text
stringlengths 532
11.6M
|
|---|
#title Revolution or Reification?
#subtitle A Critique of FRSO’s Political Program
#author 08
#LISTtitle Revolution or Reification?
#date 2024
#source https://toonworld08.substack.com/p/a-critique-of-frsos-political-program
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-04-07T03:06:06
#authors 08
#topics criticism and critique, maoism, FRSO, authoritarian left, Marxism-Leninism, settler-colonialism, decolonization
*** <strong>A Marxist Party of a New (Old) Type</strong>
In the current evolution of the so-called radical left in the so-called United States, one concerning trend is the growing popularity of Marxist-Leninist organizations, particularly among newly-activated young people. One organization that has been a major beneficiary of such a surge has been the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), which, though around for decades, has become more visible and active on the ground and online in recent years. FRSO’s article on their 2022 congress states that “[r]eflecting the rapid growth of FRSO over the last four years, this was the first congress for most attendees. While some of the participants were veterans of the communist movement with many decades of experience, the overwhelming majority were under 35 years old.” [1] This trend has continued.
FRSO’s program presents their goals and principles in an easily digestible format, divided into six sections. It is a quite basic Marxist-Leninist program and, as such, contains the flaws inherent to this organizational model, making for an uninspiring document outdated in its ideas and of little use. Fundamentally, it is stuck in a fetishized statist framework that conflates socialism with a planned state-capitalist economy, reinforces the colonial foundations on which the so-called United States is built, and spreads false information about its populations. We should criticize this anti-revolutionary program and challenge its growing influence.
At the root of the falsehoods that FRSO presents as objective truths is a bourgeois positivization of science and a twisting of Marx’s understanding of scientific inquiry. The introduction to their program claims that it is “a product of FRSO’s collective efforts at applying the science of revolution, Marxism-Leninism, to the day-to-day struggles we build and lead.” [2] The idea that Marxism-Leninism is an immortal science is a belief upheld by such organizations, but as John Holloway reminds us in his <em>Change the World Without Taking Power</em>:
<quote>
For Marx, science is <em>negative</em>. The truth of science is the negation of the untruth of false appearances. In the post Marx Marxist tradition, however, the concept of science is turned from a negative into a positive concept. The category of fetishism, so central for Marx, is almost entirely forgotten by the mainstream Marxist tradition. From being <em>the struggle against the untruth of fetishism</em>, science comes to be understood as knowledge of reality. With the positivisation of science, power-over penetrates into revolutionary theory and undermines it... [emphasis added][3]
</quote>
By turning Marx’s demystification of fetishisms on its head and presenting Marxism-Leninism as a prescriptive “science,” FRSO is able to paint any narrative but theirs as based in a misunderstanding of reality. This positivization is the source of their dogmatic chauvinism and why their political program should not be taken seriously.
If revolution is the opposite of reification—a process of negating oppressive social relations rather than of externalizing and taking them for granted—then the fetishism by organizations like FRSO only serves to obfuscate the reality that the political and economic complexes of the United States are but two aspects of the same social web. The state cannot and will not save us; as much as groups like FRSO like to believe that “political power—our collective ability to dictate what is and will be—lets us effectively attack every kind of injustice and inequality” [2], the reality is that the very existence of the state is an injustice that breeds inequality. The modern state came into being side by side with capitalism; this isn’t to say that they are one and the same, nor that contradictions can’t exist between them, only that they are so deeply bonded that one cannot be abolished in isolation from the other. In the context of the United States, we must extend this analysis of social relations further to include the structures of colonialism. The state, capitalism, and colonialism are threads twisted and tied together in a convoluted knot of violence and exploitation, a Gordian knot that cannot be untangled, only destroyed.
*** <strong>Building an Edifice on Weak Foundations</strong>
The introductory section of the FRSO program displays a blatant confusion as to what capitalism is and a misreading of how oppressive institutions developed within the so-called United States. FRSO’s prescription to resolve the problems brought on by capitalism is an alternative they call “socialism,” despite it being but state-capitalism. Rather than strengthening the struggle <em>against</em> labor, FRSO leans into a struggle <em>of</em> labor wholly grounded in the capitalist system. Like all Leninists, FRSO also has a tendency to erroneously subsume all forms of oppression into a totalizing class struggle. If a political program begins by misidentifying the nature of the problems it seeks to respond to, it’s impossible for what follows to be truly helpful.
According to the analysis under the subsection “Capitalism must go!”:
<quote>
Capitalism is a shortsighted, unplanned system that has one aim: the achievement of the highest rate of profit, which in turn concentrates wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Systematic and ever-present inequality is a built-in feature of capitalism. The oppression of women, the inequality faced by oppressed nationalities, and class exploitation, extend into the foundations of capitalism. Nothing about this society is just or fair.
</quote>
This isn’t the worst place to start; yet this analysis leads them to the conclusion that “our class needs to take power by revolutionary means. We need socialism, <em>where the commanding heights of society are occupied by the working class, placing all political and economic power in our hands</em>” [emphasis added]. In other words, rather than suggesting that, as originally claimed, “Capitalism must go!”, FRSO instead thinks that it should instead simply be placed in the hands of “the working class,” and things will figure themselves out. We find very similar language in Chapter 30, “What is Neo-colonialism?” from J. Sykes’ <em>The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism</em> (a book published by FRSO consisting of articles from their “Red Theory” series, whose content builds upon their program). Sykes claims that:
<quote>
In the case of Cuba, Vietnam, China, Laos, and the DPRK... <em>the working class controls the commanding heights of the socialist economies of these countries and operates them in a planned way to benefit the people first and foremost</em> [emphasis added], they have been able to develop their productive forces, expand their economies and improve the conditions of their people. [4]
</quote>
So, to Sykes and FRSO, “socialism” is but a synonym of a planned state-capitalist economy; they look to nation-states like “Cuba, Vietnam, China, Laos, and the DPRK” as models and inspirations of what can and should be implemented within the United States. Setting aside this idea until the analysis of the program’s section titled “Socialism,” it is clear that any goals whose baselines are the achievements of currently existing self-proclaimed socialist nations cannot be truly revolutionary. This is not genuine socialism, only a fetishized and uncreative illusion of it where rule by a Marxist-Leninist party is equated with social revolution. Likewise, FRSO’s conception of the working class is a fetishized one, one that assumes the relations between capital and labor to be pre-constituted. Returning to Holloway, this conception of the working class fails to see that “[w]e do not struggle as working class, we struggle against being working class, against being classified. Our struggle is not the struggle of labour: it is the struggle against labour.” Furthermore, “in this sense working class identity is not something ‘good’ to be treasured [or “proud of” [2]], but something ‘bad’... to be fought against... Or rather, working-class identity should be seen as a non-identity: the communion of struggle to be not working class.” [3] By turning “working class” into just another fetishized identifier, the core of what revolutionary social relations could be is removed as an option; possibilities are once more caged within the currently existing relations of capitalist society. We will return to this idea of self-limiting identities later on.
The subsection that follows, titled “Proud history, bright future,” draws a chronological history of the so-called United States. The very first sentence states that “[t]he history of the U.S. is a history of class struggle,” setting the stage for an analysis that subordinates all to the hegemonic “class struggle.” It goes on to say that according to Lenin, “the American Revolution of 1776 was a ‘great war of liberation’ that was part of the era’s wave of progressive democratic struggles against the landholding autocracy and feudal reaction that dominated Europe.” No following analysis that might acknowledge the realities of colonialism within the so-called United States can undo or outweigh honestly believing that there was anything liberatory about the “American Revolution.” It is only a reductive linear narrative about some sort of progressive march of history that can lead one to subscribe to such an outlook; it again guarantees that the solutions proposed and the future envisioned fail to look beyond existing social relations and simply mean to reform the systems that exist within them. It does not matter what Lenin, Marx, or anybody else might have to say about the “American Revolution” when a more nuanced understanding can better inform us and our goals.
Despite saying that from “its onset, capitalism in the U.S. was based on genocide, directed against the Native peoples, and fueled by slavery,” the struggles against statism, capitalism, colonialism, etc. are reduced to a history in which “[t]here were constant attempts by working people, in the cities and on the farms, <em>to fight for their own interests</em>” [emphasis added]. This flattening of diverse struggles to the singular economic-class struggle ignores the existence of a more complex history, particularly the way “working people” with a stake in the colonial project of the United States have been historically motivated to perpetuate oppressive social relations rather than advance a revolutionary cause seeking to abolish them. [5][6] “Their own interests” has meant very different things to different people. There is also an attempt to draw a contrast between the “rise [of] one [of] the world’s first trade union movements” and “the genocidal westward expansion” when these were both the result of the same capitalist social relations. It is not helpful to ignore material conditions for the sake of trying to force history to align with dogma.
It is also this introductory section of the program that first mentions the ideas of a so-called “Chicano nation” of “Aztlán” and the “African American nation in the Black Belt South,” but we will set these aside for now; we’ll first take a look at FRSO’s analysis of “monopoly capitalism,” their identified enemy, and their proposed economic model, what they call “socialism.”
*** <strong>Real Problems and False Solutions</strong>
The second and third sections of the FRSO program, titled “The Enemy: Monopoly Capitalism” and “Socialism,” serve to paint a picture of the existing present and an ideal future, according to FRSO. Instead of looking beyond capitalist production and towards liberated forms of living, FRSO relies on the precedent set by so-called socialist states in their imagining of a “revolutionary” alternative. The concentration on class struggle leads FRSO to fail to contend with the U.S.‘s colonial and slave heritage and thus to refuse to abolish all that comes with it. They also offer a reductive analysis of oppressed groups, which limits our ability to move beyond the reproduction of legalistic and patronizing models.
The program states: “Exploitation, inequality, and oppression are not things that ‘just happen.’ Everything that is wrong with this country is the product of a system: monopoly capitalism.” Remaining consistent, FRSO’s flattened approach identifies monopoly capitalism (which they call the highest and <em>final</em> stage of capitalism) as the source of all oppression and so the enemy that must be fought through class struggle. This is the basis for FRSO’s analysis wherein contemporary capitalism is defined as a system “characterized by an incredible concentration and centralization of wealth, where big banks become intertwined with industry, creating a financial oligarchy”; thus equating capitalism generally with private corporate capitalism specifically. This allows them to call their alternative to capitalism socialism, which in truth is but state capitalism (if we are to define capitalism as a set of relations of production in which individuals sell their labor to employers in exchange for wages within an economy based on commodity production).
As mentioned earlier, capitalism did not materialize in the United States in a vacuum and henceforth shaped all social relations through the vector of production; it was settler colonialism and the slave trade that set the stage and then contributed to the growth of capitalism here. As Gerald Horne states when analyzing how the British became the reigning global superpower over the course of what he calls the long 16<sup>th</sup> century, “any explanation that elides slavery, colonialism, and the shards of an emerging capitalism, along with their handmaiden—white supremacy—is deficient in explanatory power.” The course of history later led the British to pass “the baton to its revolting spawn, the United States, which has carried global dominance into the present century.” [7] Though this does not contradict what is stated in the program’s introduction, it highlights the rupture in logic evident within it. Contemporary capitalism is so deeply imbued with that inherited from slavery and settler colonialism that it cannot be redirected from the top into a system that will “open the road to freedom for working and oppressed people... [create] endless possibilities for humanity to work collectively to solve the great challenges of the economy, health, science, culture, war, and the environment” and empower us to “have lives with purpose in a healthy, productive society that benefits all people.” [2] To sincerely believe this is to be satisfied with appropriating a megamachine built off the backs of enslaved Africans and Natives that continues to commit genocide (and ecocide) today. It is choosing to reform white supremacy rather than rejecting it.
The subsection titled “Socialism in the U.S.” claims that:
<quote>
We will end the anarchy of production and replace it with <em>a rational, planned economy, where working people come first... Work itself will be transformed. With the working class in charge of society, workers will have a real say in how our workplaces are run</em> [emphasis added]. Under capitalism, we face the despotism of foremen and supervisors who make us toil for exploiters. Socialism means we will have a real interest in the goods and services we produce.
</quote>
In revisiting FRSO’s judgment of contemporary nation-states as examples of real existing socialism, these claims ring hollow. Describing these identified model-nations as ones that put working people first is to dismiss the diverse struggles within them. FRSO conflates the idea of a working class with the Marxist-Leninist party in power that claims to represent it; their revolution is in no way socially revolutionary; it does not mean to destroy existing oppressive social relations and create new libertarian ones but simply to reform the inner workings of the current system. To take the example of China, by far the most populous nominally socialist nation in history, either the largest or second largest economy in the world (if measured by PPP GDP or nominal GDP, respectively), and to many the bulwark of socialism in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, calling it a place where working people come first and despotic workplaces have been transformed into ones where laborers are free from foremen and supervisors would be laughable if the reality weren’t so tragic. Honest accounts expose the lie in this. [8–11] Ivan Franceschini and Christian Sorace in the introductory essay to the collection <em>Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labor</em> unambiguously write:
<quote>
This century has seen what is now one of the largest and most powerful political parties on earth transform from a revolutionary organisation whose foundations were built on the promise of the emancipation of the working class and pursuit of an alternative to capitalist modernity, into a capitalist machine decorated with socialist ornamentation that violently crushes any expression of labour organisation and working-class solidarity. [8]
</quote>
This is an accurate representation of the current conditions in the People’s Republic of China, a reality nothing like the imaginary one that FRSO seems to inhabit. Not to mention the history of “China” and the fact that it only encompasses the territory it does today after centuries of displacement, ethnic cleansing, and ongoing settler-colonialism [12][13][14][15][16][17]; nor that China’s economic accomplishments can only be seen as a success in isolation from the reality of uneven development and overproduction. [18] Perhaps FRSO’s ignorance of a foreign country shouldn’t be surprising given their analysis of the one they live in.
The “Monopoly Capitalism” section of the program describes the destruction wrought upon the world by American capitalism: on women, [2S]LGBTQ+ individuals, foreign nations, and the planet itself; and the ways that the American state serves the wealthy and their corporations while also creating laws that target marginalized groups. [2] Only intense cognitive dissonance could lead one to ignore the important similarities between the American Empire and the Chinese—or the Soviet one before it—that place them firmly within the category of anti-revolutionary.
Though this is not the place for a more detailed analysis of the political and economic terrains of current “socialist” nations, suffice it to say that taking a stance like that of FRSO exposes one as not only historically illiterate but also unfathomably chauvinistic—it is an injustice to those within these nation-states who yearn for genuine liberty and self-determination. It is often easier to be reductive than to learn and understand history. Why bother when you’re a disciple of the revolutionary science?
**** <em>Stuck at Bird’s-Eye</em>
In general, the “Socialism” section exposes a naive and simplistic understanding of how societies reproduce themselves. There is a tendency to be restricted to a top-down view, thus missing many nuances. As a result, FRSO fails to grasp that liberated communities can never spawn from simple legal reforms and good intentions.
In implementing FRSO’s suggested policies for the self-determination of “oppressed nations” and sovereignty for Indigenous peoples, not only is the existence of a ward-guardian relationship with Indigenous peoples maintained, but their supposedly sovereign territories overlap with that of the Chicano and African-American nations. Graciously <em>granting</em> liberty to oppressed peoples and independence to colonies (while seemingly maintaining colonial borders, both national and between US states) are not the revolutionary actions that FRSO believes them to be. It is also noteworthy that the Hawaiian Islands are recognized as an internally oppressed nation and not a colony, seemingly because of their current status as one of the fifty states as opposed to a territory. The concepts of Indigenous peoples “sovereignty,” the “African American nation” in the Black Belt South, and the “Chicano Nation” in the Southwest will be revisited further on.
FRSO claims that their model of socialism would open the door to “a more harmonious relationship with nature... [allowing] us to systematically raise our standard of living, while getting rid of all that is <em>wasteful and irrational</em> [emphasis added],” yet their suggestion of an industrial state-capitalist economy cannot lead to this, only to continued ecocide. Then again, states do tend to set their own standards and bend the meaning of words to their convenience. Nevertheless, less vicious and destructive capitalism is still capitalism, an inherently vicious and destructive system.
The suggestion that “for socialism to advance, the oppression of women needs to be pulled up by its roots” is correct, but the solution of “attacking inequality in the economic base... the realization of democratic rights, including reproductive rights, and developing ways for women to be able to participate fully in all aspects of political and social life” is not pulling up the roots of patriarchy; it is pruning. In a world where liberties exist for women, it would not be necessary for any political entity to grant them as legal rights—which, if given, can always be taken back away, as exemplified by the right to abortion in the USSR and later the US—they certainly cannot exist within the colonial and capitalist social relations that FRSO is so keen on maintaining. The same can be said about the full liberation of 2SLGBTQ+ individuals: liberation does not mean replacing old laws with new ones; it means ridding the land of colonial laws at a minimum.
I believe it is worth noting that there is no mention of freedom for children and teenagers in the FRSO program, when the liberation of minors from oppression would undoubtedly be an important element of a true social revolution. This is yet another example of allowing currently existing oppressive social relations to make one blind to possibilities.
The proclaimed goals of “a foreign policy that promotes peace and relates to other countries with the aim of achieving mutual respect and common benefit... [built on] working class internationalism” as well as that of “[aiding] other revolutionaries who are struggling against monopoly capitalism and oppression” seem incompatible with not only the maintenance of colonial structures but also the proclaimed alignment with nations like the PRC, a state that has historically maintained ties with feudal monarchs and military dictators [19] and whose economy depends on the continued oppression of laborers internationally. [18] [20] Conflicts of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, like the Sino-Soviet split and the Sino-Vietnamese war, also show how even relations between Marxist-Leninist states have the potential to turn sour.
Blinded by fetishisms, FRSO believes that they will “continue the class struggle until there are no more classes,” yet deny even the possibility of dismantling the statist-colonial-capitalist supercomplex. Suggesting that Marxism-Leninism is necessary to liberate the so-called United States can be called nothing other than chauvinism. The goal of a classless society can never and will never come as a result of Leninist (counter)revolution; this is especially true here. Ironically, this part of the program ends with the following paragraph:
<quote>
When people change the world, they themselves are also changed. To change the world positively, then, in pursuit of justice for the majority of humankind, is to change humankind itself. Only through the struggle for socialism can this bright future be ours. The present is the battlefield where control over the future is fought for and won. There’s no better time to join that fight than right now.
</quote>
This is a beautiful message, one I wholeheartedly agree with, though an important nuance is left unspoken—means must always match ends. Humans (societies) reproduce themselves, and thus a world healed from injustices cannot be born from dictatorship. To change the world, we must engage with it in ways that change us to our core, digging beneath and uprooting the ingrained fetishisms of a corrupted world. It will always be true that even more important than what we achieve is <em>how</em> we achieve it.
*** <strong>Class Divisions and the “National Question” Question</strong>
The three final sections of the program, “Class in the U.S. and our Strategy for Revolution,” “Immediate Demands of Labor,” and “Immediate Demands for U.S. Colonies, Indigenous Peoples, and Oppressed Nationalities,” present FRSO’s analyses of class-based and national identities in the United States and their proposals stemming from these analyses. Regarding class, FRSO takes the standard Marxist approach of deducing class from relations of production strictly, rather than relations of power more holistically. The primacy that they place on this economic class struggle leads them to treat what FRSO members like Sykes refer to as the “National Question” as but an appendage of the larger class struggle. [4] The very framing of national liberation as but a corollary “question” that must be answered for the sake of class struggle highlights a tendency to reduce real living struggles to theoretical points. As for their supposed demands, those related to labor amount to a more “progressive” and benign capitalism, while those related to “U.S. Colonies, Indigenous Peoples, and Oppressed Nationalities” are ill-informed and high-handed, ultimately reinforcing colonial-capitalist social relations.
For FRSO’s plan of revolution to become a reality, “[w]orking and oppressed peoples need political power.” To them, this “power is the means to reorganize society in our own interests and dictate our terms to all who stand in the way,” thus their basic strategy is to build “a united front against the monopoly capitalist class, under the leadership of the working class and its political party, with a strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the oppressed nationalities at the core.” [2] As noted before, the so-called “leadership of the working class and its political party” should be read as the leadership of a communist party, a party that seeks to take power and afterwards, as they say, “dictate [their] terms to all who stand in the way.”
We will eschew a more detailed evaluation of FRSO’s list of restrictively defined class categories for the single reason that such reductive and specific identifiers largely serve as another reason for self-described revolutionaries to treat social change as if it were an algebraic equation. As for their labor demands, I will only say that for an organization that claims not to be a party but is rather making efforts to build a new (future) Communist Party, their list reads much like a political party’s electoral platform; there is also a tendency of turning to economism. We will shift our focus to their demands for Indigenous Peoples and Oppressed Nationalities.
**** <em>Fetishized Indigenous Sovereignty</em>
When it comes to the so-called “United States,” the primary struggle, or if one prefers to borrow terminology from Mao Zedong Thought, the primary contradiction, is colonialism. To begin to imagine a possible future where communism can exist anywhere within this territory, decolonization is a requirement. Since the institutions of settler and resource colonialism have developed from the moment Europeans first landed in what is now the so-called United States, the resolving of this contradiction would mean the absolute and total destruction of the United States as an entity. Nothing can change this reality. This is not a matter of debate or compromise; turning the United States into a supposed worker-led “socialist state” (if one can even seriously imagine such a scenario) would not undo the structures of colonialism. A refusal to accept this reality is likely the most blatant failure of the FRSO program.
Klee Benally, author of <em>No Spiritual Surrender,</em> brilliantly critiques the methods and ideology of Marxist parties from an Indigenous perspective. It is helpful to quote this at length:
<quote>
Marxism’s theoretical inadequacy as a strategy for Indigenous autonomy and liberation lies in its commitment to an industrialized worker-run State as the vehicle for revolutionary transformation towards a stateless society. Forced industrialization has ravaged the Earth and the people of the Earth. To solely focus on an economic system rather than indict the consolidation of power as an expression of modernity has resulted in the predictions of anarchist critics (like Bakunin) to come true; the ideological doctrine of socialists tends towards bureaucracy, intelligentsia, and ultimately totalitarianism.
....
<em>To be required to assume a role in a society that is premised on colonial political and economic ideology towards the overthrow of that system to achieve communalization is to require political assimilation and uniformity as a condition for, and of, revolution</em>. Marxist and Maoist positions demand it which means they demand Indigenous People to reconfigure that which makes them Indigenous to become weapons of class struggle. The process inherently alienates diverse and complex Indigenous social compositions by compelling them to act as subjects of a revolutionary framework based on class and production. Indigenous collectives exist in ways that leftist political ideologies refuse to imagine, as to do so would conflict with the primary architecture of “enlightenment” and “modernity” that their “civilized” world is built on.
This is why we reject the overture to shed our cultural “bondage” and join the proletarian dictatorship. We reject the gestures to own the means of production with our expectant assimilated role of industrial or cultural worker. Any social arrangement based on industrialization is a dead end for the Earth and the peoples of the Earth. <em>Class war on stolen lands could abolish economic exploitation while retaining settler-colonialism. We have no use for any politics that calculates its conclusion within the context of these kinds of power relations.</em> [all emphasis added][21]
</quote>
Beyond the fetishization of the state that Marxist-Leninist organizations are all prone to, to suggest that a “dictatorship of the proletariat” is the appropriate solution in a settler-colony like the United States is to map colonial political geography onto Indigenous social relations; it is authoritarian temporality locking possibilities within a modern framework.
As Benally likewise speaks about, the very idea of Indigenous sovereignty is colonial in its origin—before the arrival of Europeans, Indigenous peoples did not need any state to grant them sovereignty, the same way they surely wouldn’t in the aftermath of a genuine social revolution. FRSO says that such sovereignty would include “upholding past treaties and abolishing the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the exercise of local political power.” [2] What legitimacy is there in treaties signed under coercion? What is the meaning of local political power still within the settler-colonial structure of the United States? To make it worse, what they call the “right to national development” means “gaming and especially the return of indigenous peoples’ <em>land and natural resources to make their sovereign areas economically viabl</em>e” [emphasis added]. This doesn’t sound much different from existing dynamics where recognized tribes are legally considered domestic dependent nations, have centralized tribal governments unlike social structures that existed before colonialism, with some created specifically for the intention of extraction through the signing over of access to natural resources. [21] The term “economically viable” implies a continuing exploitation of Native peoples and lands for the sake of industrial production, which, as Benally says, is a dead end for the Earth and all of us who live through her.
FRSO’s plan for Indigenous sovereignty is chauvinistic and colonial in nature. It is only by destroying the settler-colonial state that Indigenous peoples can begin to reclaim liberty. What hope can come from an organization that praises powerful men and power itself?
**** <em>The 12/4/24 Article</em>
During the process of writing this essay, J. Sykes of FRSO published an article on fightbacknews.org titled “Marxism-Leninism and the theory of settler-colonialism in the United States,” the stated purpose of which was to “challenge and correct theoretical errors,” specifically the “tendency from some on the left to argue that the United States should be understood today as a settler-colonial state.” [22] He summarizes this tendency as one that believes that
<quote>
The United States remains today a settler-colonial state. People of European descent, regardless of their actual class position, are settlers, and are seen as continuing to benefit from and perpetuate a colonial system. In other words, the people of the United States are divided into two camps, with the colonized in one camp, and the settlers in the other. Some even go so far as to say that this makes up the principal contradiction in the U.S. This is furthermore viewed as a fundamentally antagonistic contradiction.
</quote>
He contrasts this with “the Marxist-Leninist view, which recognizes the United States as an advanced imperialist country” and also views it as divided “into two camps”: the capitalists being one and an alliance of the working-class and oppressed nationalities the other. Sykes goes on to acknowledge that if the United States continues to be a settler colony today, then FRSO’s thesis has “no basis whatsoever upon which to build a multinational working class communist party in this country.” This is ultimately what it comes down to—an arrogant obsession with state power, being unable to see past fetishisms, and thus clinging onto existing anti-revolutionary social relations.
Sykes says that while the United States might have begun as a settler colony, to suggest it remains so is “metaphysical thinking.” According to his application of dialectical materialism, settler colonialism was but a transitional period in the development of capitalism. As mentioned earlier, in truth, settler colonialism and slavery built the skeleton of American capitalism that allows it to continue standing. To Sykes, settler colonialism was but a limited period that led to competitive capitalism, which then led to monopoly capitalism, the primary contradiction today and the enemy of the working class. This strange line of thinking exposes the inconsistency of FRSO’s rhetoric, who, though able to recognize Israel as a settler-colony, deny the United States’ status as one. Are we to then assume there are scenarios in which, through the simple passing of time, Israel can one day cease to be a settler-colony?
Sykes’ article lists the Hawaiian, Chicano, and African American nations as the three oppressed nations within the United States, explicitly differentiating them from colonies; thus, doubling down on Hawaii not being a colony and the seeming importance of maintaining the integrity of the United States’ borders.
He goes on to say that “[s]elf-determination is a democratic demand. It means that the oppressed nation ought to democratically determine its own destiny. <em>Historically imposed obstacles to genuine political power must be systematically dismantled</em> [emphasis added].” The irony is extraordinary; his dedication to this narrative is one that itself excludes the possibility of self-determination for Indigenous peoples, which would require an (anti)politics that first of all recognizes that the United States is a settler colony that must die for Indigenous peoples and cultures to live.
Like the FRSO program, Sykes’ article states that “in the era of imperialism, the national question is bound up with proletarian socialist revolution,” the supposedly correct position, which he contrasts to the “theory of U.S. settler-colonialism” that originated among “petty bourgeois radicals [who] pride themselves on taking the most outwardly revolutionary position, regardless of whether or not it holds up to scientific analysis.” It would do Sykes good to reevaluate his framework that singles out relations of production as the source of all oppression, as would it for him to reassess Marx’s category of fetishism and negative conception of science.
According to Benally, “[t]he colonial logic of futurity is only concerned with the reproduction of settler society.” A refusal to reject a stagist understanding of history and its narrative of progression means to stand for this violent settler reproduction. It seems to me that FRSO’s denial of the reality of ongoing settler-colonialism is largely rooted in settler anxiety, an anxiety about their own status and potential role in a decolonized space. On the topic of what decolonization means and looks like, Benally states:
<quote>
Since settler identity only can exist without consent, it would follow that re-connecting through non-dominating means, or establishing interrelationality, would be the response. But the preconditions for agreement demand destruction of the settler self, all that it represents, and all that it upholds. The proposal of auto-settler destruction, which is another way of saying social war, <em>is not a civil war or a revolution</em> [violent insurrection]<em>, but boundless social rupture</em>. In other words, power with colonizers has reasonable prerequisites. [emphasis added][21]
</quote>
In my own experience, many non-Native people have a strong and reflexively antagonistic response to the thought of decolonization. Without much (or often any) consideration of actual Indigenous perspectives, there is a fear that decolonization means a sort of mass deportation or even race war. Social rupture means to destroy the settler <em>as a subject</em> and everything that upholds it. Decolonization doesn’t mean the violent extermination of settlers as individuals; yet for the descendants of settlers to exist on decolonized lands requires a wholesale buying into the idea of auto-settler destruction. Benally’s concept of interrelationality is fundamental to this, this being a solidarity “predicated on building and tearing down direct spatial and temporal relationships.” [21] Interrelationality recognizes that pivotal to advancing decolonization is breaking those cycles of power-<em>over</em> (other humans, non-humans, the Earth, existence, time itself...)<em></em> which both those who advocate for reform and revolution rarely reject. Moving beyond colonial arrangements of domination can only happen through interrelation, a form of creative destruction.
I find it appropriate to insert here the following quote by Fanon, keeping in mind his attention to decolonization:
<quote>
To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them... that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people. In order to put all this into practice, in order really to incarnate the people, we repeat that <em>there must be decentralization in the extreme</em> [emphasis added]. [23]
</quote>
It is only decentralized, self-determined, and consciously decolonial praxes that present any hope for us in the so-called US. Though Fanon goes on to say that the “movement from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top should be a fixed principle,” I believe it is better to picture decentralization not as an alternative form of hierarchy but rather as an approach grounded in <em>networks</em> of solidarity; in other words, grounded in relationality as described by Benally. This framing goes further in establishing deep solidarity between heterogeneous groups than either strictly top-down or bottom-up approaches.
More than anything, we must realize that it will not be—cannot be—Sykes, FRSO, or any other self-identified vanguard party that will teach the masses what revolutionary change means. In the end, Sykes’ article does nothing to strengthen FRSO’s thesis but rather exposes the chauvinism inherent to it. FRSO’s program is not one that can be improved through internal advocacy from members; it is rotten to its core.
**** <em>Mapping an African-American Nation</em>
Similar to FRSO’s idea of Indigenous sovereignty, that of the “African-American nation of the Black-Belt South” fails to move beyond the existing social relations of capitalism-colonialism. Instead, the logic of statism & settler-colonialism is mapped onto the Black population of the United States. I find it essential to consult the analyses of Black anarchists and abolitionists to expose the flaws in FRSO’s line of thinking and show why Black liberation can only exist outside of statist models.
FRSO’s demands for the “African-American nation” include:
<quote>
— Reparations for the descendants of African slaves in the United States
— Political power through regional and local autonomy for communities of African Americans outside of the African American nation. End gerrymandering of political districts that reduce African American political representation.
— An end to the war on drugs targeting the African American community, police brutality, killer cops, and all-white juries.
— Expansion of affirmative action programs and an end to discriminatory testing and entrance requirements for colleges.
— Increase funding for schools in African American communities
— Political asylum for African and Caribbean people fleeing repressive governments [2]
</quote>
This set of demands also reads much like a party’s electoral platform, a “progressive” one to be sure, but one that is reformist and not revolutionary. It is unclear how such reforms would eventually lead to breaking the reification spiral of white supremacist institutions. Similar to the impossibility of Indigenous self-determination within the settler-colonial United States, the Black population of the United States cannot be truly free without the abolition of this country—one built on African slavery that continues to benefit from this legacy every day that goes by.
Reforms like “an end to the war on drugs [legalisation?], police brutality, killer cops, and all-white juries” are nothing more than empty words. These systems cannot somehow be made just through decrees; they must simply cease to exist. It does not matter how enlightened reforms sound when they’re reforms within a system that has never recognized Black people as equal citizens.
As Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson point out in <em>As Black as Resistance</em>:
<quote>
Because Africans were forcibly removed from the continent and trafficked to the United States and did not largely participate in the European process of domination (with, of course, notable exception made for the so-called Buffalo Soldiers...), Black people cannot be considered as settlers in the United States. Though we may participate in ongoing settler processes and ultimately benefit from the elimination of Indigenous people and the expropriation of their land, we are not settlers. [24]
</quote>
Yet despite this historical exclusion from the settler-colonial project, FRSO’s suggestion of “the creation of a Black majoritarian nation-state, where the fate of Indigenous people is ambiguous at best, <em>is an idea rooted in settler logic</em> [emphasis added].” In critiquing the confounding of self-determination with the adoption of settler logic, Samudzi and Anderson ask, “Is settler adjacency what a truly intersectional framework and multifaceted approach to Black liberation entails?” The only reasonable answer to this is a thundering no.
According to the example of Israel, the opportunity to become a colonizer <em>is</em> “the ultimate reparation for historical violence.” Because
<quote>
Although popularly positioned as a kind of reparation for... the German Holocaust, the creation of Israel was as an act of European antisemitism in the eyes of some... The establishment of a Jewish homeland meant that antagonistic Western governments—states such as the United States and Allied Powers that were aware of the genocidal violence of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution but stood idly by and even sought to appease the Nazi government—would not have to receive as many Jewish refugees. Mirroring this in the United States, white supremacists have historically supported the separatist politics of the Nation of Islam. They have seen Black separatism as analogous to the white nationalist “self determining politic” of the white majoritarian United States. Of course, these logics of racial self-determination do not operate the same in reverse.
</quote>
Advocating for an African-American nation in the American South does not actually uproot white supremacy, and in a scenario where the United States is not fully dismantled, it is <em>guaranteed</em> that white supremacy’s roots will remain deep in the cultural soil.
It is vital to understand that “[i]f land-based reparations were to be actualized for Black people in the United States, <em>models for land-based liberation that are not both mindful and critical of settler colonialism would perpetuate the expropriation of land from Indigenous communities...”</em> [emphasis added]. A recognition that revolutionary “land politics cannot simply be built on top of centuries-old exterminatory settler logic of Indigenous removal and genocide” points to the need for a total rupture with existing society. The liberation of both Black people in the so-called U.S. and of the land “<em>can only come about through dialogue and co-conspiratorial work with Native communities and a shared understanding of land use outside of capitalistic models of ownership</em> [emphasis added].” [24] It is irrelevant what intentions might motivate FRSO when their proposals are premised on genocidal settler logic.
Simply put, it is not and can never be up to the government of the United States to actualize Black liberation; to believe so is both ignorant and racist. FRSO’s fetishism of the state does not allow them to understand such a blatantly obvious truth, despite (or perhaps because of) their claims of strictly following the revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism.
Anti-Blackness is a global scourge, and envisioning a nation whose borders reflect those of the slave-holding American South creates an unnecessary split in the African diaspora. This fact cannot be reconciled by promises to offer asylum to refugees and local autonomy to those outside the borders of the “African American Nation.” [2] As Anderson states in his aptly titled <em>The Nation on No Map</em>:
<quote>
The people being forced to leave their homes around the world that are a part of the African diaspora pay the price of empire and state violence. People leave the African continent and experience terrifying voyages by boat and otherwise, trying to reach Europe, a region that has, through extraction and plunder, created the intolerable conditions they are fleeing. While the meddling exploitation of states destabilizes, people die in great numbers just trying to survive inside and outside of borders. This forced movement, all of these deaths in the mountains, oceans, seas, and deserts, are not simply news stories that don’t concern us. We are connected to them not just because we’re Black people but also because our respective pasts and oppressed existences share commonalities. <em>These shared understandings of how we’re being exploited are what we need to build from in order to create a global push for a revolutionary uprising</em>. <em>Our continual, global displacement forces our movement in this sense as well</em> [emphasis added]. [25]
</quote>
It is only Black people themselves and those they recognize as accomplices that can create revolutionary change to secure their liberty <em>everywhere</em>. Anderson goes on to soberly explain in the concluding section of this work why it is that genuine Black liberation is inherently antithetical to state power and how it is only possible by looking beyond its fetishisms:
<quote>
Understanding the need to confront the white supremacist state and understand our position as Black people within its confines does not mean we seek out nationality or nationhood. We don’t need to know our exact ancestral origins to know we’re Africans. <em>We don’t have to centralize anything or homogenize ourselves to confront the tragedy that we know as the United States. Be wary of any one-size-fits all rhetoric that glosses over the unfathomable diversity of Black people. Absolutist approaches destroy possibility.</em> Europe drew the map of the world as we know it—a ranked array of nation-states—using the tools of white supremacy and capitalism. <em>We don’t have to use nationhood or nationalism to try to find ourselves on their map. The map, the nation, and the state must go. We did not draw them, and they do not serve us. They never did.</em> To exist on their map in any way can only diminish us and undermine everything that we’re capable of.
The U.S. state isn’t killing us simply because it’s white supremacist: killing is part of the power granted to states, <em>it’s what states do</em>. It’s what they are built for. It’s what their police do, what their militaries do, what their borders do, and what their political parties do. All these things are structured according to the ideas of hierarchical organization and leadership and governance. <em>There is a deadly potential buried in all of them that we must reject. To try to make use of them for “revolutionary” purposes means running toward goals that have nothing to do with true liberation</em>. We must not remain trapped on this map; we must try to draw new lines to sketch out a life for ourselves that their borders, their states, and their map cannot hold.
<em>Our task is to shape a new society, a world we want to live in. In order to do so, we have to do away with the old one. The state will never end state violence, nor will any politics that relies on it</em>.
...
There’s no avoiding it, the fight that’s all around us. This is a time that requires us to choose freedom from all oppressive formations. The new, liberated future we hope to grasp comes closer to us through the willingness to first hold the truth of where we are now and where we have already been. [all emphasis added]
</quote>
When it comes to the question of Black liberation, the FRSO program isn’t just useless; it’s anti-revolutionary. By mapping a defined African-American nation, possibly well-intentioned but naive self-proclaimed radicals only preserve the social relations built on slavery and settler-colonialism. It’s clear that abolition is the only revolutionary option there is.
**** <em>A Critique of Aztlán & Chicano Nationalism</em>
An essential part of FRSO’s program and its demands for what they call oppressed nations is the recognition of a so-called Chicano homeland in the Southwest, also known as Aztlán. To subscribe to this narrative and suggest that this territory (roughly comprising that which so-called Mexico lost with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo) should be considered a Chicano nation is to spread ideas that are detrimental to the struggle for Indigenous peoples’ self-determination all under the guise of decolonial solidarity. As an anti-nationalist Chicano, I believe it is important to critique the narrative of Aztlán more broadly.
The so-called United States and so-called Mexico are both products of genocidal settler-colonialism. Any project whose basis hinges on the borders, current and/or previous, of settler colonial states restricts itself to the framework and the social relations of the systems that bred them. Many Chicanos cling to their mixed heritage as a biologistic representation of their indigeneity, failing to see that such a heritage in no way legitimizes claims to land in the Southwest. For us Chicanos, it is important that we not only understand our history but are also able to place it within a larger context; to deny Aztlán nationalism is not to deny one’s indigenous ancestry outright but to reject the maintenance of social relations that deny self-determination for Indigenous peoples today.
FRSO’s adoption of the Aztlán narrative speaks to the fact that much contemporary Chicano cultural production has focused on the topic of decolonization, taking as a starting pointh the belief that we as Chicanos are a colonized people. Sanchez and Pita remind us that though it is true that we are the product of colonial projects, these discourses forget (extremely ironically so) the role that our ancestors played as colonizers. It is a historical fact that
<quote>
Whether the colonizers in what is now the US Southwest were Spaniards, criollos, mestizos, or even Indigenous peoples like the Tlaxcaltecas, they all came from the interior of New Spain (now Mexico) in the name and in the service of the Spanish crown... to dispossess the natives of what would become the US Southwest. [26]
</quote>
Even if we have eventually found ourselves on the receiving end of subsequent dispossessions, “we have developed a selective amnesia for our role in the colonization of the native people of the Southwest; our own role in the subjugation and exploitation of Indigenous peoples and, in some cases, [their] massacre.” Though it is true that the three successive settler-colonial projects in this region (the Spanish, Mexican, and American) each have their own particularities, we cannot ignore the basic commonality of their motivations—exploitation and dispossession—simply because we find ourselves being victimized by the contemporary American colonial project.
Maria Eugenia Cotera and Maria Josefina Saldaña-Portillo’s essay “Indigenous But Not Indian? Chicana/os and the Politics of Indigeneity” recounts how
<quote>
In the Fall of 2005 the University of New Mexico hosted an international symposium, ‘Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: Conflict, Resistance, & Peace Making”... to find solutions to the ‘problems faced by Indigenous Peoples in areas such as culture, education, health, human rights, environment and socio-economic development’... [Some] local Native peoples, led by the Tricentennial Truth Alliance (TTA), called for a boycott... A statement, read by Mairis Chino (Acoma Pueblo)... drew boundaries of demarcation between legitimate indigenous subjects and those who sought to claim Indigeneity to further their own political claims for state and international recognition... While the TTA statement acknowledged that ‘there were honorable indigenous Brothers and Sisters’ participating... it also questioned the inclusion of Chicanos... who, the statement claimed, were ‘opportunistically’ deploying ‘a false representation of Indigenous values and issues’ in order to ‘promote their personal political self interests to the detriment of Indian land, culture, and communities. [27]
</quote>
The TTA went on to state that to them,
<quote>
Indigenous means the original inhabitants of North, Central and South America who continue to exist as a tribal community with a land base. Existing as a tribal community includes language, <em>tribal government</em>, and recognition as Indigenous People by other indigenous people and non-indigenous people. <em>By these terms the Indo-Hispano, Chicano, Mestizo do not have identity as Indigenous People</em> [emphasis added].
</quote>
Though in the context of the UNM symposium these remarks were powerful and likely necessary, it is also true that this definition of indigenous outright opposes the notion that Chicanos can claim <em>any</em> relationship with indigeneity. As Cotero and Saldaña-Portillo recognize, “[t]his formulation of the non-indigenous ‘ethnic’ Chicana/o subject relie[s] on an implicit acceptance of the borders of the nation-state, effectively ignoring the complex lived realities of indigenous communities whose nations have historically crossed the U.S./Mexico border.” By naming the existence of a tribal government (and thus official recognition by the US federal government) as one of the qualifiers of being a tribal community, this framework is one that not only incorporates settler-colonial structures but also recognizes their ultimate authority. Furthermore, the authors state that these “standards do not necessarily concord with understandings of indigeneity in Quito, Huehuetenango, or Oaxaca,” where “the assimilative directives of colonial regimes and, later, national projects, have resulted in very different formulations.” Chicanos are not a case of outright inventing a historical connection to indigeneity but rather the product of a long history of racial mixing<em></em> resulting in genetically indigenous subjects who came to identify with the Mexican nation-state instead of with any particular indigenous community.
And yet, Mexican mestizos<em></em> maintained real existing connections with Indigenous communities; self-identification with post-Independence Mexico did not in itself “preclude a psychic and cultural connection to indigeneity.” Cotero and Saldaña-Portillo conclude that Chicanos occupy “a complex position between ‘settlers’ and ‘Indians,’ or, perhaps... a position as <em>both</em> indigenous and settler.” This reality of existing at both ends of the settler/indigenous binary is a result of the history of not only so-called Mexico generally but also what now constitutes the space claimed as Aztlán more specifically.
By the time of the US-Mexico War, mestizos in the northern borderlands would have identified with their Indigenous neighbors, to whom they were related to through “familial, economic, political, and now by <em>national</em>” ties. [27] This can largely be traced back to the fact that
<quote>
unlike their British counterparts... Spanish colonizers invariably settled adjacent to indigenous villages and towns, grafting their own forms of government atop indigenous governments, their own economies atop indigenous economies, and seeking out close associations with indigenous peoples.
<em>Mestizaje</em> was not only the invariable outcome of this mode of colonial space-making along the northern frontier; it was also the condition of possibility for its conquest. <em>Mestizos</em> and <em>afromestizos</em> from Mexico’s interior participated in the conquest of the entire northern frontier in great numbers, making up between 10 and 40 percent of most of the conquesting population. They correctly perceived the outposts as a space where the <em>casta</em> system [the racial and social hierarchy of the Spanish Empire] would not be so rigidly observed... [27]
</quote>
Robert Archibald points out that
<quote>
Despite seemingly arbitrary ethnic classifications and an economic hierarchy which roughly followed ethnic lines, colonial New Mexico [where most inhabitants of the region lived] was not a closed society. Marriage and economic success were certain roads to improved status. The transitory stature of Indian and genizaro [detribalized Native] classifications indicate a highly effective means of Hispanicizing, Christianizing and ultimately incorporating native peoples into New Mexican society. [28]
</quote>
This reality of ties to indigeneity and their place within society in the northern borderlands was incompatible with the American white supremacist understanding of citizenship. To the Americans annexing this territory, “Mexicans could not be Indians and Indians could not be Mexicans.” [27] It was this rupture that later produced a condition that Cotero and Saldaña-Portillo call “mestizo mourning,” the mourning of the loss of a historical relationship with Indigenous people. Mexican-American mestizos in the United States mourn this ancestry “foreclosed to them–not by biological relationship... but by U.S. statecraft and racial nationalism.” And so when Chicanos claim to have an indigenous heritage, they do so “not merely as an appropriative gesture of Native tribal identity, but rather as a psychic restoration of an indigenous past denied to them by exigencies of U.S. colonial history and law.”
Due to these experiences, it is not surprising that Chicanos would turn to a historical relationship with indigeneity in an effort to address the reality of being a product of multiple settler colonial projects. Cotero and Saldaña-Portillo go on to point out that “Chicana/o indigenism cannot be reduced to a settler fantasy” given its original impulse of mestizo mourning.
This is where it is important to stress that though many, perhaps even most, Chicanos are indeed partly Indigenous by blood, <strong>heritage does not imply a connection and therefore a legitimate claim to land</strong><em>.</em> This is true even if one can trace their own family back to the Southwest pre-annexation (though most Chicanos today descend from people who migrated north of the current borderline beginning in the early 20<sup>th</sup> century, anyway).
It is also of chief importance to understand the place of mestizaje and indigenismo [an ideology emphasizing the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the nation-state] as concepts within the Mexican nationalist project of the 20<sup>th</sup> century and trace this to its contemporary implications.
As Saldaña-Portillo points out in her article “Who’s the Indian in Aztlan?,” in the context of a developing post-revolutionary Mexican identity, “the ‘black’ and ‘yellow’ aspects of the cosmic race [a theorized race resulting from the agglomeration of all others] were systematically forgotten as mestizo identity was reduced to a Spanish and Indian binary,” an identity that “remains disturbingly hierarchical.” Within the mestizo identity, “it is always Indian cultural traits that are negative [and] must be eliminated or subsumed to the ‘national’ culture of mestizaje.” [30] According to Lourdes Alberto, indigenismo and the mestizaje it laid the groundwork for “ultimately ensured the disappearance of contemporary indigenous populations, as they were no longer seen as a part of Mexico’s present and future; rather, they were frozen in an ancient past symbolizing Mexico’s raw ethnic roots.” [29] In other words, “the current ideology of mestizaje incorporates the historical figure of the Indian only to, in effect, exclude contemporary Indians from modernization.” [30] This critique necessitates that we “reconsider first the national deployment of mestizaje as a trope for citizenship, and second, the transnational deployment of mestizaje as the presumed intersection between Mexican indigenous identity and Chicana/o identity.” This mapping of mestizaje exposes the major contradictions that exist between contemporary Indigenous peoples and Chicanos, highlighting the need to move beyond a deeply problematic Chicano nationalism.
Within the United States, the Chicano movement in the early 70s appropriated the discourse of mestizaje at the same time that Aztlán was claimed as an indigenous nation that existed prior to the founding of the United States. In that period, Aztlán was a place from which to critique the discrimination against Chicanos within American society. This new nationalism
<quote>
functioned as succor for Chicanos within a U.S. ethnoracial framework that had enacted a long history of violence against Mexican Americans, including mass deportation, lynching, quotidian racism, land dispossession, language elimination, nativism, and police abuse. While Chicano nationalist discourses resulted from strategies of empowerment, nationalism gathered its rhetorical legitimacy from indigenist practices. [29]
</quote>
This movement was formulated under the specter of indigenismo’s complex history; thus, by adopting the tropes of mestizaje and indigenismo, Chicanos continued to operate within the logic to which these belong. As a result, Chicanos have often prioritized recuperating their own indigenous past instead of supporting Indigenous peoples struggling in the present; a fetishized indigeneity means that Chicano nationalists place their own biological lineage above existing cultural ones. As Alberto says, it is “[p]recisely because the apparatus of indigenism remains a threat to indigenous culture, indigenous history, indigenous epistemologies, and indigenous self-determination [that] by adopting indigenist poetics, Chicanos’ and Chicanas’ uses of indigeneity [are] viewed as an extension of a colonial practice.”
As Chicanos, we must realize that
<quote>
In mestizaje, we are reduced to searching for signs of our indigenous past and, more significantly, for a collective political future in some inherent tie to the land... <em>To recognize this process is not to deny our indigenous ancestry; rather, to recognize this is to refuse to reduce indigenous subjectivity, and indeed Mexican mestizo identity, to biologistic representation that, in discursive and political terms, always already places the Indian under erasure</em> [emphasis added]. [30]
</quote>
Thus, looking beyond an identity that temporally restricts us to a modern framework of colonial borders and an overemphasizing of biological heritage, we as Chicanos must extend solidarity to Indigenous peoples <em>across</em> the Americas who practice and maintain (continually evolving) cultural traditions that date to a time before European property relations.
Noche succinctly states in “Contra Aztlán” that though “Chicanxs are the historical product of colonialism, racism, capitalism, slavery, genocide and cultural erasure,” and that “[p]art of the struggle to liberate Chicanxs (and all people) would inevitably incorporate the reclaiming of lost ancient ways,” our own struggle for liberation “cannot overtake the struggle of Native peoples who have managed to maintain a direct connection to their deep past & present<em>.</em>” Fundamentally, we must recognize that <em>“Indigeneity is more than genetic heritage, it is a real cultural link</em> [emphasis added].” [31]
Ultimately, Aztlán nationalism is not a movement for liberation; it is just another obstacle in the way of ridding ourselves of oppressive social relations. It is an excuse for Chicanos to adopt colonial narratives and seek to “decolonize” them, ignoring that to decolonize colonialism is an oxymoron.
The Chicano-nationalist obsession with the “Chicano homeland” of Aztlán is one that denies the primacy of the struggle for decolonization and Indigenous peoples’ obviously central role within it. As for FRSO, promoting an unfounded narrative like that of Aztlán is just another example of buying into the fetishisms rooted in our society rather than working to eliminate them. The (once again) growing popularity of the Aztlán narrative and its pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric is one we must actively push back against in order to advance the decolonial struggle.
*** <strong>A Revolutionary Alternative</strong>
As stated at the beginning of this essay, the FRSO program does not challenge but instead perpetuates colonial structures, conflates socialism with state-capitalism, and generally promotes flawed anti-revolutionary narratives. The resurgence of Marxist-Leninist organizations like FRSO forces us to contend with the influence they might hold and the implications of the dogma they preach. That FRSO members continue to espouse the deficient analyses from their program in the face of more nuanced ones speaks to the danger of deluding oneself with an illusory “scientific” reasoning. The building of a better world cannot be achieved by advocating for models and practices rooted in the current one. We must look beyond the promises of counter-hegemony, let go of fetishized identities, and look to the future as the source of our poetry; to once and for all move beyond positivist-vanguard fantasies that cannot help us construct alternative and liberating communities. Only in negation may we find our liberation.
**** <em>Negating the Hegemony of Hegemony with an Affinity for Affinity</em>
FRSO’s definitions and analyses of “Socialism” and “Monopoly Capitalism” lead them to believe that a so-called dictatorship of the proletariat is the only possible solution, the scientific solution, to global oppression. The danger in this is that such an argument amounts to seeking to replace one form of hegemony with another. To do so is to perpetuate what Richard J. F. Day calls the “<em>hegemony of hegemony...</em> the assumption that effective social change can only be achieved simultaneously and <em>en masse</em>, across an entire national or supranational space” [32]. This assumption places a hard limit on how truly revolutionary FRSO’s program can be.
Gramsci describes hegemony as a process that “manifests itself in two ways, as ‘domination’ and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership.’ A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to ‘liquidate,’ or to subjugate perhaps even by armed force; it leads kindred and allied groups.” [33] This certainly describes the goal of any statist model, including the Leninist one—proletarian dictatorship being a synonym for proletarian (party) hegemony. Leninism posits replacing capitalist hegemony with its own as both desirable and revolutionary.
According to Day, the only way to break out of the trap of hegemony is to operate <em>non</em>-hegemonically as opposed to counter-hegemonically. [32] In contrast to approaches that describe a revolutionary future community in monolithic fashion, we should “think instead of the coming <em>communities</em>, in the plural, but not in the form of liberal pluralism”; as such, “we need to guide our relations with other communities according to interlocking ethico-political commitments of <em>groundless solidarity</em> and <em>infinite responsibility</em>.” Upholding the hegemony of hegemony cannot lead to the death of capitalism and the creation of better alternatives; only self-determined social relations can. Day calls this negation of hegemony an <em>affinity for affinity</em>: a championing of “non-universalizing, non-hierarchical, non-coercive relationships based [on] mutual aid and shared ethical commitments.” A logic of affinity stresses building solidarity between struggles without making any one subservient to another—without creating a hierarchy of hierarchies.
The fundamental flaw of FRSO’s program is its presentation of a supposedly revolutionary goal under the guise of objective scientific analysis, which is at its core based in the fetishisms of existing social relations and a logic of hegemony. If one truly wishes to “change humanity itself” [2], one must think non-hegemonically, or alternatively, as Jason Adams says, <em>post</em>-hegemonically. [34] We seek to change forms, not just content.
Marquis Bey says that if we are to operate in the vein of Marx’s call for a “ruthless criticism of all that exists,” then our “critical praxis and its theoretical heft [must be] a ruthless interrogation of the established and institutionalized.” [35] In this way, “[c]ritical praxis becomes a radical invitation to <em>not only do but to be done</em> by the undercommon insurgency that makes its own demands [emphasis added].” Fundamentally, such a praxis must suspend the presumption of an end goal. In aiming to create self-determined communities, we cannot restrict ourselves to replacing one hegemon with another:
<quote>
Because we cannot, and must not assume that the logics and rubrics we have when moving within the maelstrom of the hegemonic—radically altered as they may be—can operate to our benefit... We will need new rubrics and metrics, <em>unrubrics and unmetrics</em>, because a radically other-world requires radically other means to love it, to caress it, to be all the way in it [emphasis added].
</quote>
The unrubrics and unmetrics of non-hegemony, an affinity of affinity—these are the means to the end of revolutionary possibilities. Only through them can we shed the traditions of dead generations that weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living and find a new source for our revolutionary poetry.
**** <em>Identity and Dignity, or Taking our Poetry from the Future</em>
Marx states in his <em>18<sup>th</sup> Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte</em> that:
<quote>
The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content—here the content goes beyond the phrase. [36]
</quote>
All one needs to change is the century, and this quote remains as relevant today as it was then. Our revolutionary poetry cannot limit itself to that which stems from existing relations—it must be found in social rupture, which seeks to move, as Holloway says, against-and-beyond them.
For Holloway, the key to this is understanding the difference between the abstract labor (or simply “labor”) that capitalism is built upon and concrete labor (or “doing”) and why we must free the latter from the former. Though both are forms of doing, they differ immensely in their substance:
<quote>
One form of doing, labour, creates capital, the basis of the society that is destroying us. Another form of doing, what [Holloway calls] simply ‘doing’, pushes against the creation of capital and towards the creation of a different society. In both cases, our doing [human creation] is at the centre. By focusing on doing, we put our own power at the centre of our understanding of society: our power-to-do (and therefore, our power not to do, and our power to do differently)... [This argument] is not for ‘more democracy’ but for a radical reorganisation of our daily activity, without which the call for ‘more democracy’ means nothing at all. [37]
</quote>
While it is true that the deprivation of self-determined doing is what we struggle against, this process can be attributed to an even more fundamental dichotomy than that of abstract labor and concrete labor, one of <em>dispossessed</em> doing and self-determined doing. Misogyny, heterosexism, and enslavement are only some examples of dispossession that long predate the capitalist abstraction of labor and its current function as social mediator. Put simply, dispossession is the negation of self-determination—the creation of hierarchy. Holloway’s description above accurately describes the dynamic of the capitalist economy and our compulsion to labor within it, but he goes on to claim that it is this abstraction of labor that is the source of <em>all</em> other identities as we know them. Though contemporary identities all bear the scars of centuries of forced integration into the capitalist system, and it is only within this context that we have all experienced identification, it is to the more general process of dispossession that we can credit their origin. Being rooted in non-hegemony doesn’t mean rejecting or diminishing the need for class struggle, but recognizing that while it is an essential axis of struggle today, it is not the central axis—there is no such thing. What Holloway calls doing isn’t limited in its scope to pushing back against the abstraction of labor but more broadly against the reified hierarchies that all negate self-determined doing.
Understanding that identification is a process of negation allows us to consider how this negation might itself be negated, beginning the restoration of our dignity. What is significant about our identities is not the way that they define what we are, but how they, above all, define what we <em>are not</em> (and cannot <em>do</em>)<em>.</em> The ability of hierarchies to endure demands that this be the case. And so in aiming to negate these, we should “start not from the stillness of identity but from the moving of non- or, better, anti-identity. We start dialectically, but not with a dialectic understood as interaction but rather as the negative restlessness of misfitting, of insufficiency.” [37] The large focus in this essay on critiquing FRSO’s ideas regarding those identified as workers, Black, Indigenous, Chicano, etc. does not originate in a want to make these connected yet distinct struggles the be-all-end-all of our politics, but rather in seeing these (anti-)identities as springboards for building a new and better world—a world with dignity, a world where we can choose what we do. As Day points out,
<quote>
a politics of affinity... is not about abandoning identification as such; it is about abandoning the fantasy that fixed, stable identities are <em>possible and desirable</em>, that one identity is better than another, that superior identities deserve more of the good and less of the bad that a social order has to offer, and that the state form should act as the arbiter of who gets what [emphasis added]. [32]
</quote>
It might be helpful to consider here the difference between what Max Stirner calls <em>qualit</em>ies, which are the “property” of the self, owned and defined by us, and <em>essences</em>, “something alien” that “exists above and behind things,” an externalized regulative power. [38] Though while Stirner seems to suggest that the individual is the source of unique qualities, it might be better to think of qualities as continually (re)cultivated through self-determined doing and interaction. Where essentialist identities prescribed onto us by a “normalized world of self-referentiality” tend towards staticity and negate our ability to self-determine, owned qualities, on the other hand, are “continually reinvented and restated so that they do not become hardened and frozen into a recuperable shape.” [3] An affinity for affinity in conjunction with a framework of anti-identity allows us to move beyond a politics of demand, one that seeks to improve our lived experiences “by appealing to the benevolence of hegemonic forces and/or by altering the relations between these forces” [32], and towards communities that empower us to <em>choose</em>. This also avoids the class-centrism of organizations like FRSO, which precludes the conditions necessary for a groundless solidarity.
We can extend Day’s politics of affinity both in breadth and depth by considering Benally’s previously mentioned interrelationality, through which “our solidarity is projected out from our relationship with the Earth.” This way “[o]ur solidarity focuses on more than just intersections” with each other, going beyond the anthropocentricity of intersectionality and also considering our relations with “non-human beings, spirits, and Mother Earth.” [21] Dissolving those parts of our identities that prevent us from relating enables us to build communities that draw strength not just from each other but existence more broadly, expanding possibilities far beyond our imaginations and existing models rooted in domination.
When we accept ourselves as truly and totally bound by the identities that capitalist society has branded us with, we remain unable to move beyond their limits. Holloway posits “dignity” in contrast to reified identification, calling it “a leaping, gliding, swinging, dancing, never a marching: and that, for capital, is hard to follow and absorb.” [37]
Capitán Insurgente Marcos (formerly known as Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos) once said in a speech that in the wake of centuries of capitalist domination “we are being left with nothing. Except rage. And dignity... [These] <em>are our bridges, our languages</em>” [emphasis added]. [39] If rage and dignity are bridges, then programs based in fetishisms are broken tracks leading nowhere. This does not mean
<quote>
that there is some trans-historical quality of dignity: dignity is nothing other than the struggle against and beyond its own negation... [It] does not mean that we hope one day to arrive at a pre-existing dignity, but that dignity is itself an exploration, a shifting process of creating social relations against-and-beyond capital. [37]
</quote>
In demanding dignity, we demand self-determined doing. Taking dignity and interrelation as the bases of our anticapitalist movement(s) means to take our poetry from the future. We must not cling to a world which leaves no room for true agency, because quite simply, as Marcos says, “[i]f this world doesn’t have a place for us, then another world must be made.” [39]
In their calls for the building of a new movement that plainly asserts the goal of preserving fetishized identities and of subordinating all to the hegemonizing class-struggle, FRSO ignorantly promotes goals that entrap that movement within the existing logic of capital and, by implication, perpetuate
<quote>
the reification of social relations, the reproduction of the hierarchy between men and women and the dimorphisation of sexuality, the objectification of nature, the acceptance of the capitalist concept, and above all, the orientation towards the state and the idea of influencing the state or taking state power. [37]
</quote>
In FRSO’s praxis, not only do these go fundamentally unchallenged, but in a way they are strengthened by their ability to attract self-proclaimed radicals to their banners, convincing them that maintaining their own (and more importantly others’) oppression is in some way revolutionary.
It is not a matter of denying the centrality of oppressed groups/identities in anticapitalist struggles, but rather about what perspective one approaches struggle with. This is why the necessity of action based in negation must be stressed. Simply put, “The difference is between an identification that stops there and an identification that negates itself in the process of identifying.” Just as Stirner claims: “I am really Man and the un-man in one; for I am a man and at the same time more than a man,” [38] we should strive to continually break down all normative logic embedded in our identities.
Thus: “To say ‘we are indigenous’ in a society that systematically denies the dignity of the indigenous is a way of asserting dignity, of negating the negation of dignity, of saying ‘we are indigenous and more than that’.” [3] Taking this a step further:
<quote>
The drive of anti-identity is a constant movement beyond the concept [the content going beyond the phrase, in Marx’s words], it constantly goes beyond our conscious knowledge... [Revolution] cannot be thought of in terms of the bringing of consciousness to people... The politics of bringing consciousness is part of the world of character masks, the world of identities [and the world of hegemonic power]... It is much more a question of drawing out that which is already present in repressed and contradictory form... This implies a politics not of talking, but of listening, or, better, of talking-listening ... This is a dialogical politics rather than the monological talking-politics of the traditional revolutionary movement. [37]
</quote>
Describing what a revolutionary future looks like is not simply unproductive; it is in no way able to inform us on the subject. In the world we have grown up in, it is impossible to even fathom what we as individuals and as collectives might be capable of. It is certain that no enlightened minority can simply lay this out for us in a political program.
Self-liberation is just that, a liberation of the self, an internal process. Critiquing our fetishized identities is not about denying the way we have been shaped by our lived experiences within capitalism, but about taking this power away from it. As Marx says, we live in a “topsy-turvy world,” one in which our subjectivity is concealed by reified relations. Our goals must be informed by those practices that can lead us from fetishized identity to a dignified existence outside any hegemonic system.
**** <em>Against His-story, Against Positivisation</em>
According to Werner Bonefeld,
<quote>
The difficulty in conceiving of the society of the free and equal has to do with its very idea. In distinction to the pursuit of abstract wealth, of value in process, money in process and as such capital, and in distinction to seizure of the state, pursuit and preservation of political power, economic value and factor efficiency, and in distinction to the idea of labour as the natural necessity of social wealth and conception of the economic as an economy of labour, <em>it follows a completely different entelechy of human development – it seeks the society of human purposes, universal human emancipation</em> [emphasis added]. [40]
</quote>
Reflecting this contradistinction: “The wealth of the communist individuals and the wealth of capitalist society belong to two different realities. For the society of the free and equal <em>social wealth is free time</em>” [emphasis added]. Whether we call this source of social wealth “time for enjoyment” as Marx does or “freely disposable time” like Adorno, the wealth of communist society is above all characterized by self-determined doing and the satisfaction of human beings.<em></em> It is because of this key difference that “[t]he society of human purposes stands <em>in opposition to all hitherto history. Its achievement entails that the progress of this history comes to a standstill so that society can be found anew”</em> [emphasis added]. No matter the language chosen to describe it, such a condition can undoubtedly only exist <em>outside</em> of history as we know it. The problem with “revolutionary” perspectives rooted in positivization is that they are inherently incapable of halting such an ostensibly progressive march of history. In absolute contradiction to their proclaimed purpose, they cannot manifest a society that hinges on human needs—on dignity. These perspectives perpetuate the false promise that proper economic planning and development will liberate us from the dispossession of our doing. Critical theory and praxis is only critical as far as it “resists this falseness, refusing to be taken in by a philosophy of progress that in its entirety is tied to existing social relations”; it cannot enable and legitimize things to continue as they are. Above all, our critical theory’s<em></em> conception of society must be <strong>entirely negative</strong>.
According to Adorno, “to negate a negation does not bring about its reversal... What is negated is negative until it has passed.” [41] Negation is not a method to be applied to existing relations in hopes of reforming them: the negation of negation does not lead to positivity; negation must mean to move against-and-beyond. For us, this means that capitalist relations and identities, bounded as they are by what we are <em>not</em> (able to do), cannot be transformed into positive and liberatory ones. As such, “[t]here is no vantage point [within existing relations] from which to launch the society of human purposes [emphasis added]. The society of human purposes is not the hidden secret of the capitalist social relations. Rather, its hidden secret is the force of the law-making violence of expropriation that divorced the mass of the population from the means of subsistence.” [40] FRSO’s vanguardism <em>cannot</em> lead to a dignified life; their perspective too represents this expropriative violence that deprives us of self-determined doing. We must turn to a critical praxis that
<quote>
rejects the idea of revolution as a revolution for the freedom of labour as regressive, denies that bourgeois society contains within itself the necessity of human emancipation, opposes the notion of historical progress for the benefit of the working class as a ‘conformist rebellion’... that... instead of ending slavery, seeks a new deal for slaves.
</quote>
Capitalist society does not find its positive resolution “in better-paid and fully employed producers” but only in the dissolution of property and alienating means of production in themselves. Critical theory is not a “theoretical expression of the soul of the social forces” but instead “aims at these forces themselves” in order not to positivize but to abolish them.
In contrast to this, FRSO’s historical materialism leads “practice [to become] nonconceptual... a piece of the politics it was supposed to lead out of; it [becomes] the prey of power.” We cannot appropriate the tools of oppression and expect them to lead us somewhere beyond it; such is a logic based on non sequiturs. We aim for revolution, not reification.
Bonefeld says that “[o]nly a reified consciousness” can claim to have the proper knowledge to solve the crises wrought by capitalism and further to do so <em>on behalf</em> of those deprived of self-determined doing. In truth, this reified consciousness’ “grasp of reality is entirely abstract and its assertion to know what to do is groundless.” Vanguardism is but another deprivation of the self-determination that we seek. A reified consciousness abandons the possibility of revolutionary change and with it the insight that oppressive hierarchies can never be negated “by means of state.” Resulting from this failure to reject reified consciousness, FRSO’s program suggests that statist intervention in the economy will somehow lead to a society of human purpose, despite the reality that within any commodity economy, human needs are never the fulcrum upon which resolutions rest. We cannot have faith in political parties, in historical progress, or in any revolution defined by programs; to do so is to once again set ourselves up for dissapointment. We must only follow the call of our resounding “No!”—our rejection of reification, our demand for an end to progress and modernity as we have known it.
In painting a picture of the pitfalls of historical continuity, I find it helpful to quote at length from Bonefeld’s conclusion to his exploration <em>Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy:</em>
<quote>
History does not unfold. It takes no side.... The purpose of capitalism is the profitable accumulation of abstract wealth for its own sake. The commune of human purpose is not an existing human purpose. Its reality is entirely negative. History appears as a linear sequence of events... This appearance is real but by itself, devoid of meaning. What does it really mean to say that history is a sequence of events? Events of what, and what was so eventful? History appears as a transcendent force of progress only when one abstracts from it, leading to its description as a sequence of events, for which the terms ‘historicity’ provides the name. Historicity comprises the idea of history without history. That is to say, in order to comprehend history, one needs to ‘crack’ the appearance of history as a sequence of events.
One needs thus to think out of history, out of the battles for freedom, slave insurrections, peasant revolts, the struggles of Les Enragés, working class strikes, riots, insurrections and revolutions, to appreciate the traditions of the oppressed, recognize the smell of danger and the stench of death, gain a sense of the courage and cunning of struggle, grasp the spirit of sacrifice, comprehend however fleetingly the density of a time at which the progress of the muck of ages almost came to a standstill. History does not lead anywhere; it has no telos, no objectives, no purpose and it does not take sides. At its worst, it continues on the path of victorious progress under darkened clouds and smoke-filled skies. At best, its progress will be stopped. Such history has not been made yet, though it has often been attempted. [40]
</quote>
If we dare attempt to stop this progress, we must acknowledge that the oppressed don’t “struggle for the progress of oppression—this really is the business of the ‘overlords’ of history.” If our cardinal goal is to replace one hegemon with another, then the continuum of history will never be broken. Within the recipes of domination, we will never find a “secret reality that points beyond the existing social relations... The resolution to the dialectical context of immanence is that context itself.” As Bonefeld plainly states, “<em>‘The whole is false.’ The whole has to go”</em> [emphasis added]. Only with the absolute negation of oppressive relations can we build something truly new and liberating.
Notably, Bonefeld himself claims that “the proletariat is the name of the oppressed class of our time” and that the end of “progress” can only come once this class ceases to exist, as “[f]or Marx, the struggle against oppression is the struggle of the last oppressed class.” While I agree that “the whole [of society] must go,” Bonefeld’s proletarian class-centrism too finds itself ensnared within a hegemonic logic that exists within this whole, despite its negative formulation. Letting go of Marxism’s limited conception of oppression-as-class is also a prerequisite for liberation and the negation of <em>all</em> forms of disposession. As Benally says in a previously quoted section, to focus on the economic is to fail to “indict the consolidation of power as an expression of modernity” [21] more broadly.
FRSO claims their chief aspiration to be “a society without classes—communism,” this “classless society [being] a long-term project” [2]; yet it is clear that however long this term might be, their purported goal is located somewhere along the continued progression of history. Though Sykes denies believing that “every society should proceed everywhere in the same linear way, through the same set of metaphysically distinct, predetermined stages,” at a higher level of abstraction, FRSO still holds it to be true that “socialism has to be understood as developing <em>through stages</em> [emphasis added],” [4] an inherently linear framing. We must reject this narrative that embraces the progress of civilization, one whose history has proven that, in all its forms,
<quote>
Civilization has no relatives, only captives... It fashions its years and seconds into an anemic prison. It has shaped time into the most exquisite of weapons, obliterating memories, killing cycles. Its essence is time. The temporal and spacial imposition of awareness is the oblivion that is modernity and linear, or one-way time. [21]
</quote>
To reach a world beyond existing social relations, we must manifest a rupture with them. Like Benally says, our choice today is between “either liv[ing] as translucent characters in colonial fantasies, or outside of the temporal constraints of settler time, where we are most whole.” It is not a matter of transcending to a higher stage but of rejecting a formula of stages outright. We fight for a life worth living, not more efficient productive forces. If we hope to ever see a world not defined by the destructive logic of statist-colonial-capitalism, it is necessary to look beyond vanguardism and positivism, towards a world of unknowable possibilities.
**** <em>Beyond Vanguardism</em>
FRSO’s program shows us that more than a century on from the October Revolution, many Marxists have yet to learn basic lessons. Lenin, in a 1913 article, stated:
<quote>
We are constantly making the mistake in Russia of judging the slogans and tactics of a certain party or group, of judging its general trend, by the intentions or motives that the group claims for itself. Such judgement is worthless. The road to hell—as was said long ago—is paved with good intentions.
<em>It is not a matter of intentions, motives or words but of the objective situation, independent of them, that determines the fate and significance of slogans, of tactics or, in general, of the trend of a given party or group</em> [emphasis added]. [42]
</quote>
Clearly this is not an issue specific to early 20<sup>th</sup>-century Russia. Lenin was correct in his assessment, somewhat ironically, given the course of Soviet history and its judgment by most Leninists. It matters little that FRSO claims their program is a product of applying a “revolutionary science”; the slogans, tactics, and general theses of the organization do not serve to advance a revolutionary cause. The FRSO program is one (un)grounded in fetishism, blind to its obvious flaws; as such, it is a dead end.
Nitzan & Bichler propose in <em>Capital as Power</em> that we should reframe our understanding of capitalism as being a <em>mode of power</em> rather than simply a mode of production. [43] They say that hierarchical social orders are better understood this way, that “[e]very mode of power, whether based on slavery, feudalism or capitalization, has its own particular configuration,” and though it is true that each of these “depends on production... production as such is merely part of the story of power.” In this analysis, “The capitalist mega-machine defines the capitalist mode of power; and a mode of power... constitutes the ‘state’ of society.” Capitalism has thus penetrated, altered, and become the state, what they call “the state of capital.”
Contrasted with the typical definition of the state, their notion
<quote>
is broader and more flexible... [and] transcends the analytical distinction between economics and politics... [which] may be valid when viewed from below and at lower levels of abstraction... [but can] be very misleading when considered from above and in relation to the overall architecture of power.”
</quote>
Thus there is no sharp distinction “between ‘economic power’ and ‘political power’, between ‘exploitation’ and ‘oppression’, or between the ‘power of the market’ versus the ‘power of the state’.” And although the forms of power can vary, all hierarchical power structures ultimately constitute “a single nomos of power.” Crucially, this “nomos of power is not fixed. It changes as the social order evolves...” The state should not be thought of as an abstract “eternal Newtonian space” whose actors are simply replaced over time. Rather, it is a “historically constituted Leibnitzian space,” a structure of power that itself constantly evolves and is shaped by the “concrete entities and relationships that comprise it.” The state is far from just “a special organization of force” as Lenin claimed [44]; it is not a thing to be wielded but a <em>condition</em> to be overcome<em>.</em>
According to Bonefeld, the modern capitalist state “is charged with depoliticizing” the relationships between oppressors and oppressed by “concentrating the political character of bourgeois society.” [40] Essentially, the “state is no independent being... [but] the political form of the bourgeois relationships of coined freedom... The political state is the state of social depoliticization.” In recognition of this reality, Marx argues in his <em>Critique of the Gotha Program</em> that the idea of “equal rights” can in truth only be “a right of inequality” in a society of unequal individuals. [45] This bourgeois conception of equal rights is in no way eliminated with the replacement of private (individual) property with state property but is strengthened by its illusion of having moved beyond capitalist relations and achieved true proletarian equality through the so-called socialist state. Nationalization in the USSR and the Soviet Constitution of 1936’s inclusion of a supposed “[e]quality of rights of citizens... irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life” [46] did little to abolish oppressive (bourgeois) social relations.
Marx and Engels themselves say in <em>The German Ideology</em> that:
<quote>
the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. <em>In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State</em> [emphasis addded]. [47]
</quote>
In destroying the conditions of our oppression and reclaiming self-determined doing, there is no statist path. In contrast to the Marxist view, however, we must reject the Hegelian assumption of a universalized historic progression. Instead, an affinity for affinity grounded in interrelationality and a rejection of so-called progress should guide our critical praxis.
If we take up Nitzan and Bichler’s framing and apply it to the United States, it becomes clear that this megamachine has adapted and evolved in ways that have moved beyond previous fetters limiting its growth. From the seeds of slavery and colonialism, it has continually warped and evolved into the ultimate form of Leviathan. Its universal, ever-expanding, and absorptive qualities make it the most flexible power structure in history. This is our enemy.
For a future of liberated living in harmony with each other and existence more broadly to be possible, we must slay this monster. We cannot simply remove capitalism from the equation and maintain the modern state; at this point <em>it</em> <em>is the state</em>. There can be no co-opting of an apparatus that feeds on the living; to attempt to do so is to be co-opted and corrupted oneself.
“Apocalypse is the self-fulfilling prophecy of the civilized” [21], says Benally. We look around and see that statist-colonial-capitalism is spiraling wildly towards devastation and mass extinction; it is death; only through its abolition do we stand a chance of preserving life. If there is such a thing as a “transition period,” then we are living in it. We must unlearn and let go of rotten social relations. This means to forgo class war for <em>social war—</em>our goal being total social rupture. Though negation is not an end in itself, it is the impetus for creating something outside<em></em> the options already mapped out, options that inescapably lead to genocide and ecocide. Social rupture itself does not imply a utopian “clean break” of sorts but an aspiration that orients our critical praxis towards self-determined doing and the negation of that which negates it. It is through this struggle against<em></em> power-<em>over</em> that we build power-<em>with</em> (and thus power<em>-to-do)</em>. Only this (anti)power can actualize revolutionary change. We will not find solutions within the architecture of our prison—we must dismantle it brick by brick and escape its grasp, or we will perish within it.
[1] N.A (2022, June 5). 9<sup>th</sup> Congress of Freedom Road Socialist Organization: Seize the time, the future is bright! — Freedom Road. Freedom Road Socialist Organization | FRSO. https://frso.org/congress/9<sup>th</sup>-congress-of-freedom-road-socialist-organization-seize-the-time-the-future-is-bright/
[2] N.A, N.D Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Program. https://frso.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/frso-program.pdf, pp. 1–3, 6–17, 19, 29, 31
[3] Holloway, J. (2010). <em>Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today.</em> Pluto Press (UK), pp. 118, 144
[4] Sykes, J. (2023). <em>The revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism</em>. FRSO, Ch. 29–30
[5] Sakai, J. (2014). <em>Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern</em>. Kersplebedeb.
[6] Schuhrke, J. (2024). <em>Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade</em>. Verso Books.
[7] Horne, G. (2018). <em>The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17<sup>th</sup> Century North America and the Caribbean</em>. NYU Press, p. 7
[8] Franceschini, I., Lin, K., Sorace, C., & Loubere, N. (2022). <em>Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labour</em>. Verso Books, p. 2
[9] Elfstrom, M. (2021). <em>Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness</em>. Cambridge University Press.
[10] Loyalka, M. (2013). <em>Eating Bitterness: Stories from the Front Lines of China’s Great Urban Migration</em>. Univ of California Press.
[11] Byler, D., Franceschini, I., & Loubere, N. (2022). <em>Xinjiang Year Zero.</em> ANU Press.
[12] Fischer, A. M. (2013). <em>The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China: A Study in the Economics of Marginalization</em>. Lexington Books.
[13] Byler, D. (2021). <em>In the Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony.</em> Columbia Global Reports.
[14] Leibold, J. (2024, November 13). The Tibet-Aid Project and Settler Colonialism in China’s Borderlands. Made in China Journal. https://madeinchinajournal.com/2024/11/12/the-tibet-aid-project-and-settler-colonialism-in-chinas-borderlands/
[15] Xiaocuo, Y. (2020, August 27). Recruiting Loyal Stabilisers: On the Banality of Carceral Colonialism in Xinjiang. Made in China Journal. https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/10/25/recruiting-loyal-stabilisers-on-the-banality-of-carceral-colonialism-in-xinjiang/
[16] Hostetler, L. (2001). <em>Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China</em>. University of Chicago Press.
[17] Setzekorn, E. (2015). Chinese Imperialism, Ethnic Cleansing, and Military History, 1850–1877. <em>Journal of Chinese Military History</em>, <em>4</em>(1), 80–100. https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-12341278
[18] Hart-Landsberg, M., & Burkett, P. (2005). <em>China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle.</em> Monthly Review Press, pp.87–114
[19] Meisner, M. (1999). <em>Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic</em>, Third Edition. Simon and Schuster, p. 388
[20] Central Committee, Communist Party of India (Maoist). (n.d.). China – a new Social-Imperialist power! (First Edition: July 2017, Second (Amended) Edition: 2021 January). https://bannedthought.org/India/CPI-Maoist-Docs/Books/China-Social-Imperialism-CPI-Maoist-2021-Eng-view.pdf
[21] Benally, K. (2023). <em>No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred.</em> Detritus Books, pp. 233–234, 306, 351, 356
[22] J. Sykes (2024, December 4). Marxism-Leninism and the theory of settler-colonialism in the United States — Fight Back! News. https://fightbacknews.org/articles/marxism-leninism-and-the-theory-of-settler-colonialism-in-the-united-states
[23] Fanon, F. (2004). <em>The Wretched of the Earth</em>. Grove Press, p.138
[24] Anderson, W. C., Samudzi, Z. (2018). <em>As Black as Resistance:</em> <em>Finding the Conditions for Liberation</em> https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/zoe-samudzi-and-william-c-anderson-as-black-as-resistance.pdf, pp. 16–17
[25] Anderson, W. C. (2021). <em>The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition.</em> AK Press, pp. 104, 183–185
[26] Sánchez, R., and Pita, B. (2020). <em>Spatial and Discursive Violence in the US Southwest</em>. Duke University Press, p.15
[27] Cotera, M. E., & Saldaña-Portillo, M. J. (2014). “Indigenous but not Indian? Chicana/os and the politics of indigeneity.” The World of Indigenous North America. Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203122280-42, (pp. 549–550, 552–557, 561–563)
[28] Archibald, R. (1978). “Acculturation and Assimilation in Colonial New Mexico.” New Mexico Historical Review 53, 3. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmhr/vol53/iss3/2, p. 214
[29] Alberto, L. “Nations, Nationalisms, and Indígenas: The ‘Indian’ in the Chicano Revolutionary Imaginary.” Critical Ethnic Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, Jan. 2016, (pp. 107–127), doi:10.5749/jcritethnstud.2.1.0107,
[30] Saldaña-Portillo, J. (2001). Who’s the Indian in Aztlán? Re-Writing Mestizaje, Indianism, and Chicanismo from the Lacandón. In Duke University Press eBooks (pp. 402–423). https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822380771-020
[31] EDICIONES INÉDITAS. (n.d.). Contra Aztlán: A Critique of Chicano Nationalism. https://ia904709.us.archive.org/1/items/ediciones_ineditas_2020_contra/ediciones_ineditas_2020_contra.pdf
[32] Day, R. J. F. (2015) <em>Gramsci Is Dead</em>. doi:10.2307/j.ctt18fs4xw. (pp. 8, 9, 17, 80, 188)
[33] Gramsci, A., et al. (2015) <em>Selections From the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci.</em> ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA03625916. (p. 57)
[34] Adams, J. “The Constellation of Opposition.” <em>Post-Anarchism: A Reader</em>. (2011) Rousselle, D., & Evren, S. Pluto Press. (p. 109)
[35] Bey, M. (2020). <em>Anarcho-Blackess: Notes Toward a Black Anarchism</em>. AK Press. (pp. 14–15)
[36] Marx, K. (1869) <em>The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte</em>. Edited by Engels, Translated by Saul K. Padover, Uploaded by Zodiac et al. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/18<sup>th</sup>-Brumaire.pdf. (p. 6)
[37] Holloway, J. (2010) <em>Crack Capitalism</em>. Pluto Press. (pp. 43, 76, 85, 159, 225)
[38] Stirner, M. (1995). <em>The ego and its own</em>. Cambridge University Press. (pp. 97, 117)
[39] Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente. (2018) <em>The Zapatistas’ Dignified Rage: The Last Public Speeches of Subcommander Marcos</em>. AK Press. (pp. 20–21)
[40] Bonefeld, W. (2014). <em>Critical Theory and the critique of political economy: On Subversion and Negative Reason</em>. A&C Black. (pp. 222–225)
[41] Adorno, T. (2003). <em>Negative dialectics</em>. Routledge. (p. 160)
[42] Lenin, V.I., Lenin Internet Archive (marxists.org). (1913, July 16). Lenin: Word and Deed. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jul/16.htm
[43] Nitzan, J., & Bichler, S. (2009). <em>Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder</em>. Routledge. (pp. 17, 280, 281
[44] Lenin, V. I., Lenin Internet Archive (marxists.org). (1917). <em>The State and Revolution</em>. https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/lenin/state-and-revolution.pdf
[45] Marx, K. (n.d.). <em>Critique of the Gotha programme</em>. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/
[46] Stalin. (1936, December 5). <em>Constitution (Fundamental law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics</em>. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/12/05.htm
[47] Marx/Engels Internet Archive, Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1932). The German ideology. In T. Delaney & B. Schwartz (Trans.), <em>Marx/Engels Internet Archive</em> [Book].f https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf
<br>
|
#title Riot and Representation
#subtitle The Significance of the Chicano Riot <br> by Herbert Marcuse
#author 1044
#date October 1970
#source Retrieved on 2024-02-27 from [[https://www.bopsecrets.org/PH/riot.htm][<bopsecrets.org/PH/riot.htm>]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-02-27T08:29:56
#authors 1044, Ron Rothbart
#topics american situationists, post-situationist, riots, chicano, United States of America
#notes Pamphlet published October 1970. Signed “by Herbert Marcuse.” Actually written by Ron Rothbart and circulated by the Berkeley situationist group “1044.” 700 copies were circulated, including some in Los Angeles and San Diego.
In the wake of the riot of Mexican-Americans in East Los Angeles on August 29, 1970 (with an encore on September 16), the various mouthpieces of the “left” have as usual raised their tiresome duststorm of protest, which never fails to bury the real significance of events. Hidden by shows of outrage at the police, by pleas that power better give the Chicano his share of the pie or else things might get out of hand again, by the martyrdom of a newspaper reporter who ducked into one too many bars, is the real event, the burning and looting, the riot. The noise of the left, and the media in general, serves to direct attention away from, reduce to insignificance, or apologize for the attack on bourgeois property rights. The left is so concerned with defending its right to arrange demonstrations and speeches, as boring to the participants as they are inconsequential to power, that it fails to celebrate the spontaneous activity of the people and to reveal its theoretical content.
The riot covered a three-square-mile area. Windows were smashed in virtually every store along a twelve block area and people felt free to loot and burn: one hundred seventy-eight businesses were hit, seven extensively damaged by fire. Police radio cars were burned and a bus of police reinforcements was attacked. Let the mystifyers talk about the “issue” of violence. A riot is a practical critique of the system, while a demonstration can serve to perpetuate what it seems to oppose. This riot interrupted a “Chicano moratorium” demonstration “against the war” which a coalition of Mexican-American groups had organized. Here the shared opposition of an ethnic group whose human potentialities are especially denied is falsified by being directed into demands for a more equitable share in the hierarchical system which dominates life generally. The demonstration was represented by its official organizers as a bid for fewer Chicano boys in Vietnam and more Chicano capitalists in East Los Angeles. The people were handled as constituents, brought together over particular issues. This false unity channels dissent into fragmentary opposition as it dissimulates the possibility of transforming the world totally. The so-called issue, whether it be the ratio of Chicanos in Vietnam, or the war itself, or United States foreign policy, serves to direct consciousness away from the totality and the possibility of liberating every aspect of daily life. Issue consciousness perpetuates hierarchical perception, concentrating on one aspect of the social conditions without revealing the whole. Demonstrations perpetuate hierarchical relationships. Twenty thousand bodies showed up to march and then to submit themselves to the boredom of listening to leaders speak about the designated issues which were to give the gathering its apparent unity.
But after the march, as the speakers were to begin, a crowd of thirsty demonstrators filled a nearby liquor store and began to help themselves to soft drinks and beer. The owner quickly locked the front door and when sheriff’s deputies arrived, “they let everyone out of the store one by one only after they had paid for their refreshments. Because of the anger of the crowd the deputies at the door were the first to be hit by rocks, the witness said” (<em>Los Angeles Times</em>).
Here the cops appear in their familiar and essential role as watchdogs of the commodity.[1] Poised in readiness, they attack to protect the chastity of the commodity, to disallow its rules being violated by some who, on this occasion, in the spirit of celebration, would not submit to its rationality. Acts which challenge bourgeois property rights have a clarity which could not be imagined by those who, thinking of themselves as representatives of the people, organize the passivity of the people by arranging monitored demonstrations for them. These representatives really serve the masters. In fact, the parade officials, true to their intentions to preserve hierarchical order, revealed their own collusion with the watchdogs. “Rosalio Munoz, chairman of the committee that organized the parade, said Sunday that deputies could have prevented much of the violence had they contacted parade officials before attempting to disperse the crowd. He said he and other parade organizers had been working closely with the Sheriff’s Department before the parade and that a plan had been developed to prevent trouble.” The plan was not put into effect, said a Lt. Wallace, because “there was not time to contact Munoz or other parade officials.”
Too late. The potlatch of destruction had begun. Bands of demonstrators ran up Whittier Boulevard smashing windows. A witness said: “It looked like wholesale looting. Whole families would pull up in front of appliance stores and go in and pick out a television set and drive away with it” (UPI). A fire station was attacked and the state and national flags were torn down. Pedestrians on both sides of Whittier Boulevard played target practice with patrol cars, having to aim their rocks just ahead of the cars as they sped by — sometimes missing the cars and hitting those on the other side of the street. It was a game and the commodity played its part, receiving its criticism in the streets; TV and stereo consoles were rolled out from the stores and combined with bus stop benches and logs in the construction of barricades for slowing down the targets. Here the goods which encourage passivity are turned against the forces of pacification. They acquire a new use in the hands of those who would not submit themselves to their logic, but who find a superior logic in the game of subversion.
The looter takes the “affluent” society at its word. He accepts the abundance, only doesn’t submit himself to the suffering that the society inflicts on those who sacrifice themselves for what it encourages them to want. He wants to possess the commodities shown to him everywhere, in the shop windows, in the media, while rejecting the rules of exchange and the sacrifice they entail. He rejects the commodity form which encloses goods in its grip and moulds them according to the motives of profit, according to the false needs created by Madison Avenue.
Once the commodity is not paid for, it is open to practical criticism; it becomes a toy, the principle of play takes over. Stealing as opposition to the organization of society is the negation of the rationality of the commodity. The goods can be put to the service of a radical subjectivity free from the sacrifices that perpetuate commodity production and consumption and they find themselves on a new field, the field of play. The commodity is freed to be used in the destruction of the bourgeois world and ipso facto in its own destruction. Only when the means of production become toys for the manipulation of the proletariat, the class which ends class society, will life be freed from hierarchical subordination to commodity values.
The Chicanos of East Los Angeles — as the Blacks and the students — realize themselves as the new proletariat as they recognize that they have no control over the use of their lives. This recognition is penetrating ever more sections of a society which can count only on numbing it by feeding it a spectacle of dissent so that the recognition, caught in contemplation, may fail to translate itself into the coherent practical activity which will destroy the spectacle itself: a panoply of images which everyone is encouraged to contemplate so as to ignore the poverty of his own everyday life.
The commodity is the heart of the spectacle. In itself a TV or a refrigerator is a passive, insensible thing in submission to the first comer to make use of it. In the spectacle, its image parades, ever suggestively, for the admiration of a passive consumer who submits himself more and more to his own passivity. Having no real power over material abundance, he is reduced to choosing from among the false alternatives offered to him: Ford or Chevy, Tide or Cheer, Humphrey or Nixon. The spectacle invades his life, emptying it of self-activity. The people of East Los Angeles show by their actions the desire to cease to be mere consumers; in their gaiety they betray a desire for life over and above the “fair share” in abundance which their integration into the American hierarchy would assure them. The prosperity they might share is not a static sphere, but rather a ladder without end. Whatever buying power an individual may attain, he will still not have power over his own life. Life remains subordinated to commodity values, most clearly for minority groups because they suffer the humiliation of having their human riches especially despised. The question is the control of material abundance, whether it is to be dished out in ever fairer amounts according to the rationality of the commodity form, or whether it is to come under the power of collective imagination, into the field of play. The protest of the rioter is not Chicano protest or Black protest or student protest, it is the protest of the real single individual unmediated, sacrificing himself to no ideal absolute, whether party, nationality or community. A riot is an explosion of radical subjectivity in which the identity of the claims of the individual and of the collective begins to show itself practically. To the old world it is insanity. “Everyone was crazy, just crazy,” said the owner of an appliance store in Wilmongton, a town near LA where a riot broke out the next day. “Somebody would throw a brick through a window and everyone would laugh and clap.” It is a superior logic which will destroy the old world.
Let the capitalists grieve over the one million dollars in damage. By destroying commodities, by burning the palaces of commodity consumption, the rioters assert their human superiority over the dead things which dominate life.
-----------
The project of the subversion of the commodity and the transformation of the world which it dominates is beginning again in earnest. It flames up in a riot. As repression contains it, the sense of a riot may be lost even to the participants. The spontaneity of the riot is replaced by the representation of it by the left; the memory of it is reified, contained ideologically, catapulted into the spectacle as a special and specialized phenomenon, “the Chicano riot,” with its own particular issues trailing it like tails. In the spectacle it is just another riot to titillate the need for excitement, here consumed passively. An exciting life is what remains to be constructed by the revolutionary proletariat. Where authentic revolt does not recognize itself for what it is, the routine of daily life reasserts itself and revolt fails to continue.
The proletarian project will be realized as people who recognize their own powerlessness begin to take power over their own lives. The proletariat has begun to sketch its solution to the problem of the social organization of its power in the historical experience of Workers Councils (Russia 1905, Kronstadt 1921, Spain 1936, Hungary 1956), direct and total democracy in control of the means of production and all aspects of life.
As the new revolutionary movement (marked for example by Hungary 1956, Watts 1965,[2] and France 1968, and as distinguished from the traditional revolutionary proletarian movement) gains momentum, it cannot fail to gain consciousness of itself as an international movement in opposition to a universally dominant system. A local outburst adds its significance to a sequence of events which aims toward the transformation of a world totally dominated by the rationality of the commodity, by private or state capitalism, by bosses, by bureaucrats.
The terrain of struggle is no longer limited to work. As the rationality of the commodity-spectacle reaches out into every aspect of daily life, so does the struggle against it, its motive being nothing other than the will to live. Caught in the vortex of consumption, many do not yet realize that the activities which fill up both work and leisure destroy life as surely as poison. Those who imagine that any particular or quantitative changes can ultimately satisfy the will to live in a world of material abundance surely underestimate the power of human spontaneity and its hunger to take hold of all things.
<center>
HUMANITY WON’T BE HAPPY UNTIL
THE LAST BUREAUCRAT IS HUNG WITH
THE GUTS OF THE LAST CAPITALIST
</center>
[1] A commodity is a good which is bought and sold; its value is determined not by its usefulness but by its power to bring the capitalist profit.
[2] For the best analysis of the Watts riot, see the pamphlet <em>The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy</em>. I have drawn heavily on it. —H.M.
|
#title A Field Guide to Straw Men
#subtitle Sadie and Exile, Esoteric Fascism, and Olympia’s Little White Lies
#author 1312 Committee
#LISTtitle Field Guide to Straw Men Sadie and Exile, Esoteric Fascism, and Olympia’s Little White Lies
#date February 2016
#source Retrieved on 10 February 2024 from [[https://pugetsoundanarchists.org/a-field-guide-to-straw-men-sadie-and-exile-esoteric-fascism-and-olympias-little-white-lies/][pugetsoundanarchists.org]].
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-02-10T19:07:18
#authors Edelweiss Pirates
#topics anti-fascism, fascism, eco-fascism, third position, fascist creep, green anarchism, anarcho-primitivism, anti-civ, Green Scare, Pacific Northwest, white supremacy
*** OVERTURE
This essay is a response to a situation that has unfolded in the past few years in Olympia, WA concerning the social and political (or ‘metapolitical’[1]) affinities of former Green Scare[2] prisoners Nathan “Exile” Block and Joyanna “Sadie” Zacher (henceforth referred to as Exile and Sadie, respectively). In particular, it addresses itself to the arguments and sensibilities expressed in their defense by their friends and by writers less personally invested who have weighed in on the situation, directly or indirectly. These arguments and sensibilities will be principally represented in the present writing by the following three pieces:
a) an article entitled “Don’t Worry, You Can Sleep at Night,”[3]
b) an e-mail entitled “Reflections on Credibility,” sent to various Olympia “anti-fascists” which served as a statement of conscientious objection and resignation by someone apparently disappointed and horrified at the backlash against Sadie and Exile and their circle of die-hard supporters, and
c) a blog post, more serious and intelligent than the two foregoing pieces, entitled “I Say Potato, You Say Dangerous Resurgence of Fascist Ideology”[4] by Arnold Schroder (formerly Scott Schroder).
These reviews are followed by remarks on the social context of the controversy, the nature of the disagreements involved, and suggestions for moving forward. It has been produced primarily for anarchist and Olympian readerships, as well as for those of the subcultural scenes most concerned (neo-folk, metal, eco-defense, antifa, etc.).
*** BACKGROUND
A couple years ago, it was discovered by some anarchists that Exile, who along with Sadie had recently relocated to Olympia after getting out of prison, was responsible for a tumblr blog called “Loyalty is Mightier than Fire”[5] whose bent seemed increasingly congenial to fascist and neo-fascist authors and imagery[6]. At first, the handful of people concerned about this entertained the possibility that the quotations and pictures which peppered Exile’s blog were, as his defenders would go on to claim (at those times when such a claim was convenient), incidental expressions of an eclectic and wide-ranging interest in spiritual traditions and anti-modern strains of thought– areas of interest shared by many of us. Our misgivings grew, however, as did the compendium of block quotations by Julius Evola, Miguel Serrano, and other fascists, along with a smattering of references we now know to be fairly typical for Third Position[7] and esoteric neo-fascists: references to Conservative Revolutionary thought, the Strasserite wing of national socialism, volkish nationalism, and other cultural tributaries of fascism, neo-fascism, and related far-right phenomena. Furthermore, the number of swastikas appearing on the blog, culled from any number of contexts and styles, grew to be impressive, even staggering.
While the content on the blog proper had grown during this period of deliberation to be quite enough for most of the anti-civilization and insurrectionary anarchists in town (those anarchists initially most amiable to/interested in Sadie and Exile) to write off Exile, it was uncovered that his tumblr account had an extensive log of “likes” that ventured much further beyond the pale of what has been described so far. When brought up in conversation, the “likes” were promptly made private. It seemed Exile was rather fond of portraits of Hitler, memes threatening racist skinhead violence, imagery of intimidating white men with the caption “support your local fascist crew,” links to a veritable cornucopia of transphobic screeds, and at least a couple articles about how the prison experience will necessarily turn whites into “racialists” for all the insight they would gain into the “problem of the Blacks.”
What followed was a series of in-person, face-to-face conversations undertaken by anarchists with Sadie and Exile and their supporters. In total, the number of talks was around 4 or 5, with a few different configurations of participants. Some of the people who sat across the table from each other had been close friends and comrades for years. These are important details to keep in mind as you read on, since it is entirely possible to come away from the experience of reading the three aforementioned pieces of writing (reviewed separately below) with the impression that no real life conversations ever occurred, that no substantial knowledge of one another existed between the involved parties, and that regard for Sadie and Exile was tepid at the outset of their time in Olympia. The conversations were undertaken by anarchists to ascertain a few things: Are Sadie and Exile actually devotees of the ideas of Julius Evola, et al.? Are they favorably disposed toward all-white spaces? Are they as transphobic and racist as the blog and its “likes” seem to suggest? Do they have neo-nazi friends? The anarchists emerged from the conversations with answers to each of these queries that were essentially affirmative (“Evola shows us the way,” “We don’t really care how people organize themselves” “Some of my good friends are neo-nazis.”).
Furthermore, during the period of fallout which followed (and continues), it was learned by the anarchists involved in the situation that members of Exile and Sadie’s prison support team had deep concerns of their own going back for years about Exile’s proclivity toward white “tribalist” variants of neo-fascist thought which, in their estimation, manifested as a racist version of Odinism. Upon re-reading Exile and Sadie’s sentencing statement with this knowledge in mind, the references to “the ancestors” and the “fair folk” which had seemed innocuous before took on a more sinister ring. The same statement is signed “air trees water animals” (ATWA), a slogan of white supremacist Charles Manson.[8]
The list goes on. Consequently, here are some things that have been said, with a minimum of equivocation, by some anarchists:
- As convinced devotees of the ideas of Julius Evola, Miguel Serrano, Ernst Jünger, and a few other notable leading lights, with much more than a passing or incidental interest in isolatable components of their work (such as interest in “Evola’s writings on the Holy Grail,” or “Jünger’s ideas about the lifelessness of mechanistic modern culture,” for example) but rather a vital interest in advancing the main of their doctrines (which was not denied when confirmation was sought) Nathan “Exile” Block and Joyanna “Sadie” Zacher are fairly characterized as neo-fascists.
- As such, Exile’s promotion of the imagery and trappings of Fascism, Nazism, and esoteric neo-fascism of various stripes represents more than mere fetishism. He’s not just particularly enamored of ancient solar symbols. His statements in person as well as his extensive log of tumblr “likes” demonstrate a real conviction on his part. The images on the main blog page are not smoking guns per se, but the icing on an otherwise obvious cake. And that cake is rotten, my friends.
And here, on the other hand, are the statements that one is most likely to encounter about this particular anarchist response:
- “They don’t understand that Evola’s work was misappropriated by fascists.”
- “They think it’s wrong to be interested in one’s European heritage.”
- “They don’t understand the nuances of the neo-folk genre.”
- “They have no interest in earth-based spirituality.”
- “They are ideologically-blinded, stereotypically leftist anti-fascists.”
- “Shouldn’t they worry about the real fascists? or the police?”
- “They’re just saying we’re GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION!!!”
- “They are puritanical moralists who uphold taboos against certain forbidden materials and symbols and mistake any handling of those materials as an endorsement of their worst associations.”
- “They are hysterical drama queens.”
- “They are unnecessarily sabotaging the unity of their own anarchist scene.”
- “They are bored/boring.”
- “They are government agents.”
- “They don’t understand the fire they are playing with by labelling Exile and Sadie “fascists,” and their supporters as “fascist sympathizers.” They don’t understand that violence, ostracization, and other negative consequences could result.”
Now, let’s see what these are worth…
**** Julius Evola
This is as good a place as any to give a brief description, as a case study, of one among the flurry of names and terms encountered above: Julius Evola. The reason for this choice is that Evola is arguably the most important of Exile’s leading lights, and a figure of immense importance– perhaps the most important figure– for post-war European fascism, and spearheader of the philosophical school known as Traditionalism. The name of Exile’s blog is an Evola quote. The influence of Evola has been treated in several articles and books[9] but for our present purposes, a few extremely short remarks will have to suffice. It would be hard to do better at the task of introducing Evola than fascist studies writer Roger Griffin in his anthology Fascism, which is worth quoting at length here:
<quote>
Julius Evola (1898-1974) spent much of his life elaborating into a highly sophisticated ‘total’ vision of the world his lifelong obsession with the notion that the Westernized ‘modern world’ represented the rotten fruit of two thousand years of decadence. As a result the primordial ‘Tradition’ which he alleged preceded it had all but vanished. In his voluminous and massively erudite pseudo-scientific writings he argued that his Tradition had expressed itself historically in several organic, hierarchically structured, and metaphysically based States which, under the leadership of an elite caste of warrior-priests, formed the core of vast empires through which superior races and their superior values prevailed. During the 1930s he convinced himself that if [Italian] Fascism could ally itself with the more ‘aristocratic’ un-demagogic forces within the Third Reich it would create the basis for the re-establishment of such a Traditional empire in Europe (he wrote the Synthesis of Racial Doctrine for Mussolini’s regime in 1941). However the defeat of the Axis caused him to adapt his philosophy to the age of ‘ruins’ in which cultural rebirth was indefinitely postponed.[10]
</quote>
Basically, Evola wanted to constitute a synthesis of the Roman and Germanic empires, but on a pan-European basis (a departure from the narrow nationalism of the original fascisms). He has several times been described by the friends and defenders of Sadie and Exile as having been “mis-appropriated” by the fascists (in the style of Nietzsche) or even as an “anti-fascist” or otherwise explicitly non-fascist. This is presumably because at some point Evola indeed referred to himself as such. This he did in frustration that the classical fascist regimes to which he had hitched such high hopes were showing themselves to be not sufficiently versed in the precepts of esoteric Eastern spiritual traditions and consequently had succumbed to materialism and charismatic political buffoonery in a way unconscionable to Evola. In other words, Evola’s commentary on fascism can be considered a kind of constructive criticism. His relationship to Italian Fascism was turbulent as he attempted to “steer the ongoing Fascist Revolution towards the realization of […] idiosyncratic longings for a new civilization.”[11] It was in furtherance of this end that Evola’s brand of Traditionalism “allied itself overtly to totalitarianism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, racism, imperialism, and biopolitics, and hence became the accomplice to the most elitist, uncompromising, and terroristic forms of Fascism and Nazism.”[12]
Bear in mind throughout the present writing that similar expositions of other main influences on Exile are possible but have been excluded due to considerations of length.
*** PREMISES
Before going further, I would like to disclose a few facts and premises upon which I will be operating:
- I am white. Over a century ago my ancestors bought into the club of whiteness which had earlier been assembled to subjugate and decimate them, and the rest of the world. I am a person with pale skin and the attendant privileges thereof. I live as an uninvited guest on the land of indigenous peoples that I can’t even name with certainty before looking it up.[13] These things are true also for the vast majority of the people involved (and those not involved who have decided to comment) in this drama. The effects of this on the discourse surrounding the conflict will become apparent to you if they have not already.
- I take it for granted that the presence of a convinced neo-fascist, however obscure and avowedly anti-authoritarian the strains of thought he follows, is potentially of serious consequence in a small, mostly white, insular northwest college town like Olympia, which (in addition to a vicious and insane police department, a small army of white gentry, and a somewhat surprising track record of violence) has a constant small presence of hardcore white power enthusiasts as well as occasional outbursts of larger/more flagrant/more organized neo-nazi boneheads, fascist or fascist-sympathetic bikers and car clubs, etc. No matter how “anti-political” or strictly cultural his interventions into the life of the town, they have ever-present potential to go well beyond the narrow countercultural dispute they might otherwise constitute. The high level of discussion and exposure of race-related matters in recent years (including Olympia’s own episodes) have shown that race is anything but irrelevant, even (or especially) in Olympia.
- The white power movement in the United States has increasingly moved away from outright bigotry in recent years. There are separatists instead of supremacists, “racialists” instead of racists, queer fascists being welcomed into the fold, etc. It can be heard from more than one quarter of the movement that there is not one iota of hate in them for other cultures, just a desire that all peoples should have their own discrete homeland and customs.[14] It is not true that in every case these changes are merely semantic, code for the old, virulent white power. Contrary to popular belief, “hate” is not a prerequisite for fascism. For an increasing portion of the neo-fascist scene, even nationalism can be dispensed with in favor of new, avowedly anti-state and “tribalist” versions of white power. The old trappings are not necessarily part of neo-fascism’s mythic core.[15]
- A conflict which has an in-person dimension, and which involves some people who had been close friends for several years (and more who had been friends and/or friendly acquaintances) is, on an important level, different than a conflict that is a simple aggregate of internet trolling and social games of exclusion and social capital, etc.
- A conflict that is based on fear, ignorance, taboo, censure, resentment, puritanism, ideological territoriality, vicious cliquishness, groupthink, leftist convictions, and/or a desire to control and to administer images is qualitatively different from a conflict motivated by genuine aversion, differences in non-negotiable principles, irreconcilable social and political affinities, critical thinking, research into and rumination upon the topics of the conflict, or solidarity with many and varied struggles. It would be very easy, however, for these disparate elements to mix and mingle, and on both sides of a dispute. It would be difficult to totally avoid the water in which we swim, even if the effort to do so is of utmost importance.
- Persons for whom civilization itself is an irredeemably disastrous enterprise, and for whom the most stringent critiques of the Left, liberal democracy, and historical anti-fascism resonate deeply, might still find contemporary anti-fascist struggles on the ground and, more broadly speaking, struggles against white power to be compelling for some mix of reasons related to conscience, strategy, personal history, current events, race, class, self-defense and others. For such people an idea that is not the only or even the most interesting one (in this case, anti-fascism) might still make demands of time and attention that outwardly seem to suggest otherwise. Furthermore, such people need not be operating according to the (probably?) mistaken ideas that fascism is poised to become a hegemonic force in world or national politics again, or that it is more damaging to liberatory struggles and life on earth than are neoliberalism or postmodern capitalism.
- Anarchism (including anti-civilization and insurrectionary anarchism) and fascism (including deep green esoteric fascism) may be thought of as examples of social, philosophical, or political modernism[16] (along with marxism, socialism, nihilism, etc.) and as such share a number of similarities and theoretical overlap ranging from the seriously problematic to the fairly innocuous, depending on the proclivities of the source and the ideological figment under consideration. However, the differences between them are potentially more important than the similarities, and going “beyond right and left,” or “learning about your heritage,” for examples, could mean things to an anarchist which are completely opposed to the notions which go by the same name for a fascist. Consequently, any idea of “traditions” worth keeping for an anarchist would have nothing to do with metaphysically based States run by castes of warrior-priests, with patchworks of ethnically pristine hamlet cultures, with vast empires or superior races, or with an age of ruins as conceived by the likes of Evola and his acolytes.
- It is not only possible but desirable to simultaneously oppose cryptic, neo-folkish fascism AND other, more institutional manifestations of oppression (i. e. “the real fascists,” the police, government, etc.).
<center>
***
</center>
With those things said, let’s take a brief look at the main texts whose authors sought, if not to defend Sadie and Exile, then to discredit the allegedly botched, moralistic, immodest, unsafe, overblown, witch hunt response of “the anti-fascists.”
*** REVIEWS AND REFUTATIONS
**** A) "Don’t Worry, You Can Sleep at Night …and being able to sleep functions as a symptom of a greater problem" by Hunter H.
This article consists mostly of a meditation upon nihilism, ideology, hipsterdom, consumerism and various lifestyle choices which is bookended with remarks about anti-fascism that feel grafted on to the piece but which leave no doubt that it is meant as a remark upon the latest round of Olympia drama. However, aside from those beginning and closing stretches of the piece, I find myself in agreement with most of it. Arguments against the shallow, ressentiment-fueled[17] rebelliousness of those who seek to carve out ideological (counter-) hegemony, and critiques of a social order which preserves itself and brings about cohesion through sophisticated pacification techniques (rather than with garish brutality) which subtly bring about identification with the machine on the part of its subjects are all very fine, as far as they go. There are even small excerpts that I would describe as excellent in terms of succinct descriptions of complex dynamics, such as: “European anti-fascist demonstrations draw out supporters by the thousands, but serve as no attack on any actual forces of power. Rather, these demonstrations merely vocalize a popular moral position while glorifying the dominant structure in place that stands in contrast to the dark spectres of extremism, fascist or otherwise.” Very fine.
But, let’s look at the very first sentence of the piece: “No longer do the ideological extremes function as a the ultimate threat to our livelihoods, yet many within the so-called anarchist milieu (or other radical-leftist currents) remain focused on defending themselves from such extremes as central tenets of their praxis.” I’m curious to know what circumstances compel this writer to state with certainty that ideological extremes and extremists are not threatening. Because white anarchists may not be threatened frequently by other violent white fanatics doesn’t mean that fascism is not a danger, obviously to non-white people but also to dedicated anti-fascists and “race-mixers” of any background known to them. Fascists, white power advocates, and adherents to the far-right exist in fairly large numbers, in every echelon and every countercultural scene in the US, and regularly attack people or otherwise foster a climate of fear for many. But I suppose if you are disconnected from that reality, if you’re surrounded predominantly by other whites, or if you’ve never had to sleep with weapons under your pillow because you suspect your home might be invaded by nazis in the middle of the night, then it’s understandable to take this position.
Near the end of the article, Hunter H. repeats the well-worn trope about the anti-fascists being of a piece with statist censors, moved by our horror at the forbidden material to ban it from every utterance and instance, and goes on to group “Anti-fa members” in the same category with the US Military, ISIS, and racist skinheads in that we share a compunction toward the “maintenance of pristine imagery and ideology.” Most anarchists I know in Olympia could be found after the release of this article wondering who exactly this author is talking about, and how useful such a grouping/categorization could really be.
Presumably, from the remove of a Hunter H., the level on which the swastika and the trappings of antifa could be considered equivalents (as arbitrary, commodified markers of political allegiance, as “tainted hamburger meat of the political,” or as fodder for Hunter’s hackneyed post-vegan metaphors) is more important than the level on which these symbols serve as admittedly unfortunate expedients for very real and consequential differences (the subtitle of Hunter’s article even seems to be a lament that antifa are supposedly not losing any sleep from guilt and shame over the ideological vortex laying claim to us). Hunter’s squeamishness about “street-gang politics” and the violent encounters on the ground between fascists and anti-fascists seems certainly to be predicated upon more than a simple and understandable aversion to the often jarring and terrifying nature of these clashes. But can that aversion really be chalked up to the “critique of ideology” put forward by one who otherwise is calling for a showdown with the entire flow of history, a complete rupture with civilization itself? The writer nonetheless doesn’t bother to elaborate upon what the nihilist response to the creep of fascist influence or even fascist violence might be, but rather reserves their backhanded venom for the enemies of that fascism and, in this case, of that civilization. Maybe the rush to accrue cool points from local heroes (or anti-social anti-capital, if you prefer) by way of condemning people embroiled in a conflict that Hunter obviously knows little about was too time-prohibitive for further comment.
**** B) “Reflections on Credibility”, the anonymous e-mail of resignation
This email was sent and forwarded to a number of people in the Olympia anarchist scene. In a positively harried tone it outlines the disillusionment and horror on the part of the author with the Olympia “anti-fascists,” a term used once again as a euphemism for anyone who has the gall to conclude that Sadie and Exile are genuinely into fascism.
The email starts off with the explicit declaration that the author, who describes themselves as having been involved with anarchism and anti-fascism for over a decade, will NOT be engaging in debate about whether or not Exile is a fascist. This is a patently ridiculous claim, not only because this is the topic around which the entire conflict turns, but because in the very next few sentences the author makes it clear that they think the accusations and allegations against Exile are illegitimate. It then goes on to critique various rhetorical excesses, security culture gaffes, and alleged friendly fire made by the anti-fascists.
Again, despite some semantic maneuvering, the author’s implicit assumption seems to be that anyone who has concluded that Exile is a fascist is guilty of these rhetorical excesses, if not of outright obfuscation. The security culture gaffes (unfortunately, a nearly constant occurrence in every radical milieu) are exemplified primarily by people making anti-fascist internet posts and putting pictures of their anti-fascist tattoos on social media, tagging their friends. The friendly fire or mistargeting woefully condemned by this author and other commentators on the situation has to do primarily with two instances. One is the cancellation of the Oakland tour date of the Olympia-based neo-folk band Ekstasis due to their close connection with Exile. Members of the band have described their relationship to Exile as familial and described him as their spiritual role model or shaman. (In a statement of defense written by Ekstasis after the show cancellation, they made sure to say “Congratulations, you are the fascists,” a statement directed toward those who’d clamored for the cancellation. This has not, to my knowledge, been condemned by any of Sadie and Exile’s defenders as a rhetorical excess.) The other instance has to do with assaults on the reputation of a certain bar in Olympia after a group of neo-nazi boneheads (with no known connection to Exile) were coincidentally smashed just outside its premises at the end of May 2015. Statements on the irony of the coincidence were made by anarchists in person and online, due to the fact that a handful of employees and regulars of the bar have consistently and passionately defended Exile, some going so far, notably, as to engage in snitch-jacketing of anarchists and other vicious rumor-spreading about the opposition to Exile.
Some of the most absurd of the mis-characterizations made by the email are the following statements made by the author: “It is a commonly held position by folks in Olympia that looking into earth-based spiritualities coming from European traditions or anyone researching their own European heritage is a white supremacist or fascist [sic],” and “‘All neo-folk is fascist,’” a statement which the author attributes to “numerous Olympia anti-fascists.” It is entirely probable that there are self-described anti-fascists in Olympia who hold these views. I have heard the latter expressed a time or two at a party or social gathering by people who either had their tongues at least partially planted in cheek, or who perhaps were weary of sifting through the many actually sketchy bands in the genre. But to conflate all opposition to Sadie and Exile with the holding of these views is curious indeed since it is common, in the anti-civ milieu especially, to find people who are quite interested in their ethnic heritage and in European spiritual traditions (and the prospective lessons for resistance and decolonization contained therein), and who enjoy the sounds of black metal and/or neo-folk music. In fact, more than a couple anarchists have been disappointed to find that bands previously well-liked by them ended up having neo-fascist/far-right affinities. One is tempted to conclude that these straw man arguments constitute an opportunistic smear job meant to play on the prejudices of different scenes in Olympia.
One of the most ridiculous of the many ridiculous aspects of the email is the author’s suggestion that the anti-fascists in question don’t understand the fire with which they play. Drawing upon the many years of experience with anti-fascism under their belt, the author decides to do us a favor and impart the knowledge that anti-fascist research and information dissemination is often undertaken with the intention that gang-style violence will ensue. The insinuation is that no one opposed to Sadie and Exile has any similar experience, an invalid claim to say the least. It should also be said that the potential consequences of Exile’s affinities becoming known are in reality very well understood.
The email concludes on a note of lament about how irrelevant and unsafe anarchism has become to the author’s life and interests, and of regret about the milieu becoming splintered over this situation. The former sentiment would be understandable in light of the problem that all radical countercultures (especially anarchism) have had with inflated senses of self-righteousness and recklessness. It is a note sounded often by those on the threshold of their 30s which gives important indications of real shortcomings. Here, however, it rings more as a vehicle for stodgy self-congratulations and holier-than-thou posturing from one who’s lived with an unacknowledged eagerness to graduate for too long. The latter sentiment of regret implies once again that the misgivings about Exile are unfounded and not worth drawing lines over, perhaps revealing a conviction common for such graduates that a false unity is preferable to a genuine strife.
**** C) “I Say Potato, You Say Dangerous Resurgence of Fascist Ideology: A few case studies in the internet making human interaction even more painfully absurd than it already was” by Arnold Schroder
I often describe this blog post as the best offering that the “other side” has got, and I counsel people to read it if they want to know just what that is. To boot, it’s one of my favorite kinds of writing: deeply personal but highly intelligent and informed, soulful, lengthy, in due course touching upon every sub-topic relevant to the matter at hand. It’s written in a world-weary, plaintive tone that is highly sympathetic and relatable, only occasionally spilling over into smugness. In a word, it’s seductive. What’s still more is that I ostensibly share a number of basic convictions with the author, among them that industrial civilization is the absolute enemy and that the majority of people’s fighting energy, such as they want to mobilize it anyway, should be directed at this enemy (and I would add, at least in the US context, at its police and its other proponents of white power). Schroder’s phrase about targeting those with “most of the money and the guns,” resonates even in the face of post-industrial innovations in the power structure and its social control which ensure that post-modern capital is less a citadel to be stormed and more a shimmering web, a never-ending circus/mining operation aimed at more and more intangible ore deposits of the imagination for the production of value, all while the outlands burn and the excluded at home are devoured in a death trip that only continues despite all self-congratulatory progressive drivel to the contrary. Truly, the fruit of civilized alienation. And here, in Schroder, is a soul who gets it. Right?
In short, if I were learning about the dispute for the first time by reading this blog post, or if I was in the position of feeling caught in the proverbial middle, the opening stretch of this piece would likely convince me that an unscrupulous, dull, and opportunistic cabal of Antifa somewhere in Olympia had acted like real assholes lately. I’d believe that it was sad but true: that they had pre-emptively cast out something or someone never esteemed, never understood, and that it was done perhaps for no better reason than to bind the group more tightly together in its struggle against a hostile outside world, to ease existential terror, to bring before them the latest in a line of objects upon which to project the fantasies of their twisted, pathologically-adolescent minds, too steeped in Olympia’s brand of social justice moralism despite their best efforts or pretenses at abstention. Here would be people of that contemporary madness, that idiosyncratic derangement ever in the ascendent in radical circles, which allows them to rub elbows with the bringers of the Gulag, but emphatically– hysterically– not with the bringers of the Concentration Camp. I might even believe it all because I myself had been peripheral to, or even involved in, groups capable of being thusly described.
But lest you think my praise uncritical or rooted in a substantive affection, I’d have you know that the rangy erudition of Schroder effectively masks a few significant omissions, and they are ones which would be very conspicuous if only you weren’t being borne along on the gentle, lilting tide of Schroder’s thoughtfulness and originality, his dry humor and his learned gravitas. It is truly ironic that the essay begins with these words: “When one crafts fiction, one does it, no matter how fervently fidelity to real life may be desired, with a certain narrative elegance and coherence that life itself often lacks.” Schroder proceeds to do just that. It is my contention that what he leaves out is of greater consequence than the many elegant words he lets fly.
Schroder uses the phrase “twinges of admiration” when talking about the former reputations of Sadie and Exile among anarchists, and part of me suspects that this is downplaying the matter purposely. It would be too hard in Schroder’s seat to resist making the most of the often deserved reputation of the anarchists as a vicious clique who are always-already champing at the bit to excommunicate someone. But whether or not this characterization is purposeful, the fact is that anarchists had much more than a passing glimmer of admiration for Sadie and Exile before this sordid saga laid bare just what their regard for the “fair folk” consists of. Sadie and Exile basically had garnered the rock star status accorded to those in or near the anarchist milieu who undertake direct action, go to prison for it, and refuse to snitch. They were materially supported by anarchists during their years in prison with funds, publicity, letters. Therefore, an actually large measure of good faith and admiration were squandered in the aforementioned in-person conversations with them.
Aside from giving the impression right from jumpstreet that this controversy is only an excrescence of the non-life of the internet, Schroder goes on to repeat the article of faith that criticisms of Exile are firmly rooted in an irrational aversion to neo-folk[18] or to explorations of what a path to an appropriate European indigeneity could mean. He also slyly cherry picks multiple references to Exile’s blog posts to illustrate his own tour through the relevant subjects of the debate. These include but are not limited to nazism, the esoteric meaning of the swastika[19], the ELF, neo-folk, and mysticism. This train of references was immediately criticized unfairly in a couple of online forums as meandering and irrelevant, when really it was a reflection of the labyrinthine quagmire of this controversy. Schroder takes us on this whirlwind tour to make a case for the the relative harmlessness of Exile’s blog: “What do all these images have in common, or what, when they are taken in the aggregate, do they collectively signify? I’m not sure I know the answer to that, and if I did, it might be prohibitively lengthy, but if you answered “they are all inducements to the cause of white supremacy,” or “they all articulate a clear vision of a resurgence of fascist ideals in modern politics,” I’m going to have to go ahead and say you’re very, very wrong.” Sounds so reasonable.
Of course, I could do cherry picking of my own. Rather than focus, as does Schroder in tones of semi-adulation, on Exile’s use of “the statue of Christ in the ruined church, the Moroccan folk musicians, the painting of Mary and the infant Christ, the image of Michel Foucault talking about the penal system,” etc., etc., I could focus on the pictures of people weeping over mass graves, the photos of bodies stacked high, the multiple images of death squads and their ferocious pitbulls (which appeared immediately after anarchist objection to the blog was made public). Sandwiched between the quotations by Evola and Serrano and Jünger there’s also the steady stream of beautiful white women and white tigers, memes about how if the weights you are lifting at the gym are too heavy then you are not strong enough, and at least one laudatory anecdote about Oswald Spengler’s Roman soldier who perishes at Pompeii in a natural disaster rather than abandon his post, an act which after all might be contrary to the wishes of his superior and not in keeping with the steadfastness and strength and self-mastery needed to undertake Evola’s “inner immigration.” Inner immigration? Self-mastery? Let me explain.
Referring to an article that appeared shortly after this drama became public knowledge, Schroder writes, “What did New York City Antifa mean, exactly, when they, a day or two after the cancellation of the Ekstasis show, decided to publish a post called “Former ELF/Green Scare Prisoner “Exile” Now a Fascist”[20] — since they didn’t accuse him of saying so himself, and they didn’t accuse him of involving himself in any sort of political activity? Did they simply mean that somewhere in his inner core, somewhere inaccessible to direct scrutiny by any outside observer, in some hidden landscape lacking any means of ingress or egress to or from the world at large, he is a fascist? If so, they are likely well-equipped to understand the more abstract forays into philosophy and esotericism found on his blog.” This, however, is exactly the realm with which devotees of Evola are likely to be concerned.
Schroder’s concession that antifa are well-equipped to understand the blog is clearly more irony where sincerity would have done fine. What I referred to above as “inner immigration”, and what, exactly, NYC Antifa meant in their statement is elaborated upon in the article, “Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and ‘metapolitical fascism’,” by Anton Shekhovtsov, which is worth quoting at length to illustrate the point:
<quote>
Although fascism is an enfant terrible of the twentieth century, its socio-political lifespan is not bounded by Mussolini’s and Hitler’s regimes. After the joint forces of the Soviet Union and the western liberal democracies had crushed fascism’s war machine, it was forced to evolve or, rather, mutate into three distinct forms. The groups that still wanted to participate in the political process had to dampen their revolutionary ardour rather dramatically and translate it ‘as far as possible into the language of liberal democracy’. This strategy gave birth to new radical right-wing parties that have become electorally successful in several countries over the last twenty-five years. Revolutionary ultra-nationalists, on the other hand, retreated to the margins of socio-political life and took the form of small groupuscules that kept alive ‘the illusory prospect of having a revolutionary impact on society’. The third form of post-war fascism was conceptualized in the teachings of two fascist philosophers, Armin Mohler and Julius Evola. In Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932, published in 1950, Mohler argued that, since fascist revolution was indefinitely postponed due to the political domination of liberal democracy, true ‘conservative revolutionaries’ found themselves in an ‘interregnum’ that would, however, spontaneously give way to the spiritual grandeur of national reawakening. This theme of right-wing ‘inner emigration’ was echoed by Evola in his Cavalcare la tigre (Ride the Tiger), published in 1961. Evola acknowledged that, while ‘the true State, the hierarchical and organic State’, lay in ruins, there was ‘no one party or movement with which one can unreservedly agree and for which one can fight with absolute devotion, in defence of some higher idea’. Thus, l’uomo differenziato should practise ‘disinterest, detachment from everything that today constitutes “politics”‘, and this was exactly the principle that Evola called ‘apoliteia’. While apoliteia does not necessarily imply abstention from socio-political activities, an apoliteic individual, an ‘aristocrat of the soul’ (to cite the subtitle of the English translation of Cavalcare la tigre), should always embody his ‘irrevocable internal distance from this [modern] society and its “values”‘.
</quote>
The concepts of interregnum and apoliteia had a major impact on the development of the ‘metapolitical fascism’ of the European New Right (ENR), a movement that consists of clusters of think tanks, conferences, journals, institutes and publishing houses that try—following the strategy of so-called ‘right-wing Gramscism’—to modify the dominant political culture and make it more susceptible to a non-democratic mode of politics. Like Mohler and Evola, the adherents of the ENR believe that one day the allegedly decadent era of egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism will give way to ‘an entirely new culture based on organic, hierarchical, supra-individual, heroic values’. It is important to emphasize, however, that ‘metapolitical fascism’ focuses—almost exclusively—on the battle for hearts and minds rather than for immediate political power. Following Evola’s precepts, the ENR tries to distance itself from both historical and contemporary fascist parties and regimes. As biological racism became totally discredited in the post-war period, and it was ‘no longer possible to speak publicly of perceived difference through the language of “old racism”’, ENR thinkers pointed to the insurmountable differences between peoples, not in biological or ethnic terms but rather in terms of culture. They abandoned overt fascist ultra-nationalism ‘in the name of a Europe restored to the (essentially mythic) homogeneity of its component primordial cultures’.[21]
Is one of us right and one of us wrong in our focus? Is it conceivable, as Schroder seems to suggest, that there is no overarching message to the blog? Or that if there is, then it is a good and contemplative and wise one? Or is it possible that Exile is using a strategy of deliberate ambiguity in a cultural intervention which attempts to render the soil more fertile for his particular brand of softcore white separatist hippie dippy anarcho-fascism (efforts the likes of which seem to be succeeding if the Pacific Northwest is any indication)? Is it not merely a sign of Exile’s worldly outlook but, in fact, deeply creepy and offensive that he uses images of old brown women in far away lands with sick hand tattoos to make his particular vision of the rebirth of Mother Europa a few shades more palatable? I don’t think it’s pushing the envelope too far or thinking in too conspiratorial a manner to recognize that a many-splendored pageant of humanity dappled with beautiful art from Bronze and Iron Age kingdoms and religions makes the medicine go down, and that in our day a neo-fascist can mobilize that pageant for his ends every bit as easily as can an anarchist. Admittedly, those ladies and that art look pretty great.
The objection could be raised, as it often is, which Schroder puts like this: “The dialogue around fascism in neofolk has always hinged on not believing people when they say they’re not fascists. We enter into this territory of claustrophobic suspicion: “Sure, you say you’re not a fascist, but anyone can just say they’re not a fascist; what are you going to do to prove it?”” This is an objection which put another way has been repeated ad nauseum by those who esteem Sadie and Exile: a dismissal of allegations which are perceived to be based on so-called “guilt by association.” It might seem strange that people known to cavort with enthusiasts of neo-fascism and who lambast their critics as shallow leftists should base their defense, as it were, on the idea that Sadie and Exile’s detractors are bringing a form of allegation against them which is illegal for the state to bring against individuals in court cases. But here is an argument that can be deployed with instant traction even by people who ostensibly have no interest in lending further weight to legal categories of the state. It can be counted on to mobilize liberal outrage in most circles and dovetails nicely with the caricature passed around of a coterie of anti-fascists which has fashioned itself into a miniature judiciary or tribunal– one which has suspended even elementary protections for the accused, no less! The underlying assumption, of course, is that associating with fascists (or, say, adopting them as your shamanic guide) is acceptable or ethical essentially because a court could not arrest you for it. We are apparently supposed to ignore what we know in the interest of dispassionate jurisprudence. Is it true that people dealing with pre- or extra-legal social affinities and allegiances should not use their faculties of discernment to know who they should or should not cut off from contact simply because a similar criterion used by the state in an entirely other context is opposed by us, mostly because we would seek to take advantage of any protections afforded our associations, because we would want to get away with the shit? The bottom line: association, support, esteem ARE the problems in this context.
This bit on the legal innocence of neo-folk boosters of the New Right is followed immediately by a reference to Exile’s pedigree as ELF militant: “Where it might be suggested that, if one wanted to establish some kind of credibility for themselves, burning a bunch of shit down could be a good place to start.” This is a formulation that is echoed later in the piece, when Schroder offers a defense of the decorated German World War I veteran Ernst Jünger, a leading proponent in the interwar years of a school of thought which partially played into the rise of fascism in Germany called Conservative Revolution, and an abiding influence on Evola. Jünger, we are informed by Schroder, eventually played a peripheral role in a plot to assassinate Hitler, and this is offered as supposed proof of his merit. Schroder again: “I was born in 1978, and I started listening to punk rock when I was 11, so that makes me just old enough to really remember what it was like when Nazi skinheads were a constant, violent threat at punk shows and the like. I have stood my ground, as a rail-thin 14-year-old, against gangs of grown-ass skinhead men. This is a history I doubt I share with many of Rose City Antifa’s members. So there’s a few points in my favor, I suppose. But you know what I never did? I never once — not in my punk rock youth, nor at any other point in my 36 years of ecological anti-authoritarianism — tried to kill Hitler. And if trying to kill Hitler doesn’t get you a pass with today’s anti-fascists, nothing I can ever hope to do or say will.” I’m not sure of an emphatic enough way to say that this doesn’t matter. My own anarchist romanticism aside, arson and assassination– or time served in prison– do not an ally make, at least not necessarily. It should be elementary at this point that the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend, and Jünger, Evola and Exile are no friends to the anarchists, then or now.
Really, I’m being hasty when I say that it doesn’t matter that Exile has the courage to match his convictions. Along with Schroder, plenty of us growing up in the countercultural scenes of the United States had formative experiences involving neo-nazis. Plenty of us were small and scared, and came away from the experience scarred or otherwise irrevocably changed. Some of us have friends and comrades who were sent to the hospital, to jail, or to their graves. So it matters, then, when someone is motivated by a vision of order and social regeneration which is opposed to one’s own and they are willing to go down for it. Schroder’s language about “getting a pass” with today’s anti-fascists is more indicative than it was probably meant to be.
Ironically, while taking pains to exonerate the elitist, anti-egalitarian, anti-liberal streak in German culture, in neo-folk, and on Exile’s blog, Schroder admonishes, nearly pleads with the anti-fascists to engage in the spirit of open and democratic dialogue, and this with people who it has been made clear have disgraced themselves. He condemns the nebulous nature of anti-fascist alarmism, but in his turn ends up defending not only Sadie and Exile, but also the fans of Death in June[22] whose helmsman Douglas Pearce rhetorically AND financially supports fascists– the politically active and extremely violent kind– and repeatedly makes horribly racist and fascistic pronouncements in interviews and openly welcomes neo-nazis at his fascist imagery-laden shows.
But most personal to Schroder, it seems, is the case of the Austrian band Allerseelen, subject of an expose and tour date shutdown in the Northwest in 2010 orchestrated by Rose City Antifa. As his essay wears on, Schroder defiantly makes it known that he ran sound for Allerseelen after the apparently harebrained character assassination that RCA loosed upon the world. As I read, I– obstinate and pigheaded antifa emissary, tiny dictator that I am– I felt just about convinced that RCA must have gone too far to raise the ire of this agreeable anti-authoritarian eco-defender man. I really did. I paused my reading of the blog to look up the RCA statement on Allerseelen to see what kind of ephemera and whole cloth they had stretched to make their garment fit their hobgoblin. What I found is that the man behind Allerseelen, one Gerhard Petak, is particularly enamored not just of some corner of the European New Right which Schroder judges to be salutary, but of Leni Riefenstahl, the director of the infamous Nazi propaganda movie “Triumph of the Will” (Triumph des Willens) whom Petak has praised in various media. He’s also quite partial to the Order of the Archangel Michael, also known as the Romanian Iron Guard. For those who don’t know, the Iron Guard were none other than Romania’s own homegrown fascist movement. Yes, that kind of fascist, contemporaneous with Italian Fascism and German Nazism. Petak saw fit to release spoken word recordings of their founder Corneliu Codreanu[23]. I guess he just really needed to commit those speeches to tape. You know… for art.
To use Schroder’s charming, trivializing phrase when referring to the cocaine swastikas on Exile’s blog: “Right. So that’s awkward.”
*** “THIS ISN’T OAKLAND”: the social context
For several decades one of the most robust, large, and particularly tenacious chunks of the white power movement on the North American continent has hailed from the Northwestern United States, including that grey portion of the greater region adjacent to the ocean known as the Pacific Northwest (PNW) or Cascadia. Several outfits and countless stalwart individuals have set their sights on and devoted their efforts to the establishment of a discrete new homeland, an official white ethno-state whose proposed boundaries vary but generally include the land now encompassed by the states of Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and the northern part of California. Of course, this audacious proposition is entirely consonant with the history of the encroachment of European-American civilization into this region and its concomitant ongoing attempt at genocide of the indigenous population. In the white settling of the great northwest, the treatment meted out to laboring immigrants and to the black and brown populations was characterized by grinding exploitation, by terror, dispossession, and forcibly-imposed social death. It’s a history studded with atrocity. Infamously, Oregon’s state apparatus even went one better than the impressive average of northwest capitals and at its founding officially prohibited the emigration of black people to within its borders, a deliberate attempt to foster the “better elements” of culture. In its northwest corner, the pronounced tendencies toward white power that one could expect to find in no less romanticized a place as the American West can be seen to take on a more distinctly sentimental, even utopian hue, perhaps owing to the singular natural beauty of the place. What white separatists today are seeking to bring to completion is a mythologically charged task a couple hundred years in the making, animated by hopes for something like a fairy tale ending. They carry on as warriors in a world that does not understand, in the face of setbacks imposed by a liberal democratic modernity that they feel (as do many anarchists, but for different reasons) to be immeasurably, outrageously, farcically asinine.
By this point, some of the reasons for the peculiar nature of Olympia sociality may be gleaned by any reader not already familiar, that is, if you’ve bothered to keep reading this far. Despite its situation near some of the last remaining relatively intact and astoundingly gorgeous stands of wilderness forest in the US, as well as its accessibility on the I-5 corridor, “Oly” is not so much a place as an eerily comfortable bubble. Or a vortex. There’s even a local bit of superstition which holds that if you drink the well water then you’ll end up dying here, a reference to the fact that almost everybody who leaves comes back sooner or later. The pacifying triple influences of the famous hippie college in town, the huge neighboring military base, and the state capitol lend a multifarious, transient, and cosmopolitan set of dimensions to the otherwise provincial, even folkloric air of the town (they also provide some jobs to a formerly booming center of logging, milling, fishing, oyster farming, and dairying). In our little paradoxical paradise, if we don’t have it all, we have the residues and romance of what once was. As long as you can get on foodstamps and attend your herbalist workshops and art exhibitions and noise shows and Portland-style gentrifying hipster cafes and Yule celebrations unmolested by any unsightly reminders of the gaping wounds of race (or by pesky anarchist handwringing served up by those dependably dour-faced and dramatic flies in the ointment) then… well, then it just seems like everything is going to be ok.
To belabor the point for a moment more imagine, if you will, what the world would be like if the CEOs of major outdoor outfitting companies entered into a braintrust with fierce social justice militants, sustainability techies, Sally Fallon, and a bunch of Scandinavian people (just for good measure) to successfully collaborate on a bio-regional secessionist dystopia and you might get something close to the geist of radical Olympia, at least in its most obnoxiously pernicious iterations. It’s a little bit like being lost in a progressive high school cafeteria where honest-to-god trust fund insurrectionaries rub elbows with liberal baristas, and bio-dynamic farming enthusiasts who make the same pittance of a wage as you do are the first to crack the whip when you aren’t being efficient enough, when you don’t answer the e-mails from the collective fast enough, when your suggestions for self-managed life aren’t made with enough gusto. When I say that late capitalism reigns here, I mean late like you’re grounded. In this world, it’s not all that surprising when someone who is called out for harboring fascist sympathies responds by saying that you are just as fucked up because you are so into Beyonce. Now, imagine that this green capitalist wonderland had genuinely managed to secure for a large portion of its subjects a by no means negligible measure of social services and community feeling, fresh air and mountain views, and you might be getting even closer to understanding the weird, irresistible appeal of the bubble. One of the sinister undersides to this tight folksy knit, and one that helps to explain the downright nasty attacks and endless psychologizing of adversaries in this and every other conflict that unfolds, is that the repressed venom of people in this “community” (and I do mean the crud of their passive-aggressive souls) is usually reserved for those who are seen to break whatever version of this cozy consensus their own little group has internalized. Anarchist or fascist, it’s woe to you who upsets the freaky denizens of the rainy village enough for them to look up from their smartphones for more than an instant.[24]
Maybe this bit of context goes some of the way toward explaining why the friends of Sadie and Exile said what they did in conversation.[25] Maybe they felt like they could get away with such candidness in front of people who, after all, they’d known for years and with whom they’d shared significant vistas of worldview and experience. Maybe they thought that the white anarchists– in some cases no less than their former comrades– ultimately could only pretend to be any better than the rest who find their refuge in this Neverland. Tiring of the mounting tensions, they would have hedged their bets on being more honest than they had been so far. And who’s to say they weren’t right? Anarchist response to the situation has been anything but uniform. The gamble paid off for them in the form of those friends in the anarchist scene who went in for the belittling dismissals, or who pretend not to know “what the beef is” in a scene that is such an echo chamber criss-crossed with channels of gossip that this is literally impossible. To relate another example, when news got around that the lion’s share of Olympia’s long-standing A-team were through with these creepy neo-folkish bastards, some insurrectionary anarchists in town and elsewhere in the northwest expressed their wish to talk with the menfolk of the faction so resigned, rather than with the participants of the talks who were known to be basically drama-prone (trans) bitches, not to be trusted with delicate matters of determining last straws.
But there’s more to it than (hopefully) fleeting expressions of transmisogyny or jockeying for social capital. It’s not only the ubiquitous social games and mud slinging of the town to which anarchists succumb. In light of the foregoing, how could that be all? As for my own part, if ever I want to wince I need only look back upon a half dozen or more high-profile or otherwise memorable controversies and conflicts in which I felt I had acted or spoke in a justified anti-racist way… only to realize now that in all likelihood I resonated just as much as anyone else as an entitled and pretentious white goon. Who am I anyway to condemn with such furor the sins of other white people? Do I write 30-page papers about them that will be read mostly by other white anarchists only to stave off irreconcilable doubts about myself and my place in the world? I have black and brown anarchist friends who live in other towns or regions who wonder what I’m still doing here. In moments which sometimes prove uncomfortable, their puzzlement overflows and finds its way into speech or writing, and they ask me just that. Apparently, the anarchist aspiration to become or contribute to a wrench thrown in the machine or even just an ulcer in the stomach of the unliving beast, to deploy oneself in a substantive treason to whiteness, rings a bit too hollow to be believed. Too hollow. Too grandiose. Too insincere. Or if not these then, at any rate, far too implausible a notion, especially after a year and a half of nationwide demonstrations and actions for black lives has not only failed to slow the rate of slaughter but has seen its escalation to record levels in response. Oh well. Fritter away the northwest days like anyone else. Dream about living on land. Work the shit jobs that ensure that you will never, ever be able to do that. Party and bullshit. How do I put delicately to my curious friends that perhaps the main condition for my remaining here is the one that they already know and the one that is hardest to acknowledge: that I am white, so I can stand it.
But as crucial as a reckoning with these questions is, the point is not to become lost in the kind of pacified navel-gazing that this town seems to engender as an imperative, with velocity, leaving it up to someone more affected to deal with shit. Meaningful distinctions can and should be made, lines drawn that will, to whatever extent possible, orient us away from the disastrous straits in which we currently find ourselves. So, when someone tells you that they are friends with neo-nazis, wearing their statement with something approaching pride, speaking in defiant tones of their contravention of your narrow leftist precepts, you have to wonder at those who think you’re a hysterical drama queen and demagogue for unceremoniously ending the relationship. You have to wonder at people whose main security concern in the situation is that your conclusion that the person is fascist or fascist-sympathetic is too flippant or reckless. Clearly, for anti-fascists, two degrees of separation from the hardcore of the opposition is simply too close for comfort. Many people, for obvious reasons, can never totally (or at all) remove themselves from the cross-hairs of fascists. But in the spirit of gang or turf war alluded to above as part and parcel of antifa work, white anarchists, anti-fascists, and anti-racist activists routinely draw the ire of the WPs (white power advocates). In a town like Olympia this presents unique pitfalls since one is never all that many degrees separate from them. In essence, taking visible stands against racism and fascism in a town where you can expect to run into nazis a few times a year or season if you frequent downtown (or the shooting range, or demonstrations, or McDonald’s, or etc.) can pretty easily “out” you to them. Some people cross that threshold and become known to them unavoidably. Some choose to do so. And some, as we know, unintentionally let sensitive details slip out of ignorance, deplorable carelessness, or fatigue. But to act as if the affinities of Exile do not have the potential to jeopardize people is to advance a fallacy.
As we’ll see, to suggest that a perspective against industrial civilization necessitates or excuses such affinities is equally fallacious.
*** AGAINST THE MODERN WORLD… WHITHER?
The open secret of civilized life is that we are all crestfallen. Against insufferable loss and psychosis-inducing captivity some innate animal propensity continually, implacably bucks until we break, hemorrhage, become despondent, or sublimate our urges into prescribed channels of recreation and anesthesia. In this view, then, Schroder describes a legitimate impulse when in the course of contextualizing his defense of Exile he writes:
<quote>
Industrial civilization in general, and the massive social and technological changes of the 20th century in particular, have been, to indulge in gratuitous understatement, difficult for people to adapt to. There was never a moment of true acquiescence. We never believed in this dream. It was born dead. The moment science began to explain everything, massive resurgences of mysticism and anti-rationalism spread among educated people. The moment technology offered us a way to never touch the soil again, people began to flee to the forest. Our current epoch of hyper-mechanized warfare, hyper-mechanized work, and growing distance from the land gave birth instantly to many counter-currents. These counter-currents have taken an incredible diversity of forms, but if one bothers to peer just a little ways beneath their exteriors, beneath the simple classificatory schema, one finds a wealth of commonalities.
</quote>
Though this may be absolutely correct[26] it must be stated emphatically that in no way does it imply an acceptance of the doctrines of Julius Evola who, after all, was elucidating his own life’s most precious endeavor when he called explicitly for “a more radical Fascism, more fearless, a really absolute Fascism, made of pure force, impervious to any compromise.”[27] The same holds for any other of the panoply of voices who acted as conduits of that impulse, who on occasion compellingly described the stultifying or horrifying aspects of the emergent social order while intentionally bolstering Aryanism in a world already indelibly shaped by white power(s). A heeding of this outcry against the ills of the modern world certainly doesn’t imply complacency in the face of the cryptic stumping for such influences that Exile has made into his project and that, like any true “aristocrat of the soul,” he carries on all the more proudly for having been called out. It doesn’t imply a scouring of 20th century European history for the racist, conservative revolutionary men whose words take the left to task most severely, with most zeal. In all likelihood, it doesn’t imply Europe at all.
It has been claimed by some in the neo-folk scene that in order to research one’s Germanic heritage, it is necessary to engage with the sources that exert such a strong pull on the imagination of Exile and friends. Putting aside the dubiousness of that claim, what is never explained is why engagement should necessarily lead to embrace, or embrace to the kind of allegiance that inspires one to become a low key propaganda czar, an internet and musical spirit warrior for tendencies that have historically and contemporarily been used as fuel for attacks on the colonized and oppressed peoples of the world.
Even explicitly anti-fascist white radicals potentially perform a disservice to ourselves and the causes that we would further by engaging in an uncritical public identification with what we judge to be the better of our ancestors. Everyone knows white kids love hip hop, but in the northwest we also love saying we are witches. Like the women and queers and incorrigible freaks whose lives were extinguished at the stake, we tend to look for histories where we are the subjects of oppression and resistance, often to the exclusion of sitting with those elements of the history which tie us to benefitting from and participating in oppression. If a crucial part of the pre-white history of Europe is the lead up to the construction and joining of that whiteness– if we are also descended from inquisitors, clergy, colonizers, and witch hunters– then it behooves us not only to find those moments of revolt and subversion worth celebrating, but also to truly mourn what was burned up with those bodies. We should understand that whatever it was that was lost can only be made again from scratch, re-grown in place.[28] It surely cannot be fabricated with Exile’s hokey, two-bit reconstructionism which hearkens to the Roman Empire or manifests a hyper-romanticized urge to usher in the rebirth of “the component primordial cultures of Europe” à la Evola[29] and puts on a pedestal the history of people who, by and large, sold out.
There are no easy formulas, no cut-and-dry answers. On that much our nihilist theoreticians and our admirers of Jünger and company are ostensibly in agreement. But then, how to explain when the latter insist that the need for very particular formulations of spirituality or the longing for a people of one’s own (or a ressentiment-fueled, us-or-them vehemence which mirrors the left at which it is aimed[30]) effectively supersedes the exigencies of anti-racist, anti-fascist solidarity in the here and now? When they dismiss as glib posturing or leftist moralizing the recognition of those exigencies by anarchists, even those with anti-civilization principles?
In a poignant moment of his essay, Schroder asks why anarchists problematize the situation of Exile’s ideas on New Right terrain when similar ideas in the parlance of another milieu are called decolonization. He locates here an incapacity for cross-ideological cooperation and comradeship, an inexcusable narrow-mindedness in the face of concerns so colossal that they might very well prove insurmountable even if such divisiveness were overcome. In the next breath he glides into rebuking anarchists for associating with the Left analogues of such cretinous tendencies as are readily condemned everywhere and anywhere else they are found. What could be the explanation for this apparent inconsistency? Have anarchists abdicated their faculties? Do we believe the honeyed words of liars because they say what we want to hear or wear our colors while we deny potential allies because they do not? This would undoubtedly be in keeping with the track record of anarchists as history’s greatest dupes, losers, and dispensable foot soldiers, the ones who never fail to do their part in ushering in the newest incarnation of the nightmare because we couldn’t resist our piece of the action. It would be exceedingly easy to throw one’s hands up and walk away, concluding that the anarchists refuse to learn their lesson. At times, I have been tempted to do so myself.
But to leave the matter at that would be folly. To take Schroder’s argument at face value is to buy into a disappearing act, replete with smoke and mirrors. Our politics (or anti-politics) are what we make of them. Namely, I don’t believe that an interest in one’s ethnic roots or pagan revival necessarily predisposes one towards racism, pogroms, or assembly-line mass murder any more than I believe that undertaking things in a communal spirit or what some anthropologists have called “aggressive egalitarianism” (as opposed to Evola’s boasted “primordial” anti-egalitarianism) predisposes one towards Stalinist purges or terror famines. Yet, Schroder’s idiosyncratic and oh-so-wistful rendition of the flight from Leftist authoritarianism manages to effect just such a double-edged conflation, simultaneously lending weight to the pro-civilization lobby of anarchism and propping up one more too-plausible antifa scarecrow in the process. What do I mean?
There is no shortage of leftists (including left anarchists) who maintain that to pit oneself against the dynamics inherent to civilization is to court a nascent fascism, a position that I feel consists of some combination of consummate foolishness, cowardice, denial, and/or willful ignorance about the natures of fascism, modernity, authority, and more.[31] And as we’ve seen, despite his many disclaimers to the contrary, Schroder all but confirms their worst fears with the “passes” he hands out to Allerseelen, Death in June, the European New Right, etc. The other side of the coin, the scarecrow, is his suggestion that any anarchist who speaks ill of Exile must be in bed with the kind of socialists who will one day put us up against the wall. This is an argument to which many of us influenced by post-left critiques are very susceptible, finding as it does so much correspondence in real life, in the sordid history alluded to above. It’s as if anarchists necessarily fail to sniff out heinous techno-bureaucrats or state-planners-in-waiting because we prefer our bogeymen to be of the right rather than the left.
But therein lies the disappearing act. As much as anything that has been said or written about the debate, this suggestion demonstrates either a serious unfamiliarity with tendencies of anarchism which have been ascendant for years (especially in Oly), or a colossal summit reached of good old-fashioned bad faith. What our neo-folkish rivals represent as the preferences of blinkered political correctitude could just as easily be represented as the exact kind of dealing with nuance which, according to the pictures painted by the Hunter H.’s and Arnold Schroders of the world, should well-nigh be impossible for a set of myopic and reactionary brutes charged with manicuring the ideological racket. But of course, that representation (of an anti-fascist, anti-civilization critique[32]) wouldn’t be swallowed as easily, wouldn’t find as much correspondence in the rest of the world, wouldn’t play into the prejudices of audiences to the same extent– and hence is not admissible.
Maybe someone who wasn’t launching an elaborate apologia for Sadie and Exile could be forgiven for misconstruing the many, various, and complex reasons for anarchism’s tortured relationship with the left, which vacillates between romance, alliance of convenience, aversion, and outright hostility.[33] Some anarchists might very well love to go smash up the next meeting of the socialist party as much as a meeting of the NSM or Hammerskins. The left may piss and moan about our using them as crowd cover for our vandalism, but the fact remains: the radical left allows us, however uneasily, to exist in its midst while we hatch our schemes to get rid of it– and ourselves– once and for all. The radical right? They murder us execution-style in the desert. They stab us outside of convenience stores. They bash us or drag us from the backs of trucks. They massacre people in black churches. Do you really think that’s dumb luck or a simple fucking accident of history?
It’s surreal to have to explain why there is some sense, however peculiar, in which I might still conceive of myself as a “communist” (or at least associate with some of those who do) while I would never want to find a way to reclaim “fascism”– or have the misfortune to wake up one day and realize that that’s what I’d become despite any semantic acrobatics. This, contra Schroder, does not mean I fail to reject left totalitarianism along with the right. It’s surreal– and symptomatic of my social context– to have to explain the reasons why one would prefer those iterations of the ideas which go by “decolonization,” are advanced by the world’s fighting indigenous peoples, and are taken up by portions of the left rather than those iterations which go by “the right to difference,” are advanced by white people in European New Right think tanks, and are found in journals sandwiched between the ruminations of esoteric hitler worshipers. Are we really supposed to believe that we are being unfair to the more radical fringes of the right by excluding them from our futile little crusade against state and capital, against civilization? In the event that people ever get pissed enough to once again blockade the port of Olympia– let’s say this time to stop shipments of timber, the traffic in the murdered bodies of the last remaining ancient forests of the northwest– do you think I’d want to stand shoulder to shoulder with someone who is friends with neo-nazis, or expects their readers to believe that all antifa envision themselves as some scrambled, miniature version of the Allies taking Rome or liberating Treblinka, or someone who claims to have not one modicum of disrespect or condescension toward the people of other races but thinks that interbreeding and thereby watering down one’s own racial essence is a no-no? Are our circumstances so impoverished that the strange bedfellows we choose to accomplish a task must be of this caliber?
If it was inadequate for the guards of the old primitivism to shirk off concerns about latent fascistic affinities or an over-reliance on anthropological science with simple declarations of, “But we’re against nationalism! We’re against racism!,” then it’s immeasurably more inadequate for the shills of outright neo-fascism to offer up in defense of themselves declarations of, “But we are against all forms of oppression!,” or failing that, to cop to a folksy lack of savvy in matters of race or point out their non-white friends. It’s not only laughable, it’s an apparently well-deserved insult to the intelligence of those anarchists who bought it and have stuck out their friendships with them. An often overlooked point in the popular discourse is that there is much more to neo-fascism than race, and there are plenty of grounds for whites to reject it besides sheer altruism or the cosmopolitanism of liberal academics. The vision of a life well-lived held out by Julius Evola is not only based upon deeply erroneous analysis of what has gone on in the world, in the end it’s also paltry, disgusting trash; a pitiful collage of coping mechanisms for ubiquitous modern insecurities, dressed up in imperial garb and animated by some of the worst affinities ever dreamed, none of which I would ever want for myself, my relatives, or my loved ones of whatever origin. Occasional moments of illumination, erudition, or expressions which some anarchists might see as refracted versions of genuine impulses do not redeem a rotten enterprise. When have they ever?
If belonging to a place, spiritual practice, and undemocratic, anti-Enlightenment values are not necessarily spurned by anarchists, they may be recognized as too important to fuck up. I submit for the consideration of the reader that to start from or arrive at neo-fascist or “alt-right” voices like Evola is to do just that. The critique of civilization does not consist of the eloquent ramblings of those men tangled in the war-torn morass who beat their breasts most ardently against the modern world because what they fixated upon in their survey of the wreckage was the slipping away of great empires, the habits and entitlements of the well-born, and the gender roles of the Middle Ages. The anti-civilization insurgency to come will reckon with those apparatuses that produce meaning as we’ve known it, that produce history, subjectivity, race, gender. It will do this or it will be farce. If you are a racist or a transphobe, your vaunted love for the earth is immaterial.
*** A FIELD GUIDE TO STRAW MEN
In a generous vein, one could choose to believe that a simple but subtle truth has eluded the above writers: the argument being made by the wayward antifa of Olympia is not that Exile is a neo-fascist because he posts so many swastikas, but that he posts so many swastikas because he is a neo-fascist. So much the worse for us all that the basis of any such generosity has been persistently undercut by a clear refusal to read between the gaping lines.
Regardless of all mindless prattling to the contrary drawing hard lines against substantial Evola influence is an excellent strategy for anarchists and white anti-racists in the northwest. If you’ll indulge me in a taboo bit of futural thinking for a moment I’ll ask: in twenty years, when the earth is hotter, the sea is overflowing, and white people are more panicked than ever about the ebbing away of their privileges, the crumbling of the world that whiteness had built for them, in that not-far-off time when a group of white supremacist militia men again occupy land in Oregon or Nevada, or sweep through the parts of Olympia which aren’t underwater, do we want significant swaths of the “countercultural” scenes and radical avant-gardes of the northwest to express their congeniality toward the heroic men with guns (who are standing up to the government, after all!) because a supposedly harmless, novel interpretation of fascist ideology was allowed to go unchallenged where mostly white folks tread? Should we let it slide for fear of appearing as hopelessly uncool ideologues or pedantic killjoys? Do we want the next generation of rioters and arsonists, assassins and ex-convicts, midwives, healers and bio-remediation enthusiasts to incline toward a wholesome, nominally non-racist variant of neo-fascism? Or do we want them to incline toward anarchy and anti-racist rebellion?
Call it semantics or hairsplitting. Call it ideological turf war or the power fantasies of little civil engineers and christians-on-the-inside. Call it whatever you want, but we carry on. Ink will be spilled and pixels aligned in order to bemoan the lack of unity in the anarchist scene, to admonish us toward calm dialogue, to deride us for succumbing to “ideology” (meaning: not the nihilist kind), or to plead not guilty in an imaginary court, but none of that will stay our desire to see certain enemies smashed and scatter before us. Not only in anti-civ discourse and anarchist spaces, but at the black metal and neo-folk shows, at the zine symposiums, music festivals, and pagan holiday celebrations, picture the scum getting just what we’d give to any other creepy fascist fuck. Picture their delicate pamphlets with the pretty screen-printed covers sailing through the air as their tables are flipped. Flyers posted up about them. Blood on the ground. You know the rest. Imagine them being as scared and hapless as the Hammerskins who fled just such a wrath in Olympia in May of 2015.
Clearly, this essay was not written merely to defend the honor of some group or another of northwest anarchists. In any event, honor exited the situation with Sadie and Exile’s entrance. Secondly, the anarchist responses to the situation, taken together, have confirmed the utter inability of the milieu as a whole to adequately deal with countercultural neo-fascism, a bellowing, gut-churning failure. Finally, I’m sure that every hyperbolic statement attributed to that small fraction of people which I happen to think have good enough bearings in the situation came out of someone’s mouth at some point. Rhetorical excesses and security gaffes were indeed committed. But notice the slight-of-hand which renders this concern paramount, obscuring the fact of the slime in our midst. Flare-ups of temper or desperation obviously increased in some kind of proportion to how unseriously concerns were taken about Exile by the collection of white anarchists, punks, metalheads, pagans, and activists in this town and region, who frequently dismissed them outright. Sadly, a lack of support all too easily plays into unhealthy preoccupations. Who among us would not love to give more of our attention to any number of other interests and passions? Who among us would not love to defy the caricature of participants in a laughably obscure subcultural dispute of little significance? But as the system is more and more beset by crisis and breakdown, newly dispossessed people are going to be reaching for whatever radical tendencies are lying around. Despite the vogue for detached, cool self-effacement which passes for a sober voice of reason[34], the competing influences of ostensibly anti-authoritarian visions of ecological resistance could very well chalk up to much more than they once did as things heat up. This is our problem to deal with.
Yet it seems that some parties would still prefer the antifa critics to keep their mouths shut in shame over what are seen as the intangible aspects of our allegations or the missteps taken. All the while defenders of Exile continue to post selfies with Douglas Pearce and defend the inalienable right of fascist literature distributor Counter-Currents to table their wares at California’s Stella Natura festival. Perhaps most despicable of all, a few of the Evola-devout continue to intentionally and openly spread false information that certain anarchists opposed to Exile’s blog are literally agents of the US government sent to Olympia, apparently to disrupt the threat posed by its goth bars and apoliteic neo-fascist ex-cons turned ecstatic folkies. This practice, known as snitch-jacketing, is probably only surpassed by actual snitching when it comes to pathetic machinations which carry potentially dire consequences for the life and limb of its targets. Fortunately, the vast majority of people who would be inclined to take precautionary measures (and who have been the subjects of very recent federal scrutiny) seem to understand the allegations to be laughably baseless, serving primarily to discredit its sources even further.
The dishonest frameworks of discussion intentionally put forward by the cowards and dolts make no allowance for the appearance of certain kinds of anti-fascist, papering over legitimate differences among countercultural white people. Some of us are indeed northwest-dwelling, civilization-hating, practitioners of primitive skills and lovers of metal and believers in ancestral magic. Others are taken with nihilism. Still others subscribe to the kind of leftism eschewed by the foregoing. And for all this we still easily say fuck Sadie and Exile. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible to be a cop-hating, back-to-the-land, tincture-making, insurgent fascist. Again, just because the deluge of pap which denies the existence of these nuances will be swallowed in whole or in part by far away anarchists in big cities– or those who stay here for a few months or a couple years before leaving for the next hot destination– does not mean we will suddenly start preferring a false unity to the genuine strife we’ve striven to press upon for years or decades of our lives. If our know-nothing detractors and anarchist popularity contest winners are dismayed at this, they’ll be positively aghast by the ruptures that are in the offing.[35]
*** A FINGER POINTS AWAY TO THE MOON
Unlike the animal complexions of our bodies which take generations or epochs to change, the resonance of symbols can change in an instant. Personally, I’m of the mind that every thing is endowed with some bit of spirit or life and communicates with its world and hence with us, potentially, at any moment. Even symbols, words, and texts themselves are in a sense alive. Have you ever re-read something you wrote knowing that either someone you loved or someone you hated (or both) had now read it, or was about to read it? Did not the words take on a different timbre, did they not speak differently to you? Or, have you ever tried to think positively about yourself but the little voice inside you sounds eerily like the jeers and emotional sabotage of your parents, your teachers, your attackers?
The spells (and spellings) we cast bring forth various affects within and between us. They are windows into or cuticles over a numinous-yet-manifest realm with which we civilized have increasingly lost touch but may re-gain at any instant. We trade that immanent touch for symbol far too often, in far too compulsive and systematic a way, to an extent far too great. And when we withdraw from that game or even re-tool its conventions too much, we become incomprehensible to spectacular society. We become inscrutable. We become wingnut, eccentric. But none of this means that the symbols can’t still matter in a way that is radically subjective for each of us.
So, I’m not prone to vehemently reject the contention that the swastika could, in some times or circumstances, be a positive symbol for many in the world. But it is that very mutability of meaning trotted out in defense of “re-claiming” fascist imagery that I would allude to in order to make a different argument. Almost like clockwork, as I began to conclude this essay I received a text message that the Hammerskins were again demonstrating in Olympia (as part of a larger right-wing protest against the shooting death of LaVoy Finicum), that they would likely be found downtown and that everyone should exercise utmost caution.
Quite apart from the vile, toxic garbage of ally politics which ensure that we all remain stuck, I have an invitation for my “fellow” white people, for the ones who seem particularly more enamored of their right to free expression in their predominantly white, pristine Cascadian home than they are of fostering affinities which are truly dangerous– barbarous, one might say– to the impeccably modern construct of whiteness and the status quo, to those strategic ruses and allegiances without which civilization could not have recovered its stride after each faltering crisis. This invitation is held out, generously indeed, to those people pondering the situation who, in the idiom of closely neighboring contexts, would readily be recognized as fence-sitters.
The invitation: for us to introduce that rudimentary accord of sensitivity which makes it possible to think and feel the reasons for the associations most people have formed with those trappings strewn about and emanating from Sadie and Exile and their ilk, that ever-scandalous swastika (make sure to say it with a suitable dose of postmodern irony and ennui). For most people with whom we’d care to forge connections in doing battle with the structures that constitute and then gnaw away at modern life, those associations are not nit-picky hangups or puritanism. They are impositions, they are fait accompli. Those symbols and associations correspond in large part to oppressive forces still operating in the world, systems still in place and– perhaps most of all– to those lone and lonely fanatics that only by a hefty stroke of naivete could we allow ourselves to believe are remnant soldiers of a bygone era of racism, destined to disappear any minute now and leave us to our post-colonial pet devices and ethnic concerns. There is no such out-of-hand dismissal that can quell the pangs of doubt raised by the continual appearance of these twisted mirror images of our own faces and politics, who lash out all the more desperately as their mantle is so much as threatened with erosion, all of it thrown into relief by an age of very civilized brutality existing, as it always has, side-by-side with the culture of good manners and don’t-rock-the-boat white fraternity.
The invitation is to find out whether neo-folk, metal, ecology, and– in its worst manifestations– anarchy are not so racist that war, eternal war, could not be declared from within or beside them against those white power elements that they do harbor.
Admonishments to dialogue notwithstanding, this invitation is distinctly not addressed to people like Sadie and Exile, who have demonstrated by their brazen, arrogant flouting of any such request that their interests are so vested as to have chosen a side. It’s the wrong fucking side.
Some things in life are failures of nerve. Some are failures of vision. I wish I was able to say that it’s a rare instance which is so relentlessly, so furiously a failure of both as this story of Sadie and Exile. Such is the feeling of singular madness that sometimes attends the arc of events when they are thought of, retold, re-lived.
Unfortunately, any pang of exceptionalism is not true. The same dual failure– of what can be imagined, and what can be done– is to be found in most any venue, in the courtrooms and the classrooms, at our jobs (pick a job, any job) and on the street corners, at the parties and in the cells. It’s found in anti-septic conservative suburbs, in frenzied, insanity-inducing urban spaces, and in the darkest corners of rural america. It’s with us even in the quiet of the forest only because it’s somewhere in our hearts now.
The sense of shock and consternation which still clings to this tale can most probably be attributed to that vestige of hope, however unrealistic, which holds that life with such a famed and intractable beast as northwest anarchy, or in the radical so-called “community” of which we are a part, should be any less of an absurdity, any less of a bad joke than the rest.
Just another couple of years in the land where up is down..
Sincerely,
<br>
a member of the 1312 committee//edelweiss pirates
<br>
[1] See the article, “Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and ‘metapolitical fascism’” by Anton Shekhovtsov, at [[https://web.archive.org/web/20160303215022/http://www.shekhovtsov.org/articles/Anton_Shekhovtsov-Apoliteic_Music.html][http://www.shekhovtsov.org/articles/Anton_Shekhovtsov-Apoliteic_Music.html]] for an in-depth treatment of some of the main themes involved in this conflict.
[2] For a cursory glance at the Green Scare and related links, see the wikipedia entry: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Scare]]
[3] This article appeared in issue #3 of Black Seed: a green anarchist journal.
[4] This post can be found at: [[https://springspeakstruth.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/i-say-potato-you-say-dangerous-resurgence-of-fascist-ideology-a-few-case-studies-in-the-internet-making-human-interaction-even-more-painfully-absurd-than-it-already-was/]]
[5] [[http://loyaltyismightierthanfire.tumblr.com/]]
[6] Considerations of length, concision, and focus prohibit a long discussion in the present essay of the definition of fascism or of neo-fascism (which in some cases introduces significant permutations of the old generic type which are relevant to a discussion of Sadie and Exile), and in the realm of fascist studies there is no exact consensus anyway. For our present purposes I will recommend that the reader see the works on the recommended reading list, or do a cursory internet or library search for a few of the better sources on the topic, and provide here one of the most brief definitions posited by Roger Griffin: “”Fascism is a political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism.” The word “palingenetic” in this case refers to notions of national rebirth. Furthermore, fascism/neo-fascism is related to a slew of other far-right populist, authoritarian, and esoteric currents which I do not maintain are negligible or equivalent compared with fascism, or mere weigh-stations on an inevitable or teleological path to fascism.
[7] The Third Position, Third Way or Third Alternative is a political position that emphasizes its opposition to both communism and capitalism. Advocates of Third Position politics typically present themselves as “beyond left and right”, while syncretizing ideas from each end of the political spectrum, usually reactionary right-wing cultural views and radical left-wing economic views. Third Positionists often seek alliances with separatists of ethnicities and races other than their own, with the goal of achieving peaceful ethnic and racial coexistence, a form of segregation emphasizing self-determination and preservation of cultural differences. They support national liberation movements in the least developed countries, and have recently embraced environmentalism. The term Third Position was coined in early 20th century Europe, and the main precursors of Third Position politics were National Bolshevism, a synthesis of nationalism and Bolshevik communism, and Strasserism, a radical, mass-action and worker-based form of Nazism, advocated by the left-wing of the Nazi Party until it was crushed by the Night of the Long Knives.
<br>
Political scientist Roger Griffin dismisses Third Positionist claims of being “beyond left and right” as specious. He argues that Third Positionism is an ideological mutation of the far right, which rejects both Marxism and liberalism for a synthesis of palingenetic ultranationalism with either socialism, distributism, corporatism or anarchism.” — from the Wikipedia page on “Third Position”, found at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position]].
[8] You can read Sadie and Exile’s statement here: [[https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/11/18434814.php]]
[9] Among them Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century by Mark Sedgwick, and Social and Political Thought of Julius Evola by Paul Furlong.
[10] Griffin, Fascism, p. 317.
[11] Griffin, Modernism and Fascism, p. 217.
[12] Griffin, Modernism and Fascism, p. 138.
[13] The fictitious geo-political entity called Olympia is on land that has been home to Squaxin, Nisqually, Puyallup, Chehalis, Suquamish, and Duwamish peoples.
[14] “Some pursue aggressive policies of imperialist expansion, whereas for others the regeneration of the nation does not involve subjugating other nations or actively persecuting ethnic minorities and may, so they hope, even be inaugurated through the conquest of cultural hegemony instead of through the legal or violent seizure of state power.”– from The Nature of Fascism by Roger Griffin, p. 45.
[15] See the works of Roger Griffin, especially Modernism and Fascism: The sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler for an excellent discussion of the tenets of fascism and of the social and political currents that played into its rise, even if these currents also existed in contention with it, sometimes profoundly. Also, I must urge the reader again toward the article, “Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and ‘metapolitical fascism’” by Anton Shekhovtsov, which can found at [[https://web.archive.org/web/20160303215022/http://www.shekhovtsov.org/articles/Anton_Shekhovtsov-Apoliteic_Music.html][http://www.shekhovtsov.org/articles/Anton_Shekhovtsov-Apoliteic_Music.html]] for a discussion of the “metapolitical” and “apoliteic” turn in neo-fascist and far-right circles.
[16] See again Modernism and Fascism by Roger Griffin for a superb contextualization of turn-of-the-century visions of renewal, regeneration, and revolution.
[17] Ressentiment in philosophy and psychology, is one of the forms of resentment or hostility. It is the French word for “resentment” (fr. Latin intensive prefix ‘re’, and ‘sentir’ “to feel”). Ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one’s frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the “cause” generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one’s frustration. This value system is then used as a means of justifying one’s own weaknesses by identifying the source of envy as objectively inferior, serving as a defense mechanism that prevents the resentful individual from addressing and overcoming their insecurities and flaws. The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability.” — from the Wikipedia article on “Ressentiment”, found at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment]]. Clearly, anarchist subcultures are rife with ressentiment, levelled internally and externally.
[18] For unfamiliar readers, from Schroder’s blog post: “…We’re concerned with the latter kind of folk music, and with a far smaller subset of it than everyone who plays acoustic guitar and sings — neofolk. Neofolk, as I’m using the term, has been around since the 1980s, where it developed out of the context of, and in association with, industrial and noise music. It’s a thriving genre, and far too much has happened in it in the intervening decades to make any real attempt at a rigid definition. Ultimately, it has no more ideological or aesthetic cohesion than punk rock — which is to say, none. A cursory and somewhat random list of themes that have occurred in it over the years might include: Norse mythology, nature worship, mystical Christianity, Western occultism, anti-modernism, ecological destruction, love, hate, death, fear, and Nazis.” As Schroder goes on to acknowledge in the paragraph which follows this one, this list is not really so random.
[19] “So if not an expression of racist or fascist ideology, what’s with all the swastikas? Maybe this quote from Rene Guenon, featured on the blog, offers some insight:
<br>
“Such is the true significance of the swastika, a symbol found everywhere, from the Far East to the Far West, and which is essentially the ‘sign of the Pole’; … contemporary scholars have employed all manner of fantastic theories in their vain efforts to explain this symbol, the majority of them, obsessed by a sort of fixed idea, having been intent on seeing here, as almost everywhere else, an exclusively ‘solar’ symbol, whereas, if it has occasionally become such, this could only have been by accident, as a result of some distortion. Others have come nearer the truth when they see in the swastika a symbol of movement, although this interpretation, without being false, is quite insufficient, for it is not a question of just any kind of movement, but of rotational movement around a center or immutable axis; and it is this fixed point, we repeat, that constitutes the essential element to which the symbol in question is directly related.” “the esoteric conception of the swastika, wherein, whatever a given culture associates with it, the symbol has an inherent, immutable, non-substitutable relevance; it is not a symbol simply devised at random to express an idea, like the word “tree” arbitrarily signifies a tree, but an actual feature of the universe, which we are no more capable of changing than we can change the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
<br>
If we were going to talk about this esoteric conception — if we were going to discuss whether the perceivable universe is an ever-circling, ever-fluxing field of illusory change emanating from an immutable center in which all ostensibly disparate entities are one; if we’re going to talk, in other words, about whether the universe is a swastika — we are essentially in a realm where we are talking about something very much like “magic,” and whether or not it is, in fact, real. Talk about complex discussions. This is a subject on which people of all political persuasions remain divided.” … Yes, we get it Schroder, the swastika once stood and still stands for something that is not nazism, something very nice. I’d like to remind you that in our age and circumstances it also most often stands for nazism.
[20] [[https://nycantifa.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/exile-is-a-fascist/]]
[21] [[https://web.archive.org/web/20160303215022/http://www.shekhovtsov.org/articles/Anton_Shekhovtsov-Apoliteic_Music.html][http://www.shekhovtsov.org/articles/Anton_Shekhovtsov-Apoliteic_Music.html]]
[22] For the fairly unambiguous case of Death in June, see “Why we don’t like Death in June” at [[https://nycantifa.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/why-we-dont-like-death-in-june/]] and “Death in June: a nazi band?” at [[https://libcom.org/library/death-in-june-a-nazi-band]]
[23] Learn all types of fun things about Allerseelen in “Statement on Allerseelen Tour” at [[http://www.scribd.com/doc/45235072/Statement-on-Allerseelen-Tour#scribd]]
[24] Despite the workings of this sophisticated recuperation machinery– the breathability of the biopolitical fabric with its array of art students, co-op jocks, and liberal gardeners– from time to time there wells up the energy on the part of somebody or some bodies to do something as spectacularly unmediated and unchill as smashing a bunch of racist skinheads, or engaging in street fights with the police to stop military shipments out of Olympia’s port, or engaging in ecologically-motivated arsons, or ungracefully ejecting nazi-fetishists from countercultural events. To be sure, there exists a subterranean current of Olympia radical history that is nothing short of incredible and utterly inspiring (and which embraces much more than these moments of spectacular violence). Whenever one of these episodes comes to pass, you can count on a large portion of Left activists, collegiate revolutionaries, local business owners, and all-around rad folks to immediately cast the most torrid and morally-outraged kind of aspersions that they can muster onto the people acting against the scum, usually positing at fever-pitch that to do so renders one a negative and violent force in the world qualitatively equivalent to that against which we fight. Meanwhile, on the other hand, a chorus of right-wing internet trolls, local creeps, soldiers from the military base which abuts the town, and suburban and rural wingnut outliers calls for the outright summary execution or immediate imprisonment of anarchists and anti-fascists. The town’s major newspaper calls for a somewhat softer repression than this, while the smaller progressive papers counsel a still more velvet set of constraints (somewhat akin to when they call for the police to mace and beat black kids instead of shooting them). I’m not kidding.
[25] The title of this section (“This isn’t Oakland”) is a statement that was coincidentally uttered both by a member of Ekstasis/defender of Exile when explaining their withdrawal from the fray of race politics which besets major American cities, and by a Hammerskin in May 2015 who was threatening retaliation against support of Andre and Bryson (two black youth who were shot by Olympia police officer Ryan Donald), which he saw as not befitting the prerogatives of a northwest community. I don’t suggest that this coincidence renders the two sources equivalent, but that it is a telling confluence.
[26] Among the many works on these subjects, see again Modernism and Fascism by Roger Griffin for an outstandingly thorough and sweeping survey of mysticism, anti-rationalism, and occultism among the “modernist” responses to the conditions of life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. See also the early labor history essays of John Zerzan (penned in his pre-primitivist days, for those of you who don’t swing that way), in particular “Industrialism and Domestication,” which is collected in the book Elements of Refusal and can also be found here: [[http://www.docfoc.com/john-zerzan-industrialism-and-domestication]]. This essay, like several other works before and since, details the diffuse, passionate, violent and total resistance mounted to the advent of industrial society.
[27] Evola, Il Cammino del Cinabro, p. 100., cited on p. 309 of Griffin’s Modernism and Fascism.
[28] See the excellent interview with the group Knowing the Land is Resistance in issue #4 of the journal Black Seed for perspectives on spirituality and indigenousness which elude the pitfalls of either primitivist or neo-fascist pagan reconstructionism.
[29] Here I am reminded of that prevalent sub-species of white American who believes that something worth preserving here is actually threatened with extinguishment by something else called “forced multiculturalism.” I assume a recognition of the composite nature of many traditional cultures (which are known to borrow, exchange, interact with, and welcome members from other cultures, possibly from time immemorial) is reduced to a backward or outward leftist projection of this “forced multiculturalism” so reviled by our New Right types.
[30] More irony that the critics of leftist moral residues within those entrenched anarchists too eager for a fight are here the same who defend Evola, who famously wrote, “The legionary [Roman soldier] spirit is that fire of one who will choose the hardest road, who will fight to the death even when all is already lost.” Ok.
[31] “Is Fascism Anti-modern or Modernizing? Some forms of fascist myths are radically anti-urban, anti-secular and/or draw on cultural idioms of nostalgia for a pre-industrial idyll of heroism, moral virtue or racial purity. However, even in these cases it is only the allegedly degenerative elements of the modern age which are being rejected. Fascism’s essentially palingenetic, and hence anti-conservative, thrust towards a new type of society means that it builds rhetorically on the cultural achievements attributed to former, more ‘glorious’ or healthy eras in national history only to invoke the regenerative ethos which is a prerequisite for national rebirth, and not to suggest socio-political models to be duplicated in a literal-minded restoration of the past. It thus represents an alternative modernism rather than a rejection of it. Thus when a fascist text bears the title ‘Revolt against the Modern World’, as in the case of Evola (1934), it is the decadent features of modernity that are being attacked in order to outline the prospect of a totally different type of society…”– from The Nature of Fascism by Roger Griffin, p. 47. See also the book Modernity and the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman.
[32] And one which goes far beyond a slapdash hybridization, or the necessary but insufficient indications given by leftish primers like George Bradford’s How Deep is Deep Ecology?
[33] This deserves its own essay.
[34] This among people who can often be found drunk on their ideas.
[35] Or if the rupture is deemed cool they’ll take credit for making it happen.
<br>
|
#title The Root and Branch Petition
#author 15,000 Londoners
#LISTtitle Root and Branch Petition
#SORTauthors Anonymous
#SORTtopics anti-clerical, England, Christianity, proto-anarchism
#date 1640
#source Retrieved on 19<sup>th</sup> May 2021 from [[https://history.hanover.edu/texts/ENGref/er97.html][history.hanover.edu]] and [[https://archive.org/details/priesthoodofoldn00cald/page/116/mode/2up][archive.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-05-19T16:26:40
#notes The petition was published in Gee, Henry, and William John Hardy, ed., <em>Documents Illustrative of English Church History</em> (New York: Macmillan, 1896), 537–545. <br> The response was published in Calder, Robert, <em>The Priesthood of the Old and New Testament by Succession</em> (J. Wilson, 1773), 116–119.
*** <em>Editors’ Introduction:</em>
<em>THIS petition was presented by 1,500 persons on Dec. 11, 1640, on behalf of 15,000 Londoners who had signed it. The Commons postponed its consideration, but in the following February referred it to a committee. The petition must be distinguished from the Root and Branch Bill said to have been drawn up by St. John, and presented to Parliament by Vane and Cromwell in May, 1641. The bill was dropped in the House of Commons, and finally abandoned after long debates in August.</em>
<em>[Rushworth, Hist. Coll. iv. 93, ed. 1721.]</em>
*** To the Right Honourable the Commons House of Parliament.
The humble petition of many of his majesty’s subjects in and about the city of London, and several counties of the kingdom. Sheweth,
That whereas the government of archbishops and lord bishops, deans, and archdeacons, &c., with their courts and ministrations in them, have proved prejudicial and very dangerous both to the Church and Commonwealth, they themselves having formerly held that they have their jurisdiction or authority of human authority, till of these later times, being further pressed about the unlawfulness, that they have claimed their calling immediately from the Lord Jesus Christ, which is against the laws of this kingdom, and derogatory to his majesty and his state royal. And whereas the said government is found by woeful experience to be a main cause and occasion of many foul evils, pressures and grievances of a very high nature unto his majesty’s subjects in their own consciences, liberties and estates, as in a schedule of particulars hereunto annexed may in part appear:
We therefore most humbly pray, and beseech this honourable assembly, the premises considered, that the said government with all its dependencies, roots and branches, may be abolished, and all laws in their behalf made void, and the government according to God’s word may be rightly placed amongst us: and we your humble suppliants, as in duty we are bound, will daily pray for his majesty’s long and happy reign over us, and for the prosperous success of this high and honourable Court of Parliament.
A particular of the manifold evils, pressures, and grievances caused, practised and occasioned by the prelates and their dependents.
1. The subjecting and enthralling all ministers under them and their authority, and so by degrees exempting them from the temporal power; whence follows,
2. The faint-heartedness of ministers to preach the truth of God, lest they should displease the prelates; as namely, the doctrine of predestination, of free grace, of perseverance, of original sin remaining after baptism, of the sabbath, the doctrine against universal grace, election for faith foreseen, freewill against Antichrist, non-residents, human inventions in God’s worship; all which are generally withheld from the people’s knowledge, because not relishing to the bishops.
3. The encouragement of ministers to despise the temporal magistracy, the nobles and gentry of the land; to abuse the subjects, and live contentiously with their neighbours, knowing that they, being the bishops’ creatures, shall be supported.
4. The restraint of many godly and able men from the ministry, and thrusting out of many congregations their faithful, diligent and powerful ministers, who lived peaceably with them, and did them good, only because they cannot in conscience submit unto and maintain the bishops’ needless devices; nay, sometimes for no other cause but for their zeal in preaching, or great auditories.
5. The suppressing of that godly design set on foot by certain saints, and sugared with many great gifts by sundry well-affected persons for the buying of impropriations, and placing of able ministers in them, maintaining of lectures, and founding of free schools, which the prelates could not endure, lest it should darken their glories, and draw the ministers from their dependence upon them.
6. The great increase of idle, lewd and dissolute, ignorant and erroneous men in the ministry, which swarm like the locusts of Egypt over the whole kingdom; and will they but wear a canonical coat, a surplice, a hood, bow at the name of Jesus, and be zealous of superstitious ceremonies, they may live as they list, confront whom they please, preach and vent what errors they will, and neglect preaching at their pleasures without control.
7. The discouragement of many from bringing up their children in learning; the many schisms, errors, and strange opinions which are in the Church; great corruptions which are in the Universities; the gross and lamentable ignorance almost everywhere among the people; the want of preaching ministers in very many places both of England and Wales; the loathing of the ministry, and the general defection to all manner of profaneness.
8. The swarming of lascivious, idle, and unprofitable books and pamphlets, play-books and ballads; as namely, Ovid’s Fits of Love, The Parliament Of Women, which came out at the dissolving of the last Parliament; Barns’s Poems, Parker’s Ballads, in disgrace of religion, to the increase of all vice, and withdrawing of people from reading, studying, and hearing the word of God, and other good books.
9. The hindering of godly books to be printed, the blotting out or perverting those which they suffer, all or most of that which strikes either at popery or Arminianism: the adding of what or where pleaseth them, and the restraint of reprinting books formerly licensed, without relicensing.
10. The publishing and venting of popish, Arminian, and other dangerous books and tenets; as namely, ‘That the Church of Rome is a true Church, and in the worst times never erred in fundamentals;’ ‘that the subjects have no propriety in their estates, but that the king may take from them what he pleaseth;’ ‘that all is the king’s, and that he is bound by no law;’ and many other, from the former whereof hath sprung:
11. The growth of popery and increase of papists, priests, and Jesuits in sundry places, but especially about London since the Reformation; the frequent venting of crucifixes and popish pictures both engraven and printed, and the placing of such in Bibles.
12. The multitude of monopolies and patents, drawing with them innumerable perjuries; the large increase of customs and impositions upon commodities, the ship money, and many other great burthens upon the commonwealth, under which all groan.
13. Moreover, the offices and jurisdictions of archbishops, lord bishops, deans, archdeacons, being the same way of church government which is in the Romish Church, and which was in England in the time of popery, little change thereof being made (except only the head from whence it was derived), the same arguments supporting the pope which do uphold the prelates, and overthrowing the prelates, which do pull down the pope; and other reformed Churches having upon their rejection of the pope cast the prelates out also as members of the beast. Hence it is that the prelates here in England, by themselves or their disciples, plead and maintain that the pope is not Antichrist, and that the Church of Rome is a true Church, hath not erred in fundamental points, and that salvation is attainable in that religion, and therefore have restrained to pray for the conversion of our sovereign lady the queen. Hence also hath come:
14. The great conformity and likeness both continued and increased of our Church to the Church of Rome, in vestures, postures, ceremonies, and administrations, namely as the bishop’s rochets and the lawn-sleeves, the four-cornered cap, the cope and surplice, the tippet, the hood, and the canonical coat; the pulpits clothed, especially now of late, with the Jesuits’ badge upon them every way.
15. The standing up at Gloria Patri and at the reading of the Gospel, praying towards the East, the bowing at the name of Jesus, the bowing to the altar towards the East, cross in baptism, the kneeling at the Communion.
16. The turning of the Communion table altar-wise, setting images, crucifixes, and conceits over them, and tapers and books upon them, and bowing or adoring to or before them; the reading of the second service at the altar, and forcing people to come up thither to receive, or else denying the Sacrament to them; terming the altar to be the mercy-seat, or the place of God Almighty in the church, which is a plain device to usher in the Mass.
17. The christening and consecrating of churches and chapels, the consecrating fonts, tables, pulpits, chalices, churchyards, and many other things, and putting holiness in them; yea, reconsecrating upon pretended pollution, as though everything were unclean without their consecrating; and for want of this sundry churches have been interdicted, and kept from use as polluted.
18. The Liturgy for the most part is framed out of the Romish breviary, rituals, mass-book, also the book of Ordination for archbishops and ministers framed out of the Roman Pontifical.
19. The multitude of canons formerly made, wherein among other things excommunication, ipso facto, is denounced for speaking of a word against the devices abovesaid, or subscription thereunto, though no law enjoined a restraint from the ministry without subscription, and appeal is denied to any that should refuse subscription or unlawful conformity, though he be never so much wronged by the inferior judges. Also the canons made in the late sacred Synod, as they call it, wherein are many strange and dangerous devices to undermine the Gospel and the subjects’ liberties, to propagate popery, to spoil God’s people, ensnare ministers, and other students, and so to draw all into an absolute subjection and thraldom to them and their government, spoiling both the king and the parliament of their power.
20. The countenancing of plurality of benefices, prohibiting of marriages without their licence, at certain times, almost half the year, and licensing of marriages without banns asking.
21. Profanation of the Lord’s Day, pleading for it, and enjoining ministers to read a declaration set forth (as it is thought) by their procurement for tolerating of sports upon that day, suspending and depriving many godly ministers for not reading the same only out of conscience, because it was against the law of God so to do, and no law of the land to enjoin it.
22. The pressing of the strict observation of the saints’ days, whereby great sums of money are drawn out of men’s purses for working on them; a very high burthen on most people, who getting their living on their daily employments, must either omit them, and be idle, or part with their money, whereby many poor families are undone, or brought behindhand; yet many churchwardens are sued, or threatened to be sued by their troublesome ministers, as perjured persons, for not presenting their parishioners who failed in observing holy days.
23. The great increase and frequency of whoredoms and adulteries, occasioned by the prelates’ corrupt administration of justice in such cases, who taking upon them the punishment of it, do turn all into moneys for the filling of their purses; and lest their officers should defraud them of their gain, they have in their late canon, instead of remedying these vices, decreed that the commutation of penance shall not be without the bishops’ privity.
24. The general abuse of that great ordinance of excommunication, which God hath left in His Church as the last and greatest punishment which the Church can inflict upon obstinate and great offenders; and the prelates and their officers, who of right have nothing to do with it, do daily excommunicate men, either for doing that which is lawful, or for vain, idle, and trivial matters, as working, or opening a shop on a holy day, for not appearing at every beck upon their summons, not paying a fee, or the like; yea, they have made it, as they do all other things, a hook or instrument wherewith to empty men’s purses, and to advance their own greatness; and so that sacred ordinance of God, by their perverting of it, becomes contemptible to all men, and is seldom or never used against notorious offenders, who for the most part are their favourites.
25. Yea further, the pride and ambition of the prelates being boundless, unwilling to be subject either to man or laws, they claim their office and jurisdiction to be Jure Divino, exercise ecclesiastical authority in their own names and rights, and under their own seals, and take upon them temporal dignities, places and offices in the commonwealth, that they may sway both swords.
26. Whence follows the taking commissions in their own courts and consistories, and where else they sit in matters determinable of right at common law, the putting of ministers upon parishes, without the patron’s and people’s consent.
27. The imposing of oaths of various and trivial articles yearly upon churchwardens and sidesmen, which they cannot take without perjury, unless they fall at jars continually with their ministers and neighbours, and wholly neglect their own calling.
28. The exercising of the oath ex officio, and other proceedings by way of inquisition, reaching even to men’s thoughts, the apprehending and detaining of men by pursuivants, the frequent suspending and depriving of ministers, fining and imprisoning of all sorts of people, breaking up of men’s houses and studies, taking away men’s books, letters, and other writings, seizing upon their estates, removing them from their callings, separating between them and their wives against both their wills, the rejecting of prohibitions with threatenings, and the doing of many other outrages, to the utter infringing the laws of the realm and the subjects’ liberties, and ruining of them and their families; and of later time the judges of the land are so awed with the power and greatness of the prelates, and other ways promoted, that neither prohibition, Habeas Corpus, nor any other lawful remedy can be had, or take place, for the distressed subjects in most cases; only papists, Jesuits, priests, and such others as propagate popery or Arminianism, are countenanced, spared, and have much liberty; and from hence followed amongst others these dangerous consequences:
1. The general hope and expectation of the Romish party, that their superstitious religion will ere long be fully planted in this kingdom again, and so they are encouraged to persist therein, and to practise the same openly in divers places, to the high dishonour of God, and contrary to the laws of the realm.
2. The discouragement and destruction of all good subjects, of whom are multitudes, both clothiers, merchants, and others, who being deprived of their ministers, and overburthened with these pressures, have departed the kingdom to Holland, and other parts, and have drawn with them a great manufacture of cloth and trading out of the land into other places where they reside, whereby wool, the great staple of the kingdom, is become of small value, and vends not; trading is decayed, many poor people want work, seamen lose employment, and the whole land is much impoverished, to the great dishonour of this kingdom and blemishment to the government thereof.
3. The present wars and commotions happened between his majesty and his subjects of Scotland, wherein his majesty and all his kingdoms are endangered, and suffer greatly, and are like to become a prey to the common enemy in case the wars go on, which we exceedingly fear will not only go on, but also increase to an utter ruin of all, unless the prelates with their dependencies be removed out of England, and also they and their practices, who, as we under your honour’s favours, do verily believe and conceive have occasioned the quarrel.
All which we humbly refer to the consideration of this honourable assembly, desiring the Lord of heaven to direct you in the right way to redress all these evils.
----
*** Speech by Edward Derring in the House of Commons, regarding the Root and Branch Bill
<quote>
“They who deny that ever any such Bishops, (that is, Bishops presiding over Presbyters) were in the best and purest times, I entreat some one of them (if any such be here) to stand up and show me, teach me, how I may prove, that there never was an Alexander at Macedon, or a Julius Caesar, or a William the conqueror in the world. For, Sir, to me as plain it is, that Bishops-president have been the constant, permanent, and perpetual governors of the Church of God in all ages. And this being matter of fact, I do hope that historical proof will be sufficient adequate proof in that, which in its fact is matter of history; but proofs here are so manifold and clear, that I borrow the free and true assertion of a worthy and learned gentleman, (Sir Thomas Aston’s Review of Episcopacy, P. 1.). <em>It may be thought want of will rather than want of light, which makes men deny the antiquity of Bi</em><em>sh</em><em>o</em><em>p</em><em>s in the primitive times.</em> Therefore answer not me, but answer Ignatius, answer Clemens, Tertullian, Ireneus; nay answer the whole undisputed concurrence of the Asian, the European, and the African Churches, all ages, all places, all persons : Answer, I say, all these, or do as I do, submit to the sufficient evidence of a truth.”
“Parity of degrees in Church Government hath no foundation in holy scripture, and is as treasonous to reason as parity in a state or family. Indeed it is a fancy, a dream, a mere non-entity; it neither hath nor never had a being. If it be any thing, it is absolute Anarchism, and that is nothing; for privation of government is not a government.”
“But, Sir, I have heard some among us say, if then we must have a Bishop, let him be like a pilot, only for a voyage ; let him be like yourself, a speaker only for a Parliament. But if I do affirm, <em>ab initi</em><em>o no</em><em>n</em> <em>s</em><em>uit</em> <em>s</em><em>ic</em>. Your Bishop of old was not occasional, <em>p</em><em>ro re nata</em>, and immediately degraded; nothing so; but continued a fixed, constant, perpetual moderator and president for life, unless outed for his own demerits?”
</quote>
|
#title We Can’t Afford To Remain Silent
#subtitle Interview With An Israeli Anarchist
#author 161 Crew
#date October 19, 2023
#source Retrieved on 3 November 2023 from [[https://161crew.bzzz.net/interview-with-an-israeli-anarchist/][161crew.bzzz.net/interview-with-an-israeli-anarchist]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2023-11-03T23:10:45
#topics Israel/Palestine
Situation in Gaza Strip is getting more catastrophic every day. In our attempt to better understand the situation in the region, we made an interview with an Israeli anarchist. We talk about the modern anarchist movement, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, resistance against it and prospects for the future.
<strong>Hi there. Maybe we could start with you quickly introducing yourself?</strong>
Sure. I’m an anarchist from Haifa, Occupied Palestine. Been active for more than a decade, mainly in the anti-colonial movement and solidarity with Palestinians, animal liberation and ecological issues.
<strong>How did you become an anarchist?</strong>
The short answer is punk. The longer answer is of course a bit more difficult. Growing up as a settler under a colonial apartheid regime, on the “right” side of the fence, being assigned Jewish by the state, naturally you’re expected not to rebel and become a prison guard like the rest. You’re growing up surrounded with militarist imagery, Zionist indoctrination in school, and historical events like the holocaust and the Jewish religion are weaponized to boost patriotism and nationalist propaganda. The version of Judaism being taught here is that we are the chosen people, this land belongs to us by divine decree, God is a real estate agent that can be used in any land dispute, and everyone else is destined to be second class citizens at best.
It’s really hard to explain to comrades abroad how collective the Zionist project is. Israel doesn’t have a real civil society. everything is acceptable, as long as it is within very limited, pre-defined borders. You can be leftist, gay, freak, whatever you want—we’re enlightened liberals and there’s a place for everyone—but be a Zionist, serve in the army, be a loyal citizen, and don’t push it. If you can, be also white and rich on top of that. Any step outside the national consensus and you’re an illegitimate traitor.
The narrow vision or rebellion within Zionist landscape can be demonstrated for example in the mass protest movement to “save Israeli democracy” during the land few months (currently on hold due to war) against the judicial reform. Even when Israelis would step out to the streets in their hundreds of thousands every weekend against what is clearly a far-right coup attempt, they would still do anything they can to not mention apartheid and occupation over the Palestinians, and would fight to save “Jewish democracy”; i.e., ethnic superiority regime only for them, the status quo. The two sides of this movement characterize an inner-settler conflict of how to manage apartheid better, the liberal approach versus the fascist approach. Obviously, whoever wins, the non-Jewish populations of this land, first and foremost Palestinians, would always lose.
So, given this context, the “Israeli left” is not appealing to anyone looking for actual justice for this place. For me, given the nature of the situation here, settlers with good conscience looking to join the anti-colonial resistance, which is the only revolutionary movement in region and the forefront of any actual radical change, cannot do it as an Israeli, from inside the Israeli society, looking for ways to reform and improve it. On the contrary, we must shed ourselves off any colonial identity and develop tools and resources for effective race treason. We must develop an anti Israeli politics, turn against our society, and join the oppressed and the colonized, under their terms and leadership. Anarchism gives me both the language and the tools to imagine this politics. For me, there is no “anarchist society” to strive for as this is not an end goal, I see anarchism as a resistance movement, an arsenal of tools for the oppressed around the world to fight the current dystopia, and this is mainly what draws me to it.
<strong>You used to be involved in a project called “Radical Haifa,” but you told us it’s defunct now. It sounds like a very interesting initiative. Can you tell us more about it?</strong>
Nothing much to say here to be honest! We had a small group of friends in Haifa, organized as an anarchist collective a few years ago. We did stuff like having mutual aid and food distribution project during the covid lockdowns, initiating other community organizing, and joining local struggles in the city. The group is currently not active, although maybe a new collective will appear in the near future. Meanwhile, Radical Haifa became mainly a Twitter account, circulating news and analysis from Palestine from a pro-resistance and anti-authoritarian perspective, and after the platform was taken over by fascists the account moved to Mastodon/Kolektiva.
<strong>One of the most well known anarchist groups coming from that area seems to be Anarchists Against the Wall. Were you involved? What is your opinion about that group?</strong>
Anarchists Against the Wall were definitely the most active and significant group amongst Israeli radicals and anti-authoritarians during the 2000’s. Born in the midst of the second Intifada, by solidarity activists participating in local struggles in West Bank villages against the construction of the apartheid wall, its main significance was in the fact that it broke every established norm and rule of operations of the Israeli left. For once, people on both sides of the fence met not as enemies, nor as some shallow “coexistence” spectacle, but as fighters for the same cause, comrades, co-conspirators and accomplices, on equal terms. Aspects of co-resistance and joint struggle were prioritized, and under a regime like this, the sole action of meeting a Palestinian as a human being and a friend was enough for it to be considered radical and outside the mode of operation of the regular, established left.
During its peak, the group was able to bring hundreds of Israelis to the West Bank, to march with Palestinians directly and experience resistance first hand. Also, many direct actions have been conducted, like physically damaging the fence and sabotaging equipment. In the end, though, the group slowly withered away and no longer exists. Personally, I was involved near the end, as a teenager coming out of the then Tel Aviv anarcho-punk scene, and as many well-intentioned radical solidarity initiatives organized by people from the privileged side in a colonial context, the group was not exactly immune to power relations and a hidden hierarchical behavior. Many criticisms have been made about the group towards the end, and what role do settlers joining the anti-colonial resistance actually have. At a certain point, we also saw some of our privileges physically slipping away from us and it became impossible to act in the old way. Right-wing “investigators” infiltrated a protest with hidden cameras and the images broadcasted on television. Comrades got in legal troubles for direct actions in a way that paralyzed their ability to continue. Others have been doxed and attacked by fascists. The political situation has changed, with it the available means of struggle. Overall, I do think it was a valuable experience with many lessons to teach comrades everywhere.
<strong>Is there anything resembling an anarchist movement in Israel now?</strong>
Well, considering we live in a time and age in which everyone who has a WIFI connection can be an anarchist cell, you can definitely say so! In reality though, not so much. There isn’t really movement. I would say, at best, scattered individuals here and there, some youth subculture, some aesthetics, but not actually organized structures, groups, or even discussions. Generally speaking, I would say that Israeli society is very right-wing, including its working class, and people are taught to live with a constant anxiety attack and see the state of a big protective parent, without which we’re all doomed. To ask Israelis to give up the state is to speak with them in a foreign language. Under those conditions, I don’t think these ideas have any chance of spreading and becoming popular here anytime soon. I do think, however, that is has a chance of becoming a phenomenon in the edges of the empire, not as an Israeli movement, by a movement of deserters and race traitors, willing to join the struggle to liberate this area from imperialism and colonialism and state terror, a minoritarian movement, that might lay the foundations for something different. But we’ll see.
<strong>At some point I remember there seemed to be small but active minority of “refuseniks,” people who refused to do their military service despite prison and repression. How big was the scale of it and how were they treated in Israeli society?</strong>
The conscientious objectors movement have existed on a small scale in Israel for many years. Can’t really say it’s spreading and having a larger impact, but nevertheless this is of course a very positive phenomena and these teenagers are very brave. They are treated as traitors by mainstream Israeli society, and can sit for a long time in prison. Just a couple of months ago, in what feels like ancient news at this point, a group of teenagers refused to serve in the army and there was a lengthy campaign to support them. They were eventually released. Mesarvot (literally means: refusing) is an organization that helps and accompanies political objectors for anti-occupation reasons.
Of course, we must distinguish this from the other refusal movements in Israel, some for Zionist reasons. There are organizations that support army reservists in their decision not to serve in the 1967 occupied territories, i.e., the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Also, during the mass “Israeli democracy” movement, some reservists refuse to serve until the “threat to democracy” is gone. They have no problems with the occupation, the apartheid and the constant massacres and war crimes, but when their middle-class privileges are on the line this is where they draw the line. Anyway, it’s important to mention that as I’m writing these lines, the genocide in Gaza is ongoing, and all of this rhetoric is gone now. Now everyone is uniting behind the army.
<strong>Do you know about any Palestinian anarchists or antiauthoritarians?</strong>
Dana El-Kurd, a Palestinian academic, in her book <em>Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine</em> makes the argument that the Palestinian struggle is not only anti-colonial, but also anti-authoritarian in its roots. During the days of the first Intifada, Palestinians had a vibrant civil society, spontaneously organizing local committees to coordinate struggle, and address the needs of local communities. This uprising was democratic in its nature, and was fought against the will of the PLO. Even within the PLO, as Edward Said argues in his book <em>The Question of Palestine</em>, the structure was organized in a very democratic way, with internal discussions and open criticism, in complete contrast to politics in the Arab world, an area filled with reactionary regimes and self-appointed dictators and out of touch monarchs. The Palestine liberation movement was always the most democratic and progressive movement in the region, and inspired many other anti-authoritarian movements and uprisings, some of them we saw during the Arab Spring, and many are still ongoing. Many argue that the defeat of the Palestinian left in Lebanon, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo accords and the rise of political Islam have changed the picture, but I think many of the original characteristics are still in place.
Having said all that, I can’t really say that Palestinians ever had an anarchist movement per se. Palestinian anarchists do exist, but like among Israelis, it isn’t really organized as a movement, nor can I say it’s a popular idea. I do believe though that even if the name anarchism isn’t being used, Palestinians do tend to organize in an anarchist way, without calling it like that. New guerrilla groups in the West Bank in recent years like the Lion’s Den in Nablus, Jenin Brigade in Jenin and Balata Battalion in Balata refugee camp organize in a non-hierarchical way and are non-sectarian in principle, open to all the different factions to join. These youth groups are completely outside the control of the Palestinian Authority and the old politics of factions and parties, and their unpredictable, spontaneous nature is challenging to the Israeli authorities. This is true for the popular struggle as well—the struggles in the villages in the West Bank we went to as Anarchists Against the Wall were organized by local popular committees, coordinating with each other and operating under democratic principles.
<strong>Over last months we witnessed large scale pogroms and increasing deadly attacks by settlers, acting seemingly with complete impunity and then desperate suicide attacks aimed at Israelis etc. It seemed that it was inevitable this is going to end up in a huge tragedy sooner or later. Would you say it was also obvious to people in Israel or not so much? Was lack of reaction to settler violence on the side of authorities deliberate, in order to further push Palestinian population or was it just sort of indifference towards them?</strong>
Considering how Israel has been built on ethnic cleansing since 1948, it’s more than reasonable to assume that this is completely deliberate. In the West Bank we see the narrow distinction between “civilian” and “military” under apartheid context completely fade, as extremist settlers and soldiers work hand in hand, sometimes in collaboration and sometimes by ignoring the pogroms and allowing them to happen. Many times Palestinians that fight back are the ones that get repressed. What’s currently happening needs to be seen in a slightly different context though. It needs to be seen in the context of 16 years of siege over Gaza, begun as a collective punishment after the Palestinians living in the 1967 occupied territories have democratically elected the wrong party according to Israel and the US, and choose Hamas. After Fatah, the current ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, literally staged a coup with western and Israeli support to remain in power, Hamas took over Gaza in a civil war in 2007, after which Israel locked its 2 million population, making it the largest open prison in the world. Apart from controlling the borders of Gaza, the maritime area and the airspace, dictating who can enter and leave, approve the incoming goods and fully controlling the economy, Israel had also bombed Gaza almost annually, with many “military operations” killing thousands. Gaza has been kept in a humanitarian catastrophe state for many years.
If anything, Hamas government over Gaza had allowed the place to remain somewhat stable, under some management, and not deteriorate into complete disaster, and therefore was useful for Israel, which allowed them to continue controlling Gaza and manage its population. But the problem with Hamas is that they are not obedient and unlike the “Palestinian Authority” in the West Bank, refuse to be fully domesticated by Israel and kept their commitment to armed struggle. What Hamas did on Saturday October the 7th was break the ghetto, both physically and symbolically; They broke the gates surrounding Gaza and (re-)occupied land inside Israel, and also they positioned themselves as a force beyond their assigned role as the government of Gaza. They put themselves at the forefront of the Palestinian liberation movement, directly decolonizing lands. In many ways, this indeed was inevitable, and the direct result of Israel’s decisions all these last years.
The images coming from southern Israel the day of the attack 7th of October were of course very hard to process emotionally. nothing to celebrate about the massacre of many civilians, and by all definitions and standards this is a war crime. Things should be seen in of context though. Also, there are zero examples in history of a pure, “clean” resistance movement and liberation that didn’t kill innocent people. Be it resistance to apartheid in South Africa, the British colonization of India, the fight against slavery in America and resistance to nazi occupation throughout Europe—in all of those cases innocent people died. This is not to justify, but the demand of purism from the Palestinian liberation movement alone is unrealistic. The bigger responsibility is on the occupier.
<strong>There will be probably a lot of conspiracy theories about latest bloody Hamas attacks in months to come. In your opinion as person living there, do you think it was possible that Netaniahu and co. knew about them and decided not to act right away, hoping this will be his equivalent of 9/11 and will allow him to remain in power? Or was it rather arrogance and underestimating the enemy, resulting in the tragic events that we all witnessed?</strong>
Obviously there is no way to confirm such conspiracy. I would like to avoid conspiratorial mindset and conclude that probably Israel really isn’t as strong as it presents itself. What we know so far, as reported in the Israeli media, is that the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, somewhat equivalent to the FBI in Israel, did suspect in the night before that something might happen, but nothing of this scale. Apparently the head of the Shin Bet and the IDF were informed during the night that thousands of fighters in Gaza are moving toward the border, and some special teams were called to the area, but there was no indication that this is a big operation and a declaration of war. Overall it seems like a very big Intelligence failure.
<strong>From the outside it looks like the Israeli far right finally got the perfect opportunity to get rid of the “Palestinian problem” once and for all. Do you have any predictions how will it end up for Gaza? It seems like we are watching final acts of the tragedy that is unfolding in front of our eyes and it’s worse than ever.</strong>
Right now it’s hard to predict anything. Events are moving very fast and we’re receiving one devastating news after the other. As I’m writing these lines, about 3000 are murdered in Gaza, and around 1 million displaced. No food, fuel and electricity are allowed inside. Israeli troops surrounding the border with Gaza, preparing for a group invasion. Gaza is a bloodbath. The scale of the human tragedy is unbearable. Full on genocidal war of annihilation against the Palestinian population in Gaza. It’s really unclear what the main goal is. Israel has already announced its intention to destroy Hamas, probably never allowing it again to operate from Gaza, but on top of that it’s not clear currently if the goal is to also re-occupy Gaza and annex it, as some Israeli politicians have suggested, or handing it over to the PA, or something else. After Israel called for Palestinians in northern Gaza to move to the south of the strip, and we’re talking about a population of more than million people, and then proceeded to bomb those who followed this order and moved, calls were made toward Egypt to open its borders with Gaza to those fleeing, possibly hinting at the biggest ethnic cleansing plan in the history of Zionism, bigger than the 1948 Nakba.
<strong>Are there people in Israel that are speaking out against the idea of collective punishment of the civilian population for the actions of the armed groups? We have seen a statement signed by different peace groups operating in Israel and Palestine calling for an end to indiscriminate targeting of people in Gaza. Is there a chance that it will have any effect wehatsoever or is everyone in killing frenzy right now?</strong>
Not right now. As I’m writing these lines, there is zero anti-war mobilization in Israel. Pretty much everyone is out for revenge right now. Israelis are uniting in their full support for the war and anyone speaking out is putting themselves in risk. It’s really difficult to explain how fascism is getting increased in the cover of war. Arab Students are being expelled from universities and workers losing their workplaces. Students are encouraged to snitch on their fellow students, and universities and sending mails that any “support for Hamas” (which under the current atmosphere could easily also mean to call for the carnage in Gaza to cease) will be met with zero tolerance. Laws are being passed that harming the “national morale” (which, again, could be interpreted in a broad way) would be punishable by jail. Palestinians are being hunted in East Jerusalem, with documentations revealing cops entering Arab businesses, forcing people to open their phones and looking for any support for Hamas. Far right gangs surrounded the house of a leftist ultra-orthodox Haredi journalist after accusing him of supporting Hamas and fired firecrackers inside his house, causing the police to have to rescue him from his own house and help him escape. Generally speaking, people are afraid to open their mouth. There is some mobilization coming from Jewish Israelis to pressure the government to release the captives and hostages, some of these have been attacked by cops and fascists in Jerusalem and Haifa. Any organizing now would be met with swift repression.
<strong>You mentioned previously new generation of Palestinian resistance that was beginning to gain momentum. Do you think there is still a path for Palestinians to have a successful liberation movement that will not end up being controlled by religious fundamentalists? With unprecedented devastation of Gaza and level of human tragedy we are witnessing, one of the big worries is that people there will turn even more towards authoritarian groups like Hamas or Islamic Jihad etc. What is your opinion about it?</strong>
It’s really hard to say. It’s true that generally speaking, reactionary elements did grow among Palestinians, and like the Israelis, they also moved to the right in the last few years. The groups mentioned earlier don’t have an ideology, and are open to members of all factions, from Hamas to IJ and also The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to join. Generally, it seems that what characterizes the Palestinian resistance these days, both in the West Bank and Gaza, are joint and broad fronts. Islamists, seculars, Marxists and even national liberals like some factions of Fatah are fighting side by side. On the attack of Saturday October the 7th, PFLP and DFLP fighters participated as well. The Palestinian liberation movement is very diverse, but right now people seem to be putting their differences aside and fighting together. Overall this kind of reminds me the different discussions of anarchists in Ukraine fighting alongside fascists against a Russian genocidal army. We don’t know what will happen from now on, it could definitely push people to new extremes, and accelerate some very worrying processes. But we’ll see.
<strong>Scale of what is going on seems to be overwhelming and it’s very hard to feel hopeful for any positive development right now. Is there anything people can do now that can affect the situation in any way?</strong>
I’d say to anyone living abroad join the resistance in your area. There’s a wide international solidarity movement and they need your support more than ever. Join Palestinian refugee communities in the diaspora, stand with them, support their effort and speak out. This could be scary because as in Israel, other governments have been using the cover of war to spread fascism. Many states exposed their authoritarian tendencies over this last week and a half and people faced repression in various ways. Germany and France have banned demos in solidarity with Palestine and cops attacked people defying the ban and protesting. Students in the US that signed a declaration in Solidarity with Gaza were blacklisted by some workplaces. Many politicians and institutions in Israel and the western world understand currently that an outside pressure by international popular support can do a significant damage now, so they’re doubling down on the efforts to shut it down and on propaganda. This is the least people can do and I ask them to do that. fill the streets. Join Palestinian initiatives like the BDS. Boycott Israel. Speak up. Educate yourself and others. Get involved. These are historic times.
<strong>Many thanks for the interview. Is there anything else you would like to say at the end?</strong>
As I said before, this is the time to become active and speak up. We’re witnessing the largest ethnic cleansing attempt and genocide in this state’s history. We can’t afford to remain silent. The stakes are intense. Stand on the side of justice. Dark and difficult times ahead of us. Keep on fighting and good luck.
|
#ATTACH 2-t-2022-towards-an-especifista-feminism-in-north-1.pdf
#title Towards an Especifista Feminism in North America
#author Various Authors
#date 2022
#source Scanned from a zine.
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-07-17T10:06:09
#authors Anonymous
#topics especifismo, anarcha-feminism
*** Introduction
<play>
<strong>TO BEGIN...</strong>
<br>
“We recognize that the feminist camp has made great efforts, by revealing the mechanisms that oppress women and dissidence, and by naming issues that used to be invisible. However, this does not mean that the concepts and categories, and therefore the theoretical frameworks, are all equally valid. As especifist anarchists we task ourselves with taking from these theoretical productions, the concepts and categories that are consistent with our own ideology. Referring to the guiding principles of other currents will not only lead us down a different ideological path but also have concrete effects on the militancy, on the political level as on the social level.”[1] (Federación Anarquista de Rosario, “Hacia un feminismo especifista. Elementos para el debate sobre la militancia feminista del anarquismo organizado”, June 2021)
<strong>STILL...</strong>
<br>
“[...] non-mixed spaces are an imperfect solution in an imperfect world. This is not, however, a reason to abandon them as a tactic.”[2] (Les dérailleuses, “On the importance of non-mixed spaces”, in <em>Londonderry: A cyclo-feminist zine</em>)
<strong>THEREFORE...</strong>
<br>
“[In] the search for our own feminism, in accordance with our current of organized anarchism and its comprehensive strategy, we always have the obligation to always reflect on which tools and practices are — and which are not — the most effective and pertinent, in this particular context in order to contribute to the construction of popular power from a feminist perspective.”[3] (FAR)
[1] “Reconocemos que el campo feminista ha hecho grandes esfuerzos por develar los mecanismos de opresión sobre las mujeres y disidencias, y poder ponerle nombre a cuestiones que estaban invisibilizadas. Ahora bien, ello no quiere decir que los conceptos y categorías, y por lo tanto los marcos teóricos sean todos válidos por igual. Como anarquistas especifistas nos debemos la tarea de tomar de aquellas producciones teóricas, los conceptos y categorías que estén acordes a nuestra ideología. Utilizar como referencia marcos teóricos de otras corrientes no solo nos coloca en otra línea ideológica, sino que además entendemos que tiene efectos concretos que se expresan en la militancia tanto a nivel político como a nivel social.”
[2] “[...] les espaces non-mixtes sont une solution imparfraite dans un monde imparfait. Ce n’est pas pour autant une raison pour les abandonner.”
[3] “[En] la búsqueda de un feminismo propio acorde a nuestra corriente de anarquismo organizado y a su estrategia integral es que tenemos la obligación siempre de abordar reflexivamente qué herramientas y prácticas –y cuáles no- son las más eficaces y pertinentes en este contexto para aportar a la construcción de poder popular desde una perspectiva feminista.”
<strong>FOR THIS REASON...</strong>
<br>
“[We] believe that it is necessary to find a balance between coalition building and specificity, in such a way that the feminist perspective crosses the rest of the issues in addition to the organizational practices, but without erasing or backing down from the demands, which still need to be addressed in a particular way.”[4] (FAR)
<strong>WITHOUT THIS...</strong>
<br>
“The result is an outward-facing media presence that relies heavily on the contributions of individual militants and re-shares of material featuring broad anti-institutional critiques.” (Thistle Writing Collective, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”[5])
[4] “[Creemos] que es necesario buscar un equilibrio entre la transversalización y la especificidad, de forma tal que la mirada feminista atraviese el resto de las problemáticas así como las prácticas organizativas pero sin que eso signifique un borrón o desvanecimiento de las reivindicaciones propias a abordar de manera particular.”
[5] In order to continue theoretically exploring the relationship between feminism and especifismo, and not enter into polemic debates between members and ex-members of any particular org., included here is an excerpt from a statement, from March 2022, titled “Reflection & Reorganization: Black Rose/Rosa Negra Resumes Public Activity” which is responding to the critiques made by the Thistle Writing Collective. The following excerpt is included here, to inform while not rhetorically pairing its arguments with those presented in “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”, which dates back to March 2021. While the BRRN statement is not specifically part of this study, it does make up part of our North American context. For that reason, its inclusion is meant to add to any discussion about how to move forward:
<br><br>
“Eventually, this conflict led a number of members to resign from the organization, with some penning a feminist critique of BRRN after leaving. While we maintain disagreements with many of the specifics of this critique, we share its stated commitment to a revolutionary anarchist feminism.
<br><br>
The main authors of the statement you are now reading are feminists who chose to remain in BRRN. [...] Because we cannot resign our way out of patriarchy, we resolved to debate and struggle alongside our comrades in BRRN to address internal issues and to create a stronger organization.
<br><br>
[...]Moving out of our long reflection and reorganization period, we remain committed to continuously developing a working class feminist practice both inside and outside of our organization. With renewed energy, we look forward to returning to public facing activity and to carry on building the power and revolutionary potential of social movements in the U.S.”
</play>
*** Part 1
<play>
<strong>TAKE FOR EXAMPLE...</strong>
<br>
“[...]non-mixed spaces are an immediate solution to a systemic problem. By eliminating one of the sources of sexism — men — and by making it explicit that no one wants to exclude anyone, the atmosphere changes immediately.”[6] (Les dérailleuses)
<strong>AND ANOTHER EXAMPLE...</strong>
<br>
“It was not until we began sharing our experiences that so many more of us realized that this was more than administrative protocols, study groups, and consciousness raising could cure and it wasn’t something that only individuals should be held accountable for. This was an organizational crisis and the entire membership needed to respond. Our shared analysis revealed that our efforts were never sustained for more than a few months and rarely went beyond a “discussion” of the issues.” (TWC)
<strong>STRATEGICALLY SPEAKING...</strong>
<br>
“For many, non-mixed spaces are a jumping off point helping to acquire knowledge and self-confidence to then (re)insert themselves into mixed spaces. Non-mixed spaces should not be seen as a goal in themselves, but rather a way of raising important questions to the shop as a whole, allowing the practice of not mixing to potentially become a relic of the past.” (Les dérailleuses)
<strong>ASK FOR EXAMPLE...</strong>
<br>
“Are you engaging with new political ideas and demands emerging from these movements or are you comfortable with confining your discussions with others in your cocoon?” (TWC)
<strong>FROM AN ESPECIFISTA PERSPECTIVE...</strong>
<br>
“In this sense, we believe that each tool and space (such as women’s committees, protocols, conventions) should be thought of according to the sphere (level) -political or social-, the participation of the compañeras and the degree to which they appropriate feminism as their own. They cannot be used as neutral formulas. If we do not contextualize them and believe that they can be used independently of the rest of the
ideological and material apects of the organization, we would be feeding an idea of homogeneous feminism, not dissimilar from those which we clearly oppose.”[7] (FAR)
[6] “Les espaces non-mixtes deviennent une colution immédiate à un problème systémique. En éliminant une des sources de sexisme – les hommes – et en explicitant le désir de n’exclure personne, lambiance change immédiatement.
<strong>AND YET...</strong>
<br>
“Feminism never became an official area of political work [...]” (TWC)
<strong>AND STILL...</strong>
<br>
“Building strategy should not be a controversial aim for a political organization. The inability to tackle strategy and the organizational defeatism we perpetually confronted is all too common.” (TWC)
<strong>BUT AT LEAST...</strong>
<br>
“[We] want to warn about the directions it can take and the detrimental effects it can have on our strategy social construction. This does not mean that we should abandon it, but on the contrary, we should be there attempting to be influential with our construction of a feminism from below, from the women at bottom.”[8] (FAR)
[7] “En este sentido, creemos que cada herramienta y espacio (como por ejemplo, comités de mujeres, protocolos) debe ser pensada según el ámbito –político o social-, el nivel de apropiación del feminismo y de participación de las compañeras. No pueden ser usadas como fórmulas neutrales. Si no las contextualizamos y creemos que pueden ser utilizadas con independencia del resto de los componentes ideológicos y materiales de la organización, estaríamos alimentando a una idea de feminismo homogéneo y emparentado a aquellos con los que estamos claramente en disputa.”
[8] “[Queremos] advertir sobre los rumbos que puede ir tomando y que van en detrimento de nuestra estrategia de construcción social. Ello no quiere decir que debamos abandonarlo, si no por el contrario debemos estar allí influenciando con nuestra construcción de un feminismo de las de abajo.”
</play>
*** Part 2
<play>
<strong>SPECIFICALLY...</strong>
<br>
“[We] see trends that arise from the women’s and feminist movement that permeate our militancy and that we believe can hinder the development of the methodology that we are proposing with organized anarchism.”[9] (FAR)
<strong>SIMILAR TO...</strong>
<br>
“[...] there were points of contention about feminism within the organization.” (TWC)
<strong>AND...</strong>
<br>
“This was not interpersonal conflict. It was a difference in politics.” (TWC)
<strong>SUMMIZING THAT...</strong>
<br>
“On the Left, there is an unspoken belief that finding solutions for intra-movement violence (especially of a sexual or gendered variety) is “women’s work,” meaning that the burden is placed on those most likely to have already experienced abuse rather than those most likely to perpetuate it.” (TWC)
<strong>TO CRITIQUE...</strong>
<br>
“The order of things were designed to reproduce women and non-binary comrades as the unpaid social, administrative, physical, and emotional laborers not the strategists.” (TWC)
<strong>TO DESCRIBE...</strong>
<br>
““women’s auxiliary” and dutifully produced attractive content while avoiding internal conflict” (TWC)
<strong>TO CONCLUDE...</strong>
<br>
“a culture that depoliticized care and glorified masculinized “productive” work to the extent that a feminist analysis of the political moment wasn’t even audible to the culture let alone understood as urgent. If the social relations within the organization were designed to reward individualized clout chasing as the productive form of militant praxis, any feminist who made a demand for more rigorous and collective political analysis was in violation of the patriarchal order of things.” (TWC)
[9] “[Vemos] tendencias que surgen del movimiento de mujeres y feminista que permean nuestra militancia y creemos pueden entorpecer el desarrollo de la metodología que proponemos desde el anarquismo organizado.”
<strong>SIMILAR TO...</strong>
<br>
“[...] political practices where women and dissidents appear as the only voices authorized to give debates on gender issues. As especifist anarchists, we must seek to participate in all the issues of the organization, especially including those that are usually masculinized. So, while we think that the gender perspective must enter into all of our analyses, at the same time, we also believe that feminism and anti-patriarchy cannot be the center of all readings,”[10] (FAR)
<strong>WHICH MAY BE DIFFERENT FROM...</strong>
<br>
“[...] efforts to center feminism within the organization.” (TWC)
<strong>SINCE...</strong>
<br>
“We believe open organizational debate on political differences informed by work in our communities is crucial to building the knowledge, experience, and trust necessary to topple hetero-patriarchy and colonialism.” (TWC)
<strong>STILL...</strong>
<br>
“[An] individual’s, or an organization’s, carefully crafted political positions do not mean they know how to discuss, debate, or live them in their daily activism. We raise this point because it did not only contribute to the stifling internal culture that pushed us to leave BRRN, but we believe it is a trend in many anarchist spaces that deserves more analysis and critical reflection.” (TWC)
<strong>AND ALSO TO CRITIQUE FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE...</strong>
<br>
“[Many] times, in the name of women’s struggle, a programmatic agenda is carried out that ignores the reality of the social sectors where we are organized. This vindictive agenda, often without a class character or a clear intention of generating popular participation — sometimes, on the contrary, even appealing to individual and spontaneous participation — ends up promoting actions that are removed from the daily reality of social organizations, only reaching a militant minority.”[11] (FAR)
[10] “[...] prácticas políticas donde las mujeres y disidencias aparecen como las únicas voces habilitadas para dar debates en torno a la problemática de género. Como anarquistas especifistas nosotras debemos buscar participar de todos los temas de la organización, incluso y especialmente de aquellos que suelen estar masculinizados. Asimismo como pensamos que la perspectiva de género debe atravesar todos nuestros análisis también creemos que el feminismo y anti patriarcado no pueden ser el centro de todas las lecturas, entendiendo que existen situaciones en donde otras problemáticas pueden tener más peso relativo.”
[11] “[Muchas] veces en nombre de la lucha de las mujeres se lleve una agenda programática que desconoce la realidad de los sectores sociales donde estamos organizadas. Esta agenda reivindicativa, frecuentemente sin carácter clasista y sin intención clara de generar participación popular -que a veces por el contrario, apela a la participación individual y
espontanea- termina impulsando acciones alejadas de la realidad cotidiana de las organizaciones sociales y solo tienen llegada a un sector de la militancia.”
<strong>STILL...</strong>
<br>
“Our comrades heard our personal testimonies of patriarchy in the organization and saw no political importance in them. While we, through diligent and rigorous study and exchange, knew that they formed a pattern of patriarchal dominance and subordination. We argued that the only remedy to a political crisis is political action.” (TWC)
<strong>HENCE THE REASON FOR WRITING...</strong>
<br>
“[...] to expose these dynamics outside our small corner of the Left. We believe we are not alone in this experience, and know that we cannot create change alone.” (TWC)
</play>
*** Conclusion
<play>
<strong>IN CLOSING...</strong>
<br>
“Oppression, and resistance to it, is not the product of precise formulas from a lab, therefore we do not want the references of the anti-patriarchal struggle to be public figures, journalists, etc. We insist that there is no such thing as a neutral feminism in relation to the system of domination as a whole [...]”[12] (FAR)
<strong>WHAT IF...</strong>
<br>
“Within the organization, this work remained narrowly confined to small working groups and individuals.” (TWC)
<strong>FOR THIS REASON...</strong>
<br>
“[...] we consider that theoretical development must always take place alongside our militancy, we do not need compendiums of “patriarchy, feminism and gender” -or the infinite search for new terms that after a month are outdated from the new theoretical
production-, if later we cannot talk to a colleague in our union, neighborhood or place of study. That is why we say that theory must go hand in hand with the development of the political organization and its insertion fronts.”[13] (FAR)
<strong>WHAT IF...</strong>
<br>
“an influx of new membership — many of whom were oppressed by patriarchy with different experiences and expectations for what a feminist organization looks and feels like. In an organizational culture that could handle disagreement generatively, this could have led to important experiments in new ways of organizing, holding each other accountable, and practicing anarchist feminism.” (TWC)
[12] “Ni las opresiones ni sus resistencias se crean en un laboratorio o en claustro, por tanto no queremos que las referencias de la lucha anti patriarcal sean figuras públicas, periodistas, etc. Insistimos en que no existe algo como un feminismo neutral en relación al sistema de dominación como conjunto [...]”
[13] “[...] consideramos que el desarrollo teórico siempre debe darse a la par de nuestra militancia, no necesitamos compendios de “patriarcado, feminismo y género” –o la búsqueda infinita de nuevos términos que al mes quedan desfasados de la nueva producción teórica-, si luego no podemos hablar con una compañera en nuestro sindicato, barrio o lugar de estudio. Por eso decimos que la teoría debe ir de la mano del desarrollo de la organización política y sus frentes de inserción.”
<strong>TO CAUTION...</strong>
<br>
“Today there are groups that are entirely dedicated to holding workshops, talks, training in other organizations, that drop in like paratroopers just to teach and show us how we are being oppressed. Without detracting from the work they do, we do not think this is the best approach and even less so that it should serve as the face of the women’s movement.”[14] (FAR)
<strong>TO REITERATE...</strong>
<br>
“We want an organization that investigates political questions critically and rigorously. Deep and serious political inquiry does not negate our capacity for personal empathy and understanding of our fellow comrades. It does mean that we can differentiate between them and understand that successful collaborative analysis requires both.” (TWC)
[14] “Hoy en día existen grupos que se dedican a realizar talleres, charlas, formaciones en otras organizaciones, que como paracaidistas llegan y se van solo para enseñarnos y mostrarnos cómo estamos siendo oprimidas. Sin desmerecer el trabajo que realizan, no creemos que sea la forma de abordarlo y mucho menos deben ser la cara del movimiento de mujeres.”
</play>
|
#title 20th Century Land Reforms in Guatemala vs. Mexico
#author Eric Fleischmann
#LISTtitle 20th Century Land Reforms in Guatemala vs. Mexico
#date May 18th, 2023
#source Retrieved 5/18/2023 from https://c4ss.org/content/58581.
#lang en
#pubdate 2023-05-20T17:58:22
#authors Eric Fleischmann
#topics land back, land, Guatemala, Mexico, Zapatistas, 1900s
#notoc 1
#notes Citations updated 7/20/23
Malcolm X once said that all “[r]evolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.” From the Marxist-influenced Landless Workers Movement seizing unused land in Brazil to Indigenous #LandBack efforts in North America, the struggle over land—both as a means of production and as a sacred source of life—rages on. And no wonder, when large-scale absentee ownership of land is unilaterally enforced by state interventions all over the world, enabling, just in the United States, 100 wealthy families to own 640 million acres (about the size of New England), 25 individual land barons to own 20 million acres (nearly 1% of the country), and Bill Gates himself to be the largest agricultural land owner in the country. As such, there is never a bad time to look back at historical land reform movements in order to learn from their strategies. This short piece in particular is focused on comparing the land reform movement in Guatemala in the 1950s with that in Mexico during the revolution from 1910-1920—with particular emphasis on the reforms moved along by Emiliano Zapata’s Liberation Army of the South (often referred to as the Zapatistas). Both were focused on breaking up large pseudo-feudal landholdings and redistributing their ownership more widely, though beyond that they have some marked differences.
One major difference between the Guatemalan and Mexican land reform movements is that the former—although certainly involving smaller units and movements, particularly amongst workers—was a more united and monolithic effort by the state. The central mechanism for land reform in Guatemala was President Jacobo Árbenz’s Decree 900. Approved by the Guatemalan congress on June 17th, 1952, this sweeping reform allotted 603,704 hectares of land to around 100,000 Guatemalan families over the course of two years. This was accomplished through the creation of numerous committees and departments ranging from local to national. In “The Law That Would Change the World” from *Silence on the Mountain*, Daniel Wilkinson describes how one organized group of workers attempted to expose misconduct around Decree 900 by the large farm Plantation La Patria. They signed a petition and submitted it to the Local Agrarian Committee of La Igualdad—one of the many agrarian committees formed by workers and communities to enact Decree 900—in hopes it would reach President Árbenz. However, before this, “the workers’ petition would have to pass through a series of committees that Decree 900 had set up to administer the reform.” It first went through the aforementioned Local Agrarian Committee, then the Departmental Agrarian Committee in San Marcos, then the National Agrarian Department in Guatemala City before finally reaching President Árbenz more than a year after it was submitted. What is clear from this bureaucratic chain is that the land reform of Decree 900 was part of a united structure stemming from the centralized state. Local non-state actors were absolutely part of the reform movement as is demonstrated by the petitioning by the workers of Plantation La Patria or the manner—also described by Wilkinson—in which local labor unions nominated the head of the Local Agrarian Committee in La Igualdad, but both the petitioning and nomination were both part of the more monolithic structure of Decree 900.
In contrast to Guatemala, land reform in Mexico during the 1910-1920 revolutionary period was not by any means part of one unified structure, primarily relying on local and non-state actors. Helga Baitenmann points out (pg. 3) that when the “different revolutionary factions presented their land reform proposals, villagers adopted them interchangeably in their continuing struggles over land.” These different factions all created local or regional organizations to implement their specific land reform plans; for example the Zapatistas in southern Mexico appointed “keepers of the land” (‘guarda-tierras’) who were tasked with provisional land distribution (pg. 14-5). These local guardians encouraged the aforementioned variance in land reform proposals. In chapter eight of *Zapata and the Mexican Revolution*, John Womack outlines how in Zapatista-occupied Morelos, a village…
<quote>
could keep its land under a common title and distribute cultivation rights, or it could distribute the titles themselves to individual small-holders—however it elected. Neither the state nor the federal government could interfere in each village’s choice, and the most the federal government was allowed to do at all was to prohibit the selling or renting of land.
</quote>
As shown by the allowance of this federal interference—as well as the greater federal control one could find in northern Mexico at the time—the state was certainly a part of revolutionary Mexican land reform. Similar to Guatemala, there were numerous departments and councils where groups and individuals could petition for land grants or land restitution, but this system was not a unified bureaucratic hierarchy like that created by Decree 900. Instead these various institutions were parts of the quasi-governmental structures created by the various revolutionary factions.
Another central difference between Guatemalan and Mexican land reform are their motivations. In the case of Guatemala, land reform may on the surface seem like a distinctly far-left reform. This is, as described by Wilkinson, how many Guatemalans reacted to it, with the only landowner in La Igualdad willing to even discuss land reform with the Local Agrarian Committee rejecting it entirely because of his vehement anticommunist views. U.S. foreign policy arguably held this perception as well, as Douglas W. Trefzger argues (pg. 32-3) that the intervention by the U.S. into Guatemala was not solely to protect their businesses interests with United Fruit Company but also as part of the larger-scale effort to contain communism and Soviet influence in the western hemisphere. And to this point it is certainly true that explicitly left-wing revolutionaries like those of Communist Party of Guatemala (PGT) were involved in this effort and in some cases the redistributed land became successful worker cooperatives. However, Decree 900 was still a distinctly industrial-capitalistic effort. The legal justification used by Árbenz for the decree was Article 88 of the Guatemalan Constitution which allowed the government to make direct interventions in the national economy to help improve industry and agriculture. So, the improvement of the economy was the fundamental basis of the law. And the decree itself was not simply the redistribution of land, but rather the reallocation of unused land. At the time, according to Trefzger (pg. 32), only 12% of privately held land in Guatemala was even under cultivation, and the reorganizing of land ownership was intended to improve this percentage. Even further, the decree explicitly states that its goal is to develop “capitalist methods of production in agriculture and to prepare the way for the industrialization of Guatemala,” with the specific methodology being the freeing of rural workers from dependency on specific plantations and thereby allowing them participate more openly in the labor market which would in turn improve the domestic economy and allow for greater industrialization.
When it comes to the driving factors behind land reform in revolutionary Mexico, it is harder to pin down specifics because the push for land reform existed in villages even before the more explicitly ideological revolutionary factions took form—though Baitenmann’s “Popular Participation in State Formation” goes a long way in helping to suggest some motivations. A great deal of the petitioning for land by villages was obviously motivated by their own small-group economic interests, as debates around whether to apply for a land grant or for land restitutions often revolved around simply which one would grant them ownership of the most land, ut the motivations behind one of the most famous revolutionary factions, the Zapatistas, can be defined fairly clearly. Zapata desired the restoration of the land to the original pueblos that owned it, but it is also important to note that many of the land reform programs he and his people proposed often focused more on equitable redistribution of land than on restoration to primordial ownership. A balance was struck overall, with some of the land seized being returned to the peoples who originally inhabited it and the rest being divided equally amongst others (pg. 6-7). What becomes clear when seeing this is the Zapatistas’ commitment to justice and equity—to right past wrongs and create a more egalitarian future. Much like the differences in de/centralization in these land reform movements, this is strikingly different from the Guatemalan goal of modernizing the economy, even if elements of justice and equity were contained in Decree 900. And though Mexico and Guatemala are now firmly capitalist nations participating in the world economy, there is much that can be learned from their history as well as the present struggles of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation—named for the early revolutionary army—who combine Marxist, anarchist, and Indigenous politics in a fight for land-based autonomy in contemporary Mexico and Indigenous activists like Isabel Solís who have been fighting for communal land rights in Guatemala for decades.
*** Sources (nonexhaustive)
<biblio>
*Farming While Black* by Leah Penniman
“If You Don’t Use Your Land, These Marxists May Take It” by Jack Nicas
“Meet The 25 Land Barons Who Collectively Own 1% Of America” by Hannah Kim
“American land barons: 100 wealthy families now own nearly as much land as that of New England” by Christopher Ingraham
“America’s Biggest Owner Of Farmland Is Now Bill Gates” by Ariel Shapiro
“Popular Participation in State Formation: Land Reform in Revolutionary Mexico” by Helga Baitenmann from *Journal of Latin American Studies* , February 2011, Vol. 43, No. 1.
Decreto 900 Ley de Reforma Agraria by el Congreso de la República de Guatemala,
Constitución de la República de Guatemala, 1945.
“Guatemala’s 1952 Agrarian Reform Law: A Critical Reassessment” by Douglas W. Trefzger from *International Social Science Review* , 2002, Vol. 77, No. 1/2 (2002).
*Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror Betrayal and Forgetting in Guatemala* by Daniel Wilkinson
*Zapata and the Mexican Revolution* by John Womack
“A Spark of Hope: The Ongoing Lessons of the Zapatista Revolution 25 Years On” by Hilary Klein
“A Life of Struggle for Land and Community in Guatemala: Interview with Isabel Solís” by Dawn Marie Paley
</biblio>
|
#pubdate 2013-12-16 17:47:20 +0000
#title A Passion for Freedom
#LISTtitle Passion for Freedom
#subtitle An Interview with Jean Weir
#author 325 Magazine
#SORTauthors 325 Magazine, Jean Weir
#SORTtopics interview, insurrection
#source Retrieved on October 27, 2020 from [[https://web.archive.org/web/20201027062926/http://325.nostate.net/library/8-325_net1.pdf][web.archive.org]]
#date September 2010
#lang en
<strong><em>So, how is it that you found yourself arrested on September 19, 1994, with four other anarchists (Antonio Budini, Christos Stratigopulos, Eva Tziutzia and Carlo Tesseri) and accused of an armed robbery at the rural bank of Rovereto (Serravalle), Italy? How did your life evolve to lead to this situation?</em></strong>
How did I find myself arrested that day of September 19, 1994? Well, it obviously wasn’t ‘the perfect crime’ ... a couple of local people saw some guys jump over a fence into the forest in the Chizzola mountains; a massive ‘manhunt’ ensued, and within a few hours everybody was rounded up. But I don’t think that’s what you mean. You ask me how my life had evolved leading up to that moment. I’ll try to answer that question, which seems to imply that this was some kind of climax that my life had been heading towards. Actually it’s not like that. If things had gone differently and we hadn’t been caught, no one would ever have known about the event. It would simply have been ‘a day in the life’ of a few anarchist comrades.
I don’t think that there’s anything exceptional about anarchists deciding to take back some of what has been stolen from us all – we have to face the problem of survival like all the other dispossessed and moreover we are not prepared to simply ‘survive’ but want to go beyond the limitations of poverty and act on reality. Some comrades believe that expropriation will be a mass event where all the exploited will act together one great day, others are not prepared to wait to infinity for that to happen, or to spend the whole of their lives being exploited or participating in the exploitation of others.
Looking back in time, what was exceptional was the fact of having comrades with whom it was possible to discuss anything and possibly act together as a result. I say exceptional, although at that time it was normal. This deepened knowledge of one another (and oneself ) is the fruit of being in a common struggle – demos, meetings, discussions, actions, etc. — in the dimension of an informal anarchist movement. Relations between comrades deepen, one gains real knowledge of one another, not just our goals but the way we are as individuals, the way we react, our strengths and weaknesses. From there I think it is natural for comrades who know and trust each other to go into certain questions more deeply and decide to experiment in order to push their struggle forward and open up new possibilities in whatever field. For anarchists the absence of hierarchy also concerns action. When carried out in a projectual dimension with a real tension towards freedom, the validity of any one kind of action depends on the existence of all the others.
<strong><em>The media and the Italian State whipped themselves into a frenzy over the trial, but how was your experience of the solidarity from other anarchists and rebels during the legal process and during your prison sentence?</em></strong>
Actually, the thing developed into two trials…no three. First there was the trial for the robbery in question, then we were accused of two other robberies in the area, so that led to a second one (which went on for many months), during which the <em>pentita</em>(‘repentant terrorist’) matured, leading to the infamous Marini Trial.1 The local media did go into a frenzy immediately following the Serravalle (near Rovereto) robbery: all of the elements of the media cocktail ‘terrorist scare’ were there; foreigners, anarchists, guns, robbery, etc... But that was nothing compared to what was to happen subsequently, at the national level.
The reaction of the anarchists of Rovereto and the surrounding area was immediate and unconditional. Their solidarity was passionate and also ludic at times. They claimed the identity of the arrested comrades, defending our identity as anarchists within an articulate denunciation of the role of the banks and the validity of robbing them, through posters, leaflets, demos, public meetings etc.
Shortly after our arrest, the anarchist fortnightly <em>Canenero</em> was born. I think it is fair to say that, although it might have come out at some later date, for various reasons our arrest was a catalyst in its appearance then. Its eagerly awaited pages and knowledge that comrades very close to me were working day and night to bring it out was a brilliant light that illuminated that initial period in jail. So many other things happened, it’s hard to put everything down on paper. Right from the start anarchists came from all over Italy for the trials, the courtroom was always full and sometimes there were too many comrades for everybody to get inside.
I remember the huge <em>Baci</em> (kisses) and encircled ‘A’ that appeared written in lipstick on a window overlooking the court after those who hadn’t been allowed in occupied a building opposite and sent their greetings down from above... the news that over 150 cash points in the area had been glued, resulting in one of the banks withdrawing their claim for damages... the banner conveying birthday greetings unfurled in court when one of the hearings coincided with my birthday...
Flares and fireworks were set off against Trento prison during one of the hearings in the town court, resulting in a number of comrades getting expulsion orders from the area. While I was being held in the maximum security prison of Vicenza, a terrible dump, particularly the women’s section, comrades hired a coach and did an impromptu demo with flares, banners and paint-bombs at New Year, an action that wasn’t without risk because Vicenza was in close proximity to the American NATO base. I learned when I got out that everyone had a good time and went on to party throughout the night somewhere in the mountains. Next day a police helicopter appeared in the women’s exercise yard, and remained there until the day I was transferred to Opera prison in Milan. That demonstration of love and solidarity was a contribution to getting me thrown out of a disgusting place without any ingratiating ‘letters to prison governor’ or such like.
These are some of the moments that stand out in my mind concerning the initial period. Later, following the invention of a ‘repentant’ ‘ex-militant’ of an invented armed gang that we were all supposed to belong to, many comrades were arrested or went into hiding to carry on the struggle. I know that many of the remaining comrades debated intensely to agree and decide what to do, but I don’t know as much about that period as I do about the preceding one.
Reading your questions has taken me back to these not so far off times, and remembering the solidarity fills me with an immense glow. It was amazing. Only someone who has lived through similar moments can understand what I am talking about, and as you can see, I can’t squeeze the answer to this question into just a few lines, even although anything I mention is only a tiny part of what comrades were doing day after day, for years.
An anarchist defence committee that had been formed earlier became extremely active in finding lawyers, coordinating contributions from benefit gigs, etc., and sending out regular news of the whole situation, which was to develop into a complex repressive attack against a large part of the anarchist movement...
The comrade who sent the money-orders was accused of being ‘treasurer’ of the phantom clandestine organization invented by public prosecutor Marini along with the <em>Carabinieri</em> special forces, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. The comrade who bore the brunt of the committee’s activity was accused of counterfeiting an internal police note that was sent to Radio Blackout in Turin. Both were subsequently acquitted or had charges dropped.
Throughout the various repressive phases thousands of posters were printed and flyposted in all the major towns and cities, and also in many small villages – wherever there were anarchists who wanted to show their solidarity.
From being a straightforward question of a few comrades ‘caught in the act’ about which there is little to be said, the thing had evolved into about 60 anarchists being accused of belonging to a clandestine organisation, insurrection against the State, etc., with charges that carried multiple life sentences.
Everything stood on the ‘confessions’ of the twenty-year-old girlfriend of Carlo, one of my co-arrestees, who had been singled out by the R.O.S. (<em>Reparto Operazioni Speciali</em> / Special Operations Group) as potentially being someone young and impressionable that could be scared into collaborating with the police and judiciary.
She announced that she was an ‘ex-member’ of the ‘gang’, and had participated in one of the robberies in the Trento area. The way the story emerged was so absurd it was almost laughable, but things began to get quite serious – there were hundreds of raids all over Italy and many comrades ended up in prison, some went on hunger strike and were released. There was a wide denunciation of this frame-up against anarchists which had now become a main news item: endless meetings, attacks on the press, the entrances to underground stations glued on the first day of the Marini trial, demos, itinerant exhibitions, etc. etc.
Over and above the arrests, there was a total distortion of anarchist methods, and tens of thousands of pamphlets were printed and distributed all over the country denouncing this. Many actions took place, and leaflets and posters were now being drawn up at national level, following countless meetings with groups and individuals from all over the country. There were regular interventions on free radios. Actions of solidarity also took place in Germany, Greece and Spain. A German comrade brought out a bilingual paper, translated many Italian texts – theoretical texts I mean, not related to the repression and organised benefits and meetings. She was also very close to me throughout the years I was inside in many ways. I also received many letters, telegrams, cards, conveying good wishes, passion, colour, solidarity from comrades in many countries, including the UK.
<strong><em>Can you tell us about your experience of prison and the conditions, opportunities for rebellion, etc? How was your relationship with the other prisoners?</em></strong>
Another big story... where to begin? Well, for a start, I wasn’t in just one, but seven prisons over these years, and spent much of the time being shunted up and down handcuffed in a prison van between Milan and Trentino, squinting through the pinholes in the metal windows to catch a glimpse of the mountains or the orchards in bloom, as the trial in Trento ran its perverted course. The conditions in each of these prisons were fairly specific and varied immensely. But there are some factors that are peculiar to all women’s prisons – they are a lot smaller than men’s, and often have far fewer facilities, sometimes to the point of zero, for educational or recreational needs.
The first thing that struck and annoyed me was that I was alone, I mean, I was held separate from my comrades, who for much of the time were sharing a cell, so had ample opportunity to talk, laugh and generally face the situation together. Eva and I were kept apart, and fortunately she was released a month or so after our arrest. I’d been in similar situations before, so I knew the score and mustered my strength. The solidarity from outside that I have mentioned at length certainly nourished that strength, but there were many things going on within and around you that you would have liked to discuss with your own comrades, and that was impossible. I mean, even concerning some of the trivia in prison — or rather everything is trivia, but can be heavy at times. Reverberations from the proverbial ‘butterfly’s wing’ can do full circle at any instant, like an iron boomerang and even one’s thoughts seem to take on (or perhaps they have it anyway) a solid capacity to act on reality.
I think that simply staying alive, holding to one’s individuality and keeping one’s spirits – and head — high is in itself a form of rebellion in the context of an institution that is deliberately built to put people down and humiliate them. Things were very different then compared to what they had been in the 70s and 80s in Italy when there were thousands of comrades in prison, often held in custom-built maximum security prisons. Rebellion was a constant, a necessity and a continuation of the struggle outside, almost taking the place of it before the reformist about-turn of many of the Marxist-Leninist leaders set in.
Today, especially if you are a woman, you might be very few in number, inside for any one of a whole variety of reasons (better — anarchists don’t declare themselves political prisoners, and if they end up on ‘political’ wings it’s because the State puts them there to prevent them from ‘infecting’ the other prisoners). In fact, in some of the small prisons I was held in starting from Rovereto, I was kept separate from the other prisoners as far as the limited conditions allowed. The screws weren’t used to seeing the leaflets that arrived in my post and their hands would literally shake upon coming in contact with some of them and I was transferred from there as fast as they could.
The only thing I remember about Trento prison is an earthquake one night following which I spent the next hour or so trying to decide what to do in anticipation of another tremor until I fell asleep. Not all such events have a happy outcome: 8 prisoners (and two female guards) were killed, trapped in a fire that broke out in Le Vallette prison in Turin in 1986. Accounts of prisoners in New Orleans make the blood curdle in horror, to mention but a few. We must never forget that – beyond the anecdotes and reminiscences — prison consists of so many reinforced boxes that millions of people all over the world are locked up in day and night. The latter are hostages of the State and live at the mercy of a hierarchy of vile cowards 24 hours a day.
The female wing in Trento was closed down and I was dispatched to Vicenza, which I mentioned above. The women’s section consisted of two rows of cells facing each other. In the morning the heavy iron doors were opened, leaving a second barred gate locked. And that was the ‘prison condition’ for the rest of the day. Pale thin girls spent their whole days in bed because, although there was an exercise yard, it was freezing cold outside (Vicenza is in the mountains.) The exercise period is established by parliamentary decree but nowhere is it written that there is a ‘minimum stay’. An obligatory two hours in a huge freezing cold area of reinforced concrete with nothing to do was too much for most people, and the screws were quite happy to forego the task of locking and unlocking x number of gates of access.
So, the battle began, at first the ‘good’ way, pointing out the situation to medical staff, writing collective demands to the governor, etc., to no avail. It was very difficult to talk to the other prisoners as, apart from the outside yard, there was only a couple of hours ‘sociality’ each day that had to be signed up for in advance, naming one other prisoner who could be locked in with you, or whom you could ‘visit’. Nonetheless, we all managed to agree that we would go out into the yard next day and, in protest, would refuse to enter when the two hours were up. This, in the context of prison, is tantamount to insurrection. The day came. The presence of the screws from the male section downstairs, was confirmation that everybody’s plans had been thwarted. Shortly afterwards (this was in the period immediately following the New Year demo) my cell neighbour C. and I were ‘ghosted’: me to the ‘political wing’ in Opera, Milan, C. to some out-of-the-way provincial prison. This long description is to try to show how a simple attempt to obtain a basic ‘right’ comes to be considered a dangerous threat to order and submission.
The fact is it’s necessary to see the context we’re talking about. You don’t enter prison saying, wow, lots of people locked up, here’s fertile ground for rebellion, let’s have a go. In the first place, most people have many problems and are simply not interested in how you define yourself, and personally I didn’t try doing so, other than through my way of relating to them and the surroundings, although in some prisons there were ‘politicals’ who knew about us. That’s different. In the normal run of events, when you are in prison I think your job is to get on with being a prisoner and continue living your life under ‘different’ conditions and try to contribute to raising the tone of what can often be a pretty dismal reality. Most of the women inside are in a far worse situation than we are. Many have children, sometimes thousands of miles away, and worry about them all the time. We are privileged because we have comrades, solidarity, excellent lawyers who are often comrades themselves.
Having said that, it was a great experience to encounter so many different crazy people that one wouldn’t otherwise have met due to personal choices and all the ghettos we ‘scum of the earth’ are divided up into: gypsies, drug addicts, ‘murderers’, ‘historic leaders’ of once upon a time, prostitutes, ‘drug ponies’, etc. And I lived some intense and at times hilarious moments. Don’t get me wrong, prison wasn’t ‘the best days of my life’. But, when a number of very particular human beings who are forced to cohabit against their will make it to come together on the basis of this common denominator and simply be themselves for a moment with their exquisite idiosyncrasies, a strange alchemy occurs that transcends all walls and becomes a true moment of freedom, and a threat to the status quo of the prison.
Of course it would have been better to have brought down the walls for real. Many of these women are still locked up. Many more have joined them. You asked about solidarity, and I can’t conclude this reverie without mentioning an unforgettable moment of solidarity that I experienced from the other prisoners. As I said, I received a lot of mail that wasn’t officially censored, among which was the whole collection of <em>Canenero</em> and a considerable quantity of back issues of the Italian anarchist paper <em>ProvocAzione</em> that came out in the eighties. At Opera, the latter were removed from the cell I was in following a routine search, with a few feeble justifications such as ‘fire risk’, ‘illicitly acquired’, etc. What was obvious was that the contents were definitely not appreciated by those who had come across them. I was furious, and demanded my papers back.
Anyone who’s been in prison will know that there’s no such thing as ‘demand and response’, even the most insignificant request such as getting permission to buy a pair of socks has to go through a process that might take weeks. I wasn’t prepared to wait, and to cut a long story short ended up staging a protest by simply refusing to go in from the yard and be locked up after the exercise period. The immediate result of this was that I managed to get an audience with the <em>Mareschiallo</em> from the male prison; I eventually got my papers back, and the much hated uberscrew in charge of the female prison disappeared from circulation for a few weeks, which gave everyone a break. The second result was to be escorted to a kind of ‘internal court’ on Monday morning, presided over by the prison governor in the presence of screws, cops, psychologists, etc. The verdict: guilty of insubordination. The punishment: two weeks in the punishment cell. That shocked everybody on the wing, many of whom had been ‘inside’ for nearly twenty years. The rare punishments at Opera were 2–3 days. After being checked by the doctor who signed that I was fit to face the sentence (the doctor always has the last word, even on Death Row...), I was marched down to the isolation block, to be locked up 22 hours a day, and have only essential possessions: my anarchist papers (I made sure I got these), a couple of books, a dictionary and a small radio.
Screws were assigned to sit on the other side of the metal door peering at me through the spy hole and let me out for exercise in a small, squalid yard for one hour in the morning and one in the afternoon. Anyone who talked to me would receive similar sanctions. After spending most of the night at war with the mosquitoes (it was the middle of August, 40 degrees) I woke up to the sound of a loud rap number just outside the window. Peering outside I could see the girls that worked in the garden below dancing in single file through the plants, rapping out the whole story.
What a buzz!
Then when I got out for ‘air’ all the women in the section were at their windows singing a whole repertoire of love and battle songs at the top of their voices. The confusion was such that the screws had to take me away from that dirty yard to the sports ground for exercise twice a day.
For the rest: suffice to say that for the whole duration all the prison food ended up down the toilet as I received a constant supply of fresh food, hot coffee, etc, thanks to the cunning and creativity that only those who are locked up against their will are capable of, unseen by the uniformed spies outside the cell or the armed guards patrolling the walls. When the two weeks were up, big party on the wing!
<strong><em>After you left prison, how did you feel coming ‘out’ into ‘society’?</em></strong>
Society? What’s that? I think I experienced society like an iron vice from the day I was born. They had to lock me in the classroom for the first two weeks I was at kindergarten. Perhaps the closest I’ve been to being ‘in’ society was when I was in jail. You can’t escape it – unless as I said, you declare yourself ‘prisoner of war’ and spend the rest of your time alone, with special status. Prison is a microcosm of the world outside, a kind of caricature that you’re stuck in, there’s nowhere to hide, so you become socialised to some extent whether you like it or not, for the sake of the other prisoners and in order to try to do something with your time. But always within precise limits.
Like society outside, the prison structure is polarising: segregating and excluding the rebels and moving towards the integration and participation of certain other prisoners in their own incarceration. The times that I came within inches of this participatory oppression were the worst for me, and the kind of reality they are aiming for filled me with disgust. You’d like to spit in the screw’s eye and tell her to wipe the smile off her face when she comes to unlock you in the morning, but you can even end up saying ‘good morning’.
Recently an Italian comrade told me that when he was in prison last year there were some of the old Red Brigades militants who always called the screws <em>stronzo</em> or <em>pezzo di merda</em> – ‘shit’ in either case, and how the other cons really envied them for it. Had they tried it, they’d have ended up black and blue and with a few broken ribs.
Generally, you need to teach yourself to contain your loathing for the whole set-up. On coming out I was under house arrest for a while, then I came back to London as I had another short sentence pending in Italy concerning a stolen car connected to the robbery. I slipped unobtrusively into my ghetto existence here. Not with pride, I may say, because such an existence is full of compromise like any other. There’s no real struggle here, no tension in terms of attacking what oppresses you and everyone around you. You can become a frenetic activist or you can spend some time trying to take stock, ‘socialise’ yourself within that reality to some extent and keep carrying on with your own projectuality as best you can, always in the dimension of seeking affinities and outlets for the struggle as you want to experience it. So, in this open prison you’re also a misfit, an outsider playing a role and respecting the ‘social rules’.
<strong><em>Italy has a long history of insurrection both in recent times and distant, can you talk about some of the social struggles there that you have been involved in?</em></strong>
In Italy, the 70s and 80s, although there was a proliferation of clandestine organisations which declared war against the State, there was also a diffuse insurrectional movement, and that was certainly exciting, it was in the air you breathed around you. There were many examples of mass squatting, occupation of universities, non-payment of tickets, bus rides, meals, etc. in towns like Bologna where hundreds of young people just refused to pay. Many small actions of attack were carried out by individuals or very small groups of people without all the rhetoric of the armed organisations, and this was to have a profound effect on that part of the anarchist movement that had been pushing in that direction. There was always a strong sense of projectuality and of being part of the struggle for freedom along with other comrades in this informal movement. That developed into what some anarchists refer to as the ‘insurrectional method’ of struggle. The latter interpretation attempts to draw in mass participation along with anarchists against a given objective, based on a certain organizational hypothesis. This requires a constant engagement in the struggle over a period of time. It’s not a question of a small group of anarchists deciding to attack a particular expression of power, but an attempt to involve large numbers of people self-organised in a proliferation of base organisms – nuclei, leagues or whatever they decided to call themselves – and attack the objective all together. The point of this way of organising is that it can’t become hierarchical, but can extend and multiply horizontally, and once the objective is in view and all the individuals involved are experiencing a qualitative change in their relationship to power (absence of delegating, deciding in first person, creativity, etc.), the struggle might even go beyond the objective. I am lucky to have lived one such experience, even if the end result wasn’t that which everybody had desired and worked hard for. But that doesn’t matter.
The time was the 1980s, the place, Comiso, in the island of Sicily, where I was living at the time. The Americans had decided to deposit some Cruise missiles in the military base there, and there was wide local dissent about this. Anti-nuclear protestors, the communist party, the socialist party, the Greens, etc. protested in massive demos or pacifist pickets outside the base. The local anarchists decided to distinguish themselves from this circus and act in a protracted struggle in the logic of mass rebellion. The essence of anarchist struggle is in the means, not the end.
We drew up leaflets analysing the reasons, not only military but also social and economic, as to why the only serious answer to this project of death was to occupy the base and destroy it, and printed thousands of them on an old hand-operated <em>Roneo</em> duplicator using stencils that some comrades from Class War had given us in England. Nobody had any money to speak of and everything was improvised as we went along. We managed to assemble a sound system, and travelled, doing — usually Alfredo – very strong, unequivocal outdoor talks in the <em>piazzas</em> of the neighbouring villages, which were attended by most of the male population of each place. We also did leaflets specifically addressed to women and went around the living areas handing them out and having impromptu <em>capanelli</em> with some of them. We did leaflets addressed to the workers at the Anic petrol refinery (who refused to go into work until we were released when the <em>Digos</em> — political cops — pulled us in), and to school students, handing them out outside all the schools. Some of the pupils refused to go in for a day as a result, and held a spontaneous demo that filled one of the <em>piazzas</em>. It was here that I began to see how power actually works at local level: the leader of the Communist Party came knocking at our door, proposing that we ‘work together’. Needless to say, he was given short shrift. By this time some people had lent us a little old house, as many of us lived over 60 miles away. The meetings and leafleting, posters, etc. had led to some people from different areas and walks of life – pupils, lorry drivers, farm workers, etc., agreeing on the need to destroy the base, and they formed minimal ‘base organisations’ that they called leagues for lack of a better word. These leagues, which often consisted of two or three people but had the potential to expand and multiply as the struggle intensified, began to need a place as a point of reference and coordination, i.e. to have meetings, draw up and print leaflets etc. A small place was rented in Comiso for that purpose and referred to as the <em>Coordinamento</em>for the self-managed leagues against the Cruise missile base in Comiso. And these were the people who really had the power to destroy the base – with their workmates, neighbours, families, farm animals, tractors, diggers, etc. That was the dream.
But, apart from the repression pure and simple, there was a combination of obstacles, including the local mafia, two masked individuals who burst in on us with guns one night and fired a shot that went through Alfredo’s trouser-leg. Then there was the Communist Party, always acting as fire extinguishers as is their role – and, last, but not least, the anarchist movement itself and our own limitations. It’s not possible to go into all the details of this struggle now, but looking back in time, I think that some record should be made of this attempt as it was a very real experience that had a strong experimental and theoretical aspect, so belongs to everybody.
<strong><em>The publishing project you are involved in – Elephant Editions – is well known for being the main translator of Alfredo Maria Bonanno and other ‘insurrectional’ anarchists, whilst we don’t want to add to or create a cult of personality, can you explain why the ideas of Alfredo, and the other writers you publish, are important for the struggle to overthrow the conditions which oppress us?</em></strong>
In the first place, we are talking about ideas, quite rare merchandise these days. Ideas with a subversive charge, which encounter and stimulate other ideas that take us out of the swamp of opinion and tolerance and help us to reach the lucidity necessary to act upon and transform the reality that oppresses us. I should say that I have never approached any of the texts that I’ve translated and subsequently published other than with the purely selfish intention of wanting to enter the discourse and clarify some ideas myself. When eventually (after a long struggle) the text becomes something tangible in English, I want others to read it too. For (some) people reading such texts becomes an encounter, a level of self-discovery derived from seeing ideas set out in the written word with a certain level of clarity. Tensions that we already feel burning inside us become clearer, making it easier to gather and assimilate them in order to act. So, the text takes on its own life, makes its journey within the context of the struggle, contributes to giving the comrades that so desire it an instrument for recognising and valorising their own ideas and dreams, turning them into a point of strength in life and in the struggle. The text then becomes both a subjective encounter and a physical ‘thing’, which in the vicissitudes of its journey throughout social and ideal space, becomes an element in creating informal relations between individual comrades. As well as that, we all need analysis — for example of the economy, the new technologies, the changing faces of power and the struggle, new enemies and false friends. And, let’s face it, many of us are lazy or lack method when it comes to gaining knowledge. Without ideas, analyses and projectuality we are nothing, mere abstractions, building castles in the air, the hot air of formal structures and their organisational obsessions. The structure of the Italian language, and these texts in particular, is quite different to the English language of ‘pirates and shopkeepers’; it always takes me a long time to get them readable to a certain degree, and to follow the argument through. It’s quite a journey, particularly as these comrades, Alfredo and the others I have translated, are my comrades in struggle, we lived through the experience of these ideas in practice, they come from the development of the movement over the past few decades. I believe that these particular ideas, or theories, are an important contribution to the struggle today because they come from the part of the movement that doesn’t refer to any fixed organisation or formal structure and wants to attack oppression in all its forms directly.
In fact, attack and the theory of attack – which is the same thing for anarchists – are the essential element of the informal movement, without which it would exist in name alone. So, there is also a strong element of critique in these writings, a critique of the fixed anarchist organisation such as syndicalism or the federation that relies on numbers, as being limiting and anachronistic in terms of attack. At the same time, there is a critique of the clandestine organization and ‘attack at the heart of the State’ that was quite prevalent in the 70s, particularly in Italy. Most of these organisations were of a Marxist-Leninist matrix, but some anarchists tried to do the impossible by forming an ‘anarchist’ version that ended up falling into the contradictions of any fixed clandestine set-up. And I do believe that many anarchists at that time felt considerable pressure upon them to form some such organisation in order to be ‘in the reality of the struggle’. The theories we are talking about valorise the formation of small groups not weighed down by ideological preconceptions, acting directly on reality without any sense of sacrifice but for their own immediate pleasure and freedom, in the context of the freedom of all.
Another essential component in the writings we are discussing is that of analysis of the profound changes that have taken place in the past three or four decades and have affected the way exploitation functions throughout the whole world and the struggle against it. The ‘new technologies’ that many young comrades experience as normality today actually changed the way the world is run.
The whole productive set-up, including that of food, the extraction of fuel etc. moved from Europe to Asia and the East, following a massive project of restructuring that was met with rebellion that almost reached the point of generalised insurrection in some countries. This was followed by a complete change in educational requirements by the system, and an extensive cultural flattening in favour of infinite chains of data that take us nowhere.
It should also be said that, once certain texts existed in English, alas the language of the new world order, they have been translated into their own language by anarchists in other parts of the world who have seen something interesting in them, and that is one of the things that has given me most pleasure in the whole endeavour.
A quick word on the concept of ‘cult of personality’, as you brought it up.
I think that this concept is strange to anarchists in general. Anarchists are judged by other comrades according to what they say and do, and the coherence between these two factors — not through diatribes about their personal, real or invented, attributes as practised by organisations that rely on charismatic leaders and such like as came about in Russia following the Bolshevik takeover. If anything, it’s the other way around. Personal attacks exist at times that take the place of actual critique of the methods exposed by certain comrades when some sectors of the movement find their status quo threatened by these methods. That is easier than attacking the ideas themselves and opposing them with others that might be more effective, who knows. But, as I said, this is not a true characteristic of anarchists who by their very existence deny the concept of leader and at the same time exalt the individual, each and every individual, in the dimension of equality.
|
#title Unconditional Anti-Oppression
#subtitle The Rise of Anti-Speciesism in the Anarchist Movement
#author A.BLITZ MOLOTOV XVX
#LISTtitle Unconditional Anti-Oppression: The Rise of Anti-Speciesism in the Anarchist Movement
#SORTauthors BLITZ MOLOTOV XVX
#SORTtopics veganism, veganarchy, animal rights, animal liberation, anti-speciesism
#date 09/01/15
#source [[https://antispeciesistaction.com/blog/the-rise-of-anti-speciesism-in-the-anarchist-movement]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-05-26T03:21:27
#notes This is an article from the US context also posted on veganwarfare. Although we agree with much of it, we would stress that anti-speciesism has been a long-running current through anarchism, from Elisee Reclus to Louise Michel
*** Negotiation is over. Moving beyond liberal veganism
About 40 years ago animal rights was a concept promoted and activated by determined individuals, passionate about expanding their sphere of compassion. Not only did many of these animal rights activists go vegan but they also took action in the streets. Big colorful signs, petition signing, banner drops, and other tactics were deployed to disrupt the normalcy of routine non-human animal exploitation. Many of these tactics served to spread awareness of slaughterhouse atrocities in hopes of generating sympathy and agricultural reform. Overtime as more and more people began to acknowledge and speak out against non-human animal exploitation, tactics, ideas, and even other movements began to evolve.
Today there is less sign holding and petition signing as these previous attempts for change have left many disappointed. As the treatment of non-human animals continued despite votes and petitions, activists went underground giving birth to many radical groups like the Animal Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Brigade, Animal Rights Militia, Revolutionary Cells, and so on. Many vegan liberals, disappointed by politicians and the state, had begun to re-examine their own political ideologies.
As tactical diversity grows beyond the state’s control with the intent of yielding self-initiated results, the animal rights movement is now commonly referred to as the “animal liberation movement”. This form of self-determination by individuals working in cells or affinity groups has become appealing for its effectiveness. Online petition signing has seen less activity as prisoner support through fund raising and letter-writing becomes more popular. Single-issue oriented activists have begun to diversify their activism in light of acknowledging the connection with social struggles, eco-defense, and decolonisation. This expanding solidarity and mutual-aid has created new alliances, collective efforts, and new methods of resource sharing in many activist communities. The wave of increasingly radicalised vegans poses a threat to capitalism and the state. Today many once willing-to-negotiate activists have adopted new approaches that defy the lawfulness of peaceful protest and political reform. With an increase in property damage, liberated non-humans and appreciation for direct action, it was no surprise when the state constructed AETA (Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act) in an effort to sway public opinion and discourage the growth of radicalised vegans.
ANTI-SPECIESIST ANARCHISM. NONE ARE FREE UNTIL ALL ARE FREE.
*** Human supremacy and Speciesism
Human supremacy is the belief that humans are superior and therefore entitled to dominate other animals and the earth. This form of discrimination and privilege exists in the anarchist movement, and has played a key role in the perceiving of non-human animal and earth liberation as secondary movements. As any other supremacist ideology, human supremacy perpetuates discrimination, enslavement, and murder in general, and towards non-human animals in particular. It embodies an interlocking combination of oppressions which manifest in the dominating social relationship humans have towards each other, the earth and other animals. Similar to white supremacy with the discrimination of BIPOC, and patriarchy with the discrimination of women and other non-men, human supremacy refuses equal consideration and opportunity for non-human animals to pursue a life free of human control.
Like racism and sexism, speciesism is irrational discrimination towards non-human animals based on species. Anti-speciesist anarchism is an anti-authoritarian challenge to human supremacy. Biocentrism or Deep Ecology is the re-distribution of power and autonomy equally to all sentient beings through the destruction of human moral elitism. Humans have generally justified their exploitation of non-humans through the categorisation of “animals” as inferior therefore rightfully subjugated. Today many vegan anarchists have replaced “animals” with “non-human animals” or simply “other animals”. This serves to distinguish non-human animals from human animals, while also recognising the shared animality of both. The word “rights” regarding non-human animals is less often used. Since “rights” in the political context imply permissions or privileges granted by the state, anti-speciesists generally feel this term is inconsistent with autonomous freedom. Anti-speciesism as a significant element and concept in the struggle for freedom is expanding as the intersectionality of all oppressions gains recognition. [ASA argues moral rights, that all animals innately have, they are not absent of moral rights but have their basic fundamental rights violated]
*** Intersecting oppressions
Intersectionality is an examination of how all forms of oppression including but not limited to race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, species or disability do not act independently of one another but instead, are interrelated creating a system of oppression that reflects the “intersection” of multiple forms of discrimination. For example, capitalism utilises speciesism to commodify non-human animals, reducing them to units of production and capital. The legal property status of non-human animals can be compared to that of the enslaved Africans prior to the Civil War. Reproductive control over humans with uteruses reflects the reproductive exploitation of non-human animals. Anti-capitalists who have acknowledged the relationship between non-human animals and capitalism have seen that such a relationship is the antithesis of freedom and must be abolished. Consuming non-human animals perpetuates the capitalist and human supremacist notion that they are sources of food rather than sentient beings deserving of their natural born right to freedom as humans expect for themselves.
Communication, language and imagery contribute to the mutual reinforcement of all oppressions. Since non-human animals are viewed as inferior, their imagery and identity is used as a derogatory way of describing disliked, oppressed or uncivilised humans. For example some of the most commonly known slurs towards women & nonbinary people attack their physical appearance and involve non-human animals. In addition to degrading individual women & nonbinary people these insults marginalise entire species of nonhuman animals as well. The hatred and speciesism towards pigs is encouraged when they are used to reference officers of colonial law. In various contexts, pigs, cows, and dogs are considered dirty, unclean, ugly, unlovable beings. These serve as stereotypes that excuse and encourage their exploitation. In the eyes of a speciesist, nonhuman animals serve to metaphorically reference oppressed humans. Some nonhuman animals are used to describe people of colour (monkey, ape, coon etc) other nonhumans are used in the same way for women (bitch, chick, cow etc). People of colour who break laws or act out their emotions are often referred to as nonhuman animals, and women and nonbinary humans who act out of their frustration or anger are often referred to as a “bitch”. The marginalisation of nonhuman animals is intimately intertwined with the oppression upon them. When examined, the mechanisms of domination, violence, and control are the same.
*** Beyond “veganarchism”; anarchism means total liberation for all
The term “veganarchism” has played an important part in distinguishing the growing wave of anti-speciesist anarchy from traditional anarchism. But as earth and non-human animal liberation gain recognition for their place in the anarchist struggle, the continued usage of “veganarchism” becomes problematic. The term “veganarchism” preserves the same false division currently withering away. It also draws more attention towards veganism as an action without a preexisting cause. This leads to more dialogue and attention on veganism as merely dietary rather than enough dialogue on the oppression of non-veganism. Speciesism, human supremacy, and the authoritarianism in exploiting other sentient beings for food receives less exposure to criticism than veganism. This imbalance usually results in drawn out debates about veganism being classist or racist. While it is a common mistake for speciesist anarchists to impose white imperialism upon veganism (which marginalises vegans of colour by assuming that whites are the only ones concerned with deep ecology, health, and non-human animal liberation), this mistake is almost inevitable when the scope of veganism is reduced to Western culture rather than global anti-colonialism. Anti-speciesism is increasingly viewed as consistent with anti-oppression, and biocentrism consistent with anti-authoritarianism. This combination of earth, non-human and human animal liberation presents an anarchist struggle for total liberation.
Speciesism is still widely tolerated in many anarchist communities. Despite the growing number of anarchist vegans, speciesism and human supremacy are still viewed as secondary problems. Some blame the language barrier between human and non-human animals for this lack of consideration. Intelligence, physical limitations and sometimes even the question of sentience all play a role in speciesist apologism. But as more anarchists acknowledge intersectionalism and interdependence of all oppressions, veganism is viewed as the logical process of being anti-speciesist. Anarchism without anti-speciesism allows space for irrational discrimination, domination, and oppression. Furthermore, anarchism without veganism allows space for patriarchy and rape culture. The exploitation of milk from cows or eggs from chickens enables the coercive and sexual exploitation of uterus-bearing individuals. Without total freedom for all, authority and oppression remain over some to benefit those in a position of power and privilege.
More anarchist collectives have extended solidarity to nonhuman animals through promoting veganism, opening up anti-speciesist spaces, and being vocal against non-human animal oppression. Guerrilla gardening, community gardening and polyculture are on the rise in many anti-oppression communities in an effort to combat monoculture and Genetically Modified foods which colonise other lands with industrialisation and environmental destruction. Despite ever-increasing state repression, a gradual increase of property destruction attributed to non-human animal liberation continues. In online forums and in the streets, speciesism within the anarchist community is receiving more constructive criticism. Anti-speciesism means critically examining social interactions and communication between all animals, human and non-human alike. In the process of eliminating oppressive language and practices, solidarity is extended with power, respect, and equality to all who are oppressed. Many anarchists across the globe have embraced veganism not only as a practice of healthy survival but also as an extention of solidarity beyond the speciesist limits of human struggle. Today one can see the merging of the anarchist anti-capitalist/anti-fascist struggle with the eco-defense, animal and earth liberation movements. These struggles in combination present an uncompromising war against capitalism, the state, civilisation and the myriad of colonial oppression.
|
#title A Brief Introduction To Ecological Anarchies
#author Julian Langer
#LISTtitle A Brief Introduction To Ecological Anarchies
#date 9/3/24
#source <[[https://www.freespiritanarchist.com/post/a-brief-introduction-to-ecological-anarchies][freespiritanarchist.com/post/a-brief-introduction-to-ecological-anarchies]]>
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-03-12T22:06:04.417Z
#authors Julian Langer
#topics eco-anarchy, green-anarchy, anarcho-primitivism, decolonialism, Indigenous, veganarchism, anarcho-naturism, social ecology, pagan, primal anarchy, nihilistic anarchism, introduction, anti-ideology, totalitarianism, technology, feral, empire,
From the outset, it seems obvious that it would be impossible to reduce eco-anarchist praxes to what may be written and recorded for anyone to read, in the same way that it is impossible for any individual to visit a river and write down all that there is in the river. As such, even as a “brief introduction”, this can only fail to do justice to the subject matter. It also feels important to affirm that there is no totalising ideological collective monologue, which all ecological anarchies can be reduced to. Attempts to reduce ecological anarchist praxes to smaller monologues, such as primitivism, green-anarchy, indigenous anarchism, de-colonial-anarchism veganarchism, social ecology, pagan-anarchism, anarcho-naturism, anarcho-nihilism, primal anarchy and any other that I have neglected to mention, may well reflect many similar general tendencies that are part of most praxes; and equally none of these account for the uniqueness and individual-differences of every habitat and every living being’s life.
Just as most animals who live within the oceans of the world can swim and most animals who live within the woods and forests of the world can walk, whilst being entirely different and non-assimilated into some grand monologue, with diversity and difference being a key feature of healthy habitats; there is no one totalising Eco-Anarchist Praxis, no reductive singularising “ism” that has actually reduced praxes to the true One path — though there are certainly individuals who pretend to have located such a path and hold that all ought to conform to their ideology. This affirmation of the diversity of co-existing ecological anarchies is one I make entirely positively, whilst also holding an inescapable pessimism towards my (or anyone else’s) ability to adequately affirm “all of this” — I can only fail here, and that is kind of wonderful.
One of the habitual similarities that I have observed within ecological anarchist praxes is that of being revolted by and rebelling against the warring colonialist expansion of the empire of totalitarian agriculture; though this certainly differs in intensity between individuals, their perspectives and praxes. This will to resist totalitarianism and empire is one I see within the efforts in rewilding, cull-resistance, earth liberation, animal liberation and the preservation of habitat and indigenous cultures. These efforts differ entirely between individuals and places, based on geographical differences and the differences in the lives of the individuals.
Perhaps the most divisive of subject matters within eco-anarchist conversations is the matter of technology and I feel to affirm that I approach this with a deeply techno pessimist orientation, though one that is less puristic than many of those who call themselves primitivists, who I have encountered. Those who feel optimistic about technological-progression and what the expansion of the technosphere has done, I notice, typically are more inclined towards social-ecology and the socialist ideologies that seek to conserve the structures and industrialist practices of this culture, through “sustainable” and “eco-friendly” technologies. For myself and what seems like most of the techno-pessimistic individuals I have encountered; the revolt against technology seems rooted upon the ground of recognising it as despotic, mediating and ecologically-violent.
Another similarity of habits and habitats that I notice is that of eco-anarchist praxes largely caring more about health and wellness, personal, relational, environmental, embodied and mental, than property or attempts to socially engineer futures for others to live within. These orientations towards health and wellness, in my experience, come from perspectives that care for flesh, with feelings of love for life and the living. Reflecting on this, I notice two great challenges; the difficulty of any individual overcoming diseases of civilisation whilst living without separation from Leviathan and separation being ecologically impossible; and that of any medicine-praxis surviving without being somewhat assimilated into industry and the work machine.
The last habit of eco-anarchist praxes that I notice, which largely has the feeling of attempting healing, is that of ecdysis. What I mean by ecdysis is the shedding of the skin that holds the toxins of this culture, becoming the animals we actually are and an experience of being feral; as living in-between the city/empire/colonialism/statism/civilisation/Leviathans and wild-habitat/anarchy/tribe; which are ecologically non-separate, whilst being vastly different presences within the body of this world. In perhaps its simplest form, this might be experienced in nudity.
Given that this brief introduction is and could only ever be a failure, I suggest that any individual who wants a better introduction to eco-anarchies take themselves to where weeds grow and wildlife live.
|
#title Beyond Electoralism
#subtitle Reflections on anarchy, populism, and the crisis of electoral politics
#author A Collective of Anarchist Geographers
#date 2016, December
#source ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2016, 16
#lang en
#authors Erin Araujo, Federico Ferretti, Anthony Ince, Kelvin Mason, Joshua Mullenite, Jenny Pickerill, Toby Rollo, Richard J White
#topics electoral politics, electoralism, culture of resistance, Brexit, ACME
#notes from ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2016, 16 accessed November 10, 2020 at https://www.academia.edu/35480159/Beyond_Electoralism_Reflections_on_anarchy_populism_and_the_crisis_of_electoral_politics_A_Collective_of_Anarchist_Geographers?auto=download&email_work_card=download-paper
*** Abstract
This paper is comprised of a series of short, conversational or polemical interventions reflecting on the political ‘moment’ that has emerged in the wake of the rise of right-populist politics, particularly in the Global North. We position the UK’s ‘Brexit’ vote and the election of Donald Trump as US President as emblematic of this shift, which has a longer genesis and a wider scale than these events alone. In particular, we draw on anarchist principles and approaches to consider opportunities for re-energising and re-orienting our academic and activist priorities in the wake of these turbulent times. Following a short introductory section, in which we collectively discuss key questions, challenges and tensions, each contributor individually draws from their own research or perspective to explore the possibilities of a politics beyond electoralism.
Published with Creative Commons licence: Attribution—Noncommercial—No Derivatives
"Not fear but hope in the Apocalypse" (Mandarini, 2008)
*** Introduction
The recent rise of right-populist politics has capitalised on, and nurtured, growing uncertainties and anxieties across Europe and the USA. Following the result of the UK referendum to leave the European Union (Brexit) and the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA, anarchists, like everyone else caught up in the aftermath of this electoral whirlwind, found themselves in a turbulent political environment. This environment had emerged out of—and produced new space for—an intensification of political polarisation and particularly the mainstreaming of populist hard-right policies, discourses and values. To recoil is unavoidable but to retreat from struggles in such challenging times only serves to embolden the kind of destructive politics that we must confront. Herein, we are interested in what is faced, what ways forward exist, and how to actively generate a hopeful politics beyond electoralism as a form of resistance (Solnit, 2016) in our various academic and activist positionalities.
The populist reactions in western democracies against political-economic elites is neither a cause for optimism and celebration nor a time for lamentation and despair at the failure of ‘good citizens’ to adhere to liberal representative democracy’s norms and expectations. In practice, the electoral alternatives offered were no real alternatives at all. To vote ‘Remain’ in the UK meant the continuation of David Cameron’s austerity government and the aggressive implementation of EU neoliberal trade policies. To vote against Trump effectively meant voting for a right-wing liberal, Hillary Clinton, as US Commander-in-Chief; a foreign policy ‘hawk’ who backed coercive regime change in Iraq, Libya and Honduras. Even those with a more progressive agenda, like left-populist political parties such as Podemos in Spain or the UK Labour Party’s recent swing to the left, the crushing of Syriza in Greece is a particularly bruising example of how the matrices of power which such politics orbit are designed to discipline and quell even mildly divergent hopes and dreams when they become a threat to ruling establishments.
The aim of this intervention is therefore to understand recent political crises and transformations through anarchists’ critiques of power relations, intersectional injustices, and narratives of revolt and freedom. Much of this paper is far from academic in tone, format, referencing, and style—and deliberately so—in order to clear pathways that might otherwise have been obscured. Specifically, pathways beyond electoralism—beyond a self-defeating cycle of reliance on the sovereign violence of coercive leadership—are urgently needed. Faced with a widely-felt crisis of liberal representative democracy in the Global North, and coupled with the ugly resurgence of authoritarian and far-right ideologies, what might collective responses of anarchists and other egalitarian anti-authoritarian perspectives look like, sound like, or feel like?
As geographers, social scientists and social movement activists, many of us have experienced frustration across the field of ‘critical’ scholarship. Experts in leftist critique and deconstruction now tend to occupy decidedly comfortable positions in the proverbial Ivory Tower of academia. Yet, efforts to propose concrete ideas, strategies or approaches within the pages of critical academic publications can face considerable resistance. In the newly-emerging political landscape, especially in polities and political cultures of the Global North, it is beneficial to step back from the comfort of critique and think carefully about what knowledge our academic labour is producing, and its relevance to imagining and creating new forms, structures, and relations. These, we believe, must recognise the grounded realities of the present but boldly prefigure alternative futures nonetheless. As such, recognising, envisioning and enacting (anarchistic) spaces of hope and liberation in the present moment necessitates a keen focus on praxis—on putting ideas into action—learning from, collaborating with, and ensuring their applicability for social movements and other radical initiatives.
Europe and the USA are not the only regions in the world to experience a populist surge, nor are they the first. There is also a worrying global trend to the right—to right-populism and neo-fascism—which suggests that the problems lie not just with specific electoral systems but in how we organise as societies and understand that organisation politically. While some on the left propose the need for new progressive political parties or blocs, anarchist alternatives look beyond electoralism and explore the possibilities of direct democracy and new post-statist epistemologies (and ontologies). We also acknowledge the need for our alternatives to reach out beyond predictable and perhaps stale ideology, and beyond familiar platforms, to appeal to disaffected and self-disenfranchising citizens. How, in short, should anarchism engage with populism? In what places and spaces can we meet to contest and construct the political in our diverse contexts (Mouffe, 1999)?
**** Anarchist perspectives
The infamous circled-A represents Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s maxim "anarchy is order", yet the stereotype of anti-authoritarian politics is quite the opposite. Our individual contributions in this paper point to the recurring theme of how horizontal and anti-authoritarian forms of organisation are a central component of an effective response. Indeed as Schneider (2017) has argued:
‘the bulk of anarchist tradition has sought for people to be better organised in their everyday lives—while they work, where they live, how they manage disagreements. This type of power emanates from below, and it is shared. Anarchists aspire to a kind of world in which the Donald Trumps among us can shout all they want but nobody has the need for flocking to them. <em>Real, daily democracy does not leave much room for quite so much greatness</em>.’ (emphasis added)
Beyond the strict hierarchies of political parties - be they revolutionary or reformist in nature - anarchist organisational imaginaries and strategic analyses are diverse. Consider the highly-disciplined ‘platformist’ tradition that emerged from the Makhnovshchina’s vast anarchist Black Armies in the Russian Revolution (Arshinov, 2005), or the mass anarchist-communist collectivisation of large parts of Spain in the mid-1930s (Peirats, 2010). More recently, the Bookchin-inspired organisational structures that have developed in the absence of a functioning state in Rojava and the longevity of insurrectionary communities of the Zapatistas in Chiapas are clear examples of effective mass horizontal organisation, but also examples of how anarchistic forms vary in relation to their diverse geographical and historical contexts. The origins of these forms are likewise diverse—springing from complex regional histories and movements that, rather than ‘fizzling out’ or becoming co-opted, actually flourished, became embedded, and developed complex organisational cultures and structures for moving beyond immediate moments of transformation, crisis, or collapse. These sources of inspiration - both in inspiration’s emotive and institutional/organisational senses - can help us trace the genealogies and trajectories of new forms, and thereby identify potential leverage points and courses of action.
Nevertheless, there is an altogether more everyday dimension of anarchistic approaches to form, structure, and strategy; one that lives and breathes among us irrespective of political persuasion, and which, therefore, has enduring allure in anarchist imaginations. As several of our contributions outline below, there is a wide range of anarchistic organisational forms that operate daily - within, against, and beyond capitalist-statist spaces and relations. As Schneider details above, anarchism generates great power through these often rather mundane acts at the grassroots. There is an important everyday quality to these ways of being which can create different relations in society. It is a belief in the power of horizontality, of individuals organising equally with each other, of grassroots self-determination, which binds together our approaches to anarchism. However, many such examples (e.g. trust and collaboration in organisations, sharing, hospitality, responsibility) are so ingrained in various modes of accumulation and coercion that they are often barely distinguishable from that against which we fight. This anarchy on which capitalism and state power are based raises important questions regarding how to expand such relations and disembed them from the machine that feeds off their vitality.
This collective conception of autonomy on which anarchists base their thinking also unearths intersections between tactical decisions and ethical commitments. For example, we may agree that in contrast to the coercive violence of the state, acts of physical confrontation with the far-right or police are critical ruptures from this monopoly of violence that acts upon us every day. Moreover, the intersecting oppressions of capitalist-statist society mean that the violence of that society is wielded many times more on certain groups than on others. Therefore violence against the representatives of oppressive structures could be legitimate - even liberating - in some circumstances. In the fallout from Trump’s victory and the anonymous attack on US ‘alt-right’ poster boy Richard Spencer, the question "is it ethical to punch a Nazi?" became a point of debate across the political spectrum. However, accepting the critique of statist violences does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all violence committed against structures of domination is justified in and of itself. As Emmanuel Levinas would suggest, partly following Kropotkin’s and Tolstoy’s anarchist ethics, our entwinement with the other (whoever they may be, and whatever they may represent) necessarily demands of us an ethical sensibility rooted in a radical co-responsibility for all others at all times. Politically, Hannah Arendt argues that while ‘Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it’ (1970, p.59). Acknowledging the contextuality of tactical violence, Uri Gordon suggests that anarchists must ‘be responsible, experiment and keep their options open’ (2008, p.108). How, then, can we forge practical solidarities between different tactics and approaches that appear to be at odds with one another? Learning from the ‘messy’ debates and discussions within movements themselves, again, may present answers that academics all too easily overlook in their search for ‘neat’, logical conclusions.
What those who seek to move beyond electoralism now face, therefore, is a complex matrix of challenges and opportunities in the present turbulence and uncertainty. This raises the question, addressed in many of our individual contributions that follow, of how realistic interventions can be made to carve spaces for forms of scholarship and praxis that can not only prefigure the futures we seek but also make concrete impacts in present struggles. These interventions will necessarily differ according to the context in which organising and mobilisation takes place. The tactical diversity of anarchist approaches thus comes into its element; freed from the constraints of the Party and ballot box, the configurations through which we might act become myriad.
**** What next? Nurturing spaces for action
The post-electoral moment signalled by Brexit and the election of President Trump threatens to become an epoch defined by othering, jingoism, and attacks on the most vulnerable, particularly migrants. The responses gathered here highlight the mobilisation of diverse geographies in response to right-populism to generate forms of hopeful and resistant politics. Federico Ferretti recovers the insights of early anarchist geographers, stressing the need for anarchist academics to rediscover links with grassroots movements. In an exchange with his imaginary Socratic interlocutor, Kelvin Mason considers local activist responses to populism (see also Finley, 2017). Toby Rollo’s engagement with white supremacy considered as love calls into question how academics construct justice from positions of privilege. Decolonising electoral politics is Erin Araujo’s focus, questioning a blanket anarchist rejection of engagement with electoral politics through the example of the CNI in Mexico. Joshua Mullenite argues that the shift to right-wing populism will have little impact on the catastrophic climate change already set in motion through neoliberal forms of government. Richard White argues for an ethics of care in activism. A tactical anarchist focus on anti-fascism is considered by Anthony Ince. Finally, Jenny Pickerill considers the generation of prefigurative politics in the present.
A number of themes cut across and emerge from these diverse individual responses:
1. Scale, and the continuing need for anarchists to engage with the local and grassroots while developing strategies to counter a global trend.
1. Praxis, whereby anarchist academics have an obligation to work constructing alternatives as much as formulating critique.
1. Communalism, co-constructing town, village, and neighbourhood assemblies and federations as alternatives to electoral state politics.
1. Inclusion, or how anarchists can reach ‘disenfranchised’ citizens who have turned to populism to co-construct alternative stories of collectively reclaiming the power.
1. ‘Acting up’, acknowledging the imperative to keep battling, stirring things up, making a noise and disrupting new regimes even if it may look as if we are losing.
1. An ethic of care and mutual aid as integral to anarchist responses, as well as critical engagement with right-wing populisms.
In the contributions that follow, we draw from our individual research interests and activisms to discuss analyses, critiques, and proposals for moving forward - boldly but mindfully - into the new political period that faces us. In many ways, we should not see this shift as a sudden rupture but as an intensification and a rendering-visible of dynamic conditions and relations that have existed for some time (e.g. Ingram, 2017). As such, when we refer to ‘moving forward’ we do not propose a singular, teleological programme of action; indeed, to move forward is a situated and contextual practice that requires a certain relational negotiation between oneself and what stands ahead. Forward, beyond what confronts us, is a multitude of possibilities for developing new, perhaps liberatory, ways of researching, relating, and organising. Despite - or, perhaps, precisely because of - such ambiguities in tracing out pathways, we feel it is important that scholars take this intensification as an opportunity for revisiting our priorities, practices, and understandings.
*** What now? First, let’s stop "being dupes"!
by Federico Ferretti
The anarchist tradition contains a rich set of ideas on the inadequacy of electoral politics for a program of social transformation; nevertheless, this "classical" corpus is generally overlooked, or even discarded with some sense of superiority, by most of contemporary scholarship. As the early anarchist tradition and the geographical one intersect significantly, it is worth considering which insights early anarchist geographers can furnish to present day non-electoral politics and their spatialities. Contemporary criticisms of elections as rituals of giving away power (Purcell, 2014) resonates clearly with the arguments of the authors I address here.
Anarchist critiques of parliamentary politics started from Pierre Joseph Proudhon’s deception after his experience at the 1848 Assemblee nationale constituante, the assembly which followed the insurrections of February 1848 and ruled the French Second Republic from 4 May 1848 to 26 May 1849. The first political thinker who labelled himself explicitly as "an anarchist", Proudhon hoped to represent there the revolutionary aspirations of the working classes. The failure of the Second Republic to perform a social revolution and the repression and reaction which followed are considered by anarchist thinkers like Kropotkin (1896) as a milestone in the definitive rift between anarchism and parliamentarianism, and inspired Proudhon’s famous statement that being governed means to be "noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.... repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed... mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured" (Proudhon 1851, 341).
These words, which are considered to anticipate the contemporary concept of biopolitics (Springer 2013, 117), were echoed by anarchist geographers Reclus and Kropotkin in their respective claims against French elections in the 1880s. Reclus (quoted from the version published by the journal Freedom in 1910) argued that "to vote is to be dupes" because "to vote is to abdicate, to nominate one or more masters for a period short or long to renounce one’s own sovereignty" (Freedom 249, January 1910, 4). The same concept was expressed by Kropotkin, who added that political corruption leads to a loss of interest for political participation: "What a shame that there are no special trains to allow the electors to see their ‘Chamber’ at work! They would soon be disgusted..... To this rabble of nonentities the people abandons all its rights, except that of dismissing them from time to time and naming others in their places [so that] the great mass of the people ends up losing interest in the comedy" (Kropotkin 1885, 197).
Reclus and Kropotkin focused then on organisation and competences, drawing on geographical matters such as the critique of centralist state in favour of decentralisation. According to Reclus, people should stop believing "that men like yourselves acquire suddenly at the tinkling of a bell the power of knowing and understanding everything. Your mandatories having to legislate on everything, from lucifer matches to ships of war, from clearing off caterpillars from trees to the extermination of peoples, red or black, it must seem to you that their intelligence will enlarge the virtue of the immensity of the task" (Freedom 249, January 1910, 4). Kropotkin, who experienced the inefficiency of central administration since his explorations in Siberia, was equally sarcastic: "Your representative is expected to express an opinion... on the whole infinitely various series of questions that surge up in that formidable machine—the centralized State. He must vote the dog tax and the reform of university instruction, without ever having set foot in a university or known a country dog.... He will vote on phylloxera, on tobacco, on guano, on elementary education and on the sanitation of the cities.... He will kill the vine, imagining he is protecting it; he will vote for reforestation against pasture, and protect the pastures against the forests. He will know all about railways.... An omniscient and omnipotent Proteus, today soldier, tomorrow pig breeder, in turn banker, academician, sewer-cleaner, doctor, astronomer, drug manufacturer, currier and merchant,... in the Chamber his opinion becomes law" (Kropotkin 1885, 197 198).
A critique of the different dimensions of power is apparent in Reclus’s idea that "power has always made its possessors foolish... if you send your mediocrities into a place of corruption, be not astonished if they come out corrupted" (Freedom 249, January 1910, 5). These statements also show that early anarchists did not cultivate much illusions on the "good nature" of human beings, because they considered that gaining political power is likely to corrupt well-intentioned people. This concept was also developed by Errico Malatesta, who argued that parliamentary mandates had a bad pedagogical impact for both elected and electors, as the former might be corrupted by the mechanism they entered and the latter might lose the habit of direct struggle once accustomed to delegating to others.
The famous Italian anarchist also clarified that an anarchist refusal of voting is not an absolute one, because a vote can be considered when it has a direct value, e.g. the vote at a free assembly. There, an anarchist criterion is not necessarily seeking unanimous consensus, but ensuring that a majority should not be able to impose its decisions to a minority, and that every individual is entitled to keep only the engagements they freely accepted. According to Malatesta, "it is not true that it is impossible to act together if there is not the agreement of everybody... what is true is that, if a minority cedes to a majority, it must be by its free will" (L’Agitazione, 14 March 1897). It is worth noting that these ideas owed to a complex and problematic conception of power: anarchists like Malatesta acknowledged the multidimensional nature of power including what is currently called its ‘microscale’, anticipating later elaborations on this topic. As shown by recent scholarship, their way to counter power at all scales was first and foremost federalist egalitarian and horizontal organisation, tough militants such as Malatesta and Luigi Fabbri (1877-1935) remain disgracefully little-known to contemporary English-speaking scholarship (Ferretti, 2016; Turcato, 2015).
A prefigurative example of the use of non-statist decisional scales came with the 1936-39 Spanish collectivisation (Breitbart, 1978), following the 1936 definition of Libertarian Communism by the CNT, based on the three levels of "the individual, the commune, the federation" (Puente, 2013). The Spanish case also shows that the refusal of ‘tactical’ voting is not a religious dogma for anarchists, as a great part of the CNT activists voted at the 1936 elections because the left had promised liberation of political prisoners in the case of victory, though this choice has been harshly criticised by anarchist historiography (Richards, 1953).
Why should one consider now these authors, writings and concepts? Because experiences of direct democracy and bottom-up organisation, from Chiapas to Rojava, are rediscovering this set of ideas while, on the other side, the political left remains unable to provide alternatives to the existing order all over the world. Thus, the emergence of figures like Trump and the advance of the far right in Europe are a result of this failure. The anarchist tradition provides a number of experiences of spatial and social prefiguration and a related corpus of critical thinking with which critical scholarship (and not only the anarchist one) should engage more in order to enhance the transformation of society starting by the spaces and scales at which decisions are made. Geographers and other scholars can contribute to this by rediscovering links with grassroots movements and by reviving this critical tradition beyond disciplinary barriers and beyond the walls of academic institutions, assuming in this the example of early anarchist geographers such as Reclus and Kropotkin, who refused political power but did not neglect any way to reach wider publics. This included collaboration with both popular and specialized publishers; contribution to both mainstream and militant journals; conferences in academic contexts and learned societies as well as in public meetings and protest mobilisations; and interdisciplinary, multilingual and transnational approaches as a challenge to nationalist and institutional (academic and non-academic) ways of producing knowledge (Ferretti, 2014).
*** On anarchist responses to electoral populism: a dialogue from the edge
by Kelvin Mason
You look troubled,’ the Gadfly said, landing on my laptop.
‘Well, Brexit then Trump... Most of my political community is despondent, terrified even. Where do we go from here?’ What am I to write? How am I to write?’
‘Your local political community is unusual, isn’t it?’
‘Living on the west Wales coast, we’re not only on a geographic edge but a political one too. Our representative democracy at both the Wales and UK government scales is contested between peripheral parties, Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats, both pro-Remain. We’re the most Europhile area in Britain (YouGov, 2016).’
‘But your personal activism is with social movements outside electoral politics?’
‘Outside but not beyond. In a small town, in a rural area, such activism must involve alliances with groups from the more progressive political parties. And, though we campaign against the political establishment, in the immediate reality we are most often seeking to change it through its institutions rather than overthrow it. The local authority, itself oppressed by central government policies, can be an ally.’
‘And why are people terrified? What’s changed? Surely your struggles were largely defined by the European Union and establishment politics in the US, neoliberal economic policies and global military aggression as ready examples?’
‘The electoral choices in both the UK and US was between two wrongs, either of which would result in a shade of right—politically, not morally (e.g. Mason, 2016a, Van Reybrouck, 2016; Mounk, 2017). Regarding Brexit, my local community has already mobilised against an increasing incidence of hate crime and the imminent prospect of diluting environmental regulation. With Trump as President-elect, people’s fears for themselves, never mind for women’s and minority rights within the US, are even more existential: climate change, even nuclear war (e.g. Mehta, 2016).’
‘I repeat, though,’ the Gadfly said, rolling his compound eyes, ‘what’s changed?’
‘Populism. Explicitly, right-wing populism. Judis proposes that left-wing populism champions ‘the people’ against an elite and/or an establishment (Judis, 2016). Right wing populism does the same, but in addition scapegoats others—‘out’ groups, typically immigrants—whom it claims the elite/establishment favours over the people.’
‘And the definition of ‘the people’ is a moveable feast?’
‘As suits the populist rhetoric of the moment. But in the case of Brexit, the people are mainly defined as white and British, especially English.’
‘And for Trump, white and American, whatever American signifies?’ The Gadfly checked, pacing the keyboard, ‘So, ‘the people’ are working class, particularly unemployed, under-employed and lowly-paid workers whose misfortunes populist rhetoric attributes to immigrants, outsiders prepared to work for lower wages under inferior conditions?’
‘While the same or perhaps another ‘out group’ is blamed for crime, terrorism and other social problems - the strain on health services, for instance.’
‘Trump is still part of a very establishment political party, however?’
‘And the populist discourse that helped swing the Brexit vote emanated mainly from UKIP which, although an anti-establishment party, did not gain any direct political power from the Leave decision.’
‘Not straight-forward right-wing populist party political coups, then? Given that right-wing, establishment political parties will continue to exercise power in the UK and US through the institutions of the state and in favour of corporate capitalism, I ask again: what’s changed for anarchist struggles?’
‘Right-wing populism is even more morally reprehensible than right-wing elitism. It conjures skewed visions of social justice based on notions of nation and identity, home, belonging and territory. But such visions clearly appeal to a lot of people in the UK and US.’
‘Not to mention in other western nations currently - France, Austria, Italy, Hungary and the Netherlands.’
‘Owen Jones wrote that the left needs a ‘new populism’ (Jones, 2016). Among some comrades in social movements, his proposal received a hostile response. Associating populism with an appeal to self-interest, othering, charismatic and fickle leaders (e.g. Crick, 2002), one social media response ran: ‘We need to fight for what is right without compromising any of our values. Only by repeating our truths time and time again will we achieve a just society."
‘Except that repeating our ‘truths’ isn’t working?’
‘Repetition is but one aspect of communication. And aren’t the left going to make space for new truths - new knowledges? It’s a pity that Owen Jones used the term populism in his title, because what he was actually asking for was not any compromise of values ‘in the fight against racism, misogyny and homophobia but it (the left) must work out how to do that in a way that connects with the unreachedE We need an emotionally compelling vision. Because we know that stating the facts and hoping for the best will not blunt the Right or build a progressive alliance (Jones, 2016)."
‘Despondency doesn’t suit you,’ the Gadfly decided, rubbing his forelegs together, ‘and it won’t help your local community. You need to get on with building that defiant hope you talk about, from the ashes (Solnit, 2009, 2016). Some have presented the rise of right-wing populism as an opportunity, tuning into to its anti-establishment strand, calling for progressive international alliances (e.g. Mason, 2016b, Varoufakis, 2016ab, Zizek, 2016).’
‘If it is an opportunity, we need to develop our emotionally compelling vision differently from past efforts, and present it very differently—much more creatively and poetically via different media and forms. (e.g. Brown, 2015; Mason, 2017; Sartre, 2001; Springer, 2017; Thompson, 2012). To compliment the hard-graft of traditional grassroots politics, we need a politics of art.’
‘From what you’ve said, progressive alliances are already in formation locally?’
‘As a primary instance, we have a People’s Assembly that involves members of the more progressive parties as well as people who might self-identify as anarchists. Such alliances can reach the unreached. Certainly, our local People’s Assembly has attracted or re-attracted a number of dis-engaged people to become actively involved in politics. Moreover, through their agenda for action, our People’s Assembly group is consciously reaching out to support people betrayed by establishment politics: the homeless, users of foodbanks, those on workfare and zero hours contracts...’
‘Bookchin wrote,’ the Gadfly said, taking off and landing on a book, ‘that ‘to get from a centralised statist ‘here’ to a civically decentralised and confederal ‘there", we need conscious movements ‘to seek out counter-institutions that stand in opposition to the power of the nation state (Bookchin, 1989)."
‘And he’s clear that he doesn’t mean marginalised communes or co-ops, but a libertarian municipal movement that ‘establishes a system of confederal relationships between municipalities; one that will form a regional power in its own right."’
‘Bookchin would favour making space for new knowledges. He would surely also back new ways of communicating such knowledges. What he highlights is that ideas such as a ‘Progressive International’ or ‘all-European Left’ can perhaps—and should perhaps - begin with progressive local alliances.’
‘For me, the challenge is to develop emotionally compelling visions—plural, rooted in the local, which eschew populist irrationalities—othering or exclusionary localism (Mason & Whitehead, 2012, see also Featherstone, 2012; Brown & Yaffe, 2014 ).’
‘Judging by your comrade’s reaction to Owen Jones’ proposal, I anticipate that creatively, poetically and dramatically developing such visions might meet with more opposition from within progressive alliances than from the Right?!’
‘There’s a lot of work to do; we need to communicate.’ ‘Get typing, then’ the Gadfly said, and flew away.
*** Love and Hate: The Center and the Periphery of Whiteness
by Toby Rollo
"Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavour to trace its imperfections, its perversions."
<br>
—Frantz Fanon
Following the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump, many have expressed shock and discontent that racist and xenophobic movements have secured democratic legitimacy and further emboldened a politics of hate and anger. Many concerned citizens claim that the phenomena of Brexit and Trump reflects an unprecedented infusion of malevolence into the political mainstream. This may be true, yet the heightened anxiety is also indicative of a preoccupation with the vocal periphery of white nationalism, a relatively small group that is motivated by ignorant, hateful, and authoritarian ideologies. Overlooked by this telescopic fixation on a rise of political belligerence and prejudice, endorsed and encouraged by a declaredly ‘ignorant’ set of citizens, are those forms of racist and colonial domination that characterize progressive cosmopolitan politics. Exclusionary violence is also prevalent in more progressive segments of political society, though these elements are obscured insofar as they tend to be inspired by love and empathy rather than hate and anger.
There are at least four popular assumptions regarding white nationalism that obscure its connections to progressive ideals that are motivated by love and empathy: (a) that whiteness reflects adherence to a political ideology, (b) that it is overtly based on a racial hierarchy, (c) that it is cultivated in conditions of misinformation and ignorance, (d) and that it is motivated by fear, anger and hate. While these features do describe the rather thin periphery of vocal and vulgar racism, as a definition it fails to capture the motivations and the harm perpetuated within the political mainstream. Mainstream white nationalism finds expression in even the most benign discourses of progress, modernity, and civilization (Mignolo, 2011). It is characterized by a set of practices and relationships that preserve and promote European civilizational ideals including the privileging of mind over body, reason over emotion, the modern over the primitive, and commerce over mutual aid. Historically, exclusionary violence operated through the doctrinal veneration of European ideals of mind, reason, civilization, and markets over their corresponding subordinates (associated in the early-modern era with the peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Americas). The ideological and material violence thrust on the globe by European empire, colonialism, and slavery were justified through the authority granted to these ostensibly inclusive liberal principles. The ‘white man’s burden’ was thus conceived of as a relationship that required the cultivation of the mind and reason through the education of the primitive non-European, the promotion of literacy and sophistication, the establishment of a civilized political order predicated on liberal notions of citizenship rather than parochial kinship relations, and the generation of wealth through the imposition of private property and free market economies.
Few of the catastrophes precipitated by the Euro-American civilizational project have been a product of malice, and there is no necessary link between the idea of European supremacy and spurious theories of biological race or racial hierarchy. Indeed, the racial segregation of humanity emerged to buttress an already existing system of colonization structured by the identification of enlightened humanity with the reasoning mind, the indubitable value assigned to formal education, along with the veneration of the intellect, civility, and citizen spirit. From the outset, mainstream white nationalists have been animated by love and compassion for those who uphold moral doctrines of education, citizenship, and capitalism, as well as empathetic regret those uneducated, illiterate, poor, and stateless groups who represent a moral tragedy (Williams, 2012). Whatever happiness these groups might claim is dismissed as the inane pleasure of the fool or the infant whose debased condition calls for an intervention of compassionate discipline and tutelage. The vast majority of white nationalists abhor the grotesque propaganda espoused by their vulgar racist cousins. It is love, not hate, which stands as the central pillar of modern exclusionary politics, enabling the coercion and disciplining of those who do not aspire to its civilizational ideals.
Whiteness manifests in love for God and country; in the way people naturalize parental authority, discipline, and even pain as necessary to civilize human beings out of primitive childhood (a process associated with unconditional parental love); it manifests in the way parents and young children bond over racist narratives and nursery rhymes; in the way laughter and racist humour brings people closer to their uncles and cousins; in the honour bestowed on parents and grandparents who fought in wars predicated on the preservation of empire; in the sympathy directed to the parent, sibling, or good friend whose livelihood has been exported to a developing country; in the way citizenship in a particular nation-state is associated with esteem and even virtue while the most vulnerable are compelled to undertake ‘criminal’ transgressions of national borders; in the way the memories that constitute people focus on a formative family home or a home-land made possible through the ongoing dispossession and genocide of Indigenous peoples; in the convivial distribution of wealth among friends and family made possible by centuries of African and Indigenous enslavement; in the way people enact care and reciprocity through gifts manufactured by enslaved brown and black children; in the way the success of businesses, colleagues, and commercial ventures hinges on the ongoing global exploitation of labour and displacement of vulnerable communities. In these ways and many more, white nationalism and loving relations are co-constitutive.
It is not without irony that an individual’s ignorance and lack of education are seen as the basic pre-conditions of exclusionary politics. It is, after all, precisely the alleged ignorance of non-Europeans that led to their exclusion and racialization in the first place (Rollo, 2016a). This irony seems sufficient to give pause for a critical reassessment of the place of progress in progressive movements, and to consider that the bonds of whiteness are not intellectual or ideological but affective and relational. The superiority of European society is not a hypothesis awaiting contradictory evidence, nor a philosophical premise open to superior argument, nor is it an ideology or popular myth that can be undone by a powerful counter-narrative or new political party. The bonds of white nationalism are emotional and directed at values that are not exclusive to Republicans, Brexit supporters, or Trump voters. We find the same affection for education and industriousness extolled by Clinton, Sanders, Stein, Corbyn, and virtually every other political figure in memory. The emergence of Brexit and Trump, along with any corresponding rise in overt racial rancour, must be understood as emerging against a backdrop of the progressive civilizational violence that we refuse to name.
The vast majority of white nationalists are not cartoonish red-necks or skinheads who subscribe to social Darwinist fictions or pseudo-scientific racial categories. Rather, they exist among the masses of moderates, centrists, liberal egalitarians, progressives, and socialists who reject the explicit violence of racialization while proudly upholding the natural superiority of literate society, of civilized society, of market society over all else. Mainstream white nationalists might model themselves as activists, or as staunch supporters of affirmative action, or as allies of Black Lives Matter, or as advocates for a borderless society, or as dedicated students of postcolonial scholarship. But far from upholding the plurality of ways of being, knowing, and living, they commit themselves to principles of justice and progress tellingly actualized through the very systems of schooling, enfranchisement, and employment deployed at the historical zenith of assimilationist colonial politics. The tenor of dialogue and the demeanour of interaction may be soft, inclusive, and civil, but the preservation of whiteness is no less present.
A simple association between vulgar racism and violence allows mainstream white nationalism to operate under pernicious illusions. Our experts hold, for instance, that the number of domestic hate crimes is an appropriate social barometer of racism and xenophobia, ignoring the carnage imposed globally as states force the world into a Euro-American civilizational mould. Likewise, citizens perceive that a lull in racist threats and vandalism signals a greater social context of equality, all but ignoring the orderly and bureaucratic destruction of black and Indigenous peoples in homes, schools, workplaces, and prisons. Citizens hold that mass electoral politics originally devised and sustained in the context of slavery and settler colonial genocide somehow provides the most effective bulwark against these forces. If we wish to understand the robustness of white nationalist institutions, which is essential to the goal of abolition and decolonization, we can no longer suffer under the delusion that violence marches predominantly under the banners of racism, hate, and ignorance. Rather, we must confront the reality that the forces of whiteness are marshalled around perverse yet durable relations of love and conviviality that prefigure democratic politics.
What is to be done? I submit that reorganizing relations of love and conviviality around genuine political equality and plurality will require a reorientation of society around the sites of childhood where we are first introduced to civilizational ideals (Rollo 2016b). It is in childhood that future citizens are trained into an affinity for these values and come to internalize the ‘white man’s burden’. It is in childhood that a perverse love is encouraged for those who complete the arc of the human telos from ‘ignorant savage’ to ‘civilized Man’ and cultivate a paternalistic empathy for those who refuse to follow its course. It is as children that we come to experience first-hand how coercion, violence, and power are necessary to propel human beings along that moral trajectory of education, citizenship, and labour. Before electoral politics can make a difference, a genuine revolution of political thought and practice requires a revolution of these relations.
*** Decolonising Electoral Politics
by Erin Araujo
The struggle for the right to vote has cost the lives of many women and men, and the desire to participate in the decision-making process of the nation-state and other governing bodies runs deep for many people. Electoral politics are presented to its publics as democracy, duty, voice, choice, membership in a nation, gender and racial power, enfranchisement, and even condoning a subjectivity of "being of worth". In my view, however, electoral politics as majority vote and/or Electoral College is an assembled actor and tool in a system of explicit hierarchies used to maintain an untouchable, un-malleable epistemic praxis of socio-political-economic networked power relationships.
It is my understanding that people want to have a voice about how they live and participate in their communities. However, living within the territory of a nation-state we are given seemingly few choices about how to participate in local, regional-state and national politics. Rather, participation in politics is often limited to interactions between the individual and the government. Be it through education or violence, entertainment or oppression, one is constantly aware that they are directed and controlled through a series of steps, agreements, bureaucracies and laws (Graeber, 2016).
Writing from the perspectives of decoloniality and anarchism, I argue that national elections and referendums are mechanisms that reify a continuance of coloniality/modernism. I then contrast the recent proposal of the National Indigenous Congress [Congreso Nacional Indigena, (CNI) in Spanish] in Mexico to place an indigenous woman candidate in the 2017 presidential elections with the western concept of electoral democracy.
The fall 2016 presidential elections and public referendums in the Americas have driven many people to reflect on electoral politics. Donald Trump in the United States of America was elected with 46.3% of the voting-age population not voting (United States Electoral project, 2016), Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua was elected with 37.75% of the vote (where abstentions range from 40% to 80%) (La Prensa, 2016), and the referendum on the peace accords between the FARC and the government of Colombia were rejected with more than 60% of the population not voting and a 0.5% margin on the results (Lafuente, 2016). While each of these decisions was made in the name of democracy and democratic process, it is difficult to find the demos in these events. Rather, limited percentages of each population participated, favouring right-wing politics of racism, sexism, xenophobia and neoliberal projects of big business that further the United Nations 2030 Development Goals. It is important to situate the United States of America in the same discursive space as Nicaragua and Colombia, for within a discourse of decoloniality the developed and developing worlds are parts of the same construction. Decoloniality suggests a de-westernisation in both theory and practice by prising apart history through a lens that privileges an equality of epistemes and ontos [1] across geographies and histories.
Walter Mignolo (2009) writes that the concept of democracy, in a genealogy of Western thought arising from the Greco-Roman empire, became foundational during the European Renaissance, the same time that the conquest of the Americas began. While democracy as a practice applicable to the governance of a nation-state—or even the existence of nation-states in general—began centuries later, other imperialist practices within that genealogy, including territorial expansion, cultural destruction and homogenisation, epistemicide, and enslavement, were used excessively. Democracy in the Americas has always been a project of coloniality.
When Europeans arrived in the Americas there was already an immense diversity of decision-making practices around territory, governance and cultural practices in general. Authors such as Lenkersdorf (2002), Quintero Weir (2013), Mignolo (2009) and Zibechi (2010) have examined how communal thinking in various parts of the indigenous Americas continues in use around local politics, economics and other necessary decision-making spaces. The communal here refers not to socialist communes but rather to an episteme of an ecology of knowledges where well-being within a community of people, the land and ecosystems come together. While democratic decision-making constructs individuals that decide for themselves who will lead (with few options to choose from) and then compiles votes to create a majority, a communal politics refers to a process of many (both human and non-human actors) deciding how the well-being of all will continue. In an anarchist decolonial communality this process would establish all participants as equals.
It is in this sense of communal well-being that the CNI in Mexico presented a proposal for an indigenous woman candidate to run in the 2017 presidential elections. While the proposal is (as of December, 2016) under consultation in over fifty indigenous regions of Mexico, it has sparked debate not only in the regions of the consultation but among those living and working in solidarity with the Zapatistas in Chiapas and the larger movement of communities associated with the CNI. It is currently unknown how the candidacy will manifest if it is approved. The Zapatistas have expressed that it will have a non-capitalist form, driven with the goal of privileging the experience of indigenous communities and their struggles nationally. This process reinforces the need to return to local decision-making practices, increased engagement in one’s community and furthering the belief that each person has a right to participate in the governance process. By way of conclusion I offer a comment by Walter Mignolo (2009): "The left, with its European genealogy of thought, cannot have the monopoly over the right to imagine what a non-capitalist future shall be. There are many non-capitalist pasts that can be drawn from, many experiences and memories that perhaps do not wish to be civilised—neither by the right nor by the left."
*** Paris Can’t Save Us
Joshua Mullenite
With the election of Donald Trump to the Office of the President and the results of the United Kingdom’s "Brexit" referendum signalling the beginning of the end for the country’s membership in the European Union, there has been a growing concern among scientists, policymakers, and environmentalists over the future of the Paris Climate Agreement, a global regulatory measure designed to reduce the impacts of climate change by limiting global warming to 21/4C (Schiermeier, 2016; Scott, 2016; UNFCCC, 2015; Wernick, 2016). Though the agreement lacks a mechanism for legally binding member countries to meeting this goal (Dimitrov, 2016), in the world of liberal democratic politics this concern is justified. If two of the most powerful industrial states change their relationship to the agreement it could prove a fatal blow to the stated goals of the Paris Agreement, increasing our collective perpetual vulnerability by removing one of the regulatory measures meant to mitigate against it. However, a focus limited to the ways in which electoral results impact the implementation of global climate agreements ignores a bigger and broader issue: global agreements, like the recent focus in environmental and disaster policy on building "resilience" (see e.g. Grove, 2014), are concerned primarily with the potential future impacts of climate change, ignoring the environmental violence being experienced in marginalised communities today. A focus on the status and future of global environmental policy ignores the general impotency of this policy to enact meaningful change in the environment, ignores the specific role of capitalist enterprises in producing violent environmental conditions, and places continued faith in electoral politics in solving problems that it cannot solve.
By focusing on electoralism and placing hope in an ever-changing cadre of politicians rather than looking at the everyday experiences of environmental violence within marginalised and targeted communities, the solutions to collective vulnerabilities are being continuously placed in the future, setting the stage for global catastrophe. Climate change is not simply a problem for the future; it is a problem in the present. Direct, causal relationships have been identified between climate change and the rise of wildfires, changes in water runoff and riverine flooding patterns, and agricultural productivity, among other factors (Abatzoglou and Williams, 2016; Arnell et al, 2016). While it is true that experiences with these climate change impacts will only intensify if dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions do not occur, a focus on the role and impact of international climate treaties obscures not only the reality that people are suffering today but that climate change is not just a cause of this suffering but also an effect of a deeper-seeded, much longer history of environmental harm in the name of capitalist gain (see Parr, 2013; Vinthagen, 2013). It also places the focus on state-centered, regulatory options, obscuring more liberatory alternatives (e.g. Mullenite, 2016). A more liberal candidate or different referendum result would not have changed this.
While there is no hope to be found in the Paris agreement, there might be in resilience. In the days and weeks following a disaster the concept of resilience emerges both in praise of the actions of individuals impacted by the disaster and as something that needs to be built to protect others from future disasters. Through decades of policy formulation and scientific development, resilience has moved from a term used to describe socioecological, psychological, and engineered states to a disciplinary tactic employed by in neoliberal forms of governance (see Chandler, 2014; Chandler and Reid, 2016). In the process, vulnerability to traumatic shocks such as the myriad disasters brought on by climate change has become naturalized. Divorced from their political and economic origins, disasters become unwieldy, contained only by regulatory environmental policy meant to minimise their inevitable effects and through the resilience of individuals and institutions to survive these effects. In this way, resilience policy offers a tacit acknowledgement that the state is unable to act sufficiently on its own to protect individuals from a disaster. Instead, as Kevin Grove (2014) argues, the state relies parasitically on the actions of vulnerable citizens to protect themselves. We are now and forever vulnerable and the state can only offer minimal assistance in mitigating this vulnerability (cf. Evans and Reid, 2014).
Despite the threat of perpetual vulnerability, examples from New Orleans’ Common Ground Collective and Occupy Sandy show how ideas of community resilience can be redefined along lines that resist the social and environmental alienation of capitalism and the neoliberal biopolitics normally associated with resilience (see Crow, 2011; Solnit, 2010; cf. Mullenite, 2016). If it is up to individuals to prepare themselves, it is also up to individuals to define the terms of their own preparations. In the process of building this new sort of resilience—one not based on the ability of the community to bounce back to a previous, potentially violent state but instead on mutual aid and solidarity—the ability to reconfigure the politics of everyday life along the same lines begins to emerge. Catastrophic changes are coming with or without the Paris Agreement. Catastrophes represent a complete upending of the dominant social ordering of society and, in the process, open new ways of being (Aradau and van Munster, 2011; Solnit, 2010).
*** Community-based Activism: for ethics of care, expressions of solidarity and a spirit of revolt
Richard J. White
"Whatever differences exist between individuals, we do not exist in some splendid isolation.... Rather, our lives are intimately and intrinsically connected with the lives—and freedoms—of others, a claim that bears out through a geographical understanding of relationality and solidarity." (White et al, 2016: 7)
In June 2016, following a particularly ugly and divisive campaign for Britain to exit the European Union, 17,410,742 individuals—a 51.9% majority - voted for Brexit (BBC, 2016). Following the Referendum, many vulnerable groups and communities across the UK, particularly those already fragmented along the fault lines of nationalism, class, race, gender, ethnicity, and religion experienced a resurgence of hate-related crime (O'Shea, 2016; Weaver, 2016). Just a few months later, similar communities across North America were having to face the dystopian consequences that followed the Presidential election of Donald Trump. Trump waged an unprecedentedly toxic, bitter and hate-filled campaign; a campaign that deliberately stirred the hornets’ nests of American patriotism, misogyny, and racism to play on people’s fears and differences (Rushton, 2016). The explosion of violence across North America that followed the election was as appalling as it was predictable. Reporting on the harassment and intimidation in the ten days that followed the Presidential Election, the SPCL (2012) drew attention to 867 hate incidents across public spaces, private spaces, workplaces, university campuses. As widely documented, many if not most of these hate crimes were fuelled by anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBT, anti-woman, anti-Semitic, and white nationalist sentiments.
Without desiring in any way to diminish the socio-spatial manifestations of these malevolent forces of anger and hatred that certain communities experienced/ are experiencing it is important that a simplistic myopic reading of these events is refused. Rather, it is vital that these should be interpreted as part of a more extensive and much deeper ongoing struggle for social justice. In doing so this allows these events, to be viewed more contextually as symptomatic of an intensification of certain anti-political/ anti-democratic tendencies. Think, for example of what the alternatives (to Brexit or Trump) offered. Supporting Remain in the EU campaign, or voting for Clinton, would also have perpetuated neoliberal, un/anti-democratic, and post-political futures (see Asher, 2016). In both these cases the alternatives would also have led to a political economy designed to further exploit, weaken and divide the most fragile and vulnerable communities and citizens within these societies (WSM in Ireland, 2016).
**** Ethics of Care, Solidarity and Revolt
Before acting and engaging intentionally in ways to promote social and spatial justice, it is important to honestly appraise our own relative skills, abilities, strengths and limitations. In addition to acknowledging the strength and limitations of where we act from, we must also better recognise our own situated knowledges, partial perspectives and privilege, and open these up to ongoing critical reflection and problematisation at all times (Haraway, 1988). To better protect and empower vulnerable communities and groups at this time of crisis there is a compelling (anarchistic) argument for a geography of direct action that is rooted in an ethical praxis of care, solidarity and revolt. Thinking about possible guiding principles, there is much to critically reflect on by engaging with the approach and principles that underpin some of the most prominent and effective anti-fascist campaigns. For example, consider how the basic principles captured by Anti Raids (2016, n.p.) embody the values of solidarity that have historically characterised many left-libertarian and syndicalist social movements:
- It should be decentralised and grassroots
- It should target all forms of nationalism and xenophobia - from the streets to the state.
- It should be braver: When the time comes to hold the line, we need to be there for each other.
- It should be creative
- It should be multiform.
Indeed, it might be we might also add that a further bullet point: if the current dystopic climate has taught us anything, it is that (anarchist) geography/ies matters more than ever. As Springer (2016: 4) notes, "Our greatest resource comes from our bonds to one another through the relationship spaces of a universal geography and via the common interest of mutual aid." Indeed, while on-line expressions of support and solidarity with people and communities are welcome, and necessary, far greater is the need for real-life tangible, human-scale and geographically embedded actions, initiatives and interventions where it is most needed. This, of course can be both come through participating in group-based actions and/ or individual ones. For example, in the UK, the Bristol branch of the revolutionary labour union, the IWW, in recognition of the increased vulnerability of migrants in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, gave their explicit support for people from migrant communities (Bristol IWW, 2016). On a more individual level, one of the most effective, yet simple, acts of solidarity was the wearing of a safety pin. Importantly, the act of wearing of the pin was never intended to be purely symbolic (i.e. an end in itself)—a mere token gesture of solidity—but a real commitment to combat racism where it is encountered. As Alison, the woman who initiated the safety pin campaign argued:
"To me the pin is simply meant to be, one, a gesture of silent reassurance—that if something were to kick off, the victim of the attack would know he or she wouldn’t have to face it alone. And, two, for those wearing it, it would be a constant reminder of the promise they’ve made not to stand idly by while racism happens to someone else." (Nagesh, 2016)
Where possible, in the short term, approaches to direct action should be community-led, in ways that co-create space of justice, and support communities help themselves achieve their own solutions to the problems that they face. Longer term, the question of how to create meaningful and lasting dialogue across fragmented communities to heal and repair becomes central.
**** Conclusion
There is much to be done to eradicate the flames of violence and bigotry reignited by Brexit and the success of Trump in America. For many Anglo-Americans, who have previously retained a blind faith in (their) mainstream versions of 'democracy' dominated by political and economic elites, its hollow and shallow nature has been decisively exposed. In this way, this unprecedented set of events should be a source of hope: crisis as an opportunity for more people to think, and act, differently. For them: "The need for a new lifeEbecomes apparent" (Kropotkin, 2002). For the heightened levels of fear, despair, grief indeed terror felt by many, has also been emboldened and fashioned new or more purposeful, strident waves of community-orientated activism, steeped in an ethics of care, intersectional solidarity and spirit of revolt. There is no blueprint for how to "best" engage and participate, or how to "heal" communities, nor should such a predetermined pathway be desired. But to engage now by speaking out against bigotry and hatred in all its forms, and seek to act in ways that help empower vulnerable communities and people is the first step; and a vitally important one at that.
**** Recommended Reading
Keelty, Christopher (2016) How to Easily be a White Ally to Marginalised Communities. http://christopherkeelty.com/easily-white-ally-marginalizedcommunities/
*** Anti-fascism: attack as defence / defence as attack
by Anthony Ince
In the present moment, we find ourselves amidst debates across the Global North about the nature and extent of fascism in our states, parliaments, and streets. The emotive label, "fascist", can risk becoming a ‘scatter-gun’ effort to discredit or confront a range of regressive or reactionary policies of the right, and if overused can lose its power as a tool of critique or confrontation. The trouble is that defining fascism can be difficult, which may partly explain why so many across the social sciences prefer to study the theoretically less ambiguous notion of racism. Despite these caveats, I will suggest that a renewed, nuanced, and explicitly anti-authoritarian notion of anti-fascism is an important dimension in confronting the uncertain future we now face. I will also argue that anti-fascism offers much more than simply opposing fascism as such.
Setting aside the wide diversity of terms—fascism, neo-fascism, far-right, alt-right, neo-Nazi, radical right, etc.—fascism (as a broad family of far-right ideologies) is usually composed of four common characteristics: 1) a fanatical affiliation to protecting and promoting national and/or ethnic identity and ‘interests’, 2) unwavering militarism, 3) deference to (particular forms and symbols of) authority, and 4) anti-liberalism and anti-libertarianism. These usually come draped in a broadly social-democratic ethos that shrouds fascism’s ultimate submission to capital. Fascisms may also have roots in modernist discourses of order and progress (Gentile, 2004), or draw from anti-/pre-modern sentiments of blood, land and heritage (Feldman and Pollard, 2016)—often both. In recent years, growing pan-European far-right movements and parties have generated a distinct ideological shift—from biologically-driven ethno-nationalism towards a "Europe of the peoples" (Spektorowski, 2015) in which a specific, exclusionary, Eurocentric form of diversity is embraced. Yet, despite this shift, the core underpinnings of far-right ideology remain.
In the UK, the far-right threat has been growing over a number of years, but two incidents in the Anglophone world have rendered this gradual re-emergence newly visible and newly empowered. While the vast majority of Donald Trump’s supporters or ‘Brexiteers’ cannot be defined as bona fide fascists, their electoral successes are certainly ‘fascist-enabling’, in the sense that they have served to legitimise attitudes, discourses and agendas that contribute to the mainstreaming and normalising of far-right politics. In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, for example, it is no coincidence that there was a substantial spike in reports of racist incidents (Institute for Race Relations, 2016a, 2016b).
In the present turbulence, and the past, electoral campaigning has proven woefully insufficient in confronting these dynamics, which stretch far beyond party politics and into the everyday lives of communities and individuals. This is something that anti-racist geographers have discussed, at least implicitly, for some time. Literatures on encounter and living with diversity foreground not periodic electoral participation as an antidote to the complexities of living in a diverse, mobile society but understanding and negotiating the lived experiences of difference in place more effectively (e.g. Wilson, 2016). However, this field arguably does not do enough to integrate their analyses with more political-economic questions of inequalities in work and housing [2], and can overlook problems of hierarchical mediation or coercion (Ince, 2015).
While anti-racism continues to be fundamental to critical and radical geographies (e.g. Nayak, 2010; Pulido, 2015), anti-fascism offers something quite distinct. Anti-fascism intervenes at the intersection of racism and authoritarianism, confronting the ways in which the two play off one another and are manifested in tandem. The dimensions of fascism that we might call ‘more-than-racial’—such as suppression of independent democratic institutions (e.g. unions), restrictions to the press, and hyper-militarism—sometimes enter into anti-racist geographies but are integral to anti-fascist analysis and action. Thus, there is a renewed necessity for research on, and participation in, anti-fascism, which operates largely beyond the electoral realm and is woefully underexplored in geography. More specifically, an anti-fascist geography driven by anarchist sensibilities is something that radical scholars could do well to explore in two key ways.
Firstly, anti-fascism may offer opportunities to integrate the political-economic and the everyday, affective dimensions of life in divided times. These dimensions mesh through anarchism as an analytical approach and mode of praxis that fundamentally seeks to develop a politics of everyday life rooted both in material, collective questions of equity and in wider imaginaries of liberation. When we imagine anti-fascism, it is easy to think of a reactive phenomenon manifested in the spectacle of public confrontation, but it can be undertaken equally in many spheres—work, communities, pubs, homes, etc. Anarchists have long been at the forefront of anti-fascism, not only on the streets but also in these other spheres, such as incorporating anti-fascist approaches into the labour movement. Historical examples include the inter-war anarcho-syndicalism of Germany’s Freie ArbeiterInnen Union [3] or the Spanish Confederaci—n Nacional del Trabajo, whereas a contemporary example is the General Defence Committees of the anarchist-leaning syndicalist union, the Industrial Workers of the World (USA).
Secondly, the complexity and diversity of anti-fascisms (plural) is distinctive and prefigurative. Anti-fascism does not solely focus on self-defence, or defence of others, even though these are central elements; anti-fascist imaginaries tend also to promote wider visions for society too. At a basic level, solidarity across ethnic, gender and other differences often provides a framework for such visions. This unsettles the reactive-sounding ‘anti-’ prefix of anti-fascism, since anti-fascist action is ultimately action for something, as well as defensive action against something. As such, anti-fascism can articulate ‘defence’ and ‘attack’ as one, creating a heterodox politics that cuts across different modes and visions of attack and defence. For liberal anti-fascists, this may be to preserve the liberal-democratic state, individual freedoms and the free-market economy, whereas anti-fascism for orthodox Marxists would propose class solidarity in the face of fascism’s ‘unholy alliance’ of capital and labour.
Anarchist anti-fascism links with Marxist class analysis in this regard but crucially offers something different again, since anarchism is underpinned by an anti-authoritarianism that extends to the logics of statism and hierarchy altogether. Whereas most political perspectives critique certain forms of authority (typically, fascism), anarchists promote modes of action in which authority as an organising principle should play no role in governing societies. For anarchists, then, the antifascist imagination includes rejecting (or only instrumentally using) electoral methods; instead focusing on grassroots, extra-parliamentary activisms and participative forms of democracy. Electoralism may offer a straightforward way of ‘beating’ the far-right, since keeping certain parties out of political office is a specific, measurable goal, but this maintains the same power relations, discourses and agendas that produced the conditions for the far right to emerge in the first place. A lack of electoral support does not necessarily equal a lack of tacit or informal support. We must therefore think on a more systemic level, considering how fascism has multiple lines of flight that extend far beyond the ballot box. An analysis driven principally by anarchism can help us do this.
A first step in developing what we might term ‘anti-fascist geographies’ is to consider what this could entail. What might anti-fascist praxis look like in an everyday academic context? To what extent can academics continue collaboration with a state that is increasingly authoritarian, coercive, and racist by design? What role is our academic labour playing in the production and reproduction of these agendas? And how can we ensure our thinking and research strengthens or informs praxis beyond the academy? It is also necessary to distinguish between geographies of anti-fascism (an empirical topic) and anti-fascist geographies (an approach to scholarship). These have crossovers, especially in the sense that geographers can use analysis to support more effective anti-fascist strategies. A finer-grained analysis of the far right itself is also necessary for both of these approaches, since the relational interplay of anti-fascists with their political opponents is a fundamental dynamic, both in place and across space. However, incorporating an anti-fascist ethic into other empirical topics or academic activities (e.g. pedagogy) is a different task that requires further debate to generate approaches that cut across multiple fields.
Geography has long prided itself on its critical ethos and grounded relevance to pressing social issues. Yet, critique alone no longer feels sufficient. Our task, then, is to adapt swiftly but with nuance to this new world that is emerging around us. It will not provide all the answers, but supporting a re-energising of anti-fascism beyond the ballot box as a fusion of defence and attack—a deliberate affront to passive victimhood—is one way we as geographers can begin to do this.
*** (In)visibly creating anarchist futures
by Jenny Pickerill
In a world seemingly intent on supporting fascism, racism, misogyny, patriarchy, neoliberalism, environmental destruction and growing inequality it can be tempting to retreat from public political battles. We can use this urge to think carefully about the power of being invisible, of using ‘unseen’ spaces to build alternative imaginaries and practice prefigurative acts. We need to use invisibility strategically and with purpose as a way to rebuild while we live in an era of fear, anger and unpredictability.
Now is not the time to rely on the electoral system to counter such politics. White Americans and Europeans are being encouraged to articulate themselves as victims, as being treated unfairly, a move that eradicates any sense of history or complicity in structural inequalities (Bump, 2017). Such victimhood erases responsibility, solidarity and mutual obligation to tackle any structural inequalities. It decouples any links with others, with place, and with history. The system has already failed many in society and the history of representative democracies illustrates the tendency to repeatedly fail the marginalised, the environment, and the non-elite (Bartels, 2016; Purcell, 2013). While the state has had moments of protecting workers, responding to ecological crises, and providing welfare, it has only done so under pressure from social movements and even then, it has often been too slow and weak in taking any actions that might curtail the destructive effects of capitalism. For example, while labour movements such as trade unions have fought for employment rights and in countries like the UK there is now a broad range of legislation that protects workers from unfair dismissal, leave entitlement and maternity and paternity leave, there has at the same time been an exponential growth in the use of zero-hour employment contracts (Frege and Kelly, 2003). These contracts are legal and carefully sidestep employment legislation by enabling employers to avoid providing a stable living wage, holiday or sick pay (Burgess, 2013). Even when state legislation has been able to change or modify capitalist practices for the benefit of workers or the environment, the British vote for Brexit and the US support for Trump now illustrate how unstable, temporary and fragile such protective acts are.
If we reject relying on electoral politics it becomes more obvious that we, as individuals, are the ones who need to, and can, act to build a different type of politics (Wall, 1999; Purcell, 2013). Anarchism has always understood the value of people-power. Although it has been accused of failing to adequately confront power (Mueller, 2003)—by seeking to bypass the state and perhaps not always articulating how it would deal with the powerful or the oligarchical elite—anarchism has repeatedly illustrated that that grassroots, autonomous, solidaristic and collective activism can generate internationally progressive transformative politics (Scarce, 2016; Springer, 2016; Pickerill and Chatterton, 2006). This rests on a belief that right-wing populism can be effectively challenged by a left politics of justice, equality and inclusivity (Purcell, 2014).
This people-power can be mobilised visibly and invisibly. While confrontation and public resistance is necessary and timely, it is also vital that we attend to the less visible forms of activism that can be crucial to a successful transformative politics. In social movement studies these periods have been theorised as latent or organisational moments where activists regroup and reorganise ready for new visible mobilisations at a later date (Tarrow, 2011). But employing less visible forms of prefigurative politics is subtly different. Anarchist prefigurative politics are in themselves a powerful form of change that are not waiting for a future moment of mobilisation but require living now as if we already inhabit the world we want (Chatterton and Pickerill, 2010). It is a way to embody political values and reflect these in daily practices and acts, leading to new social relations (Ince, 2012). Prefiguration is a process of creation, of optimism; of action in the now that is flexible, local and diverse. On a micro-scale, for example, it is ensuring that our everyday practices do not contradict our politics (‘walking our talk’). Prefigurative acts build an alternative future.
Sometimes being invisible is incredibly powerful and silences useful (Gatwiri and Karanja, 2016). This invisibility creates space and time to remake ideas, resource flows and infrastructures but also to put into practice these ways of being. As Tsing (2015) explores in her examination of invisible networks of trade of matsutake mushrooms, there is much in the world that exists and flourishes on the edges of capitalist encroachment. It is in these ‘unseen’ spaces that alternative imaginaries are built and experimental ideas tested, not just as radical spatial interventions but also in our everyday lives in our homes and workplaces. Creative new ways of being and acting are practiced. There are also, of course, many forms of direct action that seem to appear (and need to be seen to appear) from invisible sources, such as hacking by Anonymous.
There is a huge range of post/non/alter-capitalist spaces to be employed here, including eco-communities, squats, online spaces, pop-up shops, secular halls and social centres, but informal spaces can also be used, such as people’s homes, or local community spaces such as village halls, allotments and meeting spaces above shops or in charity offices (Chatterton, 2016; Pickerill, 2016). Crucially, many of these spaces are hidden from public view - the squats only known by its residents, the eco-communities constructed without planning permission on rural fields and the meeting spaces squirrelled away in the back of charity offices all offer space to live and organise differently (Pickerill, 2012).
It is about seeing what might not at first sight be immediately visible and finding the cracks in places to be occupied or the moments to be ruptured (Purcell, 2013). Prefiguration enables the struggle to be grounded in place, for acts to be local, relevant and culturally appropriate. It is about developing responses to local events regardless of the unpredictability and the fear, of using what space we must try out new ways of being (Mason, 2014; Maeckelbergh, 2016). Small daily acts, be that calling out racism, making ethical consumption choices (like where you purchase food and what you eat), or countering gender stereotypes, can appear non-confrontational, almost invisible and yet open up space for dialogue with differentiated others. These small acts can seep out into the public space and gradually connect those willing to be attentive to, or moved towards, more participatory radical politics. These seemingly small daily acts open up a space of dialogue where difficult conversations about how privilege and oppression are structural and replicated can happen. These discussions can be the beginnings of creating the commons. Invisibility helps new necessary alliances (especially with the white working classes) be built. These less visible daily practices are just as important as filling the streets for a protest. This is about using invisibility to intensify our existing practices, to put into practice our creations and ideas, to remake the world without drawing unwanted attention to this creativity and therefore without making visible these spaces of production that are at risk of surveillance and repression. While it is necessary that we signal our withdrawal of consent to state power (especially to Trump) and resist coercion, the state response is predictable—it will be swift, violent, and merciless.
As we enter a new political era it is tempting to retreat from overt public political battles, but if we do it should be to put into practice our alternatives, continue to literally build alternative ways of being and ready ourselves for future public political encounters. It is strategic to be as invisible as we are visible, but only if we are practicing anarchist prefigurative politics, if we are experimenting in ‘unseen’ spaces, and if we are slowly but surely building new alliances of solidarity.
*** Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the ACME editors, especially Simon Springer, for their support for this unorthodox writing project, as well as the useful advice provided by the anonymous referees. We also thank the participants in our diverse research projects to which much of our thinking is linked, and the fellow collaborators, activists, and trouble-makers with whom we organise.
[1] Where ontos is the noun of ontology, if ontology is the study of ways of being then ontos is subject of that study. Ontos are the foundations of ways of being and the discourse that evolves therein.
[2] Many thanks to Richard Gale for recent discussions on this.
[3] The name during this period was Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschlands but here I use the more gender-inclusive contemporary name.
*** References
<biblio>
Abatazoglou, John T. and A. Park Williams. 2016. Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em> 113(42): 11770—11775. Anti Raids. 2016. Building an anti-fascist culture post-Brexit https://rabble.org.uk/anti-raids-building-an-anti-fascist-culture-post-brexit/ [Accessed 21 April 2017]
Aradau, Claudia and Rens Van Munster. 2011. <em>Politics of catastrophe: genealogies of the unknown</em>. New York: Routledge.
Arendt, Hannah. 1970. <em>On Violence</em>. San Diego: Harcourt Brace.
Arnell, Nigel W., Sally Brown, Simon N. Gosling et al. 2016. The impacts of climate change across the globe: A multi-sectoral assessment. <em>Climatic Change</em> 134: 457-474.
Arshinov, Peter. 2005. <em>History of the Makhnovist Movement</em>, 1918-21. Trans. L. Perlman and F. Perlman. London: Freedom Press.
Asher, Gordon. 2016. ‘Options for the Left regarding the UK’s EU Referendum’ Bella Caledonia http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2016/06/17/options-for-the-leftregarding-the-uks-eu-referendum/ [Accessed 18 April 2017]
Bartels, Larry M. 2016. <em>Unequal democracy: The political economy of the new gilded age</em>. Princeton University Press.
BBC. 2016. EU Referendum Results. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results [Accessed 22 February 2017]
Bookchin, Murray. 1989. <em>Remaking Society</em>. New York: Black Rose.
Breitbart, Myrna M. 1978. <em>The theory & practice of anarchist decentralism in Spain, 1936-1939</em> (PhD Dissertation), Worcester, Clark University.
Bristol IWW. 2016. ‘Solidarity with migrant communities after Brexit’ http://www.bristoliww.org.uk/solidarity-with-migrant-communities-afterbrexit/ [Accessed 20 April 2017]
Brown, Adrienne M. 2015. ‘Outro’ In, Adrienne M. Brown and Walidah Imarisha (eds.), <em>Octavia’s Brood: Science fiction stories from social justice movements</em>. Oakland: AK Press, pp. 279-281
Brown, Gavin and Helen Yaffe. 2014. Practices of Solidarity: Opposing Apartheid in the Centre of London. <em>Antipode</em>, 46: 34—52.
Bump, Philip. 2017. ‘Trump awards himself a new trophy for victimhood.’ <em>The Washington Post</em>, 18th May, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/05/18/trump-awardshimself-a-new-trophy-for-victimhood/?utm_term=.1360b0e0cc48 [Accessed 8 July 2017]
Burgess, John, Julia Connell, and Jonathon Winterton. 2013. Vulnerable workers, precarious work and the role of trade unions and HRM. <em>The International Journal of Human Resource Management</em> 24(22): 4083-4093.
Chandler, David. 2014. <em>Resilience: The Governance of Complexity</em>. London and New York: Routledge.
Chandler, David and Julian Reid. 2016. <em>The Neoliberal Subject: Resilience, Adaptation, and Vulnerability</em>. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Chatterton, Paul. 2016. Building transitions to post-capitalist urban commons. <em>Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers</em>, 41(4): 403-415.
Chatterton, Paul and Jenny Pickerill. 2010. Everyday activism and transitions towards post-capitalist worlds. <em>Transactions of the institute of British Geographers</em>, 35(4): 475-490.
Crick, Bernard. 2002. <em>Democracy</em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crow, Scott. 2011. <em>Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective</em>. Oakland: PM Press.
Dimitrov, Radoslav S. 2016. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change: Behind Closed Doors <em>Global Environmental Politics</em> 16(3): 1-11
Evans, Brad and Julian Reid. 2014. <em>Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously</em>. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Fanon, Frantz. 1967. <em>Black Skin, White Masks</em>. New York: Grove Press.
Featherstone, David. 2012. <em>Solidarity: Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism</em>. London: Zed.
Feldman, Matthew and John Pollard. 2016. The ideologues and ideologies of the radical right: an introduction. <em>Patterns of Prejudice</em> 50(4-5): 327-336.
Ferretti, Federico. 2014. <em>Elisee Reclus, pour une geographie nouvelle</em>. Paris, CTHS.
Ferretti, Federico. 2016. Organisation and formal activism: insights from the anarchist tradition. <em>International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy</em>, 36(11-12): 726-740.
Finley, Eleanor. 2017. ‘The Commune from Rojava to the Zapatistas’. <em>Roar Magazine</em>. https://roarmag.org/essays/communalism-bookchin-directdemocracy/ [Accessed 4 April 2017]
Frege, Carola M. and John Kelly. 2003. Union revitalization strategies in comparative perspective. <em>European Journal of Industrial Relations</em> 9(1): 7—24.
Gatwiri, Glory J. and Karanja A. Mumbi. 2016. Silence as Power: Women Bargaining with Patriarchy in Kenya. <em>Social Alternatives</em> 35(1): 13-18.
Gordon, Uri. 2008. <em>Anarchy Alive!</em> London: Pluto Press. Graeber, David. 2016. The Utopia of Rules. London: Palgrave.
Grove, Kevin. 2014. Adaptation Machines and the Parasitic Politics of Life in Jamaican Disaster Resilience. <em>Antipode</em> 46 (3): 611—628.
Ince, Anthony. 2012. In the shell of the old: Anarchist geographies of territorialisation. <em>Antipode</em> 44(5): 1645-1666.
Ince, Anthony. 2015. From middle ground to common ground: Self-management and spaces of encounter in organic farming networks. <em>Annals of the American Association of Geographers</em> 105(4): 824-840.
Ingram, Alan. 2017. Geopolitical events and fascist machines. <em>Political Geography</em> 57(1): 91-93.
IRR. 2016a. ‘Post-Brexit Racism’. http://www.irr.org.uk/news/post-brexit-racism/ [Accessed 30 November 2016]
IRR. 2016b. ‘Post-Brexit Racism Update’. http://www.irr.org.uk/news/post-brexitracism-update/ [Accessed 30 November 2016]
Jones, Owen. 2016. ‘The left needs a new populism. It’s clear what happens if we fail’. <em>The Guardian</em>, 10 November. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/10/the-left-needs-anew-populism-fast [Accessed 1 December 2016].
Judis, John B. 2016. <em>The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics</em>. New York: Columbia Global Reports.
Kropotkin, Peter. 1885. <em>Paroles d’un revolte</em>. Paris: Flammarion. Kropotkin, Peter. 1892. <em>La conquete du pain</em>. Paris: Stock.
Kropotkin, Peter. 2002. The spirit of revolt. In, R.N. Baldwin (ed.), <em>Peter Kropotkin. Anarchism: a collection of revolutionary writings</em>. New York: Dover Publications, pp. 34-43.
Lafuente, Javier. 2016. ‘Colombia dice ‘no’ al acuerdo de paz con las FARC’ El Pais http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/10/02/colombia/1475420001 _242063.html [Accessed 21 April 2017].
La Prensa. 2016. ‘Así te contamos las elecciones presidenciales en Nicaragua’ La Prensa.
http://www.laprensa.com.ni/2016/11/06/politica/2130024-en-vivo-elecciones-en-nicaragua [Accessed 21 April 2017].
Lekensdorf, Carlos. 2002. Filosofar en clave Tojolobal. Mexico: Grupo Editorial Miguel Angel Porrua.
Maeckelbergh, Marianne. 2016. The prefigurative turn: The time and place of social movement practice’. In, Ana Cecilia Dinerstein (ed.), <em>Social Sciences for an Other Politics</em>. Springer International Publishing, pp. 121-134.
Mandarini, Matteo. 2008. ‘Not fear but hope in the Apocalypse’ <em>Ephemera</em> 8(2): 176-181.
Mason, Kelvin and Mark Whitehead. 2012. Transition Urbanism and the Contested Politics of the Spatial Practice. <em>Antipode</em>, 44(2): 493 -516.
Mason, Kelvin. 2014. Becoming Citizen Green: prefigurative politics, autonomous geographies, and hoping against hope. <em>Environmental Politics</em> 23(1): 140-158.
Mason, Kelvin. 2017. Ghosts of the future. <em>ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies</em>, 16(1): 149-155 Available at https://vimeo.com/182695880 [Accessed 1 December 2016]
Mason, Paul. 2016a. ‘The leftwing case for Brexit (one day)’. <em>The Guardian</em>, 16 May. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/16/brexit-eu-referendum-boris-johnson-greece-tory [Accessed 2 December 2016].
Mason, Paul. 2016b. ‘How the left should respond to Brexit’, <em>New Statesman</em>, 17 October. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/10/paul-mason-howleft-should-respond-brexit. [Accessed 31 November 2016].
Mehta, Vijay. 2016. <em>Peace Beyond Borders: How the EU Brought Peace to Europe and How Exporting it Would End Conflicts Around the World</em>. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications.
Mignolo, Walter D. 2009. ‘The communal and the decolonial’ Turbulence: ideas for movement http://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-5/decolonial/. [Accessed December 9, 2016]
Mignolo, Walter D. 2011. <em>The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options</em>. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Miller, C. and A. Werner-Winslow. 2016. <em>Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election</em>. Washington: Southern Poverty Law Centre.
Mouffe, Chantal. 1999. Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism? <em>Social Research</em> 66(3, Prospects for Democracy): 745-758.
Mounk, Yascha. forthcoming. <em>The People vs. Democracy: The Threat of Illiberal Democracy and the Rise of Undemocratic Liberalism</em>. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Mueller, Tadzio. 2003. Empowering anarchy: Power, hegemony, and anarchist strategy. <em>Anarchist Studies</em> 11(2): 122-149.
Mullenite, Joshua. 2016. Resilience, political ecology, and power: Convergences, divergences, and the potential for a postanarchist geographical imagination. <em>Geography Compass</em> 10(9): 378-88.
Nagesh, Ashitha. 2016. ‘Wearing a safety pin because of post-Brexit racism? There's something you need to know’. Metro http://metro.co.uk/2016/07/01/wearing-a-safety-pin-because-of-post-brexit-racism-theres-something-you-need-to-know-5978819/ [Accessed 19 February 2017]
Nayak, Anoop. 2010. Race, affect and emotion: young people, racism, and graffiti in the postcolonial English suburbs. <em>Environment and Planning</em> A, 42(10): 2370-2390.
O'Shea, Josef. 2002. ‘From Cable Street to Brexit: how a chilling wave of racism echoes down the decades’ http://www.prruk.org/from-cable-street-to-brexithow-a-chilling-wave-of-racism-echoes-down-the-decades/ [Accessed 19 February 2017]
Parr, Adrian. 2013. <em>The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics</em>. New York: Columbia University Press.
Peirats, Josh. 2010. <em>The CNT in the Spanish Revolution</em>, Volume 1. Oakland: PM Press.
Pickerill, Jenny. 2012. Permaculture in practice: Low Impact Development in Britain. In, J. Lockyer and J. Veteto (eds.), <em>Localizing Environmental Anthropology: Bioregionalism, Permaculture, and Ecovillage Design for a Sustainable Future</em>. Berghahn Books pp. 180-194.
Pickerill, Jenny. 2016. <em>Eco-homes: People, place and politics</em>. Zed Books, London
Pickerill, Jenny and Paul Chatterton. 2006. Notes towards autonomous geographies: creation, resistance and self-management as survival tactics. <em>Progress in Human Geography</em> 30(6): 730-746.
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. 1851. <em>Idee generale de la revolution au XIXe siecle</em>. Paris: Garnier.
Puente, Isaac. 2013. <em>Libertarian Communism</em>. Hastings: Christiebooks.
Pulido, Laura. 2015. Geographies of race and ethnicity 1: White supremacy vs white privilege in environmental racism research. <em>Progress in Human Geography</em> 39(6): 809-817.
Purcell, Mark. 2013. <em>The down-deep delight of democracy</em>. John Wiley & Sons. Purcell, Mark. 2014. Ranci6re and revolution. Space and Polity 18(2): 168-181.
Quintero Weir, Jose c. 2013. <em>El Camino con las Comunidades</em>. Maracaibo: Universidad del Zulia.
Richards, Vernon. 1953. <em>Lessons of the Spanish Revolution</em>, London, Freedom Press.
Rollo, Toby. 2016a Feral Children: Settler Colonialism, Progress and the Figure of the Child, <em>Settler Colonial Studies</em>. Advance online publication: doi: 10.1080/2201473X.2016.1199826
Rollo, Toby. 2016b. Democracy, Agency, and Radical Children’s Geographies. In, Richard J. White, Simon Springer, and Marcelo Lopes de Souza (eds.), <em>The Practice of Freedom: Anarchism, Geography and the Spirit of Revolt</em>. Washington: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 235-255.
Rushton, Steve. 2016. ‘Season of the Demagogues: Brexit Exposes ways Britain is moving closer to the U.S.’ Occupy. http://www.occupy.com/article/season-demagogues-brexit-exposes-ways-britain-moving-closer-us#sthash.morWhd18.dpbs [Accessed 14 January 2017]
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2001. <em>What is literature?</em> London: Routledge.
Scarce, Rik. 2016. <em>Eco-warriors: Understanding the radical environmental movement</em>. Routledge, London
Schiemeier, Quirin. 2016. ‘Brexit looms large over EU climate agenda’. <em>Nature News & Commentary</em>, July 26. http://www.nature.com/news/brexit-loomslarge-over-eu-climate-agenda-1.20322 [Accessed 5 December 2016]
Schneider, Nathan. 2017. ‘Why we should listen to anarchists in the age of Trump’. <em>America Magazine</em>, http://www.americamagazine.org/politicssociety/2017/01/22/why-we-should-listen-anarchists-age-trump [Accessed 22 January 2017]
Scott, Andrew. 2016. ‘Brexit: Implications for Climate Change Commitments’. https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/resource-documents/10907.pdf [Accessed 8 July 2017]
Solnit, Rebecca. 2009. <em>A Paradise Built in Hell: The extraordinary communities that arise in disaster</em>. New York: Penguin.
Solnit, Rebecca. 2016. <em>Hope In The Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities</em>. Edinburgh: Canongate.
Spektorowski, Alberto. 2015. Fascism and post-national Europe: Drieu la Rochelle and Alain de Benoist. <em>Theory, Culture and Society</em> 33(1): 115-138.
Springer, Simon. 2016. <em>The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation</em>. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Springer, Simon. 2017. Earth writing. <em>GeoHumanities</em>, 3(1): 1-19.
Tarrow, Sidney G. 2011. <em>Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics</em>. Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, Hunter S. 2012. <em>Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72</em>. London: Simon & Schuster.
Tsing, Anna L. 2015. <em>The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins</em>. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Turcato, Davide. 2015. <em>Making sense of anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution, 1889-1900</em>, Oakland: AK Press.
UNFCCC. 2015. FCCC/CP/2015/L.9/Rev.1, Adoption of the Paris Agreement. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf
United States Electoral Project. 2016. 2016 November General Election Turnout Rates. http://www.electproject.org/2016g [Accessed 21 April 2017]
Van Reybrouck, David. 2016. <em>Against Elections: The Case for Democracy</em>. London: The Bodley Head.
Varoufakis, Yiannis. 2016a. ‘After Donald Trump’s awful victory, the left must be more ambitious (interview)’. <em>New Statesman</em>, 13 November. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/brexit/2016/11/yanis-varoufakis-afterdonald-trump-s-awful-victory-left-must-be-more [Accessed 15 November 2016].
Varoufakis, Yiannis. 2016b. ‘Trump victory comes with a silver lining for the world's progressives’. <em>The Conversation</em>, 11 November. https://theconversation.com/trump-victory-comes-with-a-silver-lining-for-theworlds-progressives-68523 [Accessed 04 December 2016].
Vinthagen, Stellan. 2013. Ten theses on why we need a "Social Science Panel on Climate Change". <em>ACME: An International of Critical Geographies</em> 12(1): 155 176.
Wall, Derek. 1999. <em>Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical environmentalism and comparative social movements</em>. Taylor & Francis.
Weaver, M. 2016. '"Horrible spike" in hate crime linked to Brexit vote, Met police say’. <em>The Guardian</em>. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/28/hatecrime-horrible-spike-brexit-vote-metropolitan-police [Accessed 19 January 2017]
Wernick, A. 2016. ‘The world's nations vow to move forward with the Paris Agreement, with or without US President-elect Donald Trump’. PRI, December 4. http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-04/worlds-nations-vow-move-forwardparis-agreement-or-without-us-president-elect [Accessed 5 December 2016]
White Richard J., Simon Springer and Marcelo Lopez de Souza. 2016. Performing anarchism, practicing freedom, pursuing revolt. In Richard J. White, Simon Springer, and Marcelo Lopes de Souza (eds.) <em>The Practice of Freedom: Anarchism, Geography and the Spirit of Revolt</em>, Washington: Rowman & Littlefield. pp 1-22.
Williams, Robert A. 2012. <em>Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization</em>. New York: Palgrave.
Wilson, Helen F. 2016. On geography and encounter: Bodies, borders and difference. <em>Progress in Human Geography</em> 41(4): 451-471.
WSM in Ireland. 2016. ‘10 point guide for post Brexit resistance as racist right wins EU referendum’ http://www.anarkismo.net/article/29389 [Accessed 20 March 2017]
YouGov. 2016. ‘The Eurosceptic map of Britain. 28 February 2016’ https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/02/28/eurosceptic-map-britain/ [Accessed 4 December 2016]
Zibechi, Raœl. 2010. <em>Dispersing Power</em>. Oakland: Ak Press
Zizek, Slavoj. 2016. ‘Dear Britain’. <em>The Guardian</em>, 04 June. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/04/dear-britain-letters-fromeurope-referendum [Accessed 29 November 2016].
</biblio>
|
#title Political Statement in the trial for the Velvedo double robbery case (31/7/14 )
#author A.D.Bourzoukos
#SORTtopics Greece, capitalism, armed struggle, repression, violence, legal system, labor, Act for Freedom Now!
#date October 6, 2014
#source <[[https://actforfree.nostate.net/?p=17882][actforfree.nostate.net/?p=17882]]>. Retrieved on 03/07/2024 from [[https://lib.anarhija.net/library/a-d-bourzoukos-political-statement-in-the-trial-for-the-velvedo-double-robbery-case-31-7-14][lib.anarhija.net]].
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-07-03T23:16:30.145Z
To beginning, I would like to clarify the reason I am here today, taking advantage of the procedure of statements. What will follow therefore, will in no way have an apologetic character since my acts and choices are included in the wider anarchist struggle, the struggle for life and freedom. Consequently, they are acts that I support with every aspect of my being and I will continue to do so as long as this world remains as it is. So, no, I am not apologizing, I have to nothing to say and analyse on a procedural level about my actions. I refuse the charges exactly because I refuse civil legality. I refuse to legitimize your role and your justice which is driven and instructed by those governing. I therefore do not hope for your leniency, I will not bend before the threat of your laws and the many years of prison that await me, even in the worst of conditions that your state reserves for those who refuse to bow the head. These new prisons called “C’type prisons”. I am here to highlight the characteristics of my choices and exacerbate the dispute between us. You, a part of the judicial authority, and me, a part of the anarchist struggle. And when I say “you”, I do not mean just you specifically, but all the people who hold authority positions. It is a dispute that escapes the narrow frames of a inter-personal clash, it is a class and social war that spreads in the space-time continuum, it finds its roots in the initial forms of capitalism and the relations of exploitation and authority which for centuries now have defined the human race.
Therefore, although I am an anarchist and I do not recognize any court as competent to judge my choices, I cannot ignore the authority of this mechanism and not illustrate the perception and interpretation of the laws and justice. I cannot remain silent before this covered up firing squad and bow the head in fear that my turn has come. I consider it therefore my obligation to bring the revolutionary counterargument against the monolithic judicial authority, against the silence you are trying to enforce. To take things in order, I am in a special room, inside a special court, I am tried under a special law and the future foresees special detention conditions for me, my comrades and any troublemakers that bother the smooth operations of this whole system. Special categories of people amidst a mass of identical, docile and subjugated citizens, this is an easier way to interpret this whole intentional differentiation. On the other hand, all we have to do is see the role and use of the laws and justice, to fully interpret the reasons behind this intention. Justice is by definition a form of social control, a way to conserve obedience and compliance in society through a system of rules that define what can happen and what not, what remains in the frames of systemically acceptable and what is out of this norm. The state of justice that you claim, enforces the terms of subjugation in a system of exploitation and wretchedness. “Justice” is fair therefore, because its obeyed, but what happens with those who refuse to comply, those who deviate and escape the predefined social behaviours? “Law and Order”, the dogma that covers the gap, securing the maintenance of civil legality with stricter laws, exterminating sentences and rigorous oppression. Thus, the state enlists the judicial authority in order to stomp out any deviating behaviour, to maintain social and political stability. Allegedly expressing the interests of society, basically however forcing the citizens to follow the laws, giving thus, indirectly the monopoly of violence to the state mechanism. Since the one who receives the state violence cannot and is impossible to respond with the adequate counter-violence, but only accepts the authority of the state and the enforcing of laws for the “common good” with docility. A precondition of capitalist-political stability is the legalization of the system and the violence it produces and of course the custodians could not be any others than the judicial authority, which is called to “cover” all the structural unbalances of the system so it does not collapse socially and economically. Always, of course, executing the governmental orders and operating invariably in favour of the state interests. The ability of multiple interpretations of the law by the judges is the back door which always remains open for the ruling class to intervene and guide the juridical authority. Their role (your role) could be no other than the safekeeping of the economic and political elite, the criteria on which justice is served are deeply class orientated and therefore your violence is aimed at outlaws, poor-devils, immigrants and of course those who factually dispute your authority. On the other hand, the flexibility of your laws runs out in the cases of major criminals, just like in the recent case of Thessalonikis’ mayor Papageorgopoulos, who although was sentenced to life in first instance for embezzling 17,9million euros, after a year, the sentence is “broken” down to 12 years. Since probably, the 17.9m this gentleman took from the citizens of this country is a crime of a much smaller scale compared to immigrants who for petty theft get 14–15 year sentences. And I cannot but mention another example of how extremely guided and class orientated your justice is. Of course, I am talking of the decision of the Mixed Sworn court of Patras which acquitted two of the four accused for the case of the shootings in Manolada. Where 35 immigrants were shot for demanding their wages.
Truthfully, what kind of society do you envision and what common good do you defend? What is the social gain and the values you propose? You envision a society in the dark, the whole of it frightened, where it will passively accept the violence of the state and capital, and you are accountable for this. Who was convicted for the millions of euro the political authority has been robbing the public money of all these years? Who was convicted for the thousands that were led to suicide because of the economic crisis? Who was convicted for the uncountable (allegedly “isolated”) incidents of torture in the police stations?
NO ONE!
Of course, I am not saying that you are not doing your job well, quite the opposite! This is your job, to cover up the daily crimes of the state. Even here, inside this room we saw numerous cops, who in a glaringly and excess tenacity covered for their colleagues from Veria police station for the torturing that took place inside there. The oxymoron of the case however is not the cover up by the side of authority, but the way torture is presented as the natural follow up of this application of authority. Besides, the publication of our pictures served this exact target: on one side the ethical legitimization of torture and on the other the diffusing of fear through setting an example for all those who chose to attack the system and its structures. We are talking of an “aponeurosis” of society in its entirety, an attempt to vanish and assimilate any reflexes it has left. In the most blunt way, state and government form the terms of their enforcement, through extreme fascist legislations and special acts of legislative content. The most recent of examples is the C’type prisons legislation, the legalization that is, of special detention conditions, a permanent torture that restructures the correctional system on the standards of generalized oppression ordered by foreign and domestic capital, the biggest and best organized terrorist organization. To make a synopsis, your intention to serve justice is exhausted in the maintaining of political stability and the class divisions which are lawfully created by the capitalist system. But, since we are talking of terrorism, lets go on to the charges this court of yours attributes to me. First of all, the terrorist organization one, article 187A of the penal code, or “the commission of certain offences in a manner or to an extent or in circumstances which may seriously damage a country or an international organization with a view to seriously intimidate a population or compel an illegal public authority or an international organization to perform any act or to refrain from this or seriously damage or destroy the fundamental constitutional policies, economic structures of a country or an international organization”. It is important to see this legal characterization and mainly what the law seeks in its entirety. Firstly, 187A is basically an idiom, an upgrade of 187, concerning criminal organizations. The nature of the law contains a very important duality, not so much from a legal-technical point of view — which does not concern me anyway — as much as at a level of political feasibility. In a nutshell, the judicial authority, in cooperation with the state and government, follow the wild dogma of neo-liberalism inspired by thatcher, that “there are no more classes, only individuals”. Thus, there is no battle of classes, therefore no political crime, since the state and ruling class define the means and limits of political confrontation in the frames of legality. Authority therefore, cannot be disputed. Because, obviously, this demotion or to be exact the equation of political crime with common crime means the penalization of every form of resistance, let alone when this is carried out with the use of violence. We have therefore an idiom, which beyond discrediting the political characteristics of every act, it aims also at the vanishing of every form of resistance. An umbrella law whose range is constantly widening and recently we even saw a whole village in Skouries being prosecuted with the 187A, inaugurating the tactic of mass persecutions in the frames of a terrorist organization simply because these people resisted the expanding mania of capital. And it is a natural follow up of the systemic crisis, that authority will channel the fear to the resisting part of society, characterizing more and more acts as terrorist, in the hope of maintaining the fragile balances of the capitalist system.
Simultaneously, in the last 5 years we see an upgrade of the oppressive policy. The persecutory authorities in Greece, following the ‘Marini’ dogma and having to deal with an anarchist movement constantly increasing in dynamic, sets up a series of prosecutions from 2009 when they found a bomb in a house in Halandri. Thus, a legitimate house was baptised a lair and a “fresh” tank of prosecutions was created. Any anarchists who had their prints in this house were (and probably remain) possible terrorists, a theorem which the prosecutor in the trial for comrades Sarafoudis and Naxakis took a step further, claiming that it is enough to be an anarchist in order to also be a member of the CCF. Using therefore the prosecution formula, the persecutory authorities loaded us with indictments seeking our lengthy imprisonment and exemplary punishment. Your fairytale is nice, but the only terrorists are the state and capital. Historically, from the first appearance of terrorism as a political analysis, this identified itself with state violence. Terrorism, is the transcendence through violence and terror. And those who rush to condemn violence no matter where it comes from surely cannot perceive (or it does not suit them to perceive) the unmistakeable difference between primary and secondary violence. Lets not fool ourselves, violence defines this system, it exists on a daily level in the entire social web. As long as there are people who live in cardboard boxes while others in luxury villas, there is violence. As long as there are people killed in labour accidents and few get rich, there is violence. As long there is exploitation of human by human, there is violence. Since forever, violence was a basic structural ingredient of the capitalist system, it reproduces daily in various ways and has multiple receivers. It is a fact however, that there is a primary violence applied from authority and is expressed in the most vicious way, systematically, through the economic bloodsucking of the largest part of society in order to feed the collapsing banking system with billions. Through labour which instead of being a way for everyone to express their creativity and cover their needs its more like a punishment, where people are forced to work like slaves in the modern galleys of capitalism, through the vicious oppression towards the fighting part of society, through the 1,5 million unemployed who are indirectly sentenced to a form of slow death. Hundreds of ways of expression of this violence — state terrorism — hundreds examples also, and there is no reason to speak further about this. The matter is that from the state terrorism — which claims the monopoly of violence — erupts also the only just violence, revolutionary counter-violence. Because even if the world we are fighting for is that of non-violence, solidarity and freedom, we know very well that the privileged ones will not voluntarily give away their authority, without the use of violence. Against violence we promote violence, against power, power, at any cost. Even at the price of our own freedom or life. In order to save our lives we must be ready to lose it. Revolutionary violence, therefore, has nothing to do with the use of terror. Terror was, is and will be the tool of the ruling class in order to enforce itself. The unmistakeable difference of revolutionary counter-violence from state terrorism is summarized in the words of Malatesta: “If, in order to win, we must set up guillotines in the squares, I would rather lose”. Despite however, we are also a part of this corrupt and alienated world and we inevitably carry it with us, we also carry the need for revolution. We fight for a free future which, for good or for bad, we can see only through the prism of the present. And in order to equip our struggle in the present, expropriation is a revolutionary necessity. First of all in order to liberate time from our lives, to not be boxed in the web of waged slavery. But mainly in order to fund the wider anarchist struggle in every aspect. And the anarchist struggle is a course towards the total emancipation of the human. A course towards the destruction of every institution that cowers the human existence.
The expropriation of banks was is and will remain a diachronic choice of revolutionary movements, an act of revolt against the economic stronghold of capitalism. Of course, we do not delude ourselves that a robbery will damage the bank, let alone the bank system in its entirety. Either way it is a revolutionary act, a crack in the omnipotence of the state and capital. Not, of course, by definition revolutionary but always connected with the subject that defines the specific characteristics of this act. You speak of a robbery in the frames of a terrorist organization, let me clarify, therefore, that I was never a member of an organization, but only an anarchist. As an anarchist, I carried out the robbery and therefore it was a conscious act of resistance, a means necessary for the self-funding of my life and the struggle. A choice that I would make again and still support, since the reasons and motives that led me to this choice is the nature of capitalism, the relations of exploitation and oppression. And of course, when we speak of a robbery in the context of the anarchist struggle, we speak of specific targeting and specific characteristics during this. For example our target could not be the 44,3% of the population of the country that owes to banks and is led to forced liquidations in order to survive and not have their house repossessed. We, contrary to the state mechanism, do not “tax” the lower social classes, the poor and unemployed, those who have nothing. We expropriate the places where the the state (and not only) money is over-accumulated, we target those who steal 37,7 billion euros from society in order to “rescue” the banking system. We target that 5% of the major families in Greece who for years now have been oppressing the lower social layers of the country. When we choose a robbery therefore, we choose a revolutionary means, an act of struggle, and as every revolutionary action, is organized and executed based on the ethics of the subject. An ethic completely different from what the system enforces. An ethic in the frames of anarchist propositions. Thus, exactly because our targeting is specific, just like our aims, we choose to arm ourselves and defend our freedom, tackle the armed and ruthless guards of capital, deputies of order and security. Of course, as anarchists we are completely against the state perception of “collateral damage”. This is a term used by dominance to cover up its most hideous and repulsive crimes. Thus, for us during a robbery the weapons are not pointing at everyone, they aim at the expropriation of the money and the necessary enforcement demanded by our act. Despite all this, the same does not go for those who aim at depriving us of our freedom. In this case we found ourselves in a peculiar situation during our pursuit. Our choice to steal the vehicle of a random driver who we found in our path added a factor beyond us. We chose to stop the driver from calling the cops to report the stolen car and the only way was to take him with us for the time it took for our comrades to escape. The dilemma we found ourselves in when the chase started was answered by us exclusively and definitely not guided by an uncritical humanism, but our own personal code of values. Therefore there was no disarming by the cops, I will not give them the pleasure to raise the work of the police once again. Whatever happened was clearly our choice, a decision of disengagement, based on our own criteria, considering all the factors that have come up.
You believe therefore that these choices are is in the jurisdiction of a court to judge, evaluate or even stand objectively across them? Of course not, exactly because they are choices that consist a wider struggle, which we are up against. And I am speaking of the total of the choices, not only the moment of pursuit. A lot was said during this trial and you many times attempted to present a more “democratic” façade that gives room to the pluralism of opinions, that you allegedly comprehend what we stand for and promote. Or, that you do not execute orders, that you are not the representative executioners of the system. That the decisions are not preordained and that your job is to apply the “letter of the law”. Truthfully though, where exactly do you apply the “letter of the law” since no law has a one and sole evident meaning? Substantially therefore, there is almost no case of derogation of the judicial authority from the state policy. Even in the cases where there human factor prevails or in a case where because of some judicial activism, either the initiative will be assimilated by the system itself, or the aim of the judicial activism will be the change of the state policy and not the opposition to the state mechanism. Moreover, your direct implication in this consciously bonds you at a policy level also. Something that obviously cannot be hidden, comes to the surface when the stability and the democratic façade of the system is threatened. As for example, the exemplary devotion of the “chairman” to systematically dictate the answers to the cops aimed at taking them out of the tough position of exposing their colleagues. Your are accomplices therefore, in the numerous crimes of state terrorism, co-responsible for the desperate situation we experience every day. Devoted defenders of a system of exploitation and decadence. Murderers, with their hands soaked in the blood of all the free and
disobedient moments. Branches on the “tree” of authority and corruption, you are obliged to wash off the blood in order to ease your conscience. But, the vanity of your existence enforces more blood to wash off the previous one. And of course, an alleged lenience does not clash with your repulsive role. Our secured convictions and many indictments they have loaded us with leave you room for democratic “sensitivities”.
The state of emergency we are experiencing is based on the hypnosis of society, it continues to exist as long as fear prevails over militancy. The state and capital demand passivity, the only way to survive without becoming the target of vicious oppression is to simply close your eyes and let your life go, let History be written without affecting it the slightest. A hibernation in a deep and endless “winter”. The “winter” of authority and exploitation. The “winter” of terror, violence, state, oppression forces, laws, judges and capitalism. And still, in this constant “winter” there are some who defying the darkness of the times and the undoubted weapon superiority of the system, fight for tomorrows “spring”. They carry with them the insistence of spring that always wins in the battle with winter. All these people were guided by a common thing, they were never satisfied with what was given to them allegedly open handed. They collectivize against the ethical dictations of the time and make the step towards the impossible. The step towards the unknown, but simultaneously exciting, exactly because its unknown. They threw themselves into the struggle first of all to change themselves, but also in the hope of diffusing the struggle in the whole of society. It is all those people who refused the enforcement of authority and
exploitation, which over time have fought giving even their lives for the dream of revolution. People who fell in love with the Idea of subversion and the need for the destruction of the civilization of fortified misery. Fortified behind the moments of oppression, behind the diffused fear, behind the continuous “murders” of disobedient desires. A journey has started centuries ago, a path stepped on by hundreds of people in the course of History. A course towards the total emancipation of the human. A course towards the Utopia, towards freedom and anarchy. And every step towards this direction — small or big — carries the weight of the history of all these people. Every step is a moment of struggle in the path for revolution. We in turn give the promise that we will never betray the struggle, we will never forget the beauty of this journey. I declare therefore to be an unrepentant anarchist, a part of a struggle that carries the special characteristics of each fighter, a multi-tendency struggle but with the same target, the revolution. And if one thing is sure, it is that nothing is over, now more than ever we must continue and intensify our struggle, be the revolutionary prospect for the final overcoming of capitalism.
EVERYTHING FOR FREEDOM, UNTIL THE REVOLUTION AND ANARCHY.
|
#title For a Solidarity of Condition and Position
#author A Delivery Driver in Manhattan
#LISTtitle For a Solidarity of Condition and Position
#SORTauthors CrimethInc.
#SORTtopics COVID-19, working class, solidarity
#date April 13, 2020
#source Retrieved on 2020–04014 from [[https://crimethinc.com/2020/04/13/all-we-have-is-us-a-call-from-a-delivery-driver-in-manhattan-for-a-solidarity-of-condition-and-position][crimethinc.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-04-14T02:43:01
Today, rather than speaking of the working class, it might be more precise to speak of the <strong><em>endangered class.</em></strong> In this account, a delivery driver at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in Manhattan describes the conditions that workers are exposed to and the stark class relations between the <em>vulnerable</em> and the <em>protected,</em> concluding with a call for solidarity among all on the receiving end of capitalist violence and inequality.
-----
With all these calls coming out for solidarity among all humanity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’d like to be specific about where my solidarity lies and to encourage others to do the same. While some of us are risking our lives, others are pulling the strings from above as they ride this pandemic out in comfort. While “we are all in this together,” we are not all enduring the same conditions or facing the same risks.
The reality that we have been numb to for so long is coming into focus. It has become impossible to conceal the inconsistencies in the ways that our labor is valued, to ignore all the ways that we are at the mercy of those above us in the hierarchy. They have done everything in their power to make us blame ourselves and each other for our situation, but it’s no longer possible.
I am writing from a mandatory quarantine outside of the United States. I spent March in Manhattan working as a so-called “essential worker” delivering food to the rich as the pandemic spread through the city. Like so many people in my situation, I suspect that by now, I must have already been exposed to the virus. If I contracted it, I was fortunate enough to have no symptoms. As a lower-class resident of the United States, of course, I never had access to a test, so this is just speculation.
I’m not happy to be able to say “I told you so” about the situation we find ourselves in today. At the beginning of March, many people were still dismissing me as paranoid. It wasn’t that I was afraid of getting sick. For weeks, I was trying to explain to friends that they have to understand how the food they eat reaches their plates, where their medications are made, and how the division of a globalized world into consumer nations and producer nations could cause serious issues when it comes to us getting access to basic sustenance. Now everyone is talking about these things.
The first few weeks of March in New York City were like a roller coaster climbing to the top before a steep plunge. The tension just built and built. Every day, I agonized about whether I should flee to the countryside or try to return early to my home abroad. I had to weigh both of those options against the money I was making and the prospect of a future in which it might be much more difficult to obtain employment.
Biking across the boroughs, I could feel something strange building up. Most people who took the situation seriously expressed it by shopping or leaving the city. There was rampant panic buying and an exodus of those with second homes or families to stay with outside the city. Near the projects and poorer neighborhoods, I could still find toilet paper and disinfectant, since fewer people there could afford to hoard. Many distrusted the government; many didn’t care; many had witnessed things even worse than a pandemic; and many felt helpless in the face of the confusion and fear that arrives with the unprecedented.
Those who wore masks and gloves were considered eccentric up until the third week of March. People were still promoting parties up to the very last day they could. Those who were able to work remotely were sent home first, while everyone else remained at work. Some of the more affluent private schools were cancelled shortly after that. Then the suburb of New Rochelle was put into lockdown, but everyone else went about their business as if nothing was happening. When Mayor de Blasio finally closed the schools and forced the restaurants and bars to shutter, the reality of the situation finally began to settle in. All the reasons for high rent, all the distractions from the stress, all the rationalizations were suddenly gone. Ignorance was no longer an option.
The weather fluctuated the way it has over the last few years, prompting cynical comments about climate change, but everything just seemed dreary to me. Hugs became more and more awkward. Soon, I reserved them only for people I wasn’t sure that I’d see again. I was staying with a friend who tested positive for COVID-19 and has since recovered. I house-sat for another friend whose partner has died of the virus.
Manhattan became emptier and more and more frightening as the tension increased. In contrast to the September 11 attacks, or to Hurricane Sandy, when we saw a blackout of Manhattan on Halloween that I will never forget, the pandemic didn’t hit all at once in an obvious way. It was an invisible impact in slow motion—it was hard to grasp what was coming or to what extent it was already underway. It was chilling to see friends who had recently dismissed my concerns as paranoia coming to me for advice. It made my blood run cold to watch people who had always tried to calm me down slowly growing more fearful as their livelihoods were cut off. The biggest, busiest city in the United States was shut down by an unseen force. In the end, I escaped, leaving many of the people I love to wait for the unknown.
During my final weeks in New York City, I was deemed an “essential worker” because I brought food directly to rich people’s doors in order to ease their risk of exposure. I see people posting “stay at home” memes on Instagram, never pausing to acknowledge how the fusion meals they post photos of alongside them are still possible during this time.
It’s hard not to scoff at the cheers of the rich I see in recent videos taken from Manhattan. Apparently, the ones who didn’t escape to their summer homes take a moment each day to appreciate delivery people and other workers who have been taking the risks for them through this pandemic. I watch these clips and their petty gratitude leaves me unmoved. My memories of being disrespected, degraded, and underpaid are not dispelled by a moment of flattery from the comfort of Manhattan’s luxury buildings. We deserve more than a little applause.
I worked delivery jobs up until the day I took what I feared was my last opportunity to return to my partner and a more affordable life abroad. I knew the risks of travel, but I was more concerned about what the future would bring and what my economic position would be in it. Most of my friends in New York work service and hospitality jobs—or used to. After every job I had intended to work was cancelled, the app-based delivery jobs I turned to as my last resort were pretty much all that remained for those of us who lacked the privilege to work remotely. I still get notifications informing me of one-off work opportunities. I wonder if each one I pass up is a meal I won’t be able to eat in the future.
So I resent the applause of the wealthy. I wish I could publish the names and addresses of everyone I had to deliver to, along with the exact amounts of the tips they gave me. I wish I knew the net worth of each person I delivered to so I could calculate my anger precisely.
I delivered to skyscraper condominiums across Manhattan. At first, when I showed up, the doormen would greet me with a smile, assuming I was a visitor or resident because of my light skin. As soon as it came out that I was a delivery person, they would suddenly change tone. The transition was intense. You wonder how they choose these guys.
Other times, I was forced to enter through disgusting piss-covered “poor doors”—secondary entrances for service workers and low-income tenants. This doubled the time it took me to enter and leave buildings. It also forced me to come into contact with more building staff, increasing my risk of exposure.
Still other buildings wouldn’t allow delivery people up at the request of tenants. I assume they considered us dirtier then the bags we delivered. While this was degrading, it was also a relief.
I delivered to penthouses as high as the 73<sup>rd</sup> floor only to receive no tip at all. Generally, the tips were shit. Maybe this was because the rich are nervous about what the future will bring for them. (The <em>New York Post</em> has since reported on customers pretending to offer big tips and then cancelling them afterwards.) The tips were so bad that I was afraid to ask for no-contact deliveries, as some customers scoffed at my requests. As a service worker, how dare I protect myself?
I won’t forget one of my last nights delivering. I did my best to reject delivery requests to Walgreens and Duane Reade pharmacies, partly because it was just too degrading to take jobs in which my sole function was to reduce the risk that people wealthier than me had to face, but also because I knew that the products people were trying to order were already sold out.
These apps force you to be the one to bear the consequences when someone requests a product and it is sold out. They don’t give you the option to cancel the job when the product is unavailable—you have to say you are unable to complete the order. Consequently, you not only forfeit travel compensation for biking to the location, you also can forfeit delivery consistency for the remainder of your shift.
That night, instead of thermometers and toilet paper, someone ordered 50 boxes of laxatives, a purchase of $250. I bit the bullet and took the order.
I biked through the silent streets of Manhattan’s upper West Side. Even in the eerie absence of traffic, I still had to obey the traffic lights, lest the police ticket me for delivering “essential” services. I miss the old school days of NYC before “quality of life” policing. In those days, riding a bicycle, you felt unstoppable.
I got to the pharmacy and went in. It felt like I was stepping into a giant petri dish teeming with COVID-19. Of course, as at all the pharmacies in Manhattan, everything was sold out, including this person’s 50 boxes of laxatives. I called the customer to beg her to cancel the order—my only chance to keep the pathetic $2.36 that I get for the “pick up” part of the delivery process. More importantly, it was also the only way to avoid having to cancel the order myself and risk losing my spot in the app’s almighty algorithm.
“Of <em>course</em> they are out, ugh!” she answered when I informed her. She demanded that I be the one to cancel, because she knew she’d lose her $2.36, reciting the standard “It’s your job, it’s not my fault.” She had used me to confirm what she already knew so she wouldn’t have to enter a pharmacy in the epicenter of the epidemic, but she had the audacity to demand I cancel so she wouldn’t have to give me any money. I ended up begging her, trying to explain that I had biked through a pandemic to check on the product for her. I offered to send her a photograph confirming that I went into the store and saw that the product was out. She replied that it wasn’t her problem. I moved on to the next job, obsessing about her selfishness and entitlement. After 30 minutes, she canceled.
She was placing a $250 order and she demanded that I forfeit all dignity so she didn’t have to “waste” $2.36. I am certain that if I had not spoken good English, I would have received nothing at all for my pains. Of countless stories like this, this one remains fresh in my memory, as it took place the last night I was working in New York.
This is why, when the wealthy and powerful speak about solidarity, it leaves me cold. I reserve my love and appreciation for those who are not only afraid of getting sick at this time, but who are forced to risk being infected in order to survive—those who are struggling to figure out how to eat, how to keep a roof over their heads, how to prepare for an even more precarious life in the economic recession ahead. I reserve my love and appreciation for those who have always been underpaid and replaceable, who are on the front lines of the pandemic. <em>Now</em> we are essential? <em>Now</em> we are heroes? What were we before? What will we be when this ends?
It’s shocking how people continue to rationalize the value of leaders and institutions that have utterly failed to do anything to help us survive this catastrophe.
How is it possible that police officers are still getting respect as “emergency workers” when they are running around without masks on, infecting people throughout the city, attacking children on the subway? How can anyone set them alongside nurses and grocery store workers, who are dying dozens at a time so we can eat? Hasn’t the role of police in the spectacle of the end of the world shown their true purpose clearly enough, if it wasn’t already obvious?
ICE agents have been hogging N-95 masks so they can protect themselves while they continue disappearing undocumented people, spreading the infection as they terrorize communities and separate children from their parents. Prison guards are spreading the virus to prisoners whose only means of protest is to stage revolts at great risk to themselves.
I saw police pulling over delivery workers for bicycle traffic violations in Manhattan when deliveries surged in response to the virus. This is a typical tactic via which the New York Police Department fulfills their monthly ticket quotas. Grocery workers, agricultural workers, those working in transportation, delivery people, EMTs, hospital staff helping to keep us alive under what amounts to martial law—all these people are all truly deserving of my gratitude. How can anyone place the police alongside these courageous individuals? What do they do to sustain and care for us?
The United States has passed a two trillion dollar stimulus plan. I don’t even know if I am eligible for the check or for unemployment, thanks to my being poor and working gig to gig all these years. The website says those low-income taxpayers should wait—until the others have been paid first, I’m guessing. I read that only 30% of the stimulus goes to individuals ($602.7 billion). The other 70% is split between large corporations ($500 billion), small businesses ($377 billion), state and local governments ($339.8 billion), and public services ($179.5 billion). As far as I see, considering that the airlines alone are getting over 10% of the corporate bailouts while I am still fighting them for a refund on the flights they cancelled on me, I see this as a big fuck you to me and everyone like me. Just one more reminder that in this society, my value is conditional at best, determined by the logic of the market and the priorities of the ruling class.
If the way that the stimulus package is distributed doesn’t make their priorities clear enough, governments are simultaneously rushing to maintain, reconstruct, and usurp power.
In places like Russia and Israel, the authorities are exploring new opportunities in cyber-policing. In places like Hungary, the rulers have already used this opportunity to transition to outright dictatorship. In places like Kenya, India, and the USA, we see them containing slums, prisons, and refugee camps as acceptable death zones. In Greece, on International World Health Day, police attacked a gathering of doctors and nurses at Evaggelismos hospital in Athens who were calling for more safety resources. Experiments in martial law are taking place everywhere under the guise of lockdown, supposedly for our protection—but those in power seek to protect their position, not to protect us. Nationalists and fascists are using this as an opportunity to advocate for bigger border walls and prisons. We’ve even seen some scientists calling on world governments to go to Africa or other populations that are less valuable to the global economy to carry out the experiments through which they hope to generate vaccines.
So I want to call for another solidarity. A solidarity between those who have a lot more to worry about than the virus alone. A solidarity among all who have to fear what governments and their police will do to us. A solidarity between everyone who is waiting in terror for even more precarious conditions to arrive as the rich scramble to enter the post-pandemic world still standing on the shoulders of us expendables. A solidarity that includes refugees and others who have lost their homes. I want to share my gratitude with those who deserve it—those with whom I share <em>condition</em> and <em>position.</em>
When in our lifetimes has the mathematics of our value been more flagrantly displayed? Politicians, police, and billionaires are struggling to rationalize their comfort and privilege; in the United States, they are being more honest than ever before about what really matters to them.
We need a solidarity that has nothing to do with politicians and plutocrats, nor with the police who protect them. Let us look on those beside us with love and a mutual commitment to protect our humanity, just as we regard those above us as our enemies. Those who are looting in southern Italy are expressing the same passion for life as those who looted New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in order to feed their neighbors. These are the people who are setting a good example, not the police, not Governor Cuomo.
Today, my own quarantine period is about to end. But my mother is working in a grocery store at nearly 70 years of age, while my father, who is in a hospital with a compromised immune system, has tested positive for coronavirus. If concerns about the market had not been prioritized over concerns about life, I am certain my father would have been spared this virus, as he was isolated since the beginning of March in a nursing facility. My mother cannot distance. My father couldn’t distance. But many can afford to sidestep these risks. They are not facing the same pandemic. They don’t deserve my solidarity.
We are not all in this together—but most of us are.
Return to normalcy? Never again.
|
#title A Few Words of "Freedom"
#subtitle Interview by CCF – Imprisoned Members Cell with Alfredo Cospito
#author Alfredo Cospito, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
#LISTtitle Few Words of Freedom
#SORTauthors Alfredo Cospito, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
#SORTtopics FAI/FRI, CCF, nihilist, interview
#date July 2014
#source Retrieved on July 27, 2018 from [[https://325.nostate.net/2014/12/01/interview-by-ccf-imprisoned-members-cell-with-alfredo-cospito-greece-italy/][325]] via [[https://writerror.com/texts/a-few-words-of-freedom][writerror]].
#lang en
#pubdate 2018-07-27T16:03:02
#notes <em>Source: [[http://radioazione.org/2014/07/greciaitalia-intervista-delle-ccf-ad-alfredo-cospito][RadioAzione]]</em>. Translated for <em>[[http://interarma.info/][Inter Arma]]</em> by Nihil Admirari
<strong>INTERVISTA CCF/ALFREDO COSPITO</strong>
From the Greek prisons to AS2 unit of the prison of Ferrara: a few words of “freedom”.
<em>Interview by CCF to myself.</em>
Before answering your questions, I’d like to stress that what i’m about to say is my own truth. One of the many points of view, sensitivities and individual nuances within that crucible of thought and action that goes under the name of FAI-FRI.
Informal federation that, rejecting any hegemonic temptation, represents a tool, a method of one of the components of anarchism of praxis. Anarchism of praxis that only when it is informal, without being forced into organizational structures (specific, formal, of synthesis) when it doesn’t seek the unbearable consent (therefore rejects politics) it can be recognized in a wider chaotic universe called “black international”.
To understand this better, FAI-FRI is a methodology of action that only some of the sisters and brothers of the black international practice, it’ s not an organization nor a simple collective signature, but a tool that aims towards efficiency, whose objective is to reinforce cells and each comrade of praxis through a pact of mutual support based on three key points: revolutionary solidarity, revolutionary campaigns, communication between groups or individuals:
<strong>REVOLUTIONARY SOLIDARITY</strong>
<em>Each group of action in the Anarchist Informal Organization is engaged in showing revolutionary solidarity to comrades who are arrested or are on hiding. This solidarity will show itself mainly through armed action and the attack against men and structures responsible for the imprisonment of comrades. Solidarity will always be practiced as an indispensable feature of anarchist way of life and action. Of course we do not refer to legal and technical support: bourgeois society offers a sufficient number of lawyers, social workers and priests, which means that revolutionists can be engaged in another kind of activities.</em>
<strong>REVOLUTIONARY CAMPAIGNS</strong>
<em>When a group or individual starts a revolutionary campaign through the deeds and related communiqués, other groups and individuals in the Anarchist Informal Organization will follow according to their methods and time. Each group and individual can launch a struggle campaign on specific targets through one or more actions signed by the single group or individual and by the claim of the Federation. If a campaign is not agreed by the other groups, the critic will show itself through actions and communiqués that will contribute to correcting or discussing it.</em>
<strong>COMMUNICATION BETWEEN GROUPS OR INDIVIDUALS</strong>
<em>The groups of action in the Anarchist Informal Organization are not required to know one another. This will avoid repression to strike them and possible leaders or bureaucrat from emerging. Communication between groups or individuals is carried out through the actions and through the channels of the movement without them to know one another directly</em> (drawn from the responsibility claim for the attempt on Prodi, that time president of the European Commission, 21 december 2003, taken from Il dito e la luna.page 15-16).
This pact of mutual support in fact bypasses the assembly, its leaders, the specialists of speech and politics and the authoritarian mechanisms activated even in anarchist sphere when the assembly becomes a decision-making body. What the black international should do over the coming years is to reknot that “black thread” broken for a long time.
A thread that binds anarchism of yesterday which practiced “propaganda of the deed”, offspring of the International Congress of London in 1881, and anarchism of today, informal, anti-organizational, nihilistic, anti-civilizational, antisocial.
Nicola and i, the only members of “Olga Cell”, don’t know in person the other brothers and sisters of FAI, knowing them would mean seeing them locked up within the four walls of a prison cell. We were convinced of the utility of FAI-FRI thanks to the words (communiqués) and the actions of the brothers and sisters who preceded us. Their words always confirmed by their actions, gave us the indispensable tenacity, without which any project is reduced, in the era of the virtual, to useless, sterile words in the wind.
We needed a compass to find our way, a tool to recognize and unmask those who have created an anarchist gym for verbalists, a filter to distinguish empty words from those that carry reality.
We found in this “new anarchy” , in its claims and the related revolutionary campaigns, the perspective of a real attack that amplifies our destructive potentialities, protects our autonomy as rebel and anarchist individuals and gives us the opportunity to collaborate, strike together, without knowing one another directly. No kind of coordination can be included in our planning.
“Coordination” necessarily requires knowledge, organization between the sisters and brothers of different cells. Such a coordination would kill the autonomy of each group or individual. The most “efficient” , prepared, courageous, charismatic group would inevitably prevail, reproducing the same deleterious mechanisms of the assembly, in the long run leaders, ideologists, charismatic “bosses” would rise again, it would be a step towards organization: the death of freedom itself.
Some might say that even in an affinity group, in a FAI cell a charismatic leader, a “boss” could hide.
In our case, however, damage would be limited as between cells there is no direct knowledge. Gangrene could not be extended.
Our being anti-organizational preserves us from that risk. That is why we need to rely on “revolutionary campaigns” which exclude knowing groups and individuals directly, killing every glimmer of organization. Campaigns must never be confused with coordination, this is the informality, this is the essence, in my opinion, of our operating planning. It must be clear that when I speak of an affinity group or action cell, I may refer to a single individual or a numerous affinity group.
We should not make an issue of numbers.
It is clear that every single action is planned between the various members of the group, in that case one should not speak of coordination, never such a planning should be extended to the other groups of FAI-FRI. Outside each group, communication must be “limited” only through “revolutionary campaigns” and the actions related.
Our knowledge of FAI-FRI must always remain partial, limited to our affinity group. We only need to know the paw marks, the scratches, the wounds FAI-FRI causes to power. It would be mortal to create something monolithic or structured, each of us must avoid hegemonic misunderstandings or fantasizing.
Organization would restrict tremendously our perspectives, reversing the process from qualitative to quantitative. The action of one strengthens the will of others, creating inspiration. Campaigns are spread unevenly.
A thousand heads raging against power, cutting them all off is impossible. It is these very actions followed by words (communiqués) that allow us to exclude with certainty theorists, pure lovers of speech, giving us the chance to relate exclusively to those who live in the real world, getting their hands dirty, risking their own skin. These are the only words that really matter, the only words that allow us to grow, to evolve. Revolutionary campaigns are the most efficient tool to cut, harm where it hurts the most. Giving us the opportunity to spread throughout the world like a virus, carrier of revolt and anarchy.
<strong>CCF: To get to know you better, tell us something about your current situation.</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: There is not much to say, we were arrested for the kneecapping of Adinolfi, managing director of Ansaldo Nucleare. Lack of experience led us to mistakes that cost us the arrest: we didn’t cover the license plate of the motorcycle used for the action, we parked it too close to the ambush site, and most importantly we didn’t notice a camera in a bar, a very serious mistake that we’re paying right now. We claimed responsibility for our action as “Olga FAI-FRI cell”. I was sentenced to 10 years and 8 months, Nicola to 9 years and 4 months. Over the coming months we will have a further process for subversive association. This is more or less our current situation on the case.
<strong>CCF: Anarchist prisoners and prison. Which are the conditions in special sections, how do jailers behave and how are your relationships with the other prisoners?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: In Italy through maximum security circuits, which involve many restrictions, the democratic state wants to isolate us, relegating us in sections completely separated from the general context of the prison. Any contact with other prisoners is impossible, we don’t have the chance to go to the open air, only for two hours in a small concrete courtyard.
Censorship for me and Nicola has always been renewed, therefore we receive mail and journals delayed and with difficulty, things of special interest to us are seized in the entrance and exit. Right now we are locked in an AS2 high surveillance unit for anarchist prisoners.
“Relationship” between us and jailers is that of mutual indifference and natural hostility. What else can I say, from my point of view “civilized” protests outside and inside prison are useless, “livability” in here is just a matter of power relations. One must leave prison, it’s up to those who are inside to realize it…
<strong>CCF: Anarchy for us is not a party, it doesn’t have central committees, it is a stream of acts, ideas, positions, values. Which are the trends of the anarchist movement now in Italy, which its features, its contradictions, its activities?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: This is an important question that requires an articulated answer. I attend the anarchist movement since the late 80s.
Over the past 20 years, many things have changed, many relationships between comrades were broken, many trends –even negative ones- were set in motion, giving sometimes poor results and accentuating leadership-driven and political attitudes, but also giving new perspectives, a new generation beyond assemblies, beyond mechanisms of politics has made its voice heard.
To answer your question about the situation of the italian anarchist movement today I need to take a step backwards.
People often think that insurrectionalism is a whole, made of concepts and theories frozen in time, in their “ideological” rigidity. An ideology with actually (something completely aberrant) its own Lider Maximo and its dogmas. Nothing is permanent over time.
Women and men through their actions forge ideas. It’s not up to those three or four well-known comrades, with their books and articles, to show us the way, not even a matter of the long and inconclusive assemblies. It’s those unknown comrades with their practice of attack that push us forward, leading us to life.
It was because of this practice that in the end of the 90s, the previous groups- Crafts and Fire Cooperative (Occasionally Spectacular), July 20 Brigate, Cells against Capital, its Prisons, its Jailers, and its Cells, International Solidarity – questioned two established dogmas of the so-called “insurrectionalism”, the anonymity of actions and the predominance of the assembly which had turned into a decision-making body.
Two fixed points that were dragging us inexorably to a lethal inertia. Giving voice and continuity to the practice itself through claims, escaping from the shackles of the assembly and imposing no longer comprehensibility limits regarding “people” and the rest of the “movement” , anarchy became terrifying once again.
With ongoing bombs and responsibility claims, these groups dispelled the dogma of anonymity of action, breaking up the silence surrounding us after the wave of repression that followed the Marini case, seriously obstructing those dynamics that were dragging us to a citizenism* that risked to erase every instance of violence.
After these groups appeared, the term insurrectionalism for many anarchists, assumed a negative connotation, especially when journalists began to use it as a synonym for “terrorism”.
At that point, many took a step back claiming that certain “spectacular” attacks and the related communiqués drove people away.
To understand the divisions within the anarchism of praxis, today, in Italy, we need to go back to the early history of the struggle at Val Susa against the TAV: in 1998, after the tragic deaths of Baleno and Sole, many were the calls for a democratic legitimacy, a “right” justice, a fair trial, not only by eminent representatives of democratic “radicalism”, but also by a part of the anarchist movement.
A large part of anarchists were engaged in an “innocence-proving” crusade to the limits of denigration. Sole and Baleno were represented as two innocent, poor, naive victims, caught up in a story greater than themselves.
After the arrival of about ten letter bombs addressed to some of those responsible for the death of the comrades (actions never claimed) , the anarchist movement almost in its whole, fearing future waves of repression, distanced itself from such practices, considering them, at best, not “worthy” of anarchists, at worst, a true and proper police provocation.
Very few the exceptions, that naturally attracted the attention of the magistrature in the years to come. Ever since, the vast majority of the so-called “insurrectionists” was engulfed by an uncontrolled, suicidal desire for consent, setting out to a relentless pursuit towards civil society. Chasing the chimera of social/ working-class struggle, wherever it showed up, bouncing like crazy spinning tops from CIE (TN: CIE, Identification and Expulsion Centres ), to Val Susa (TN: struggle against High Speed Railway Line in Susa Valley), to squatting, to the struggle of the prisoners, watering down their own planning just to appear credible, reliable, realists, approaching more and more dangerously citizenism.
A small part of them, years later, realized the gradual and political ugly turn that social struggles were taking, withdrawing themselves into their classic ivory tower, pontificating against everything and everyone, immersed up to the neck in a desperate practical nihilism. (TN: nullismo= practical nihilism meaning the inability to act, to achieve, especially in the sphere of society).
Others instead experimented, without limits, with every single vital potentiality, not caring for the great theorists or the maximum systems. The most “lucid” that were keen on society, at least in the beginning, tried to repeat at Val Susa the experience of the 80s against the stationing of missiles in Comiso. Experience still trumpeted as a real example of insurrectional intervention methodology in the area.
At Comiso the planning actually had, although criticized for its political-deceptive content, an insurrectional perspective. The intermediate struggle, throwing out americans and their missiles, had to be the spark for a generalized uprising in the heart of Sicily, as in the classical case of the Matese Gang**.
Fake working-class alliances formed by single comrades, populist speeches to terrorize people and drive them towards revolt, absurd long speeches on possible rapes by american soldiers, tried to leverage the italiote machismo, turning this intervention into a phenomenon all political, strongly reprehensible from my point of view, but still, we must admit, with an insurrectional perspective.
In Val Susa things turned out differently, from the very beginning the insurrectional objective was quickly replaced by the simple struggle against Tav. The intermediate struggle got the upper hand, qualitative became quantitative, with the counting of protesters at the barricades, the struggling next to Alpine citizens, policemen, mayors, political parties, losing sight of the ultimate goal: the destruction of the existent.
The insurrectional perspective was transformed into a more modest, political improvement of the existent.
Once again “realism” had canceled the vital potential of anarchism. Personally I don’t criticize a priori, “ideologically” the so-called intermediate struggles, what i do criticize is the method with which one intervenes, acting as a representative and setting limits to the action itself, inevitably running great risk of becoming vanguard.
When you start doing what could drive people on your side instead of what you think is right, you do politics. From the moment you impose limitations on yourself out of fear of not being understood, you are, de facto, already a political entity, therefore you become part of the problem, one of the many cancers that infect our existence. One should never measure his own words and actions just to become acceptable to people, to the crowd, otherwise there is great risk of being transformed by the very “intermediate” objective he wants to reach.
Reading today the old responsibility claims of the groups that after the year 2000 will give life to FAI, i realized that through their actions they often intervened in the intermediate struggles, trying to reach partial objectives: FIES abolition, (TN: FIES, Ficheros de Internos de Especial Seguimiento, regime for political prisoners held in conditions of extreme isolation in Spain) CIE, etc. Not once seeking a general consensus, a quantitative growth. Always aiming at a qualitative growth of action, greater destructiveness, greater reproducibility.
The quality of life of an anarchist is directly proportional to the real damage he causes to the deadly system that oppresses him. The less he accepts compromise, his feelings, his passions become stronger, crystal clear, his hatred more lucid, always sharp as a razor. Unfortunately, the vast majority of anarchists act in accordance with the criminal law, many actions are not put into practice simply by fear of the consequences.
We must realize that the worst fate for an anarchist is not death or prison, but surrendering to fear, to resignation. Actions and writings of the black international emphasize on the total rejection of this resignation, the strong vitality, the energy of a movement that turns the quality of life, the sense of community and solidarity, the permanent struggle, into the center of its own existence.
Death, prison, have already made their appearance in this path without defeating us. Our strength is the full awareness of what we are, full awareness that once fear is defeated, a full life worth living, unfolds in front of us, for as long as it lasts, it’s the intensity that matters.
Getting back to your initial question on the trends, the features and the contradictions of the anarchist movement in Italy today, i must say that the debate on using or not acronyms and claims is still very strong.
Even in this case, i wouldn’t make an “ideological” approach of the subject, i have nothing against actions not claimed, from my point of view they simply tend to disappear, they do not stimulate debate, they have a minimum potential of reproducibility.
That’s why i made the FAI-FRI methodology my own. On the other hand “insurrectionalists” here, do make an “ideological” approach of the subject.
Whoever claims responsibility with an acronym is an enemy worthy of denigration. Those who know them, are very well aware of the reasons for this intransigence, communicating through claims puts clearly in danger their “power”, their theoretical hegemony. Actions claimed lay bare their practical nihilism.
Behind them, the failure of a classic insurrectional planning unable to adapt to reality; forward, profound discussions or so.
As a reaction to a reality that crashes them, panic, rage, hatred take over for anything that moves outside their rigid, disastrous plans. The main component of anarchism of praxis here in Italy, consists of those insurrectionalists who have embraced with undeniable enthusiasm and sacrifice the social trend.
They sometimes “dirty” their hands with action, always though with an eye pointing towards civil society, always measuring with an attention all political, their own steps. Departed from a “classic” insurrectional planning, they arrived today to a revolutionary “citizenism”, wonders of the political realism.
A few more years and we will find it hard to distinguish them from the militants of the Italian Anarchist Federation by which more and more frequently are accompanied in demonstrations, processions and rallies. Often praising absurd free Republics, they take two steps forward, two backward, remaining actually still, yet always with a nice, pleasant company.
The odd man out, the so-called “wild card” of anarchism of praxis in Italy is the informal FAI and even before all of these groups that created it: Metropolitan Cells, Tremendous Anonymous Revolt, Revolutionary Cell Horst Fantazzini, Cells against Capital, its Prisons, its Jailers and its Cells, International Solidarity, Sisters in arms, Nucleus Mauricio Morales, July 20 Brigade, Armed Cells for International Solidarity, Animal Revolt, Revolutionary Cell Lambros Fountas, Damiano Bolano Cell, Anti-Civilization Subversive Individualities, Conspiracy of Black Fire and Nicola and me of Olga Cell.
A hundred and more actions scattered over 20 years. Those years I witnessed as a spectator the panic of anarchists of every “current”. Those that were terrorized by repression and the similarity of the acronym to their federation. Those that were puzzled (and so was i) as they couldn’t understand what was happening, what was going on. As a reaction, the most ugly accusations flew thick and fast: secret services, authoritarianism. The smarter ones ignored the phenomenon hoping for its quick passing, but when the FAI-FRI virus, thanks to you CCF, began spreading all over the world, rivers of words started and are still pouring in by “anonymous” censors of orthodoxy: ”Arcipelago”, “Lettera alla galassia anarchica”, (TN: writings of italian anarchists supporters of anonymity of action ,criticizing FAI-FRI), rivers of words never followed by deeds, at least not here in Italy.
<strong>CCF: In your writings when you talk about power, are you referring exclusively to the power of the state or even to the one spread in society and its structures?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: When i talk about power, I’m referring to all of its aspects, the most obvious and the most subtle, hidden ones. Power penetrates everywhere, in the relationships between comrades, in our love affairs, in our emotional relationships and friendships. That is why i consider it vital to search for a new way to make plans, to live our own passions, to interact, so that we can improve the quality of our action, of our life, of our being rebels above all.
I still believe that society exists only under the sign of dominants and dominated. Better still, between dominants and those who allow themselves to be dominated. It is certain that responsibility lies on each side, both social subjects contribute to the limitation of my freedom, of my happiness.
The democratic citizen, as a good servant, fears and respects authority, begs for its attention, strengthens the chains that bind his wrists. Fact remains that responsibilities are not the same, a gradation exists. Between a man or woman of authority, a rich man, a manager, an industrialist, a politician, a scientist, a technocrat, and a “simple” citizen, an employee, a worker, who supports with his very own quiet living, his own consent, his own vote the status quo, i strike without any hesitation the first.
This does not detract from the disgust that i feel for “voluntary servitude”, for the resigned, if the “good” citizen stood between me and my freedom, I wouldn’t hesitate to act accordingly. For that little experience i have, I can tell that people, the crowd, the excluded, the oppressed, are much better than what our “ideological” glasses show us. I don’t struggle for the resigned but for my own freedom, my own happiness. The only possible point of reference is my “community”.
My idea of “community” is antithetical to the all-inclusive, authoritarian, abstract concept of “society”. My being part of a nihilistic, anarchist, anti-civilizational, completely different, in permanent struggle against the existent “community”, forces me to declare war on society ever single day.
I do not want to garner support, but to reinforce through violent action the bonds of true solidarity with my brothers and sisters.
Black international is my “community” spread throughout the world, fellow travelers who share my need to attack without hesitation, without knowing each other, in our differences we are one, a clenched fist, a hook in the stomach of “society”: <em>A plan that combines the mind with the feeling, the ice of strategy with the fire of praxis, here with now, the tension with the duration, with the direct aim of destroying the social apparatus and the liberation of our lives.</em> (CCF- Let’s become dangerous).
During struggle, new ideas have blossomed like seeds in the wind, carried away by the fire of praxis, inspirations, strategies previously inconceivable were born. In a modernity where terms such as society and authority reveal their full synonymity, i feel the need for new meanings, new words that can transmit my constant tendency towards new anarchy.
To use new words because the old ones are holding me tight. New meanings for a completely different planning. The same words at different latitudes may represent very different concepts. The so-called “informal organization”, at least as it was theorised between the late 70’s and the early 80’s in Italy, is way far from the informality of FAI-FRI.
According to italian insurrectionalists, informal organization should mainly be based in the tool of the assembly and the creation of base committees and self-managed federations. Where anarchists as a true minority that acts, after having contributed to their creation through networks, contacts, affinity groups, should have to try and guide the “real movement” towards insurrectional solutions. The battlefield of this insurrectional strategy: the “intermediate struggle”.
The “concrete” examples are always the same: the previously mentioned Comiso and the wildcat strike of the railway workers in Turin in 1978. With a certain embarrassment, I remember, as a witness before the judges in the Marini case, overelaborating next to a comrade, the difference between insurrectionalist methodology and the concept of the armed band of Revolutionary Action ( armed anarcho-communist organization of the 70’s) all this to emphasize on the distances with “lottarmatismo” (TN: lottarmatismo, strategy of armed attack of the organizations of the 70’s, that began to lean towards militarism), subtleties of a certain “noble” insurrectionalism, which doesn’feel familiar at all.
Today, certain strategies reappear among anarchists here in Italy in the noTav cases, with the addition of a dangerous corollary of sympathy by democratic magistrates and left-wing intellectuals. A civil society welcomed with open arms, to counter the fear that follows repression.
Nothing could be further from the antisocial, anti-organizational, nihilistic, purely anarchist concept of FAI-FRI. So, when I speak of FAI, i’m not referring to the informal organization, but to a different methodology of praxis. Certain words are outdated, words like “organization” i prefer not to use, as they do not represent us, they are different from us. As different as authority and society, with all the corollary of abominations and monstrosity.
<strong>CCF: A large part of the anarchist movement, both in practice and theory, contrast the state and its institutions, but don’t act likewise when it comes to civilization and technology. On the contrary, many are those who imagine self-organised factories and an “anarchist government” of our lives. What is your opinion on technology and civilization?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: Still today, the vision of the nineteenth-century, scientific, positivist anarchism is the dominant one.
There are still those, in 2014, who raise absurd “questions” about the day after the revolution.
How to manage production, deal with the inevitable shortages, self-manage factories, regulate future social relationships. If i put in the center of my action, the contrast to civilization and technology, the concept of revolution as it was intended a century ago will be, in fact, put aside. Questioning civilization in its whole, implies a total, apocalyptic, utopic, unachievable destruction.
Revolution, with its “simple” possible overturning of social relations is very little, a useless palliative as it creates new civilization. When declaring war on civilization, we satisfy our need to live not outside (that’s impossible, civilization never abandons us, we always carry it inside) but against it.
By creating communities at permanent war with society, we build moments of happiness, we live flashes of intense joy in our lives. Revolution is an insufficient tool, with its political, concrete “realism”, even in its libertarian variant, with its self-managed communes, its administration-ruling of the world, its inevitable creating of status-quo: breaks wings, shatters hopes, creates new chains.
Revolt, with its endless charge of breaking, with its lack of future prospects, with its absolute negation of politics: creates hopes, breaks chains. A woman and a man in revolt, destroy chains without wanting to build other, this is enough to fill up with adventure and happiness any existence.
<strong>CCF: What do you think of the international network of ALF and ELF? Are there any prospects of connection with FAI?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: To comrades like me, formed during the struggles of the 90’s in Italy, the contribution of the groups of action ALF and ELF, with their international network, concerning the revolutionary anarchist imaginary and how to organize into affinity groups, was very important. Their environmentalist, animalist perspective has changed the view of many anarchists.
In Italy, their propensity to affinity groups was greeted with enthusiasm as a concrete example of informal organization. The first actions of ALF in Italy were strictly related to an anarchist vision. Over time, anarchist perspective went fading away.
Today, my only objection regards their opposition on striking people. Although I know that there have been great debates, this position of theirs i honestly can not understand. I understand and agree more with the violence of the mexican ITS (TN: ITS, Individuals Tending Toward Savagery), with their anti-civilizational, wild, anti-ideological concept.
As for the “connections” between FAI-FRI and ELF, ALF they are beyond doubt a fact, which one could easily acknowledge simply by reading the responsibility claims of the russian ELF-FAI-FRI and the mexican ALF-FAI. At the risk of becoming repetitive, I must reiterate that FAI-FRI is a methodology, a method, to sign as such, you invite other groups of FAI-FRI around the world to enter into a real campaign of struggle, you increase your own strength, you spread actions from one part of the world to another. You make action more efficient and destructive.
Nothing more, nothing less. The sisters and brothers of ALF and ELF that signed as FAI-FRI, joined this methodology without renouncing their own history in any way. We are not playing at Risk, FAI-FRI is not an organization that incorporates acronyms spread around the world. One becomes part of FAI-FRI only at the very moment he/she acts and strikes claiming as FAI, then everyone returns to their own projects, their own individual perspective, within a black international that includes a variety of practices, all aggressive and violent.
After all, i was convinced (maybe I’m wrong) that the brothers and sisters of ALF and ELF that signed FAI, did so to emphasize on their being anarchists, on their adherence to an anarchist planning, to what I call “new anarchy”, to distance themselves from that ecologism based on empathy and pietism.
<strong>CCF: Right now FAI is an international network of anarchists of praxis, with dozens of cells in many countries around the world. This adventure began in Italy in 2003, with an open letter to the anti-authoritarian movement. If you want, tell us briefly how you see the evolution of FAI and which are now your points of reference.</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: When i read back in 2003 the “open letter to the anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement” signed by Crafts and Fire Cooperative (Occasionally Spectacular), July 20 Brigate, Cells against Capital, its Prisons, its Jailers, and its Cells, International Solidarity, I was very impressed.
Several saw in this writing only a goliardic provocation to the old dogmatic anarchism of the Italian Anarchist Federation. Still today, most worthy comrades, such as Gustavo Rodriguez, support this view in their writings, misinformed by italian anarchists who know nothing and have done much since the very beginning to obstruct this new trend of anarchy.
I open a small parenthesis: I believe that the writings of Rodriguez concerning the international black are remarkable, some of the ideas developed truly open new perspectives.
That said, i since the very beginning have taken very seriously the choice of the acronym FAI, seeing not only an attack to the old formal federation, but also a new planning. Despite being, at that time, very far from that perspective, I started off with that long process that brought me, in 2012, to act as Olga cell of FAI-FRI.
Rereading today the “open letter to the anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement” i realize how much has been done, how much this concept of anarchy has evolved, and how greatly it keeps evolving:
<strong>FEDERATION</strong> <em>because of its wide-spread horizontal structure, that is to say federation of groups or individuals, free and equal men and women bond together by common practices of attack against dominion and aware that mutual support and revolutionary solidarity are instruments of freedom. Relationships inside the federation are stable and flexible at the same time; they evolve continuously thanks to the ideas and practices brought in by new individuals and groups that will join. We do not want any democratic federation, as this would involve representatives, delegates, official meetings, committees, and organs implying the election of leaders, charismatic figures and the imposition of specialists of speech. In the informal federation, communication must be based on a horizontal and anonymous debate, which will come out of the practice (claims of actions) and of the widespread of theories through the means of communication of the movement. In other words, the meeting will be substituted by an anonymous and horizontal debate between groups or individuals who communicate through practice. The federation is our strength, that is to say the strength of groups or individuals that help one another through a well-defined pact of mutual support.</em>
<strong>ANARCHIST</strong> <em>because we want the destruction of capital and the State. We want a world where only freedom and self-organisation “dominate”, and a society where exploitation of men over men and of men over nature does not exist. We strongly oppose any Marxist cancer, which is nothing more than a fascinating and dangerous siren that claims freedom for the oppressed but actually denies the possibility of a free society and just substitutes one dominion with another.</em>
<strong>INFORMAL</strong> <em>because we do not believe in vanguards nor do we think that we are an enlightened active minority. We just want to live as anarchists here and now and this is why we consider the informal organisation as the only kind of organisation capable of preventing the creation of any authoritarian and bureaucratic mechanism. It allows us to keep our independence as individuals and/or groups and to resist power with continuity. The Informal Anarchist Organisation practises the armed struggle but it refuses classic monolithic organisations implying a base, regular and irregular members, columns, executive cadres, huge amounts of money and living on hiding. We think that this kind of structures is an easy target for power. In fact, an infiltrated cop or an informer is sufficient to have the whole organisation or a good part of it collapsed like a house of cards. On the contrary, as the informal organisation is formed by 1000 individuals or groups that do not know one another (as they recognise one another through the actions the carry out and the mutual support bonding them), if by some unfortunate chance infiltrators or informers should come out, this would affect a single group without spreading to the others. Furthermore, whoever takes part into the Informal organisation is a militant only when preparing and carrying out an action. The organisation, therefore, does not affect the entire life and projects of the comrades so that all kind of armed-struggle sectarianism are avoided. Once we are well rooted, power will find it very difficult to destroy us.</em> (drawn from the responsibility claim for the attempt on Prodi, that time president of the European Commission, 21 December 2003, taken from Il dito e la luna.page 14-15)
The vital force of FAI-FRI is its constant renewal, its stimulating evolution. Today the need to overcome old concepts such as “organization”, “liberated society”, “revolution” is more urgent than ever before.
Other concepts such as “federalism”, “informality”, “mutual support”, ” horizontal-anonymous debate between groups/individuals through praxis”, ” rejection of plenary assemblies” retain their full strength as the main pillars of our planning.
Since 2003, anarchists of praxis of FAI have set themselves on new perspectives, have developed new connections. Ignoring the nihilistic delusions of pure theorists of insurrection, against every political “realism”, they have ensured that concepts such as nihilism, antisocial struggle have made their reappearance more vital than ever.
The brain of FAI-FRI is this constant chaotic debating of women and men through praxis. Words and new perspectives will be describing new paths hard to imagine today, words that in turn will be overcome by even more effective and disruptive concepts, as they will be already tested in action.
An ongoing experimentation of revolt, nothing established, nothing permanent over time, only fixed point the insatiable desire for freedom and the constant striving for anarchy.
Nicola and i, by the action against Adinolfi (even though delayed), have joined this planning, making our own anti-civilizational and anti-technological contribution to FAI-FRI. Very interesting the contributions on the same line of the english FAI, the mexican and the chilean. Keep in mind though that the news we receive in prison are few and censored, therefore knowing what happens out there is extremely difficult.
It was your contribution, CCF, concerning the internationalization of FAI that sped up the creation, in parallel, of the concept of the “black international”. The point of reference of the methodology of FAI-FRI can only be this “international”, with all its universe of actions claimed or not, conflicts, barricades and violent assaults.
The “new” nihilistic perspective with all of its anti-organizational potential is the greatest result of this dialogue through praxis. A very important, vital role have those who through actions, not just small talk, criticize our methodology by pointing out the risk we run that all boils down to an acronym.
To avoid that risk, we need to develop further the “revolutionary campaigns”, which are too often ignored by the other groups of FAI-FRI· sometimes instead (hopefully more often) they take us by surprise, one of the first examples the “Phoenix Project”, started in Greece and spread throughout the world.
<strong>CCF: Anarcho-nihilism is probably the most calumniated trend of anarchy, both by “official” anarchists and by state propaganda. What are your thoughts on anarco-nihilism and the criticism it receives?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: By nihilism, i mean the will to live anarchy now, right away, leaving aside expectations of a future revolution.
To live as an anarchist means to struggle, to arm yourself, to conflict with the existent without waiting. Only in this conflict, one can savour full happiness with its ever-present accompaniment of relationships, complicities, loves, friendships, hatred.
For me, there is no other way to live with satisfaction and fullness the present, life. It is in this nihilism that my anarchy is being fulfilled, true, real, today, now. A nihilist destroys, he doesn’t build anything because there is nothing he wants to build.
A revolution would inevitably create more chains, new authority, new technology, new civilization. An anti-civ anarchist can only be a nihilist, for it is in the destruction of society that this new anarchy is being fulfilled.
To destroy not because the desire for destruction is also a creative desire, but because there is nothing that we want to build anymore. To destroy because there is no future in civilization. I’m not surprised at all that nihilism is the most calumniated trend of anarchy by the very same anarchists.
Its ruthless concreteness, removes the happy ending of the good-night story (the future revolution), forcing us to action, here and now, scaring away all those quitters always ready to postpone conflict.
My nihilism goes hand in hand with life, with action, rejects overhumanism, it has nothing to do with the verbalistic individualism of the passed century or of our time. Much in common with the individualistic, anti-organizational anarchy of men of praxis like Novatore, Di Giovanni, Galleani.
<strong>CCF: As an anarchist nihilist do you accept the idea that “mass society will make its revolution when conditions are ripe” ?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: as an anarchist nihilist i stand clearly against any deterministic vision of anarchism, against any “scientistic” anarchism.
I do not think that history will lead us by the hand towards anarchy, on the contrary I think our “destiny” is always to go against the tide. Society will always be based on some type or form of slavery.
The very thought that someday we will achieve the “perfect society” terrifies me, anarchy would be transformed into a regime. Utopia would become dystopia. I prefer to strive for anarchy and through this continuing tendency of mine, achieve happiness.
Conditions are ripe when desire overcomes fear, conditions are always ripe for an act of revolt. The more so, when revolt creates communities through complicity with other individualities, in that case our strength increases a hundredfold and proportionally our pleasure grows. Only the women and men of praxis can understand the true potential of the will: what seems impossible is carried out, desperate actions become an example reinforcing other desires.
An anarchist without courage is an anarchist with no will, he knows what is right yet doesn’t have the strength to confirm it with deeds, he stands still watching, at most he speaks, he writes. The saddest existence of all.
<strong>CCF : What is your opinion on the formal anarchist structures (for example federations) which mutilate their practice and theory in the name of massivity and social acceptance?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: formal structures have a head -leaders-, arms -the militants-, legs – the committees related. In the informality of FAI-FRI, each individual is the head, affinity groups are the arms and violent action the legs.
However, affinity group is not an exclusive feature of the informal structures, many the examples of the formal anarchist organizations which base their action on affinity groups: the spanish FAI pre 1936, Fijl, with their groups of action after Franco’s victory and so on.
In all these cases though, there was a coordination, a political direction, the freedom of each individual was limited. The distinctive feature of the informality of FAI-FRI is the complete absence of organization, direction, coordination. The full autonomy of each group or individual. Organization is being replaced by dialogue through actions, the engine is no longer society but each community in struggle.
The so-called informal “organization” as was theorized in Italy includes, willingly or not, a direction, experts of informality who lead the assemblies, directing indirectly the affinity groups. The most clever, the most good at talking, the most charismatic one has the possibility to impose himself on others.
The “hierarchy” formed through this “informality” is the most subtle and difficult to eradicate as it is invisible. The “classic” informal insurrectional strategy involves relating to specific organizations, associations, people’s committees, as they have a perspective which includes revolution, quantitative growth. A perspective that is absent from FAI-FRI, from its anti-social, anti-civilizational tendency, for us politics, compromise, settlement do not exist, in that way we do not run the risk of becoming leading class.
I couldn’t stand to be part of an organization as my individual freedom would be limited. Then, there is the matter of repression, it is lot easier to rip apart an organization than 10-100-1000 single individuals and affinity groups that don’t know one another, but this is secondary.
<strong>CCF: Today in Greece several anarchist squats instead of creating meeting points for new comrades with the aim of acting, appear as an alternative to cultural centers. What is the situation in Italy and your opinion on squats?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: i never had a great sympathy for those called in Italy social centers. In the 90s, the places occupied by us were defined “nor centers nor social”, we acted in a playful, existential, individualistic way, we didn’t have a social, communicative perspective with the district around us, we mainly aimed at the quality of our life, our relationships, we strongly criticized “militancy”.
Perhaps that is why some of us, not caring about communication, expressed great violence against the system. I believe that occupation, squatting, if it creates conflictuality, complicity and actions, it can become a wonderful place where one can experience conflictuality with the rest of the world. In the end, I must tell the truth, in the past few years I have attended squats very little and have searched for my complicities elsewhere.
<strong>CCF: Every anarchist of praxis struggles with the dilemma between public activity or illegal. What is your opinion?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: I am convinced that the only actions that really count are those illegal. It is only through illegalism that one can live anarchy. This does not detract from the importance of newspapers, books, brochures, demonstrations, occupations, but the priority, the irreplaceable, indispensable activity for an anarchist can not be other than the direct conflict with the system, the violent action.
The system is well aware of it, in democracy they let you say whatever you want, the true problems begin when you put what you say into practice. I don’t agree with the comrades who think that every action has equal dignity, violent action has more than the others.
To hell with the risks of specialism, especially when the only specialism left is that of the pen.
<strong>CCF: In certain European countries there is a trend known as political anonymity. Ideological supporters of political anonymity claim that “responsibility claims and acronyms such as FAI, create an ownership of action”. We CCF think that our actions define who we are and claims are not a property title but an act of war. What do you think about that?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: The lack of acronyms and responsibility claims can’t protect us from the risk of authoritarianism and vanguard.
The comrades of the “letter to the anarchist galaxy” accuse us of having a desire for hegemony, of being an organization, one of the many anarchist federations.
Like the magistrates who have condemned us, they see in us an organization, a pseudo armed party. Convinced that our objective is the recognition by the state, they present us as a caricature of the armed struggle.
This “witty” and “granitic” belief, follow other more active and optimistic: the belief that, as if by magic, by not claiming responsibility, an action can become reproducible, a heritage of “all”; that by not having a name and an acronym, automatically one avoids the perspective of doing politics; that those who communicate through the tools that the “movement” offers -assemblies, conferences, newspapers, magazines, websites- do not succumb to authoritarian leadership-driven mechanisms and similar specialisms and -icing on the cake- that when not claiming responsibility, courts find it hard to repress us.
Let’s say that these firm points are the backbone of the classic social “insurrectionalism”, the way it was spread in Italy, France, Belgium… with its ups and downs, successes and failures.
Let’s leave aside all the silly accusations that this “current” of informal anarchism, in its italian component, addressed to FAI-FRI: accusation of considering the practice of parcel bombs mediocre; accusations of us wanting the hegemony of the movement and to overshadow anonymous actions, the accusation of being an organization, a political party and, finally, the accusation of being vanguard.
The same bullshit that the formal FAI foist on us, 12 years now. Insults that certainly do not facilitate a balanced debate and that do not surprise me that much, given the previous.
The same comrades claimed a few years ago that whoever practiced the abduction of a person wasn’t worthy of being called an anarchist , while later they resented the fact that some anarchists, in an excess of panic, distanced themselves clearly from our (mine and Nicola’s) shooting in Genoa. I find it difficult to relate to these comrades, not so much for the insults, but because such declarations of intent here in Italy, i stress it in Italy, are followed by more than 15 years of a great deal of theory and very little practice -not to say of nothing at all- and it would be hypocritical of them to pretend otherwise.
In Belgium, where this vision of informality is actually moving forward, the facts are clear as well as, unfortunately, the repressive responses of power. For as much as the supporters of anonymity say, no theory can give us the certainty of impunity, especially when action turns from symbolic to destructive.
The rejection of an acronym, the anonymity of an action can not certainly make us impervious to repression and sometimes even the so-called “innocence” is not enough.
Besides, i’m telling the truth, those who act according to the penal code always caused me a certain disgust. My approach on the actions claimed or not is pragmatic, it is not a matter of principles, ideological but a matter of efficiency and concreteness. I myself in certain occasions may decide not to claim responsibility, FAI-FRI is a very efficient tool from my point of view, only a tool, one of the many tools that my community, the black international, adopts in its war on society, on civilization.
That said, i have adopted the method of FAI-FRI because i oppose any organization, to avoid being subject to any kind of leadership, to bypass, with communication through claims, all those potentially authoritarian mechanisms, like assemblies, associations, base-cells, committees, movements, to protect my anonymity and mainly to reinforce my destructive potential through revolutionary campaigns, without setting limits to my individual freedom.
Not knowing directly the other brothers and sisters of FAI-FRI, charisma, prestige find it very hard to penetrate, limiting greatly the risks concerning our freedom. Only facts speak, only praxis, creation of the will, counts.
In the “classic” insurrectionalism, despite anonymity, everyone knows everyone, concepts, ideas develop within the assemblies, giving harmful space to the unavoidable specialists of theory, of ideology. When bypassing the plenary assemblies and communicating only through the actions of FAI-FRI, we can avoid spending valuable time arguing for hours about maximum systems with people who have never dirtied their hands with action and never will. Allowing us eventually to cut out of our lives those who do not put their words into practice.
Today i feel the need to see the energy that i put into action bloom, reproduce, to see new paths built, through bouncing from one part of the world to another. Through responsibility claims, actions speak, spread, increase their virulence.
The practice of the so-called anonymity of action doesn’t satisfy me at all, no matter how respectable and pleasant it is, it does not reinforce our action, it does not favour debates, in the long run it grows weak, limiting, dissolving, isolating us. It reduces greatly the reproducibility of the deed which when not followed by words, fades out.
Anonymity of action in a social perspective has a sense of camouflage. They want to convince people, they seek consensus to start a revolution, they pretend to be “people” so that they can turn their action into heritage of “all”, for an action not claimed could have been carried out by “anyone”.
In that case, the action not claimed has a strong meaning, a meaning all political, social, a meaning that is likely to turn us into one of the many vanguards of the square.
Naturally, this could never be my own meaning, for i reject in its whole any social perspective regarding my action. Anonymity of action in an antisocial perspective finds its meaning in the recreational pleasure of trying to make whatever destroys us bleed, in that immense satisfaction of doing what needs to be done, simply because it’s right.
It’s not a small thing, this egoistic perspective is fully included in the antisocial paraphernalia of the practices of the black international. It has been my practice in the past, it could become my practice again in the future, today, however, FAI-FRI is my perspective on the world.
Today, the debate is not between claiming responsibility or not, using an acronym or not, but between a social-political conception of anarchism and an antisocial-nihilistic conception of anarchy. A crucial choice, the one between anarchism and anarchy, revolution and revolt, old and new anarchy, a crucial and inevitable choice.
The anti-civilizational subject can not exist in a social perspective, just as much as there can be no anti-technological subject in a social perspective. Society, culture, technology, civilization: one can not exist without the other. Historically, only political parties with their authoritarian, hierarchical paraphernalia made a revolution. There is nothing more authoritarian than a revolution, nothing more anarchic than revolt.
Revolution structures, organizes, creates civilization and progress. Revolt deconstructs, has no future, leaves in the present, suspends our lives in an eternal ” here and now”, never satiates our desires pushing us forward to a continuous search of the impossible.
A constant trend that feeds on the destruction of the existent. When I speak of “new anarchy” i refer to that anarchy that can easily exist without the concept of revolution, realism, politics.
The restless spirit of Bakunin, the visionary madness of Cafiero, the thirst for justice of Ravachol and Henry, the hatred and vengeance of Di Gioavanni, the poems and the lead of Novatore, the bloodthirsty despair of Bertoli are all part of this “new anarchy”. The black international, my brothers and sisters of FAI-FRI are today the incarnation of this “new anarchy”.
The time has arrived to acknowledge that we are different, that an abyss divides us from the old anarchism. We have no space for the great illusions: revolution, progress, civilization.
Our path is different from that of social, realist, rational, positivist, proactive, creator of new order and civilization anarchism. A different path that finds within anti-civilization the closing of a circle.
A circle that leads us to nowhere else than living life to the full. Defining ourselves carriers of “new anarchy”, naive as it may sound, serves as a distinction from the political anarchism as well as from a certain social insurrectionalism that oozes ideology.
<strong>CCF: ”Solidarity between anarchists of praxis is not just a word”. How have italian anarchists dealt with your case and how have they expressed their solidarity?</strong>
<strong>Alfredo</strong>: There are two types of solidarity. A passive one that all too often serves only to wash away conscience for someone’s own inactivity and that does not bridge the gaps between words and deeds.
And then the active, concrete, real solidarity that some call revolutionary, created in silence and anonymity, where only destructive actions speak even through the words that follow. Needless to say which one I prefer.
In final analysis, the best solidarity that i could receive is to see the planning of this new anarchy, in all of its forms, continue to move forward, insensible to the strokes of repression. I will not deny it, in every action that someone salutes us as anarchist prisoners, both in Italy and the rest of the world, my heart fills with joy.
This is my life today. The war continues, never give up, never give in.
<em>Long live FAI-FRI</em>
<em>Long live CCF</em>
<em>Long live the black international</em>
<strong>Alfredo Cospito</strong>
–
*ΤΝ. <em>Cittadinismo</em>: Ideology based on the belief that citizens should be able to govern themselves. Distinctly rejects the concept of representation, preferring other patterns of direct or participatory democracy. In the absence of alternatives, the so-called representatives of the citizens commit to the order they received and the decision-making power remains intimately related to the citizen. Officially rejects leaders and every mediation, as it is based on the moral superiority of the citizens. Rejects organization, as the citizen must be free to express his opinion without ideological or “political” limitations.
According to this ideology, organizations that could survive in the new society are not based on any ideology or a worldwide vision. Only post-ideological organizations with an objective, such as citizens for the water, citizens against the Tav, citizens against taxes and so on, can survive.
**ΤΝ. <em>Banda del Matese</em>: Cafiero and Malatesta conceptualized the idea of the Matese Gang, based on propaganda of the deed. According to Ceccarelli, a small armed group is able to “move in the country, as much as possible, proclaiming social war, urging people on acts of social banditry, occupying small communities and after having accomplished as many revolutionary actions as possible, heading to those places where our presence will show itself in the most efficient way”. The gang decides to act in San Lupo (Benevento). Unfortunately, one of Malatesta’s associates gives away their plans to the police and San Lupo is placed under surveillance. Many anarchists are being arrested while an exchange of gunfire between anarchists and the police takes place inside the village. A cop dies of his wounds.
Cafiero, Malatesta and Ceccarelli along with 25 comrades decide to climb up the mountains and try to trigger revolt in the isolated villages. Revolution at Letino is greeted with enthusiasm by the villagers who aid the rebels. In the next village Gallo things proceed similarly, although this time villagers are less excited as they hear about the arriving of government troops heading to encircle the rebels. For two days Malatesta and his comrades wander around in the mountains, searching in vain for food and shelter. Hungry and shivering from cold, they are surrounded by the army and driven to prison, where they are held for sixteen months without a trial. They are accused of the death of a police officer but on the trial held on August 1878, they are released without charges.
|
#title A Few Words To Bring The Controversy To An End
#LISTtitle Few Words To Bring The Controversy To An End
#SORTtopics anarchy, tactics
#date 18 April 1897
#source <em>The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader</em>, edited by Davide Turcato, translated by Paul Sharkey.
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-09-07T02:53:56
#notes Translated from Malatesta’s note to the article “Poche parole per chiudere la polemica,” by Francesco Saverio Merlino, <em>L’Agitazione</em> (Ancona) 1, no. 6 (18 April 1897). This further exchange between Merlino and Malatesta follows directly the one of March 28, included here before the present one. In this further article, Merlino claims that the respective positions are “gradually becoming closer.”
#author Errico Malatesta
Merlino is developing an odd approach to debate. From what is said to him he picks out some phrase that he then wrenches out of its context, toying with it and twisting it and, because he then ignores the context, he manages to depict you as saying whatever suits him. Besides, he never answers questions put to him nor replies to rebuttals; but swoops on some incidental example or detail and addresses it, ignoring the essential point at issue; so that the subject of contention is never the same from one response to the next.
And actually, who could guess that we were in the throes of debating whether parliamentarism is or is not compatible with anarchy?
If things carry on like this, we can spend a good century arguing without ever discovering whether we agree or not.
Anyway, let us follow where Merlino leads.
Why is Merlino saying that “we are gradually becoming closer?”
Is it because we concede the need for cooperation and agreement between the component members of society and because we defer to conditions outside of which cooperation and agreement are not possible? But, sure, that is socialism and Merlino knows perfectly well that we have always been socialists and therefore always very “close.”
The point, now, is whether socialism is to be anarchist or authoritarian, that is, whether agreement should be voluntary or imposed.
And what if people refuse to agree? Well, in that case, there will be tyranny or civil war, but not anarchy. Anarchy is not brought about by force; force can and should be used to sweep away the material stumbling blocks and allow the people a free choice as to how they wish to live; but, beyond that, it can achieve nothing.
So, if “a handful of good-for-nothings or hotheads, or even a single individual pig-headedly say no, is anarchy then to be ruled out?” Damn it! Let’s not bandy phoney arguments. Such individuals are free to say <em>no</em>, but they will not be able to stop others from pushing for <em>yes</em>—and so they will have to fit in as best they can. And if “good-for-nothings and hotheads” were sufficiently numerous as to be in a position to seriously thwart society and prevent it from blithely functioning, then …sad to say, anarchy would still be a way off.
We do not depict anarchy as some idealized paradise indefinitely postponed precisely because it is too beautiful.
Men are too flawed, too used to competing with and hating one another, too brutalized by suffering, too corrupted by authority for a rearrangement of society to be likely to turn them all, overnight, into ideally good and intelligent beings. But no matter the measure of the impact we can expect that rearrangement to produce, the system needs changing and, in order to change it, we must bring about the essential preconditions that allow for such change.
Our reckoning is that anarchy is feasible in the near future, because we think that the requisite conditions for it to exist are already embedded in the social instincts of men today; so much so, that one way or another, they keep society afloat in spite of the disruptive, anti-social operations of government and property. And we reckon the remedy and bulwark against the noxious tendencies of some and against the dangers posed by the conflicts of interests and inclinations, is not government, whatever its hue, but freedom; being made up of men, any government cannot help but tilt the scales in favor of the interests and tastes of those who are in government. Freedom is the great reconciler of human interests, as long as it is rooted in equality of conditions.
Whilst we want to see anarchy made a reality, we are not waiting for crime or the possibility of crime to be banished from the face of society; but we want no police because we do not believe they have the ability to prevent crime or clear up after it, whereas the police themselves are the source of a thousand woes and a standing menace to freedom. Social defense must be taken care of by the whole society; if arms must be taken up in order to defend ourselves, we want to see everyone armed rather than a number of us constituted as some praetorian guard. We remember only too well the fable of the horse that submitted to the bridle and let itself be mounted by a man, the better to hunt the stag—and Merlino is well aware of how much of a lie there is in talk of “oversight by the citizenry,” when those in need of such oversight are the very ones who command strength.
Nor is Merlino any more rigorous when he borrows our example of the “European Entente”. We have never claimed that equality and justice were features of present day relations between states, any more than we have denied the need for a federative, libertarian orchestration of international interests. We merely said that the violence and injustice, which prevail in relations between states today, would not be remedied by some international government or Parliament. Greece today is under the yoke of the Great Powers and she resists it; if she was represented in some world Parliament and had agreed to abide by the determinations of the majority of that Parliament, she would be subject to an equal or greater violence, and would have no right to resist it.
Moreover, what is Merlino talking about when he says that we are mid-way between Individualism and Socialism?
Individualism is either a theory of struggle, “every man for himself and devil take the hindmost,” or it is a teaching that everyone should think for himself and do as he pleases without a care for others, out of which universal harmony and happiness emerge, as if by some law of nature.
In either sense, we are the polar opposites of individualists, every bit as much as Merlino may be. The issue between him and us is an issue of freedom or authority and, to be quite frank, it strikes us that he has reached (or, rather, has strayed to) a position midway between authoritarianism and anarchism.
------
We come now to the matter of tactics.
Merlino is astounded that we should have rejoiced at the socialists’ success.[1] We find his astonishment truly odd.
We rejoice when democratic socialists get one over on the bourgeois, just as we would celebrate if republicans got one over on the monarchists, or the liberal monarchists on the clericals.
We would be a lot happier still if we had managed to convert to anarchism those who cast their votes for the socialists, and had we managed to ensure that not a single vote was cast for the socialists. But in the present instance, had the hundred thousand-odd voters who did cast their votes for the socialists not done so, that would not have been because they were anarchists but because they would either have been various shades of conservatives, or folk who abstained out of sheer indifference, or who cast their votes indiscriminately for whoever was paying, promising, or threatening the most. And Merlino is astounded that we should rather know them to be socialists, or half-baked socialists?
Good and evil are quite relative; and a reactionary party may well represent a step forwards in comparison with an even more reactionary one.
We are always delighted to see a clerical turn into a liberal, a monarchist into a republican, a fence-sitter into something; but it does not follow from that that we—whose thinking is streets ahead of theirs—must become monarchists, liberals, or republicans.
Take an example: given the current status of the southern provinces, it would have been an excellent sign if the supporters of Cavallotti quite simply had met with success on a wide scale;[2] and we would have rejoiced at that, just as we reckon the democratic socialists would have as well. But that is not to say that the socialists and anarchists should have championed Cavallotti’s supporters in southern Italy. Instead, the socialists stand their own candidates everywhere, even if that might lessen the chances of the less reactionary candidate—whereas we lobby everywhere for deliberate abstention, not bothered by whether or not it might favor this candidate or that. For us, it is not the candidate that counts, insofar as we do not see the point of having “good deputies”; what matters is some indication of people’s frame of mind; and of the thousand and one bizarre frames of mind in which the voter may be found, the best is the one that opens his eyes to the pointlessness and dangers of returning someone to Parliament, and the one that impels him to work directly for what he wants through joining forces with all whose wishes are the same as his.
-------
Finally, what possessed Merlino to finish his letter with innuendoes that are, to say the least, in poor taste, given the current status of his relations with anarchists?[3] Merlino claims that he is still an anarchist and strives to get us to think of anarchy in his terms and to have us embrace his tactics; which he is entitled to do. But why adopt that tone, which may well be appropriate in dealings with an opponent that he does not care about wounding, but which is out of place towards comrades he is out to persuade and win over?
Some time ago, in responding in <em>Il Messaggero</em> to Malatesta[4] who had talked about the anarchist party’s “incipient reorganization” Merlino was poking fun, while he <em>knew</em> that the anarchists actually were reorganizing and had already produced results, very modest results to be sure, but real for all that. And now here he is dredging up the history of self-styled abstentionist anarchists who vote; here he is, casting Azzaretti up to us, the very same Azzaretti we ourselves denounced in these columns.[5]
Well, if there abstentionists who vote — and we know that, actually, there are—that means that they are not fully aware of the views they profess; or else that they cannot find in the anarchist ranks the strength needed to stand up to outside influences; the cure lies, not in all of us abjuring our programme or adding to the causes of confusion and weakness, but in nurturing individuals’ consciousness and bolstering the party’s organization.
And if, after that, there are still knaves who sell out, it merely remains for them to be unmasked and driven out.
[1] The reference is to the socialists’ success in the latest elections.
[2] Felice Cavallotti, leader of the radical Left, was a popular figure of Italian politics. He died in a duel in 1898.
[3] The closing paragraph of Merlino’s article reads: “One last word. You claim that all anarchists are abstentionists. How wrong you are! The fiercest abstentionists vote for the republicans, for the socialists, for their personal friends, not to mention the Azzarettis, which are quite a few! What is gained by abstentionist tactics is to take part in elections not in the name of our own principles, but under a false name and to the advantage of other parties.” Antonino Azzaretti was a Sicilian anarchist who had expressed public support for a certain right-wing candidate.
[4] Malatesta is referring to himself in third person because his editorial note is unsigned.
[5] Malatesta had harshly criticized Azzaretti three weeks before in an article titled “Cose sporche” (dirty stuff).
|
#title Why I Left the PSL… or the DSA or Socialist Alternative or whatever
#author a filler kid
#SORTauthors Anonymous
#SORTtopics organization
#date July 2021
#source https://fillerpgh.wordpress.com/2021/07/20/why-i-left-the-dsa/
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-07-21T08:40:09
For six years, my sights were always set on spamming out emails and event invitations, optimizing social media engagement, writing press releases and meeting agendas, recruitment, discourse pissing contests…
<strong>Leftist organizations were the center of my life until the day I burned out, and I regret the time that I wasted on them.</strong>
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of formal organizations that do genuinely radical and important things. But that shit just doesn’t work for me anymore. And it honestly sucks that it took me so long to realize this.
At the time of my involvement with my former organization, I was only vaguely familiar with some of my friends’ projects, yet I felt they were never serious about taking the Next Step (electing delegates to send to our meetings). I came to dismiss them as lifestylists and anarchists.
I lauded the anarchists for their absence from the struggle against gentrification and landlords, even as I heard about the squat evictions and the solidarity attacks that followed, even as I walked through the neighborhoods where a creative and hostile graffiti culture kept the developers at bay. I made tired jokes about vegan burritos, even as the food distribution centers and groups multiplied across the city without needing the direction of any central committee.
I used to treat organizing like a try-hard student treats a group project. Other radicals’ ideas, activity and efforts were only Good if they were useful to whatever campaign I was working on. My friends helped out here and there, but they lacked commitment to the organization and would fail to return to meetings after completing the project they helped with.
While I was hard at work trying to recruit strangers for the next meeting, or preaching the gospel of the Proper Position on some trending issue, or educating “The Masses” about the merits of yet another piecemeal reform campaign dressed in last century’s revolutionary garb, my friends were busy growing together.
By the time I had finally burned out of my organization and started hanging with my friends again, I had become so accustomed to organizational processes that it took me <em>years</em> to repair my relationships enough to begin to see and understand how anarchists organized. At first, the informality felt like a mess; I couldn’t keep track of who was doing what <em>unless I was directly involved and needed to know.</em> And that was difficult to adjust to, especially when I could see projects everywhere but still didn’t really know who might help me find a way in.
There was never any rush to invite “everyone” and so I never really knew when things were happening. There were no unified plans to link Events into a Campaign, or any real pressures to even attend events, really. I often wondered if I should return to the Real political work, which obviously had to be elsewhere. But elsewhere still meant within the range of my former organization’s influence… and I just couldn’t bring myself to go back to that world.
<em>When I was a Leftist organizer, the movement that I imagined myself to be building was always something exterior to my life — something that took place outside of myself, my friends and their projects, the spaces that we inhabit. But “the” movement isn’t elsewhere.</em>
<strong>Leftist organizers told me that the Project emerged from the Organization. My friends showed me that organization emerges between our individual projects.</strong>
I never want to wiggle my fingers for “consensus” again. I’m sick of attending “meetings” instead of just talking and working on shit with my friends. I refuse to be marginalized for questioning the decisions handed down by the party leadership or the coordinating committee or the whatever-the-fuck jargon is used to disguise hierarchy these days.
No, I don’t want to join a fucking politician’s street team. No, I don’t want to listen to another boring speech. No, I really don’t think trying to convince people that the legacy of Stalin or Mao (or any other dead dictator) is worth redeeming here, in fucking Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Year of Their Lord 2021, in the heart of an empire built on stolen land. Are you fucking serious.
I wasted years on general assemblies and GBMs trying to force an insurgent network into existence, when all I had to do was just start paying attention to what was already going on, take a second to realize that no Party could ever “organize” all of it into a coherent movement, and then take a step back far enough to see <strong><em>that’s actually a good thing</em>.</strong>
If the alphabet soup of communist parties ever actually pivoted toward militancy (they won’t, but if they did) then they’d literally be setting themselves up for immediate repression.
Anarchy, on the other hand, is a flawed and centerless constellation of relationships, which is to say anarchy is built on affinity, trust, and reciprocal knowledge. Pittsburgh anarchist scenes are just as fragmented as the Left. It is true that “we” do struggle to sustain coordination and momentum, beyond the intermediate term. Like every movement, anarchy waxes and wanes. I couldn’t care less. Any communist or anarchist who believes that revolt in the united settler-states actually depends on the strength of “the Left” is deluding themself. Revolt happens with or without us. So rather than waste my time obsessing over the strength of some organization or ideology’s influence in a given region, I’d rather learn more <em>projectual</em> approaches that might contribute to conflictuality. I know some of you reading this are studying this framework as well, and I look forward to discovering your projects, wherever they may incite or strike.
To me, it makes more sense for “the movement” to refer to a circulation of tactics, skills and projects <em>within and between radical social scenes</em>… and that movement sure as hell doesn’t have much to do with the political organizations that fill my email’s spam folder.
At the end of the day, I’m still not sure what giving up on The Organized Left <em>actually</em> means though. What I do I know is that despite all our grandiose beef, I’m still gonna see the real commies by my side at the barricades from time to time. And in those moments, the fragmentation in Pittsburgh will weigh heavy. But the moment passes. I’ve finally left the Party, and I know what I’d rather be doing.
I want to elaborate my search for affinity, and to discover where my projects might collide with yours. Lately, I’ve come to think that sorta thing is all a movement is actually about, anyway.
It’s about navigating social life & conflict with the intent to find accomplices through what we do, rather than what we say.
It’s about negating passivity and reimagining the spaces you inhabit, assessing the possibilities that your every action could open up.
It’s about understanding the things you do as already being part of an insurgent project.
It’s about that rush of euphoria that hits when your projects start introducing you to all sorts of punx, plugs, insurgents, accomplices, rebel artists, mentors, lovers – and then collaborating organically because <em>you’re never to meet a “new recruit” ever again.</em>
It’s about the decisions you make every single day, from the ways you choose to get your food to the people you choose to share it with.
<em>A graffiti crew, an urban garden, an anti-fascist patrol and workout schedule, an electronics repair workshop, a social center, a variety of accountability models, an Addicts Autonomous of sorts, an anarchist distribution center, a weekly prisoner correspondence night, several counter-repression projects and firearms trainings, many attempts at collective living, bursts of short-term direct action groups, a squatters’ network and tool-share, a dumpster CSA, a successful (though unpublicized) rent strike, a compost pick-up & drop-off site, a weekly poetry workshop, several food distribution networks and groups, a recording studio, a neurodivergent support group, an insurrectionary study and research group, a begaydocrime sex worker crew, a homeless shelter, a traveler kid rest stop…</em>
<strong>The movement is everything that you’re already fucking doing — here, now, individually, collectively.</strong>
This world is ending. No global revolution is coming to save us. What worlds emerge is dependent on the particular trajectories the collapse will traverse in each region. Empire will survive in the places where workers still prioritize the needs of the techno-industrial economy – be it capitalist or communist – over the needs of the world they inhabit.
Elsewhere, anarchy spreads like cracks in the concrete. Anarchy, not anarchism. A diverse, decentralized mosaic of struggles for autonomy.
Until the land beneath the ruins of the colonial order is reclaimed by a life beyond Leviathan.
<right>
<strong>– <em>a filler kid</em></strong>, July 2021
</right>
<right>
Partially plagiarized from a column that appeared
<br>
in <em>Filler</em> Volume 2, Issue 1, published December 2019.
</right>
|
#pubdate 2010-11-15 12:00:32 +0100
#author A. G. Schwarz
#SORTauthors A. G. Schwarz
#title From Movement to Space: the anarchist open assemblies
#lang en
#date 2010
#SORTtopics assemblies
#source Retrieved on 14 November 2010 from [[http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/12202][anarchistnews.org]]
The fact that a certain tactic is used by anarchists in a country which is generally seen as having a high level of struggle should not be enough for anarchists in a country with a weaker struggle to adopt that tactic.
An increasing number of US anarchists are talking about anarchist open assemblies, directly influenced by the use of that tactic by the comrades in Greece. The open assemblies in Greece, however, are directly influenced by the contextual existence of an anarchist space <em>rather than</em> an anarchist movement. US anarchists on the whole either intentionally or habitually evince a projectuality befitting a movement rather than a space, a fact which may explain the mixed results obtained in San Francisco’s recent anarchist assembly, necessary and innovative though it was.
Tactics, of course, can be melted down and recast, and I have no idea how that might pan out with open anarchist assemblies in a North American context. But if US anarchists want to use open assemblies <em>as they do in Greece</em>, which may or may not be a valid goal, they will need to realize certain changes in their mode of struggle as well.
Primarily, for the open assembly to work as such, I believe US anarchists would need to accept a belligerent plurality, and a minimization of decision-making complementary to a maximization of initiative-taking.
Before elaborating what this means and deciding whether this is a desirable change, it would help to review the strengths of the open assembly within the Greek practice, which seems to me to bear at least some similarities with certain manifestations of the <em>encuentro</em> in Latin America. Traditionally, any particular group of individuals who decide to take it upon themselves releases a call, with a time and a place, for an open anarchist assembly, usually at an occupied park or in a university. Typically, they will also release an initial statement that gives an introductory analysis of the situation but invites debate. Anyone is welcome to attend, but it is made clear that the assembly will run on anarchist lines, which means no political parties, no talk about reforms or participation with the state.
The open assembly allows dozens or hundreds of people to come together and discuss a situation without either restricting the meeting to a select group or surrendering it to liberals, leftists, or wingnuts. It encourages debate and a profound theorizing that comes from and translates back into practice. People talk as long as they want, but someone who is being boring, repetitive, or irrelevant is interrupted and, on the odd occasion it should be necessary, shouted down. The vulnerability to wingnuts so typical in the US is simply absent. There is no emphasis on time limits, no stack, no facilitator.
The Greek anarchists generally do not talk about an anarchist movement because they do not see a singularity of direction or a shared set of boundaries. The anarchist space has many different clusters and constellations but no center point. It would be infinitely poorer if it were reduced to a single star. The open assemblies reflect this self-understanding.
In the US, on the other hand, the only possible meaning for the term “anarchist space” up till now is a space as a social center, a singular project, within an anarchist movement. A singular project has indisputable limits and needs (e.g. paying rent every month) and the possibility of unanimous goals (e.g. to make anarchist books available to this neighborhood, and equalizing group participation in the process). Certain forms of communication that may make sense within such a situation — facilitated or consensus meetings — are by default transferred to most assemblies US anarchists organize.
In order to adopt an open assembly that is not just a larger meeting, which would inevitably fall into the cycle of diminishing participation as has been witnessed so often in the experiences of anarchists in other countries, US anarchists must choose to be belligerently pluralistic. The notion of one big organization, one platform, one strategy, or one coalition must be thrown out the window. A center point, in politics, is the essence of suppression. We will never all come together, nor do we need to. Just because two people both identify as anarchists, why on earth should they expend energy to come together or synchronize their practices if they never coincide in their daily activities and struggles? Only if they can both grow from the meeting. Certainly not to come to an agreement about how one should do things the same way as the other. If that were the outcome, the anarchist space would become poorer in experiences, and more limited in the range of social trajectories or niches it has a hope of touching. Platformism is all well and good for platformists, but it makes no sense to strategize with resources that are simply not ours to command. “If only all the anarchists pooled their resources on this one campaign...” Your failure to stir up enough people, anarchist or otherwise, to help you accomplish the things you want to accomplish, cannot be blamed on disunity.
At the same time, this pluralism needs to develop a belligerence, to never be content with what it has achieved while always being conscious of its victories and points of strength. Once we hold ourselves to high standards, we can sincerely criticize other anti-authoritarians who have chosen a different practice. The autonomy, or distance, or non-unity of different clusters in the anarchist space allow them to develop different perspectives and experiences from which to criticize one another. This important advantage is lost when anarchists allow positive fragmentation to become silence and dispersal, when they do not communicate despite the distances. Pluralism must not be allowed to become relativism, in which every anti-authoritarian practice is treated as equally valid (the history of struggles in this country should amply show that they’re not). Sensitivity must not atrophy into its worst manifestation: thin skin. Not only the high-strung ideological purists, but also the thin-skinned hypersensitive ones who present themselves as non-ideological are the most likely to counterattack any fundamental critique of their practice with the most vicious and poor faith categorizations.
I’ll remain oblique on this point, because in the anarchist space, unlike its terrestrial equivalent, the anarchist scene (with its heaviest manifestations in two self-important coastal cities), we like to keep drama and rumorology to a minimum. (By the way, did you hear that my old comrades at Void Network work for the police, adore the media, and aren’t real anarchists, according to some riot tourists afraid of losing their monopoly on Greece points?)
Secondly, US anarchists would need to exchange an emphasis on decision-making for one on initiative-taking. The open assembly does not exist to ratify a decision, because it would never dream of stopping its constituents from making all the decisions they wanted. And, I would argue, it does not exist either to impel action, because it is assumed and promoted that its constituents are already taking action, and need the assembly <em>in order to share</em>, to challenge or deepen their analysis as well as to gain some practice in articulating that analysis, and also to get a sense of what everyone else is going to be doing, <em>so as to be able to carry out their actions more intelligently.</em> The assembly must never be a crutch.
At most, it can endeavor to create spaces to facilitate action, such as by calling for a protest, in which case it is emphatically not organizing an action, but calling for a future manifestation of the assembly on the streets, at which time all its constituent clusters, all the affinity groups that take part in it, can carry out the actions they have planned on their own. The protest, thus, is not a singular project, it is not a step forward for a movement, it is another explosive appearance of the creative chaos that is the anarchist space.
Within the assembly, people can talk for hours about their analysis of the situation, they can begin to weave their own history by describing the present moment of conflict between State and society, market and individual, they can evaluate past actions and dream up new innovations. But they must not call for decisions, or propose actions. How can we take someone seriously who must come to an assembly to look for accomplices, who has no friends to hatch their plans with, who does not know how to act with what’s in front of them?
Detailed decisions on how to carry out an action are best done in small groups with a well developed level of affinity, not only for the obvious practical reasons, but also because the larger group should not come to a single decision about what is the right thing to do. What we need to encourage is not unity, patience, and compromise, but taking the initiative to carry out direct actions, whether those be propaganda, attacks, or the meeting of basic needs. Once we face the struggle so earnestly, the sense of solidarity that unity usually stands in for will not be far behind.
|
#title A History of Timebanking
#author Eric Fleischmann
#LISTtitle A History of Timebanking
#date 7/26/23
#source Retrieved 7/19/2023 from https://c4ss.org/content/58802
#lang en
#pubdate 2023-07-28T15:14:49
#authors Eric Fleischmann
#topics community currency, anthropology, Karl Marx, Josiah Warren, banks, labor theory of value, history
#notes Excerpted from “Patience and Time: Timebanking and Self-Organizing Networks of Eldercare in Greater Portland, ME” (https://www.academia.edu/100745163/Patience_and_Time_Timebanking_and_Self_Organizing_Networks_of_Eldercare_in_Greater_Portland_ME)
The roots of timebanking can be found in what early economists of the late 1700s like Adam Smith and David Ricardo described as the “Labor Theory of Value” (LTV); which proposes that all commodities produced in a market system originate their value in human labor. As Ricardo writes:
<quote>
In speaking then of commodities, of their exchangeable value, and of the laws which regulate their relative prices, we mean always such commodities only as can be increased in quantity by the exertion of human industry, and on the production of which competition operates without restraint.[1]
</quote>
Born in the context of proto-industrial capitalism as an attempt to explicitly conceptualize the basic rules of the proto-global economy in the de-marcantilizing nations of Europe, socialists of various stripes would use this <em>empirical</em> axiom as an <em>ethical</em> basis for why workers are “entitled to all they create” (a common saying in militant labor circles). In this sense the LTV becomes a means to resist the logic of the factory—wherein workers create for the profit of bosses and owners and only receive back a fraction of the value they create—and as such it is no surprise that, beyond Marxian economics, the theory has been abandoned by most mainstream economists in favor of the “subjective theory of value.”[2] However, within many radical movements, time-based currencies became an application of the LTV to not just to production but to exchange; x hours of labor for x hours of labor.
On this basis, the English-born Robert Owen—an early 19th century industrialist and a founder of the modern cooperative movement—worked for decades establishing and expanding trade unions, cooperatives, and intentional communities in North America and, in many ways set a precedent for socialists after Ricardo, held firmly to the LTV; believing, according to Edward J. Martin, that “workers ought to be compensated based on both human needs and effort.” After numerous failed attempts at “pure” communism—i.e. no property and <em>no currency</em> etc.—in many intentional communities throughout the 1820s, Owen—then entrenched in establishing trade unions and cooperative enterprises back in England—would advocate for the “development of labor exchanges where workmen and producers’ cooperatives could exchange products directly and thus dispense with both employers and merchants.” In 1832, he founded the “National Equitable Labor Exchange” which “sought to secure a wider market for cooperative groups and to enable them to exchange their products at an equitable valuation resting on labor time” through printed labor vouchers. This would lead to similar exchanges emerging in several other provincial cities.[3]
[[a-h-a-history-of-timebanking-5.jpg f]]
[4]The Bostonian anarchist Josiah Warren participated in several communistic Owenite communities in the United States and also left with the belief that a means of market exchange based on the LTV was a key part of a liberatory economic project. Based on that idea, in 1827 Warren would establish his “Time Store” in Cincinnati, Ohio, wherein, according to William Bailie in his 1906 book on Warren, compensation was “determined on the principle of the equal exchange of labor, measured by the time occupied, and exchanged hour for hour with other kinds of labor.”[5] The Time Store was apparently very successful—even resulting in several other stores coming to accept the labor-time vouchers alongside standard U.S. currency. After two years, Warren left the store to a friend and traveled throughout the midwest; helping establish time stores and entire communities based on the principles of the LTV and equitable exchange. He, like Owen before him, hoped that these efforts would birth a socialist society not based on governmental control but voluntary, cooperative production and exchange by producers. However both Owen’s exchanges in England and Warren’s many stores and “Equity Villages” in the U.S. had collapsed or faded away as the turn of the century neared, unable to match the competitive advantages of 19th century industrial capitalism.[6]
[[a-h-a-history-of-timebanking-4.jpg f]]
[7]After Warren’s death in 1874, time-based currencies fell to the wayside among anarchists in his vein (like Benjamin Tucker and William B. Greene) in favor of a focus on credit. Greene would go as far as to argue that it is the current “confused” organization of credit and its emergence from the “insufficiency of circulating medium which results from laws making specie the sole legal tender” that leads most immediately to “want of confidence, bad debts, expensive accommodation-loans, law-suits, insolvency, bankruptcy, separation of classes, hostility, hunger, extravagance, distress, riots, civil war, and, finally, revolution.”[8] As a result, these anarchists began to advocate for mutual credit through free banking, an open-ended system wherein, as members of the Voluntary Cooperation Movement (a contemporary anarchist group) outline,
<quote>
[a]ny group of private individuals could cooperate to form a mutual bank, which would issue monetized credit in the form of private banknotes, against any form of marketable collateral the membership was willing to accept. Membership in the bank and receipt of credit were conditioned on willingness to accept the notes as tender.[9]
</quote>
In fact, by the 1930s, anarchist writer Laurance Labadie—described by Herbert C. Roseman as the “heir of Warren”—would explicitly reject the idea of making “labor-time a standard for a monetary unit” as “a fallacy and bound to fail in practice” in favor of a free banking strategy.[10][11]
Looking back again a few decades, Marx, a year after Warren’s death, had in turn proposed that, at least in a transitional phase phase between capitalism and socialism, labor vouchers would function as such:
<quote>
[T]he individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds), and with this certificate he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor costs. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form he receives back in another.[12]
</quote>
Marx would go on to seemingly abandon this idea and later critique Owen’s labor exchange in the footnotes of <em>Cap</em><em>ital</em> <em>Vol. 1</em>, but the core idea would inspire heterodox Marxists for the next two centuries.[13] For example, 20th century Marxist-influenced autonomist Cornelius Castoriadis advocated for a similar structure wherein “[p]eople will receive a token [revenu] in return for what they put into society . . . allowing people to organize what they take out of society, spreading it out (1) in time, and (2) between different objects and services, exactly as they wish.”[14] Then in the 90s, Marxian economists Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell embraced the computer age in advocating for a socialist system wherein “some form of labour credit card . . . keeps track of how much work you have done” which can then be used to acquire goods from communal stores.[15]
This mirrors the kind of economics proposed within Marx’s lifetime by the anarchists of the Jura Federation—which Marx had worked hard to expel from the International Workingmen’s Association. Mikhail Bakunin and his associates, according to his friend James Guillaume in 1876, proposed that confederated communes would each establish their own “Banks of Exchange.” Then
<quote>
[t]he workers’ association, as well as the individual producers (in the remaining privately owned portions of production), will deposit their unconsumed commodities in the facilities provided by the Bank of Exchange, the value of the commodities having been established in advance by a contractual agreement between the regional cooperative federations and the various communes, who will also furnish statistics to the Banks of Exchange. The Bank of Exchange will remit to the producers negotiable vouchers representing the value of their products; these vouchers will be accepted throughout the territory included in the federation of communes.[16]
</quote>
Like the Marxist formulations above, it is somewhat vague if the vouchers in the Bakunist scheme are based solely on labor-time or other factors like type of work and intensity, but regardless, later communist and collectivist anarchists largely abandoned the idea of labor vouchers in favor gift economies or, as in the case of anarchists during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) according to Percy Hill, “money was abolished in Aragon, [but] no one system predominated to replace it, instead the various towns organised broadly under the principle of ‘free consumption.’”[17]
Around that same time in the United States, the Great Depression led to the emergence of literally countless local currencies (called scrips) in the face of the extremely devalued American dollar and lack of work opportunities.[18] It has been suggested by some (including one of my interviewees) that some of these scrips were time-based, but little information is available. Beyond this and some discussion of Warren’s experiments in obscure periodicals, the first contemporary timebank would not appear until it was founded in 1973 by Teruko Mizushima in Japan to give greater valuation to the work of housewives in particular. At almost the exact same time as [Sylvia] Federici and other autonomist and socialist feminists were campaigning for the productive/reproductive work of women in the household to be acknowledged and compensated, Mizushima was, according to Jill Miller, “recruiting housewives who, she believed, suffered from inadequate recognition of their abilities” into her “new currency to create a more caring society, through increasing the exchange of mutual assistance in the community, and to value everyday tasks, such as those of housewives and carers, which the wage system did not reward.” Of particular importance to this sorority was the care of elders, many of whom had served in the Pacific Theater of World War II and “were hospitalised or unable to look after themselves or their homes.”[19]
A few years after Mizushima’s project began, [Edgar S.] Cahn began promoting “time dollars” (known regionally sometimes as “time credits” or, especially at Hour Exchange Portland, “Hours”) in the United States. For Cahn, there are
<quote>
at least three interlocking sets of problems: growing inequality in access by those at the bottom to the most basic goods and services; increasing social problems stemming from the need to rebuild family, neighborhood and community; and a growing disillusion with public programs designed to address these problems.[20]
</quote>
The solution he proposed was, of course, timebanking; a scheme whereby neighbors could exchange labor with each other; x hours for x hours. One of the first communities to adopt this program was Grace Hill Settlement House, a mutual aid program founded in 1903 focused on helping immigrants in St. Louis neighborhoods. By the 1980s, it had become a more general social service provider and established their Member Organized Resource Exchange (MORE). This included community computer stations, the “Neighborhood College,” and more, but, as The Annie E. Casey Foundation argues, the “centerpiece of the MORE system is its Time Dollar Exchange,” which not only allowed for members to exchange services but “[a]t Grace Hill, Time Dollars also can be used at Time Dollar Stores, which offer donated goods such as food, toiletries, clothing, and furniture.”[21] Not only was this a practical success but, according to Stephen Beckett (who will be discussed momentarily), several of the women involved in Grace Hill helped lay out the first four “values of timebanking:” “1) Everyone is an Asset, 2) Redefining Work, 3) Reciprocity, and 4) Social Networks or Social Capita.l”[22] Then, with the addition of “5) Respect,” Cahn would go on to campaign for time dollars across the world, and, thanks to him and co-current projects like Ithaca HOURS in New York state, hundreds of timebanks now exist all across the world.[23][24]
*** <strong>A History of Hour Exchange Portland</strong>
The history of Hour Exchange Portland (“Hour Exchange” or, formerly, “HEP”) begins with Cahn and his campaign to popularize timebanking.[25] Their website states that “[i]n late 1995 Dr. Richard Rockefeller (the founder of Hour Exchange Portland) first heard Dr. Edgar Cahn speak” and
<quote>
realized that we can’t expect people to take care of our environment, if we are not first taking care of each other. Compelled to bring the Time Dollar concept to Maine, Richard began to share his vision. In 1997 Maine hosted an International Time Dollar Congress in cooperation with Dr. Edgar Cahn . . . bringing together 40 Service Exchanges from all over the world. For many, it was the first opportunity to share their experiences about their programs and learn from others. For the Portland community, the Congress inspired a new vision and direction. It was time to grow a local Service Exchange, and the seed that became today’s Hour Exchange Portland was born.[26]
</quote>
That seed would sprout into the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization “Maine Time Dollar Network,” and originally it was one of an ecosystem of active timebanks in the various cities, towns, and counties of Maine. Over the years many of these have collapsed or been absorbed by other banks and new ones have sprung up again and again, but through it all the renamed “Hour Exchange Portland” persists.
Lucy [pseudonym] elaborated in length on the history of Hour Exchange and emphasized to me the important role that Rockefeller played both in its inception and ongoing maintenance. One of the heirs to his family’s fortune, Rockefeller utilized his resources (alongside numerous grants and an AmeriCorps VISTA contract) to support the timebank for nearly a decade. This funding allowed the timebank to initially employ multiple full-time and part-time paid administrative positions. One of the many documents Hour Exchange provided for this research included the following information:
<quote>
Hour Exchange Portland’s annual expenses from 2007 through 2010 averaged around $300,000. Salary and benefit expenses for the paid employees comprised about 75%-80% of the budget in any given year. In 2011, the organization reduced its budget considerably by employing only one full-time staff person. Beginning in 2013 Hour Exchange Portland employed only part-time office assistance.
</quote>
Throughout this time period (2007-2013), Rockefeller also, according to Lucy, “tried to encourage Hour Exchange to be more self-sufficient” by “providing less and less support over the years.” Though reorganization to account for this had started around 2011, this self-sufficiency was put to the test when Rockefeller died unexpectedly in 2014. From then onward, Hour Exchange has been “member run” in that its perpetuation is solely the responsibility of the board and general membership without any consistent paid staff.
Since its founding, Hour Exchange had largely functioned without printed “time dollars” and rather through written records and then basic spreadsheets introduced by Kent Gordon, but in 2006, Hour Exchange members Stephen V. Beckett, Terry Daniels, Linda Hogan, and, later, John Saare saw that “everything was getting on the Internet,” and started the hOurworld cooperative, through which they developed the software Time and Talents. I spoke to Stephen via video call in the early spring and he explained to me that previously, the Hour Exchange system was only partially digital for administrative purposes, with “first just a single computer, then a local area network, then a local area network with part of the database online.” Much of what was elaborated upon in Time and Talent after finishing the basic software elements was ways that these two databases, one local and one online, could be synced up. Other software for timebanking had existed before Stephen’s project such as Timekeeper and, more popularly, Community Weaver v1-3 (developed by Mark McDonough and Cahn’s organization Timebanks USA) but both had major bugs and ease of use issues, and additionally the latter required fees from member timebanks—in contrast to Time and Talents which is free to this day and funded primarily by contracts for specialized versions of the software. This matter of fees in particular brought on, as Paul Weaver writes, further disagreements “over the ownership and development of the software (open source versus proprietary), over data (who own the data, who has access to data, who has control and rights over information generated from data, etc.), over decision making, etc.”[27]
This tension between which software timebanks should use and, more fundamentally, over who would lead the western timebanking movement eventually led to a split between advocates of time dollars; with Hour Exchange Portland at the heart of it, both because of Stephen’s membership thereof and Rockefeller’s adamant opposition to fees. On the one hand, many timebanks stayed with the Community Weaver software and its reliable association with Cahn’s work, but numerous others switched to Time and Talents for its accessibility and affordability.[28] Today, Time and Talents helps coordinate and catalog exchanges in and between 388 timebanks, including its birthplace Hour Exchange Portland, across the planet and allows for anyone to set up a timebank with only a small group of people and a click of a button. However, the Covid-19 Pandemic in the 2020s did substantial damage to these timebanks and the activeness of their memberships. Such was the case of Hour Exchange Portland in particular, Lucy explained to me that she saw “a lot of people didn’t feel comfortable doing face-to-face exchanges, so the number of exchanges dropped precipitously.” She also emphasized to me that much of what kept the bank’s momentum was in-person community events like potlucks and the annual Bizarre Bazaar, where members gather to exchange crafts, second-hand items, and more with time dollars. Dorothy [pseudonym] added that many of the relationships Hour Exchange had with artistic institutions like Meryl Auditorium, Portland Stage, and various art exhibits pre-pandemic have lapsed, removing that incentive as well. And while it is in the process of recovering, it is in the context of the “pandemic aftermath” that I am doing my research on timebanking and its intersections with eldercare.
[1] David Ricardo, <em>On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation</em> (London, UK: John Murray, 1817), 15, Epub.
[2] Robert P. Murphy, “The Labor Theory of Value: a Critique of Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy,” <em>Journal of Libertarian Studies</em> 20, no. 1 (Winter 2006), accessed April 21, 2023, https://cdn.mises.org/20_1_3.pdf.
[3] Edward J. Martin, “The Origins of Democratic Socialism: Robert Owen and Worker Cooperatives,” Dissident Voice, last modified December 6, 2019, accessed April 14, 2023, https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/12/the-origins-of-democratic-socialism-robert-owen-and-worker-cooperatives/.
[4] Socialist Party of Great Britain, “Labour Time Vouchers,” Socialism or Your Money Back, last modified November 30, 2016, accessed April 14, 2023, https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/11/labour-time-vouchers.html.
[5] William Bailie, <em>Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist: A Sociological Study</em>(Boston, MA: Small, Maynard and Company, 1906), 9, accessed April 15, 2023, https://archive.org/details/josiahwarrenfirs00bailiala/page/n5/mode/2up.
[6] Steve Kemple, “The Cincinnati Time Store As An Historical Precedent For Societal Change” (Presented at CS13 Creative Economy exhibition, Cincinnati, OH, March 19, 2010), 5, 9, https://www.scribd.com/document/32919811/The-Cincinnati-Time-Store-As-An-Historical-Precedent-For-Societal-Change.
[7] “Cincinnati Time Store,” Wikipedia, accessed April 15, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Time_Store.
[8] William Batchelder Greene, <em>The Radical Deficiency of the Existing Circulating Medium: And the Advantages of a Mutual Currency</em> (Boston, MA: B.H. Greene, 1857), 238-39, accessed April 15, 2023, https://books.google.com/books?id=RBkqAQAAIAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions.
[9] Voluntary Cooperation Movement, “A Mutualist FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions About Mutualism,” Anarchist Library, accessed April 15, 2023, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mutualists-org-a-mutualist-faq.
[10] Herbert C. Roseman, “Laurance Labadie and His Critics” (1967), Union of Egoists, last modified April 1, 2018, accessed April 15, 2023, https://www.unionofegoists.com/2018/04/01/laurance-labadie-and-his-critics-by-herbert-c-roseman/.
[11] Laurance Labadie, “Letter to Mother Earth” (1933), The Anarchist Library, last modified 1 17, 2022, accessed April 15, 2023, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/laurance-labadie-letter-to-mother-earth.
[12] Karl Marx, <em>Critique of the Gotha Program</em>, Foundations 16 (Paris, France: Foreign Language Press, 2021), 14, accessed April 15, 2023, https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/C16-Critique-of-the-Gotha-Program-1st-Printing.pdf.
[13] Karl Marx, <em>Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production</em>, ed. Frederick Engels, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, 1974), 1:97-8, accessed April 20, 2023, http://www.marx2mao.com/PDFs/Capital,%201.pdf.
[14] Cornelius Castoriadis, “On the Content of Socialism, II,” 1957, in <em>Political and Social Writings Volume 2, 1955-1960: From the Workers’ Struggle Against Bureaucracy to Revolution in the Age of Modern Capitalism</em>, trans. David Ames Curtis, vol. 2, <em>Political and Social Writings</em>(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, n.d.), 2:125, accessed April 15, 2023, https://files.libcom.org/files/cc_psw_v2.pdf.
[15] Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell, <em>Towards a New Socialism</em> (Nottingham, UK: Spokesman Books, 1993), 25, accessed April 15, 2023, https://users.wfu.edu/cottrell/socialism_book/new_socialism.pdf.
[16] James Guillaume, “On Building the New Social Order,” in <em>Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist-Founder of World Anarchism</em>, by Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume, ed. Sam Dolgoff (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 222, PDF.
[17] Percy Hill, “Anarchist Communist Political Economy and the Spanish Revolution,” Red and Black Notes, last modified September 13, 2020, accessed April 15, 2023, https://www.redblacknotes.com/2020/09/13/anarchist-communist-political-economy-and-the-spanish-revolution/.
[18] Loren Gatch, “Local Money in the United States During the Great Depression,” <em>Essays in Economic & Business History</em> XXVI (2008), accessed April 15, 2023, https://scriplibraryhome.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/local-money.pdf.
[19] Jill Miller, “Teruko Mizushima: Pioneer Trader in Time as a Currency,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, last modified July 2008, accessed April 15, 2023, http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue17/miller.htm.
[20] Edgar S. Cahn, “Time dollars, work and community: from `why?’ to `why not?,'” <em>Futures</em> 31, no. 5 (1999): 499, accessed April 15, 2023, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328799000099.
[21] Annie E. Casey Foundation, “Grace Hill’s MORE: Neighbors Helping Neighbors,” hOurworld.org, last modified February 2008, accessed April 16, 2023, https://hourworld.org/pdf/Grace_Hill_MORE_Study.pdf.
[22] [Edgar S. Cahn, <em>No More Throw-Away People: The Co-Production Imperative</em> (Washington, DC: Essential Books, 2000), 24.]
[23] “Goals & Core Values,” Waikato TimeBank, accessed April 20, 2023, https://waikato.timebanks.org/page/683-goals–core-values.
[24] “Ithaca HOURS: Community Currency since 1991,” paulglover.org, accessed April 16, 2023, https://www.paulglover.org/hours.html.
[25] Hour Exchange used to employ the abbreviation “HEP” until it was brought to the previous board’s attention that it resembled the “hep hep” rallying cry of antisemitic rioters in early 19th century Germany.
[26] “Mission,” Hour Exchange Portland, accessed April 16, 2023, https://hourxport.org/mission.htm.
[27] Paul Weaver, “Software development and arising governance tensions,” <em>Transformative Social Innovation Theory</em>, last modified 2017, accessed April 20, 2023, http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/sii/ctp/tb-usa-5.
[28] Ibid.
|
#ATTACH a-i-a-in-nes-diaries-of-the-new-dawn-of-a-new-syri-2.pdf a-i-a-in-nes-diaries-of-the-new-dawn-of-a-new-syri-1.pdf
#title Diaries of the new dawn of a new Syria
#subtitle A collection of analyses
#author Your anarchist comrades in NES
#LISTtitle diaries of new dawn
#date 09.02.25
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-02-09T00:00:00
#authors Anonymous
#topics anarchism, syria, rojava, DAANES, NES, autonomy
** <strong>Introduction</strong>
The dictatorship of the Assad regime collapsed after more than 50 years. Although its
downfall appears to be an overnight event, it is a complex result of many contradictions,
balance of forces, geopolitical shifts and Syrian people’s struggle for freedom.
There is much to be said about what happened before, during and after the collapse of the
Assad regime. This is a vast field of research and many narratives that should be covered
by larger amount of literature. In this brochure we will focus on analysing the events
which transpired during and after the demise of the regime. You are reading a result of
summarizing the updates and analysis produced by Anarchist comrades on the ground in
Northeastern Syria. We have taken our place in defense of the revolution and manage to
regularly share our perspectives on what we see happening.
As we are writing this, the February 8<sup>th</sup> comes close and marks two months since the fall
of dictatorship. We take this opportunity to summarize our work into a more coherent
analytical overview.
The near future in front of us is uncertain. Many possibilities exist, covered with fog of
uncertainty. Many people in Syria want peace, but the air if full with tension and
anticipation of war. There are doubts whether another option exists, other than standing
to defend the revolutionary gains against all odds and against all authoritarian powers
around. Peaceful agreements and diplomatic solutions are hard to believe when it comes
to states. Everyone pursues their interests. And peoples of Northeast Syria will pursue
their interests, too — revolution must be defended. Otherwise — no justice, no peace, no free
life. We will continue our struggle here, and we are ready to take our humble place in
whatever is about to come.
Revolutionary greetings from your Anarchist comrades in NES,
February 2025
** 01/12/24
<strong>What is going on on Syria?</strong>
This is a fast update on the situation on Syria to share with comrades, since things are
really getting wild. We share mostly facts, political analysis not in this message.
These notes can be confusing for those not familiar with the situation here, feel free to
ask!
- Few days ago the ‘rebels’ of Idlib and surroundings, under military leadership of HTS (a new name of what once was al-Qaeda in Syria) started a big offensive, breaking the siege of the SAA (Syrian Arab Army). The offensive broke throw their lines and started to advance to Aleppo (second biggest city of Syria). They are advancing fast and in multiple directions.
- Today the offensive goes on, taking control of big part of Aleppo city, with
exception of some pockets under regime control and the northern Kurdish
neighborhood of Sheik Makhsud.
- SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) made a big deployment in reaction to the
threats, taking control of the road connecting Aleppo to Raqqa, also connecting
with the region of Tal Rifat, where refugee camps for Afrin IDP where at risk of
invasion by SNA.
- SNA (Syrian National Army, proxy of Turkey in Syria) also started an offensive,
probably in coordination with HTS, and there are now clashes between SDF and
SNA in the Raqqa-Aleppo road. For now those clashes are small, not comparable
with the massive offensive of HTS against SAA.
- HTS is already attacking Sheik Mahksud in Aleppo, after most of the city fell
under their control with SAA being overrun and withdrawing in mass. Kurdish
forces are fighting back, ready to defend their ground.
- As for now, the ‘rebels’ also reached the city center of Hama and some northern
areas of Homs. Seems there are also clashes in Damascus. There are rumors of
a coup taking place, seem that some national television went off air after some
(still confusing) clashes.
- Other ‘rebel’ forces that were trained by US in al-Tanf (South Syria) are also
moving, not clear where or why.
- Iranian forces (very present together with SAA) are being captured or expelled.
Iran says this is a coup of Israel-Turkey-US. Diplomatic envoy of Iran will go to
Turkey on Monday to discuss situation
- Since the beginning of the offensive Russia has been moving troops, leaving
their ground positions in Tal Rifat (Kurdish areas)
- As for now, seems clear that the SAA collapsed, ‘rebels’ are taking positions in
several big cities and rumors that entire brigades are deserting defecting to the
“rebels”. The situation is confusing and shifting.
- Iraq decided to close down borders with Syria, a lot of diplomatic talks and
speculative journalism ongoing. Besides Iran there is a surprising radio silence.
– Turkey is not saying much for now, neither Russia who just fired their general
command of Syria.
- NES (North East Syria, aka Rojava) is in the middle of all this, trying to defend the
advances of the revolution and specially the Kurdish people of Afrin and Sheik
Mehksud. SDF reacted very fast to the threats, seizing the road and avoiding the
surrounding of Kurdish areas on this offensive. Is not clear how much HTS and
SNA working together or they just started coordinated offensive, also not clear the
role of ‘southern rebels’ trained by US. SDF have a defensive position, but taking
control of some territories as SAA withdraw.
It’s messy, it’s confusing, it’s not clear what is going on. We will see how things develop.
There are more things we could say but this message is already to long so I’ll stop here.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 02/12/24
<strong>What does it mean? Some bullet-points analyizing the situation</strong>
- In the first days of HTS offensive and SNA push against Şehba, as well as siege of
Sheikh Maqsood, it is clear that Assad regime is in very difficult situation and it’s
collapse seems possible. However, potential HTS rule will not be stable and will not
resolve crucial issues of Syria that were created and fueled by the dictatorship of Bashar
Al-Assad. Nevertheless, the fall of Assad might open a glimpse of chance for changes in
the region, if Syrians – those in the country and those who will decide to come back after
exile – will manage to claim original ideas of Syrian revolution.
- Major geopolitical forces such as Turkey, U.S. and Israel will benefit from offensive of
HTS. HTS fits everyone as a force that is opposed to Iran, Assad and Russia. Given a
chance to take up state-making in case of success and follow Taliban model, it is possible
that main actors will exercise their influence in a possible future new government. It is
possible that these states might give support to HTS, but are not interested in Syrian
peoples independently deciding for themselves.
- Fall of Assad regime will be good for DAANES in various aspects, but poses major
questions: A) Threat of ISIS taking up the opportunity and growing again while not
having to fight Russia and Assad, although they will fight with HTS, B) Growing
interference by U.S. in case of increased dependence on their protection against potential
Turkish invasion, C) Finding new balance of forces in the region, D)Turkey expanding its
direct control far deeper into Syria, and E) Religious fundamentalists of HTS taking over
will bring sharp conflict with development and revolutionary achievements of society in
NE Syria, first and foremost of women.
- Situation for Lebanon will be very difficult, as the country will be sandwiched between
Israel and HTS-run part of Syria, and might create ground for escalation of internal
conflicts. Hezbollah will be left without support from Iran.
- DAANES is offering a non-state solution based on self-governance, cultural, religious,
gender and ethnical autonomy. Still, it gets the least recognition and international
support.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 06/12/24
<strong>The regime is collapsing</strong>
It is clear that no one have any faith in Assad government anymore. We feel confident to
announce that this is the end of the regime. For many Syrians today will be a day of
celebration. After almost 13 years of war, misery and exile, their dreams of a Syria
without Bashar are coming true. In that sense, it is a day of celebration for us too.
But the end of the regime will probably be just the beginning of a new phase of conflict
and instability, a very difficult one. Syria have become a ground for many military forces
(state forces and non-state forces) to use violence and war to pursue their objectives
without fear for the consequences. From the brutality of the Syrian regime and Russian
mass bombings of civilian population, the inhumane and horrific massacres of the Islamic
State or the genocidal and imperialist occupations of the Turkish Army and it’s proxies
against the Kurdish people and the Rojava Revolution.
More than a decade of war and suffering left wounds that won’t heal with the end of the
Assad dynasty, and the following day will probably witness more bloodshed and atrocities.
The declarations of SNA operation against Manbij will probably be the beginning of a
brutal war of occupation as we already saw in 2018 in Afrin and 2019 in Serekaniye and
Gire Spi. The future of Damascus still unclear, and the authoritarian Islamism of HTS
will soon start to show it’s dark faces to the Syrian people, the faces that are not screened
in CNN but that the people of Idlib, who had been protesting against their authoritarian
rule for months, has been suffering and protesting against.
Western powers will tacitly accept (and maybe even support) this mediatic and apparently
diluted version of salafism, as they already did in Afghanistan. And those big moves will
partly silence the massacres of Turkey in Manbij, letting the rouge NATO partner of
middle east a bit lose in exchange for their loyalty in other affairs that are of higher
priority for western agenda.
Anyway, this is already too long. If you made it here probably you have opinion on your
own about the situation. And maybe now is not a time for words, but a time for action.
The revolution in Rojava is, as always, under threat. Let’s celebrate the fall of the regime,
but let’s keep building the new world we carry in our hearts.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 09/12/24
<strong>Attacks on Manbij, but SDF is not SAA.</strong>
There are too many things ongoing in Syria, the developments are extraordinarily fast –
and probably confusing for those not familiar with the situation. Every part of the conflict
is racing to position themselves and get advantage from the political transition that will
follow in Syria.
Regarding the situation in NES, the resistance in Manbij is critical. A collapse of the SDF
in Manbij would had been followed by further attack of SNA, but the military proficiency
displayed has been the best deterrence for further movements of SNA. It showed that
SDF is not the SAA, and that blietzkrieg tactics of rushing with armored vehicles under
artillery fire cover can send regime soldiers running away, but SDF is ready to hold
positions and fight back.
For Turkey, Manbij is also very important, and it will be a decisive battle for the future of
the SDF and the DAANES. This battle is proving that a well trained and prepared force,
even if lightly equipped, can inflict massive losses to a much more numerous and well
equipped force, even when they have total air supremacy. Every day that SDF holds any
ground in Manbij is one more day that Turkey is being defeated, making SNA looking
weaker. HTS took several big cities in days, SNA can’t take one middle sized city even
when having full support of Turkish airforce. But of course, as we said at the beginning,
SDF is not SAA.
The attacks of Israel can also open new cans of worms, igniting old hates and legitimizing
more extreme and fundamentalist positions inside HTS, overwhelming the moderate face
that they had been working to present.
Many more things could be say, but this is already getting long so we stop here for today.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 10/12/24
<strong>Turkey on the north, Israel on the south</strong>
The withdraw of SDF from Manbij is a painful concession. Many comrades lost their lives
in the liberation of Manbij from the hands of ISIS, including the brave arab commander of
YPG Abu Leila, also 8 internationalist fighters. As Erdogan stated many times, their next
target is now Kobane, the proud city that became the turning point on the war against
ISIS through and historic resistance. Kobane was also a key element for the
internationalization of the Rojava revolution and the Kurdish question, becoming a
symbol of resistance known to the whole world.
The dimension of Israel attack all over Syria is not just a deterrence action against the
possibility of a hostile Syria, it is also a show of force a military capabilities to
neighboring countries. It is also the perfect scenario for IDF to test their response
capacity and air force at such a big scale, without fear of any repercussions since there is
no one in Syria able to answer to such brutal attacks.
Turkey’s propaganda campaigns, with miss information and fabricated videos, aims to
weaken SDF and destabilize the DAANES. Now they also try to spark intra-Kurdish
conflict, harvesting the investments they made for decades in the Barzani-led KRG, using
all tools at their hands in this war. Even HTS is calling attention to that, publishing a
press statement denouncing SNA’s fabrication of fake videos. But exposing their dirty
methods is not enough to stop them, we need to take action in all fronts possible to put an
end to their atrocities.
Syria is moving from the joy and celebrations after the fall of the regime, to the darkest
hours it lived since the worst times of the war. Israel and Turkey are committing
massacres and abusing their power to impose their agendas, taking advantage of the
situation to feed their greed and expansionist ambitions. The revolution is under
existential threat, and it is our duty, as internationalists and as revolutionaries, to make
sure they can’t break this revolution. The world is descending into really dark paths, with
war and oppression gaining ground all around. But there is also hope and revolutionary
opportunities in those situations. It is partly in our hands to decide where we go from this
point.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 11/12/24
<strong>The rush for influence on a new Syria</strong>
HTS is now busy making itself more presentable to western audiences, hoping to gain
official legitimacy throw capturing the Syrian state structure. Western powers are going
along with that, and no one is putting much attention to the small scale attacks that their
rogue islamist groups are doing. The DAANES is holding talks with them, accepting
them as provisional government for now, hoping to halt Turkish offensive and work
towards a federal Syria that respects regional autonomy.
Turkey is moving further in their attacks, striking as far as Raqqa, making a bold
statement that they are ready to defy US red lines in order to achieve their aims. The
SNA soldiers are recording and spreading videos of the horrendous crimes they are
committing as part of their psychological warfare, evoking the behavior of ISIS. This is
not a coincidence, several ISIS fighters have been reported to be now holding command
positions inside different factions of SNA.
Israel is moving further into Syria, defying even the UN that called to not push forward.
With Russia and Iran losing all their influence on Syria, Israel and Turkey (strategic
NATO allies, Turkey being formal member of the military alliance) are taking advantage
of the situation to advance their imperialist agendas, indirectly supporting each other in
their occupations.
DAANES is struggling to sustain the developments of past years, with Turkey attacks on
Euphrates region and inter-tribal tensions in Deir-Ezzor, where some tribes pleading
alliances with HTS while others reaffirm their support to SDF. This is nothing new, is the
continuation of the tribal conflicts that had been ongoing in the region for some time.
One important topic to put attention is the situation of women. Women played very
important roles all along Syria since the first uprisings of 2011, but in HTS protests and
events, the absence of women is very noticeable, specially when compared with the role of
women in DAANES. Rojava is a women revolution, and this is becoming even more
obvious now, when all other forces are overwhelmingly male.
Enough for today, keep struggling and support the revolution!
Revolutionary greetings!
** 12/12/24
<strong>Disinformation and ethnic conflicts</strong>
The situation is getting very confusing on the ground, with disinformation spreading on
social networks and political talks behind closed doors. Verifying information is becoming
a critical step to understand what is happening, since Turkish propaganda strategy relays
on a very strong disinformation apparatus.
This specially affect a lot of Syrian returnees, since many of them had been living in
Turkey and being exposed to the Turkish narrative of criminalization of SDF. This will
feed ethnical tensions between Kurds an Arabs, risking more conflicts and even violence.
This comes together with the inter-Kurdish conflicts we discussed two days ago, and
indicates a general plan of turkish state intelligence to divide and isolate the leading
forces of the revolution. Other forces like US or HTS will not oppose to such a plan, since
a weakened revolutionary force will make it easier to dilute and manipulate the political
project of the DAANES. This puts the achievements of the revolution in serious danger,
and is more important than ever to expose and denounce such strategies, building a
common revolutionary front to face enemy attacks.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 14/12/24
<strong>Context on the ceasefire disagreements about a tomb</strong>
<em>Short explanation Written by YPG/YPJ International:</em>
<strong>The tomb of Suleyman Shah</strong>
<em>Part of the negotiated ceasefire between <verbatim>#</verbatim>SDF and <verbatim>#</verbatim>Turkey was connected to the location of
the tomb of Suleyman Shah and its military implications. Let’s dive into this a little
deeper to understand what this is all about:</em>
<em>Suleyman Shah lived in 13<sup>th</sup> century and, according to Ottoman legacy, is the grandfather
of Osman I, who founded the Ottoman Empire. Because todays <verbatim>#</verbatim>Turkey likes to see itself
as successor of the Ottoman Empire, the tomb and remains are important for them.</em>
<em>The tomb of Suleyman Shah was Turkey’s only foreign enclave, located more or less 30km
from the Turkish border close to Qere Qozaq, on the river banks of Euphrates. In 2014 the
tomb and its 38 Turkish guards, were completely surrounded by <verbatim>#</verbatim>ISIS.</em>
<em>So the tomb was brought to Ashme village, between <verbatim>#</verbatim>Kobane and Euphrates river, a site
closer to the Turkish border, where it was easier and less risky to protect, but still on
Syrian (and <verbatim>#</verbatim>SDF) territory. Turkey stressed that the relocation would only be temporarily.</em>
<em>While now negotiating the ceasefire, it was offered to help transfer the tomb again, but
<verbatim>#</verbatim>Turkey instead requested that it will be given 1km of land in this area, where they intend
to deploy heavy weapons and build a military base. Thus no agreement could be reached.</em>
<em>Revolutionary greetings!</em>
** 16/12/24
<strong>10 points of NES diplomacy</strong>
<em>The Autonomous Administration of NES has proposed 10 points to start a political
dialogue with the provisional government:</em>
<strong>10 point proposal of NES</strong>
<em>“Cooperation between the governments of NES and Damascus would be to the advantage of
everyone in Syria and could help overcome the current difficulties.”</em>
1. *First of all, it is important to maintain the unity and sovereignty of the Syrian state and
to protect the country from attacks by the Turkish state and its supporters.*
2. *Military operations on the entire Syrian territory should be ended to start a
comprehensive and constructive national dialogue.*
3. *We appeal to all sides, to refrain from rhetoric of hatred and betrayal to pave the way for
a constructive dialogue. Syria is a country that is rich in many ways. This wealth must be
preserved, based on justice and democracy.*
4. *We suggest an early meeting of the Syrian political actor: inside in Damascus to
standardize the visions for the transition phase.*
5. *We would like to work for women to participate even more in the political process than
before.*
6. *We emphasize that resources and economic wealth should be distributed fairly between
all Syrian regions, since they belong to all citizens of the Syria.*
7. *We would like to work to ensure that the original and violently displaced population can
return to their areas. It is important to us to preserve their cultural heritage and to end the
policies of demographic change.*
8. *In view of the developments in Syria, we reaffirm our commitment in the fight against
terrorism to prevent the return of IS terrorists, through the joint cooperation between SDF
and the international anti-IS coalition.*
9. *We are of the firm believe that the occupation must be ended. The Syrian people must be
given the opportunity to determine their future and use the principle of the good
neighborhood.*
10. *We welcome the constructive role of the Arab states, the United Nations, the
International Anti-IS coalition and all active international actors and ask everyone to take
on a positive and effective role in the advice and support of the Syrian people. And to
facilitate the communication between the different population groups in order to ensure
stability and security and stop foreign interventions.*”
** 16/12/24
<strong>HTS and international fascism</strong>
We can see how EU and US are not concerned with the past of HTS as a branch of Al-
Qaeda, accepting their provisional government very fast. At the same time very little
support or recognition has been given to NES, even when has been the main force on the
ground fighting ISIS. Clearly the deciding factors for western powers are not human
rights, ethical values and democracy as they like to claim, their decisions are being
guided by anti-refugee sentiments and economical interests on oil and gas.
As right-wing parties take more power in governments, their electoral promises of harder
migration laws guide their political programs. Those governments end up supporting
authoritarian regimes that promise order and stability, hoping they will keep refugees
away from their borders, when its exactly those regimes that force people to flee. There is
a long history of western powers, especially US, supporting religious fundamentalist
groups over socialist revolutionary forces. This goes against ethnic and religious
minorities and especially against women and queers, since religious fundamentalism and
patriarchy always go hand in hand.
A German organisation called GfbV (society for threatened peoples) warned:
<em>“The new rulers of Syria are presenting themselves in the media as moderate, but there are
already many signs that they are not keeping their promises. (...)
Turkish ruler Erdoğan has already sent his foreign minister to Damascus to torpedo a
peaceful solution between HTS and DANNES. Erdoğan’s policy is extremely dangerous.
The German government, especially the Federal Foreign Office, must not rely on Erdoğan
and the Syrian Islamists if it really wants to create stability and a long-term peace order”</em>
We see that the liberal left seems more aware of the situation, but they are not gonna risk
anything to stop it. As it already happened with ISIS, there are threats that won’t be
stopped with political diplomacy and economic sanctions. Fascism can have many colors,
and it is always in deeply militarized and patriarchal environments where it thrives the
best. Religious fundamentalism is therefore a perfect ground for fascism in the Middle
East, as islamophobia and racist nationalism is in western territories.
Fascism needs to be stopped before it’s to late. Even if having different colors,
authoritarian forces will eventually cooperate to eradicate autonomy and diversity. The
mentality of dominant male, imposing their hegemony and dreaming of bigger and bigger
nation-states under their rule, is the main threat for any expression of free life. But
denouncing it is not enough, we have to take action to make sure their ambitions are
prevented. And if not you, who? If not now, when?
One solution. Revolution. Revolutionary greetings!
** 18/12/24
<strong>Rojhilat Efrin on attacks against women</strong>
The General Commander of YPJ Rojhilat Efrîn highlighted the ongoing resistance against
foreign occupation and stressed the significance of safeguarding the region’s autonomy
and women’s rights. She noted that the Middle East is being redesigned, with
paramilitary groups and factions contributing to insecurity. The attacks against women
symbolize the broader destabilization of society. The importance of international backing
for the region’s self-management system is seen as vital for the Kurdish, Arab, and
broader regional populations.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 20/12/24
<strong>The dark sides of a new government</strong>
The assassination of two Kurdish journalists is a painful reminder of how news and
information is a weapon of war.
We are seeing elaborate schemes in social networks, where fake information and
fabricated war headlines are propagated, distorting reality and creating confusion about
the situation on the ground. This is part of psychological warfare, another form of waging
war employed by our enemies. This broadcast channel is partly an answer to it. We know
that war has many sides, and that we need to give collective answers to all of them,
building mechanisms of self-defense against all kinds of attacks. We also see attacks
against health workers, with an ambulance that was transporting injured recently being
targeted in the Kobane region. These kinds of attacks are not just attacks against
civilians, are attacks against basic ethical standards.
Western powers like to claim a moral high ground, talking about democracy and human
rights. Turkey is a NATO member that has been spitting on any basic ethical standards,
and still got a new bribe of 1 billion E in the form of aid to control refugees. HTS was on
the terrorist lists for its links with Al-Qaeda. But now, climbing the ladder to the top of a
Nation-State, that is not relevant for the other heads of State anymore. As it already
happened with the Taliban.
It deeply reflects how States are born, with brutal and murderous gangs fighting and
killing, until one big man manages to establish himself as president, as king, or even as
god. And then the other big men around him applause and congratulate his ascend. After
that, maybe they put some make-up and rewrite the history here and there, to make sure
it suits whatever is the current trend in present literature. And, voila! A new government
is born.
It is also pathetic to see Turkey and Israel building tensions, accusing each other of the
same crimes they are committing themselves. Especially when their military intelligence
agencies collaborate and negotiate the occupation and partition of Syria behind the
cameras.
“The Truth will not remain captive in the darkness”
- Nazim Dashtan
Comrade Nazim, comrade Cihan, all the brave fighters defending this revolution:
Rest in Power!
Revolutionary greetings!
** 22/12/24
<strong>Diplomacy and the 4D chess</strong>
Very fast, al-Julani traded his military-style green shirt for a business-style black suit
and a tie, hosting several official meetings this Sunday in the Syrian presidential palace.
A new technocrat is born, paving his way to the presidency of Syria and to the corridors of
the international Realpolitik.
This creates a very challenging situation for the DAANES, since it is the game that
Kurdish politicians had been trying to play for the last years. Diplomatic institutions had
become an important work for the bodies of the self-administration, moderating the
revolutionary narrative to look formal and acceptable to western audiences, aiming to
achieve recognition and status for North-East Syria. It worked for a while, creating an
illusion that office politics and diplomacy was the right path to follow. But now this
illusion is vanishing.
The negotiations of Mazlum Abdi for a ceasefire in Kobane, proposing a demilitarized
zone, rightly addressed the concerns that Turkey was putting on the table about the tomb
of Suleiman Shah. This exposed the hypocrisy of AKP, that was just using those
conditions as an excuse for their attacks. But with US entering the game, and especially
with the fierce resistance of SDF in Tishreen and Qereqozah, the invasion got halted for
now. SDF is crushing wave after wave of the mercenaries that Erdogan is sending.
Erdogan has hopes that Trump will side with him when he takes office, but the pro-
Kurdish positions from some senators of the republican party -with a the bipartisan bill
against Erdogan proposed in the US senate- are now bringing doubts about that. Kurdish
diplomacy has been playing a pivotal role in the last years, and the revolutionary process
also paid a price for it, having to play the role that western powers (mainly US) wanted to
see “the Kurdish partners” playing.
But the Kurdish liberation movement is more than the diplomacy of Rojava, and the
resistance in Kobane is proof of that. We made it that far because the people of Rojava
have always been ready to fight and defend their land. If we want to push for
revolutionary transformations, we need to take initiative and go on the offensive.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 23/12/24
<strong>Pushing back in Manbij countryside</strong>
The SDF seized the opportunity and are making an advance towards Manbij. Since SDF
kicked out ISIS in 2016, Manbij had years of democracy and stability. Now we see how the
local population refuse to accept the Turkish occupation and the violent fundamentalists
groups of SNA. We can see how the self administrations managed to get the vast majority
of the people behind the idea of this revolution.
This is a very important victory, not just for the military aspect but also on the political
side. Pushing back against the occupation is also a psychological blow for the Turkish
proxy groups, that find themselves in disarray in front of the advance of SDF. Phones and
other devices captured in the advance of SDF are now showing their communications,
where desperate calls for help and scared communications of fighters running away are
being circulated in whatsapp groups. Their dependency on Turkish military power makes
them vulnerable to SDF counter attacks, because they don’t have contingency plans for
those situations.
Still, Turkish air superiority is a massive challenge for SDF advance. Advances towards
Manbij are a big achievement, and we should celebrate it. But the war is not over, Turkish
planes can become a nightmare not just for SDF but for all peoples of northern Syria. It is
still not clear how much Erdogan will try to play political in his alliance with HTS, or how
much he will go full on with military attacks.
But this will be something we will need to evaluate in the future, today let’s ceebrate this
amazing victory of SDF!
Revolutionary greetings!
** 24/12/24
<strong>The dark side of a new government II</strong>
HTS is consolidating their power, announcing the disarmament of different factions and
their integration into a new national army, under control of the provisional ministry of
defense. The provisional government is also making concessions with Christian
communities, that organized big protests in Damascus after the arson attack on a
Christmas tree in Hama. It looks a bit weird for us to see their demonstrations, marching
and holding crosses above their heads, playing with the hegemony of Christianity of
western powers as a tool of deterrence.
Anyway, it worked. Ahmed al-Sharaa announced that those who burned the tree were not
Syrians, and that there is no place in the new Syria for them. He learned fast to speak the
language on western nation-states, using racism and xenophobia to blame the other, to
pin any crimes and problems on some external threat, closing ranks under one flag, one
nation, one state. But it really seems that those who burned the tree where not Syrians,
but Chechens, Islamist veterans that were counted among the elite fighters of the now
dispersed al-Nusra front. As Mussolini did one century ago, when he dumped his loyal
‘fascio di combatimento’ paramilitaries once he got to the Italian parliament, al-Sharaa is
now purging the ranks of HTS to consolidate his power.
But let’s not get lost in history. The important news for us are happening here, next to the
Eufrates river. The counter-offensive on Manbij yesterday night had been an important
victory, redefining the dynamics of the SNA-SDF ongoing conflict. It proved that SNA
stands no chance against SDF without Turkish drones in the sky. It also means that,
from now on, every time it rains, SNA mercenaries will be exposed to new SDF counter-
offensives.
For those who had been in Rojava for some time, we remember how the Turkish offensives
of 2018 and 2019 advanced ruthlessly to fulfil their aims (first Afrin, later Serekaniye and
Gire Spi). Back then, they had green light of Russia and US to do as they wanted. Now,
with Russia absent and US waiting for Trump to return to the white house, there is a
window of opportunity where SDF can use the rainy days to push back. The first counter-
offensive in Manbij has been a success, not just on a military level but also on a
psychological level, showing that the revolutionary forces are ready to defend their land.
This has sent a clear message: Kobane is a red line. If anyone mess with it, the spirit of
the resistance that broke the advance of ISIS will once again burst free!
Revolutionary greetings!
** 25/12/24
<strong>Alawite tensions and SNA defections</strong>
There are now big protests in the main cities of Tartus and Latakia, reacting to the
desecration of the tomb of an important Alawite scholar. This adds to videos that had
been circulating on social networks, where HTS fighters are threatening and insulting
Alawites in rural areas. Also in Hama and Homs big protests are ongoing, with rumors
spreading of HTS opening fire against protesters. This can become a big challenge for the
provisional government, since the stronghold of the old regime minority (the Alawites)
can easily spark clashes and old hates, with HTS acting on old grudges and spite against
them. Seems that SNA is now being deployed on Latakia too, and they will just add
gasoline to the fire. This adds difficulties to HTS, that more or less managed to calm down
the protests of Christians in Damascus for now, knowing that those are closely watched by
western christian powers, even more on Christmas days.
Today there was also big confusion with a statement attributed to SDF, that was
announced by Kurdish media but not visible on any SDF channels. The alleged statement
called for armed groups in Serekaniye and Gire Spi to surrender their weapons, to
abandon their positions and leave occupied territories, offering safe passage to other
areas if they withdraw before the end of the year. Most Kurdish media removed the
statement, but still the news circulated. On the ground no one knows anything about such
plans. Still, after the success of the Manbij counter-attack, liberating Serekaniye is
something that everyone is talking about.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 28/12/24
<strong>On minorities unrest and the need of a ‘democratic nation’ project</strong>
After a month since the offensive of HTS started, we have now better ground to evaluate
what is going on in Syria. The unexpected collapse of al-Assad regime was followed by
celebrations and hopeful dreams of an easy and bloodless transition in Syria. But this is
something we only see in movies and history books. In real life most revolutions are
followed by periods of instability and warlordism, where different factions struggle to
impose their hegemony.
The recent protests of Christians, as well as the uprisings of Alawites, are complex events
that are getting polarized in social networks. These two social groups had certain
privileges during the regime of al-Assad, privileges that were partly established with the
old French colonial rule, favoring them over Sunni Arabs or Kurds. But those privileges
are also limited to some higher classes, and not all members of those groups were aligned
with the regime.
Those uprisings are not simply “uncontrolled regime/Iran/Israel elements/agents” as HTS
like to claim, it is also a reaction to the attacks of “uncontrolled HTS elements”, like the
fire on the Christmas tree in Hama and the desecration of the grave of an important
Alawite scholar. Those attacks are manifestations of ethnic grudges that many Sunni
Arabs may share, but when ethnic simplifications like this are used to call for ethnic
cleansing, things can very easily spiral out of control.
Many Alawites and Christians had power positions in the regime, but many Sunni Arabs
too. Kurds know very well what it means to be part of a secondary class, to be at the
bottom of the social pyramid. That’s why it has been so important for the DAANES to
develop respectful and inclusive methods for everyone, allowing autonomy and self-
organization to all different social groups. HTS sectarian visions, with Islamic
fundamentalism as a ground to build a fake national unity, pose serious threats to the
diversity of Syria.
The DAANES is already making calls to stop the attacks against Alawite people, to put
an end to the sectarian violence, to build the nation under a base of diversity and respect
for the other. The call for a “democratic nation project” should be understood in that
sense, as part of a wider project for democratic confederalism, questioning old patterns of
tribalism, patriarchy and nation-state. It is a call to continue the revolution all around
Syria and beyond.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 29/12/24
<strong>Diplomacy and the 4D chess II</strong>
Any hopes of a tolerant and progressive government under HTS are rapidly dying. The
military repression against Alawites has been just a glimpse of what is coming. After
yesterdays call of the UN envoy for elections in 3 months, al-Sharaa responded today that
no elections will take place in Syria in the next 4 years. He also announced his plans for
the dissolution of HTS during the National Dialog Conference. That probably means to
dissolve it inside the structures of a new centralized government, attempting to wash off
the terrorist label that still hangs on HTS, while institutionalizing and taking control of a
new Syrian state. In short, achieving a transition from Party to State, as any
authoritarian force attempts to do.
We also include some words from Hawzhin Azeez, a Kurdish political academic who
shared her reflections about the rumors of dissolution of SDF and the importance of YPJ:
<em>It’s a mistake to see the YPJ as solely a response to end ISIS terrorism or an integral aspect
of Kurdish national liberation.
The YPJ are a permanent military force that will only dissolve itself when capitalist, statist
and patriarchal oppression ends. They are ideologically committed to protecting women
and themselves so long as these hierarchies of oppression and violence against women exist.
They are a permanent women’s self protection unit here to stay.
Even if the HTS/Jolani government manoeuvres the disarming of the SDF somehow, the
YPJ is ideologically committed to permanent self protection even against the men/forces in
their own communities. They cannot be dissolved! The YPJ is one of the most radical and
groundbreaking aspects of Rojava’s Revolution.</em>
Revolutionary greetings!
** 30/12/24
<strong>War is politics with effusion of blood</strong>
Today a pentagon official declared that the ceasefire between SDF and Turkey is holding.
It’s surreal to read those declarations when heavy clashes are happening everyday around
Manbij. Ahmed Al-Sharaa keeps receiving visits of foreign diplomats to gain legitimacy as
negotiations are still ongoing. Mazlum Abdi affirms the will of SDF to become part of the
new Syrian army if an acceptable agreement can be reached. And ISIS continues
attacking security checkpoints in several areas of Syria.
The attacks yesterday of the Military Council of Serekaniye in the Turkish occupied areas
were a good reminder of two things: 1) Many parts of Syria are still under occupation, and
people are ready to fight to liberate their homes 2) SDF is probably the strongest military
force on the ground. It is important to remember those things when we look at the
negotiations between SDF and HTS. Any call for a new Syrian army needs to include
SDF, and SDF will not accept to simply “give up the weapons”. SDF is currently
protecting about a third of the Syrian territory, with a well grounded and coordinated
force. Together with many local military councils, SDF also counts with special elite
units, veterans of the war against ISIS. HTS surprised the world with their production
and proficiency with kamikaze drones, and counts in their ranks with some veteran
Islamist fighters. Still, HTS can’t defeat SDF on the ground, at least not without the
Turkish support that is allowing the SNA to attack the SDF.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, after many years of silence, Syrians are now free to
discuss politics openly in the street. Years of fear and repression from the regime secret
services are now behind. Damascus, Aleppo, Homs... those are historical cities with
vibrant new dynamics, that also carry important lessons from the years of resistance
against the regime. Many politically organized Syrians are now in exile, but still many
voices are already challenging the authoritarian moves of al-Sharaa. We also saw how
Damascus was not liberated by HTS, in fact they arrived to the capital when Assad was
already gone. The first military barracks stormed in the capital where the southern ones,
with Druze flags and FSA brigades emblems. Those were welcomed by the people of the
capital, that celebrated their arrival because they also wanted the regime out. So when
tomorrow HTS starts to claim that they are the ones that saved Syria, remember that
they are lying. It was the people who toppled down the regime.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 02/01/25
<strong>Politics is war without effusion of blood</strong>
We start 2025 with many things going on. January will be a challenging month, with a
race of different actors to strengthen their positions, both in the military field as well as
in diplomatic influence. Al-Sharaa is putting his HTS trusted circles in key positions in
the government. You can read some of their (newly collected) biographies on Wikipedia,
partly documenting their past activities as “brave jihadist fighters” of al-Nusra. How
much they are just playing a theater for western audiences, or how much they really
moderated themselves in exchange for power in a Nation-State, is something that will be
more clear in the next months.
The statements of an insurgent “popular resistance movement”, with a certain Iranian
flavor and with Russian fringe media echoing it, can contribute to new waves of
instability if they come backed up with actions. The Druze community in the south also
seems unwilling to cooperate with HTS transitional government, contributing to a mosaic
of actors that question HTS’ proclaimed power. Meanwhile, many people in Syria’s
western cities are going out to the streets, fixing roads and painting murals, reinforcing
bonds of solidarity and mutual aid among neighbors. This networks of civic organizing
can easily flourish in local committees and popular councils, as they already did in the
early years of the Syrian revolution. How much HTS government will give space to these
local initiatives, and how much these grassroots movements will confront the
authoritarian steps of HTS, is something that will be a determinant for the future of
Syria.
The press statement of the ‘joint forces’ leaving the SNA coalition is an important step,
moving towards a generalized meltdown of the Turkish proxy forces. It is not clear how
much it is an open defection or maybe a ‘cover’ operation of Turkish intelligence, aiming
to ‘infiltrate’ some of their trusted agents in the new Syrian Army. Still, together with
many local reports of groups and fighters defecting to go back home, plus the big amount
of losses that the resistance of SDF is inflicting against their attacks, all this is making
SNA more an more unable to hold their ground. How much Turkey will try to keep SNA
together or will try to invade directly if things don’t play as they want remains still to be
seen.
On the other side, the ongoing talks to integrate SDF in that same new Syrian Army are
an uncomfortable but necessary step, in order to build relations with the transitional
government and avoid being outmaneuvered by Turkey. For now, they seem similar of
nature to the negotiations with the Assad regime that were held in the past. SDF never
reached any agreement with the regime that wouldn’t compromise their integrity and
values, and the same is true for the new negotiations with HTS. Negotiations of this kind
are diplomatic games, a projection of power of the different actors. If the balance of power
changes, negotiations can be pushed in a new direction, with the stronger imposing their
will and the other having to accept a compromise. Therefore the most plausible scenario
is that those negotiations will get stalled, waiting to solve the differences on the battle
field.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 04/01/25
<strong>Negotiations and delegations</strong>
The recent handover of strategical border-crossing points in Afrin to HTS is a very
relevant development, it shows the will of Turkey to sacrifice SNA militias in exchange for
better relations with HTS. Those border crossing points are a big source of tax revenue for
the militias that control it, cutting down their access to funds and giving them to HTS
will not just improve their economical situation but also reinforce the centralized control
that the HTS transitional government is attempting. And of course, Turkey is expecting
HTS to not forget that they are helping them with that, gaining a better diplomatic
position in future negotiations.
The visit of the French and German foreign ministers to Damascus indicates that Europe
is willing to accept the transitional government as legitimate representation of Syria. The
video with the awkward moment when Baerbock offers her hand and the reception
delegation and they refuse to shake her hand, has been circulating a lot. It is a clear
indication of the misogynist approach that this transitional government has. At the same
time, they orchestrated a press conference with an unveiled women talking on behalf of
the White Helmets, a rescue organization with close ties with HTS and Turkey. This is
clearly a move for media spectacle, since any pictures ever seen of women working with
White helmets has been always with veil and gloves, and always as having an auxiliary
role. This adds to other examples of HTS tokenizing women to appear moderate and
aligned with inclusive values, but it is clearly nothing else than a facade.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 06/01/25
<strong>Slowing down the roller coaster</strong>
The extreme instability of the last month seems to be slowing down. This is a dangerous
time, where the international media attention starts to withdraw, forgetting once again
what is happening in Syria. The heavy clashes of Manbij countryside are the new
normality, as well as the intensified artillery attacks of Turkish army, as well as the
constant drone strikes all over north east Syria. In the big cities of Western Syria the
transitional government is tightening their control, with security operations targeting
mainly old regime loyalists for now.
The unstable situation of the Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheik Mekhsud and Ashrafia in
Aleppo is slowly (but silently) escalating tensions. SNA fighters dropped some explosive
devices days ago before being shot by local defense forces. Today, a crowd chanting slogans
aligned with the transitional government marched towards the Kurdish neighborhoods.
YPG forces fired warning shots in the sky to disperse the march, and for now it stopped
there.
The local militias from Suwayda “Men of dignity” and “Mountain brigade” made
statements rejecting sectarian factional armies and condemning the deadly clashes that
took place recently in the south of Syria. It is not clear to us if the clashes where with
HTS supporters (as we reported recently) or with old regime loyalist groups. Or maybe
with both, reports seem confusing and our lack of trusted sources from southern Syria
makes it difficult to get a good grasp of the situation.
The fatigue and exhaustion after more than a month of frantic activity are also weighing
on everyone. In these times we can see the dynamics of war switching from sprint to
marathon, where endurance and resilience become critical. Those who can’t withstand
the pressure, those who break, will open small windows of opportunity for their enemies.
SDF has repeatedly proven its strength in this long term race, so now is time to wait for
enemy mistakes. As Sun Tzu wrote 15 centuries ago: “To secure ourselves against defeat
lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the
enemy himself.”
Revolutionary greetings!
** 08/01/25
<strong>Turkey increase efforts</strong>
As SNA weakens, the Turkish army is increasing their role in the Tishreen front lines.
Drone strikes are targeting not just military positions, but also SDF supply lines and
even the civilian convoy that traveled there. More and more armored vehicles are being
supplied to the Turkish proxies, combined with increasing air support from drones and
war planes. The resistance of the Tishreen dam is at the moment the warmest front line
of all Syria, a decisive battle for the resistance of the DAANES is being fought there.
The reiterated threats of Turkey about a total invasion in Northern Syria are now coming
with claims to control ISIS prisons. This could be extremely dangerous, considering how
many foreign ISIS fighters could reorganize their cells with Turkish help. Many of them
were aided by Turkish state to cross the border to Syria to join ISIS 10 years ago, and
Turkey could now use them as leverage to create instability and chaos in many countries.
The Israel “Committee for the Evaluation of the Defense Establishment Budget and the
Balance of Power”, led by former National Security Council head Yaakov Nagel, is
highlighting the tensions between Israel and Turkey. These two states are competing for
hegemony in middle east, and their tensions can become more and more central as both
states expand their influence in Syria. How the transitional government balances their
occupations (Turkey in the north, Israel in the South) will affect also what role the
DAANES and the Kurdish liberation movement will play in Syria.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 10/01/25
<strong>Solving contradictions, creating opportunities</strong>
The civilian vigil on Tishreen dam is an example of the readiness of the people in north-
east Syria to defend their land, using a wide diversity of tactics. For several years,
militants of northern Syria have been discussing the importance of a resistance inspired
on the ideas of “revolutionary people’s war”. The ongoing protest in Tishreen, together
with the other vigils taking place in the Syrian-Turkish border next to the cities of
Qamishlo and Kobane, are an example of civil resistance against occupation. Those
actions don’t go in contradiction with the military defense of SDF, instead they
complement each other, combining diverse forms of resistance towards a common aim.
The International Coalition is also making some interesting steps, with French army
starting to deploy alongside US forces in the border with Turkey and other locations.
France has been an important partner of the International Coalition since the beginning,
and this is probably related to the fears of French State to foreign ISIS fighters, many of
them with French nationality. If HTS or Turkey take control of the prisons currently
under control of SDF, that hold thousands of ISIS fighters captive, those prisoners could
find their way back to France and endanger the security of many European countries.
This is also a preventive move of France, taking precautions before Donald Trump, who
declared his intentions to withdraw US soldiers from Syria, takes over the white house.
The Turkish appointed governor of Afrin refused the call of HTS to transfer the
management over the local council to an HTS delegation. This reflects how, even if Turkey
and HTS are cooperating in many areas, they still have conflicts an power struggles.
Those kind of contradictions can evolve to more bitter relations if Turkey refuse to give up
control of the regions they occupied in Syria. Contradictions in the relations between Iran
and Russia are also surfacing, with declarations of an Iranian commander blaming
Russia for not really fighting against the rebel offensive that sparked the collapse of the
Regime.
All authoritarian powers, all centralized governments, have always one aim: to
accumulate more power. This brings them to cooperate with each other when they can
benefit from it, but also to constantly compete and clash against each other. Exploiting
these contradictions is necessary to undermine their hegemony. Pushing them to clash on
each other can create opportunities for revolutionary forces, but only when those forces
are well organized in strong revolutionary movements can really seize those opportunities
and develop alternative models against capitalism modernity.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 13/01/25
<strong>Dialog and reconciliations</strong>
The preparation for a “national conference” for Syria had been ongoing for some time, but
now the announcements are getting more concrete. It is still not clear how this conference
will be organized and who will be allowed to take part in it. As details are being clarified,
it will become more clear if it is an inclusive and democratic process to engage in a
national transition, or if it will be a performative process to legitimize power grab of HTS
after the collapse of the Regime.
SDF meetings with HTS continue, and some agreements are being reached as the
recently announced joint administrative committees indicate. The diplomatic relations
with KRG also continue, suggesting agreements towards Kurdish unity for the future.
These diplomatic negotiations are very difficult and fragile, and nothing is concluded yet.
Talks about peace and dialog may not sound very radical, but defending the revolutionary
achievements of NES is clearly a priority in those talks. Let’s hope for the best, but also
let’s get ready for the worst.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 15/01/25
<strong>Moving forward</strong>
Now it’s one month and a half since we started to elaborate these reports of curated news,
summarizing the ongoing situation in Syria. It has been a very intense and we are very
grateful for all support and interest from comrades following this updates. We put a lot of
efforts to make sure comrades have access to reliable information about what is
happening. As the situation slows down, we also need to catch up with other works we put
on hold due to the situation of emergency.
The war stills roaring in Tishreen, and Turkish planes and drones continue their brutal
attacks against the people of NES. The bombings on civilian convoys are an extreme
example of how far they are willing to go to achieve their aims. The diplomatic talks and
other forms of soft power is now the main element, we know the politics are just a
continuation of war without blood spilling (as war is a continuation of politics with blood
spilling).
For us, this is also a time of action. Not only in the front lines but also on the streets, with
popular resistance and grassroots organizing. We want to call you once again to organize
commemorations for the Syrian anarchist Omar Aziz, who died in the prison of the al-
Assad regime. Wherever you are, you can organize events in solidarity and support the
revolution. We hope this can become a ground to build networks of comradeship and
mutual aid among anarchist comrades, to support the revolutionary movements in Syria
and to question the authoritarian forces that try to impose themselves as new centralized
government. Power to the people! power to the local councils and peoples federations!
Remember Omar Aziz and all revolutionaries who gave their life for this revolution!
https://rememberomaraziz.net/
Revolutionary greetings!
** 17/01/25
<strong>Dialog and reconciliations II</strong>
The meeting between Mazlum Abdi and Masoud Barzani has been celebrated by kurds in
cities like Qamishlo. Others look at it with mistrust. Some hope it is the beginning of
negotiations towards a process for Kurdish national unity. Together with the meetings of
KNK (Kurdish National Council) that recently took place in Qamishlo, we see big efforts
from Kurdish political bodies to build national unity and cooperation with the new
Damascus administration. This can also bee seen in relation to the recent delegation that
visited Abdullah Ocalan in Imrali, that shared a message of dialogue towards peace and
stability.
It is the first time that PDK, the ruling party of KRG (Kurdish Regional Government in
Iraq), hosts an official delegation from SDF. Besides a brief cooperation in 2012–2013, the
relations with PDK and PYD, the main Kurdish political party of north East Syria, had
been difficult. PDKs cooperation with Turkey has been a deep contradiction that made
any agreements impossible. PDK expanded their activities and influence in some areas of
Afrin, under occupation of Turkish proxies. After serious disagreements, the self
administration forbid ENKS, a party affiliated with PDK, to continue working in
northern Syria. This blockade was lifted some months ago, but the relations still difficult.
There are also decades of conflict, even war, between PDK and PKK that will make those
negotiations very difficult.
National unity is an important element for any process of national liberation. The
promises of a free Kurdistan had been the engine of many Kurdish political parties for
several generations, but how this free Kurdistan looks like (and who is ruling it) has been
always a point of conflict. The occupation of other nation states of Kurdish land made the
creation of a Kurdish state impossible. The proposal of Democratic confederalism moved
away from attempts to build a Kurdish state, and instead developed the proposal of
democratic nation to build a stateless society. How much this is compatible with current
negotiations is something that only time will tell.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 26/01/25
<strong>10 years of the liberation of Kobane and Shibani in Davos</strong>
As HTS government consolidates it’s position, asserting their diplomatic influence and
expanding their military presence over Syria, their position on the autonomous self-
administration starts to be more aggressive. Recent military deployments on the gas and
oil fields south of Raqqa were used by some media to claim military advances over SDF,
exploiting also ethnic tensions and resentments that may arab nationalists still hold
against Kurds. It is not clear how much it was a mistake or disinformation of some media,
or how much it was an intentional move to portray the transitional government as strong
and decisive against separatism. Assad al-Shibani, FM of the HTS government who
recently got his PhD from an Istanbul private university, is calling to disband SDF in the
(in)famous World Economic Forum of Davos, while announcing a full embracement of
neoliberal economical agenda for Syria.
Al-Sharaa, ‘de facto’ president of Syria, is also making declarations like “The Kurdish
People’s Protection Units alone did not respond to our call to restrict weapons to the
authorities”. Those statements dismiss not just the ongoing negotiations with SDF, but
also how other armed groups also rejected his calls to reorganize the monopoly of violence
under direct control of a centralized state. As SDF makes diplomatic moves to consolidate
it’s position and strength in the negotiation table, HTS seems to be more inclined to
accelerate tensions towards confrontation, knowing they will have full support of Turkey
for any military action against SDF. Turkish state media have a long history of fabricated
news, and now already twice they spread false information of alleged car bombs going to
Aleppo from SDF areas, indicating their readiness to create excuses to justify attacks on
SDF.
Let’s not lie, the situation in NES looks difficult. Still, the resistance in Tishreen is an
example of the determination to resist against the invasion, to defend the advances of the
revolution. We also remember how 10 years ago, 26<sup>th</sup> of January of 2015, YPG and YPJ
announced the liberation of Kobane from the attacks of ISIS. We should not forget that,
because at that time it looked much darker than today. And here we are, the revolution
did not just defeat the caliphate, but have been also a key element to the collapse of the
regime of Bashar al-Assad. It is also making impossible for Turkey to consolidate it’s
imperial aspirations in Syria and in Kurdistan. Revolutions are not the easy way, we
know that, but difficulties won’t deter us to pursue our dreams of freedom and liberation.
Revolutionary greetings!
** 26.01.25–01.02.25
<strong>On the New Syrian Government’s “Victory Congress”</strong>
The Military Operations Administration in Syria announced some dramatic shifts in the
country’s governance as results of the so called ‘Victory Congress’. This congress was
organized with a high degree of secrecy and was held among military leaders of different
factions, including SNA. SDF or DAANES delegates were no invited. The next day Ahmed
al-Sharaa gave a public speech on Syria national tv as new president.
<strong>Announcements of the “victory congress”:</strong>
- Ahmed al-Sharaa is now the official president of Syria’s transitional phase. The 2012
Syrian constitution is abolished.
- A temporary legislative council will be established to govern the country until a new
constitution is drafted and implemented.
- All military and security institutions previously loyal to the old regime are officially
disbanded
- All armed factions and political-revolutionary bodies will be dissolved and integrated
into state institutions
- The Ba’ath Party, which had ruled Syria for decades, is officially dissolved
<strong>Key priorities for the transitional phase announced in the “president speech”:</strong>
1. Establishing a functioning authority to fill the political vacuum.
2. Ensuring civil peace and preventing further internal conflicts.
3. Building state institutions that can serve the Syrian people.
4. Developing a strong economic foundation to drive recovery.
5. Restoring Syria’s international and regional standing.
<strong>Major challenges for the new administration:</strong>
- Security threats from remaining militant factions and external actors.
- Economic hardship, exacerbated by years of war and sanctions.
- Political divisions within Syrian opposition groups and international stakeholders.
<strong>Declaration of the DAANES about the “Victory congress”</strong>
<em>As the DAANES, we emphasize that these decisions should have been taken at a ‘National
Congress’ with the participation of everyone.
In particular, we do not accept the presence of some terrorists who have the blood of the
Syrian people on their hands. Ehmed Ihsan Fayad al-Hayis, who brutally murdered
Hevrin Xelef, Secretary General of the Future Syria Party and Mohammad al-Jasim, the
head of the Abu Amsha group, complicit in many crimes committed in Afrin, were present
at this meeting.
We emphasize once again that this meeting is not legitimate and does not represent the
Syrian people.
Any decision to be taken in Syria without a National Congress including all political
circles will be incomplete. The most appropriate solution to end the instability in Syria is a
national congress. The exclusion or suspension of any party in Syria from the congress will
be no different from the practices of the former regime. On this basis, we once again call on
the government in Damascus to refrain from such mistakes. Everyone must take part in the
making of the new constitution in Syria.
As the DAANES, we once again call for the unity of Syria as part of our national
liberation perspective. We emphasize once again that everyone in Syria must have their say
about the future of Syria.”</em>
|
#pubdate 2010-10-13 10:38:07 +0200
#author A. Kent MacDougall
#SORTauthors A. Kent MacDougall
#title Pandemic Immiseration: The Myth of Capitalist Affluence
#lang en
#date 1999
#SORTtopics capitalism, economics, Fifth Estate, Fifth Estate #352, unemployment
#notes From <em>Fifth Estate #352</em>, Winter 1999
<strong><em>Fifth Estate</em> Note:</strong> Some terminology in this brief but potent essay differs somewhat from the language generally used in the <em>FE</em>.
For example, we normally do not invoke Marx and Engels in economic critiques, but much of their economic analysis remains valid into the modern era.
Also, we feel the commonly used term, employed here by the author, “developing,” is inaccurate to describe the nations of the South — that is the Southern tier, non-industrial countries. The phrase connotes a process that is not occurring, as the article ably points out.
Despite these minor differences, we think his description of contemporary capitalism is compelling and deserves wide possible dissemination.
The author can be contacted directly at 911 Oxford St., Berkeley, CA 94707.
* * *
During the post-Second World War economic boom, Marxists were hard-pressed to defend the key tenet that capitalism tends to raise the rate of exploitation of workers by lowering their real wages relative to labor productivity and profits. Amid unmistakable improvements in material living standards for most workers in most advanced capitalist countries, it was hard to argue that the working class was undergoing relative impoverishment, let alone absolute impoverishment.
No more. Impoverishment and immiseration are on the rise just about everywhere in the world. This is evident in statistics on rates of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and hunger. And it strikes the eye in just about every major city — in the sullen slums of Western bourgeois democracies no less than in the gritty capitals of former Soviet bloc countries and the teeming shanty cities of the peripheral South.
*** A Blip In A General Decline
What’s more, evidence is accumulating that post-Second World War prosperity may prove in the long run to have been no more than a blip in a general decline of living standards since the advent of capitalism.
According to Immanuel Wallerstein, “Perhaps as much as 85 percent of the people who live within the structures of the capitalist world economy are clearly not living at standards higher than the world’s populations of 500–1,000 years ago. Indeed, it could be argued that many, even most of them are materially worse off.”
Capitalism’s tendency to generate wealth for the relatively few and poverty for the many is as much in evidence today as it was in the 19<sup>th</sup> Century England of “dark satanic mills” that Marx and Engels so perceptively analyzed. Now, as then, the poor grow poorer as the rich grow richer.
The deterioration of living standards of the English working class during the early and mid-stages of the Industrial Revolution was halted and gradually reversed largely because some of the wealth sucked from overseas colonies trickled down to the masses, and millions emigrated overseas, reducing the reserve army of unemployed. Today, there are far fewer underpopulated parts of the world to ship surplus workers to. So, a halt to the worldwide decline in living standards is unlikely anytime soon. Indeed, it is unlikely as long as capitalism dominates the world economy.
The post-Second World War improvement in wages was consistent with Marx’s proposition that real wages can rise provided they do not interfere with the progress of accumulation. And the post-1973 erosion of wages follows his view that where the reserve army of unemployed is large, real wages can be driven down even below subsistence. Currently, the reserve army of unemployed and underemployed is estimated at a third or more of all workers worldwide. With so many people desperate for any work at any wage, it is little wonder that absolute impoverishment is on the rise in so many parts of the globe.
The United Nations Development Programme estimates that “more than one billion people in developing countries lack access to basic health and education, safe drinking water and adequate nutrition. And one person in three lives in poverty.” An estimated 100 million are homeless. More than 800 million are too poor to afford an adequate diet.
Hunger is widespread and increasing, most notably in Africa but also in the United States where, according to Congressional testimony, the hungry increased to 30 million in 1995 from 20 million in 1985. By the government’s own estimate, 36 million Americans lived in poverty in 1995. Even Americans who consider themselves middle-class are being squeezed by a general decline in inflation-adjusted wages that has persisted for more than 20 years, as well as humbled by the erosion of job security and benefits.
The erosion of material living standards in both North America and Europe reflects more than corporate greed, the siphoning off of industry and jobs to the low-wage South, the weakening of labor unions, or even the economic stagnation common to capitalist economies unable to provide sufficient productive investment opportunities to absorb surplus profits. It also reflects the ever mounting costs that industrial societies sustain to maintain larger and more specialized bureaucracies, to gather and disseminate information critical to centralized control, to educate ever more narrowly specialized experts, to fund research and development, to legitimate the status quo, to militarize against real and imagined external threats, and to maintain internal control over increasingly restive populations.
All of these costs levied disproportionately against the working population — by businesses in the form of higher prices and by governments in the form of increasingly regressive taxes that have reduced labor’s share of the economic surplus relative to both labor productivity and profits.
*** Apologists For Capitalism
The decline in living standards of most workers in most mature capitalist countries would appear even greater if expenditures that workers make out of necessity rather than choice were included in the calculations. New needs — more schooling to prepare for desirable work, a car to commute to a distant job, manufactured entertainment to compensate for the social isolation caused by the breakdown of interactive local communities — raise the real cost of living without necessarily improving the quality of life.
Much is made by apologists for capitalism that, deplorable as poverty is in wealthy countries, the poor are still living better than their forebears used to and their counterparts in less developed countries still do. If living standards were determined solely by the quantity of one’s personal possesions, this would generally be true. But poverty is not just the absence of possessions.
Above all, it is the denial of the essentials of a decent life: freedom from exploitation, oppression, violence, drudgery and hunger; freedom to lead the life one values, to assert one’s traditions and culture, and to participate actively in community and political life; access to meaningful work, basic education, health care, and nonpolluted environment; and, above all, a sense of empowerment and purpose. In all these essentials, the world is poor indeed — and getting poorer all the time.
|
#title Interview with the Kurdistan Anarchists Forum (KAF) about the situation in Iraq/Kurdistan
#author A Las Barricadas
#SORTauthors A Las Barricadas, Kurdish-speaking Anarchists Forum
#SORTtopics Iraq, kurdistan, interview
#date 3<sup>rd</sup> September 2014
#source Retrieved on 22<sup>nd</sup> March 2021 from [[https://tahriricn.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/interview-with-the-kurdistan-anarchists-forum-kaf-about-the-situation-in-iraqkurdistan/][tahriricn.wordpress.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-03-22T14:37:47
#notes <em>This interview was carried out by [[http://www.alasbarricadas.org][www.alasbarricadas.org]] on 3<sup>rd</sup> September 2014. The English translation has been edited for readability by Anarkismo.net.</em>
<strong>ALB: How are you now ?</strong>
We are fine but like many of you extremely concerned about the current situation in Iraq in general and the Iraqi part of Kurdistan in particular. We are very active in the social media with respect to writing, making comments and discussing the current crisis that exists with different people and groups.
<strong>Are you afraid that the ISIS attack will defeat the Peshmerga?</strong>
Actually, the attack by ISIS is not just an attack on the Regional Kurdistan Government (KRG) forces or military (recognised as Peshmerga), it is attack on everybody. As you know ISIS is the darkest of forces and is far more brutal than any of the other terrorist groups. They do not distinguish between an armed people and the ordinary people. Wherever ISIS has entered, it has given the residents a very hard time by controlling them, subduing them by implementing Sharia Law. We are sure you have heard what happened already to he Yazidis, who are a peaceful people and did not fight with them at all. ISIS is no less brutal to Christians and Shias than the Yazidis, because they believe these people, all, are devils or evil.
We are more concerned about the actual war that the people in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdish are facing now, more than a defeat of the Peshmarga at the hands of ISIS. The KRG forces (Peshmerga) are the corrupt forces of the current political parties who are in power, mainly the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), whose leader is Massoud Barzany who is the president of Iraqi Kurdistan as well, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), still led by Jalal Talabany, the former Iraqi president. There are also other forces from Islamic organisations and other small political parties. However, we know that these forces (Peshmerga) are a tool in the hands of the political parties and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), but as you know we have nothing in common with them and always consider them to be a suppressing force. However, while Iraq and Kurdistan at the moment face the darkest forces in their current history, we should be worried about the Peshmerga being defeated.
There is another important point that we would like to bring to your attention. The Peshmerga at first were not just defeated: they actually fled without shooting a single bullet. If it were not because of the People’s Defence Units (PDU) and Women’s Defence Units (WDU) (the Syrian Kurdish forces) and later PKK, ISIS could easily have invaded the capital of Kurdistan, Irbil. If they had occupied Irbil then the rest of the Kurdistani towns would fall into their hands with no resistance or very little resistance.
<strong>Are your people working in self-defence against ISIS?</strong>
As we, KAF, previously stated, we are only a Virtual Forum, not a physical organization in that we have no people from the top to the bottom. The majority of us who write in our Forum (Seko) live abroad; we therefore can do nothing physically for the self-defence of Kurdistan. If you mean people in Kurdistan who agree with our ideas or are close to KAF, of course, they try to organize themselves to fight back. However, because there is no anarchist movement in Kurdistan, we are sorry to say that yes, there are no self-defence groups or movements as we see in Turkey and (Rojava) Syrian Kurdistan. We do believe the only force or power can defeat ISIS is independent self-defence from the mass of the people. Unfortunately this force or movement at the moment does not exist.
<strong>What do you think of the US bombings?</strong>
Before the US decided to bombard and hit the ISIS bases, there were a lot of rumours and news that ISIS was created by the US, UK and Israel. The more reliable evidence that we can refer to was from Edward Snowden about this. Now when they (UK and US) decide to attack ISIS and sell weapons to the KRG, it is to undermine Edward Snowden’s information and the rumours that spread widely.
We are against intervention from the US and Western countries and also selling weapons to the KRG. We know this is big business for them, that can make a lot of profits through this trade. We also do not want Kurdistan to become a battlefield for all the Jihadist groups in the world against the US, Western countries and the Kurdish, in which so many innocent people would be killed and many places would be destroyed. In addition, the war situation creates more haters between Kurds and Arabs, between Kurds and Sunnis. In the meantime it caused the emergence of many racist and fascist groups.
The only winners in the wars are the big companies who sell weapons and war equipment, and the losers – as always – are the poor people.
<strong>Do you work with PYD/PKK/PÇDK?</strong>
No we do not. Because we reject any support or co-operation with any hierarchal, political and authoritarian groups and organizations. We only line up ourselves and are interested in any resistance from the mass of people and the social movements wherever they are in this world and we are ready to support them by whatever means we can.
<strong>As for your answers, in Iraq there is now a self-defence group called the Sinjar Protection Units (YPS). I think this is a creation of the YPG. Also the PÇDK is creating its own militia. I imagine that some rank-and-file peshmerga might now be looking at self-defence militias with sympathy. Do you think it is possible to have over the next few months an autonomous canton in Iraq, similar to those in Rojava? (I mean autonomous with respect to the KRG, the US and everything else.)</strong>
We unfortunately do not think something like what you mentioned can happen easily and quickly because:
Firstly, the nature of the parliamentary system and the role of centralism in Iraq like elsewhere does not allow it. Secondly, thirteen years of sanctions by western countries and the US against Iraq, including Kurdistan, as well as the invasion and occupation, then the imposition of a free-market policy and globalization on Iraq, forcing it to be dependent on conditions that have been laid down by the big powers in Europe and the financial institutions (the IMF, WB, ECB). Thirdly, there are internal reasons as well. The Kurdistan Regional Government, (KRG) has dominated every aspect of people’s life in Kurdistan for the last 22 years. They have worked on changing the mentality of the citizens to be corrupt, to be materialistic, to lose their own self-confidence and independence, to be dependent on them mentally and financially. The KRG has created such an atmosphere in Kurdistan that the majority of the people just think about how to get rich and compete with one another in becoming richer and in getting to better positions. In a very rich country like Kurdistan, its people are dependent on everything imported from abroad, there is no independent economy as the policies of the parties in power have destroyed the independent economy of Kurdistan.
We believe that what happened in Syrian Kurdistan in terms of setting up the military Units and also self-rule in its three cantons, that the PKK and PYD are behind them and the DSAs under their influences. This means that if something like that happened in Sinjar, neither the KRG nor the Iraqi central government and the countries in the region and US would allow this pair of forces (the PKK and PYD) to stay in Sinjar for a long time, supporting people there to announce their own self-rule.
We recognize that setting up people’s defence units as a people’s army and also democratic self-administration (DSA) on the basis of people’s cooperatives, communes and emerging federalism, needs a very long social process of mass struggle, independently, to involve people in all social and economic questions, which becomes something very urgent and necessary. These are the grounds of setting up a true people’s defence unit and the direct-democratic administration, otherwise the units will be a militia like any other militia in the world and the so called DSA will be a real dictatorial government.
It is a fact that there was a big conspiracy in withdrawing the KRG forces (Peshmerga) and this created a gap or gave an opportunity for mass resistance to emerge and set up Protection Units among Yazidis themselves, who had bee the victims of genocide and displacement. However, there is another important point perhaps you are not aware of which is among the Yazidis themselves there are elites, especially the religion’s Prince and the powerful rich people who are always supportive of the KRG’s policies, having an impact on many people in the Yazidi community by using their religious influences. This can be a big threat and divide the Yazidi community.
In short, neither the self-consciousness of people under the KRG nor the economic and the social grounds are likely – at least at present – to allow what we see in Syrian Kurdistan happening in Sinjar. In addition when comes to that, there is the possibility for both – the KRG and the Iraqi central government – to unite against the people’s resistance in Sinjar using any means in suppressing and oppressing them. We also believe the regional, western countries and US who for almost two decades have been investing politically and economically there (Iraqi Kurdistan) and making very huge profits, are not just sitting and watching the situation. They are therefore intervening, first by using their network of spies, logistical support, then providing anything else to the KRG and Iraqi central government that is needed to protect their interests. It is worth reminding you that at the same time both Iran and Turkey’s governments have been continuously attempting to eliminate the PKK’s forces and are using this as an excuse to penetrate the Kurdistan border with their military forces and bombard the region, killing so many innocent people.
In addition to what we said, we must admit that there is no anarchist social movement there (Iraqi Kurdistan) at all. What we have there is more the idea and thought of anarchism.
In fact the leftist and communist parties are trying to create their own Units under the name of “people’s guards” or “Units of the People’s resistance” but they are not in a enough strong position to do so; even if they do manage to do it in the future, it won’t be anything different from the hierarchal units or at best they will be militias of the sort we have so many of (militias and state militias) in Kurdistan. Their real intention is to make political capital out of this and, like any other political group or military Unit, try to get wages and salary from the bourgeois government.
<strong>Some Kurdish women from the PKK came to Barcelona last month. One of them recognized herself as an anarchist. She was from Germany and she wanted to learn more about anarchist history here in Spain. Do you think there are anarchists in the ranks of PKK? Do you have contacts with them? Would it be possible to have a left libertarian current inside this hierarchical movement?</strong>
Yes. Inside the PKK and PYD there are men and women with anarchist ideas and thought. Some of these people have reached that through their own struggles and experiences; the others have become anarchist and libertarian under the influence of Abdullah Öcalan. They have realized that anarchism is the most radical answer to the capitalist system. We believe that those who have embraced the anarchist idea under the influence of Öcalan may not be as solid as the people who reached the same ideas through their own struggles and experiences. Obviously the reason for that is while Öcalan is still at the top of a hierarchal organization like the PKK, and has every power, if for some reason he orders the people inside the PKK or PYD to change their direction, we are sure many of them are happy to do it. If that happens there is a possibility for this group to change its principles and direction. We think differently about those especially guerilla women who have become anarchist through their own experiences as they are members of the groups and committees in the villages and towns in society; we believe they are more stable and solid. We have seen a few interviews that they have given and also seen a few films that show how they live together and how do they manage their work and daily life together, like living in communes. All these give us more hope, yet again because we do not live with them, therefore we do not know how much of this is true. We must also say that among their sister parties in Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan, we unfortunately do not see these positive changes and directions. These people almost look like the PKK of the early 1990s; they are still nationalist and most of their leaders are very authoritarian. We think they do not embrace the current ideas and thought of Öcalan, like economic cooperatives, communes in the towns and villages, people’s self-rule, direct democracy, the system of federalism and free confederation. We believe the parties’ policies in Iranian/Iraqi Kurdistan are very much in contradiction with the current policies the PKK and PYD: they are still insisting on political changes rather than social changes, they are still competing with the other bourgeois parties in gaining money, power and position.
The experiences of many of us have proved or at least shown that it is very, very hard for a libertarian/anarchist idea and direction to grow and develop inside a hierarchal organization. Not only this, it is impossible for such ideas and directions to remain or stay and continue in an ideological nationalist organization. We can always separate or distinguish between the social movement and the leftist political movement whatever form they have because the leftists and politicians are always authoritarian and corrupt. We can see in reality the leftists are always trying to tame and control struggles and the movement of the mass people and use them to achieve their own political aims, making political capital out of it. We are the witness of all the attempts that have been made by leftists during the uprising which took place in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991 and up to present, how they have tried to change the direction of the mass movements, deceiving them, disappointing them, compromising with the State and trying to plant the seeds of naivety among people to believe in political parties, centralism, “the workers state”, “communist state” and “socialist state”. This is all the propaganda that they have produced since then.
Unfortunately, so far we have been unable to make a direct link or connection with the anarchist people in the PKK and PYD. We have tried before to do so but we were not successful. However, we are hoping to make that connection in the near future.
<strong>And the last question: what do you think about Democratic Confederalism? Is it true that the PKK is in favour of this or is it propaganda held by the Western countries? (If they pass as, for example, similar to the Zapatistas, they might be seen as “cool” in the leftist milieu.)</strong>
Actually, answering this question is difficult firstly because the PKK controls a region and is completely different from what the Zapatistas in their country controlled, and also because the PKK is a hierarchal force as a party and as a military force. We cannot be sure of the details of their daily life and their actions as we do not have evidence to prove whether it is true or false. The only things that we can talk about are Democratic Self-Administration (DSA) of Syrian Kurdistan, and Tev-Dem, which one of our comrades visited a while ago for a couple of weeks. Certainly there is no comparison between there and the KRG in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the moment there is power sharing between whole political parties within DSA so there is a good balance. The PYD as a main party in there took advantage of being in a very strong position, because on one side the KRG cannot use its proxy party (Alparty) to control DSA and the situation; on the other side the Islamist organization cannot have any influence in Syrian Kurdistan. However, while the PYD is the main party and in the next DSA election no doubt will win the majority of votes there, we do not know if the PYD will control the DSA or simply use another method to balance the power sharing. This worries us obviously and we will have to wait and see. What we can say is that the PYD is also a hierarchal party with authoritarian people leading it, and because of this there is a possibility of change either ways. We certainly cannot compare DSA with the KRG, as the KRG is an excellent protector of free-market capitalism. The experiments of DSA and Tev-Dem are very attractive and have produced more hope by transferring the position of women in the religious and patriarchal society of the Middle East, improving and developing it. They have created a feeling of liberation and the tendency for self-liberation among women. The dignity, personality, self-confidence and freedom of women have all returned. All this cannot be achieved by every force or party. This has created an atmosphere for the anarchist movement especially while women already have a major role in the communes and the rest of the local groups and committees. They can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with men, leading them into the future to a social revolution. In the meantime we are hoping this experiment is setting a good example for the women in Iraqi Kurdistan – who are currently under the strong influence of the capitalist free market, consumer culture and political parties including the religious parties – for them to leave this stage and get involved in a social revolution.
The women in Syrian Kurdistan do not just play a big role in the areas/fields we mentioned above: in fact by setting up the Women’s Defence Units (WDU) the position of women in Middle Eastern society, as weak creatures having only certain duties which are inside the house, has changed. It has raised the question that they cannot be dominated by men, clans and religions. They can change society and it has proved again that any movement in society which does not include them cannot get anywhere. Women have reaffirmed that the desire and feeling of liberating themselves from slavery or from being a second-class citizen in a patriarchal society only comes from their own efforts and struggles. That being said, a long time ago there was no force who could liberate a slave unless that slave had the self-consciousness of liberation and this has become a strong demand and desire.
Finally we thank you very much and recognize your concerns about other anarchists in different parts of the world. In this interview you have given us a good opportunity to talk briefly about the Iraqi, Kurdish and Middle East societies. This opportunity perhaps opens a small window to English speakers and those anarchists who can speak English to see the situation that explained above from our view. We think not many anarchists in the world are aware or know a lot about the situation in this part of the world. This may encourage them to make the effort to get to know a bit about the Middle East and the anarchist movement there. We have noted that the self-centrist views of European comrades in general has been one of the diseases of the anarchist movement since the Second World War because we think many of the anarchists comrades, who normally focus on Europe, the US and Latin America, do not have much interest in the same movement in elsewhere.
|
#pubdate 2010-04-12 09:59:46 +0200
#author A. Mary Pranxter
#SORTauthors A. Mary Pranxter
#title The Wild Ones Fight Back: Some thoughts on Strategy
#LISTtitle Wild Ones Fight Back: Some thoughts on Strategy
#lang en
#SORTtopics anti-civ, insurrectionist, primitivist
#source [[http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/feraltowardswildness/fight.html][www.angelfire.com]]
#notes from <em>Sabotage! Reader</em>
We’re at war. It’s not a typical war, where all sides are fighting for power. No, we’re fighting against power, against domestication. We don’t want to rule anything, we just want to live wild and free. Unfortunately, there’s a whole damn civilization trying to keep us from doing so. And we haven’t been fighting this civilization very well.
Some of us beg it for table scraps with our petitions, giving our names and addresses. Some of us go out in big herds, marching in line, chanting slogans, carrying signs and “demanding” that our enemies do what we want. Some of us publicly and peacefully (“civilly”) disobey the law in order to get arrested. Occasionally, some of us get into pitched battles with cops which all too often seem staged and futile, since they are a one-time thing with little chance of becoming full-fledged insurrection.
We have been very visible in foolish ways, excessively organized and very serious — and we’ve been botching it up. If we were interested in gaining power rather than destroying it, then visibility, organization and seriousness would be just what we need. But since we are out to destroy power, then invisibility, apparent randomness, and playfulness are much better weapons.
We know who the powers are who are that are trying to destroy all wildness; if we are at all aware, we know what they’re doing and where they’re doing it. In sabotaging their activity, we can’t give them this same advantage. We need to be invisible. We aren’t interested in publicity. We are interested in — at least temporarily — fucking up the domesticating activities of our targets.
If the target can be hit in such a way as to make an explanation unnecessary, that’s ideal. Should there seem to be need for explanation, let the graffitied message either be very specific to that one situation or so general as to be untraceable. It’s best not to do frequent repetition of the same graffiti in association with more intense forms of sabotage. And don’t forget that an imaginative graffiti campaign may itself be effective in at least getting people to think.
Illegal activities for sabotaging the mega-machine should be done anonymously, not under the name of any group which gives the police a handle for investigation and the media the beginning of an image which they can effectively manipulate. The problems caused by association of monkeywrenching with Earth First! and with the names of certain individuals should be quite obvious after the arrests of the Arizona Four (later to become the Arizona Five). Where no definable groups existing, infiltration becomes quite difficult.
If we choose to write about these things, it’s best to do so either in very general ways, as in this article, or in purely speculative terms, and never to use any name that is normally associated with ourselves.
Another worthwhile skill to develop is the ability to act in an apparently random way. Demonstrations, civil disobedience, even most battles with the cops are well-ordered activities. In some sense, they are orchestrated by the very forces we are fighting, because in these acts we are fighting on the enemies’ terrain; we are merely reacting to them. Our acts of sabotage need not be this way. We can strike targets when they least expect it, when they think they’re off the hook. There is no need to be systematic, at least not from the perspective of our enemies with their rigid militaristic mindsets.
This life-destroying civilization surrounds us, and targets are everywhere, so there’s no need to act only in reaction to its more heinous crimes against wildness. We can choose our targets with a certain level of playfulness and spontaneity; we can begin to have some control over the terrain of this struggle. By becoming a random, chaotic factor in the highly ordered and increasingly uniform world of civilization, we take the offensive. In little ways, we start to chip away at the foundations of civilization, to undermine it and help towards its collapse.
Though invisibility is essential to our illegal activities, it’s no fun to extend it to the rest of our lives. Who wants to spend most of their time pretending to be a mindless slug who embraces their own domestication, or staying underground. I sure the hell don’t! The only time we need to maintain invisibility while taking illegal action. The rest of the time we can visibly be wild and playful pranksters.
Authority always takes itself seriously; what better way to undermine it then to make fun of it? If we can learn to constantly confront the forces of domestication with playful mockery and wild laughter — even our own tendencies towards domestication — we will be exposing it’s ugliness in the best way possible and we’ll be having fun while doing it. Wherever we confront domestication — from the religious and political fanatics spouting their dogmas, to shopping malls full of mindless consumers — we can learn to spontaneously transform the situation, playfully creating spur of the moment, surreal guerrilla theater that undermines the domestication process.
We live best when we live in this world as wild and merry pranksters, playfully mocking civilization and those who unquestioningly accept it. To dance, play, laugh, to avoid work as much as possible and steal from the rich and powerful, to undermine authority and domestication every chance we get: this is the life we choose. Unseen by our enemies, we do whatever we can to fuck up the workings of the mega-machine with an apparent randomness that confounds their orderly plans. It is the return of the repressed, our wildness springing forth to undermine the forces of domestication.
|
#title Between Analysis and Vision
#subtitle Moving Beyond the Theory-Practice Dichotomy
#author A. Morefus
#SORTtopics green anarchy, Green Anarchy #13, critical theory, analysis, strategy
#date Summer 2003
#source Retrieved on 21 August 2018 from http://greenanarchy.anarchyplanet.org/files/2012/05/greenanarchy13.pdf
#lang en
#notes from <em>Green Anarchy</em> Issue #13, Summer 2003
<quote>
I am cruising currently, right now. I am cruising because I have dedicated myself to all that is creative and destructive in my life, right now. And I am equally in love with every aspect of my life, and all the ingredients that have caused me turmoil and all the ingredients that have caused me glory. I am the living whispered warning in the Roman general’s ear “glory is fleeting”, and in that verb, that active verb, “fleeting”, there I live; there I reside in this moment. I have dedicated my life to the idiom, “I don’t know”, and I am in love with the frantic chaos of this limitless universe.
- Timothy “Speed” Levitch, The Cruise
</quote>
<br>
<quote>
Pointed threats,
they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn,
from the fool’s gold mouth-piece,
the hollow horn,
plays wasted words,
proves to worn,
that he not busy being born,
is busy dying
- Bob Dylan, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
</quote>
As anarchists desiring to be relevant outside of the mostly insular academic journals or often sectarian theoretical discussion groups, it is important to openly explore the space between <em><strong>analysis</strong></em> <em>- the critical look at the entanglement of systems, institutions, and circumstances which have brought us to this point</em> (i.e. civilization), and our own personal and communal liberatory <em><strong>visions</strong></em> <em>- the world we are trying to create</em> (i.e. a return to wildness). This is an acknowledgment of the complex and multi-faceted nature of any political or social movement, the space it inhabits, as well as the interpersonal relationships which develop within and outside of it. Some level of reconciliation with the conflict between our own unrestrained aspirations and the world we live in must occur before we can proceed in changing ourselves or the condition in which we dwell. This is not a support of compromise as a method of action, or a “let’s wait till later to fight” attitude, but instead a mediation of the infinite directions and obstacles we must navigate around and through. I am not speaking of what has been described as “anarcho-realism”, for that implies a denial of subjectivity and also usually entails “playing their games” or “selling-out” as a model of social change, thus putting it into direct conflict with anarchy. In order to be effective and in tune with the process of change, however, it is important to prioritize fluidity and flexibility over rigidity and purity, and to understand complexity as something which contains contradiction.
For a qualitatively different world, it is helpful to synthesize the positive aspects of previous attempts at creating liberated societies or circumstances, to learn from past mistakes, and most importantly, to go beyond, or apart from, prior methods. Moving along ideological lines has proven to be only good at superficially unifying mass populations, and is ultimately limited by its homogenizing process and disconnection from individual realities, as well as its lack of relevance to the larger political context. We must step outside of the two segregated, linear, and illusory models of social change: <em>1) The development of a perfect critique along with the deconstruction our own social programming and conception of “flawless” interpersonal relationships in order to sometime down the road “fight the revolution”</em> <strong>or</strong> <em>2) “Fighting the revolution now” and then later dealing with the damaged survivors’ bodies, hearts, and minds (the “we’ll figure it out later” approach)</em>. Both are limited and dangerous models to work from. Limited, in the sense that one cannot happen without the other; they must be organically intertwined along with many other priorities. Dangerous, because we will never get to the stage of physically dismantling the apparatus of control and its institutions if we are exclusively inwardly focused; and equally dangerous, because as damaged and pathologically socialized beings, we will reproduce unhealthy and dominating patterns, ultimately recreating an unqualitatively different society.
Presentation style can be problematic when exploring methods of social or personal transformation. Even though some seemingly static or factual information may be relatively fixed, it is important to be clear that all analysis is obtained through various social filters and particular biases. For our personal or communal visions to remain non-ideological, they must be presented in an organic and subjective way. It is always good to avoid painting ourselves into boxes, yet at the same time, not be too ambivalent. For instance, there are times and places to use “short-hand” or “lingo”, such as the numerous prefixes anarchists tend use in order to give a general priority in terms of their analysis or vision (i.e. green, red, pink, insurrectionary, etc.), but ultimately these are restraining and often make things less apparent, rather than actually helping to illustrate complicated perspectives. Therefore, it is good to be limber in how we explain ourselves, depending on those we are in contact with, having a situational description. This is not to say we should “dumb things down”. Aside from that being an elitist attitude, it is usually not good at doing anything but alienating people. Nor should we be chameleon-like, and try to be what flows or fits within a specific group or clique. It is more honest and effective to relate to others’ lives and specific circumstances, or give examples of how you integrate your perspective into your everyday life. It is also much more favorable and less dictatorial to raise questions rather than to give answers. Of course, direct communication is preferred over mediated and impersonal modes of expression/connection like Internet posts. Finally, when discussing or presenting ideas or concerns with others whom you respect or wish to work with on any level, it is always important to be able to separate criticisms and internal discussions from denunciations and self-righteous posturing, unless your only goal is to be <em>right</em> or <em>pure</em>.
When we actually get down to the discussions of what is to be done, within the context of our small de-centralized groups, and the larger political and civilized realm, two limiting factors must be taken into account: our <em>physical needs</em> and our <em>psychological state</em>. Both are direct factors on the pace and scope from which we can bring about change, and both deserve considerable and honest thought before, or at least in the discussion of, developing projects or immediate objectives. We all need to eat. We all need shelter. Within the capitalist system (and we can pretend that we are not, or make it our primary focus to not be dependent on it) we need a small amount of money, both for personal and communal survival, but also to sustain most anarchist projects. We should be cautious when criticizing this aspect of other anarchists’ lives. Pulling away from the system is an essential part of an anarchist trajectory, yet we are all somehow dependent on it, and to dwell too much on the hypocrisy of this will get us nowhere. It is good to be conscious of this, and try to lessen our dependency through re-appropriation, self-sufficiency, and simple living, but until the capitalist system is thoroughly destroyed, we are all somewhat reliant on it. This is a major factor in their control mechanisms. Also, we need to keep in mind, that we have all been severely damaged by the domesticating processes of the dominant culture. We have all been socialized with fucked-up roles, keeping us in a perpetual state of misery and subservience to, and for the benefit of, the system, keeping us at odds with each other. Many are not psychologically or emotionally capable of participating on certain levels. How can we learn to accept limitations, and also work to decrease or compensate for them? The healing process is always ongoing. It is a significant element of the revolutionary process, not a before or after project. Compassion is an important component often lacking from radical scenes and this absence stifles healing and growth. We must figure out how to reconcile that we are all at once victims and victimizers, colonized and colonizers, healers and perpetuators. We can in no way be condoning of abusive or dominating behaviors, which must be dealt with firmly in accordance to a group’s processes, but they also need to be acknowledged as symptoms of a larger colonizing and domesticating system. This pattern must be broken. Privilege is yet another factor to take into account when developing strategies or projects - our privileges or societal status as individuals or groups, in relation to others. Yet, this should not be seen as a limiting aspect, but more of a factor to be examined and carefully thought about in our interactions with those around us. Too often, all of these factors provide redundant restrictions on our actions and our dreams, rather then being places from which our rage and momentum can develop.
Often, people’s response to the limitations placed on the development of liberated communities is to carve out “autonomous” spaces on the fringe of society. While there is an important element to this, as a relatively “free” space to create healthier dynamics, to move outside many of capitalism’s restrictions, or as a stronger position to fight the system from, it often becomes a “vacation-land” and escapist dreamscape. Escapism is not a preferable route to take for many reasons. It neglects to account for the inevitable co-optation and engulfing process by the apparatus of the system, or the limitations placed on “escapist” projects which may not be as apparent at their inception. These projects may be helpful in providing isolated experiments in dealing with specific problems or in practicing certain skills, but are ultimately lacking in their connection to the larger context of reality, which makes them inherently artificial, possibly useful, but contextually vacuous. Without also being connected to projects aimed at undermining, dismantling, or destroying the system, they often cash in on certain privileges, rather then using them to combat the system. They make revolution only half way, and often not at all. <em>(...And to regress, or be just a little reactionary, for just second... I get pretty fuckin’ tired of those “who are no longer political” or “just living their lives” judging or even commenting on people or projects still continuing on in resistance. It is understandable why some would lose hope in the prospects of the tremendous project of all the dismantling that is needed, but you cannot be outside and inside whenever it meets your convenience or safety. Anarchy is not a past time, intellectual game, or a social club!)</em>
Everything we do is, in some way, a compromise of our unalienated desires or liberated goals, and all is muddied with the unhealthy and confining context we live in. Nothing is pure. Inactivity and taintlessness may be a sanitary response, but what does it actually get us but self-righteous satisfaction, nothing we can actually touch or feel. This does not even take into account the fact that we are all, on varying levels, complicit in the systems of domination, and therefore, purity of ideas is virtually meaningless. For us to move towards a revolutionary situation and a more healthy social condition, we need to come to grips with this fact. Meanwhile we should openly critique or understand the reformist or symptomatic projects we, or others, are involved with; in fact, this is a necessary process in any evolving group or movement, but not along absolutist or ideologically pure lines. There are many important anarchist projects which are not insurrectionary in nature, that are not directly attacking the apparatus of the system. These are important, however, in the creation of insurrectionary situations or revolutionary conditions. They should be seen for their value and also their limitations. There are numerous examples of what could be termed “reformism from a revolutionary perspective” (outreach, education, conferences, info-shops, publications, prisoner support, community spaces, mutual aid networks, gardens, etc.). However, there are some important and honest questions to ask ourselves or others when developing these types of projects: <em>What are the goals? What do they offer an anarchist community or movement? How are they organized? Are they flexible? Are they meant to be permanent? Do the inherent compromises outweigh the positive effects? Are they supporting, running parallel to, or moving away from the system? Can they support or compliment, or are they in conflict with or limiting, the possibility of insurrectionary moments? Is their creation needed to move towards a revolutionary situation? Are they restricting the movement towards a revolutionary situation?</em> For example, we need to obtain our physical nourishment from somewhere. Some anarcho-primitivists take a more absolutist approach in stating that the only appropriate skills to be learning in this regard center around hunting and gathering. While many primitivists and green anarchists agree that this form of subsistence is ideal, preferable, and least dominating, the fact is, this is almost impossible at this time for most people. The reconciliation for many is to learn methods of growing food such as some forms of permaculture, which are outside of the traditional methods of agriculture and in tune with natural processes. This is often done alongside learning primitive skills and with the understanding that there is a certain level of domestication involved in growing food (but certainly far less then eating tofu at vegetarian restaurants). For many, this is one of numerous possibilities in a temporary transition, which can occur during a natural and human encouraged re-wilding process.
If we remain only in the analysis or visionary realm, never getting our hands dirty or touching the ground, we will go nowhere. We cannot be limited by only looking back or forward, and we must certainly do more than just look (analyze/criticize/theorize). We must be willing to make mistakes and experiment. Anarchy is alive and organic and situation oriented. It is a process, not a historical framework, theoretical game, or utopian endpoint. We must attempt to effect the physical plane and make anarchy now, even if it is not complete or immaculate. It is in the process that we experience anarchy, not in the idea or as a conclusion. The connection between anarchism and the decentralized forms of feminism can be seen as a positive example of the withering of a seemingly overwhelming gap between analysis and vision, by being rooted in the everyday life. Within anarcha-feminism, there is often a harmonizing of analysis and vision through daily activity and the meeting of the essential needs of individuals and their communities (i.e. community childcare, women’s healthcare, support groups, self-defense) and the overcoming of the obstacles of Patriarchy. D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) culture is a more general positive example of this dynamic, yet it often lacks the more overt political nature. If the idea of “Revolution” is to retain any meaning, it needs to be situational in orientation, rooted in the personal desires for liberation, and also be relating to the context in which it resides. It is a living and breathing phenomenon and it is never complete. In general, it is good to avoid flattening situations, or standardizing responses. Flexibility is the key to avoiding stagnation of ideas and activities. Whether ideological or physical, it is important to think outside of our (or their) boxes, however radical we think our ideas are; it is the only way we may grow. Yes, there are times to draw lines, to place limitations or borders around things, but these should be temporary and consensual black and white directions and activities in a larger sea of gray. The gray line is what holds us together, and at the same time, respects individuality and the moment.
<strong>Create, live, and experience anarchy now!</strong>
<quote>
The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one’s self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply connected with all human beings and still retain one’s own characteristic qualities
- Emma Goldman, The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation
</quote>
<quote>
But I am not finished. I seem to be residing within a borderland that is not a place of trauma and stress – but not yet a place of healing. Some symptoms hang on, and there is a feeling like on a rocky shoreline... The last stretch of the journey is as trying as was the beginning, I have accomplished the bulk of the inner work, and yet I am still grappling to believe. After a lifetime of knowing only the psychic fragmentation that has protected me from the truth, to become true to myself lies within vision – and yet seems beyond reach.
- Chellis Glendinning, Off the Map
</quote>
|
#title Deconstructing All Relationships
#subtitle Beyond Just Fucking or Fighting as Revolutionary Agendas
#author A. Morefus
#SORTtopics green anarchy, critical theory, activism, lifestyle anarchism, green anarchy #23
#date Summer/Fall 2006
#source Retrieved on 10 August 2018 from http://greenanarchy.anarchyplanet.org/files/2012/05/greenanarchy23.pdf
#notes from *Green Anarchy* #23, Fall/Summer 2006
#lang en
<quote>
Not only do we desire to change our lives immediately, it is the criterion by which we are seeking our accomplices. The same goes for what one might call a *need for coherency* . The will to live one’s ideas and create theory starting from one’s own life is not a search for the *exemplary* or the hierarchical, paternalistic side of the same coin. It is the refusal of all ideology, including that of pleasure. We set ourselves apart from those who content themselves with areas they manage to carve out – and *safeguard* – for themselves in this society even before we begin to think, by the very way we palpate our existence. But we feel just as far removed from those who would like to desert daily normality and put their faith in the mythology of clandestinity and combat organizations, locking themselves up in other cages. No role, no matter how much it puts one at risk in terms of the law, can take the place of the real changing of relations. There is no short-cut, no immediate leap into the elsewhere. The revolution is not a war.
– At Daggers Drawn
</quote>
Theory is a dirty word in many anarchist circles. Often, it is dismissed as “useless”, “masturbatory”, or “privileged” by those wanting to either prioritize living their lives and expressing themselves as freely as possible within the confines of this death trip (art, sexual exploration, building communities of mutual aid, primitive skills, etc.), those who wish to “just shut up and fight” (riots, sabotage, armed struggle, etc.), or the ones who stifle theoretical development in favor of going through the same perpetual and unfulfilling political motions (politics, activism, etc.). While most of these pursuits can be beautiful and significant in the deconstruction of this society and the creation of free modes of living (aside from the bureaucratic, managerial, and activist gibberish), they are not in any way conflicting with the evolution of multifarious organic critical theory. In fact, without such an ongoing personal and collective investigation, examination, and critique of the complexity and depth of the totality of civilization and how we are affected by it, no personal or social transformation is even possible. And certainly any experiments we participate in will be seriously limited by our unwillingness to question more deeply our intentions, goals, effectiveness, and contribution to larger contexts. This is why I argue that the development of personal critical theory in concert with a larger theoretical framework, and connected to practical action is a vital anarchist project. The deconstruction of all of our relationships, from the personal to the communal to the larger social context, and in particular from the perspective of developing anarchist strategies, is essential.
> This is no time to Swallow Anger
> This is no time to Ignore Hate
> This is no time to be Acting Frivolous
> because the time is getting late
> This is no time for Private Vendettas
> This is no time to not know who you are
> Self knowledge is a dangerous thing
> The freedom of who you are*
*** The Need for Critical Theory
Theory is integrally connected, whether we are aware of it or not, to all of our actions. Even most of what we perceive as instinctual (at least at this point) contains complicated thought processes that are unique to us, our experiences, our desires, and in many cases, unfortunately, our ideologies. Any time we conceive of a desire, theory is a part of reaching its obtainment or the effort put towards it. Yet not all actions are derived from a *critical* theory, or a theory that has been vigorously developed to incorporate and understand the complex nature of the totality, and our place within it. Also, not all theory is connected with practical application in our world. But, for theory to be relevant, it must concretely pertain to our lives and not merely be an abstract overlay or removed concept. A theory disconnected from practical application will have an outcome on our world, but most likely, not how we perceived it or wished it to be (i.e. pacification, complacency, abstraction, arm chairism). However, our critical theory, by its very nature, cannot be something that is complete, solid, or ironclad. It is something to be freshly encountered and perpetually reconceived in our daily lives. It is less a methodology or program for doing or thinking, and more a persistent, thoughtful, and candid perceiving, understanding, and interacting with our world. No doubt, basic desires, wishes, interests, etc. may remain relatively constant, but how we experience and approach them is best left open and genuine.
Whether we develop our own critical theory or not, we will be guided by theoretical positions and pushes. Is it not better to deeply engage in the creation of our own unique subjective theory, in connection with others, than to – knowingly or not – accept the motivations and theoretical framework of another, whether individual (parent, teacher, boss, guru, specialist, etc.) or institution (church, political system, organization, ideology, etc.)? Since many have never been encouraged to develop critical thinking skills – they were socialized to be followers, to prefer a more complete and “time-tested” worldview, lack the confidence to develop their own theoretical basis, or are just plain lazy – people are generally more easily guided by the theory of the other. This usually leads to either the full-throttle adoption or acceptance of a single ideology (religion, patriotism, all assortments of politicism), the concoction of various splintered ideas (new ageism, postmodernism), or the lack of interest in thinking at all (apathy, passive consumerism). Regardless of the direction, thinking is done for people, and the paradigm that creates these ideologies is maintained, as it guides all thoughts and actions within, perpetuating the alienation between ourselves and our world.
Critical theory, that is self-derived, inquisitive, discerning, and deliberative theory, attempts to limit the influence of external belief systems and to develop the starting point from within ourselves, and therefore limit the alienation between the self and what is attempted to be understood or changed. A direct relationship is created. This is not to say that any of us have the answers, that there is not a historical framework to interpret, or that others cannot connect deeply to this process. It just means that all analysis stems directly from our personal experience and our own eyes, and thus is more connected to our desires, and therefore more relevant to our practice and lives in general. The connection to others in this pursuit can be a helpful and vital process, but ultimately, we must internalize and use critical processes to make these experiences pertinent to us, rather than simply wear their clothes. This is also true of examining the “historical record”, which should be viewed with a healthy amount of skepticism. We cannot view others’ positions or a historical context from a fixed or ideological position, but from true inquisitiveness. It is too easy to read what we want (or our ideology wants) from any source.
Critical theory is not limited to one specific element of life, although at times it might be helpful to temporarily isolate a specific dynamic. Ultimately, if it is to have any deeper relevance, these separate investigations need to be contextualized into a holistic perspective that incorporates an understanding of the totality. Critical theory is not bound by the dualism of morality, but instead looks to understand the complicated nature of all relationships. Dichotomies are merely oversimplifications, usually stemming from a theoretical framework that is agenda driven, rather than from one’s true desire to comprehend our world and our relationship to it. These dualisms are typically intended to guide specific behavior, which may even change in given certain circumstances, but whose theoretical rationalizations remain. This approach implies an essentialness to understanding, where as critical theory stems from subjective desires in the context of the world and our relationship to it. Our desires inform the questions we ask. Since critical theory is not guided by outside agendas, there is no fear in asking certain questions, because there is no ideology to uphold which might be contradicted by certain unrestrained honesty. Ultimately, transparency in a theoretical process that is not guided externally can be the only way we can seriously examine ourselves and our world. It connects theory and practice in a way that is consistent with our desires. And, it honestly seeks authentic accomplices in our actions and in our lives.
> This is no time to turn away and drink
> or smoke some vials of crack
> This is a time to gather force
> and take dead aim and Attack
> This is no time for Celebration
> This is no time for Saluting Flags
> This is no time for [New Aged] Inner Searchings
> The future is at hand*
*** ‘Cause We Just Wanna Have Fun
One of the primary obstacles to the development of critical theory is the exclusive focus on carving out space in the world to develop either healthier relationships with ourselves and those we are in community with, or to explore fetishized aspects of our desires. The first can, in general, have many positive aspects, but only if viewed and acted upon within a larger context, while the second can provide temporary exploration, but is often a perpetual trap which becomes a “lifestyle”[1], scene, or counterculture. Both form boxes that are difficult to get beyond, and both perpetuate an illusion of making a significant break with society. Because they almost entirely move from a reactionary position (providing an alternative to or escape from “straight” society), and because they do not typically seek society’s destruction (thinking they can coexist within or on the edge of it), they do not evade the limitations imposed by society. They are often guided by ideologies which attempt to make ambiguous the alienation in our lives, and aspire to convince us of the tolerable conditions of this existence, and prevent many from recognizing our role or situation in this society. Add to this the fact that the recuperation of any remotely radical theory and activity within this context is almost a given; a safety valve built into the system.
In a culture in which we are told that “comfort” is paramount and “if it feels good, go for it”, it might be wise to more deeply investigate both the motivations for this perspective (capitalism, for one), as well as our socialization[2]. Now, I love pleasure, don’t get me wrong, and would be the last to suggest one deny themselves of any, especially if we are in touch with our intuition and senses. But without at least some investigation into where our desires emanate and how authentic they are to us, we can easily fall into unhealthy situations, reproducing the sickness of society, or become misled by fragmented or distorted feelings. But how do we begin to figure out what are socialized behaviors and which are desires that stem from our unique being? Since we are so immersed in the muck of society, this is an ongoing and often tricky exploration with no cut and dry distinction in most cases. And, once we can start to grasp what aspects of our perceived desires seem authentic, it is then a matter of not isolating or elevating a specific desire as the primary or sole focus of our lives, at the exclusion of others. We are hopefully driven by a multitude of desires, some overlapping, and some even contradicting, but unless we can touch on many of these as a related push or complex theory, then we can become unbalanced or even obsessed. This is all part of the process of critical theory.
As the narrow-minded solely-seeking pleasure seeker or short-sighted scene dweller often neglects larger contexts, it frequently seems the case that they are constantly at odds with direct action, militant struggle, or insurrection. They may view these activities as a danger to their projects, a threat to the prosperity of the communities, counter-acting their work at "finding peace in this world", or inconsistent with their convoluted ideologies which allow them to acquiesce escape, or dwell in apathy. Any critical perspective on these projects would either question their meaningfulness, or at least, understand that they are temporary, and that their true longevity (for those which actually do make a significant break with the system) is dependent on the ultimate destruction of the institutions of hierarchical power. This comprehension, and the action which moves with it, removes to "lifestyle" from anarchism, and makes anarchy a lived practice stemming from critical theory.
<verse>
This is no time for Celebration
This is no time for Shaking Heads
This is no time for Backslapping
This is no time for Marching Bands*
</verse>
*** The Struggle Carries On...
The opposite extreme of the counter-cultural or “escapist” model is the duty-filled revolutionary specialist. Neglecting huge portions of social and other relations, the revolutionary specialist often makes theirs a singular path. It is exclusively about a physical fight or solely a material concern. It is often guided by ideology or superimposed political theory that one adopts to greater or lesser degrees, while personal critical theory is neglected ,or in many cases, prohibited for the good of the People or the Revolution. Often, this is a result of one who thinks it impossible to realize their own unique personal desires,feeling they are unrealistic, that they lack the imagination to connect to them, that it is out of their control, or that they should take the back seat to the larger battle. They put themselves into a larger struggle for removed or abstract concepts ("two arms for the Revolution"). They may sometimes even appear to be self-motivated and passionately driven, but ultimately they indenture themselves to "the Cause", which inevitable assigns roles and obligation. Giving these fractured or alienated solders "meaning" to their lives, the ideology guiding these sheep instills them with morality, guilt, sacrifice, responsibility, and obedience, not to mention the self-righteous (and often dangerous) indignation to do "what is right" for the Revolution (all of these values warrant a lengthy study themselves). Ideology, if "correctly" applied or consumed, is the basis for most justifications of horrific acts. History is filled with these acts and players, yet mostly re-written to suit the purpose of the ideology.
Aside from the ideological constraints of the revolutionary specialist, the separation of the actor from cast, or the problem of the expert, comes into play. As we will see with the activist, the revolutionary feels they can be part of a specialized group to act in the implementation of a strategy aimed to solve the problems of the world. They will be the ones who will make/change history. This mode of social change makes no significant break with the mode society currently thrusts upon us, and is thus a reactionary procedure; simply a changing of the guards. Already we are alienated and removed from directly controlling our lives, and merely switching who makes these decisions, especially when they claim to be doing it for us, should be met with disdain. The revolutionary specialist is still a politician, no matter how righteous their rhetoric, inspiring their slogans, grand their promises, or handsome their beret.
<verse>
This is no time to Ignore Warning
This is not time to Clear the Plate
Let's not be sorry after the fact
and let the past become our fate
There is no fate*
</verse>
*** Chug, Chug, Chug, All Aboard Activism!
Similar to the revolutionary specialist model, yet usually less extreme in both agenda and in action, a typical response to the miserable world we currently inhabit is the idea that if we could only organize properly, do the "good work", or focus on the right issues, we could achieve a "better world" This model also incorporates the worst of the "lifestylist" or scenester, as it is an illusion of working towards significant social change and living differently than the norms of society, when in reality, they are defined by it. This often plays out as the activist model, an ineffective, delusional, moralistic, self-righteous, alienated, and specialized method for shaping social change. There is inherent in this process, a lack of critical theory.
Activism is the strategy of being active in this society; to be engaged as an operative within the modes, logic, and outlets of the system. Whether legally, morally, philosophically, or theoretically (or a combination of them all) constrained by and consistent with the system's values and processes, one is a player in the system, and at most a reactionary element in it. Typically, the actions the activist takes and ideas they believe are not defined by them and are removed from their lives. Rather than prioritizing their lives based on passions and desires, they are guided by the duty-filled expectations of the activist world, and typically asked to play a role in some guilt-laden program. Activist types (often an annoying vocal minority) attempt to correct the problems in the world, in order to allow things to "run better for everyone". For instance, they deal with privilege and oppression politics (the politicizing of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) to correct our socialization along new ideological lines, the "correct ones". This short-sighted approach, often with self-righteous judgement, can never get past the simplistic and programmatic college textbook conclusions, offering a plethora of predictable, elementary, paternalistic/maternalistic, and opportunistic solutions. Like the revolutionary specialists, although even more directed by the system, activists become the experts in change, especially in connection to their specialty, the single issue. They "raise consciousness" through repetition, as they hammer their cause into our heads.
After years of going through the motions of ineffectual resistance, many renegotiate their relationship with “activism”, or, hopefully, give it up altogether. Typically suffering from burn-out and frustration, the only long-term persona for the activist is the eternal defeated optimist, often sacrificing themselves to the state and victimized by the delusional egos of their (often unrecognized or unacknowledged) leaders.
By rejecting moralistic and sacrificial tendencies for those of direct immediacy, we not only feel more connected and a part of our activity, but ultimately are able to stay healthier and have a better chance of achieving short and long-term goals. The only worthy activism is to encourage people to think for themselves and to feel.
<verse>
This is no time for Congratulations
This is no time to Turn Your Back
This is no time for Circumlocution
This is no time for Learned Speech
This is no time to Count Your Blessings
This is no time for Private Gain
This is a time to Put Up or Shut Up
It won’t come back this way again
There is no time*
</verse>
*** Creating Coherence Between Theory and Practice
If we are to actually connect with our desires, or live anarchy, there can be no separation between theory and practice. The two are intertwined and dependent on each other. There is always a theoretical framework (or fragments of many) at play, so it is just a question of how much we determine what they are. We can submit to other theoretical positions, knowingly or not, or we can develop our own. How we do this is a personal adventure, although we can certainly learn much from others, especially in approach or techniques (rather than detail). But, despite the amount of time some spend in the development of critical theory, certain traps or limitations in its exploration and expression are common-place. For instance, mystification, ambiguity, jargon, and the disconnection from an engagement with the world we wish to play a role in all form barriers to comprehension and expression, and contribute to a lack of clarity in our thinking and in sharing of ideas. The flip-side to the activist model (which goes through the motions or acts in the world mindlessly), is the arm chair intellectual or political theorist who is critical of everything, theoretically, yet never connects abstract concepts to actual life or has a practical agenda; The Lazy Boy Revolution. This dwells in ineffectiveness at the same level as the activist, revolutionary specialist, or counter-culturalist, yet it carries with it a higher level of smugness and self-righteousness as it contemplates and interprets the world from a false and “safe” objectivity. And, of course, avoiding the crystallization of ideas and “the problem” and “the solution” program is a must, as abstraction can only distance ourselves further.
The deconstruction of all of our relationships with the world we inhabit is a difficult challenge, but necessary if we are to move thoughtfully and strategically. This requires the creation of our own critical theory that is derived from and is, a lived reflection of us. This certainly does not necessitate a positive vision, but does imply strategy, which combines and creates coherence between theory and practice. Remember, we are of this world.
<verse>
This is no time for Phony Rhetoric
This is no time for Political Speech
This is a time for Action
because the future’s Within Reach
This is the time
because there is no time
There is no time*
</verse>
[*] Lou Reed, There Is No Time
[1] “life-style” (ism) is a touchy subject in anarchist circles, mostly stemming from how it was used by Murray Bookchin to dismiss any anarchist trend or subset which differed from his own. That is an absurd way to use the term, and is not how it is used here. The purpose of using “lifestyle” in this context is to mean a *style* of living one’s *life* . This is usually driven by either superficial elements (fashion, hipness, music, etc), or one specific element of one’s life they identify with (sexuality, hobbies, political orientation, diet, etc). There is often a homogeneous sub-culture that informs the “style” this life takes from form to detail. It often lacks much in terms of critical theory.
[2] “comfort” is a word which is loaded or informed by the expectations of a culture. It is a manufactured concept that is dependent on standards of a context. For instance, some find comfort living in a gated community or riding in a Hummer, while others find comfort cooking on a campfire or drinking whiskey for breakfast. There really is no absolute measurement for it.
|
#pubdate 2009-04-22 11:13:38 +0200
#author A. Morefus
#SORTauthors A. Morefus
#title Smashing the Petri Dish: Abbreviated Inquiry Into Abandoning the Concept of Culture
#lang en
#date 2007
#SORTtopics anti-civ, green, Green Anarchy, Green Anarchy #24
#source Retrieved on April 21<sup>st</sup>, 2009 from [[http://www.greenanarchy.org/index.php?action=viewwritingdetail&returnto=viewjournal&printIssueId=21&writingId=650][www.greenanarchy.org]]
#notes Published in Green Anarchy, issue #24 — Spring/Summer 2007.
The following are questions I have recently asked myself:
<strong>Why abandon culture?</strong> There are countless reasons to begin to challenge, seriously realign our relationship with, and perhaps abandon the concept of <em>culture</em> — the historic, contemporary, and projected assemblage of social dynamics and features by which we define ourselves and which collectively frame us as social groupings. Culture contains the all-tofamiliar civilized notions of expectations, projections, customs, taboos, values, morality, and rituals, as well as being anthropocentric in nature, and in general, limited as it defines the human condition of a place, time, and context only in terms of human relationships or how we use other <em>things</em>. The human-animal, unrestrained by such an understanding of reality, and in tune with applicable concerns of connected subsistence and curious play, needs not for culture as something to belong to or to be guided by. Instead, they are what they are, a composition of all they are connected to, yet unique unto themselves. And if relationships are fluid, unbounded by artificial concepts, and based on mutual desire, than what use or need is there for culture, except to define and confine these relationships. It might be proposed then, that our search for liberation may fall outside the parameters of the concept of culture, and in fact, may be in contradiction with its very existence. Culture, whether ethnic, religious, national, tribal, pop, alternative, or counter, acts as a definer rather than minimalizer of the borders within and between ourselves, each other, and the rest of life.
<strong>Can we challenge the current basis of our relationships to each other?</strong> For many, to abandon culture seems a project too daunting, shocking, and counter to what we may have always believed. But when we talk of undoing the entirety of civilization, are there questions too colossal to ask and material too compact to cut through? To dispute culture itself, and the physicality of its politicized manifestation, society, is to question civilization’s very premise, that we are controlled and manipulated by external forces that have an agenda ultimately incompatible with that of the individual, regardless of their desires (although there may be illusory moments of adaptability). Whether there are direct lines drawn to individuals or groups in power, or the rigid formation of patterns and textures over time, culture controls. It must, or it ceases to exist. Culture can be viewed as the summation of who we are as social beings, or the parameters we live within. Both are unsatisfactory for one attempting an uncivilized and unrestrained existence. If we are to live entirely different, than what seems foundational and what binds all of this (civilization) must be unglued. The imprint must be erased. The structures must be shattered, so as to open up the space for our unimpeded wild selves to roam.
<strong>Is there an intrinsic element of cultivation that leads to the formation of rigid socialization?</strong> The cultivation of crops and tillage of the earth created a different context in which we dwell then that of the human-animal in a pre-civilized context. With the domination of the land, stratification of society, accumulation of power, creation of economy, and religious mystification of the world, culture takes root as an all-encompassing means of control. To put it simply, when there are things to keep in order, an orderly society is preferable. With this comes the standardization of society, the suggestion of values, the implementation of codes, and the enforcement of regulations, be they physical, intellectual, or spiritual. Overt force is always adjacent (at least the allegation of it), but to convince people they are a part of an abstract grouping, and that it is superior to any other, cultural identity is a much more effective means of control. And, to convince them of their need to view contrary or deviant inclinations of the belief system as an Other, also sets the ground for the defending of culture. The abstraction of unmediated relationships might be where we start to see concepts of culture as necessary. Before (or outside this perspective) what purpose would it serve?
<strong>What about the process of domestication is inevitable in culture?</strong> Development of humans as individuals and societies in general through education, discipline, and training, seems to require obedience to societal norms, recognized largely as cultural. The goal, as with any other form of domestication, is to obtain a uniform and productive crop or yield in as efficient means as possible. Individuality and fluidity are seen as hazards to be reigned in or plowed under. Possibly, depending on how bumper a crop that season, or how much power the domesticator has accumulated, some unruly weeds are allowed to exist on the periphery, but even they are still largely controlled, if only due to the proximity to the disciplined ones.
<strong>Are socialization and control implicit in the perpetuation and acceptance of culture?</strong> Culture attempts to express and prescribe meaning to our world. This meaning is typically, and I would argue inevitably, used to obtain and maintain power and control. Culture regularly has both a conservative and progressive character to it. Both securing society and pushing it forward stability and innovation. Traditional cultural values which sustain the contemporary aims of a society’s influence and momentum are often supported while the proposed future for that society is often portrayed as intrinsic trajectories for that culture. The tension between them keeps things moving. At any particular stage of advancement in a civilization, the characteristic features of such a stage are described as its culture. So that what is described as permanent, is never so, and that which is promoted as temporary is often an illusion of change. The bottom line is, the path of a society, and the cultural aspects of it, are quite arbitrary, yet presented as predetermined. To not be acquiescent in this set-up places one, for all practical purposes, outside of cultural reality. But the rejection of culture is certainly not a rejection of social interaction. The isolated human, rarely a healthy, connected, and successfully functioning being (by any standards), is typically the product of extreme alienation and trauma. Anti-social behavior, as a specific description, is relative to the context of the society, but it describes more of a disconnect from the ability to interact then a rejection of that society’s values. One can be positively a social being (and possibly they must be) and still attempt to dismantle that society and its social characteristics, especially if their processes of social interaction are from outside that society. As interaction and relations removed from the alienated and mediated civilized methods tend to be more direct, fluid, and intuitive, without the clunky dominating, and often insincere methods we are instilled with, it seems key to any sort of positive alternative.
<strong>Ever notice the “cult” in culture?</strong> Socially, there is great pressure, from authoritarianism to tension between “civilians”, to create a mindless following that is pervasive throughout society. There develops an affiliation of accomplices who adopt complete and societal belief systems or faiths. Those who move too close to the margins are regarded and handled as outsiders, which strictly maintains the definitions applied to a culture. In addition, the progressive linearity of cultural enlightenment and refinement through intellectual and aesthetic training occurs at all levels, from fashion to philosophy. Details and motivations of our actions that are obtained, recorded, and remembered through vastly different perceptions and bias perspectives, acquired through a cultural context and individual views, are filtered, averaged, and distilled to create a prevalent, repeated response system.
<strong>But what about primitive people and useful traditions?</strong> There is probably more from the past that we have carelessly discarded than we have critically shed, especially concerning earth-based peoples from gatherer hunters to horticulturists to pre-technological agriculturists and homesteaders (in my opinion, there is less to appreciate as we move onward in domestication, but from where we are located in history, there is still some value in critically assessing small-scale cultivators for some useful aspects). Examining the dynamics and methods of these various types of groupings for everything from food procurement to social organization (not that they aren’t inevitably linked) will reveal a great diversity between peoples and the strategies and patterns that have developed, and typically, unfortunately, formed into a culture. This investigation can also reveal common threads in how situations, needs, and problems are dealt with, which we can filter through our own unique and communal desires and contexts to apply to our lives, without adopting cultural parameters and definitions. Techniques are valuable, cultural explanations are useless, unless they reveal a relationship between things that can be utilized without socializing.
Life contains some underlying stability of circumstance, yet within it is an infinite and intricate shifting, fracturing, and supporting over time. A never-ending improvisation of reinforcing and interfering, but never repeating. Even the seemingly firmly structured parts are composed of limitless variables. We might be inspired by the way the Kaluli tribe of the Papuan Plateau perceive and interact with the world. For instance, they do not hear singular sounds in the rainforest, but instead an interlocking soundscape they call dulugu ganalan, or “lifting- up-over sounding”; millions of simultaneous sound cycles, starting and ending at different points. People’s voices layer and play off of this reality, as drums, axes, and singing blend together in rhythms and patterns creating an instinctual vocabulary understood by the group.
<strong>So what might living outside of culture look like?</strong> To start with, it would be free from moral and social frameworks that limit our freedom to explore, experience, and connect. We would still be “bound” by certain biological and geographical limitations, but not those determined by any experts or leaders. Instead we would experience directly these limitations, and along with shared experiences with others, develop our own unique understandings. Collective experience would not fit into any prearranged formation or contain any unified meaning. It would be the infinite intersections of support and divergence that make up the rest of what we call life. Rather than thinking in cultural terms, perhaps we can look at other social animals for inspiration. Flocks, herds, and packs can be contemplated for their manifestations and dynamics of living patterns. Instinctual rather than intellectual in motivation and stable yet flexible in an organic manner, rather than enforced or altered through mechanistic and projected means. Is this not closer to how humans live(d) outside of civilization?
<strong>Can we smash the petri dish and abandon the stifling concept of culture for an unobstructed reality?</strong> If we are content with the role of microorganisms in a prepared nutrient media or the product of such cultivation, then life as part of a culture is acceptable, even desirable and beneficial. If we are not satisfied as bacteria, segments of tissues, or fungi in a scientist’s test tube or observation dish, then we need to begin to seriously review how we relate to, coordinate, and view ourselves, each other, and the world around us. We can trade the abstraction, symbolic, efficiency, control, and completeness of superimposed culture for the connected, direct, dynamic, openness of unalienated existence.
<em><strong>The choice really is ours.</strong></em>
|
#pubdate 2025-07-31T06:47:01.277Z
#title A New Anarchist FAQ
#subtitle An Introduction to Anarchy in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century
#LISTtitle New Anarchist FAQ
#notes Instructions for contributing to this wiki: [[https://raddle.me/wiki/A_New_Anarchist_FAQ_Instructions][<raddle.me/wiki/A_New_Anarchist_FAQ_Instructions>]]
#date July 2025
#source Retrieved on 31 July 2025 from [[https://raddle.me/wiki/A_New_Anarchist_FAQ][raddle.me/wiki/A_New_Anarchist_FAQ]]
#topics FAQ, introductory
#lang en
#author Raddle Collective
#authors Raddle Collective
** What is Anarchy?
Anarchy is the rejection of all institutions and doctrines that seek to impose rule. It is a life of autonomy and self-determination. Anarchy is not theoretical, nor hypothetical. It is not a hope for an imagined future, it is here and now. It is a living and breathing praxis. It is a path of defiance we create for ourselves in spite of constant subjugation.
Anarchy is an endeavor to carve out pockets of life free from exploitation and suffering. It is actively working to end authoritarian relations wherever they exist, and building non-authoritarian alternatives. There is no end-goal to anarchy. It is not a prescribed way of life for an imagined people in an imagined place and time, but the experiments of countless generations of disparate people who aren’t happy being forced to submit to their supposed superiors, people who aren’t willing to accept that a life spent toiling to enrich others represents any kind of “freedom”.
<quote>
“Anarchy is the thing we want. It is
the Beautiful Idea. It is the entirely
impractical idea that we can be, and
must insist on being, totally free. From
domination, of course, but also from
mundanity and morality. It is the id to
the super-ego of society and its
shaming, fear-instilling humiliations and
self-inflicted limitations.
Anarchy is an act of faith—a leap
into the unknown—and a totally sober
proposition. It is an explosion and the
simple things we do unconsciously.
It is something that predates civilization
and cannot be tamed by cities,
governments, exchange, or politics.
Anarchy is anarchy, it is both organization
(along completely different lines
than the ones that currently exist on
a broad level), and chaos. It is each of
us having the ability to determine our
own lives and the ways that we relate
to others, from our most intimate
relationships to the more far-flung.
Anarchy is impossible and it is
that very impossibility that makes it
desirable. As desirable as the eventual
lover or the water at the end of a long
hike. As impossible as independence,
autonomy, and collaboration among
equals.
Long Live Anarchy!”
— anonymous
</quote>
** What is Archy?
The dictionary definition of ‘archy’ is any body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks. Be it monarchy, an oligarchy, a republic, a feudal state or any other hierarchical society.
While anarchy is the opposition to social hierarchy and domination, archy is the full embodiment of those things. While anarchy calls for the absence of rulers, archy depends on the majority of a population serving and obeying a minority of rulers. Sometimes a few rulers (e.g. monarchies), and sometimes many (e.g. social democracies).
Hierarchies exist for rulers to maintain their social control & power over the population. This control is maintained with violent force by authorities appointed by the rulers: the army, national guard, police, courts, prisons, social workers, media, tax collectors, etc.
Not all guidance given by one person to another constitutes hierarchy. Choosing to accept a specialist’s expertise in their craft needn’t create a hierarchy or make them your ruler. A roofer laying your roof or a chef cooking your meal needn’t be your superior on a hierarchy simply because they are providing you with a valued service.
Similarly, an individual using force to strike a blow at the system of authority that oppresses them does not turn the individual into an authority.
Authority is not simply an isolated instance of the use of force, but an ongoing social relationship between two parties. It is a relationship where one party has the socially legitimized right to command, and the other party has the corresponding obligation to obey.
Destroying archy where you see it does not create archy, it creates anarchy.
** What is Autonomy?
Autonomy, in the anarchist sense, is the freedom to make your own decisions and act on them—without needing permission from any higher authority like governments, bosses, or institutions. It’s about self-governance, not just as individuals but also as communities.
In some respects, autonomy resembles the concept of liberty—an idea that gained prominence during Europe’s so-called “Age of Enlightenment” in the 18<sup>th</sup> century. At the time, liberty was seen as a bold and radical challenge to the unchecked authority of the monarchs who ruled society at the time. Its advocates argued that all people were born with inherent rights, supposedly granted by God, which no ruler had the right to violate. The idea of inalienable rights, or liberties quickly spread, becoming a central slogan of the French and American Revolutions. These uprisings played a key role in dismantling monarchy and feudal rule and laying the foundation for what would become modern liberal democracy.
While liberty is often seen as a “right” granted by the state (like freedom of speech or the right to vote), autonomy doesn’t depend on the state at all. It’s not something given to you—it’s something you claim and practice yourself, anarchically.
From [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sub-media-what-is-autonomy][Sub.Media]]:
<quote>
“Over the centuries, countless astute, and not-so-astute political thinkers, from Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson, to Alex Jones and Glenn Beck have claimed liberty as a universal human right. But to say that this principle hasn’t been universally applied would be a gross understatement. This is because from its very beginnings, the concept of liberty has existed within a framework of European global conquest, a process facilitated by colonialism, slavery and genocide. Even today, the language of liberty is still used to mobilize people’s support for imperialist wars. Remember when the United States government claimed they were bringing freedom to Iraq?”
</quote>
Liberty comes with conditions: you’re allowed certain rights as long as you obey laws and accept the authority of the state. Autonomy rejects that setup entirely. It says: you don’t need rulers to tell you what rights you have—you already have the power to decide things for yourself and with others.
Autonomy is both individual and collective. In the individual sense, it means you can make choices about your life without external control or having to obey the will of authority figures who always put their interests before yours. In the collective sense, autonomy means groups of people make decisions together on matters that affect them collectively.
With anarchism, you can’t really have one without the other. Autonomous communities are made up of individuals who freely choose to work together. In anarchist thought, individual and collective autonomy are inseparable—you can’t truly have one without the other. Autonomous collectives are formed by autonomous individuals who choose to collaborate in pursuit of shared goals. Outside of such collective structures, practicing real individual autonomy is incredibly difficult—not only because those in power actively work to suppress it, but also because humans are fundamentally social beings. Unless you’re completely isolated from society, like living alone in a remote cabin, your freedom depends on the freedom of those around you.
Some examples of Autonomy:
- A feminist collective organizing its own campaigns without relying on NGOs or politicians to give them their marching orders.
- A neighborhood assembly of residents resisting gentrification by making decisions about housing and land use themselves, rather than obeying the will of property developers and landlords.
- A tribe in the Amazon that refuses to receive missionaries, conform to European social mores or accept the laws of the state that claims ownership over their land.
These are all examples of people creating systems of power and decision-making that belong to them, and work for them, not imposed from above in order to benefit capitalists and their enforcers.
Autonomy challenges the idea that we need to be ruled by people who supposedly are more qualified than us to determine our needs. It’s about reclaiming control over our lives—not through asking for rights from powerful entities, but by organizing ourselves and taking direct responsibility for how we live, play, relate, and co-exist.
Or put more simply: Do you really need someone sitting in a palace or parliament in a faraway city telling you what you can or can’t do, what your goals are, and how to achieve those goals?
** What is Mutual Aid?
Mutual aid is the principle of people working together to solve problems for the benefit of everyone involved. It’s about cooperation, not competition—helping each other out because we all do better when we support one another.
While mutual aid has existed for as long as human society—and is found throughout nature—anarchists emphasize it as a core principle for how society should be organized. The Russian anarchist and biologist Pyotr Kropotkin made this argument in 1902, in his book Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, when he challenged the dominant view of evolution among his peers in the scientific community as a brutal competition among people for power (“survival of the fittest”).
Instead, he showed that cooperation within and between species actually offers a major evolutionary advantage and is a more sustainable form of social organization than the winner-takes-all competition envisioned by capitalism. Using the scientific method, Kropotkin demonstrated that species that were able to work together, or who formed symbiotic arrangements with other species based on mutual benefit, were able to better adapt to their environment, and were granted a competitive edge over those species who didn’t, or couldn’t.
Capitalism organizes human activity around profit, often through coercion—like forcing people to work or go hungry. Mutual aid, by contrast, organizes activity around human need and collective care. It is a wholesale rejection of capitalism’s competitive, profit-driven systems. Capitalism can’t or won’t solve problems like global poverty, exploitation of workers and environmental collapse. Mutual aid offers a different path where people come together without expecting profit and hierarchical power, simply to support each other and improve life for all.
In modern civilization, we’re taught to see ourselves as independent and self-reliant—living in our own apartments, managing personal bank accounts, signing a smartphone contract, and carefully curating individual identities on social media. But this idea of personal independence is largely an illusion. It’s a narrative promoted by governments and corporations to shape us into isolated, manageable and commodified consumers focused on short-term gratification.
In reality, human beings are deeply interdependent—and that interdependence has always been central to our survival and progress as a species.
Take a moment to consider: where does your food come from? Your clothing? The materials that make up your home or your car? Most of us rely on vast, complex systems of labor, infrastructure, and global supply chains to meet even our basic needs. Without these systems, very few people today could last a week, let alone manufacture the commodities we depend on daily.
Some examples of Mutual Aid in the World Today:
- People organizing relief efforts after disasters like Hurricane Katrina
- Community-run child care co-ops
- The global Food Not Bombs volunteer organization that feeds the hungry using food that would otherwise be discarded
- Open-source software communities
- Volunteers risking their lives to help others in war zones (like the White Helmets in Syria or Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders)
Mutual aid is the basic foundation for building social relations based on solidarity, not control or coercion. Mutual aid is the belief—and the practice—that we survive and thrive through cooperation, not competition. It’s a practical, ethical, and political alternative to systems based on hierarchy, profit, and control.
** What is Direct Action?
Direct action is the choice people make to take political action themselves, directly addressing an issue without waiting for higher authorities like politicians, courts, police, social workers or bureaucrats to act. Direct action can be taken either by an individual or a group of people who share the same immediate goal.
Instead of asking for permission, voting for a representative, protesting or lobbying for change, people undertake the action themselves—whether that’s blocking a harmful development project such as a pipeline, squatting a building to counter private property relations, using graffiti to stave off gentrification, sabotaging a hostile workplace, neutralizing a rapist or dismantling a private health insurance company. It’s one of the main ways anarchists put our values of autonomy, self-organization and mutual aid into practice.
Direct action encompasses a wide range of activities: everything from minor graffiti and wheatpasting, to prison breaks and assassination. Direct actions are tactics, meaning that they are a specific type of action that can be used to implement a wide variety of strategies, so it doesn’t necessarily tell us much about the politics of those carrying out the action itself. The long-term goals of a group undertaking a direct action together could diverge greatly, but the immediate goal can be mutually beneficial. For this reason, anarchists often work with non-anarchists they feel they can trust on direct actions.
The German philosopher Max Weber famously described the state as holding a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. In practical terms, this means that acts of state violence—whether delivered through a politician’s laws, a court’s ruling, a prison guard’s chains, a psychiatrist’s involuntary hold order or a police officer’s gun—are considered lawful and justified. It serves as a stark reminder that the state always positions itself as the one and only legitimate authority in managing social conflict. The government uses its monopoly on violence to reinforce the structural cruelty inherent to capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, ableism and hetero-patriarchy.
At its core, direct action isn’t about pleading with those in power to end their cruelty or exploitation. Instead, it’s about asserting the power of the people taking action—standing apart from, and in direct opposition to, the systems of structural oppression enforced by the various authorities who insist on our obedience.
By engaging in direct action, people reject the idea that a government or state has the exclusive right to make decisions for communities and instead assert their own autonomy and freedom to determine their own fate—often setting a powerful example for others to follow.
For instance, instead of lobbying a politician to oppose a pipeline or trusting regulatory agencies to intervene, supporters of direct action may choose to physically obstruct construction of the pipeline themselves, seeing it as a more immediate, effective and empowering way to create social change.
As pointed out by Sub.Media in their [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sub-media-what-is-direct-action][direct action explainer]], direct action is also instrumental in creating the conditions to enable mutual aid. The following summarizes their article.
A good example of direct action being symbiotic with mutual aid comes from the 1960s, when the Black Panther Party in the USA confronted the harsh realities of poverty and systemic neglect in their communities. Instead of waiting for government support or appealing to the conscience of white-dominated America, they took matters into their own hands—creating free health clinics and launching breakfast programs to feed impoverished schoolchildren.
These initiatives weren’t just charity; they were part of a broader effort to build grassroots community power. So effective were these programs that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover labeled the Black Panthers a major threat to national security—by which he really meant, a threat to the state’s legitimacy and the cruel white supremacist structures it protects. In order to continue their social programs, the Panthers armed themselves to protect the programs from government agents, who worked to assassinate their leaders and dismantle their organization.
Because direct action often steps outside official political channels—and sometimes outside the law—it is frequently met with efforts to suppress or control it. These range from subtle tactics like co-option by government and corporate-aligned nonprofits, to more extreme forms of repression, including surveillance, mass arrests, and targeted violence by government or paramilitary forces.
The men and women who have declared they hold exclusive control over social organization have demonstrated they will do whatever it takes to suppress movements that threaten this status quo. They will maim and kill anyone in order to ensure full control over society is maintained by the collection of governments and corporations that rule us.
While the idea of direct action likely predates written history—emerging wherever people have resisted hierarchy—the term itself originates in the early labor movement. It was used to describe militant tactics including industrial sabotage and wildcat strikes.
By directly halting production and standing together in the face of repression, workers were able to extract real concessions from their employers. Over time, the widespread use of these tactics pressured governments to legalize trade unions and implement labour reforms—moves largely intended to pacify the more radical elements of the labor struggle and bring them back under state regulation.
One of the most powerful chapters in the history of direct action unfolded in 1970s Italy. Amid a housing crisis triggered by capitalist restructuring, thousands of southern migrants occupied abandoned buildings and organized collective resistance to evictions. This forced the state to secure affordable housing for the poor in order to manage the growing crisis that was presenting a big threat to their power.
When the state then attempted to raise transit fares and utility bills, massive groups engaged in auto-reductions—refusing to pay the increased rates as a form of collective defiance, again forcing the state to re-examine its policies in order to maintain its power.
Italian society at the time remained a deeply religious, conservative, and patriarchal society, where both abortion and divorce were outlawed. In response, a bold women’s liberation movement emerged, establishing a covert network of clinics to directly defy the state. Doctors, nurses, and trained volunteers provided safe abortions in defiance of the government’s laws. These acts of direct care were accompanied by persistent public demonstrations, which ultimately led to the legalization of abortion as the ruling parties feared losing even more ground to the grassroots.
Today, as we face rising inequality, social fragmentation, and ecological crisis, direct action continues to serve as a vital tool for communities seeking to reclaim power. It offers a means not only to resist injustice, but to begin shaping the kind of world we want to live in—together in our own communities, without ceding control to the brutal authorities who would sooner murder us than see their monopoly on power threatened.
** What is Praxis?
A question you’ll often get when you attempt to discuss anarchism with people new to these ideas is how practical is anarchy? How can anarchy be demonstrated to me in a way that I can appreciate its effectiveness? Nothing is more effective in demonstrating the value of anarchy than praxis.
Praxis is when anarchists apply theory to practice through direct action, collective effort, and grassroots initiatives. It emphasizes the importance of lived experience, immediate action, and the continuous interplay between reflection and practice to challenge and dismantle oppressive structures. For anarchists, praxis is not merely about theoretical discussions, but about embodying principles such as autonomy, mutual aid, and self-organization in everyday life, aiming to create a liberated life through participatory and decentralized methods.
Praxis is any action that embodies and realizes anarchist theory. It’s a valuable method for creating awareness of anarchist causes and building solidarity in your community.
Examples of praxis:
- Setting up a “Food Not Bombs” chapter in your community.
- Squatting an unused building to provide a safe space for homeless people.
- Guerilla gardening.
- Setting up a free shop that people can freely take what they need from.
- Building community gardens to feed and engage the community.
- Preparing free meals for homeless people.
- Helping people install a free and open source operating system and the Tor browser for privacy and security.
- Converting old combustion-engine cars to electric.
- Make a zine/informational about an important topic.
- Creating memes from an Anarchist perspective.
- Assassinating dictators.
- Creating an autonomous zone.
- Horizontal community public safety organizing to replace the police.
- Teaching people how to steal from the rich effectively.
- Creating a space online where Anarchists can share their ideas with each other.
- Aiding in defending indigenous sovereignty.
- Being support for people suffering from addictions, and helping them be on a healthy path they want to be on.
- Stopping pipelines from being built.
- Investigating history, and appreciating the context for how you have come to be.
- Identifying privileges caused by being a part of a white-supremacist, hetero-normative, patriarchal, trans-phobic, classist, state controlled labor farm.
- Calling out problematic behaviour in comrades, no matter their status in the group.
- Teaching people to be self sufficient by gardening, foraging and upcycling.
- Starting an anarchist bike collective to fix people’s bikes.
- Making anarchist music that shines a light on injustices in the world.
- Setting up a community mesh-net to share data with people in a decentralized manner.
** What is Leftism and How Does it Relate to Anarchy?
The left vs right divide comes from which side of the French king members of the états généraux parliament were sitting before the French revolution — those on the right were monarchist, those on the left were in favour of the republic. In other words, both were in favour of the state. Obviously all this was a long time ago, and most people aren’t really aware of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not relevant, because the underlying assumption still persists that the whole spectrum of conceivable politics need to be enacted through the state. That’s still true, whether it’s social-democrats, liberals, Leninists, greens, whatever.
One of the most important things anarchists need to get across is that worthwhile transformation can only be achieved through direct action outside of and against the state, parliamentary democracy and the various structures of class collaboration, and that means questioning the left vs right thing, which only serves to cement the state’s dominance over our lives.
Anarchists are not leftists, we side with neither monarchy nor republic, dictatorship nor democracy, free market capitalism nor state capitalism. We stand for anarchy. The absolute negation of all authority, including both wings of government: Left and right.
According to every contemporary definition, the left wing is part and parcel of the state, of government, of authority, and anarchists who identify with that left wing are buying into the coercive notion that they need to box themselves in with liberals, social democrats, Marxists and other authoritarians for no logical reason at all.
A far more useful distinction than left vs. right is authority vs. anti-authority. Anarchy has nothing of substance in common with authoritarians, with governmentalists, with those who desire to dominate and rule us, because anarchy is a completely different animal than anything envisioned by the left (or the right) wing of the state. We speak an entirely different language.
While the left attempts to organize people in order to cement left-wing state power, in order to reform the state to better suit the interests of the left, anarchists attempt to escape all domination and control, to abolish the government, political parties, the state, its borders and military and all kinds of power hierarchy.
Anarchy isn’t simply another cog in the politics machine, it’s the *anti*-politics. We reject everything politics represents.
<quote>
“Although anarchists differ in their ideas of the tactics to be used in achieving social change, they are united in regarding themselves as apolitical or even anti-political.”
</quote>
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/george-woodcock-anarchism-a-history-of-libertarian-ideas-and-movements][Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements, George Woodcock (1962)]]
<quote>
“It is not true then to say that we treat politics abstractly. We make no abstraction of it, since we wish positively to kill it. And here is the essential point upon which we separate ourselves absolutely from politicians and radical bourgeois Socialists (now functioning as social or radical democracy which is only a facade for capitalistic democracy,). Their policy consists in the transformation of State politics, their use and reform. Our policy, the only policy we admit, consists in the total abolition of the State, and of politics, which is its necessary manifestation..”
</quote>
[[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/bakunin/writings/Politics.html][Politics and the State, Mikhail Bakunin (1871)]]
<quote>
“I have always considered my inclination to anarchy to be irreducible to a politics. Anarchist commitments run deeper. They are more intimate, concerning supposedly personal or private matters; but they also overflow the instrumental realm of getting things done. Over time, I have shifted from thinking that anarchist commitments are *more than* a politics to thinking that they are *something other than* a politics. I continue to return to this latter formulation. It requires thinking things through, not just picking a team; it is more difficult to articulate and it is more troubling to our inherited common sense. I do not think I am alone in this. It has occurred to some of us to register this feeling of otherness by calling our anarchist commitments an *ethics*. It has also occurred to some of us to call these commitments *anti-political*. I think these formulations are, for many of us, implicitly interlinked, though hardly interchangeable.”
</quote>
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alejandro-de-acosta-its-core-is-the-negation][Its core is the negation, Alejandro de Acosta (2013)]]
Classical anarchists rarely, if ever identified with the left wing, and after waging deadly warfare on anarchists for a century, it was only recently that the left began to lay claim to anarchy, typically to co-opt successful grassroots anarchist movements to further their coercive political program and ultimately prolong capitalism and our growing dependence on the state.
This being said, a lot of anarchists today, the majority in fact, strongly identify with the left, typically by defining “left” to mean “anti-hierarchy”, despite this definition being incongruous to what the left actually represents in both modern times and historically. These anarchists closely affiliate themselves with a wider left-wing movement, including Marxists, social democrats, and even centrist political parties, and they’re perhaps unwilling to sacrifice the social capital they’ve accrued in their friendship circles by swearing off the left.
A lifetime of daily propaganda by the state and its media apparatus separating people into 2 opposing factions: left Vs. right, has a way of become ingrained in the collective consciousness. Parting psychologically with this meticulously manufactured tribalism is no easy feat. The advertised left wing identity of social responsibility, ethics, diversity, inclusion and a dedication to equality is not something that’s easy to part with, despite it being a largely fictional construct: which is constantly proven when the left wing parties get their turn to be in power and quickly increase austerity, imperialism, war, surveillance, mass-incarceration and corruption.
The state wants us to view the world in left/right binary terms in order to uphold the representative democracy system that sustains the state and keeps us separated into haves and have-nots, rulers and obeyers, while allowing the wealthy to loot our resources and steadily criminalize our very existence.
As long as the left is in service to state power, it’s of no use to anarchists.
** Do Anarchists Support Free Speech?
From Wikipedia.org:
<quote>
“Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g. “downsizing” for layoffs, “servicing the target” for bombing, in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth.”
</quote>
The concept of “free speech” is fundamentally flawed, and has historically been used to convince citizens of states that they have “rights” that are gifted to them by the supposedly benevolent and generous state.
In actuality, the state doesn’t give you rights; it controls them, limits them, denies you them. It uses its monopoly on violence to censor, stalk, spy on, imprison and terrorize anyone that would threaten to subvert its power.
When an authority grants you “free speech”, what they’ve really done is take away your freedom to speak, and then allow certain people (typically the favored social class) to say certain things under certain conditions. There’s nothing “free” about this. You’re still forbidden from speech that would threaten the state or those it empowers. You’re still legally viable for slandering powerful people that can afford as many lawyers as it takes to sue you into bankruptcy. You’re still beaten to a bloody pulp (or worse) for talking back to a cop. You’ll still be imprisoned, enslaved and murdered by the state and its enforcers for being the wrong race or the wrong gender or the wrong sexuality or the wrong religion or the wrong class and daring to resist your oppressors.
Free speech is a lie told to us by our rulers to convince us we need to be ruled by them.
Anarchists are aware enough to realize the state does not grant us any kind of freedom. The entire existence of the state is predicated on taking freedom away from us to empower the rich and powerful minority that the state exists to serve. So as anarchists; as people who don’t want to be ruled, people who see the blatant lies our rulers tell us for what they are, it would make little sense for us to support an inherently Orwellian concept as “free speech”. Much more honest words for this concept would be “controlled speech” or “state-approved speech”.
Really, when the state talks about freedom of speech, they’re most often talking about the freedom to be a hateful bigot — since bigotry is really the only type of speech the state will go out of its way to protect. Bigotry allows the state to scapegoat undesirable groups and thus create gaping social divisions. If everyone is villainizing migrants or gays, those groups will serve as a fine distraction. Ensuring our rulers and their benefactors can live to exploit us for another day as we focus our rage at anyone but them.
According to the state, white supremacists are free to incite hatred against non-whites (which has often led to mass murder), but if someone were to say they think the president of the nation deserves to be stabbed for his crimes... Well, that person would promptly be carted off to prison for voicing such a dangerous idea.
Unfortunately, some people insist on using bigoted or otherwise oppressive language in anarchist spaces, claiming that free speech allows them to do so. Since we’ve established that free speech is nothing more than an insipid lie our rulers tell us in order to control us, it’s important that we reject the dishonest language of the state when talking about anarchy, and take a long hard look at the reasons someone would have for clinging to the state’s shrewd promises of “rights” and “freedoms” that simply don’t exist.
“Free speech” is not an anarchist principle in any way. Actual anarchist principles of course include direct action, mutual aid, taking a strong stance against authority in all its guises, as well as freedom of association. This means we are free to associate with whoever we want and free to avoid associating with people that would build authoritarian structures to oppress us.
So let’s talk about the people who enter anarchist spaces, direct slurs and hateful bigoted rhetoric at us, and then insist we accept their abuse because they have the sacred right to freedom of speech... These people simply have no understanding of anarchy. Their “right to free speech” that they insist we respect could only be granted to them by a state with a monopoly on violence. If someone comes into your space and calls you a racial slur, no institution should have the power to stop you from showing that person the door.
It takes an incredibly sheltered person to believe there should be no consequences for abuse. When someone is abusing you or people you care about, you should absolutely be free to take a stand and remove them from your space, no matter how many times the person cries “free speech” as they’re telling you you’re a worthless (slur).
The “freedom” to scapegoat, demonize and demean people who are different from you really stands in direct contradiction with anarchy. Discriminating against people based on ability, race, gender or sexuality creates authority. It makes you an authoritarian. Your rhetoric directly alienates the people who belong to the groups you’re choosing to look down on in disgust and present as less-than human. By using demeaning language to chastise marginalized people for their perceived inadequacies, you’re upholding normative social roles, creating classes and subclasses and strengthening the authoritarian power structures that directly oppress any people that belong to minority groups.
For example, by using the word “f*ggot” as an insult, you effectively cast gay people as being worthy of scorn and derision. You assert authority over everyone who isn’t heterosexual and make life incredibly difficult for people that don’t meet the normative standards you’ve helped construct to maintain the social dominance of heterosexuals.
Anarchists can and will choose to not associate with people that claim they have a right to oppress others. Anarchists are anti-authoritarian to our core, and this means we don’t have to put up with hateful bigots in our spaces.
** Are Libertarian Socialists the Same as Anarchists?
An anarchist by definition stands against all authority without exception, while a socialist by definition is simply someone who feels the means of production should be collectively owned. So socialism is narrowly focused on economic issues, while anarchy is explicitly concerned with any and all social issues.
When a socialist also identifies as a libertarian, they’re indicating that they’re critical of the traditional authoritarian socialist states that have been so prominent in the world (the USSR, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, etc.)
But while libertarian socialists might reject one-party states, that doesn’t mean they reject states entirely. A lot of them will support democratic states or other democratic forms of government. Anarchists, on the other hand, reject all forms of government.
Generally someone who chooses to identify as a libertarian socialist rather than an anarchist is making a deliberate choice to use non-committal language that implies they’re willing to accept certain forms of authority. If they opposed all authority as anarchists do, they’d likely call themselves an anarchist.
There are various forms of libertarian socialism that promote a supposedly ‘libertarian’ state, while there are other libertarian socialists who reject the state form, but embrace other forms of authority.
Communalists are a famous example of libertarian socialists who embrace various forms of authority including majoritarianism but stop short of supporting a full-blown state. But the form of government they do support greatly resembles states on a smaller, more localized scale.
While a few anarchists might also choose to identify as libertarian socialists in polite company, the majority of libertarian socialists aren’t anarchists, so anarchists would be better off avoiding the ‘libertarian socialist’ moniker since all it really says about a person’s politics is they like socialist economics but have an aversion to vanguard parties. Anarchy is a whole lot more than economics.
** Can Capitalism Be Anarchist?
“Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g. “downsizing” for layoffs, “servicing the target” for bombing, in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth.” (From Wikipedia.org:)
The phrase “anarcho-capitalism” was coined by far-right white-nationalist Murray Rothbard as a way to demean anarchists by appropriating anarchist terminology and diluting anarchy’s meaning by associating it with all the things anarchists struggle against.
In one of his unpublished pieces, Rothbard even admitted “we are not anarchists, and those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical” because “all” anarchists have “socialistic elements in their doctrines” and “possess socialistic economic doctrines in common.”
Capitalism is just as brutal a hierarchy as statism and anyone claiming capitalists are capable of being anarchists is using malicious doublespeak to attack the anarchist movement by confusing the definitions of ‘hierarchy’ and ‘authority’. Capitalism is a perverse authority that creates a multitude of oppressive totalitarian hierarchies. There is no way to make it compatible with anarchy.
These “anarcho” capitalist pretenders would have us believe that capitalism is “voluntary” when in reality private property rights can only be enforced violently; by an authority that is powerful enough to rule a society.
Rothbard’s followers claim to oppose the state but not capital. In reality, they wish to replace the state with wholly unregulated corporations; effectively making the corporations into totalitarian states that don’t have to answer to anyone.
For all intents and purposes, these so called “anarcho-capitalists”, “propertarians” or “voluntaryists” wish to revert to feudalism and fully enslave workers, without the annoyance of human rights, labor and environmental laws or any other controls on their business activities.
They wish to replace the state’s police forces and military with private police and military that would work directly for the corporations, with no accountability to the public and with the sole purpose of safeguarding the profits and personal safety of the owners of capital.
They have similarly hijacked the word ‘libertarian’ which was historically synonymous with “anarchist” (Kropotkin used both words interchangeably) and maintains its original meaning outside the USA.
Within the USA, “libertarian”, “voluntaryist”, “propertarian”, “deontological liberal”, “autarchist”, “paleocon”, “minarchist”, “neocon”, “rights-theorist”, “libertarian moralist” and “social conservative” are all words that just mean “capitalist that doesn’t like public accountability or paying taxes” with very minor differences; usually relating to how private property “rights” will be enforced.
By creating far-right capitalist perversions of every anti-capitalist movement, the wealthy largely succeed in erasing the original revolutionary goals of a movement and replace them with more of the same capitalism, imperialism, poverty, genocide and environmental destruction.
“Anarcho”-capitalism is an oxymoron and has nothing to do with Anarchy.
** Do Anarchists Practice Democracy?
Democracy is derived from the Greek *demokratia*.
*demos* — “the people” + *kratia* — “power, rule”.
It means “To be ruled by the people”.
Contrast this with the etymology of the word Anarchy. From the Greek anarchos meaning “To have no ruler”.
If the definition of the word ‘democracy’ is “Rule by the People”, and the definition of the word ‘Anarchy’ is “To have no ruler”, then the answer to the question “Do Anarchist’s Support Democracy?” would logically be no. Anarchists are against all authority, even authority imposed by a majority of voters.
Of course, it’s not always that simple. Some anarchists do choose to engage with electoral voting, believing that a “lesser of two evils” approach is worth the trip to the ballot box. But, this is not the same as believing that democracy works or that it’s a form of anarchy.
Others (social anarchists) might claim that what we have now isn’t “real” democracy. Most working systems of democracy in the world today are ‘representative’, where the people elect an individual to represent them in government. Some people instead advocate for a return to the ‘direct democracy’ of ancient Greece, where the intermediary is removed and power is given directly to civilians to make decisions by voting directly on each government policy.
In short, these two forms of democracy are a difference between rule by political proxies or rule by the majority group of voters. However you window dress it, all democratic systems are ways to rule people — something all anarchists oppose by definition.
But, more than this, democracy separates us; pitting the majority against the minority. Many of us — including you — might live in a democracy, and might find that those outside of the ruling class continue to be exploited, living in perpetual servitude. We have never been granted the freedom and liberty that our rulers promise democracy will grant us.
Yet, because we are given the opportunity to take part in the political process by way of democracy, we are lead to believe we have a say in the governing of our lives. As long as we believe that the ballot box is the solution to our problems, we remain passive and alienated, never taking control control of our own fates.
Anarchy rejects this authority of the majority over the minority. Anarchy rejects the authority of any group over any other group. Anarchy is about upholding each individual’s autonomy and dismantling the authority forced on us by oppressive actors.
Democracy is a hierarchy of coercive power. What happens when the minority disagrees with the majority? They are either forced to conform, or forced to leave. Democracy either promotes or enables the marginalization of minority groups while putting the onus on them to ‘speak up, be heard, and vote for change’. “Power to the people”, means “Power to the most powerful group of people”. The more power the majority group has, the less power the marginalized minority groups have.
Finally, democracy has proven endlessly throughout history that it enables the authority of brutal power hierarchies starting from its inception in ancient Greece; where only free land-owning men were allowed to participate in the direct democracy system. Democracy is responsible for some of the worst atrocities in history. More than we could list here. But, to scratch the surface:
- Funneling wealth to the ruling class leaving billions in poverty
- The Armenian genocide
- US Oil wars
- South African Apartheid
- Palestinian Apartheid
- Prison states
- The democratically empowered Nazi genocide
- The US carpet bombing of Vietnam
- Guatemalan death squads
- Slavery in the USA (representative democracy) and in ancient Greece (direct democracy)
- and more
Democracy is a tool that maintains the tyrannical capitalist status quo.
So do anarchists support democracy?
Anarchy is the opposition to authority. It is taking a stand against every form of oppression. It is the quest to limit the suffering afflicted on people by those who rule them. Anarchy is against all rulers, including democratic ones. Anarchy and democracy are incompatible.
** Are Anarchists Allies With Other Anti-Capitalists?
Anarchists oppose authority. Temporary alliances can make sense when two groups share common or at least compatible goals, but when one of the groups aims to create the conditions that will oppress the other group, an alliance wouldn’t be in the oppressed group’s interests.
Since most Marxist and democratic socialist groups aim to wield the power of the government and more broadly, the state form, and have shown countless times that they will use that power against anarchists as soon as they get it, there’s simply no way for anarchists and authoritarian socialists to find common ground. Anarchists would be shooting themselves in the foot by helping authoritarians grasp for power.
To be an anarchist is to abhor rulership, government and the coercive machinations of politicians. There’s no way for an anarchist who allies themself with an authoritarian to be anything other than a patsy who is arming their own oppressor.
There are countless examples of Marxists betraying and mass-murdering anarchists in history: during the Spanish civil war, during the Russian Revolution and its aftermath in Ukraine (including the Kronstadt rebellion, the Bolshevik–Makhnovist conflict), in Korea when Marxists assassinated the leaders of KPAM, and in modern times every time the members of a communist party join forces with the police to violently beat and imprison anarchists, from Greece to China to Vietnam.
Democratic socialists have the same history of violently killing anti-capitalists from outside their party, including in Germany during 1919, when the ruling democratic socialists violently put down the Spartacist uprising, with one of the most famous casualties being orthodox Marxist Rosa Luxemburg, as well as scores of anarchists.
Anarchists are only allies with those who seek to dismantle systems of domination, not simply change the strongman who gets to crack the whip.
** What About Healthcare?
There have been numerous alternatives to both state-run and capitalist models of healthcare throughout history. Revolutionary Catalonia (1936–1939) was a pioneer in universal public health care. Managed by worker collectives, these revolutionaries showed medical care could be organized without government oversight or profiteering private companies.
Similarly, the Welsh Tredegar Workmen’s Medical Aid Society in the UK directly demonstrated for 50 years how communities could establish their own thriving healthcare systems through mutual aid. The society, run by iron and coal workers, catered to the specific needs of its members, offering a variety of medical and health benefits. Services across several hospitals and clinics included convalescent and maternity homes, ultraviolet treatments, glasses, dentures, prosthetic limbs, dietary supplements, injections, health foods, medications, X-rays, and even wigs were supplied.
These pioneering systems greatly inspired the formation of the Spanish SNS and British NHS, although their non-hierarchical features were naturally abolished as part of the shift to state control.
To dismantle the state and capital’s grip on healthcare and restore the medical system to anarchy, it’s important to implement collective decision-making that involves all stakeholders, particularly those most affected by the medical policies that affect them. Prioritizing the integration of medical knowledge and expertise without bestowing special political power on the administrators and practitioners is crucial: a horizontal organization where medical professionals share their knowledge as equals within the community instead of dominating and ruling over those who lack their expertise. It is important to acknowledge that medical care is intertwined with wider social issues that impact the entire community, and these issues must be addressed in a holistic manner.
** Do Anarchists Support Money?
There are several conflicting proposals for anarchist economic systems, including Mutualism and Anarcho-Communism.
Mutualists promote decentralized, community-based monetary systems that facilitate equitable exchange without the accumulation of interest or profit. It emphasizes mutual credit, local currencies, and labor-backed tokens, aiming to create a monetary environment aligned with cooperative values and social equity.
Anarcho-communists, on the other hand, seek to abolish or drastically reduce the role of money in society altogether, replacing it with direct distribution of goods and services based on need, and communal cooperation to freely share resources. Anarcho-communists see money as an oppressive tool that fosters inequality and alienation, and advocate for minimizing or eliminating its use entirely.
All anarchists oppose extracting rent or profit—such as interest or usury. Mutualists aim for an economic future where money functions as a facilitator of exchange rather than a source of wealth. The goal is to prevent capital accumulation through monetary means and promote equitable access to resources.
Using mutualist economics, money would be decentralized, locally issued, and tied to specific communities or cooperatives. These local currencies would be designed to circulate within the community, maintaining local economic autonomy and reducing dependence on national or global monetary systems.
In practice, mutualist communities might use a combination of mutual credit, local currencies, and barter arrangements. The focus would be on facilitating equitable exchange, avoiding interest payments, and promoting producers’ self-sufficiency.
Anarcho-communists especially emphasize mutual support, sharing surplus resources freely with those in need, fostering social bonds and collective well-being. Goods can be distributed through systems like gift economy exchanges or managed as common resources (the “commons”) accessible to all members of the community.
With both anarcho-communism and mutualism, distribution often considers what individuals contribute to the community. Those who work or contribute more may receive more, but the focus is on meeting needs rather than profit or hierarchical privileges.
Regardless of the economic school of thought, anarchy aims to replace capitalist markets with voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. Replacing money within such a framework involves fundamental shifts in how resources are allocated, produced, and shared. Here are some ways anarchists can work to replace capitalism:
- A Resource-Based Economy: Instead of using money as a medium of exchange, communities could directly share resources and services based on needs and availability. This would involve communal ownership of the means of production and a focus on fulfilling everyone’s needs rather than generating profit for a few capitalists.
- Mutual Aid and Voluntary Cooperation: Social relationships would be based on mutual aid—people helping each other voluntarily—reducing the need for transactional currency. Goods and services would be exchanged through direct barter or community-based sharing systems.
- Decentralized Autonomous Communities: Localized, self-managed communities could coordinate through consensus or participatory decision-making. Resources would be allocated based on community agreements, and labor contributions would be recognized as fulfilling individual and collective needs.
- Labor Credits or Time Banks: Some proposals suggest replacing money with systems like time banking, where people earn credits for their work, which can then be used to access services. While still a form of exchange, it emphasizes social value rather than monetary profit. Historically, mutualist ideas have favored commodity money or labor notes—tokens representing actual labor or value contributed—rather than fiat money issued by governments. This approach aligns with the principle of valuing labor directly and avoiding the distortion caused by fiat currency creation and inflation.
- Communal Planning and Allocation: Resource distribution could be managed through decentralized planning, where communities collectively decide what to produce and how to share it, removing the need for monetary transactions.
- Mutual Credit Systems: Mutualism often advocates for the use of mutual credit systems—local currencies or credit exchanges—that facilitate exchange between individuals and cooperatives without relying on centralized money issued by a state or banking system. These systems are based on trust and reciprocal obligations, allowing communities to trade goods and services directly or through credit notes that are mutually recognized.
** What About Security?
Anarchist strategies for security focus on building resilient, self-sufficient communities rooted in mutual aid, non-hierarchical organization, and voluntary cooperation to maintain safety and social order. Emphasis is placed on non-violent conflict resolution, mediation, and restorative justice practices to address disputes and prevent escalation, aiming to build trust and cohesion within communities.
Anarchists believe in self-defense. Communities and individuals are empowered to defend themselves if necessary, emphasizing the importance of preparedness without reliance on state-controlled forces.
Instead of centralized police or military forces, anarchists favor mutual aid networks where community members support and protect each other. This can include neighborhood watch groups, community patrols, collective emergency response teams or even the temporary formation of militias to face external threats.
Security efforts are organized locally and autonomously, allowing communities to tailor their methods to their specific needs and values. This reduces reliance on a centralized authority and fosters direct accountability.
Education about bodily autonomy, social responsibilities, and conflict de-escalation is prioritized to reduce the likelihood of violence or theft, fostering a culture of mutual respect and understanding.
Militias need to be organized without leaders or ranks, ensuring that all members have equal say and responsibility, preventing authoritarian tendencies from taking root. Participation in security is voluntary, respecting individual autonomy and avoiding coercion.
Anarchists understand that the state functions to protect and defend serious forms of harm and abuse, particularly those that serve the interests of those in power—be they economic, political, or social. For example, the state’s criminal justice systems tend to prioritize maintaining social order and property rights over addressing the root causes of violence or supporting survivors. In many cases, state responses to harm can be limited, punitive, and disempowering, ultimately taking away individuals’ agency and control over their own lives and not doing anything to solve the underlying problems at play.
Furthermore, anarchists see how the state’s systems criminalize and stigmatize victims and survivors, rather than providing genuine support or justice. By doing so, the state can perpetuate cycles of silence, shame, and disempowerment, making it harder for people to resist or challenge harmful structures. It can also suppress grassroots community efforts for accountability and healing, preferring instead to enforce top-down control.
Anarchists believe that real justice arises from communities taking responsibility into their own hands, rather than relying on state institutions that simply reinforce oppression. They emphasize the importance of empowering individuals and communities to define their own responses to harm, ensuring that agency remains with those directly affected and not with an apathetic bureaucracy. It’s important to reject the state’s attempts to co-opt or suppress genuine efforts at accountability and social change and advocate instead for decentralized, community-led approaches that respect and uphold personal agency and build collective responsibility.
** What About Prisons?
Anarchists advocate for the complete abolition of prisons because they view these institutions as inherently oppressive and unjust. Prisons are seen as expressions of state power that serve to uphold existing social hierarchies—particularly those related to race, class, and gender—by disproportionately targeting marginalized communities. From an anarchist perspective, incarceration perpetuates systemic inequalities and fails to address the root causes of social harm.
Instead of punitive measures to control the population, anarchists support the development and expansion of community-based, non-coercive forms of justice. This means restorative justice, transformative justice, and community accountability practices that aim to repair harm, foster understanding among people, and rebuild relationships in communities torn apart by the state’s cruel divide and conquer policies.
Anarchists reject the legitimacy of the state and law enforcement to deny people freedom. Prison abolitionists focus on addressing the underlying social, economic, and psychological factors that contribute to harmful behaviors, emphasizing healing and reconciliation rather than punishment and confinement.
Anarchists view prisons as a component of the broader state machinery that consolidates power through its monopoly on violence. They recognize that law enforcement agencies, which operate within a rigid framework of hierarchy, violence and coercion, are inherently joined to the prison system, feeding it mostly impoverished people and minorities for using drugs, stealing from capitalists or struggling with mental illness. Therefore, advocating for prison abolition also involves challenging the legitimacy of law enforcement institutions altogether, seeing them as tools of social control that perpetuate inequality and repression.
The prison abolition movement, rooted in anarchist principles, envisions a society where community members collectively take responsibility for addressing social harms without relying on coercive hierarchical institutions. It seeks to dismantle the entire carceral system and replace it with networks of support, dialogue, and mutual aid—building communities based on solidarity rather than punishment.
** How Do Anarchists Handle Sexual Violence?
Anarchists approach sexual violence with an emphasis on community-based, autonomous responses that prioritize survivor empowerment, accountability, and transformative justice. They reject reliance on state institutions like police or courts, which are often perpetuate harm, disempower survivors, and maintain systemic inequalities. Instead, anarchists advocate for alternative models rooted in mutual aid, consensus, and collective responsibility.
Anarchists also fully support utilizing direct action when dealing with violent actors if necessary. Self-defense, whether by the victim or the broader community, is always supported. Anarchists always advocate for communities to take responsibility for their own protection. In situations of violence, they view direct intervention—such as confronting or removing the violent individual—as essential for ensuring immediate safety and preventing additional harm.
Many anarchists emphasize that any direct action should be rooted in principles of accountability, non-coercion, and safety. The goal is often to address harm without perpetuating cycles of violence or creating new forms of domination. The approach should ideally be decided by the survivor. Some may favor community-based conflict resolution, while others may prefer more direct interventions.
Anarchists recognize that social inequalities, patriarchy, misogyny, trauma, and lack of support systems greatly contribute to sexual violence. Therefore, a significant part of a strategy for anarchist justice involves transforming these social conditions—promoting gender equity, mental health support, education, and community solidarity—to reduce the likelihood of harm occurring.
Preventing sexual violence involves community education about consent, power dynamics, and healthy relationships. Building a culture of respect and mutual care is seen as essential to reducing the harm of the patriarchy. Anarchists believe survivors of sexual violence should always be empowered to lead their own healing processes, participate actively in community-based accountability efforts, and have their safety, autonomy, and well-being prioritized in any response to violent individuals.
Anarchists believe that communities should take responsibility for addressing harm directly. This involves creating safe spaces where survivors can share their experiences, seek support, and participate in decisions about how to respond to the harm. Anarchist groups ensure survivors have agency and control over their healing process. This involves listening to their needs, respecting their choices, and providing resources that support their autonomy.
** How Do Anarchists Approach Ecology?
As always, anarchists call for communities to have direct control over their ecosystems, emphasizing sustainable lifeways and ecological justice without hierarchical or corporate interference.
Anarchists favor local, community-based decision-making to ensure ecological concerns are addressed directly by those most affected, rather than through state authorities or corporations that are always completely displaced from the ecosystems they exploit for profit.
Anarchists promote collective efforts to restore and protect ecosystems, emphasizing solidarity and shared responsibility among communities and individuals as well as direct action to protect ecosystems from attack by vested interests.
Anarchists advocate for reducing consumption and living in harmony with nature to mitigate environmental degradation. The current system of concrete and tar covered industrial population centers needs to be dismantled so that people live *with* their ecosystem rather than attempting to erase it. This is the only way people will respect the land that gives them life and correlate its suffering with their own. People who are displaced from the ecosystem rarely learn to treasure it.
Anarchists repudiate capitalism and state policies that prioritize profit over ecological health. Anarchists put their lives on the line to challenge exploitative practices like deforestation, pollution, and resource extraction.
Anarchists envision a world where ecological considerations are integrated into all aspects of life, fostering a culture of respect for the environment and recognizing the intrinsic value of all living beings.
Overall, anarchists seek to create a society rooted in ecological sustainability, ecological justice, and autonomy, believing that true environmental stewardship can only be achieved without the use of oppressive hierarchies, which always end up being used to protect the industries that despoil the wilds for profit.
** Are Anarchists Vegan?
Anarchists are opposed to all forms of oppressive and exploitative systems. Therefore, it is logical for anarchists to adopt diets that do not rely on the exploitation and suffering of other beings.
Many anarchists make the ethical decision to follow a vegan way of life as part of their opposition to animal exploitation, industrial food production, and the associated environmental degradation that accompanies it. They frequently promote veganism as a means of resisting systemic violence and exploitation perpetuated by the meat industrial complex, which enslaves, tortures, and kills animals for profit, while also taking advantage of the largely impoverished migrant workforce forced to work in this sector.
Nevertheless, as can be expected in all diverse groups, not every anarchist adheres to a vegan diet. Some anarchists prefer to concentrate primarily on issues related to anti-capitalism, class, union membership, or other causes, and their dietary choices may be influenced by a mix of religious beliefs, cultural habits, gluttony and apathy. For various reasons, these anarchists opt not to extend their ethical opposition against domination to non-human animals.
There are possibly a few anarchists who have significant health concerns that preclude a vegan diet, and potentially some indigenous anarchists who live off of the land in remote Northern regions where vegetation is sparse. But generally anarchists who enjoy consuming the flesh of others are considered hypocrites and frauds by vegan anarchists. This rank hypocrisy also extends to individuals who identify as anarchists yet seek to excuse other oppressive systems they partake in, such as the patriarchy. Many anarchists possess ideological shortcomings that they are not prepared to confront. It is important to recognize that people are not perfect, and it would be naive to assume that anarchists are exceptional.
In conclusion, while veganism is a prevalent practice among anarchists, particularly those who emphasize animal rights and environmental issues, it is not a universal or defining trait of anarchism as a whole, as there remain many individuals who identify with anarchist principles but are unwilling to undertake the challenging work of dismantling all their authoritarian attachments.
** How Do Anarchists View Global Trade?
Anarchists generally don’t advocate for global trade and instead promote a perspective that emphasizes local markets, cottage industries, decentralization and mutual aid.
Rather than supporting centralized, hierarchical systems of international commerce, where labor exploitation and ecosystem destruction can be hidden out of sight, anarchists advocate for alternative, local models rooted in sustainable resource-management, voluntary cooperation among skilled artisans and strong autonomy.
Decentralized and local economies are integral to anarchist economics. Promoting both local production and consumption to reduce reliance on global supply chains is important to counter the immeasurable harm of globalized industry. This can involve community-based markets, cooperatives, free stores and the formation of local currencies.
Alternative trade networks need to be built which prioritize mutual aid, fair trade initiatives, and decentralized barter systems that bypass conventional global trade institutions.
Anarchists have long been involved in anti-Globalization initiatives. Anarchists oppose large multinational corporations and inter-state trade agreements that invariably form the backbone of the exploitative and oppressive capitalist system, undermining both individual autonomy and collective labor bargaining.
In challenging capitalist markets, anarchists utilize direct action and solidarity efforts, engaging in protests, strikes, sabotage and campaigns to challenge corporate influence and push for local, direct control over economic practices.
Anarchists often work to build autonomous zones and cooperative networks within their communities. Creating these self-managed zones that operate outside state and corporate control is a good way to demonstrate to curious onlookers that there are other ways to organize economic activity and trade: Promoting mutual aid, bartering, gift economies and emphasizing local production by skilled artisans rather than outsourcing labor to a faraway land where ethical standards and practices may be lacking.
Alienating consumers from the production process and disenfranchising local artisans does untold damage to communities and their ability to sustain themselves without capitalism and the state.
Emphasizing voluntary exchanges based on mutual benefit rather than profit, often through cooperative organizations and networks is how anarchists aim to replace global trade. Certain integral goods that can’t be produced locally would need to be sourced by sending trade delegations to negotiate with producers in other localities and ideally to directly inspect their supply chains for ethical breaches.
Anarchists critique the current global trade system for fostering inequality, environmental degradation, and exploitation, and seek to replace it with decentralized, equitable, and sustainable alternatives rooted in community self-determination.
** What Do Anarchists Think About Religion?
Anarchists’ perspectives on religion can vary widely, reflecting the broad diversity within anarchist thought. Most often, anarchists will critique organized religion for its role in maintaining social hierarchies, authority structures, and systems of oppression. Most anarchists see religious institutions as tools used to legitimize and perpetuate power dynamics that anarchists oppose, such as capitalism, patriarchy, law, punishment and state authority.
Religious doctrines and dogmas are often used by authoritarians as tools for social control, limiting individual freedom and critical thinking which would endanger the rule of law. Anarchists typically oppose the indoctrination and conformity promoted by religious institutions.
That being said, a lot of anarchists hold a personal spirituality. Not all anarchists are atheists. Some advocate for personal, non-institutionalized spiritual practices that emphasize individual freedom, direct experience, and community without the need for hierarchical structures.
While there are some anarchists who support hierarchical organized religions, including some of the most oppressive religious institutions in the world, they generally convince themselves their sect’s interpretation of the institution and its dogma is non-oppressive. Atheist anarchists would argue these religious anarchists are unable to break from the lifetime of indoctrination they’ve ingested, and by convincing themselves their religion is misunderstood by 99.9% of its adherents and they have the true (non-oppressive) interpretation, they are able to overlook the apparent contradiction between a faith with a past and present steeped in fire and brimstone, and their anarchist attachments.
Christianity specifically has only embraced a stance of tolerance and peace in times when it hasn’t had real power over society, yet even then, it has acted to defend the powerful and to instruct the powerless to “turn the other cheek”. Even when the Christian church is not actively participating in the oppression waged by the state, it has played a crucial role in justifying and sustaining it. For centuries, the church has kept the working class in bondage by sanctifying the rule of earthly authorities, teaching the oppressed that resistance to power is inherently sinful or immoral and that we will be punished by God for resisting the authority of slavers and tyrants. It has worked for two centuries to reinforce the social order, instructing the downtrodden to accept their fate and be rewarded for their docility in the afterlife.
Our rulers have historically drawn their legitimacy from divine approval granted by the church—whether by claiming they govern by God’s will or asserting that wealth is a sign of divine favor. The Bible has been wielded as a tool to elevate obedience as a cardinal virtue, urging submission to authority and deflecting resistance. Passages that exalt the role of rulers and call for the submission of subjects have been used as justification for injustice, maintaining hierarchies and class divisions and even enforcing slavery.
More recent theological innovations, like the Protestant work ethic, have further entrenched this oppressive system. It frames poverty as a moral failing, while wealth is seen as evidence of divine blessing. This narrative not only rationalizes social inequality but compels the working class to see their suffering as a moral duty, subtly reinforcing the status quo. In these ways, the church has not just been complicit in the oppression wrought by state and capital, but often acts as its chief defender, embedding it deeply within both spiritual and social structures.
Through these lenses, Christianity, when aligned with political and economic power, has most often served as a tool of control rather than liberation—a force that has maintained the status quo of inequality and subjugation, even under the guise of moral or spiritual authority.
Since anarchy readily embraces diversity, it should be expected for anarchists to also embrace healthy contradiction. While it’s true that the vast majority of anarchists reject the governing religious institutions, especially Christianity, there is a subset of anarchists who choose to base their entire politics on that religion. This next section of the FAQ is for Christians.
** I’m a Christian, Can I Be An Anarchist?
Christian anarchism is a blended political and theological philosophy that combines Christianity—particularly the teachings of Jesus—with anarchist principles. It holds that the only true authority is God, and that earthly governments and hierarchies are fundamentally in conflict with the teachings of Christ.
Christian anarchists point to Jesus’ life and teachings—especially the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7)—as advocating for a radical form of nonviolence, love of enemies, and rejection of worldly power. To describe their embrace of a pacifistic strain of anarchism, they cite select passages from the Bible, including:
“Turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39)
“Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44)
“My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36)
“We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)
Christian anarchists believe that the state, with its reliance on violence, war, law enforcement, and coercion, is fundamentally at odds with Jesus’ message of love and compassion. They often argue that governments demand allegiance that should be reserved for God alone, that laws enforced by the threat of state violence contradict the gospel and that participation in the state’s wars or in capital punishment is incompatible with Christian ethics.
Most Christian anarchists are inspired by Leo Tolstoy – The Russian author and pacifist whose book The Kingdom of God is Within You is their foundational text. He saw the state as incompatible with Christianity. He believed that the fundamental teachings of Jesus, particularly his calls for nonviolence, love, and forgiveness, directly contradicted the coercive and violent nature of the state. Tolstoy’s understanding of Christianity was deeply rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus emphasized peace, loving one’s enemies, and renouncing the use of force. For Tolstoy, the state, by its very nature, relies on violence, authority, and coercion, all of which he saw as antithetical to these core teachings of Christ.
Jesus’ own life was marked by a rejection of material wealth. He chose a life of simplicity and poverty, often traveling with little more than the clothes on his back. In passages like Matthew 8:20, where Jesus says, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” the Gospel underscores his renunciation of worldly possessions. This voluntary poverty is seen not only as a personal choice but as a deliberate act of solidarity with the poor and marginalized. For many radical Christian thinkers, Jesus’ rejection of wealth was a direct critique of the accumulation of riches and the inequality that it breeds.
Jesus’ teachings consistently warned of the dangers of wealth. In passages like Matthew 19:24, where he states, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” Jesus highlighted the moral and spiritual peril of material wealth. His admonitions to the rich young ruler in Luke 18:22, “Sell everything you have and give to the poor,” further underscore his belief that the pursuit of riches was incompatible with the pursuit of spiritual integrity. These teachings were often read by later Christian radicals as a direct critique of not just personal greed but the very systems—such as capitalism—that perpetuate wealth inequality and the concentration of power in the hands of a few.
** How Do Anarchists Approach Parenting?
Anarchists parent children in diverse ways, but always emphasizing principles such as non-coercion, mutual respect, honesty, autonomy, and egalitarian relationships. Since anarchy rejects hierarchical structures and systems of authority and domination, anarchist parents work to foster environments where children are encouraged to think independently, express themselves freely, and participate actively in any decision-making processes that affect them.
Some common characteristics of anarchist approaches to parenting include:
- Respect for Autonomy: Recognizing children as individuals with their own thoughts and emotions, and encouraging their independence and self-expression.
- Non-Coercive Discipline: Avoiding punitive or authoritarian discipline methods, opting instead for open communication, understanding, education and guidance.
- Collaborative Decision-Making: Involving children in family decisions to impart a sense of responsibility and encourage respect for individual perspectives.
- Modeling Values: Demonstrating principles like equality, kindness, mutual aid, self-determination, self-defense and anti-authoritarianism through everyday interactions.
- Flexible Boundaries: Establishing household rules that are negotiated rather than imposed, fostering trust and mutual understanding between child and parent.
- Educational Philosophy: Supporting experiential, child-led learning rather than strict adherence to traditional schooling models, sometimes incorporating alternative education philosophies like unschooling or having the child engage in independent study before teaching you what they learned.
It’s important to note that there isn’t a single “anarchist parenting” model; approaches vary widely based on individual beliefs and circumstances. Overall, anarchist parenting seeks to empower children as autonomous individuals within a supportive, non-hierarchical, safe and stable environment.
** Are Anarchists Violent?
The monopoly on violence is when the state (or a central authority) is the only entity legally permitted to use or authorize the use of physical force within the lands it claims as its territory. This concept was most notably articulated by sociologist Max Weber, who argued that the state’s legitimacy derives from its exclusive right to wield violence, either through the police or the military. Anarchists strongly reject the state’s monopoly on violence. From an anarchist perspective, the state’s monopoly on violence is seen as a tool used to maintain hierarchical structures, suppress dissent, and enforce laws that serve the interests of ruling elites rather than the common people.
When anarchists advocate for the use of violence, they’re clear it must be decentralized and accountable to the community rather than centralized in heavily-insulated state institutions. Anarchists opt for direct action and self-defense practiced by communities or affinity groups, rather than state-led violence or militarized law enforcement.
Anarchists engage in direct action as a means of expressing their principles and advocating for social change outside traditional political channels. This approach emphasizes immediate, voluntary, and decentralized actions aimed at challenging authority, disrupting oppressive systems, or raising awareness about injustice. Direct action can involve violence when it is needed, for example to disrupt fascist organizing, to prevent pipeline building through water bodies or to defend migrants who are being targeted by the police for deportation.
While some anarchists are happy to engage in violent actions, others explicitly oppose violence and advocate for non-violent methods of social change. The diversity within anarchist movements means that violence is neither inherent nor universally endorsed, but most anarchists see no problem with using force when necessary, either as self defense, or to defend marginalized members of their community, so long as the force isn’t backed by a central authority such as a state or private security firm.
Anarcho-pacifists practice nonviolence and peaceful methods to promote social change and oppose hierarchical authority. They advocate for a stateless society where conflicts are resolved entirely through dialogue, mutual aid, and non-violent resistance rather than through the use of force. While they still employ methods of direct action, they opt for peaceful methods such as marches, sit-ins, civil disobedience, community-building activities, and promoting principles of compassion, cooperation, and respect for all individuals.
Illegalists are anarchists who advocate for or engage in illegal activities as political praxis. The term is historically associated with certain anarchist movements in the late 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup> centuries that employed illegal acts, such as theft or sabotage, as a means of resistance against the state and capitalism.
Illegalist actions have sometimes involved violent acts, but not all illegalists are necessarily violent. Their methods and philosophies vary; some may emphasize property crime or sabotage that doesn’t involve violence against persons, while others have embraced violent tactics up to and including assassination of robber barons and presidents. It’s important to recognize that the term encompasses a diverse range of individuals and strategies, and their actions depend on specific contexts and motivations.
In conclusion, anarchists can be violent or they can be non-violent depending on the anarchist, but no anarchist would confuse the isolated use of force by an individual to defend themself or their community with the hierarchical authority that is the state’s monopoly on violence, which is more often than not employed to protect the class of robber barons from the downtrodden peasants they exploit.
** Who Were the Haymarket Martyrs?
The Haymarket Affair was a pivotal event in the history of labor activism and radical politics. It is widely regarded as a turning point that galvanized the international labor movement and highlighted the tensions between workers seeking better conditions and the brutal authorities who would go to any length to prevent change.
During the late 19<sup>th</sup> century, industrialization had led to harsh working conditions, low wages, and long hours for the majority of workers in the industrial world. The movement for an eight-hour workday gained momentum, with protests and strikes occurring across the United States and internationally. On May Day in 1886, thousands of workers participated in a nationwide strike for the eight-hour work day.
In Chicago, USA, organizers held a rally in Haymarket Square to support the strike and advocate for workers’ rights. Anarchists were largely the architects of the union movement in Chicago, using the issue of the day to galvanize workers towards a greater class war that could result in a social revolution and the creation of a free society.
As the rally was winding down, police attempted to disperse the crowd. Suddenly, an unknown individual threw a bomb into the police line, resulting in the deaths of several police officers and civilians, and multiple injuries. The police then opened fire indiscriminately into the crowd, causing more death and injury, and then reloaded their guns and did it again.
The incident was exploited by authorities and capitalists to crack down on labor organizers, especially anarchists. In the aftermath, eight anarchists were arrested and tried, accused of conspiracy related to the bombing. Despite there being no evidence linking them to the bombing, seven were convicted; four were executed by hanging, one committed suicide in prison, and others received long prison sentences.
The Haymarket Martyrs are commemorated in anarchist history for paying the ultimate price for advocating for anarchy. Their story challenges official narratives that portray authority figures as protectors of average citizens and instead emphasizes their role in defending the systemic oppression of citizens. Their deaths galvanized support for the eight-hour work day, which was finally achieved in the 20<sup>th</sup> century. They serve as a reminder of the importance of revolutionary ideals and how the ongoing fight against tyranny and exploitation can require the ultimate sacrifice.
** What is Workerism?
Workerism is any ideology or worldview that strives to structure society around work, the working class, the workplace and workers, often while failing to critique these things.
Workerism, or operaismo, was of particular significance in Italian left-wing politics, being largely embraced by Italian political groups including anarcho-communists. The workerists followed Marx’s lead in seeking to base their politics on an investigation of working class life and struggle.
Some anarchists, especially egoists, nihilists and other anti-left tendencies would argue a workerist lacks the imagination to see beyond a work-based existence, to constructive-play focused ways of life that prioritize joy over sacrifice and productivity.
** What is Constructive Play?
Post-work anarchists, also known as anti-work anarchists, seek a new way of life based on constructive play rather than work. They reject the stagnant workerist ideologies put forth by capitalists and socialists alike and instead encourage parting with the work industrial complex in totality.
Alfredo M. Bonanno:
<quote>
“Play is characterized by a vital impulse that is always new, always in movement. By acting as though we are playing, we charge our action with this impulse. We free ourselves from death. Play makes us feel alive. It gives us the excitement of life. In the other model of acting we do everything as though it were a duty, as though we ‘had’ to do it. It is in the ever new excitement of play, quite the opposite to the alienation and madness of capital, that we are able to identify joy.”
</quote>
** Do Anarchists Not Want to Work?
Anarchists have always been critical of traditional work structures and pursued the abolition of the oppressive labor arrangements industrial society has long upheld. Anarchists challenge the idea that the system of work—which always includes exploitation to some degree—is inherently necessary or desirable for human fulfillment or societal well-being. All anarchists have strived to expose how capitalism commodifies the workforce and how the system of work creates exploitation, inequality, and alienation. A shared objective in any anarchist movement is opposing hierarchical authority in workplaces and instead advocating for voluntary cooperation and self-management. Anarchist historians and anthropologists have outlined how in societies across the world, work as we know it depends on coercion and exploitation, a system of superiors and inferiors.
When anarchists advocate for a Post-Work Society, they envision a future where work is significantly reduced or eliminated, replaced by leisure, communal activities, and autonomous living. Anarchists want to foster a world where individual and collective autonomy over one’s labor and life choices is the default, a world where we aren’t forced against our will to labor for others to survive.
In practice, anti-work advocates may promote ideas like voluntary labor, community-based projects, or alternative ways of life that minimize or altogether avoid conventional work. The goal is to create a society where human needs are met without the imposition of oppressive and alienating labor systems.
The anti-work movement gained visibility through anarchist literature that critiques work culture and promotes alternatives aligned with anarchist and anti-capitalist ideals. The idea was popularized on anarchist forums such as Raddle, before being co-opted by Marxists and liberals who attempt to strip it of its anarchist origins and water it down so that it doesn’t actually promote abolishing work.
To abolish work is to replace it with more equitable, fulfilling, and voluntary activities. The core principle remains challenging traditional work paradigms rooted in hierarchy, exploitation, and alienation.
** How Did the Anarchist Critique of Work Originate?
Egoism is the philosophy of Max Stirner as described in his most famous work, “The Unique and Its Property” and expanded upon later in “Stirner’s Critics”. A 19<sup>th</sup> century existentialist philosopher, Stirner was one of the earliest known exponents of anarchy inside industrial Europe. Egoism stands apart from later workerist offshoots of anarchism like anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism by refraining from glorifying work, the factory and other exploitative social constructs.
Egoism emphasizes the individual and their unique will and rejects any abstractions (“phantasms”) and their influence (“haunting”) on the actions, thoughts, feelings, and desires of the individual (“The Unique”). As such, Egoism is opposed to humanism, liberalism, statism, morality, ideology, work ethic, social custom, religion, tradition and other fixed ideas that are projected onto us by external forces. Stirner posits that The Unique pursue it’s own interests, whatever they may be, free of any reservations born from phantasms.
Like most currents of post-work or anti-work anarchy, egoism rejects the idea of mass social revolution, seeing it as a time of violent and unpredictable turmoil which could very easily give rise to new hierarchies that serve new tyrants who rush in to fill the power vacuum.
Instead, egoists and other post-work anarchists favor more evolutionary methods of making anarchy: A focus on alternative experiences and social experiments, as well as education and the demonstration of radical modes of living which can easily create anarchy in the world today, in the current time and place, serving the current population.
A lot of anarchists don’t believe it’s in any way desirable for individuals to wait for a pie-in-the-sky social revolution before they can begin to experience anarchy. Post-work anarchists have no qualms about celebrating life by fully-embracing alternative experiences and lifestyles outside of what is offered within the current social system.
Workerist anarchists are quick to demean post-work anarchists such as egoists, anti-civs and green nihilists as “lifestylists” for not adhering to whatever workerist program their off-shoot of stateless socialism decrees as necessary to achieving revolution. Like all socialists, workerist anarchists would rather focus their energies on recruiting workers to their cause and growing their unions in the hopes that they (or more realistically their distant descendants) can accumulate numbers big enough to bring about their much-coveted socialist revolution.
Post-work anarchists want no part of any program designed by others to limit them, control them or curtail their individual desires in order to compel them to pursue a collective ideological agenda passed down by long-dead European philosophers who lived in a different time and place and had different ideals, customs and objectives than anyone living in the world today.
Egoists reject the idea that the individual should have to sacrifice for the benefit of the “greater good” and instead they posit that cooperation, the formation of social bonds, altruism and mutual aid are inherently desirable because these things benefit the individual as much as they benefit the collective. For this reason, Stirner advocated for a “union of egoists”: Multiple egoists voluntarily associating with one another to fulfill a purpose, goal, or even to simply enjoy eachother’s company; free of any coercion or obligation. It’s essentially the earliest form of the anarchist concept of freedom of association.
Despite common misconceptions, egoists have nothing against relying on or working with others to achieve a mutually-shared goal. Egoism posits that kindness and charity is born from empathy, not morality. People give and help each other because it feels good for most people to do so, in this sense, what we call “altruism” is simply a side-effect of egoism.
Egoism embraces any act that is done out of the individual’s desire to commit the act. If the act is born from obligation, it is not an egoist action. Egoism supports the individual doing exactly what the individual pleases — taking no notice of God, state, morality or society.
To Stirner, “rights” were merely specters in the mind, coercing us to act in a certain way in order to benefit externalities like the state. He held that society does not exist but “the individuals are its reality”.
** Why Do Anarchists Oppose Rights?
Anarchists critique the concept of rights primarily because they see it as rooted in hierarchical, state-centered, or capitalist frameworks that can reinforce authority, inequality, and coercion. The critiques of rights often focus on the limitations, assumptions, and potential harm associated with rights as traditionally conceived. Stirner was likely the originator of the rejection of rights as a concept, but modern anarchists such as Bob Black (“The Myth of Human Rights”) and ziq (“But the Government Said I Have Rights”) have written in length about the subject.
Rights are upheld as constructs of authority. Many anarchists argue that rights granted by authorities—states, legal systems, or institutions—can be used to legitimize power and control rather than promote the genuine freedom of the people governed by the authority.
Rights are always limited and conditional—anarchists reject the idea that rights are granted or protected by the state, as this inevitably leads to the state imposing arbitrary limitations and exclusions to certain classes and groups of people e.g. undocumented migrants, women, homosexuals. The limitations on rights undermine autonomy and restrict mutual aid efforts by criminalizing anyone who offers help to the groups who are denied rights.
Rights can reinforce hierarchies—by framing individuals as entitled to certain privileges, rights can uphold social hierarchies and inequalities, especially when rights are unevenly distributed or selectively enforced, which they invariably are. Rights are often used by the state to divide and conquer: The emphasis on individual rights can create divisions among people and groups, leading to fear and competition rather than solidarity, which is contrary to anarchist principles of mutual aid and collective liberation.
Rights tend to serve capitalist or state interests. Anarchists see rights language as a tool used by states and corporations to legitimize property rights, exploitation, and control, rather than the fostering of genuine liberation and social justice.
Rights are simply not enough for true liberation. Anarchists often argue that the granting of rights are merely legal or formal protections that do not challenge the underlying power structures in place. Instead, anarchists advocate for direct action, social transformation, and the abolition of oppressive systems rather than relying on rights-based reforms to the oppressive systems.
Instead of focusing on rights, anarchists emphasize free association, mutual aid, self-determination, and collective decision-making as the foundations for a just and free society. They seek to build relationships and institutions based on voluntary cooperation, rather than scattered legal entitlements for certain people.
** What Are Some Examples of Anarchist Societies and Communities?
*** The Free Territory (Makhnovshchina) in Ukraine (1918–1921)
Led by Nestor Makhno, was an expansive anarchist territory during the Russian Revolution. Peasant armies and workers’ councils controlled the territory through voluntary associations, with an emphasis on anti-authoritarianism. The Free Territory demonstrated the feasibility of large-scale anarchist-inspired self-management during social upheaval.
Policies were exercised through local councils (soviets) and assemblies composed of workers, peasants, and soldiers. These bodies made decisions collectively, emphasizing direct participation and discussion. Communities and military units operated based on voluntary association, rejecting hierarchical authority structures typical of state systems. Factories and land were collectivized and managed by workers and peasants themselves, without top-down control. This meant economic activities were organized democratically, with decision-making power in the hands of those directly involved.
There was no Standing Army in the Traditional Sense: The military was organized as a voluntary militia, with soldiers choosing to participate and having a say in military decisions. The Makhnovists promoted mutual aid—community members helped each other in farming, production, and defense. Their social practices prioritized cooperation over competition.
While Nestor Makhno was a prominent leader, the movement emphasized consensus and voluntary adherence rather than authoritarian command. Leadership was based on mutual respect and consensus, not coercion. The movement rejected centralized state authority, hierarchical military commands, and bureaucratic control, seeking instead to create a stateless and classless society. Their goal was to dismantle the oppressive structures of Tsarist Russia, the bourgeoisie, and the state. Instead, they aimed to establish voluntary associations, free communities, and a society based on anarchist principles. The Makhnovists sometimes allied with other revolutionary groups temporarily but maintained their independence and anti-authoritarian stance.
The Free Territory was crushed by Marxist forces led by the Bolsheviks, who declared the anarchists to be “bandits”. The Bolsheviks viewed the autonomous anarchist region as a threat to their efforts to consolidate power and suppress independent socialist movements in favor of a centralized authoritarian socialist state with Lenin as the ruler. The Red Army’s superior military resources and strategic campaigns overwhelmed the smaller, guerrilla-style anarchist forces. By 1921, the Bolsheviks had effectively defeated the anarchist movement in Ukraine. Nestor Makhno was forced into exile, fleeing to Romania and later France.
*** Freetown Christiania
Founded in 1971, remains active today, an intentional neighborhood that has managed to maintain a largely autonomous status for over five decades. The community was established by squatters in Copenhagen, Denmark, who occupied an abandoned military area and proclaimed it a free city. Due to this status, residents are not required to pay taxes and are able to sell marijuana and other drugs openly.
Freetown Christiania has always embodied an anarchist, communal ethos. The community discourages private property—residents are prohibited from owning private cars, for example—and maintains basic rules to prevent violence and crime, such as a ban on guns. Residents often live communally, with shared spaces and resources. It has a reputation for being a hub of alternative lifestyles, progressive arts, and activism. The community manages its affairs collectively, often through consensus-based decision-making.
In 2012, when the Danish government offered to sell the land occupied by Christiania to its residents, the community accepted. They formed a foundation to purchase the property, ensuring that the land would be owned collectively by the community.
*** Exarchia
A neighborhood in Athens, Greece, known for its strong association with anarchist, anti-authoritarian, and radical political movements. It has a long-standing reputation as a hub of counterculture activity, social activism, and resistance against state authority and capitalism. Exarchia has historically been a gathering place for anarchists who oppose government policies and advocate for decentralized, self-managed communities. The neighborhood is home to numerous alternative bookstores, cafes, squats, and art spaces that promote free expression and political engagement.
Throughout Greece’s modern history, especially during periods of political upheaval, Exarchia has been a center of resistance, notably during the military junta of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in subsequent protests against austerity and government reforms. Exarchia is often targeted by the Greek state for its defiance of authority. It often sees clashes with police, especially during protests, and maintains a reputation as a safe haven for anarchists, students, and activists. It embodies a spirit of rebellion rooted in anarchist principles.
*** The Shinmin Autonomous Region.
In 1924, the Korean Anarchist Communist Federation (KACF) began actively supporting the development of anarchist labor unions and promoting anti-imperialist sentiments in China. Five years later, the KACF declared the Shinmin province to be independent from China and declared their aim to establish a decentralized society within the region.
Like other anarchist communities, the KACF organized itself into a loose federation of councils, each governing specific areas, districts, and villages. These councils collaborated and made decisions independently on key issues such as agriculture, finance, and education, fostering local self-management. However, due to Japan’s imperialist ambitions to conquer the region and Stalin’s efforts to overthrow it, the federation was ultimately dismantled in 1931.
*** The Strandzha Commune
The Strandzha Commune in Bulgaria was an anarchist-inspired community declared on August 18, 1903. It was led by Mihail Gerdzhikov, a guerrilla leader associated with the Internal Macedonian Adrianople Revolutionary Organization. Despite having a small force of around 2,000 fighters, Gerdzhikov’s group established a provisional government in the Strandzha Mountains, challenging invading Ottoman forces that numbered approximately 10,500 soldiers. Within the commune, a communal system was implemented, with resources shared equally based on need. However, this short-lived experiment was suppressed by Ottoman troops just over a month later, on September 8, 1903.
*** Zomia
A vast geographical region inhabited by approximately 100 million people. Stretching from the Vietnamese highlands and Tibetan plateau to Afghanistan, Zomia is home to multiple anarchistic communities. Some political scientists, including Yale’s James Scott, view Zomia as the rejection of modern nation-states and consider it an example of anarchist society in practice.
In this region, states such as China and Vietnam lack control over many of these remote areas, leaving local communities largely autonomous in their governance. A lot of these cultures employ non-hierarchical social structures. The Wa people, for example, have social rules that limit the display of wealth and power, helping to maintain their non-hierarchical and egalitarian society.
Scott also contends that this form of society emerged as people fled from traditional nation-state systems to seek greater freedom. He further suggests that the absence of written language across Zomia is a deliberate choice by its inhabitants, aimed at avoiding the bureaucratic complexities associated with literacy and formal state administration.
*** The Hadza
The Hadzaare a protected hunter-gatherer Tanzanian indigenous ethnic group. They live around the Lake Eyasi basin in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. Several anthropologists who have lived with them have written that they embody aspects of anarchistic social organization. Their society is characterized by a high degree of egalitarianism with a strong aversion to hierarchy and formal leadership. Decisions are typically made collectively through consensus, and there are no permanent leaders or rigid social structures that enforce authority. People who attempt to assert authority other others are rejected socially.
The Hadza’s social practices emphasize sharing, cooperation, and mutual support, which reduces inequality and conflict over resources. Their mobility and subsistence diet fosters flexible social roles rather than fixed hierarchies. This decentralized and non-coercive way of organizing society aligns with principles commonly associated with anarchy.
** How Do Anarchists Who Live Together Divide Chores?
Anarchists in a shared living space handle the division of chores through the principles of mutual aid, voluntary cooperation, and consensus decision-making. Since anarchism emphasizes rejecting hierarchical authority, chores are often organized in a way that promotes equality, autonomy, and collective responsibility.
Housemates collaboratively decide on how chores are assigned using consensus, ensuring everyone’s input and agreement. They may hold regular meetings to discuss responsibilities and make adjustments to the agreement as needed. They may choose to employ rotating tasks so that chores are rotated regularly so that no one housemate bears the same responsibilities indefinitely, promoting fairness and variety.
Members choose chores based on their individual preferences and skills, fostering a sense of purpose, ownership and cooperation. Instead of strict divisions along class or gender lines, chores are viewed as communal tasks that everyone contributes to according to their ability, emphasizing collective care for the living space and the betterment of the residents’ living conditions.
A chore sharing system must be flexible, negotiable and adaptive, remaining open to change, allowing members to adapt chores to changing circumstances, abilities and preferences. Anarchist approaches to any communal living situation always prioritize cooperation, respect, and shared decision-making, aiming to create an egalitarian and harmonious living environment.
** How Do I Manage Interpersonal Conflicts with Other Anarchists?
Tackling interpersonal conflicts with other anarchists can require a combination of open communication, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to anarchist principles such as autonomy, anti-authoritarianism, and solidarity. It can take a lot of time and energy to resolve these conflicts, but as long as these basic values are shared, it should be doable. Here are some strategies to navigate conflicts effectively.
Active listening—Listen carefully to the other person’s perspective without immediate judgment or defensiveness. Show that you value their experience and viewpoint. As long as they’re not being abusive, don’t talk over them, let them have their say before you respond.
Express your concerns and feelings honestly but respectfully, while identifying common values and goals. Remember that, as anarchists, you share core principles like mutual aid, freedom of association and resistance to authority. Focusing on shared ideals can help bridge differences.
Establish boundaries—Recognize each other’s right to autonomy and differing approaches to problem solving. Respect the boundaries that have been set and always be careful not to control or dominate others in your social circle.
Seek consensus or mutual agreement—When possible, work toward consensus or at least mutual understanding rather than winning an argument. Emphasize cooperation over conflict.
Address issues promptly and directly—Don’t let conflicts fester. Address issues early while emotions are manageable, aiming for resolution rather than escalation. Avoid the temptation to break off into opposing cliques, which will only further social divisions and lead to intractable conflict and potentially violent rage.
Use mediation if needed. If conflicts are persistent, consider involving a neutral mediator from within your community who can facilitate dialogue. Be careful not to burden the mediator or expect too much of them, remember to respect their autonomy and boundaries too.
Always reflect on the power dynamics at play in any group. Be aware of any power imbalances and work to ensure that all voices are heard equally and that no one is treated unfairly due to any hierarchical elements that may develop in the group.
Prioritize solidarity and community building. Remember that maintaining relationships and community cohesion is vital. Focus on building trust and mutual support.
Be open to growth and change. Conflicts can be opportunities for learning. Be willing to adapt and grow from disagreements.
By emphasizing respectful dialogue and shared values, anarchists can navigate conflicts without compromising their principles, fostering stronger, more resilient communities, but in the event that someone in the group is being oppressive, or trying to build authority, don’t be afraid to exercise your freedom of association. You don’t have to get along with everyone.
** How Do I Live a Freer, More Anarchistic Life?
It can be a years-long process to align your everyday actions and choices with core anarchist principles such as autonomy, mutual aid, freedom of association, anti-authoritarianism, and direct action. It’s an ongoing, concentrated effort to move towards an anarchic way of life.
Always cultivate personal autonomy. Make decisions based on your values rather than external authority or societal expectations. Practice self-reliance and critical thinking.
Reduce your dependence on hierarchical systems as much as possible. Minimize reliance on institutions that concentrate power—such as large corporations, government agencies, or hierarchical workplaces—by supporting local economies, sharing resources with neighbors, and building autonomous community in any way you can.
Participate in mutual aid. Whether you organize it yourself or engage as a participant, look for ways to enact mutual support in your community—share resources, skills, and knowledge to strengthen community resilience and challenge the competitive, capitalistic mindset.
Practice direct action. Don’t wait for others to solve problems for you. Take initiative to address issues directly, whether through protests, community organizing, sabotage, or a variety of tangible personal choices, rather than waiting for top-down solutions to be presented to you.
Decentralize all the systems around you: Either create or support decentralized structures—like local cooperatives, grassroots groups, or affinity networks—that empower individuals and communities rather than centralized authorities like the City or the State.
Live simply and sustainably in every way you can. Reduce your material consumption and environmental impact, aligning your lifestyle with ecological sustainability and strong anti-consumerist principles. Practice what you preach.
Question authority and social norms every day of your life. Constantly challenge authority figures, societal norms, and traditional roles including gender roles. Be critical of every system of power you’re forced to interact with and refuse to accept them as natural or unchangeable.
Build community and solidarity everywhere you go. Develop relationships based on trust, mutual aid, and shared values. Collective resilience is key to living freely outside oppressive structures. You can’t do everything alone.
Educate and raise consciousness among your neighbors and co-workers. Share knowledge, challenge misinformation, and promote anarchist ideas within your community to foster collective liberation. Don’t let apathy and cruelty be normalized. Always speak up for the oppressed, always oppose injustice.
Continually assess your practices and beliefs and be ready to reflect on your mistakes, adapt to new surroundings and changing circumstances. Be open to change and always work on your personal growth. Achieving greater freedom means never closing yourself off to new experiences and people.
Living a freer, more anarchist life is an ongoing process of resisting oppressive systems and cultivating personal and collective autonomy. It’s about making intentional choices that align with anarchist values and contribute to both individual and collective liberation.
** What Are Some Important Texts to Read?
See [[https://raddle.me/wiki/reading]] for a comprehensive list. Each category has the texts arranged by their significance to each subject, so you can only read the texts most related to the topic at hand if you prefer. The list blends both classical and modern texts so you get a diverse perspective and it covers various schools of anarchy as well as related principles.
|
#title A No Borders manifesto
#author Anonymous
#LISTtitle No Borders manifesto
#SORTtopics no borders, manifesto, migration
#date 2012
#source Retrieved on 8 October 2015 from http://noborders.org.uk/news/no-borders-manifesto
#lang en
#pubdate 2015-10-08T09:16:31
**1.** Freedom of movement is not a right; it is a real living force. Despite all the obstacles that states put in people’s way — all the barriers of barbed wire, money, laws, ID cards, surveillance and so on — millions cross borders every day. For every migrant stopped or deported, many more get through and stay, whether legally or clandestinely. Don’t overestimate the strength of the state and its borders. Don’t underestimate the strength of everyday resistance.
**2.** In the 19th century, militants fighting against slavery in the US created an ‘underground railroad’ that smuggled many thousand runaway slaves to safety, as well as enabling acts of sabotage and rebellion. In the 20th century, the term was used again by the anti-Nazi resistance in Europe. Can No Borders become a 21st century underground railroad across Europe and beyond?
**3.** The most successful and inspiring No Borders work has been just about this: creating strong networks to support free movement across Europe’s borders. This is the infrastructure of a growing movement of resistance: contacts, information, resources, meeting points, public drop-ins, safe houses, and so on. A pool of formal and informal connections, a web of solidarity, working on both public and clandestine levels.
**4.** People manage to move, live, and evade state control because they are part of communities and networks. Migration happens because of millions of connections between millions of people. Our No Borders networks are one small part of this. Yet, as a movement, we can play an active role in bringing such connections together across national and cultural boundaries. Our struggle is one and the same.
**5.** People move for many different reasons. Many of the causes of global migration can be traced back to the West’s imperial and capitalist ventures: western-manufactured weapons and armed conflicts, wars of aggression in pursuit of oil and other natural resources, repressive regimes backed by Western governments, climate change and land grabs, and so on. But this is not the whole story. We shouldn’t overemphasise the role of western powers and fall into the trap of seeing people who migrate as helpless victims. People have always travelled in search of better living conditions, or simply to pursue their dreams and desires.
**6.** Modern states try to turn movement into a right that is granted or denied according to economic and political power. Elites and ‘first world’ citizens with purchasing power can travel and settle where they want, while the poor are controlled and criminalised. Some may be let through because they are deemed to be useful to the economy, or because they are classed as ‘genuine refugees’. Categories like refugee, asylum seeker, economic migrant and illegal immigrant are used to divide and control. This is why we use the term ‘migrant’ for all.
**7.** There are many fronts to fight on against this rotten economic and political system. We do not want to make No Borders some kind of model or metaphor for every fight against domination and repression. We are drawn to this struggle for our own reasons and out of our own passions and histories – for example, many of us are migrants or the children of migrants. However, there are some specific reasons why we think free movement is right at the heart of struggles in Europe at this moment.
**7.1.** Migrants from poor countries are the first line of attack for retrenching European governments and economies in a time of crisis. With limited rights and no visibility, migrants are often the first workers to lose their jobs when the recession bites; the first to be targeted by increased repression and new surveillance technologies; the first to be blamed and scapegoated for capitalism’s crises; and the first to be dispensed with when their labour is no longer needed.
**7.2.** But migrants are often also the first to resist, and to develop alternative infrastructures outside the reach of the state. In 17th century England, travelling workers and beggars thrown off their land by the enclosures started early revolutionary movements like the Levellers, Diggers and Ranters. In the 19th century, anarchism grew up among dispossessed migrant communities in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Chicago or the East End of London. In the 20th century, the anti-Nazi resistance in France was begun by exiles from Spain and Eastern Europe. The precariousness of migrant groups means they would always need to develop new ways of organising in order to survive. The loss of old ties and certainties encourages new ways of thinking and acting.
**7.3.** Migrants may be the first under attack, but they won’t be the last. The conditions faced by clandestine migrants show what we can all look forward to in austerity Europe: mass unemployment, less employment rights and more exploitation, less welfare, repression more brutal and naked. This is what the crisis really means: the so-called first world turning into a third world, with widespread poverty and a stark class divide. The old compromise of the welfare state, which kept workers in the West quiet by guaranteeing basic living standards, is crumbling. As illusions and disguises are shattered, we see the return of open confrontation between the elites and the rest of us.
**8.** No Borders has its roots in anarchism. There is plenty to criticise in the recent history of European anarchism. Too often anarchists have retreated into their own identity, forming a subculture and cutting themselves off from the wider struggles around them. But there are also many positive things we should retain, including the Do It Yourself (DIY) culture of recent decades. Social centres, activist kitchens, independent media, housing and workers’ co-operatives, secure communication networks and other DIY projects are valuable resources – so long as we recognise that, like migration, activism is not an identity but something we do. For example, No Borders squats in Calais and in big cities across Europe are not lifestyle choices but essential shelters and resource points. And as the safety blanket of European welfare systems is pulled away, more and more of us will have to find new ways to do things ourselves. All our know-how on the streets, at the barricades, in practical support and mobility, will become precious. The point is to make our skills and resources part of wider movements of resistance.
**9.** No Borders needs to be an open and diverse movement. Many different people, with and without papers, have contributions to make. To make this a reality we have to tackle the borders within our movement too. We need to constantly address different forms of privilege, whether based on people’s legal status, language, education, gender, race, class, or simply people’s other commitments and abilities to face different levels of risk.
**10.** This is not a game. We are fed up with shit actions. We need to distance ourselves from the symbolic stunt activism that has come to dominate many activist scenes. Stunt activism seeks to grab the attention of the mainstream media and, through them, to win over so-called public opinion. It can make sense to pay attention to the media, but not to make them our main focus. We need to scrap the idea – pushed by the state and media corporations – that there is one unified, homogeneous mass of ‘normal people’ called the public. There is no such public; only lots of different people and groups with different, often conflicting, interests and desires. And the mainstream media don’t speak for any such public anyway – they speak for the media corporations and advertisers who set the agenda.
**11.** We therefore propose a few principles for No Borders activities:
**11.1.** Number one: our actions should be direct actions in the true sense. They should have direct material outcomes, even if these are only small – if we stop one person being deported, if one migration prisoner manages to escape, if one person gets a safe roof over their heads, if we stop one eviction, win one asylum case, help one person trapped in the system to find strength to get through the days, win one workplace struggle, cause some real damage to a company’s profits, this is a material gain. When we do meaningless symbolic actions that fail to achieve anything, we only get discouraged, while the system gets stronger. When we achieve direct successes, these reverberate in our communities, encouraging those already taking part and inspiring others to get involved, thereby strengthening the network as a whole.
**11.2.** Number two: every action should also have a broader aim: to build the infrastructure of resistance and rebellion. This means developing and strengthening our networks, making new alliances, acquiring useful skills and material resources. The audience of our actions is not ‘public
opinion’; it is all those we want fighting beside us. Our aim is not to convince the majority of the European population of the No Borders argument. The people we most need to work with already know very well what borders mean.
**11.3.** Number three: pick tactics strategically. We should think carefully, and seriously, about our strengths and weaknesses. We should be clear about what our actions can actually achieve, and where we need to improve and be better prepared. Dogmas, fantasies, and ingrained habits should be questioned all the time. We must acknowledge the valuable work to be done by people who, for various reasons, cannot take on certain risks. But we must also recognise that, if our movement is to begin to really challenge the border regime, many of us will face serious risks and far more serious repression. Our defence against repression and fear is to create a strong culture of solidarity.
**12.** Radical grassroots movements are the groundwork for the new world we carry in our hearts. At first they start as essential support lines for escape and small-scale resistance, and for the small hidden acts of counter-attack and sabotage that are available to the weak. At the same time, resistance and struggle are not separate from the rest of life – these networks and communities are the same ones in which we live, learn, play, work, invent and build alternative social and political structures. As a movement’s strength grows, and as crises expose weaknesses in its enemies, these networks become the infrastructure for open rebellion. So the 19th century underground railroad was the basis for slave revolts during the US civil war. The underground railroad of the 1940s broke out into partisan uprisings. What new forms might struggle take in the 21st century? We don’t know, but let’s find out.
|
#title Why I Am a Non-Resistant
#author A. P. Brown
#SORTtopics resistance, pacifism
#date June 5, 1890
#source https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/non-resistance/a-p-brown-why-i-am-a-non-resistant-1890/
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-06-11T14:03:08
#notes <em>Twentieth Century</em> 4 no. 23 (June 5, 1890): 7–9. [not part of “Economic Seminar”]
Well, first, because having been at the trouble to be born into this somewhat interesting world I feel inclined to linger in it as long as may be to learn more in regard to its workings, and I have noticed that those who are ready and prone to fight, who believe in fighting and practice it, are more likely not to die of old age than are those who follow after the things that make for peace.
There is some risk, to be sure, whichever course one takes but observation and reflection assure me that the non-resistant’s risks are on the whole less, and this for many reasons not necessary to enter into here or
Second, not wishing to “lose my head” in a literal sense I am also averse to the figurative loss thereof.
There are many and complex questions shortly coming to the consideration and determination of the American people.
There are subtle and unseen but potent forces at work in society As I believe the epoch of Christianity, <em>as it has been popularly understood</em> for fifteen hundred years, is about closing, and only here and there as yet are those who see with any good degree of clearness what is to take its place. Our entire social life is perturbed and anon will boil like a pot. Now, in a state of war, which is what all fighting means, there is no chance for any question whatever to get considered upon its merits no matter how vital the question may be. So there will be need of those who neither fear, fight, nor run away.
Third, more than fifty years ago I heard Henry C. Wright all one Sunday present the doctrine of nonresistance as few besides were able to do, and although only about twelve years old I was captivated, and now in maturer years the seed then sown is germinating, as indeed why should it not?
Fourth, non-resistance, or more properly speaking, moral resistance, is a matter of sound philosophy. I believe in individual responsibility.
<quote>
“Ef you take a sword an’ dror it,
<br>
An’ go stick a feller thru,
<br>
Guv’ment ain’t to answer for it,
<br>
God’ll send the bill to you.”
</quote>
“I have nothing to do about that; you will have to speak with the boss,” was the witty answer of an Alsatian friend of mine when as an apprentice many years ago he was compelled to work on Sunday, and was threatened with perdition by the parish priest for Sabbath breaking. But when the sheep and the goats are assembled for final separation I surmise there will exist a profuse scarcity of “bosses,” industrial, legislative, ecclesiastical, or other, behind whom one can shelter himself for the deeds done in the body. Responsibility carries with it freedom, and freedom repudiates coercion, and I am positively denied the right to resist even what seems to be evil by the strong arm and power of the sword. At least that is the way it seems to me.
Fifth, because repudiation of the use of carnal weapons <em>on principle</em> is compensated by an accession and inflow of moral force. As the loss of sight maybe transmitted into an exceeding power and delicacy of touch, so the subjugation of the animal propensities is followed by a power and dignity that repel encroachment.
I know “A.H.S.,” in “Tax Reform Advocate,” December 14, ‘89, speaking of Pentecost’s burglar, says non-resistance “ if followed to its logical conclusion, would reduce the man who practiced it to the level of a dog— a mongrel cur, with no respect for himself,” etc. Did “A. H. S.” ever see Garrison or Stephen S. Foster, or will he take one look even at the <em>portrait</em> of Henry C. Wright, p. 177, Vol. 3, of the life of Garrison (by his children)? I know the papers from the “Sun” up made merry over “Pentecost’s burglar,” but what can one expect from those who write of what they cannot comprehend? Their fatal mistake, one and all, lay in the assumption that the net reason, mission, and purpose in life of the man Pentecost was to stand guard and custodian of certain jewelry, Connecticut clocks, and such matters, partly brass, when it is quite possible he might feel himself called and fitted for something else. But I digress.
Allow me right here, however, to suggest to those people who conjure up contingencies little more likely to occur than that one should be struck by a falling aerolite, and who inquire in well assumed anxiety, “What would you do if,” etc., or if something else, there is only one answer for it all. I don’t know what I should do. I might be paralyzed; might be seized with madness, even with the second power of madness. Human nature has its limits, and he who encroaches on it, and above all on human nature potent enough to believe in non-resistance as a moral principle, incurs a terrific and, to himself, a wholly unknown and altogether not-to-be-calculated risk, the very existence of which should and would make the assailant of the sacredness of the individual mightily cautious.
Oh no! I don’t know what I <em>should</em> do; I know perfectly well what I <em>ought</em> to do. And by trying at all times and under all circumstances to do just that, base fear is banished, the inner light is kept trimmed and burning, and one is constantly open to that ever present inspiration Jesus alluded to when he said it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak; I will give you a mouth and wisdom that all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.
Ah no good friends; whoso has once stood face to face with death will not thereafter run away from shadows.
Lastly the highest ideal I can conceive, touching the zenith of the moral universe, indeed, is the utterance of Jesus, the Carpenter’s Son (I beg you will not confound or even associate His sacred name with the Christ of the creeds and catechisms), as he suffered a cruel death on the cross, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.”
This ideal of love, even for cruel enemies, stands and shines in deathless splendor through all the ages, as the transcendent sublimation and flowering out of all that was in the man. Man? No conceivable God or quintessence and concentration of all the gods could strike a higher note. I can admire “ the hero when his sword has won the battle for the free,” but I positively must worship a sentiment like that. That reaches back to ages before the Southern Cross had ceased to shine on Baltic shores, and sweeping forward through ages unnumbered and unknown will one day make the whole world kin. Assail it with all your criticisms, theological, historical, what you will, they are henceforth no more to me than the croaking of a raven to the music of the spheres.
These considerations have force with me; dear reader, what have you to say to them?
|
#title A Pathless Journey
#author Julian Langer
#LISTtitle A Pathless Journey
#date 29/4/2023
#source https://ecorevoltblog.wordpress.com/2023/04/29/a-pathless-journey/
#lang en
#authors Julian Langer
#topics religion, spirituality, meditation, mysticism, endarkenment, ontological anarchism, materialism, gurus, medicine, Magic, psychic-nomadism
*** Introduction
I am writing this following an invitation to write something on “punk” spirituality and theology. While I would never call myself a practitioner of “punk spirituality” or a “punk theologian”, I have been engaged in activities that I would describe as anti-authoritarian and DIY mysticism and meditation, which has something of a “punk” quality to it – ontological anarchy being my usual category of choice for a great deal of this.
This is not intended as a guide for anyone else, or a work on what I perceive as truth. I would like this to be received as a work of autobiographical and expressive writing. This is my attempt to communicate what I have done and what I am doing.
*** A Fertile Void
I was born to hippie, artsy, bohemian, mixed religious-cultural and drug addict parents, both of whom were very lost. When I think about my parents meeting and coupling I think of individuals desperately trying to survive amidst an existential abyss of 1980’s counter-culture, industrial-capitalist supremacism, London-urbanism, poor-life choices and families that were not fertile soil for meaningful relationships. I was my mother’s first child that she birthed and my father’s second. They were loving and unwell, often colliding against each other in rage-filled arguments, often making poor choices, but neither one having any ill intent. My father was in and out of rehabs and my mother died in the April of 1999. Dad relapsed, but got clean and has not used drugs since 1999.
While my father was in rehab, my sister and I were moved between different households in my family, eventually being placed in my mother’s parents’ toxic household. They were churchgoing Christians, who always wore their Sunday best, while also being psychologically and emotionally abusive. Dad got involved in 12 step practice through rehab and became very focused on the importance of having a higher power and a religion to practice. When we moved back in with dad, after over two years of living with mum’s parents, I came to take dad’s positions that individuals need higher powers and religions as truth.
There is a certain sadness that I feel when thinking about my parents together and these earlier life experiences that I endured. I can also affirm that surviving these situations and events gave me the strength to endure other experiences throughout my life. More than this though, I feel to affirm here the single most powerful gift that my mother gave me, which is the most primal truth I have to draw from and that I hold to this day as core to my being – that I am loved and that there is love for me in the world. Her death has made aspects of this love harder to find over the years, but still I feel it and believe it.
*** Searching
At a very young age and for the bulk of the second half of my childhood, I became somewhat obsessed with religious belief and different conceptions of God. I took myself to different churches and religious temples, to try and talk to those there and find out their beliefs. I would sit at the computer and look through lists of religions and their beliefs, where they converged and where they differentiated. While I was doing this, I was also experiencing an identity crisis; I didn’t know what religious identity to embrace, what sexual identity to call myself and was caught by this notion that I needed a higher power and collective to tell me. He hadn’t intended to and was simply trying to pass to his children what he was embracing to keep himself alive, but my father’s push for religious devotion had inspired a fear in me, fuelled by the existential terror of almost being rendered an orphan at 7 years of age.
There were periods when I called myself a Christian, a Zoroastrian, a Pagan, among others, but the religious identity that I adopted and stuck with the longest was Buddhist. My interest in Buddhism started when I took myself to a temple on Wimbledon Common when I was 14. I liked Buddhism because of the pacifism and negative-hedonism I found throughout the followers and practitioners. I started practicing Buddhism around the same time as I adopted an individualist and pacifist anarchist political position, in the second half of my teens – I was also reading Nietzsche, Emma Goldman, Emile Armand, Albery Libertad, Camus and other anarchists and existentialists. I was increasingly hostile towards the concept of God and those who believe in God, while repeating the “Buddhism isn’t a religion; it’s a spirituality” line. This was also a period of intense rage, without a process of expression and catharsis, and self-renunciation, as I felt increasingly hostile towards Samsara – the world of birth, suffering and death.
Then, on my 19th birthday, I was diagnosed with a brain tumour. My Buddhist practice during this period of my life was heavily influenced by the teachings of the monk Geshe Kelang Gyatso, with an emphasis on “happy” being the right way to be. I was quite dogmatically attached to a Buddhist inspired pacifist-anarchism, citing Gandhi as one of my go-to political heroes. I was very moralistic and attached the concept of karma, in ways that justified a belief that “everything will turn out the way it ought to” non-attachment/detachment. I loved it when people described me as being “zen”. I continued this practice right through cancer treatment and tried to continue it after, but could not.
*** Dying
Having a brain tumour is an existentially terrifying and agonisingly painful experience, which I would not wish upon any other individual. Hydrocephalus migraines render the rest of the world mute, as there is nothing other than that pain to give attention to. To say that the experience of having a brain tumour and being a cancer patient felt like dying feels true and while I am sure there are individuals without the experience who would call me dramatic, I am just glad that they have not had those experiences.
While the experience is awful, dreadful, agonising and not one I’d like to repeat, it is also utterly Real and true in ways that I cannot deny. Brutally-Real, the truth of my individuality and existential aloneness became utterly unquestionable to me. I was loved intensely throughout the experience, in particular by my partner, now wife, as well as my father, who was still trying to encourage me to become more “spiritual” and less angry.
During the months following treatment, I became increasingly suicidal, as I lost hope in karmic-morality and found myself unable to non-attach to the pain I had experienced. Buddhistic thought and the standards for how I “should be” were fuelling a desire for life renunciation, which I could justify through the history of self-mummification and self-immolation within the religion’s ascetic practices.
After this, I returned to reading Camus and Nietzsche, and found myself re-invigorated with life-affirmation and falling back in love with individualist and existentialist thought. After reading Heidegger’s essays on technology and enframing, I became increasingly interest in anti-technology philosophy and politics, which then brought my attention towards environmental matters. It was from this ground that I wrote my first book Feral Consciousness – a work of individualist-anarchist environmentalism, from a materialist ontological orientation, which I was advancing from a position of Nietzschean return-to-flesh. I had found that the world is dying from a cancerous entity, much like I was, and with that a fierce desire to affirm life and challenge the cancer.
*** Hylozoic Mysticism
Immediately after the publishing of Feral Consciousness I became intensely interested in philosophy of mind and radical-monist ontology, while also desiring an animist experience of the world. Becoming increasingly revolted by eliminative materialism (and other materialist ideologies), I came to embrace a panpsychist philosophy of mind, which I retain now. This movement away from materialism brought me to something of desiring an animist experience of the world, which I have seen individuals, such as Wildermuth, claim to have (and even offer courses on attaining, for a fee). The animist experience is not one I could claim to have, as I see animism as requiring an experiential depth of relationship with wild living beings and an intensity of immersion within a habitat, that the technologies that surround me and the socialisation I have experienced do not provide. It would be inauthentic of me to claim to be an animist as animism strikes me as requiring an intensity of lived experience lived by individuals who are indigenous to where they live, or have lived throughout their lives outside colonialism and techno-industrial apparatus. So I don’t describe myself as an animist. Many of the individuals I see marketing themselves as animists strike me as inauthentic and lacking sincerity – though I could be wrong.
Hylozoism means something very similar to animism, in that it is a philosophy that affirms that life is a quality of all physicality, but does not have the same connection to indigenous life experience. So this became a term I could use to articulate an understanding and perspective of the world, while not posturing a lived experience that I do not have. I found this most valuable when writing Feral Iconoclasm, which includes a chapter that is a rejection of materialism.
Hylozoism has been a useful concept for me when reflecting upon my encountering the world in ways that I would describe as mystical experiences. What I mean by mystical experiences are those that have been ineffably beyond words, undeniably real and yet paradoxical, and also bringing me an experience of awesomeness for how alive I find the world to be. Standing by the edges of cliffs, staring out to the sea, I have had deeply hylozoic-mystical experiences, which I could never adequately describe in words and so shan’t attempt to try. If I tried to explain it here I would utterly fail and the attempt to do so feels almost disrespectful.
*** Meditation
When I abandoned my Buddhist practice I said to myself that I was giving up meditation practice too. Perhaps this was true for what I thought meditation was – I certainly do not embrace the Buddhist mediation models I was seeking to follow during that period of my life. But I did not give up all that I have come to consider meditation to be.
My most active return to meditation came after a different health crisis and as a means of surviving with post-traumatic stress. This active return to meditation was an intentional and focused subscendence into the wild untamed habitat that my body and mind is. Feeling the blood moving through the rivers of veins that meander through my body. Noticing the experience of my skin as a landscape for micro-animals and insects, how it feels for the wind to impact upon this landscape. Re-membering woods and forests in my mind and exploring them as energies to draw from while trying to survive amidst this techno-industrial death camp. While in woods, or by streams and rivers, or standing upon cliffs looking out to the sea, I began noticing the experience of the paradox of my being an absurdly small aspect of these environments alongside the eco-egoist encounter of these spaces becoming and being extensions of my individual selfhood – with ontological anarchist defiance in the face of the law-of-non-contradiction, I have embraced this paradox.
With my hostility towards belief in God lessening and lessening over the years, at the point of returning to active and engaged mediation I began to embrace the label of fundamentalist-agnostic, becoming increasingly open to the idea of God, from a non-dual and radically monist concept. While I have always enjoyed Pagan aesthetics, I would not describe this opening up as anything more than an aesthetic embrace of Paganism. In Shivaism, a modest interest during the initial opening-up was occurring, and I would often chant to myself “om nama Shivay” (and still occasionally do). But this opening-up was more than anything else an extension of my subscendental meditation and playing with the idea of me being an aspect of God and God being and extension of me.
*** Gurus
As I began returning to active meditation and the literature surrounding meditation practices and techniques, as well as different traditions, I started becoming increasingly uncomfortable with and revolted by individuals who position themselves and are upheld as teachers and authorities on meditation. Cult leaders like Osho and those who I came to see as seeking to create their own personality cults, as wise-men with the spiritual knowledge, including individuals I had looked on as friends, were of interest to me – particularly with regards to the pitfalls and dangers of meditation cultures. (I feel to quietly and gently note here that one of the main motivations for my movement away from collaborating with the project Gods and Radicals came from increasingly coming to view the main individual involved in that project as seeking to create their own personality cult, as a druidic-Marxist-guru figure). Likewise, individuals like Ram Dass and Sadhguru, who encourage mediation practices that encourage individuals to repress and alienate themselves from their experience of anger and other “bad” emotions, reignited the flames of frustration towards meditation practices and spiritualities in general. The commodification and mechanical mass production of mindfulness meditation practices and the spiritual-industrial-complex, spearheaded by the likes of Jon Kabat-Zinn (another public guru figure, seemingly amassing a significant cult of personality) likewise only emboldened my desire to rebel against the meditation-spirituality-establishment through refusing to participate. While I am loathed to mention him here, I notice how Jordan Peterson has become a guru figure for many looking to be shown the way by individuals who feel lost and want an authority to teach them the path to walk and feel revolted and despairing.
Largely for his anti-authoritarianism and hostility towards guru figures, when coming back into meditation practice and coming to create a practice for myself, I became fond of listening to Krishnamurti speaking. This affection was more like heroism than looking to him as a teacher or provider of wisdom or knowledge. Like how I treat individuals like John Africa, John Moore, John Muir (yes 3 Johns), Henry David Thoreau and Edward Carpenter as individuals that I am impressed by and respect a great deal of what they did, while not considering them to be authorities on anything or providers of “the path”, my relationship towards Krishnamurti is more one of heroic appreciation, than of a follower adoring or venerating a teacher.
An individual occupying something of a guru position, who I have struggled to balance my appreciation of and feelings of revolt towards, is Peter Lamborn Wilson(/Hakim Bey). While integrity brings me to wanting to affirm that I have drawn a great deal from Wilson’s writings and value a great deal of it, I am choosing here to focus on the aspect of his thought that pertains to him occupying a guru-like position of path-provider and my rejection of that path. The paths that Wilson positions as the-way are the TAZ (temporary autonomous zone) and escapism through Amish-like religious-communes – these are not entirely separate in his thought and theory, but I am differentiating them for the sake of clarity. That the TAZ has been assimilated into this culture so intensely through events like Burning Man festival renders it little more than a false promise to me – I largely see TAZs as TTZs (temporary totalitarian zones). Likewise, I do not trust in the promise land of the religious commune as anything other than a totality of capture. I cannot deny that I feel some level of appreciation for Wilson’s thought and writings, but find his guruism and path revolting and utterly undesirable.
Another guruistic individual who I have mixed feelings regarding the work of is that of Ramon Elani. Elani has written both brilliant and dreadful pieces of writing, from a perspective undoubtedly similar to mine. I also consider his affirmation of global warming as a presence not to try to transcend, but one to be lived through, to be both brave and brilliant. However, I equally encounter his quietism and esoteric-elitism revolting. I write this feeling disappointed to be doing so – doing so has been done out of my desire to write with integrity and authenticity.
While I’ve been writing (and editing) this, there has been a spectacle regarding the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, and this has got be thinking about auto-iconoclasm – when a religious figure, cult leader and/or guru destroys their own image, usually by forgetting who their audience are. Regardless of whether or not his interactions with a young boy were abuse or normal Tibetan cultural practices; the Dalai Lama has a large audience of westerners, who his books have been sold and who he has become largely popular amongst, who have had their image of him destroyed – partially or entirely – due to him forgetting that his audience is one who will see his actions as abusive. Thinking about auto-iconoclasm, I notice myself trusting that many individuals do just destroy their own image as authority-to-show-people-the-way. Those who don’t tend to have churches, organisations and institutions to defend their image. This brings my attention to Derrick Jensen, who I see as embodying something of a guruistic figure, who has, at least partially, destroyed their own image in auto-iconoclasm, and the efforts his marketing organisation Deep Green Resistance go to attempting to not let that collapse. A friend who has Derrick Jensen as a friend on Facebook told me the other day that Jensen mostly uses his account to post anti-trans and other politically-right wing rhetoric, which suggests to me that he is somewhat committed to destroying his image as a valuable voice and writer, within the anarchist and environmentalist discourses that he previously sought to reach individuals through – this would make sense given his movement towards anti-anarchism. (Jensen blocked me on Facebook several years ago, so I have not seen these posts for myself.)
*** Purposeful Aimless Wandering
My walking practice began initially as a means of exercise and regaining strength after cancer treatment. I took to hiking for miles in the areas around where I was living, exploring the woods, valleys, river and streams surrounding my home in particular. While I didn’t call it meditation at first, there was definitely a meditative quality to the practice from the start. I was drawing from my the inspiration I found in Thoreau and Nietzsche and took walking to be an activity for contemplation, noticing, thought and philosophy.
With my return to active meditation practice, my walking practice became more actively meditative and less about exercise and walking significant distances. I became increasingly interested in the practice of shinrin-yoku and in August last year (2022) I began training as a shinrin-yoku guide. How I’d describe the meditative aspects of this walking practice is purposeful-aimless-wandering, with the activity not having a destination to reach, but having the purpose of deeply experiencing being-here.
As I sit here writing this I notice the potential for me to be accused of being a hypocrite for training as a shinrin-yoku guide, for having just shared hostile feeling towards the authority of the guru. I don’t claim to live without contradictions that could be grounds to accuse me of being a hypocrite. Even so, I do feel that there is a difference between a guide and an authority, with one offering advise, help and invitation, and the other offering direction, instruction and commands.
As part of my shinrin-yoku course, I need to do at least one all day meditative walk, done whilst fasting – the course calls this a “medicine walk” and/or “vision quest”. I am intending to do three of these and yesterday (as I write this paragraph) I did my first of these. It was an utterly beautiful and intense experience, walking and meditating through the East Lyn River Valley all day, having only eaten a small amount of food before heading off and only eating again as I foraged wild garlic at the very end of my journey. For an hour I sat inside of a dead tree, which was mostly dried out, and shortly after this, whilst sat on a rock in the river, was joined by ducklings going for what appeared to be their first swim. One of my main thoughts/reflections/observations from yesterday was noticing how tiny and inconsequential I felt before the rocks, river and trees surrounding me. The physicality, body, that I am is far weaker and easily breakable than theirs, and will hopefully die long before theirs too. With this I was thrown into the experience of my personal ecological-absurdity, along with the enjoyment of my silliness and an intense feeling of love for these wild-beings. While this feeling brings me something of sobering, there’s also something of mental-liberation from the type productivity-consciousness that I see as very normal in this culture, without the transcendentalism that often goes with trying to get out of productivism – subscendence, in my lexicon. While similar to both; eco-absurdism, for me, lacks the top-down/above-it-all God’s eye view of Thacker and Zapffe-type cosmic-pessimism and the meanness of Jeffers-type inhumanism, lacking its certainty. When encountering my ecological-absurdity I notice, with my uncertainty, the uncertainty of others and a particular unreasonableness. This occurred yesterday through a moment of relationship with a tiny holly plant. I couldn’t know how they came to grow from where they were, why they had taken root there, or what compels their will-to-life – I could adopt an absurd-reasoning and seek to construct a story, but that wouldn’t be truth. The truth I felt in that space was an intense love and care for the small evergreen. Their evergreenness held (absurd) meaning for me; when considering how they grew in ecological-absurdity and how much decay and collapse I have seen in inhumanism and cosmic-pessimism – friends embracing a form of helplessness that I do not. While this walk was done purposefully (or perhaps with absurd-purpose), I did not have any aims or goals in the process.
*** Medicine-Person Practice
The decision to train as a shinrin-yoku guide came alongside a desire to find a medicine-person practice that I could engage in and care for the living as I live amidst mass-extinction machinery. I know that I cannot save any living being from the violence of annihilation from this culture, but I am committed to doing my best to care for living beings as a rebellion against the machinery of mass-death.
One of the aspects of this medicine-person practice that took particular focus during COVID-19 lockdowns was an amateur herbalism practice, largely comprised of drying leaves and making herbal teas. I have given the teas out to friends and loved ones as gifts.
I notice, again, something of being close to something I dislike. Medicine-practitioners outside of the industrial-medical-complex, particularly traditional and indigenous examples, are often given the identity of “shaman”, following from anthropological use of the term, which originates in the Germanic and Russian languages – I believe its original use was in reference to Siberian medicine-people, but I could be wrong. This blanket use of the term “shaman” has seemingly all but erased the multitude of different medicine person practices. Not only this, but the term has been capitalised upon by individuals, groups and organisations to market neo-shamanism as pathways and practices for individuals to follow, courses to undertake and so on. I notice individuals like Barry Goddard adopting guruist like positions, under the identity of “shaman”.
As I am not drawing from any traditional or indigenous culture’s medicine-practice, and am not a Siberian tribal medicine person, it would be utterly inauthentic and a lack of integrity for me to call myself a shaman, or neo-shaman. I live without an indigenous culture where I live and am here due to diaspora. My emerging medicine-person practice is something that I am learning and self-creating, for myself and those I love.
*** Mantras and Koans
I have enjoyed mantras and koans, for meditative purposes.
A koan that I have played with, drawing from the Maya paradox, is this – Realities are illusions and illusions exist. This is of particular importance to me while thinking about technology and its impact on experience and perception. I invite you to consider this koan for yourself. Another example of where this koan is meaningful for me is when thinking about authority – I consider the Reality of authority an illusion, but it seems true to me that this illusion exists.
A mantra that I have often used in meditation is this – I am not waiting and I am not expecting. This mantra is one that brings my attention to the living present and the presences I encounter here.
*** Presentism
With the anti-History turn that my thought took just before writing Feral Iconoclasm, I became increasingly inclined towards presentist practice and philosophy of time – presentism could also be termed immediatism, as in the not-waiting-for-the-revolution practices of many rebels engaged in activities in the here and now, as well as what Hakim Bey was writing about in his book titled Immediatism. Presentism for me is egoistically, ecologically and phenomenologically obvious, as life resides in the present, here and now. It is spatially, geographically, situationally, place focused, rather than productive/narrative focused, (anti-)politically speaking; as an anti-History praxis. This was one of the main focuses of the aforementioned book and still remains a huge aspect of my philosophy and practice.
The positive affirmation of embodied living presence, which is at the core of presentist praxis, strikes me as so important, amidst the totalitarian negativity of the mass-extinction machine death camp of Leviathan/Moloch. I want to live and care and fight and laugh and love and rebel and cry and scream and be-with other living presences, here and now. I don’t want to sacrifice anyone I love for the Cause of some imaginary future, or retaining some idealised past.
While these (anti-)political qualities to my presentism exist, there is an obvious and more meditative quality to the practice. When I am calm and not wrapped up in activity, experiencing where I am with greater attention, I notice the present moment with greater intensity. The present to me is all there is and all there ever will be.
*** Wild Magick
I use the term wild magick here specifically to avoid the (false) dichotomy and dualism of order-chaos, which I have continually found to be bullshit – I see no order or chaos in civilisation(/statism) nor wildness(/anarchy). I do not see civilisation and wildness as a dualism, as I encounter wildness as the radical-monism (which is a pluralism) that is Being – civilisation is, to me, a Realities that is an illusion and an illusion that exists, but is not Real. So, what I mean by wild magick is the magick that I encounter in the world, or rather the encounters in the world that I experience as magickal.
One such encounter is the breaking of a bay leaf and breathing in the phytoncides, noticing the calming affect this has on my nervous system and my immune system being boosted by these invisible forces released by the leaf. Another example is that of a robin who came to visit me minutes after I was in a car crash that could have killed me, just being with me for several seconds. I honestly could never list all the examples – I won’t try.
*** Endarkenment
My initial desire, as I come to write about endarkenment here, is to differentiate endarkenment from “the Dark Enlightenment” and what I have come to call lightlessness, meaning a form of pessimistic-helplessnessism that claims knowledge of why it is best to give up and renounce life. Both of these modes of thought strike me as forms of gnosticism, claiming knowledge and with it certainties, which endarkenment, for me, is the inversion of. For me, endarkenment is active-agnosticism, as a passionate embrace of uncertainty. This invokes, perhaps unsurprisingly, an anti-Enlightenment will, towards both spiritual and scientific “Enlightenment”, particularly with regards to how both seek transcendence and the elevation of “humanity” above the living wild world, often called Earth. Through subscending and descending into the living wild world, endarkenment invokes mysterious and mystical uncertainties and desires for exploration of the world and self, in an eco-egoist sense of differentiation-without-separation; individualist-holism. Three of my main inspirations for this movement in my praxis were Giles Deleuze, Hakim Bey and Timothy Morton.
Drawing from Deleuze’s philosophy of dark-precursors – untraceable precursors that prefigure events, rendering their origins dark and uncertain – I found a means of describing my activist praxis as non-localisable localism. This is somewhat similar in ethos to what Klee Benally describes as being “unknowable” in his writing on indigenous-activist praxis. Being dark, non-localisable, unknowable, or what other term you might prefer, there is a becoming-uncertain that occurs. “How did that happen”, “why is that like that” or “I can find no reason for that to happen” are the sorts of desired responses to this praxis. The terrain becomes endarkened and ecological-absurdity manifests as the world is stranger. I see this as invoking something of folk-horror and I am increasingly interested in the potential of folk-horror stories as a means of perceptual attack and culture jamming.
The inspiration here from Bey comes from the paragraph in his Endarkenment Manifesto where he envisages a medicine praxis utterly different from that of the technologically dependent one that Enlightenment sciences have produced. This medicine praxis, as Bey describes, is not oriented towards prolonging life-spans, and for me is not about getting individuals back into work as quickly as possible. Rather, this is a medicine praxis oriented towards health, wellness and liberation. The crux of this is, as I see it, re-Earthing medicine-praxis, through practices such as anarchist-herbalism, village-hedge witchcraft, (yes) shinrin-yoku and other similar practices.
Timothy Morton’s influence comes in no small part from his philosophy of dark-ecology. Morton describes dark-ecology as being like chocolate and moving through three different stages; depressing, into mysterious and then into sweet – I don’t know if it is necessarily as definite or linear as this, but I share the perspective of ecological-awareness involving all of these experiences (as well as more). I am intentionally going to focus on the mysterious aspect of dark ecology here. Morton draws from Freud’s concept of the uncanny, to articulate that dark ecology invokes something of strangeness (that is familiar) – I’d say becoming familiar with strangeness. While Morton describes this as invoking a form of eco-gnosis – as a form of gnosticism – I somewhat depart from him here, as for me this invokes agnosticism. Suddenly, through embracing endarkenment and dark ecology, I find myself immersed within a world containing invisible atmospheric pathogenic ecosystems, which I cannot claim to know, but encounter when I am ill; I encounter the potential for shadow biospheres, which may be present anywhere in the world on the microbial level (including my body) and potentially in non-assimilated spaces on the macro-level; which brings my attention to what is called the “unseen species problem” and the extent to which there is no way of knowing how little I “know” or “we know” of life on Earth – which is non-separate to me and part of me, whilst not being me. This brings my attention to holism, which is where I have drawn most from Morton’s thought. From a dark-ecological perspective, holism is implosive, subscendental and the whole is less than the sum of its parts; differentiating dark-ecological holism from that of the explosive, transcendentalist holism, common to deep-ecology and similar perspectives that posit that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The transcendental-holism works on the same basic ideology of agricultural-religions, that there is a God who transcends all of Earth and created Earth and all life and who could and would annihilate all life on Earth in an act of vengeance; and much of Gaia-theory and “Mother Nature is pissed off” rhetoric merely changes the gender, whilst retaining the revolting narrative – this is a great deal of Ramon Elan’s philosophy in Wyrd Against the Modern World. Subscendental holism, for me, begins with the depression of God’s death, moving into agnostic uncertainty and mystery, and finds sweetness and beauty in tribal/folk religions – moving between these like the tide.
*** Unorthodox Judaism
In November 2020 I began reading the works of the Jewish existentialist Lev Shestov, with an intention of writing a book on his philosophy. Reading his thought, I found a terrible and awesome philosophy, full of dark and wild thoughts. To really do justice to his thought, I am exploring other Jewish existentialists and philosophers writings, as well as reading the Torah – Kafka, Buber, Zeitlin, Spinoza and Abram are the main individuals I am reading for this. This project has brought me perhaps the closest to theistic belief I have been, since I was a teenager – though this theism is that of a radically monist, immanent, absurd and irrational God, whose name I say through breath (YHWH as breath sound), and who transforms me into a gigantic bug when I come to recognise them. I would not, in this moment, call myself a theist, but I feel far more comfortable with that perspective than I have for many years, with a very uncomfortable perspective on God/YHWH.
One of the strange qualities of coming back to theism is that it also involves coming back to the religion of my father’s family. My great grandparents fled Poland for being Jews and the family became split between multiple countries. The geographic distance made cultural connection a real struggle for me growing up and was an aspect of my early identity crisis. While it was never an intentional aspect of my exploration of the unorthodox thought of Shestov, there is a sweetness about feeling close to something of my background, my roots, my ancestors, which I am glad to be finding.
This exploration is not finished and probably won’t be for a few more years and I might not find myself inclined towards an unorthodox Jewish religious perspective at its end. Right now though, I feel the closest I have ever been to one.
*** A Pathless Journey
As I sit here writing this I notice that I have not followed a path, but have moved through spaces and journeyed far throughout my life so far. This lived experience of psychic-nomadism has helped me find a pathless practice, praxis and philosophy, which has emerged from me. This is no ones truth other than my truth and no one can take this away from me, without tearing the air from my lungs. Here I am; I am here. I move. I change. I am a transient presence, living egoistically and ecologically in the present. There is a definite DIY-quality to my finding my way through the world to where I am now.
None of this has been written to suggest a path for anyone else, or a practice for anyone else to embrace. I do not know the way and do not pretend to. There are spaces where I may be able to guide others, should they wish; as well as spaces where I know I desire the guidance of others.
The wandering of the account I have presented here in writing has no aim, as I am not seeking to Cause anything for the production of a future. This wandering has been aimless but purposeful – the purpose has been catharsis for me and to perhaps affect an individual who reads this and might be struggling with their pathless experience. I do not know how it might affect them and am not expecting any particular affect. I am not waiting, but living – that is all I can do.
If you meet me on the road, kill me (and eat me – but please cook me well)!
|
#title The New Terror Bill in the Philippines
#subtitle Another Front in the Worldwide Struggle against Tyranny
#author A.S. Sakdal
#LISTtitle New Terror Bill in the Philippines
#SORTauthors A.S. Sakdal, CrimethInc.
#SORTtopics anti-terrorism, terrorism, law, Philippines, CrimethInc.
#date 2020/07/19
#source Retrieved on 2020/07/19 from [[https://crimethinc.com/2020/07/19/the-new-terror-bill-in-the-philippines-another-front-in-the-worldwide-struggle-against-tyranny][crimethinc.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-07-20T02:48:50
Yesterday, a new “anti-terror” law went into effect in the Philippines, marking another stage in the worldwide rise of autocracy. The law enables authorities to warrantlessly arrest and detain anyone for two weeks or more on the sole suspicion of inciting terrorism “by means of speeches, proclamations, writings, emblems, banners or other representations,” even “without taking any direct part in the commission of terrorism.” What constitutes terrorism is defined at the whims of the Anti-Terrorism Council, a group comprised almost entirely of members of authoritarian president Rodrigo Duterte’s cabinet.
Similar laws in Egypt and Turkey, among the world’s most authoritarian governments, indicate what the likely effects of this law will be. Already notorious for pursuing a “war on drugs” that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands, Duterte—like other despots including Hungary’s Viktor Orbán—has taken advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to consolidate his grip on power. The latest government policies include calling on neighbors to inform on those they suspect of contracting the virus, warrantless house-to-house searches for infected persons, and forced relocation to isolation facilities. In short, COVID-1984.
Considerable attention has focused on the courageous movement in Hong Kong resisting authoritarian control from the government of mainland China. But the struggle in Hong Kong against the Chinese Communist Party is only one of many such struggles taking place around the world against governments of many different political persuasions. Stepping back, we can see that the problem is not a specific authoritarian political party or ideology, but the way that new technological and economic developments have concentrated tremendous power in the institutions of governance while rendering the lives of ordinary people expendable from the perspective of those who rule.
In this context, it is naïve for human rights groups to decry the policies of specific administrations. The issue is that the old social contract is defunct. Indeed, in many parts of the world, including the Philippines, it barely ever applied. Post-industrial capitalism has less need of workers to staff the machinery of production; this is why people are being locked by the million in slums or prisons to die of COVID-19 or the bullets of the police, while entire regions are reduced to sacrifice zones. The state-sponsored rights and social safety nets that we are familiar with today were just partial concessions that served to co-opt and pacify a century of uncompromising labor struggles. History only moves one direction; the comparative comfort and stability of the early neoliberal era are gone for good, because they were only stages in the climax and consequent self-destruction of capitalism itself. Rather than begging to turn the clock back a few decades, we have to organize on a worldwide basis, across all borders and dividing lines, in order to become ungovernable and thereby liberate the tremendous untapped potential of all humanity.
The recent victory in Minneapolis shows what people are capable of in a single city. We have to replicate this on a worldwide basis.
<em>In the following report from an author in the Philippines, A.S. Sakdal spells out what the terror law means for people in the Philippines and why they are fighting it.</em>
*** #JunkTerrorBill
On Labor Day 2019 [which is to say, May Day, in the Philippines], hundreds of people from across different sectors marched on the highways of Manila amid sweltering heat and exhaust fumes. Protesters bore colorful banners and placards as they filled the city with chants, fists pumping the air. Traffic was brought to a standstill.
As the march crossed a thoroughfare, a brief verbal tussle ensued between a motorist and a protestor. The motorist honked his car horn and yelled at the protestors crossing in front of him. The protester, a jeepney driver on strike, planted his feet in front of the SUV and screamed,
<quote>
<em>“Magtiis ka! Kami araw-araw nagtitiis!”</em>
<em>Endure this minor inconvenience—God knows we endure every single day.</em>
</quote>
It’s been more than a year since that day. Moments like that one have been lost in the shuffle for some people, but they continue to reverberate in my head. This is what we take to the streets for. This is why we fight.
For the past four years of his six-year term, authoritarian President Rodrigo Duterte has filled our gutters with the blood of the marginalized; he continues to do so to this day. Police raid shantytowns and slaughter supposed drug personalities on suspicion alone. Not even children have been spared.
Activists, human rights defenders, and community leaders are routinely harassed and murdered as well. By September last year, 113 environmental activists had been killed since Duterte assumed presidency. In March 2019 in Negros Oriental, 14 farmers were killed in police operations. When asked, police branded the slain farmers as communist rebels and insisted that their operations were legitimate.
All of these atrocities occurred under an anti-terrorism law that government officials called “toothless.”
The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 came into effect yesterday on July 18. This piece of legislation will allow police to wiretap, warrantlessly arrest, and detain for up to 40 days any person suspected of engaging in “terrorism” or acts related to it. A safeguard included in the previous anti-terrorism law, which slaps erring police officers a hefty fine of P500,000 for each day a suspect spends wrongfully detained, has been removed in the new law. The police essentially get to decide whom they brand as terrorists; even if they are if proven wrong, they enjoy impunity.
Make no mistake, they will use this legislation as a weapon.
The country is facing rapid militarization amid the pandemic. Groups of fatigues-clad police officers armed with assault rifles crowd the Metro. In Cebu City, imported Israeli tanks patrol empty streets. Police, who are supposedly civilians in uniform, are starting to resemble their military counterparts in both form and disposition.
On June 2, police arrested 72-year-old Elmer Cordero along with five fellow jeepney drivers. The six staged a peaceful protest against government policies banning traditional jeepneys on the road during the lockdown period. They were hungry and unemployed.
Three days later, plainclothes policemen kidnapped eight people who were holding a peaceful protest against the previous Anti-Terror Bill at the University of the Philippines — Cebu. Seven of the arrestees were protesters; one was simply a bystander who had stopped to inquire. Two unidentified men visited the home of one of the protesters a few days later to threaten his family.
Even government troops were not spared police violence. Later in the month, police officers shot dead four army officers on board an SUV in Sulu. Upon investigation, the shooting was found to be unprovoked.
The enforcement of the Anti-Terror Law will be placed in the already bloodied hands of this violent institution, which is eager to heed the tyrant’s calls. Can the people truly trust the Philippine National Police—government pawns whose body count in Duterte’s drug war already numbers in the hundreds of thousands—to wield this power fairly?
The narrative used to justify authoritarianism has developed over the past few years. If the drug war served as a pretext to fill narrow alleyways and shanties with the blood of the poor, the Anti-Terror Law will see the blood of dissenters mingle with theirs next. The Duterte regime is seeing patches of resistance rise across many different sectors as more and more disgruntled individuals join in the clamor for real systemic change.
Duterte and his cronies have intensified repression, but these are not the actions of a regime that is confident of its power. These are the actions of a crumbling dictatorship cornered, desperately lashing out against budding resistance movements.
The past few years have seen the rise of authoritarian populist leaders across the globe, chauvinistic “strongmen” who always cower behind uniformed goons when they face genuine opposition. Striking down these despots is not a task we can approach on a country-by-country basis—it is the challenge facing all oppressed peoples across all nations, and it must be understood as a single unified project, not many different ones. We must plant our feet and confront tyranny head on.
We freedom fighters ask you to help make our situation further known to the international community. With the Anti-Terror Law in place, we expect state forces to begin cracking down on all dissenters in the Philippines. This is why we need you to help us spread our message however you can: on social media platforms, by word of mouth, through print. All these will help our cause in building momentum against the repressive Anti-Terror Act of 2020.
History has never been kind to tyrants. We must prove this once more. We will fight tooth and nail. Stand with us.
|
#title A Sick Planet
#author Guy Debord
#LISTtitle A Sick Planet
#source https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/2019/09/23/a-sick-planet/
#lang en
#date 1971
#authors Guy Debord
#topics Environmentalism, Pollution, revolution, situationist
#notes Written by Guy Debord in 1971, this text was intended for publication in Internationale Situationniste 13, which never appeared. It was first published in the French edition of the present collection in 2004. It may also be found in Guy Debord, Oeuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 2006, pp. 1063-9). Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, published in English, 2008
‘POLLUTION’ IS IN FASHION TODAY, exactly in the same way as revolution: it dominates the whole life of society, and it is represented in illusory form in the spectacle. It is the subject of mind-numbing chatter in a plethora of erroneous and mystifying writing and speech, yet it really does have everyone by the throat. It is on display everywhere as ideology, yet it is continually gaining ground as a material development. Two antagonistic tendencies, progression towards the highest form of commodity production and the project of its total negation, equally rich in contradictions within themselves, grow ever stronger in parallel with one other. Here are the two sides whereby a sole historical moment, long awaited and often described in advance in partial and inadequate terms, is made manifest: the moment when it becomes impossible for capitalism to carry on working.
A time that possesses all the technical means necessary for the complete transformation of the conditions of life on earth is also a time–thanks to that same separate technical and scientific development–with the ability to ascertain and predict, with mathematical certainty, just where (and by what date) the automatic growth of the alienated productive forces of class society is taking us: to measure, in other words, the rapid degradation of the very conditions of survival, in both the most general and the most trivial senses of that term.
Backward-looking gas-bags continue to waffle about (against) the aesthetic criticism of all this, fancying themselves clear-eyed and modem and in tune with their times when they argue that motorways, or the public housing of a place like Sarcelles, have their own beauty-a beauty preferable after all to the discomforts of ‘picturesque’ old neighbourhoods. These ‘realists’ solemnly observe that the population as a whole, pace those nostalgic for ‘real’ cooking, now eat far better than formerly. What they fail to grasp is that the problem of the degeneration of the totality of the natural and human environment has already ceased to present itself in terms of a loss of quality, be it aesthetic or of any other kind; the problem has now become the more fundamental one of whether a world that pursues such a course can preserve its material existence. In point of fact, the impossibility of its doing so is perfectly demonstrated by the entirety of detached scientific knowledge, which no longer debates anything in this connexion except for the length of time still left and the palliative measures that might conceivably, if vigorously applied, stave off disaster for a moment or two. This science can do no more than walk hand in hand with the world that has produced it-and that holds it fast-down the path of destruction; yet it is obliged to do so with eyes open. It thus epitomizes–almost to the point of caricature–the uselessness of knowledge in its unapplied form.
Admirably accurate measurements and projections are continually being made concerning the rapid increase in the chemical pollution of the breathable atmosphere, as of rivers, streams and, already, oceans; the irreversible accumulation of radioactive waste attending the development of nuclear power for so-called peaceful purposes; the effects of noise; the pervasion of space by plastic junk that threatens to tum it into an everlasting refuse dump; birth rates wildly out of control; the demented vitiation of foodstuffs; the urban sprawl everywhere overrunning what was once town and countryside; and, likewise, the spread of mental illness-including the neurotic fears and hallucinations that are bound to proliferate in response to pollution itself, the alarming features of which are placarded everywhere-and of suicide, whose rate of increase precisely parallels the accelerating construction of this environment (not to mention the effects of nuclear or bacteriological warfare, the wherewithal for which is already to hand, hanging over us like the sword of Damocles, even though it is, of course, avoidable).
In short, if the scope and even the reality of the ‘terrors of the year 1000′ are still a subject of controversy among historians, terror of the year 2000 is as patent as it is well founded; indeed, it is now based on scientific certainty. At the same time, what is happening is by no means fundamentally new: rather, it is simply the ineluctable outcome of a longstanding process. A society that is ever more sick, but ever more powerful, has recreated the world–everywhere and in concrete form–as the environment and backdrop of its sickness: it has created a sick planet. A society that has not yet achieved homogeneity, and that is not yet self-determined, but instead ever more determined by a part of itself positioned above itself, external to itself, has set in train a process of domination of Nature that has not yet established domination over itself. Capitalism has at last demonstrated, by virtue of its own dynamics, that it can no longer develop the forces of production-and this, not in a quantitative sense, as many have taken it, but rather in a qualitative one.
For bourgeois thought, however, speaking methodologically, only the quantitative is valid, measurable and efficient, whereas the qualitative is no more than vague subjective or artistic decoration of the really true, which is gauged solely by its actual avoirdupois. For dialectical thought, by contrast, and hence for history and for the proletariat, the qualitative is the most decisive dimension of real progress. That is what capitalism, on the one hand, and we, on the other, will eventually have demonstrated.
The masters of society are now obliged to speak of pollution, both in order to combat it (for after all they live on the same planet as we do--which is the only sense in which it may be said that the development of capitalism has in effect brought about a measure of class fusion) and in order to conceal it, for the plain fact that such harmful and dangerous trends exist constitutes an immense motive for revolt, a material requirement of the exploited just as vital as the struggle of nineteenth-century proletarians for the right to eat. Following the fundamental failure of the reformisms of the past–all of which without exception aspired to the definitive solution of the problem of class-a new kind of reformism is heaving into view which answers to the same needs as the earlier varieties, namely the oiling of the machine and the opening up of new profitable areas to cutting-edge enterprises. The most modern sector of industry is racing to get involved with the various palliatives to pollution, seeing these as so many new opportunities made all the more attractive by the fact that a good part of the capital monopolized by the state is available for investment and manipulation in this sphere. While this new reformism is guaranteed to fail for exactly the same reasons as its predecessors, it differs radically from them in that it has run out of time.
The growth of production has until now entirely confirmed its nature as the realization of political economy: as the growth of poverty, which has invaded and laid waste the very fabric of life. A society where the producers kill themselves working, and can do nothing but contemplate the product of their labour, now allows them in all transparency to see–and breathe–the general result of alienated labour, which has proven equally lethal. This society is ruled by an overdeveloped economy which turns everything–even spring water and city air–into economic goods, which is to say that everything has become economic ill-that ‘complete denial of man’ which has now reached its perfect material conclusion. The conflict in capitalism between modern productive forces and the relations of production, whether bourgeois or bureaucratic, has entered its final stage. The rate of production of non-life has risen continually on its linear and cumulative course; a final threshold having just been passed in this progression, what is now produced, directly, is death.
Throughout a world where employers wield all the power thanks to the institution of labour as a commodity, the ultimate, acknowledged and essential function of the developed economy of today is the production of employment. A far cry indeed from the ‘progressive’ nineteenth-century expectation that science and technology would reduce human labour by increasing productivity, and thus more easily satisfy the needs heretofore deemed real by all, without any fundamental change in the quality of the goods made available to that end. It is for the sake of ‘creating jobs’ (even in country areas now devoid of peasants), that is to say for the sake of using human labour as alienated labour, as wage-labour, that everything else is done; and hence that, stupidly, the very foundations of the life of the species–at present even more fragile than the thinking of a Kennedy or a Brezhnev–are put at risk.
The old ocean itself cares naught for pollution, but history is by no means indifferent to it. History can be saved only by the abolition of labour as a commodity. And historical consciousness has never been in such great and urgent need of mastering its world, for the enemy at its gates is no longer illusion but its own death.
When the pitiful masters of a society whose wretched destiny is now discernible–a fate far worse, be it said, than those evoked in the fulminations of even the most radical Utopians of an earlier time–are obliged to admit that our environment has become a social issue, and that the management of everything has become directly political, right down to the herb of the fields and the possibility of drinking water, sleeping without pills or washing without developing sores–in such circumstances, it is obvious that the old specialized politics must perforce declare itself utterly bankrupt.
Bankrupt, indeed, in the supreme expression of its voluntarism, namely the totalitarian bureaucratic power of the so-called socialist regimes, where the bureaucrats in power have proved incapable of managing even the previous stage of the capitalist economy. If these regimes pollute much less (the United States alone produces 50 per cent of worldwide pollution), it is simply because they are much poorer. A country such as China, if it is to retain respect as a power among impoverished nations, has no choice but to sacrifice a disproportionate part of its slim budget to the generation of a decent quantity of pollution, as for example, to the (re)discovery or touching-up of the technology of thermonuclear war (or, more precisely, of the terrifying spectacle of thermonuclear war). Such a high quotient of poverty, both material and mental, buttressed by so much terror, amounts to a death warrant for the bureaucracies presently in power. What dooms the most modern forms of bourgeois power, by contrast, is a surfeit of wealth that is in effect poisoned. The supposedly democratic management of capitalism, in any country, offers nothing except the electoral victories and defeats that–as has always been obvious–have never changed anything in general and precious little in particular with respect to a class society which imagines that it can last forever. Nor do elections change anything more on those occasions when the system of management itself enters a crisis and affects to desire some vague kind of guidance in the resolution of secondary but urgent problems from an alienated and stupefied electorate (as in the United States, Italy, Great Britain or France). All the experts have long noted-without bothering to explain the fact–that voters almost never change their ‘opinions’, the reason being that voters are people who for a brief instant assume an abstract role that is designed, precisely, to prevent them from existing in their own right and, hence, from changing. (This mechanism has been analysed countless times by demystified political science and by revolutionary psychoanalysis alike.) Nor are voters more likely to change because the world around them is changing ever more precipitately: qua voters, they would not change even if the world was coming to an end. Every representative system is essentially conservative, whereas the conditions of a capitalist society have never been susceptible of conservation. They are continually, and ever more rapidly, undergoing modification, but decisions in this regard–which always ultimately favour giving the market economy its head–are left entirely to politicians who are no more than publicists, whether they run uncontested or against others who are going to do just the same thing–and say so loudly. And yet the person who has just voted ‘freely’ for the Gaullists or for the French Communist Party, just like someone who has been forced to vote for a Gomulka, is quite capable of showing who they really are a week later by taking part in a wildcat strike or an insurrection.
In its state-run and regulated form, the ‘fight against pollution’ is bound, at first, to mean no more than new specializations, ministries, jobs for the boys and promotions within the bureaucracy. The fight’s effectiveness will be perfectly consonant with that approach. It will never amount to a real will for change until the present system of production is transformed root and branch. It will never be vigorously carried on until all pertinent decisions, made democratically and in full knowledge of the issues by the producers, are permanently monitored and executed by those producers themselves (oil tankers will inevitably spill their cargo into the ocean, for example, until they are brought under the authority of authentic sailors’ soviets). Before the producers can rule and act on such questions, however, they must become adults: they must, all of them, seize power.
Nineteenth-century scientific optimism foundered over three main issues. The first was the claim that the advent of revolution was certain, and that it would ensure the happy resolution of existing conflicts; this was the left-Hegelian and Marxist illusion, the least acutely felt among the bourgeois intelligentsia, but the richest, and ultimately the least illusory. The second issue was a view of the universe, or even simply of matter, as harmonious. And the third was a euphorically linear conception of the development of the forces of production. Once we come to terms with the first issue we shall deal by extension with the third, thus enabling us, albeit much later, to address the second, to make it into that which is at stake for us. It is not the symptoms but the illness itself that must be cured. Today, fear is everywhere and we shall escape it only through our own strength, our own ability to destroy every existing kind of alienation and every image of the power that has been wrested from us: only by submitting everything except ourselves–to the sole power of workers’ councils, possessing and continually reconstructing the totality of the world–by submitting everything, in other words, to an authentic rationality, a new legitimacy.
As for the ‘natural’ and the man-made environment, as for birth rates, biology, production, ‘madness’ and so on, the choice will not be between festival and unhappiness but, rather, consciously and at every turn in the road, between a myriad of possibilities on the one hand, happy or disastrous but relatively reversible, and nothingness on the other. The terrible choices of the near future, by contrast, amount to but one alternative: total democracy or total bureaucracy. Those with misgivings about total democracy should try to test its possibility for themselves by giving it a chance to prove itself in action; otherwise, they might as well pick themselves a tombstone, for, as Joseph Dejacque put it, ‘We have seen Authority at work, and its work condemns it utterly.’
The slogan ‘Revolution or Death!’ is no longer the lyrical expression of consciousness in revolt: rather, it is the last word of the scientific thought of our century. It applies to the perils facing the species as to the inability of individuals to belong. In a society where it is well known that the suicide rate is on the increase, the experts had to admit, reluctantly, that during May 1968 in France it fell to almost nil. That spring also vouchsafed us a clear sky, and it did so effortlessly, because few cars were burnt and the shortage of petrol prevented the others from polluting the air. When it rains, when there are clouds of smog over Paris, let us never forget that it is the government’s fault. Alienated industrial production makes the rain. Revolution makes the sunshine.
|
#title A Syrian anarchist speaks: “We need to start analyzing our situation in a libertarian way”
#LISTtitle Syrian anarchist speaks: “We need to start analyzing our situation in a libertarian way”
#author José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton
#SORTauthors Jose Antonio Gutiérrez Danton, Mazen Kamalmaz
#SORTtopics Syria, Palestine, Middle East, Israel, Israel/Palestine, anti-militarism, anti-colonialism, anti-war, interview, Islam, program, anarkismo, analysis
#date June 17, 2010
#source Retrieved on 22<sup>nd</sup> December 2021 from [[http://www.anarkismo.net/article/16873][www.anarkismo.net]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-12-22T17:30:15
<em>The following interview with Syrian anarchist Mazen Kamalmaz, is a follow up conversation to the publication of his Call for an Anarchist Manifesto on Palestine in late April 2010 [[http://www.anarkismo.net/article/16367][www.anarkismo.net]] In this conversation he further develops the ideas posed in the call for a manifesto, and the shortcomings and difficulties for it to be launched at the moment, as well as exploring the possibilities for anarchism in the Middle East today.</em>
<strong>1. In you recent call for an anarchist manifesto on Palestine, you mention that anarchists ideas have gained a foothold in the Middle East... can you tell us more about this?</strong>
Anarchist ideas are now listened to and respected, despite sometimes being perceived as utopian by the politically active minority of our societies. There is a small but steadily increasing number of anarchists. There is a group of active anarchists in Jordan acting in the social left movement, another group in Lebanon although facing some internal troubles lately. In general, the influence of anarchist ideas and politics is increasing within leftist organisations. Still we are too little to have a real impact on the ongoing or escalating struggle of the masses.
<strong>2. You also say that unfortunately anarchism is still absorbed in propaganda while the social struggle escalates everywhere... what are for you the most interesting and promising struggles going on in the region?</strong>
The recent crisis is global and destruction of the lives of people by neoliberal policies and governments can be felt everywhere. Masses fight back and the fight is escalating. Beside that, the masses become less tolerant and more militant about governments’ repression. In Egypt, for example, the anger of the masses and their mobilization were never so strong before. I don’t want to exaggerate the revolutionary potential in these struggles, but it is there and because of that we feel the urgency to make our voice, analysis and ideas well organised and well known. As a new movement, still we are trying to make our ideas known and still trying to find ways to do this in the face of prejudices and the patriarchal hierarchy of our societies. I think also that we have to overcome the intellectual style of our thinking; we have to win workers or we will be doomed to have a marginal role in the coming struggle.
<strong>3. What has been the response to your call from other anarchists in the Middle East?</strong>
The response was poor, unfortunately. I think such a manifesto will be again the product of one or very few individuals. At the end of last year something similar happened when comrade Sameh Abood from Egypt wrote down and published a programme of the anarchist current in Arab countries on his own initiative. We still have difficulties to communicate with each other, even we don’t know each other in person, and so there was no active discussion until now about these issues among us.
<strong>4. You also mention that this manifesto could kick start a process of debate of the whole region... could you explain us why Palestine is so central to social change in all of the Middle East?</strong>
As you can see, the Palestinian issue is quite crucial for Middle Eastern peoples. Islamic fundamentalism, and before that Arab nationalism, are fed by both the anger and illusions raised by this particular conflict. It is the ideal issue to differentiate our politics from other authoritarian currents, be they fundamentalist or nationalist. I thought that a manifesto by both Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Muslim, workers and intellectuals will offer a libertarian alternative to the various authoritarian ways of analyzing and solving the conflict.
<strong>5. At the moment the Palestinian Authority is engaged in indirect talks with Israel... do you think anything significant will come out of that?</strong>
The Palestinian Authority cannot achieve anything through negotiations. They are only following their own interests, not that of the Palestinian masses. It is another example of a bureaucracy that became the repressive force against its own people. The involvement of a part of the official Palestinian left in this Authority’s institutions helped only the Islamists to renounce the left in general.
<strong>6. You mention as well that this could be a first step towards an anarchist manifesto in the Muslim world... considering that the Muslim world embraces countries which are so different, from Africa to the Far East, do you think such a manifesto is possible? what do you think could be key elements of it?</strong>
I think that there are so many common issues and difficulties in general that we, anarchists in the Arab and Muslim world, are facing, and that we need to discuss and tell our point of view about. The manifesto itself is not important, we need to start analyzing our situation in a libertarian way and talk about anarchism to our masses, which are either under the influence of religion or illiteracy, in their own words. This is a way to overcome our weaknesses, by offering theoretical anarchist analysis to those who can be interested in joining the struggle later or when the masses will be more radical, as a weapon that can be used effectively when needed.
|
#title A Tale of Nihilist Lovers
#author Anonymous
#date 4/25/2025
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-05-20T07:26:13
#topics love, anarchy, nihilism, illegalism, romance, crime
They couldn't catch us. Madison, Wisconsin. Do you remember the feeling of being consumed by maniacal laughter after our first intercourse with illegality? Nah, it won't change the world and most wouldn't think much of it. And it certainly has nothing to do with revolution, The Movement, or Marxism. But it...felt incredible! It all started out as just an idea formulated in one of our post-sex "What if" conversations. There wasn't a whole lot of planning. More of a "fuck it – let's do this!" Never knew that one night would lead to a lifelong crime spree of bigger and more exciting things. We learned so much about each other that night. More than we could have ever imagined. Our hearts raced together as we moved our loaded cart carefully past the cash registers, and then through the automated doors. That night was our very first food heist! We ate the fanciest vegan food that we would have never been able to afford. We discovered a courage within ourselves that we never thought we had. What does it mean to push, bend, and eventually break the security apparatus designed to subdue us with fear? What does it mean to ride adrenaline like a wave into a sea of unknown possibilities?
Fast forward: I remember the reflection of the moonlight in your eyes, our whispers trembling with excitement. Like a nervous first date under the blanket of a starry night, our hearts had an appetite for destruction. Why walk in circles holding signs when sabotage is so much more fun? We completed our mission and scurried away into the dark, haunted by the apparition of uncertainty; did anybody hear us? Were the cops already called? How long till they catch us? They have certainly come close... We wondered. Guns drawn? A shoot out? We are too feral for the iron bars of a cage; we can't even stand living in a house too long! How will it all end? Who cares... The present is ours!
Fast forward a little more: do you remember this one, my love? Vandalism, fire, sirens in the distance. I'm momentarily paralyzed by those beautiful green eyes, shining from behind your balaclava. Minneapolis 2020: Rioting won't bring about the collapse of society. At least not before another cop's bullet takes another life. But while revolutionaries are busy writing up another analysis, desperate to control the narrative, you and I are gonna have some fun! We shed our civilized skin and become unhinged within the frenzy of social unrest. We each have our own complex histories and traumas. We pass each other fist-sized pieces of concrete to hurl at anything that can break. So much rage, sadness, and frustration. So much around us to release it upon. We smash everything in sight, our knives drawn toward anyone who tries to stop us. It's not about winning or losing, victories or defeats. We don't give a fuck about how the media portrays us.
We have no masses to organize or lead. Destruction for the sake of destruction produces a high more addictive than anything Philip Morris, Anheuser-Busch, or a drug lab could ever produce. Hopelessness and despair doom too many into endless cycles of culturally encouraged chemical self-destruction. The only inorganic chemicals you and I have ever needed are kerosene, tar, and potassium chlorate. Anarchy is a path we carve through this concrete jungle, driven by an instinct for freedom as primal as our desire to fuck. Like Santino "Sonny" LoSpecchio once said: “The working man is a sucker”.
Even though we knew it would happen, it's still a shame that after all those fires and broken windows that everything was rebuilt. What's worse? The fact that a new Target and Wendy's exist on top of the ashes of the old, or that it was the working class that's responsible for rebuilding them?
There's something about the way you move, my love. Were you ever truly domesticated? The rulers of civilization once convinced you that something within your brain was broken. The applied disease model as an explanation for your behavioral insubordination exposed their own denial; they each saw, within themselves, an image of you. But they have roles to perform and social credibility to lose in shedding their humanism. You've shed everything. Bravely you've escaped into the black night of amorality. I can hear your mischief in my dreams. I've finally found a face to every vine that breaks apart the asphalt. Our love language expands outward like the debris field from a fallen airliner.
Our enemies say we deserve each other. They couldn't be more correct. We hop trains to riots so we can contribute our efforts toward the destruction of their cities. We chase them down residential streets with daggers drawn. They were fast that day, but maybe next time we see them we will be faster...
America is more ripe now than ever for tearing apart. One big safe space for MAGA worshipers and armed bootlickers. Maybe with enough matches we can make this the year without a winter. Exposed to the heat of this country set on fire, our kisses explode like ammunition. Maybe others will join us in an orgy of chaos where romance burns through the fear of prison, intermingling with a love for our bodies, a love for our very lives – queers, trans, faggots, and other beautiful deviants dancing and fucking like a thousand machetes hacking away at the white house.
The galaxy is in your eyes, my love. Like the flash from a pipe bomb, your smile brightens up my day. Remember our very first conversation? I could feel the depth of your gaze in my spine. Consumed by an inexorable pull toward your honesty, compassion, and your gentle smile, I became paralyzed as my heart conducted chemistry with something more than love. Two cats perched on a tombstone in Shupea Cemetery, reflecting on our lives. I can feel all these memories compress the universe around us like a blanket, as we cuddle to the cacophony of thunderstorms on a mattress of anesthesia.
My love, these experiences together are as seamless as every wave in an ocean. To others this is just a tale of two mercury switch hearts ignited by the spark of a first kiss. I look forward to whatever we may encounter under this black rainbow called life. We'll ride the waves of every hurricane that makes landfall. Until their bullets turn our blood into confetti during a shoot-out, or we simply grow old and sing each other to sleep with a shared death rattle... More riots! Vandalism! Anarchy!
Shall we hold hands?
4/25/2025
|
#title A Warning to Students of All Ages
#LISTtitle Warning to Students of All Ages, A
#author Raoul Vaneigem
#LISTtitle A Warning to Students of All Ages
#SORTauthors Raoul Vaneigem
#SORTtopics education, situationist international, situationist, school, students
#date 1995
#source http://www.notbored.org/avertissement.html
#notes this pamphlet was originally published in French in 1995. It was translated by JML with NOT BORED! in August 2000.
#lang en
** Chapter 1: A warning to students of all ages.
The school, the family, the factory, the barracks, and, by proxy, the hospital and the prison, have been the inevitable passages by which commodity society has bent to its profit the destiny of the so-called "human" being.
The government that this society exercises over human nature, which is still in love with the freedom of childhood, puts in their proper places the growth and happiness that precede -- and delay to diverse degrees -- the familial enclosure, the workshop or office, the military institution, the clinic, the houses of the condemned.
Has schooling lost the repulsive character that it had in the 19th and 20th centuries, when it broke spirits and bodies upon the hard realities of efficiency and servitude, making it glorious to educate by forced labor, authority and austerity, and never by pleasure or passion? Nothing is surer, and it can't be denied that, in all the apparent eagerness of modernity, a whole lot of archaic ideas continue to scandalize the lives of schoolchildren.
Hasn't the scholastic enterprise obeyed, up to this very day, one dominant preoccupation: improve the techniques of training so that the animal would become a profitable investment?
No child crosses the threshold of a school door without being exposed to the risk of losing him or herself. Losing, that is, exuberant life, filled with new knowledge and marvels, that would be excited to receive nourishment, if it were not sterilized and made hopeless under the boring work of abstract knowledge. What a terrible affirmation, to see those shining looks so suddenly tarnished!
Here are four walls. The general consensus suits the hypocrites; within these walls, one is imprisoned, constrained, blamed, judged, honored, chastised, humiliated, labeled, manipulated, fondled, violated, treated abortively and left begging for aid and assistance.
"What are you complaining about?" object the makers of laws and decrees. "Isn't this the best way to initiate the youth into the immutable laws that rule the world and existence?" Doubtless. But why should the young accommodate themselves any longer to a society without joy and without a future, a society whose adults have nothing but their defeated resignation, which they support with a mix of bitterness and discomfort?
*** A SCHOOL IN WHICH LIFE BECOMES BORING TEACHES NOTHING BUT BARBARISM
The world has changed more in the last thirty years than in the last three thousand. Never -- in Western Europe, at the very least -- has the sensibility of children so diverged from the old predator reflexes that made the human animal the most ferocious and destructive of the terrestrial species.
However, intelligence remains fossilized, almost powerless to perceive the mutation that is taking place before our eyes. A mutation comparable to the ancient invention of the tool, which produced the work of exploiting nature and engendered a society composed of masters and slaves. A mutation revealing the real meaning of the term "human": not the production of a feudalized survival within the imperatives of a lucrative economy, but the creation of a reality favorable to a more intense and rich life.
Our educational system used to pride itself on having responded efficaciously to the exigencies of a society that was formerly under the yoke of the all-powerful rule of the Father. In this aspect, such glory is both repugnant and accomplished.
What does patriarchal power support itself on? the tyranny of the father? the potency of the male? Not so much on these as on a hierarchical structure, the cult of the boss, the scorn of women, the devastation of nations, rape, and oppressive violence. History has abandoned this patriarchal power in an advanced state of dilapidation: In the European Community, dictatorial regimes have dissolved into the troubled waters of business; paternal absolutism has become nothing but a memory of a puppet show.
We have to cultivate the silliness of a ministerial baking party if we wish to save from oblivion this pedagogy, which is still perfectly good for mixing with the ignoble yeast of despotism, forced labor and military discipline; the resulting abstraction, the etymology of which (abstrahere, to pull out) speaks of the exile of humanity from itself, the separation from life.
This society will agonize, in the end; this society in which the individual never begins to live unless he or she is learning to die. In that agony, life rekindles its rights timidly, and, as if it were for the first time in history, life is inspired by eternal spring instead of withering in an endless winter.
Hating yesterday, school is nothing but ridicule. It functioned and functions implacably according to the machinery and gears of an order that believed itself to be immutable. Its mechanical perfection shatters exuberance, curiosity, and the generosity of adolescents, for the purposes of better integrating them into the drawers of a dresser, which the usury of work changes little by little into a coffin. The power of things prevails over the desire of beings.
The logic of such a flourishing economy was still fallible, however, like the dull clicking of the hours of survival, sounding constantly the clarion call of death. The influence of prejudice, the force of inertia, and the customary resignation, all rather commonly exercised their mastery over the ensemble of citizens. Apart from the few who are unsubdued, who are in love with independence, the majority of people find their reckoning in the miserable waiting for and expectation of social promotions and guaranteed careers all the way to retirement.
Excellent reasons, then, are not lacking to set the infant on the righteous path of decencies and convenience, seeing that, when following it, he or she blindly hands him or herself over to the professors' authority and tries hard for the honor of that supreme compensation, the certitude of employment and a salary.
Pedagogues write dissertations about the checkmate schooling is in, but they don't worry much about what's checking it, nor about the fact that the checkmater is encroaching on everyday existence, advancing at every turn towards the dominion of the anguish of worthiness and unworthiness, profit and loss, honor and dishonor. A dismaying banality reigns over ideas and behaviors, over the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the cunning and imbecilic, the lucky and the unfortunate.
Certainly, the perspective engendered by having to pass away one's life in a factory or an office in order to make the month's rent money is not one that is inclined towards the exaltation of dreams of happiness and the harmony that nourishes infancy. Such a life produces instead a chain of dissatisfied adults, frustrated by a destiny that they would have wished to be more abundant, more generous. Deceived and instructed by the lessons of bitterness, they often find no better outlet for their resentment than in absurd problems and quarrels with others, sustained and caused by the most wonderful reasons in the world. Their religious, ideological and political confrontations procure for them their alibis and Causes, which hide, in fact, the somber violence of the evil of the survival from which they suffer.
And so their existence flows away into the frozen shadow of an absent life. But when there are plague-ridden times, the exterminators make the law. The inhuman despotic principles that administer teaching and inculcate in infants the bloody vanities of adulthood, which Jean Vigo heckles in his film <em>Zero de conduite,</em> participate in the coherence of the dominant system. They respond to the imperatives of a society that recognizes no other driving forces but power and profit.
Henceforth, if education refuses to obey the same motors that drive the rest of society, the trash compactor will be put out of order: there'll be less and less to win, and more and more life will sneak in to the mix and steal from the deep hidden corners of the drawer.
The insupportable preeminence of financial interests over the desire to live isn't going to wait anymore to give back the change. The daily clanging of the attraction, the bait, the female charms of gain, resound absurdly in proportion to the devaluation of money; in proportion to the common bankruptcy of state capitalism and private capitalism; in proportion to the circling toward the sewer drain of the patriarchal values of master and slave and of the ideologies of right and left, collectivism and liberalism, all that -- in the name of the all-holy, sacrosanct commodity -- is built upon the violation and rape of human and terrestrial nature.
A new style is being born, which alone disperses the shadow of a colossus whose feet of clay have already begun to break up. The school remains confined in the anti-days of the collapsing Old World.
Is its destruction necessary? This is a doubly absurd question.
First, the school is already destroyed. Since professors and students are less and less concerned with what they teach and study -- and, above all, with the manner in which they institute teaching and self-instruction -- why aren't these people running to save the old pedagogical passenger-boat, which is leaking water from all sides?
Boredom engenders violence. The ugliness of buildings excites vandalism. Modern constructions, cemented with the contempt of real estate agents, bask idly in the sun, crumble, and catch fire, according to the programmed usury of their shoddy materials.
Next, the question of the destruction of the school is absurd because the destruction-reflex is a registered part of the death logic of commodity society, whose profitable and lucrative necessities weaken, degrade, pollute, and kill the life of beings and things.
To accentuate the ruination does not only profit the carrion crows otherwise known as property owners, their ideologues of fear and security, and their parties of hate, exclusion, and ignorance; it pays the wages of the real estate agents, who never seem to stop changing their "new" habits and masking their nullity beneath reforms as spectacular as they are ephemeral.
School is the center of a turbulent zone in which the young years drown in moodiness, in which the conjugal neurosis of the teacher and the student imprint their movements on the pendulum of resignation and revolt, frustration and rage.
School is also the privileged place of rebirth. Pregnant, it carries within it the conscience at the heart of our epoch, which is to assure the priority of living over the economy of survival.
The school retains the key to wandering in a world without dreams: the resolution to erase boredom from a luxurious landscape. The will to be happy will banish polluting factories, intensive agriculture, prisons of all kinds, maggoty business offices, warehouses of adulterated products, and the pulpits of political, bureaucratic, ecclesiastic "truths" that call the spirit to mechanize the body and condemn it to rot away in the inhuman.
Stimulated by experiences of revolution, Saint-Just wrote: "Happiness is a new idea in Europe." He wrote this line two centuries before the idea became a desire and demanded an individual and collective self-realization.
Thus, each infant, each adolescent, each adult finds him or herself faced with a choice: check into a world that rings up the logic of "sell it at any price," or create his or her own life by creating an environment that assures him or her of plentitude in harmony. Everyday existence cannot be confused any longer with this adaptive survival in which people have been reduced to the production of commodities and to being produced by them.
We do not want a school in which one learns to survive by unlearning how to live. The majority of human beings have been nothing but spiritualized animals, capable of putting technology at the service of their predator interests, but incapable of refining humanly the art of living and thus becoming truly worthy of being called a man, a woman, a child.
Following their frenetic paths towards profit, the rats in jeans and three-piece suits discover that now there's nothing left of the earth but a chunk of cheese that they've gnawed on all sides. These rats either need to progress even further in their gnawing or undergo a mutation that will render them human.
It is time that lived moments replace the dead memory that has stamped acquaintance with the hidden restriction that nothing can ever be experienced.
We have for too long allowed ourselves to be persuaded that there is nothing to look forward to in life but common decay and death. This is a vision of prematurely old people, of golden boys fallen into precocious senility because they preferred money to youth. Let it be soon that these phantoms of the present married to the past cease to hide the will to live that searches out in each one of us the path of its sovereignty!
The new society begins where the experiencing of omnipresent life begins. A life in which one perceives and comprehends in rocks, vegetables and animals the rule that human beings have issued and enforced, that they carry within themselves with so much unconsciousness and contempt. But also a life founded upon creativity, not on work; on authenticity, not on appearances; on the luxuriance of desires, not on mechanisms of forcing ideas back and then pulling them out. A life free of fear, constraint, culpability, exchange, and dependency, because it would be a life that would be married to, and inseparable from, a consciousness and enjoyment of the self and the world.
A woman who had the misfortune to live in a country that is gangrenous with barbarism and obscurantism once wrote, "In Algeria, one learns from childhood to wash a dead man's body; myself, however, I want to teach him the gestures of love." Without writing such morbid verse, our pedagogy has too often been, beneath its apparent elegance, nothing but a toilet bowl full of corpses. Now it is a matter of finding, deep within the check-writing of knowledge, the gestures of love: the key to exploration and the key to the fields in which affection is offered without reserve.
Childhood is caught in the trap of schools that kill the marvelous instead of exalting it. This indicates, well enough, the kind of urgent situation in which teaching finds itself: the burden of creating a world where it would be permitted to marvel at oneself, instead of sinking further into the barbarism of boredom.
Watch out so that you are not tricked into waiting for help or panaceas from some Supreme Savior. It would assuredly be in vain to accord credit to a government or some political faction that is gathering together people concerned above all with sustaining their own shaky power. Nor does it make sense to trust in tribunals of masters of thought or media personalities who multiply their images in order to consummate the nullity that the mirror of their everyday existence reflects. But, above all, it would be self-betrayal to kneel down and beg, stand at attention or think of oneself as inferior. Education's goal, after all, should really be nothing but autonomy, independence, the creation of the self -- without which there are no such things as true mutual aid, authentic solidarity or collectivity without oppression.
A society that has no other responses to misery but clientelism, charity and tricks is a Mafioso society. To put school under the shrine of competitiveness is to incite corruption, which is the morality of business.
The only dignified things one should be "in on" are the things that one needs to move oneself by one's own means. If school doesn't teach you how to struggle to unleash your potentially vibrant will, it will condemn future generations to resignation, servitude, and suicidal revolt. It will turn to the dust of death and barbarism the most living and human part of each person.
I do not imply the establishment of any other educative project, except that which creates itself in the love and exploration of the living. Outside of a "school for truants" in which life looks for itself and finds itself without end -- outside of the art of loving with speculative mathematics -- there is nothing but the dead weight of a totalitarian past.
** Chapter 2: To have done with carceral education and the castration of desire
Instilled since early youth, the feeling of guilt raises around everyone the most sure of prisons in which desires are walled in. Over the course of the millennia, the idea of a nature that would be exploitable and capable of being made to do chores has condemned the simple inclination towards enjoying all the pleasures of life to feelings of sinfulness, remorse and a need for penitence, and to a bitter intake of ideas and a compulsive spouting off of them.
What should the essential preoccupation of teaching be? To help the child in his or her approach to life so that the child can learn to know what he or she wants and want what he or she knows; that is, to satisfy his or her desires, and not in some apathetic, animal doze, but according to the refinements of human consciousness.
The opposite produces itself, however. Learning is currently founded upon the repression of desires. The child is dressed in angelic habits, beneath which he or she doesn't cease doing stupid things, and denatured stupid things at that. How could one be surprised that schools imitate so well, in their architectural and mental conceptions, the island prisons on which the punished are exiled from the ordinary joys of existence?
*** A SCHOOL THAT HINDERS DESIRES STIMULATES AGGRESSIVENESS
The ancient school walls never seem to stop evoking the walls of penitentiaries. The high-placed windows make sure that the student sees nothing but a little bit of the sky, a unique space reserved for the happiness of souls, if not bodies. The body, immobilized in a study hall that quickly turns into a torture chamber, suffers its earthly destiny in the ordinary style.
The opinion still prevails that in order to learn to learn (or become beautiful), it is necessary to learn to suffer. To enter into adult age . . . wasn't that to renounce the pleasures of infancy in order to progress into a valley of tears, decrepitude, and death?
The pedagogues have always affirmed that discipline and the maintenance of order were the necessary conditions for all education. Today it is easy to see the degree to which their pretend-science was really nothing but a cover-up for an insidiously repressive practice: to encourage scorn of the self and bully the "carnal appetites," so as to raise humanity to the seventh heaven of spirit, all the while dragging it down to earthly materiality.
Once the body is reduced to the state of being an object, and in this case a piece of material to be schooled, the instructor is all the better prepared to drive into schoolkids' heads the respectable notion of respect for authority. Soliciting abstract intelligence and "objective" reason contributes to the concealment of that sensible and sensual intelligence which is tied to the desires of the little light in the heart that flickers whenever the child, finding him or herself again alone, asks him or herself the question, "How's all this knowledge I got stuck in my head by constraint and menace going to help me feel good in my own skin, live more happily, and become what I am?"
The educational method renounced corporal punishment at the time when the slap and kick in the ass stopped constituting the essential part of a familial education which, in the words of the torturers, had already proved itself valuable. And how!
This does not mean that the body from then on escaped the harassment, mortifying fear, and scorn heaped upon it. Isn't it true that the senses are placed under rather high surveillance during the hours of study in the rooms that are reserved for it? The eye has to rivet itself to the gestures of the masters so homework can be done. The mouth never opens except at the invitation of the mentor, and it had better be ever-wary as to what it dares to utter! An incorrect response, a bad-sounding remark, and the volley of blows from the green wood would be provoked: mockery, rebuffing, humiliation -- is it any different today? At the same time, relevant or servile words attract the praise that fills out the promotional balance sheets at the end of the year. In the end, the hand raises itself politely to solicit the attention of the scholar making needless and inopportune displays of his or her learning, insisting upon the importance of trifling points in his or her scholarship. Not so long ago, the hand that raised itself risked getting wrapped on the knuckles with the ruler of righteous good sense.
One perceives, with the passage of time, that schoolkids have been treated according to the manufacturing processes employed by the Stalinist savant Pavlov, who gave his laboratory dogs compensatory bits of sugar for good behavior and would sanction bad behavior with electric shocks. Wasn't it necessary that scorn be the norm of the age in which pedagogues advocated an educational method that a single human being deserving of the name today would never inflict upon a dog? Isn't it clear that school remains, as a result of the cowardice of a general assent, a place of dog-training and conditioning, to which the culture of pretext and the economy of reality are tightened like screws?
*** HOW CAN ONE GET TO KNOW THINGS WHEN OPPRESSION EXISTS?
Maintained by the fear of having to get around in a prison of tetanus-ridden muscles, compressed emotions install between the oppressor and the oppressed a logic of destruction and self-destruction that breaks all forms of enlightened communication.
To the idiotic expected-salary of the master, who reigns tyrannically over his class, responds with an equal idiocy the uproar and hullabaloo that serve to release the students' repressed energies.
All over the prison and the ghetto, character-armoring imposes its strategy of confinement, and the momentum of hopelessness prepares the fist of the rioter. The hand of the schoolkid avenges itself by mutilating tables and chairs, scrawling insolent marks on insolent walls, ripping up the rags of ugliness, sanctifying a vandalism in which the rage of destruction pays off the debt of feeling that you've been violently destroyed, ransacked by the everyday pedagogical trap.
The students' mouths open in ferocious attacks of protest, their eyes draw from the challenge they've made the glimmer of enthusiasm that they were denied. But these movements of contestation periodically arouse the interest of the managers of bureaucratic "unions" and government authority-figures, and these movements -- having found themselves, because of their dependency upon those managers, with an absence of creativity -- sink into the same dullness and stupidity as the doddering, buffoon-like, hierarchical power that originally provoked them. Why wait for gregarious mass manifestations when the intelligence of individuals, having failed to make a project of radical change, has been stifling itself according to the common denominator of the crowd, at the lowest level of comprehension?
To avoid explosions of desires acted upon without any thought behind them, the authorities knew it would be necessary to prepare decompressive safety valves and controlled demonstrations. When they cut you slack with a reform, it's not a breath of liberty, it's the respiration of tyranny.
The playgrounds sported by prisons, barracks and schools permit libidinal energies -- otherwise compromised by the rigors of discipline -- to release themselves in leisure. This "exercise" preserves the separation between the head -- the "boss" -- and the rest of the body. On the "playing field," the body is submissive to the head in principle, but the hierarchical order instituted during study time is in fact reversed. The last becomes the first: The dunce and the muscled brute dominate on the pavement, making the better students shake. Nothing is changed by the reversal; it's just the oppressed urges of life relieving themselves in death-urges.
Once the parenthesis of tolerated disorder is closed up again, the spirit rekindles its rights and starts again its mission of reigning over the chaos. Those whom professorial power has crowned with the holiness of knowledge once again take their places at the head of the pack. Their intellectuality vomits into the darkness the ugliness that lurks in the depths of their beings, while their superiority affirms itself over the unruly, the bad students, the dunces, the ones dismissed as idiots according to an insult that deserves to be analyzed closer (as long as one is conscious of the fact that to repudiate the animality of urges, instead of refining them, doesn't so much give one a greater humanity, but rather a bestiality with a human look to it).
Evidently there exists a natural rhythm of effort and rest, concentration and relaxation, but the reigning social organization of work has substituted for the simple alternation between contraction and release the psychological mechanism of repression and release of thought. The ordinary behavior of the exploiters, who accord to the exploited only enough relaxation to render them fresh for the factory and office, is precisely expressed in the statement of General de Gaulle, irritated by the revolution of 1968: "It is time to whistle the dogs that their recreation time is over."
*** TO LEARN WITHOUT DESIRE IS TO UNLEARN HOW TO DESIRE
The scorn of oneself and others is inherent in the exploitation of earthly, human work. The fact that scorn is a part of common practice in exchanges between professors and students explains why so few dream of becoming indignant. It would be illusory to believe that a practice so intolerable would cease before any kind of ethical choice, a will to courtesy, of whatever formula or style, has taken place -- "I would remind you not to speak to me in that tone of voice." A really good game would be the radical overhaul of society and teaching methods that have still not discovered that each child, each adolescent, possesses in a brute state the unique richness of humanity: its creativity.
How can one excite curiosity when there are so many beings tormented by the anguish of guilt and the fear of sanctions? There certainly exist professors who are enthusiastic enough about imbuing their auditorium with passion, and who make forgotten for an instant the detestable conditions that degrade their job. But how many, and for how many years?
Enumerate, on the one hand, the bureaucrats who terrorize their classes and are terrorized by them, and, on the other, the artists, jugglers, and tightrope walkers of knowledge, who are capable of captivating their students without ever having to transform themselves into guard dogs or adjutant bosses.
We are not talking about judging people here, nor about entering into the imbecilic practice of awarding merit and demerit by reviling the good students and praising the bad ones. No, what is important here is to bring everything into play, so that teaching keeps awake that curiosity, so natural and filled with life, from which Sheherazade was able to hold in check death, with which a tyrant menaced her.
Over the centuries, the aberration of a world upside-down has weighed heavily upon children's education.
That so many efforts and so much fatigue is required of both master and student to revive the eagerness to learn, which has been pointed out quite frenetically by observers of those of tender age, says enough to prove that this is a brutally interrupted evolution. Curiosity is usually suffocated, just as it tries to come out, at the most important points in the child's ludic development, when it is amusing to ask questions; the questions are answered in such a way that the basis of a happy knowing is thrown away. All this because that happy knowing would be incompatible with the vision of some austere adults, who say that science is important because it endows one with the seriousness of business, and that learning should be propagated with dry, boring, abstract truths.
Do you remember the thousands of questions that a child -- marveling without end -- asks about him or herself and about the world that he or she discovers? "Why does it rain?" "Why is the ocean blue?" "How come my brother stole my toys?" The responses that he or she received were most often nothing but evasive words and abrupt refusals. Eventually wearied by a conduct that makes him or her feel unsuitable, the child lets him or herself becomes susceptible to the impression that he or she is not worthy nor capable of understanding. As if all steps of psychological development did not have their own adequate mode of comprehension!
Meanwhile, disheartened in the end by so many interrogations judged without interest, the child enters in the cycles of study, in which he or she looks for answers that he or she has deep-down-inside lost the desire to find by him or herself. What the child passionately wished to acquaint him or herself with a few years previously, he or she -- yawning with boredom -- is today constrained to study today by force.
The diversity of happy and unhappy sensations created in the child that experimental consciousness which permitted him or her to cultivate certain of those sensations and avoid altogether certain others. If that consciousness is maintained in the child by a parental teaching method filled with attention, solicitude and affection, the child is filled with a psychological motivation that enthuses him or her to desire without end, to want to know more and more, to engage the world with a curiosity without limits. All this for the simple reason that awareness then obeys the most natural of solicitations: rendering oneself happy.
If teaching is received with reticence or repugnance, this is because the knowledge filtered through school programs carries the mark of an ancient wound; it has already had its original sensuality castrated.
Knowledge of the world without a consciousness of the desires of life is dead knowledge. It has no use except at the service of those mechanisms that transform society according to the necessities of the economy. The artificial sweetness that dead knowledge brings to the fate of human beings delivers them into the world begrudgingly, and consistently menaced by new rigors that soon efface the pleasant aftertaste.
After having stolen from the schoolkid his or her urge to live, the educational system starts artificially force-feeding the student in order to send him or her on the path towards work, along which he or she will continue to mumble, all the way to complete disillusionment, the leit-motif of his or her young years: "let the best man win!"
Win what? More sensible intelligence, more affection, more serenity, more lucidity in self and circumstance, more ways to act upon one's own existence, more creativity? No, just more money and power in a world that uses money and power by being used by them.
*** ERROR IS NOT CULPABILITY
The educational system does not simply content itself with containing the desires of childhood in character armor, in which clenched muscles, a heart gone cold and a spirit impregnated with anguish don't really favor exuberance and enlightenment. The system is not satisfied with cornering the schoolkid in battles without joy, which inevitably end in a whack on the head, in case that the student might forget that he or she is not there to be amused. The system suspends above the student's head the ridiculous and menacing sword of a verdict.
Whether he or she likes it or not, each day the student enters into a parole room in which he or she is to appear in front of judges and in answer to the accusation of presumed ignorance. Then the child has to prove his or her innocence by regurgitating on demand the theories, rules, dates and definitions that contribute so much to his or her relaxation at the end of the year.
The expression "undergo examinations," that is, in criminal parlance, proceed with a suspect's interrogation and arraignment when the charges are read, evokes well the judiciary reality of school, since it is really the same thing when a student gets written or oral examinations inflicted upon him or her.
No one these days would dream of denying the utility of controlling a person's assimilation of knowledge, degree of comprehension and experimental ability. But is it necessary to dress teachers and students, who really just want to instruct and be instructed, in the garb of Judge and Guilty Party, respectively? What despotic and outdated spirit do the pedagogues claim authorizes them to erect a tribunal and then cut into such vibrant, lively flesh with the double-edged blade of merit and demerit, honor and dishonor, salute and damnation? What personal neuroses and obsessions do they obey when they dare to blemish with fear and the menace of suspension from school the progress of children and adolescents, who only need attention, patience, encouragement and that affection which carries the secret of obtaining so much by demanding so little?
Isn't it true that the educational system persists in basing itself on the ignoble principle, descended from a society which assumed that pleasure only exists on the screens of a sadomasochistic relationship between masters and slaves, "I'm only punishing you because I love you. . . ."?
It is an effect of the will to power, not the will to live, that motivates people to try to determine by judgment the fate of others.
Judging prevents one from understanding the person one presumes to rehabilitate. The behavior of judges, who are themselves scared by the fear that comes with being a judge, redirects to their own ends some of the convicted student's indispensable qualities, which would have helped the student in his or her long, poetic journey towards autonomy: that is, obstinate determination, a sense of effort, an awakening sensibility, a nimble intelligence, a constantly trained memory, the perception of the living in all forms, and the attentive hold over his or her own consciousness that allows the student to perceive what helps in his or her progress, what slows him or her down, what his or her errors are, and what their corrections would be.
To help a child or an adolescent assure for him or herself the greatest possible autonomy -- this implies without any doubt a constant lucidity in the awareness of the degree of development of the student's capacities and the orientation that will favor them. But what has this in common with the control to which the student is submitted, once he or she is ready to get through a period of learning, when he or she is put in front of a professorial cross-examination? Leave, therefore, the culpability to those religious spirits who do not dream of anything but tormenting themselves by tormenting others.
Religions need misery to perpetuate themselves; they maintain misery so as to lend more glamour to their acts of charity. Oh, well. Could the educational system, which assumes in the student a constitutive weakness, which is always suspicious of his or her supposed sins of laziness and ignorance, and which refuses to dismiss the case until the student says that the professor is a sacred being -- could this system do anything else but perpetuate misery? It is time to finish with this puke of the past!!!
Each individual possesses his or her own creativity, and that creativity is suffocated when mistakes are treated like punishable offenses. This must no longer be tolerated. There is no such thing as guilt, there are only errors; and errors correct themselves.
*** ONLY THOSE WHO POSSESS THE KEYS TO NATURE AND DREAMS WILL OPEN THE SCHOOL TO AN OPEN SOCIETY
The perspective of marketability-at-any-cost is the iron curtain of a world closed-in by the economy. The perspective of life opens upon a world where everything is there to be explored and created. Today, the institution of school belongs to the business crowd, who, cynically, would like to manage it, without burdening themselves anymore with the old humanitarian formalities. We'll see whether or not students and teachers allow themselves to be reduced to the function of lucrative cogwheels. What if they, not foreseeing anything good in the administration (to which they are invited) of a universe in ruins, develop the desire to learn how to live instead of economizing on themselves?
Today the game is staked entirely on a change of mentality, of vision, of perspective.
Pinning down a butterfly is not the best way to get to know it. The person who transforms the living into a dead thing, under whatever pretext, only demonstrates that his or her knowledge has not made him or her a human being.
There exists, on the other hand, an approach that reveals the radiance of life in the heart of a crystal, a poem, an equation, a chemical formula, a plant, a manufactured object. It establishes between the observer and the observed an osmotic relationship in which everything is distinct without everything being separate.
Doesn't the consciousness of a living presence in the subject and in the object naturally manifest what there is of the teacher in the student and of the student in the teacher? Where there is a lack of the intelligence of life, there is nothing but the relations of brutes. Whatever doesn't come from and return us to the most vibrant and living part of us only diverts us towards death, for the greater glory of armies and technologies of profit. That's why the majority of schools are battlefields on which scorn, hate, and devastating violence ring up the bankruptcy of an educational system that constrains the teachers to despotism and the taught to servility.
What resignation exists in the supposedly studious confinement in which the student takes the offer to sacrifice him or herself and slams the door of renunciation on his or her own happiness! And how would the educator, who is no more capable than his or her students of becoming a child again by being reborn each day, instruct them? Whoever carries in his or her heart the dead corpse of his or her youth never educates anything but dead souls.
To dispense knowledge is to awaken the hope of a marvelous world, which nourishes humanity and is nourished by the dreams of youth. At the same time, it is still necessary to shatter the curse of received ideas and to make fun of those accountants of power and profit who have excluded the marvelous from their reality so well that infantile impatience relegates it to the kingdom of fairies and the impotent marshes of utopia.
The human body, animal behaviors, flowers, philosophical speculation, the cultivation of wheat, water, stone, fire, electricity, woodworking, horseback riding, quantum physics, astronomy, music, a suddenly privileged moment in everyday life -- everything becomes marvelous again, but not due to contemplative mysticism, but because people, once they've made the choice to give preeminence to the living, stop complying with the imperatives of lucrative exploitation. When forests are the lungs of the earth and not things to be purchased per acre or spaces to be devastated by real estate interests, one gets the human sense of a Nature that energetically offers its resources to whoever approaches but does not rape her.
Learning about life is a walk through the universe of gift-giving, a certain kind of mycological stroll, on which the guide teaches how to distinguish between edible mushrooms and others, unsuitable for consumption, mortally poisonous in fact, but which, with proper treatment, possess very healing qualities.
Instead of an entrenched camp in which reserve workers sadly stagnate, why not make school an amusement park of knowledge, an open place in which creative people come to discuss their practices, their passion for their experiences, and what they hold close to their hearts? A luthier, a farmer, a cabinet maker, a painter or a biologist surely have more to teach than those businessmen who come to advocate adaptation to the random laws of the market.
It is clear that an awakening to the cultures of the world would also be an awakening to the diversity of age groups! Why limit to the young the right to be instructed and exclude those adults who are concerned with their lack of knowledge about literature or mathematics? Doesn't everyone feel the need to make that contact which shatters the artificial opposition between age groups?
But there is no prescription nor panacea. It is solely the job of each person's will to live to open that which was closed by the violence of economic totalitarianism. It's on the level of the individual that the imagination will make a show of its force.
Every year dozens of institute authorities and inventive professors do not suggest new methods of teaching founded on new accords between beings and things. You who complain about the number of bureaucrats who are usurping the positions of teachers, and who throw out across the planet the cold stare of statistical figures in order to limit their significance to paycheck cards: when have you demanded that the ideas of Freinet or any of the many others be taken further forward towards the erection of a generous knowledge? When did you ever oppose the distillers of boredom who rule over the constantly blooming projects of ludic and living education? Have you never thought about undertaking a substitution of the hierarchical connection between masters and slaves for a relation no longer founded upon obedience, but on the exercise of individual and collective creativity?
When politicians of dismaying mediocrity invite you to submit to them your revindications, don't they have the satisfaction of discovering that you are just as poverty-stricken as they are, if not financially, then at least intellectually and in terms of imagination? Do not doubt that the discount price at which you allowed yourself to be sold gave them enough left over to accord you, without further bargaining, the right to heckle them in grand, cathartic demonstrations.
The worst resignation is that which provides an alibi for revolt. Do you respect yourself so little that you wouldn't even take the time to figure out what your life's desires are, that you don't even know what kind of existence you'd like to conduct? Do you not see any other choice beside the one you are officially presented with, the "choice" between the poverty of wealth and the misery of poverty?
Does it seem to you that the disappointing future of a life passed making the month's rent money seems bright, because the shadow of joblessness is growing longer everywhere under the mediated sun of full employment? Nothing kills more surely than becoming content with survival.
** Chapter 3: Demilitarize the teaching profession
The spirit of the barracks has reigned sovereignly in schools. One marched at a snail's pace, complying with the orders of peons who merely lacked uniforms and rank stripes. The configuration of the battlement obeyed the laws of the right angle and the rectilinear structure. Thus was architecture employed in the surveillance of spaces for controlled roaming by the righteous, Spartan authorities.
Up to the sixties, the educational institution remained petrified with its warlike virtues, preparing kids to go die at the frontier, just as they began to devote themselves to love and happiness. Such an injunction would drown in ridicule today, but, despite the mutation initiated in May 1968 and the discredit into which the standing, combatless army of Europe has fallen (though there are a few exceptional local wars into which it disdains to intervene), it would be excessive to pretend that the tradition of the vociferous injunction, the barked insult, orders without responses and insubordination (which is the appropriate response) have become outdated.
The nearly absolute authority with which the schoolmaster is invested serves better the expression of neurotic behaviors than the diffusion of knowledge. The law of the fittest has never made anything of intelligence but a weapon of stupidity. Many, without doubt, are rendered helpless by not having anything but the right to shut up. But as long as communities of interests don't situate at the center of their knowledge the inclinations, doubts, torments, and problems each person feels during the days (that is, the most important part of their lives), there will be nothing but the mortuary the educational system constructs around us and the scorn we have for the institution's constant transmission of messages whose meaning has nothing to do with desiring, living beings.
*** WHOEVER TEACHES WITH FEAR RENDERS KNOWLEDGE TIMID
The authority legally accorded to the teacher puts such a bitter taste into knowledge that ignorance sneaks in to crown itself with the bay leaves of revolt. Those who dispense their knowledge through pleasure don't have to do anything to impose it, but the barracks-style warehousing of education is such that it is usually considered necessary to instruct with obligations, not charms.
Try, then, to extol the virtues of mutual comprehension between professors entering their classes like they were going into lion cages, and bunches of schoolkids, exhausted from dodging the whip and ready to devour their trainers! It seems that autocracy has been beaten all over Europe, and yet the school remains dominated by tyranny. Where the barking is the loudest in the amphitheater is where frustrations are so great they are bursting.
Nothing is more ignoble than fear, which belittles humans-turned-beasts and keeps them at bay; and I do not believe that fear should be tolerated by students or professors. Nothing breeds terror like terror itself. When pedagogical directives wear themselves out, favor will come to that principle which says that we should get rid of fear and give reassurance, a principle which seems to me to be a condition for any true learning about life. In order to apply this principle, it would be necessary to make the school into a place where neither authority nor submission, neither the strong nor the weak, neither the first nor the last, reign. As long as you don't form a community of students and teachers that is actually devoted to perfecting the creativity that everyone has inside themselves, you would be smart to be indignant about all of barbarism's many faces -- religious fanaticism, political sectarianism, the hypocrisy and corruption of governments. And yet you will fail to chase away either their mechanisms of integration or the drug and business mafias, because there is an underhanded trick operating within the hierarchical organization of teaching that predisposes us toward falling into the grasp of Mafiosos.
Now that the ideologies of left and right are melting in the sun of their common lie, the only criteria of intelligence and action resides in the everyday life of each person and in the choice between what strengthens one's own life and what destroys it, which is a choice that is confronted at every instant. If so many generous ideas have turned into their opposites, this is simply because the behavior that was working in their favor was negation. A project of autonomy and emancipation cannot base itself on the will to power, which continues to impress upon gestures the furrows of scorn, servitude and death, without wobbling and eventually falling.
I anticipate no other way to finish off fear and the lies that result from it than by a ceaselessly revived will to enjoy oneself and the world. To learn to untangle that which makes us more alive from that which kills us; this is the first lucidity, the lucidity that gives its meaning in the form of knowledge.
The most elaborate techniques put at our disposition a considerable amount of information. All this progress is not negligible, but it results in nothing but a bunch of dead letters if a favorable relation between teachers and little groups of students plugs into the web of abstract knowledge through any other net-work than the one we are interested in: what every individual wants to do with his or her life and destiny.
*** LIBERATE THE DESIRE TO KNOW FROM CONSTRAINT
The violent exploitation of nature has substituted constraint for desire. It has propagated everywhere the curse of work, both manual and intellectual, and has reduced to a marginal activity the true richness of human beings, i.e., their capacity to recreate themselves as they recreate the world.
By producing an economy that economizes on people until it makes ghosts out of them, human beings have only impeded their own evolution. That's why humanity still needs to be invented.
School carries the sensible mark of a break in the human project. One perceives more and more how and when the creativity of children is smashed by the hammer of work. The old familial litany "First work, you can amuse yourself later" has always expressed the absurdity of a society that calls for a renunciation of life in order to better consecrate toiling, which drains life and keeps pleasure from resembling anything but the colors of death.
One would have to possess the combined stupidity of all the specialized pedagogues in order to be surprised by the fact that the prodigious efforts and fatigues inflicted upon students have such mediocre results. What is there to hope for, when there's no heart in it, or when there's no more heart to put into it?
Charles Fourier, observing, during an insurrection, the care and ardor with which rioters ripped the pavement from a road and put up a barricade in a few hours, remarked that, to do the same work during "normal times," it would have taken a team of terracers, working under the order of a boss, three days. Wage-slave workers would have had no other interest in the job besides the pay, while the insurgents were animated by the passion for freedom.
Only the pleasure of being yourself and being for yourself will give to your knowledge that passionate attraction which justifies the effort without needing to take recourse in constraint.
To become who one truly is demands the most intransigent of resolutions. It necessitates constancy and obstinance. If we do not want to resign ourselves to acquiring knowledge that reduces us to the miserable state of being consumers, we cannot ignore that we need -- in order to leave the mire in which we are bogged down by the society of the past -- to take the initiative to increase the pressure with a sense for the contrary. But what? Are there still those of you who would fight and crush others to obtain employment, and yet hesitate to invest in life, which all of your efforts are designed to make something of?
We don't want to be "the best"; we just want to experience the best parts of life to the fullest, according to that principle of inaccessible perfection which revokes dissatisfaction in the name of the insatiable.
** Chapter 4: Make school into a center for the creation of the living, not the antechamber for a parasitic commodity society
In December 1991, the European Commission published a memorandum on higher education. It recommended that universities behave like business enterprises, submissive to the rules of the market. The same document expressed the view that students should be treated like clients, who should be incited not to learn but to consume.
Courses thus become products; the terms "student" and "studies" move aside to be replaced by expressions better suited for the new orientation: "human capital" and "labor market."
In September 1993, this same European Commission came back, like a recurring symptom of disease, with a green book about European education. It specified that it would be necessary, starting from maternity, to accumulate "human resources for the exclusive needs of industry" and to favor "a greater adaptability of behaviors in order to respond to the market's demand for working hands."
We see here only too clearly how the clogged-up flows of the present project into the radiant future the bygone efficiency of the past!
Once the remains of the only-halfway-marketable subjects of yesterday -- Latin, Greek, Shakespeare & Co. -- are eliminated, students will finally have the privilege of rising to the heights of saving gestures that allow the lucky to balance the market's budget by producing and consuming useless shit.
One is on the right track when one sees that, in whatever diverse forms they are found, governments always adhere to the unanimity of the principle: "Business enterprise should be in accordance with training and training should be in accordance with the needs of business enterprise."
*** RECRUITS NEEDED TO MANAGE BANKRUPTCY
To aid in understanding our era, it isn't futile to determine the processes by which the development of capitalism has successfully completed its journey to the level of planetary crisis, which is actually the crisis of the economy in its totalitarian functioning.
Since the start of the 19th century, the ensemble of individual and collective behaviors has been dominated by the necessity to produce. The organization of production with the aid of intellectual and manual labor demanded a method managed by executives and an authoritarian, indeed, a despotic mentality.
This was the period of the military conquest of markets. The industrialized countries unscrupulously pillaged the resources of the new colonies.
When the proletariat undertook a coordination of its revindications, it submitted to, despite its anarchist spontaneity, the clutches of autocracy, which the preeminence of the productive sector had already allowed to arise and become strong. Syndicates and workers' parties took on a bureaucratic structure; soon enough these institutions crippled the working masses, while at the same time they shouted that they were emancipating the workers.
Red power installed itself even easier than it had squeezed a few extra shares of benefits from the exploiting class. These "shares" were translated as wage increases, the opportunity to plan the time of work (the eight-hour-day, paid leave time), and social advantages (welfare, health care).
The years 1920 and 1930 saw the centralization of production reach its greatest heights. The passage from private capitalism to state capitalism was conducted brutally in Italy, Germany, and Russia, where the dictatorship of a unique party -- fascist, Nazi, Stalinist -- gave the means of production over to state control.
In the countries in which a liberal tradition safeguarded formal democracy, the monopolistic concentration of capital and the state's ascension to a managerial position came about through a process that was slower, more underhanded, and less violent.
It was in the United States that a new economic orientation first manifested itself, when the country dived headlong into a development that would considerably transform mentalities and morals, creating the necessity to consume and making it equal to or even more important than the necessity to produce.
Since 1945, the Marshall Plan, officially designed to aid a Europe devastated by war, opened the road to the society of consumption, which was closely identified with a society of happiness.
The obligation to produce at any cost ceded its place to an enterprise dressed up in the charms of seduction, beneath which was hidden a new primary imperative: consume. It doesn't matter what, just consume.
We now come to an amazing stage of evolution: a hedonism of the supermarket and self-serve democracy, propagating the illusion of pleasures and free choice, managing to undermine the sacrosanct patriarchal, authoritarian, military and religious values that always favored an economy dominated by the imperatives of production, but without having to worry about retaliation from the anarchists of the past.
Today, one sees how much the colonization of the laboring masses by the pressing invitation to consume a high-strung happiness has replaced, and thus loosened, the stranglehold on overseas colonies and has favored struggles of independence.
If the "freedom" of exchange and its indispensable corollary of expansion have contributed to the end of the majority of dictatorial regimes and to the collapse of the communist citadel, they have also rapidly unveiled the limits of consumable happiness.
Frustrated by a happiness that doesn't coincide in the least with increases in useless gadgets and adulterated products, consumers have, since 1968, become conscious of the new alienation whose object they have become. To work for a salary that one then invests in the purchase of commodities with an uncertain use-value suggests less a state of bliss than the disagreeable impression that one has been manipulated in accordance with the exigencies of the market. Those who put up with working in workshops and offices all day don't leave except to enter the factories of the consumable, which are less coercive but more deceitful.
False needs prevail over real ones, the past practice of selling "must have" products has led to a more and more aberrant production of parasitic services, which attach themselves to the citizen with the mission of securing, training, surrounding, counseling, supporting and guiding him or her, in short to snare him or her in the trap of a constant solicitude and dependency that likens him or her little by little to a handicapped person.
Thus, one has seen the primary sector sacrificed to profit the tertiary sector, which sells its own bureaucratic complexity in the form of aid and protection. Quality agriculture has been crushed under the weight of monoculture food production, which overproduces ersatz cereals, meats, and vegetables. The art of finding accommodations has been buried under dull colorlessness, boredom, and the criminality of the acres of concrete that assure revenues for the business crowd. As for the school, it has been called to serve as a reserve of elite students, who are promised a good career in profitable uselessness or in the mafias of finance. The belt is buckled. The mantra "study in order to find a job," as aberrant as it may be, simply voices the same demand to consume in the sole interest of an economic machine that is jamming up every part of the western world -- although every year, the specialists announce its triumphant re-start, because they have supposedly cleared the jam.
We are drowning in the mire of a parasitic and Mafioso-style bureaucracy in which money accumulates and gets caught in a closed circuit, instead of getting invested in quality products, useful for making life and the environment better. As the good teacher knows, money is what we lack the least, contrary to what your elected representatives may tell you, but teaching isn't a marketable sector anyway.
There exists, for all this, an alternative to the economy of decline and its impossible throwbacks. By redirecting the ever-deepening gap between the interests of commodities and the interests of living people, it suddenly becomes plausible to reconvert to the service of humanity a technology that lucrative imperialism has dehumanized -- and to expose things like nuclear fission and genetic experimentation more clearly as the redoubtable menaces they really are. This alternative demands that priority be given to the quality of life and its basic activities of acquiring lodging, food, transport and accommodations of all sorts, and the needs of health, education and culture, which are exactly what the absurdity of archaic capitalism condemns to self-dismemberment beneath the constant blows of budget restrictions.
A mutation is being primed for explosion before our eyes. Neocapitalism is getting ready to reconstruct what 19th century capitalism ruined. Despite the varied resistance movements of the past, natural energy is being replaced by polluting and devastating means of production.
In the same way that the industrial revolution gave birth, at the beginning of the 19th century, to a considerable number of inventions and innovations -- electricity, gas, vaporizers, telecommunications, rapid transport -- our age is in need of new creations that will replace those that no longer serve life, but menace it: petroleum, nuclear energy, the pharmaceutical industry, chemical pollutants, experimental biology . . . and the plethora of parasitic services in which and on which bureaucracy proliferates.
*** THE END OF FORCED LABOR WILL INAUGURATE THE ERA OF CREATIVITY
Work is an aborted creation. The creative genius of humanity has found itself trapped in a system that condemns it to the production of power and profit, and that doesn't allow any restraints to be placed upon its luxuriance, other than art and reverie.
Now this work of exploiting nature, so often exalted like the Promethean power that transforms the world, today delivers to us its invoices for sales in all accounts: a comfortable survival where all resources and the heart are smothered in the vicious cycle of marketability.
How could a concept so useless and harmful to life as work not be smothered in its turn? Yesterday it procured the car and the television, at the price of polluted air and the palliatives of an absent life. Work is today no more than an uncertain life-jacket in a society paralyzed by bureaucratic inflation, where nothing is guaranteed anymore, neither salaries, lodgings, natural products, energy resources, nor social acquisitions.
In an atmosphere made oppressive by the scarcity business, the diminishing of work is evidently resented like a curse. Joblessness is just off-peak work. The same resignation and the same necessity to wait for alms to be given are seen when the worker waits for his or her paycheck to come through, after devoting him or herself to a job that was boring (even though at the time the worker would consider it imprudent to admit it).
While everything goes along with the current hopelessness, which inspires an economically programmed planetary self-destruction, there is an abandoned world waiting to be taken over and occupied so that it can be rehabilitated, restored, divested of its nuisances, and rebuilt for our well-being. As it shatters, the mirror of consumerist illusion puts happiness within our reach, after showing us its deceitful reflections.
Reduce the duration of work in order to better redistribute it? Very well. But from what perspective, and with what conscience? If the aim of the operation is to get the greatest number to produce more goods and services useful for the market and not for life, then, in exchange for a salary that would pay for one's increasing consumption, the old capitalism has done nothing but recuperate to its own profit what it feigned having abandoned to the profit of all.
On the other hand, if the same steps taken obey the solicitations of a Neocapitalism searching out in ecological investments a weapon against the property speculation of an ownership without imagination, all that'll be lacking will be a change of consciousness for a guaranteed salary and a reduced-time workday for the path of free creation and the leisure to find and to be oneself, at last, to be opened for everyone.
Despite the occultation that the bureaucrats of corruption and the business mafiosos carry around with them, there exists a socio-economic demand running counter to the calls for help coming from the ordinary collapse. This demand clamors for an environment that would better the quality of life, for production without oppression and pollution, for authentically human relationships, and for the end of the dictatorship that marketability exercises over life.
It falls to you -- and to the new school you'll invent -- to prevent creativity, objectively stimulated by the promises of jobs in the public service, from going to hell because of economic alienation or because it sliced itself open in trying to create itself.
If you forget what you are and what kind of life you would like to lead, you can not hope for any other fate besides that of being a good commodity that is discarded as soon as the toll booth is passed and the toll is paid.
*** GIVE FAVOR TO QUALITY
Forced to obey the criteria of quantity, the road to profit lapses into the absurdity of overproduction. Yesterday, to produce a lot augmented the surplus value accumulated by bosses, who did not hesitate to destroy surpluses of coffee, meat, wheat and corn, so that they could prevent a drop in market price.
In reaching a larger segment of the populace, the development of consumption has permitted the absorption, up to a certain point, of an increasing quantity of commodities conceived of less for their practical uses than for their effect of bringing in money. The quality of a product has been treated in such an off-handed manner that it is no longer the quality that determines the sales tag, but rather the bullshit publicity that dolls up the commodity to seduce the client.
But as the highest price goes to the one that washes the whitest, so does the lie use itself when its turn comes. Outraged by the excess of scorn, the clientele is finished balking. It arms itself with critique, and refuses to swallow blindly the little spoonfuls of slogans that are fed to him or her at every instant through the eyes, the mouth, the ears, the head.
Many have decided not to let themselves be consumed by an economy that mocks their health and intelligence. In demanding the quality that was offered them, these people find that it's their own quality of being that they discover or rediscover, that their specificity as lucid individuals was occulted by this reduction to the alienated, artificially gregarious state that provokes and maintains consumerist propaganda.
But now that consumers' defense organizations have organized boycotts against products that have had the nature ripped from them by an agriculture that inundates the market with force-grown cereals, fertilizer-ridden vegetables and meats coming from martyred animals in concentration-camp farms, it seems that the individual would be well advised to see that, in the junior and high schools, culture has taken the same path taken by the worst agricultural practices.
If politicians nourished the good intentions with respect to education that they never cease proclaiming, wouldn't they get down to business by assuring its quality? Even if they did, it's a little late to be decreeing the two measures that determine the most important conditions of human learning: an increase in the number of teachers, and a decrease in the number of students per class, so that each person can be treated according to his or her specific needs, and not in the anonymity of a crowd.
Apparently, the concept of "interests" has more of an economic connotation for the politicians than the simple human one. If governments favor the intensive production of students, so that students end up consumable objects for the market, then the principles of a sane administration require that the greatest possible number of heads be stuck into the smallest possible school area and tended by the fewest possible number of personnel. The logic is unanswerable and seemingly unstoppable, and no Society for the Protection of Animals rises up against the forced consumption of knowledge submissive to the law of supply and demand, nor against the morals of the horse dealers who reign over the stables at job fairs.
Resign yourself, then, to the political party, busy with stupidities and tied to the gregarious state, since I can't see how it's possible to educate a class off 30 students without iron rule or tricks.
This is not to declare the material impossibility of promoting a personalized pedagogy. Wouldn't the sophistication of audiovisual techniques permit a large number of students to receive individually what schoolmasters used to repeat over and over until the students had it memorized (orthography, elementary grammar, vocabulary, chemical formulas, theorems, music theory, declination...)? Couldn't one test the degree of assimilation and comprehension in the form of a game?
Liberated from a thankless, mechanical occupation, the teacher would have nothing to do but devote him or herself to the essential part of his or her job: to assure the quality of globally received information, to help in the formation of autonomous individuals, and to give the best of his or her knowledge and experience in helping each person learn to read themselves and to read the world.
Information to the greatest number, training in little groups. Working at the center of a vast irrigation network that diverts the multiplicity of ideas and things that can be known so that it flows toward each student, the educator will have at last the freedom to become what he or she has always dreamed of becoming: the revealer of a creativity to which no one possessed the key, since it was hidden so deeply beneath the weight of the constraints of the past.
** Chapter 5: Learn autonomy, not dependence
Over the centuries, the school has extended the sequestration of the child imposed by the authoritarian, patriarchal family. Now that a rough sketch of mutual understanding, fashioned from affection and progressive autonomy, is being developed between parents and their offspring, it would be regrettable to see that the school ceases to be inspired by familial community.
Paradoxically, the educational system, which teaches youths, i.e., those who change the most, has been the institution that has changed the least of all.
The traditional family would prefer to produce children in a line rather than offer life to two or three little beings to whom it would confer its love and attention without reserve. Those children who do not die at an early age most often hide a secret wound from view. Tyranny, culpability and emotional blackmail engenders the same sorts of mercenaries who, hiding behind their hardness of character an infantilism that enjoins them to look for a substitute for the father and mother in the families-on-loan that constitute all the churches, political parties, sects, "national gregariousness," and army corps of all genres. For all its humanity, history is filled with showoffs who need help. Some cynicism would be necessary to evoke the concept of "natural selection," proper to the animal species; just look at our production of dead flesh, which fills the factories and is spat out by guns. The nature of this "production" implies that we need to correct the statistics coming from this "natural selection," as well as recognize the fact that the economy of familial procreation carries a flaw whereby death settles its accounts.
The evolution of morals makes us regard as a monstrosity today that bestial proliferation of lives irredeemably condemned to be absorbed beneath the blows of the machete of war, massacre, famine and sickness. This evolution does not prevent the stigmatizing of overpopulation in countries where religious obscurantism feeds off of the misery that it knowingly maintains, nor the acceptance in Europe of the same archaic and scornful spirit that continues to treat students like cattle, though that spirit is supposedly relieving students of a life it assumes would be inconsequential without schooling.
The overpopulation in classes not only causes barbarous behaviors, vandalism, delinquency, boredom and hopelessness, it moreover perpetuates the ignoble criteria of competitiveness, the concurrent struggle that eliminates whoever doesn't conform to the exigencies of the market. Ambitious brutes get the better of sensible and generous beings; we see the shadow of the sharks of power calling themselves high-sounding things, as if they were trying to be the brilliant thinkers of olden days, as if they were trying to prove that they were a part of some "natural" selection.
There are no stupid children; there is nothing but imbecilic education. Forcing students to heave themselves up onto the top of the heap contributes to the laborious progress of animal rage and cunning, but surely not to the development of a creative and human intelligence.
You say that nothing is comparable nor reducible to who one is, to what one is. Each individual possesses his or her own qualities; his or her only responsibility is to cultivate them for the sole pleasure of having one's feelings of oneself be in agreement with one's manner of living. The individual must cease, then, to exclude from the educational path the child who is more interested in hamsters and dreams than in the history of the Roman Empire. For the one who refuses to allow him or herself to be programmed by the logicians of promotional sales, all paths lead towards him or herself and towards creation.
Yesterday, it was necessary to identify with the father, whether he be was a hero or a cretin (such sweet sarcasm came from that ambiguity). Now that fathers notice that their independence progresses with the independence of their children, now that fathers feel enough love for themselves and others to help adolescents get rid of their images -- who could still support what the school still proposes as models of accomplishment, i.e., the efficient and maggoty financier, the energetic and senile politician, the Mafioso reigning with clientelism and corruption, the businessman making his final profits from pillaging the planet?
All this is designed to condemn you to never attaining anything, to constantly looking for yourself and your identity in a religion, an ideology, a nationality, a race, a culture, a tradition, a myth, an image. Identifying with the most living facets of your own being and self is the only way to emancipation.
*** AN ALLIANCE WITH CHILDREN IS AN ALLIANCE WITH NATURE
Violence exercised against the child by the patriarchal family participates in the rape of nature by work and the commodity. The consciousness of planetary pillage has gone from an uncompromising defense of the environment to a nonviolent defense of natural resources, but has not contributed much to the shattering of the yoke that economic exploitation makes weigh so heavily upon man, woman, child, fauna, and flora.
The sentiment that we all issued from a common womb, which is the earth, and whose memory is revived during training in the maternal belly, has fed so well the nostalgia for a Golden Age and original harmony that one realizes suddenly that forced labor separates us from nature and from ourselves with a ripping up felt inside, a discomfort that we had for so long perceived as an existential torment, a suffering of being itself.
The failure of a ransacking, polluting economy and the emergence of a project for the symbiotic recreation of human beings and their natural habitat will henceforth get rid of our paradise lost, the ghost of which has haunted a history that was powerless to construct itself humanly: the myths of the good savage, primitive communism and apocalyptic millenarianism, which, after appearing in the glory days of nazism, reappeared in the name of integrating us better into contemporary society.
At least we will have learned that life is not a regression to some protoplasmic stage, but a process of refinement and the establishment of an organization of desires.
The idea long prevailed that, in the struggle against cancer, it was important to destroy those cells that a sudden and frenetic proliferation had condemned to wither away and die. It is preferable today to reinforce the life-potential of healthy peripheral cells and to favor the reconquering of what is still alive before annihilating those that death has already snatched away. I would be satisfied if such an attitude sovereignly determined our dealings with ourselves, with our fellow human beings and with the world.
We know, after having seen so many idiotic generations make sensibility into a weakness and take up arms only to become bloodthirsty, that love for the living awakens an intelligence that cannot be measured against the underhanded spirit reigning over the totalitarian universes.
A highly respectable ethic -- the respect for living beings -- prescribes that one not kill a stupid person, and not knock over a tree without being ready to avoid it when it falls. Nevertheless, what such recommendations assume about tricks and constraints will never spirit away conviction like they spirit away the awareness that the prejudice one holds towards the living one also holds towards oneself -- that is, if the individual doesn't stand guard, because the living is not an object, but a subject, who merits being treated according to the unalienable right of having been born to live.
*** FROM INDISPENSABLE AID TO THE REFUSAL OF PERMANENT ASSISTANCE
The road to autonomy follows the example of the infant who is learning to walk.
Progress doesn't take place without tears and efforts. The risk of falling, bumping into a wall, suffering additionally in the first few steps the shackles of fear. Nonetheless, the existence of affection that encourages you to get back up again, to start again, to devote yourself and to coordinate gestures, demonstrates that mastery of movement is acquired better and faster when you are not locked in the ancient conditions in which one worried, not only about the crusading fires of a mocking vanity, diffuse menaces and the anguish of not being loved anymore if one didn't apply oneself, but also about a certain sickness that is underhandedly maintained by the ambiguity of parents who both desire and doubt that their child will make his or her first steps towards an autonomy that could then be subtracted from their tutelary authority, thus removing from them the feeling of being indispensable.
The teaching of the very young has taken up without difficulty the same familial disposition that put everything into work in order to assure happiness in independence, just as parents only recover happiness, lost since adolescence, when they discover control. Filling themselves with that osmotic comprehension in which one educates by letting him or herself be educated as well, nursery schools have first crack at giving the gift of affection and the opportunity to explore. That affection, which is an invaluable quality in the existence of individuals and collectivities, should supposedly be indebted to the lowest paid governmental businessmen says enough as to what heights of scorn for public utility the logic of profit climbs.
The rupture is brutal from the moment you enter the school. There one regresses into the archaic family, in which the infant can not even learn how to get by alone without signaling the act of eternal recognition for those who had been in charge of his or her training. Confidence in yourself is undermined and compensated for by insolence; school reconstructs the repugnant mixture of the morgue and the servility that composed, in the past, ordinary social behavior.
In the sincere desire to make the adolescent a human being in the full sense, the teacher overtaxes him or herself in a truly uncomfortable exercise of power to which the hierarchical structure constrains him or her. How could teachers not be tempted to make themselves indispensable and to maintain in the student a weakness that renders domination more comfortable? Crutch-sellers have a need for cripples.
If we escape this society, we do so barely and with difficulty. This society has never believed in individuals, and individuals place their belief in the powers that cripple them by forcing them to walk. God, churches, the state, fatherlands, political parties, leaders, and little Fathers of the People -- all of them have had enough pretext not to live for themselves. The children who were never told about anything unless it might have made them fall down -- it is time to teach them how to teach themselves. In the end, teachers such as ourselves can break the habit of being in demand and start to be on offer. We hope that this miserable society of people, which is on permanent benefits whose passivity gives the corrupt their force, becomes nothing but a thing of the past.
*** PUBLIC SERVICE FUNDS SHOULD NOT BE AT THE SERVICE OF MONEY
Education has to do with the creation of human beings, not with the production of commodities. Will we have revoked the absurd despotism of gods if we have tolerated the fatalism of an economy that corrupts and degrades life on the planet and in our everyday existence?
The only defense available to us is the will to live, allied with the consciousness that propagates it. Judging by the capacity of human beings to subvert what kills them, this will can be an invincible weapon.
Endeavoring to govern us, the logic of business demands that all remuneration, grants, and charity be paid off with the greatest possible obedience to the commodity system. You have no other choices than to follow it or to refuse it by following your desires. Either you enter like a client into the world market of lucrative knowledge -- in other words, like a slave to a parasitic bureaucracy that is condemned to collapse beneath the growing weight of its uselessness -- or you will fight for your autonomy, come up with the fundamentals of a new school and a new society, and recuperate the money squandered each day by the ordinary corruption of financial operations in order to invest it into the quality of life. In France (a country much like ours [i.e., Belgium]), "The national union estimated that taxes evaluated at 230 billion francs, being close to the amount of the budget deficit, were instances of fraud imputable to the business milieu; this scandal lifts the veil covering the corrupt practices of the large industrial and financial groups." It is no different here.
The money stolen from life is placed at the service of money itself. Such is the reality hidden by the absurd and menacing shadow of the large economic institutions: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, the European Commission, the Bank of France, the Bank of America, and many others.
Their support for foundations and university research centers implies that, in exchange for support, the evangelism of profit should be propagated, easily transfigured into a universal truth, by the bloody mercenaries of press, radio, and television.
But, as formidable as it may seem, the machine rots from its emptiness, and goes out of order slowly: it will finish, as in Kafka's <em>Penal Colony,</em> by engraving its Law into the flesh of its master.
Do we not see a few courageous magistrates, motivated by the desire to gain the favor of an ethical reaction, who are smashing the impunity that financial arrogance has guaranteed? The taxation of huge fortunes -- 1% of French people own 25% of the national fortune, whereas 10% own 55% of the wealth; it is worse in America, where 5% of the population, last time I checked, owned 90% of the wealth -- and the prosecution of the most obvious examples of corruption, and only the perceived ones, of course, committed by businessmen, the denunciation of the scandal of representation fees (a scandal ignored in the U.S., where court costs and lawyer costs are higher than anywhere), the fining of corrupt administrators, and the blocking of assets of international fraud -- all this indicates well enough, on a card everyone can read, the means of access to the treasure, which the citizens have created and sustained, and from which they are systematically kept. It is no less true that the path gets lost beneath the devastating effect of resignation, that is, if money isn't seized and invested in the only domain that would truly be in the general interest: the quality of everyday life and its environment.
Without doubt, however, the honest magistrates are wearing the robes of justice; you, on the other hand, have nothing, because you have never created anything that could sustain you. You do, however, possess over repression -- no matter how just it wants to make itself look -- an advantage that it will never be able to prevail over: the generosity of the living, without which there is no creation or human progress.
Teaching has found itself trapped in a realm of unoccupied lodginghouses that the owners have preferred to abandon and leave to rot, since empty space is marketable, but space that welcomes shelterless men, women and children isn't. Thus <em>The Economist</em>states that "the subordination of commerce to the rights of men will have a cost more than it's worth" (April 9, 1994). Nevertheless, to requisition a building to give people shelter from misery -- which is relieved due to the simple fact that it's warm inside -- in the end doesn't escape the plan of destruction of useful goods, to which the inflation of the parasitic sectors (and the proliferating bureaucracy that this inflation engenders) are so conducive.
What you get out of yourself won't really be yours unless you make it better, in the sense that "to live" means "to live more." Occupy your school; don't let them appropriate you for their programmed dilapidation. Paint the walls, make them beautiful and to your liking, because beauty incites creation and love, and ugliness attracts hate and annihilation.
Transform the schools into creative workshops, into meeting places, into parks of attractive intelligence. Let's make the schools into fountains of happy knowledge, following the example of the vegetable gardens that the homeless, jobless, and the most deprived have occasionally had the imagination to plant in the big cities, after they've smashed up the asphalt and concrete.
The errors and gropings of whoever undertakes to create and to be created are nothing in the face of the privilege that such an undertaking confers, i.e., the revocation of the fear of being oneself, which the forces of repression secretly nourish and solicit.
We are born, said Shakespeare, to tread upon the heads of kings. The kings and their armies of executioners are nothing but dust and ashes. Learn to march alone, and you will walk proudly over those who, in their dying world, have nothing but the ambition to die with it.
In collectives of students and professors, the task of snatching the school from the glaciation of profit and changing it to a place of simple human generosity reappears. Sooner or later, the quality of life will attain the sovereignty denied to it by an economy reduced to selling and valorizing its own collapse.
From the instant that you form the project of a pedagogy founded on a natural pact with life, you will no longer have to beg money from those who exploit and scorn you by marketing you. You will demand that pact because you will know how and why you can seize the freedom that it implies.
One doesn't live as long as expected if one doesn't fully develop one's capacities.
|
#title Blackness and Democratic Modernity
#author A.X.
#LISTtitle Blackness and Democratic Modernity
#date January 10, 2023
#source https://harbinger-journal.com/issue-2/blackness-and-democratic-modernity/
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-09-10T22:24:59.246Z
#authors A.X.
#topics Democratic modernity, Ocalan, democratic confederalism, black anarchism, black social ecology, social ecology
<quote>
“Modernity as a concept means time, the present. There are different moderns, depending on the age. From Sumerian modernity to Roman modernity, and even before and after them, there have been…many examples of modernity.”
Abdullah Öcalan, <em>The Sociology of Freedom</em>
</quote>
<quote>
“The Negro’s revolutionary history is rich, inspiring, and unknown. Negroes revolted against the slave raiders in Africa; they revolted against the slave traders on the Atlantic passage. They revolted on the plantations. The docile Negro is a myth… The only place where Negroes did not revolt is in the pages of capitalist historians.”
C.L.R. James, “Revolution and the Negro”
</quote>
When Portuguese caravels first arrived on the shores of West Africa, no one could grasp the historical magnitude of the social transformations that were from then underway: for Africa, for Europe, and for the whole world. The following centuries of brutality inflicted upon the African peoples who were kidnapped and sold were the very foundation of a new global system that shapes the modern world. As Black people, as people made Black <em>through slavery</em>, we have both struggled against our oppression and at times imagined ourselves as a totality, as a nation, which could cast off this oppression together.
This historical mission for Black freedom and autonomy can be clarified through an exchange of ideas and experiences between Black revolutionary nationalism and Kurdish revolutionary nationalism, especially as exemplified by the political shift in the thinking of the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan. Öcalan and the PKK began as Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary nationalists seeking to establish an independent Kurdish state in the Kurdish-majority regions of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, before reorienting to a politics of democratic confederalism and democratic nationhood. As Öcalan has put it,
<quote>
My realization that I was a positivist dogmatic was certainly connected to my isolation. In isolation I grasped the alternative modernity concept, that national structures can have many different models, that generally social structures are fictional ones created by human hands, and that nature is malleable. In particular, overcoming the model of the nation-state was very important for me. For a long time this concept was a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist principle for me. It essentially had the quality of an unchanging dogma. Because real socialism hadn’t overcome the nation state model and saw it as a basic necessity for modernity, we weren’t able to think of another form of nationalism, for example democratic nationalism. When you said nation there absolutely had to be a state! If Kurds were a nation they certainly needed a state! However, as social conditions intensified, as I understood that nations themselves were the most meaningless reality, shaped under the influence of capitalism, and as I understood that the nation-state model was an iron cage for societies, I realized that freedom and community were more important concepts. Realizing that to fight for nation states was to fight for capitalism, a big transformation in my political philosophy took place. I realized I had been a victim of capitalist modernity.[1]
</quote>
In the same way, I argue that Black liberation is not possible through the models of national “self-determination” that themselves are creatures of capitalist modernity, such as nation-statehood, which are dominating rather than emancipating, exclusionary rather than expansive—and that we must embark on a revolutionary project of constructing an altogether different modernity.
Öcalan has long reflected on the historical experience of the peoples of the Middle East, upon whose ancestors’ backs the world’s first states were built. He therefore looks to their revolutionary movements as the spearhead of the struggle to <em>unmake</em> the state, as well as the dominant male and his oppression of women. Black revolutionaries must similarly reflect on our place in the historical development of capitalism and empire. This system was built through the enslavement and dispossession of Black people, and so the democratic society to come will be—and is being—built through the rebellions of those kidnapped people’s descendants.
<strong>* * *</strong>
The concept of modernity, Öcalan argues, denotes only the present, and the current hegemonic power that shapes it. These early Iberian slavers and conquistadors may not have been global hegemons, but by setting in motion the European colonization of the Americas and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, they enabled the development of industrial capitalism, finance, and global empire, which transformed western Europe from a society economically trailing those of Africa and Asia into the center of a new world-system. Öcalan calls these past 400 years, beginning with racial slavery throughout the so-called “New World” of the Americas, “capitalist modernity.”[2] The oppression of Black people was foundational to the emergence of this capitalist modernity. These emerging European powers and eventually the United States were able to expand their influence around the world because of the slave trade, whose sugar cane fed the growing ranks of a landless working class and whose cotton fed the textile mills of European industry. Blackness developed from this racial slavery in the Americas, which birthed the social category of <em>whiteness</em> simultaneously: the belief in some essential racial characteristic beyond Christianity and culture binding northern Europeans together.[3] The semi-capitalist economy established in colonial America legally enshrined the separation of White and Black as a permanent social institution following the rebellions of the late 1600s that challenged the ruling planter class.[4] The creation of the white race was a strategic response to the threat of potential unity between exploited European workers and Black slaves or indigenous peoples.
This thus ties the creation of the Black race directly to capitalism itself within the “New World”. Throughout capitalism’s further development, this divide was used to create a hierarchy within the laboring class where white workers by luck of being “white” were able to have more privilege in society than Black workers, even if those Black workers were legally free—what W.E.B. Du Bois termed “the psychological wage” of whiteness, by which they could be persuaded to accept less <em>actual</em> wages.[5] White workers did not face the threat of being enslaved because someone thought (or pretended to think) they were a slave, and even after emancipation they could hold fast to the belief that someone was always beneath them in the social hierarchy. This is not to mention the reproductive labor that Black women endured as the primary caretakers of white children, and constantly being forced to have children themselves to propagate and grow the enslaved workforce.[6] The pseudo-scientific idea of the “Black race” was rooted in slavery, and this Black race itself was literally born from those women who had the label of “Black” and the status of slave forced upon them.
These slavers and settlers were not able to simply reorder the world to their liking, however. Because these Africans were human beings, they fought back. The fights raged all across the continents and islands that enslaved people were brought to, where they were tortured via disabling forced labor, constant beatings, and sexual assault.[7] As C.L.R. James wrote,
<quote>
Slaves on slave ships jumped overboard, went on vast hunger strikes, attacked the crews. There are records of slaves overcoming the crew and taking the ship into harbor, a feat of tremendous revolutionary daring. In British Guiana during the eighteenth century the Negro slaves revolted, seized the Dutch colony, and held it for years. They withdrew to the interior, forced the whites to sign a treaty of peace, and have remained free to this day. Every West Indian colony, particularly Jamaica and San Domingo and Cuba, the largest islands, had its settlements of maroons, bold Negroes who had fled into the wilds and organized themselves to defend their freedom. In Jamaica the British government, after vainly trying to suppress them, accepted their existence by treaties of peace, scrupulously observed by both sides over many years, and then broken by British treachery. In America the Negroes made nearly 150 distinct revolts against slavery.[8]
</quote>
Fighting back against the cruelty of the slave masters is in the purest way an expression of the humanity of the enslaved peoples. Any and all people will do the best they can to express their humanity when it is being denied. For enslaved people, to express their humanity in the face of such extreme violence can only mean self-defense. This is the essence of a slave revolt, violence in defense of one’s humanity. As Öcalan writes,
<quote>
The right of each social group to defend itself is sacred. To defend oneself against each attack which aims to destroy the existence of a group or any of its values related to its existence is not just an irrevocable right, it is the basis of the group’s existence.[9]
</quote>
This sacred right belongs to all living things. He terms this “defensive force” of a social collectivity not a <em>power</em> but the “democratic defense force” or “democratic authority”, stating “A rose defends itself through its thorns; let us then call this democratic authority paradigm the ‘rose theory.’”[10]<em></em> This “rose theory” must frame our struggle against the persecution of the present and toward the freedom of the future. A slave revolt cradles the seed of an entirely new world, through the violent longing of the most dispossessed for self-determination and freedom; it is the revolutionary ancestor pointing the way to a <em>democratic</em> modernity. Despite all efforts to bury this history, slave revolts are at the center of our historical experience as Black people. Ever since we as Africans arrived on the shores of the Americas, we fought to free ourselves. This resistance and rebellion have come to define the “Black Nation” as a concept.
Even with the formal abolition of chattel slavery, our oppression as Black Americans still continues into the modern day. Following the defeat of Reconstruction, Southern state governments forced Black people back into what was effectively a condition of slavery. Our ruthless exploitation through the sharecropper system was upheld by the “Black Codes,” which implemented a system of mass imprisonment through which the state legally re-enslaved those Black people who defied white rule. This was the inception of modern day prisons in the United States, which to this day maintains a form of legal slavery for millions of Black people. Caging human beings has ballooned into a multi-billion-dollar industry, highlighting how the link between capitalism and Black enslavement has shaped the entire current landscape of “criminal justice” and law enforcement.[11]
The legacy of slavery has created an extreme racial disparity in generational wealth, so that Black people persistently occupy the lowest rung of the capitalist hierarchy. Through this material deprivation and targeted enforcement by agents of state, Black people are continuously funneled back into the prison system and its legalized slavery. From the country’s colonial roots to the contemporary social order of the United States, both capitalism and statism—the centerpieces of capitalist modernity in the west—are built on the oppression of Black people, as well as that of the indigenous peoples of North America. And as the oppression of Black people under capitalist modernity has continued into the present in new forms, so has our resistance: changing shape and building a new world around us through struggle.
We are a nation that does not elect its own leaders but is constantly at war with the United States and other settler colonial states in the Americas. This is a nation that is not defined by geographic borders—that exists, in the words of Black anarchist William C. Anderson, “on no map.”[12] Even in the realm of cultural expression, the Black experience is defined by criminalization on one hand and resistance on the other. The simple fact that our hair is considered “unprofessional” when it is dreaded/loc’d, braided, or in its natural state is a testament to this fact. The music we create from jazz to rock to disco to hip hop have all been seen as “devil’s music” by the white majority in their beginnings. These art forms were our pure expression of our pain, our struggle, and most importantly our identity as human beings. When we write music about police brutality, we are speaking truth to power. Even songs that are just about having fun have a political depth. For us, these songs are a way to escape the grind of capitalism. Yet these art forms are only seen as “good” when they are able to be commercialized and sold for profit to white audiences. When hip hop as a genre was taken over by white corporate interests, we saw that the true drive to create this music was taken away, and its rebellion was recuperated. This is capitalist modernity attempting to overtake that democratic yearning for freedom through the arts. Why is it that N.W.A’s song about police violence and nurturing a revenge fantasy against one’s oppressors has appeared on mainstream, socially nihilistic shows such as South Park? The answer is clear: capitalist modernity.
The Black Nation exists as a collectivity <em>through</em> our constant resistance to the United States and its statecraft across generations. Our communities have only been able to hold together in the face of statist violence, whether that be at the hands of the police or other state bureaucrats like Child Protective Services (CPS), by developing communal structures of our own, for our collective life and resistance. CPS, for example, ostensibly exists to save children from violence, but is more often used to punish poverty and tear apart Black and indigenous families. Contrary to the state’s instruments of punishment and its assumptions about the universality of the nuclear family, the Black community has cultivated ideas such as “it takes a village to raise a child” for generations. We challenge the prevailing ideology of parenting under capitalist modernity through our own practices of communal family life. I wish to be clear that this is not a universal or intrinsic part of being Black in America, but due to the oppression we have faced from the days our ancestors first arrived on these shores to the modern era, we have been forced to be the “other” in society, creating our own social world within it.
As Jessica Gordon Nembhard has documented in vibrant detail, this imperative to develop our own communal institutions to overcome our oppression has placed us at the leading edge of cooperative economics throughout our history. From mutual aid societies of free or escaped Black people pooling their funds to buy the freedom of their families to the farming cooperatives organized to escape sharecropping and secure political rights, these have been foundational to the struggle for Black freedom.[13]
When groups of people are faced with oppression they typically have to create alternative systems to the official ones that clearly do not serve them. As a Black autonomist I must stress that we as Black people cannot push for integration into a system that was not created for us, and which does not contain institutional pathways for any kind of genuine democratization. We must continue to consciously create our own communities (or take control of existing ones where we are a dominant force), via a prefigurative politics, and from there confederate with other oppressed nations as we operate through the processes of consensus and direct democracy. Rather than seeking to carve out space for ourselves within these settler states and the capitalist order, both of which were built through our oppression and enslavement, we should instead strive to lead the way in the development of a fundamentally different kind of society by people of all nations and cultures.
Öcalan termed this future free social order assembled out of the autonomy and power of society’s oppressed groups <em>democratic modernity</em>.[14] He asserts that democratic modernity is the opposite of capitalist modernity, being “an economy free of monopolism, an ecology that signifies harmony with the environment, and a technology that is friendly to nature and humanity.”[15] As the basis for building a regenerative new relationship to the rest of life on earth, democratic modernity is a parallel concept to what Murrary Bookchin called “free nature,” where through a politics of direct democracy we are able to serve as conscious ecological stewards, a society that administers itself in harmony with first nature free of bureaucracy and the state. Just as capitalist modernity was birthed through our enslavement, it will be buried—and democratic modernity created—through our revolt.
Constructed by the former underclass within the United States, such a democratic society will be built within the shell of the old, nascent in our communal practices of resistance to capitalist modernity. We build prefigurative structures that demonstrate the political possibility of entirely new ways of living together. These structures can be as simple as spaces where we as Black people are able to express our autonomy outside of white supremacist influence; that is, not necessarily autonomous <em>physical</em> spaces but also creating the mental, spiritual, and emotional spaces where we can express ourselves without fear of violence. Further, we must build economic centers that work to separate our communities from dependence on capitalism and the state, and tie them back to us as the people, and united on a confederal basis. This would enable a given community to control itself while still working with other communities throughout the country and even across national borders. We can build community gardens, give-away shops, revolutionary collectives and other projects that are woven together to take back control of society. Such would be a reversal of Orlando Patterson’s concept of social death in slavery, being a social rebirth. For Black people, the construction of a democratic society would mean at minimum a society that is not controlled by the state, patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, queerphobia, or any other forms of domination over our people or ourselves.
In the past, we as Black people have created our own self-defense forces to counter police violence, practiced economic collectivity to lift ourselves up together, and amassed in assemblies of the people to chart a common course. Yet when faced with hierarchies such as toxic masculinity, queerphobia, ableism, and other forms of social domination, we have often failed. It is in these areas where we must seek to transcend our practices of the past here through our organizing in the present. We must see ourselves as a democratic nation that will operate autonomously from white supremacy, queerphobia, statism, capitalism, patriarchy, adult supremacy, and all other forms of domination, <em>as a condition of securing genuine Black freedom</em>. We must study our history and work towards correcting the errors of hierarchy and authority in our striving towards democratic modernity. We must create a world where this education is understood as a self-transforming project that goes on for our entire lives, where we exercise direct control of our own lives, and where we may freely cooperate with others as equals within our communities and with other communities. We must operate independently yet be interconnected with the rest of the world. Crucially, this building of a liberated society for us as Black people must start with the creation of our own autonomous spaces that reverse our oppression and constitute the building blocks of a democratic modernity.
This project of Black autonomy is therefore sharply distinguished from Black separatism. To quote Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin:
<quote>
[W]e also have differences with the Black (and other race) nationalists, although we may share many basic ideas with them on cultural autonomy. We also believe in and treasure many of the traditions and history of our peoples, but believe it must be ‘demystified’ and made into a culture of resistance, rather than personality cults or escapism from the reality of fighting racism. Further, we categorically do not believe in any “race nationalism”, which demonizes white people and advocates some sort of biological determinism. We are not xenophobic; so do not entertain any race mythology about European peoples as either a superior species or as devils. And although we recognize the necessity of autonomous struggles in this period, we can work with white workers and poor people around specific campaigns. Our major point of our differences is that we are not seeking to build a Black nation-state. In fact, we believe the same class politics of “haves and have-nots” will show itself within any type of Black nation-state, whether it’s an Islamic, secular New African, or African Socialist state, and that this will produce an extreme class differential and economic/political injustice among those oppressed peoples of color. We can look at a succession of dictatorships and capitalist regimes in Africa to let us know this. We believe that a bourgeois class and political dictatorship is inevitable and that a people’s revolution will break out under such a Black Nationalist government.”[16]
</quote>
As black people are at the bottom of the pyramid, we must be explicitly against forming a state that will inherently leave many of us at the bottom of some type of hierarchy, as all of us would not be free. As Mikhail Bakunin has said, “I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.”[17]
This explicit rejection of nation-state nationalism is essential due to the competing conceptions of Black nationhood within the Black nationalist tradition. On one hand, Black nationalism can be viewed as pride in being Black and the view that the Black community must control the Black community. As Malcolm X put it in his speech “The Ballot or the Bullet,” “The economic philosophy of black nationalism only means that we should own and operate and control the economy of our community.”[18] On the other hand, we have the view of building an independent Black nation-state advocated by movements like the Republic of New Afrika. This latter view has fallen out of favor, especially within Black anarchist and other Black libertarian communist spaces. A nation-state simply is not an adequate vessel for Black self-determination—such a “Black state” would be a stricture upon that self-determination, not its expression. Belief in Black nationhood does not inherently mean that a Black nation-state must be built; it does, however, necessitate the recognition of Black people as a people or as a nation that is distinct from the American nation and identity, as well as from all other nation-states that have Black people among their subjects, within and outside of Africa. Black nationhood is established not through the formation of a state, an instrument of imposed unity, but through our shared struggle from below against state power. Only in this way can we build a democratic nation that encompasses all Black cultures and identities.
Despite what white supremacists may say, the Black community is extremely diverse. We span national borders, languages, religions, and distinct local histories. Even within America we see Gullah people, the Black people of Harlem, Black Texans, Black LGTBQ culture, indigenous Black freedmen in Indian Country, and many other distinct but overlapping cultural dimensions of the Black nation within these borders. The nation-state, on the other hand, is structurally predicated upon imposing homogeneity. In <em>Democratic Confederalism</em>, Ocalan writes:
<quote>
The nation-state in its original form aimed at the monopolization of all social processes. Diversity and plurality had to be fought, an approach that led into assimilation and genocide. It does not only exploit the ideas and the labour potential of the society and colonize the heads of the people in the name of capitalism. It also assimilates all kinds of spiritual and intellectual ideas and cultures in order to preserve its own existence. It aims at creating a single national culture, a single national identity, and a single unified religious community… The homogenic national society is the most artificial society to have ever been created and is the result of the “social engineering project.”[19]
</quote>
The diversity of the individuality and social existence of Black people is far more complex, and the boundaries of Blackness far more blurred and indefinable, than any ruling ideology of nationality could ever fully appreciate or accept.
Even the challenge of the global Black population speaking many languages is not an insurmountable one. While “the nation-state bases itself on a strict imposition of a single language,” Öcalan writes, “It is possible to count different languages and dialects as a richness for a democratic nation.”[20] While we may need common or overlapping languages to communicate, we ought not let the fact that some of us may speak Spanish and others speak English or Igbo as our mother tongues be a reason to distance ourselves and not find common ground as a nation. Ashanti Alston captures this sense of unity in diversity and overlapping spheres of democratic belonging in his essay “Beyond Nationalism But Not Without It”:
<quote>
To my folks of color: COME ENVISION: envision a world of worlds within our world where there’s principled co-existence within the wonderful diversity of the Black Community.
</quote>
<quote>
Harlems / Spanish Harlems / Watts / hip-hop communities / villages of the Carolina coast / college communities / gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender communities / zulu nation / new afrikan / religious communities that come together mainly on Saturday or Sunday / squatter communities / outlaw communities / kemetic communities / ibo-ghanaian-sierra leonean-ethiopian-rasta neighborhoods / nomadic poet-artist tribes / and then those of us who just be plain ignant and harmless and crazy when we have to be and fun-loving and like to journey through and between communities and sometimes just create new mixed ones … WHAT IF? … and HOW?[21]
</quote>
This is the Black nation, and our world of beautiful difference is how we will build democratic modernity. It is our unity in diversity, and the basis of our unity in diversity with the people of all nations. We fight and build institutions that serve all of us and provide us with the material things we need to live in a free world separate from the state and its institutions of violence. Through such a civilizational democratization, we must dismantle the hierarchies of capitalism, queerphobia, white supremacy, and ableism, and the ideology of dominating nature. This means creating a society where humans do not dominate each other or nature. We will cooperate with the environment we live in, and use eco-technologies that do not destroy the planet and our species. That is the essence of our project of Black autonomy: a project prefigured in our daily practices of resistance, which builds a new society in the shell of the old.
[1] Quoted in Nick Danforth, “An Imprisoned Nationalist Reads Benedict Anderson”, <em>Dissent</em> (2013). https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/an-imprisoned-nationalist-reads-benedict-anderson.
[2] Abdullah Öcalan, <em>The Sociology of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization, Volume III</em> (Oakland, PM Press, 2020), 250, 258.
[3] See Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, <em>Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life</em> (London and New York, Verso, 2013), 121-145, and Theodore W. Allen, <em>The Invention of the White Race, Volume 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America</em> (London and New York, Verso, 2012).
[4] Fields and Fields (2013), 127, and Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, <em>Anarchism and the Black Revolution: The Definitive Edition</em> (London, Pluto Press, 2021), 79-80.
[5] W.E.B. Du Bois, <em>Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880</em> (Cleveland and New York, Meridian Books, 1935), 700.
[6] Jennifer Hallam, “Men, Women, and Gender,” <em>Slavery and the Making of America</em>. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/gender/history.html.
[7] Neal Shirle and Saralee Stafford, <em>Dixie be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South</em> (Oakland, AK Press, 2015),18-19.
[8] C.L.R. James, “Revolution and the Negro”, <em>New International</em> (Volume V, December 1939). https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1939/12/negro-revolution.htm.
[9] Abdullah Öcalan, <em>Capitalism: The Age of Unmasked Gods and Naked Kings, Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization Volume II</em> (Norway, New Compass Press, 2017), 227-228.
[10] ibid.
[11] Darius Rafieyan and Cardiff Garcia, “The Unaccounted Workforce,” <em>Planet Money</em> on National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/29/884989263/the-uncounted-workforce.
[12] William C. Anderson, <em>The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition</em> (Chico, CA, AK Press, 2021).
[13] See Jessica Gordon Nembhard, <em>Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice</em> (University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University, 2014).
[14] Öcalan 2020, 193.
[15] Abdullah Öcalan, <em>Democratic Nation</em> (International Initiative, 2016), 17. http://www.ocalanbooks.com/downloads/democratic-nation.pdf.
[16] Ervin 2021, 91.
[17] Mikhail Bakunin, “Man, Society, and Freedom” (1871), from Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff (Montreal, Black Rose Books, 1980). https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1871/man-society.htm.
[18] Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet”, 1964. https://genius.com/Malcolm-x-the-ballot-or-the-bullet-annotated.
[19] Abdullah Öcalan, <em>Democratic Confederalism</em> (International Initiative, 2011), 12-13. http://www.freedom-for-ocalan.com/english/download/Ocalan-Democratic-Confederalism.pdf.
[20] Öcalan 2016, 26.
[21] Ashanti Alston, “Beyond Nationalism but Not Without It” (Oakland, Jailbreak Press, 2004).
|
#title What is to be done today?
#author A.X.
#SORTauthors Black Flag Catalyst
#SORTtopics CHAZ, libertarian socialism, neighborhood assemblies, Dual Power, illegalism, mutual banking, insurrection, police, abolition, autonomous zones
#date May-Jul 2020
#source Retrieved on 2020-08-24 from
<br>[[https://medium.com/@A_X/what-is-to-be-done-today-a-libertarian-socialist-outlook-on-capitalism-and-the-state-c3b5fb7d7a0a][medium.com/@A_X/.../ Parts #1]], [[https://medium.com/@A_X/what-is-to-be-done-today-part-2-a-libertarian-socialist-outlook-on-the-american-insurrection-94d9858800dc][#2]] & [[https://medium.com/@A_X/what-is-to-be-done-today-part-3-autonomous-zone-and-their-fallout-376bd2b32a82][#3]].
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-08-24T09:21:39
*** A libertarian socialist outlook on capitalism and the state
A spectre is haunting the United States, the spectre of Libertarian Socialism. All the powers of the United States have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre. Patriarchy has worked with the state, capitalism, White Supremacy, colonialism, LGBTQ+ phobia, and ableism to oppress all sectors of society. Yet there is a growing movement that is bubbling to fight back. This movement does not have a name and does not nor will ever belong to one group. This movement seeks to give workers more power in their lives and is seeking to democratize the economy. This movement is seeking to build mutual aid for all of those struck by the violence of the state — poverty.
A movement for a general strike is brewing. We have seen workers despite their lack of unionization in companies such as Amazon launch strikes on May 1<sup>st</sup>. So now we are at a point where we must ask ourselves what must we do from here or “What Is To Be Done Today?” As workers we must organize our workplaces, as neighbors we must organize our neighborhoods.
On the topic of neighborhoods we must create neighborhood assemblies. This is an institution that represents part of a neighborhood and is governed by direct democracy. To work together with others of our neighborhood we must create neighborhood councils. At this council each assembly sends 1 delegate to the council to coordinate and plan out what will be done with the other assemblies. Then we must go beyond and create a municipal council. This council will have 1 seat per neighborhood. This will function similarly as this will be how each city makes final decisions through bottom up direct democracy.
Before I continue however I must define the term “delegate” and it differs from a representative in liberal democracy. In this sense a delegate can not introduce anything that the assemblies have not given him/her/them to introduce. For example if one assembly comes to a decision that the roads in their neighborhood need to be repaired. The assembly agrees and sends a delegate to the neighborhood council to discuss this. The other delegates can not vote until they have talked to the assembly they represent. This allows each person that would be affected by this decision of repairing the roads to discuss, make suggestions etc and reach a consensus.
Then further if the delegates are making decisions without approval from the assembly they represent they are subject to instant recall. Now to contrast that with liberal democracy a representative can introduce a law that is not popular with their community and can get it passed. The representative is not able to be instantly recalled because of this. For example in California a Single Payer Healthcare Bill was introduced in the California State Legislature yet voted down despite the popularity of the bill and the help it would have given to millions who do not have adequate health insurance in California.
However we must remember that there are groups who can be unrepresented in a system that I propose. This includes colonized people such as Indigenous Peoples, New Afrikan (Black Americans) people, women, the LGBTQIA+ community, the disabled community (both mentally and physically). So I propose caucuses for each group then further to have one delegate per group per assembly along with each group having their own assemblies and the ability to discuss issues in their communities as they see fit. We must build these institutions to take back control of our neighborhoods, communities, etc… right now. That is what must be done in our neighborhoods.
Now what is to be done in our workplaces what must we do to take control of the workplace and abolish coercive work. To create the latter of course we must abolish capitalism, wage labor, commodity production, and guarantee the needs of all people such as housing, quality food, clean air, and clean water. For the former we must take over the firm through workers councils in many areas, radical unions in other areas, and simply provide the funds to buy the business and give it to the workers. Regardless of how worker control is brought about we must confederate (interconnect) with other workers councils in similar industries within our communities.
These many structures must all work together to meet the needs of the people. This will create loose anti-capitalist, and anti-state structures. We must, however, be ready for revolution at the same time, and not be willing to just become assimilated into the bureaucracy and the state. We must fight directly against this not just with words but with actions as well. We must arm those who want to be armed along with training in how to use a firearm properly. These new institutions, no matter how peaceful they appear, will be attacked by the state through the police. We must be ready for this. We cannot forget the MOVE bombing of 1985.
Through these structures we must assault the capitalist economy through the use of a tax strike, election boycotts, and a general strike. To feed the people we must use mutual aid networks, community gardens, guerrilla gardening, etc… To house the people we must create housing cooperatives, community land trusts, and the like, to free the people from state violence (homelessness, food insecurity, and the like). These structures will be governed by the people who live in them and use them. We must bring our homeless population into houses, bring them the things they need to survive and we can do this by using our new neighborhood structures that we have built. We can seize property that is not being used and through our worker owned structures turn them into new homes.
We can use alternative currencies such as mutual credit to deny the state revenue and fund our institutions. We can use mutual credit to build houses, buy land, etc… We must also incorporate cooperative banking (credit unions) within these structures until the revolution. Further we must embrace the criminal element that the anarchist/libertarian left has a rich tradition in. I will not describe these illegal methods in detail but they will have to be used to propagate our message and fund our projects of community self defense from the state (police), against the capitalists who will rob our land, against the industrialists who poison our food, air, and water.
Through a combination of mutual credit/cooperative banking and propaganda of the deed our projects will be funded. Of course once we are in the revolutionary phase mutual credit must be ended so we all have free access to what we need to live through local planning. Mutual credit while unfortunate will have to be with us through the transition to a moneyless society. This offers people a further incentive to join the new institutions that will be created. The people now will not see us as legitimate if we say “join us and you can have everything for free” they will join if we offer them a way to rebel through mutual credit will bring them on board. However other means such as expropriation to fund striking workers in capitalist firms or fund neighborhood assemblies and the like is also an acceptable means of raising money. Both of these methods can also be used to create additional cooperatives and assemblies.
In the end it is up to each assembly to decide how to fund themselves without state money. Another way is to use a GoFundMe (or similar sites) to buy land and form a community land trust. This will require a large amount of people and a large amount of money. Lastly, of course, mass squatting in tandem with guerilla gardening is a very acceptable means and way to take control over the land and create our food.
Within the authoritarian left, however, they advocate for a vanguard party to rule and take over the state as it currently exists. This party, however, is in charge. Creating rule by the party and not by the people in its supposed transition to a socialist “country.” The authoritarian left has only created state capitalism with a strong safety net in the best case or state capitalism with large human rights abuses. Most of the time, however, it seems to be both. Every state seeks to consolidate power; no state in the history of the world has ever voluntarily dismantled their own institutions and given power to the people directly. This won’t be true simply because the state is in control by the working class. Simply put, the lumpenproletariat will be oppressed by the “working class” being in charge. The lumpen proles by-and-large being the already oppressed groups in society such as New Afrikan people, immigrants, indigenous people etc. Keeping the working class in charge does not give these groups power.
The authoritarian left would have you believe that libertarian socialist methods don’t work. This simply is not true. We can see this through groups such as Cooperation Jackson, Barbacha, Rojava in the modern day. In the past Revolutionary Catalona, The Free Territories, the Shimin Commune, and more. One can even argue that the many indigenous societies in the pre-colonial Americas and pre-colonial Africa were examples of libertarian socialist societies. The history of these places have been suppressed oftentimes by “allies” in the cases of Revolutionary Catalonia and The Free Territories. Others were destroyed by colonialism and empires. Yet these societies were free in the case of the latter. In the case of the former groups such as Cooperation Jackson are fighting for a free society while others have achieved a free society and are defending themselves.
In the end Solidarity,
A.X.<br>
Black Flag Catalyst<br>
May 22, 2020
*** A libertarian socialist outlook on The American Insurrection
<quote>
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.” — Max Stirner
</quote>
Since I last posted we have seem significant developments in the so called United States of America. We have moved beyond the small actions by some workers to full scale open rebellion in many cities in the face of police brutality. These rebellions however can’t be quelled with just reforms now. No, we have reached a movement that seeks to abolish the police. A movement that is demanding the world recognizes that we are. black and that we are PEOPLE as well. Police precincts have been taken over and burned down,others are as I write this “under attack” by the people.
This is full blown spontaneous action that could NEVER have been planned let alone organized by a vanguard party. We are seeing what can only be summed up as democratic insurrection. We are launching full scale attacks on private property that is owned by the bourgeoisie,we are attacking the state house, we are building mutual aid. with the resources we have expropriated we are changing the narrative. We have experiences social death and now we are experiencing social rebirth.
Now if you have been living under a rock you may wonder: “How did we get here?” that question can be answered quickly. We got here because of George Floyd, Tony McDae, and Breonna Taylor. All 3 black PEOPLE who were murdered by the police. In the case of Tony McDae this shows not just the ongoing injustices faced by black men but also by the injustices faced by black TRANS PEOPLE. Breonna Taylor’s murder shows the injustice faced by BLACK WOMEN everyday. George Floyd’s murder shows that to be black in America means to have your humanity rejected.
Now the state is responding to our rebellions by cracking down further and attempting to push martial law. The state is attempting to being in the troops to Minneapolis to put down the rebellion. This will only launch us into a revolution. The state has in fact pushed many unconstitutional rules onto the people such as curfews. In Washington DC many believe that cell signals were jammed from 1 am to 6 am on May 31<sup>st</sup> 2020. In Philadelphia the National Guard has live rounds. In many cities around the country the police have been using rubber bullets. The police have still killed many and even left the body of David McTee in the street for 12 hours. The police have assaulted peaceful protesters, destroyed water of protesters along with reporters.
So this leads me to answer the question of this article. What is to be done today? We now must stockpile weapons by any means necessary, and commit to creating a Black people’s militia. We must also seek to create communes for our people during time. We must interconnect (confederate) them as well to bring true resistance to this fascist we will face. Within these communes we must have community councils, neighborhood assemblies, municipal councils, regional councils and the like. We must defend ourselves and we must stay militant. Their is no going back from here. The state has done it’s best to destroy peaceful change all this has done is make violent a necessity.
It is important to remember however that people are doing mutual aid and solidarity on their own. This includes giving out expropriated goods, donating them to people asking for food and more. The people may not realize it but they have created an Autonomous Zone. They have freed themselves from the police. This may be temporary but this is an important step. This is something we must seek to persevere the state can and will destroy it if they are able. This informal commune is only an extension of what we as black people have done before. This can be seen through the Ogeechee Insurrection and the like. However we as people are coming together and practicing solidarity when free of the state and it’s agents of destruction. We are fighting. We are winning and we shall overcome. To paraphrase Malcolm X The US has put a knife our back and for a long time has not acknowledged it. Now they have acknowledged that knife but only because we took it out ourselves. Now they are scared of what we are doing with it.
We are living through history now and we must remember history is written by the victors. For that it is necessary for us as colonized people to win this.
From the sidelines as someone not in a city with protests and an uprising I can only say this: Thank you and good luck we the people shall win and we shall overcome.
In solidarity and in struggle
A.X.<br>
Black Flag Catalyst<br>
Jun 2
*** Autonomous Zone and their fallout
A significant amount has changed since my last article. In this article I talk about how the protests must take the next step and go to the creation of communes. This unfortunately did not happen. However autonomous zones were created. These zones were successful in some cases, and unsuccessful in others. However creating Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) is a strategy I briefly mentioned in part 2 of this series. This strategy can be defined as “taking over areas and turning them into their own zone free from the state,capitalism and other oppressive hierarchies.” Within part two I mentioned that informal TAZs were being created. Naturally this culminated last month (June 2020) in the creation of formal TAZs. The most “famous” of which being CHAZ/CHOP. Both referring to the same place but both meaning different things. CHAZ meaning Capital Hill Autonomous Zone and CHOP meaning Capital Hill Occupied Protest.
For simplicity sake I will refer to this as just CHAZ from here on out. The failures of CHAZ are well documented. The lack of formal decision making in the form of direct democracy led to a large amount of confusion on the ground. However there are other places that do and do not call themselves Autonomous Zones but function similarly. From the Black Hill Autonomous Zone,The Rayshard Brooks Peace Center and many more. The most successful example is JTD Camp which is run by homeless people in Philly which is still running as of early July. Next I will be talking about why JTD Camp is succeeding where others have failed.
JTD Camp has what seems to be some form of consensus based, directly democratic decision making and is centered around concrete material demands. These demands all benefit the people directly through providing permanent low income housing along with addressing police mistreatment of unhoused people. The people of JTD Camp have repeatedly asked for city council members and other city officials to meet directly with them. City officials have not met with the people nor met a single demand. This area is being considered a No Cop Zone, something CHAZ tried to meet but failed at as police were repeatedly let back into the zone. No cops have come to JTD Camp. The people are showing they can take care of themselves. Further the Workers Revolutionary Collective is helping organize the people. The staunch anti-capitalism and demand that the city eliminate the police along with creating a community land trust create strong libertarian socialist/anarchic vibes and demands. These demands allow the people to have a foundation which CHAZ did not have unfortunately. Yet despite these gains the city is planning on demolishing JTD Camp on July 15<sup>th</sup>. To combat this I recommend to donate to the camp and to sign the change.org petition.
Lastly I will answer the title question: What is to be done today? What we must do today is create revolutionary collectives. These collectives can be used to create food cooperatives, community land trusts and the like. This does not need to be of people on the ground exclusively. This can take the form of twitch streams coming together and creating a collective where they use the money raised to develop food co-operatives that buy food in bulk then sell individual food at the lowest price possible. The goal would not be to have a profit but to meet the needs to buy food and sell food.
This can also be used to help create situations like JTD camp where they will be able to create permanent low income housing in the form of community land trusts (CLT). Yet once we have CLTs we must not stop. We must confederate (interconnect) these CLTs across state, and city lines. This will be used to take away from the private market and transition into a solidarity economy.
Then in addition to CLTs and food cooperatives we must create community self defense groups to protect our natural resources from the state, and private investors. We must oppose pipelines,we must oust “land developers” and other exploitative people from our communities. This will put us in a situation where we will be able to fight back against the state,capitalism, and other forms of violence such as white supremacy, LGBTQIA+phobia, patriarchy, ableism and more. This will allow us to bring the people to our side and allow them to fight for themselves on their own behalf. We must start this now we must win and we must fight.
So this leads to the question of “what is a revolutionary collective?.” A revolutionary collective can be defined as a group of revolutionaries in a group for a specific purpose that is designed to raise money and use that money to create on the ground projects. One such example is the Workers Revolutionary Collective which has helped organize JTD Camp, yet does not control the people of JTD Camp. This allows the people to still control themselves and create their own demands. This can be expanded to other sectors outside of work such as connecting tenant unions into one big collective. Or to create collectives that teach people to build their own internet to decrease and hopefully eliminate the need for big internet companies such as Comcast which exploits the workers and has a near monopoly on the industry. These collectives have a near infinite potential on what they can help build to defeat and overcome the capitalist class in the economic sense. Our next move must be to build revolutionary collectives where we live and where we work. In addition to the current protests with revolutionary collectives we will have a real chance to achieve collective liberation from capitalism,white supremacy, patriarchy, LGBTQIA+phobia, ableism and all future and current oppressive hierarchical forms of oppression. Through the creation of revolutionary collectives we will create free association and anarchy.
In solidarity
A.X.
<br>
Black Flag Catalyst
<br>Jul 12
|
#title War Anarchic: Boudica
#author Aaron Koek
#SORTtopics war, Britain, history, insurrection
#date August 8, 2020
#source Retrieved on 9<sup>th</sup> August 2020 from https://c4ss.org/content/53225
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-08-08T23:08:06
Roman incursions into Britain began with Julius Caesar between 55–54 B.C.E. with two separate attempts. The first invasion (55 B.C.E.) was launched on the grounds of supposed support from the Britons towards the Gallic tribes against the Romans during the Gallic Wars (58–50 B.C.E.). This first attempt ended in failure, loosing their cavalry boarded on ships due to bad weather and constant guerrilla attacks by the Britons forced a stalemate. The second invasion (54 B.C.E.) proved more fruitful for the Romans and Caesar as they managed to fight their way to the river Thames as well as establishing a number of treaties and trade partners with local tribes living in the south-eastern parts of the territory.
It wouldn’t be until about a hundred years later that Rome would even attempt to set foot in Britain again. When it did return in 43 AD under the Roman emperor Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus it would be with much greater success. Rome had wanted access to Britain for some time due to rumors of great material wealth, both in metals and food that were always in need by the large, imperial government of Rome. It would be under these conditions that Boudica of the Iceni tribe would rise to become queen of her people and lead a brutal insurrection against Roman occupation.
The Romans invaded Britain when Boudica was around eighteen years old, having either previously or within recent times married their husband Prasutagus, whom may have been related to the then king of the Iceni, Antedios. Meanwhile their neighbors to the south in the Catuvellauni tribe, in alliance with other tribes, waged a guerrilla campaign against the Roman army. After a successful battle against the Catuvellauni lead rebellion Claudius established a legionary fortress located at Camulodunum, now modern day Colchester in Essex, as well as the submission of eleven British tribes, including the Iceni under Antedios.
In 47 AD Ostorius Scapula replaced the first, previously established Roman governor of Britain. Ostorius arrived to the territory under guerrilla attacks and as such, decided to disarm the British tribes, including the Iceni. This was seen both as a threat and an insult to the Britons Celtic traditions and as such rebelled. However, this rebellion would fail and at some point Antedios would die, leaving Prasutagus and Boudica as king and queen of the Iceni. The Romans seized more land around Camulodunum to establish a colonia of veteran Roman soldiers, resulting in the enslavement and execution of many local tribes in an attempt to expand Roman influence, both materially and culturally in an effort to “Romanize” the territory. In 52 AD the king of the Catuvellauni, whom had been a leading figure in much of the resistance up to this point, was captured by Rome. That same year, Ostorius died, replaced as governor by Didius Gallus.
In 54 AD Emperor Claudius was poisoned, possibly by the mother of his successor, Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus who became emperor of Rome. Later in 58 AD Caius Suetonius Paullinus, replacing Didius Gallus, became governor of Britain and began a vicious military campaign in Wales. After successfully pushing to the north-western borders in 61 AD, Suetonius reached the sacred Celtic groves on the isle of Mona. There, they attacked the isle slaughtering the druids and what resistance was there, cutting down the sacred groves that were located on the isle. This would most likely have been an incredibly painful moment for the Celtic tribes of Britain, and it wouldn’t have been unlikely for Boudica to have heard of this assault against such an important spiritual location.
In conjuncture to the brutality at Mona, Boudica’s husband Prasutagus died. In death, Prasutagus left a will that was meant to split power between Rome and the Iceni, however this had no legal precedence either in Roman law or Celtic tradition and was therefore ignored. Under Roman law the death of a client king meant that either a new one was to replace them or Rome would take control of the territory directly. In this case, it would be the latter. Boudica, now acting as the sole ruler of the Iceni, was confronted by the procurator Decianus Catus, a financial official of Rome. They began to take inventory of Iceni property and lands, now considered property of Rome. When Boudica objected to this, Boudica was beaten and their daughters were raped. This violent act against Boudica and their daughters wouldn’t silence them however. It would spark a fire that would be felt across Britain and would not be forgotten.
After uniting with a number of other tribes resistant to Romes imperialism, Boudica attacked Camulodunum, slaughtering the inhabitants and burning it to the ground. The Roman legion Legio IX under the command of Quintus Petillius Cerialis Caesius Rufus attempted to halt the rebellion, but was ambushed by Boudica’s forces, escaping with their cavalary leaving his remaining infantry to be slaughtered. At this point Suetonius would learn of the rebellion and made their way from Mona to Londinium, Boudica’s next target. However, much like Camulodunum, Londinium had no walls or defenses and so Suetonius ordered the town evacuated. Those whom remained were brutally executed by Boudica’s forces.
Similarly to Camulodunum and Londinium, Verulamium, which had been granted the title of municipium by Rome which allowed for a limited amount of autonomy and participation in Roman government, was raided by Boudica. Suetonius gathered an army of around 10,000 soldiers, made up of the combined forces of Legio’s XIV and XX, as well as a number of auxiliaries gathered from around the local area. Dio wrote that Boudica’s forces number at around 230,000 warriors from various celtic tribes that had allied themselves to Boudica’s cause. Where exactly Suetonius and Boudica’s forces met in battle isn’t exactly known, though some suggest it to be located around Watling Street (A5).
One might initially think that Boudica’s numbers would have played a decisive factor in the battle. However, the training, equipment and strategem of the Roman army would prove itself once again against the might of the Celtic rebels. The Romans chose to position themselves in a defile in which the woods would be at their back, with open country in the front, taking advantage of an essentially natural fortification. Boudica’s forces met Suetonius’s in the field, Boudica reportedly riding in a chariot, commonly used by the Celts in warfare. The Romans opened the battle with their throwing javelins, followed by a charge in wedge formation, supported by cavalry on their wings. The long swords of the Celtic warriors, which required relative space to swing properly, were rendered ineffective on the cluttered battlefield that favored the Romans shield formations, stabbing with their short swords into Celtic lines. The chariots that the Celts favored proved completely useless against an enemy that had effectively fortified their position. The Celtic warriors weren’t even able to effectively retreat as they had brought their wives in wagons, set up behind their lines to witness the battle, effectively barricading themselves against retreat. The result was an overwhelming Roman victory, slaughtering the Celts and pushing Boudica to suicide, most likely in order to avoid capture by the Romans. Tacitus reports around 80,000 causalities for the Celts and 400 for the Romans.
Boudica’s revolt resulted in the death of about 70,000 Roman civilians and 7,000 Roman soldiers, if Tacitus’s numbers are to be believed. Boudica’s revolt, while a failure, shocked Roman society with its tenacity and violence. Rome would eventually take control of Britain, but the effects of Boudica’s rebellion are still felt to this day and much can be learned from them and the Celtic warriors that fought by their side. Lessons can be drawn from the successes, failures and context of the insurrection itself.
Which is what Boudica’s revolt must be understood as, an insurrection.
<quote>
An insurrection is a general uprising against the power structure. It is usually a sustained rebellion over the course of days, weeks, months or even years. It is a type of class war that involves a whole population in an act of armed or semi-armed resistance. Sometimes mistakenly called a rebellion, its character is far more combative and revolutionary. Rebellions are almost totally spontaneous, short-term affairs. An insurrection is also not the revolution, SINCE REVOLUTION IS A SOCIAL PROCESS, RATHER THAN A SINGLE EVENT, but it can be an important part of the revolution, maybe its final phase. An insurrection is a planned violent protest campaign which takes the spontaneous revolt of the masses to a higher level. Revolutionaries intervene to push rebellions to insurrectionary stage, and the insurrection to a social revolution. Source.
</quote>
Under this definition, Boudica’s revolt meets all the criteria for an insurrection. When we consider the revolts that proceeded Boudica’s from the beginning of the Claudian invasion in 43 AD all the way to their own ending in 61 AD, there exists eighteen years of prolonged insurrectionary activity within Britain. Though not necessarily able to be classified as a revolutionary process, the Celtic tribes of Britain certainly were united in a sustained, multi-year long process of warfare against Roman occupation. Boudica’s revolt was an extension of this campaign, which is especially obvious when we consider the targets that the Celtic insurrectionists chose and the kind of violence and destruction unleashed upon Roman colonists and soldiers. Of note is Boudica’s first target at Camulodunum, due to its establishment as a colonia and especially for the temple to the emperor Claudius that had been constructed there by emperor Nero in their honor. In assaulting Camulodunum, the soldiers and survivors that were able to escape the initial attack took shelter inside the temple itself. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Celts burned Camulodunum to the ground, including the temple. The Celts also, according to Roman reports, slaughtered and mutilated much of the towns inhabitants, though to what extent the Romans could judge with their own use of rape, torture, slavery and gladiatorial blood sports is questionable.
Suffice it to say, the Celtic insurrectionists sought to remove the Romans, and anyone who would ally with them, from Britain entirely. Of the three locations that were assaulted by Boudica’s forces, Camulodunum and Londinium were colonia. Verulamium itself was a Celtic community that had accepted a degree of Romanization and was therefore seen as a threat to Celtic autonomy due to their loyalty to Rome. A clear path of anti-imperialism is present in the insurrectionary campaign of Boudica, for personal as well as social, political, economic and spiritual reasons. This campaign would culminate in the battle against Suetonius.
The Celts made a number of errors in regards to this particular battle. Equipment wise, the Celts were highly under prepared for the type of engagement that they were about to undertake. While the style of weapons and battle dress of the Celts did not necessarily spell defeat for them, it had to be undertaken with their strengths in mind against whatever weaknesses could be exploited against their opponents, namely the Roman military. However the Celts choose to meet the Romans in open battle, something they were incredibly experienced with, in a position that highly favored the Romans. Not only that but the Celts, under their own arrogance, brought their wives in wagons with them, which would later prevent them from escaping Roman slaughter. The Celtic failure at this battle is quite disappointing given resistance up to this point, especially given the strategic knowledge Boudica had employed previously. There is an argument to be made that, had the Celts been successful in this battle it very well may have completely halted Roman incursion into Britain, at least for some time.
Boudica’s insurrection demonstrates that the struggle against domination and oppression is not one that can be accomplished over night. It is an evolutionary social process. Boudica’s insurrection was not the first in Britain but rather a part of an established historical struggle. Without that, Boudica would have had little to no reason to resist with the tenacity that they did, barring their own obvious personal reasons for doing so. This history would have given Boudica an understanding of what and why Roman imperialism needed to be resisted. The colonization, enslavement, murder, torture, rape and destruction of spiritual practices and ritual sites that had taken place before Boudica’s insurrection deeply informed their actions and strategy. It is why for example they chose to burn Camulodunum and the temple built there as they represented, both materially and symbolically, Roman domination over their lands and peoples.
In order to struggle for our freedom against domination, we must understand the history of that struggle for us to understand the context of our current one. Not only that, but we must be united in our struggle, otherwise it may fall apart without direction or understanding of what we are fighting for. Finally, struggling against domination must be understood within the evolutionary social process, that the struggle for freedom itself will contain the potential for a free society within it. These are the lessons that Boudica’s insurrection teach us, ones that I am of the idea must be understood if we are not only to understand the context of rebellions in our own time, but so that we may push them towards their insurrectionary and quite possibly, revolutionary potentialities.
|
#title Communism Unmasked
#author Abba Gordin
#LISTtitle Communism Unmasked
#date 1940
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-01-02T18:14:36.852Z
#authors Abba Gordin
#topics Marxism, communism, critique
#source Retrieved on January 2, 2025 from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b591661
#publisher New York, I. N. Hord, 1940.
* Book One: Communism ― Emerging Master-Class Ideology
** I. MARXISM AND MARXIANITY
*** 1. The Double-Faced Mask
MARXISM AS A TEACHING is composed of two elements. One is effervescent, volatile. The other is, by comparison, solid matter, sound and sane judgment, if overstatements made by it are overlooked, or, rather understood and, therefore, forgiven. One part of Marxism, if we may say so, represents oriental ardor, revivalistic fervor, emotionally volcanic eruptions of condemnation and, as a counter-balance, geyser-like gushings of salvation. This part we shall call “Marxianity”. It is an inheritance that fell to his lot, and Marx took possession of it all too willingly, utterly uncritically, from Weitling et Co. variety of Communism. The other half of the Marxian teaching is hard-boiled, cold-blooded, realistic; we shall call it Marxism proper. There is still a third part, a cross between Marxism and Marxianity; we shall style it Marxianism.
Marxism contends that competition of the cutthroat kind, as well as its milder forms, is baleful. For it injects the virus of antagonism into the economic organism which, like every organic whole, must not be divided against itself if it is to thrive. Marxism, further, points out that capitalism as a system of management of our national economic affairs is not sufficiently coordinated, and that is why it cannot be efficient. It is lacking in planning, prevision. Demand and supply run a wild race, and there is none to stop them. Scarcity and abundance, want and glut precipitately replace one another, not unlike currents and counter-currents caught funneling in a frantic whirlpool. Blind forces, unregulated or unregularized, sway and shake the economic structure. The ebb and flow of the commercial tide rock the economic boat. The rise and fall of the volume of production and consumption, never balanced, threaten to smash our industrial craft to smithereens, or, at least, to capsize it now and then. In other words, periods of depression alternate with those of prosperity.
<quote>
“Each boom period and... each crash period that follows on its heels proves that it (the capitalist class) has become incapable of any longer controlling the productive forces, which have grown beyond its power; a class under whose leadership society is racing to ruin like a locomotive whose jammed safety valve the driver is too weak to open.” (F. Engels, Anti Duehring, p. 179.)
</quote>
These theses-no matter what one thinks of them, whether one be inclined to subscribe to or take issue with one cannot help admitting their sobriety, their, if not strictly scientific, then, at any rate, pseudo-scientific approach to economic phenomena. And these very contentions form the more or less healthy core, the rather wholesome essence of Marxism. Out of these premises Marxism draws one conclusive demand, and that is rationalization of industry achieved by purely political means, through socialization or nationalization of the instruments of production and agencies of distribution.
<quote>
“The emancipation of the working class demands the transformation of the instruments of labor into the common property of society and the cooperative control of the total labor.” (Programme of the Socialistic Working Men's Party of Germany, Gotha, May, 1875.)
“The emancipation of the working class can only be achieved through the socialization of the means of production, distribution and exchange.” (Social Democratic Federation, Programme and Rules, Bradford, Easter, 1906.)
“The real emancipation of the working class requires a social revolution... i.e., the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, their transformation into the property of the state.” (V. I. Lenin, Draft of a Programme for the Social-Democratic Party of Russia, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 225, Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow.)
</quote>
But this part of the Marxian doctrine taken by itself, as its severe criticism of the existing order of things so its project for politico-economic readjustment, would not entice the laboring masses, would not stimulate their will, could not inflame their imagination and drive them to heroic action and into historic shambles, would not whip them into social venture and political adventure. How can one get enthused to self-forgetfulness, work oneself up into a trance, over a dust-dry, sang-froid problem of management and the determination of the size of the economic units?
And for the devotees of the cause Marxism has in store a mask. One half of it is grinning gloomily, gnashing its teeth, while the other half is keeping on smiling winningly, its eyes screwed skyward toward heaven and bliss.[1] This mask is the thesis on capitalist exploitation in conjunction with the antithesis of Communist salvation, the creation of the harmonious commonwealth, the erection of the New Jerusalem upon the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah of present-day society.
*** 2.“Exploitation” Without an Historical Time-Limit
**** A. Topsy-Turvy Economy
THE LABORERS are being exploited! Marxianity, echoing the old teaching of Communism, raises a hue and cry.
How is one to prove this thesis about the exploitation of the working masses taking place under the given industrial system called capitalism?
Well, this is easily done by Marx with the aid of his “surplus-value” theory.
Now, let us presume, without further argument, that the exploitation doctrine is well-grounded. The question arises, by whom are the workers exploited? Who are those exploiters of theirs? The capitalist class, runs the articulate answer. Those who, according to Marx's own testimony, have developed commerce, introduced large scale industry. The laborers are exploited by a class that has originated, with the assistance of scientists, in general, and inventors and creative engineers, in particular, our machine-age and our mechanical civilization,
<quote>
“It (the bourgeoisie) has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, Essentials of Marx, p. 33, New York, 1926.)
“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground-what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor.” (Ibid. pp. 35-36.)
“To concentrate and enlarge these scattered, limited means of production, to transform them into the mighty levers of production of the present day, was precisely the historic role of the capitalist mode of production and of its representative, the bourgeoisie.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 301.)
</quote>
Such a class of energetic enterpreneurs, who make two blades grow where one grew before-to say the least of this class and not apotheosize it as Marx and Engels do-how can it be branded as exploitative? Still more astonishing is the fact that the same authors who tell us about the unparalleled achievements of this prodigy class stigmatize it as spoliatory. And this is done by them, if not in the same breath, in the same two pages. They begin with exaggerated praise and finish with still more exaggerated blame and overdone condemnation. One and the same class cannot play such mutually excluding parts at one and the same time. Marx's theory of exploitation, based on his teaching of value and surplus value, has no time-limit clause attached to it. It is supposed to be valid for the whole period of capitalism, from its very beginning to its very close. And how can one consider the capitalist class as highly useful, indispensable, the representative of an historical period, contributing to the welfare of humanity in a positively active way, and yet, in spite of all its unusual services and achievements as a leading class, put it down as a “bunch of blood-suckers,” a class that has no right to claim any remuneration whatsoever on its own merits, a class that can make no honest living, no matter at which period one takes it, a class that deserves nothing, and lives off the labors of another class which is exploited by it.
<quote>
“The capitalist, I say, is a parasite on industry useless in our present stage of industrial development as any other parasite in the animal or vegetable world is to the life of the animal or vegetable upon which it feeds.
“The working class is the victim of this parasite-this human leech, and it is the duty and interest of the working class to use every means in its power to oust this parasite class from its position which enables it thus to prey upon the vitals of labor.” (James Connoly, Socialism Made Easy, pp. 28-29, Chicago, 1909.)
“So also we find that the Marxian theory that history has consisted in class struggles is given a very broad interpretation; indeed, it may amount to nothing more dogmatic than the assertion that a systematic parasitism is always in evidence after a certain stage of culture has been reached.” (William English Walling, The Larger Aspects of Socialism, p. 101, New York, 1913.)
</quote>
Marxian theory is more than dogmatic, it is contradictory. The Marxian teaching of class struggle, as well as his theory of exploitation having no time-limit reservation, militates against Marx's own views and utterances about the historical usefulness of capitalism and the capitalists. A class cannot be useful economically and yet gain nothing legitimately economically. A class cannot fulfill a useful function in society, and yet not get paid for it by society, and be “compelled” to take recourse to “exploitation” as a means of gaining a livelihood.
<quote>
“Both from the biological, and from the sociological point of view one may say that the parasite is a being which lives at the expense of another without destroying it and without doing it service.” (Jean Massart and Emile Vandervelde, Parasitism, Organic and Social, p. 1, London, 1895.)
</quote>
But here we have a special case of a being that had done service and then stopped doing it. It was useful, and it is no useful any longer. It “has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all the preceding generations together,” but now it is played out, deteriorated. It has outlived its useful So that the beginning of its career was glorious indeed, only its end, its old-age putting to shame its youth, is sheer ignominy. But, notwithstanding its youthful deserts, it has been keeping on living all the time, those periods of its great deeds included, by the same category of “profits” that are, according to Marx's economic teaching, “unpaid labor” and nothing more. So that the passage from extraordinary usefulness to extra ordinary uselessness and parasitism was not registered in the mode of appropriation of the class. Political economy, thus, assumes quite fantastic aspects. The bourgeoisie is an enigmatic class, it has created enormously great productive forces, and has never been paid for it, for its creative efforts, but, therefore, in its turn, it has been keeping another class, that of the laborers, unpaid, and in this bizarre fashion it has managed to exist. It makes its ends meet not by receiving compensation for its own “labors,” but by depriving another class of the compensation for its work it is entitled to. In this point, Marxian economy is a topsy turvy economy. It is more of the nature of a burlesque, a travesty, than a “science”.
Furthermore, how is parasitism possible to be manifested in such an appalling form : the parasites, in the shape of the good-for-nothing industrialists and financiers, go the whole hog, grab the whole produce; and the actual producers, the alleged creators of all values, let them get away with it, allow them to suck their blood, eat their flesh and crack their bones, and feel con tented and happy to receive back a meager portion of their own flayed skins.
<quote>
“The mere fact that the ruled and exploited class has at all times been far more numerous than the rulers and exploiters, and that therefore it is the former who have had the real force in their hands, is enough to demonstrate the absurdity of the whole force theory. The relationships based on domination and subjection have therefore still to be explained.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 203.)
“We say, the working people are enslaved... by the rich; but who are those men who form... the wealthy class? Are they heroes, each of whom can vanquish tens and hundreds of working people? Or are there very many of them, while there are but few working men? Or are these men, the rulers and the wealthy, the only ones who know how to make everything necessary and to produce everything the people live by? Neither the one, nor the other, nor the third. These men are no heroes, but, on the contrary, weakened, helpless people, and not only are they not numerous but they are even hundreds of times fewer than the working people. And everything men live by is produced not by them, but by the working men, while they are both unable and unwilling to do anything, and only devour what the working men produce. Why, then, does this small band of feeble people, idle men, who cannot and will not do anything, rule over millions of working men?” (L. N. Tolstoi, To the Working People, p. 166, Works, Vol. XII, Part II, Boston, 1905.)
</quote>
A class so big that it outnumbers its enemies by one hundred to one, at least-in high industry the pro portion is much larger – a class so skillful, so gifted that it is capable of creating real values, and more than that, that had succeeded in actually monopolizing the bound less field of productive activity; this great class is, at the very same time, so stupid and helpless as to prove itself utterly incapable of protecting its rightful acquisitions. It is unable to take care of itself and the abundant yield of its labors, to shield it from a handful of flabby de generates, scum of humanity, called capitalists. Is it not astonishing? Is it not bewildering that two such extreme opposites as gigantic power and absolute impotence should be embodied in one and the same aggregate of individuals?
<quote>
“It is a capitalistic or profit system which allows the laborer, who creates wealth, an average of approximately $ 1.50 per day, while wealth is appropriated in sums running up into millions in a single year by others who produce nothing.” (Charles C. Hitchcock, The Socialist Argument, p. 78, Chicago, 1912.)
“The capitalist regimen is so constructed that it compels the industrious, thrifty, and sober to divide. Indeed it compels it with such a compelling force that the division leaves them but a beggarly pittance, while the lion's share goes to the lazy, the drunkard, and the spendthrift.
“Paul Lafargue condensed the process of division under the capitalist system in the terse motto : ' Wealth is a product of labor and the reward of idleness. '“ (Daniel De Leon, Fifteen Questions, p. 110, New York, 1914.)
“The workers are also, and permanently and essentially, the exploited. They labor, they produce, they create the sum of wealth. But they create it for the benefit of others, those who own the means of production-the capitalist class.
“The latter concedes to them a portion of it, which assures their existence, and retains the balance.... The workers pro duce and the capitalists are enriched..” (Edgard Milhaud, The March Toward Socialism tr. by H. J. Stenning, p. 68, London, 1920.)
</quote>
What is still more puzzling is the fact that this highly efficient class, the maker and breaker of our material civilization, is not cognizant of its situation. It is not aware of its being exploited, and it is entirely lacking in pride and dignity that usually go with the realization of one's extraordinary greatness and significance. Odd! This class stands in need of agitators, of the “scientific,” professorial brand, or the vulgar, soap boxing species, that they should come and tell it about its unsuspected powers, its unlimited possibilities and opportunities.
These splay-mouthed ranters, in their loving kindness to oppressed humanity and boundless devotion to the interests of all those who are wronged, come to the working class and teach its more advanced members lessons of political economy, and thus force open their eyes and make them see the basic fact of their existence: first, that they belong to the elite of the productive community, they constitute the Chosen Class in society, and, secondly, that they are being robbed by their employers.
<quote>
“All the other classes of contemporary society stand for preserving the foundations of the existing economic order.” (V. I. Lenin, Draft-Programme for S. D. P. of Russia, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 225.)
“. . . The laboring class, in contrast to which all other classes are only a reactionary mass.” (Programme of the Socialistic Working Men's Party of Germany, Gotha, May, 1875.)
“Those by whose hands all that wealth which is the pride of our civilization is produced, whose hands have brought forth all these products without which society could not live for a single day-it may well be demanded that these should be secured an ample and unfailing income....” (F. Lasalle, Science and the Workingmen, p. 64, New York, 1900.)
</quote>
Stranger than fiction! Those demigods of economy cannot do without the Patron Saints, Marx, Lenin... self-appointed trustees and guardians of the proletariat.
**** B. Brahmana as the Prototype of the Proletarian
<quote>
“Man is stated to be purer above the navel (than below); hence the self-existent (Svayambuh) has declared the purest (part) of him (to be) his mouth.
“As the Brahmana sprang from (Brahman's) mouth, as he was the first born, and as he possesses the Veda, he is by right the lord of the whole creation.
“For the self-existent (Svayambuh), having performed austerities, produced him first from his mouth, in order that the offerings might be conveyed to the gods and manes and that this universe might be preserved.
“What created being can surpass him, through whose mouth the gods continually consume the sacrificial viands and the manes the offerings of the dead?
“Of created beings the most excellent are said to be those which are animated; of the animated, those which subsist by intelligence; of the intelligent, mankind; and of men, the Brahmanas....
“The very birth of a Brahmana is an eternal incarnation of the sacred law; for he is born to (fulfill) the sacred law, and becomes one with Brahman..
“A Brahmana, coming into existence, is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all created beings, for the protection of the treasury of the law.
“Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahmana; on account of the excellence of his origin the Brahmana is, indeed, entitled to it all.
“The Brahmana eats but his own food, wears but his own apparel, bestows but his own in alms; other mortals subsist through the benevolence of the Brahmana.” (The Laws of Manu tr. by G. Buehler, I, 92-101, Oxford, 1886.)
</quote>
These quoted passages are the pattern upon which the workingman-ideology was shaped. The Marxian Communists, excellent imitators as they surely are — they idealize the continuous imitative process called labor — did not have to spend any too much labor on revamping the Manu-doctrine. Without much exertion on their part they adapted the Hindu teaching to their purpose, incorporating it into “scientific” Communism. It was all a matter of inserting a few minor alterations. All they had to do was to substitute <em>brawn</em> for <em>brain</em>, muscles for intelligence, the “hand” for the “mouth”. It was an operation almost as good and as skillfully carried out as that performed by Marx on the Hegelian philosophy. Instead of the absolute idea of Hegel, Marx introduced the "matter" of the productive forces. Here the same procedure was followed. The place of the Brahmana was taken by the worker.
Whatever exists in society is the property of the worker - Brahmana, on account of his being a member of the only progressive class, all the other classes being a reactionary mass . . . . The worker - Brahmana eats his own food, wears but his own apparel, bestows but his own in wages; other mortals subsist through the benevolence of the worker - Brahmana.
The most curious thing about all this is that the worker - Brahmana does not know that he is a worker Brahmana on whose sufferance all the rest of mankind subsists…
The giant, the Samson of economics, is blind , and some wretched dwarf - surgeons, in the person of half baked wizards and incandescent zealots, must operate upon him, remove the cataracts from his afflicted eyes, and make him behold and comprehend reality, and, primarily , his own omnipotence . And this is no easy task at all. It takes plenty of time and effort to achieve this, to knock “Communistic" ideas into the numskulls, the proletarians, the confirmed ignoramuses . . . who know nothing of their genius for economics and are utterly devoid of “class - consciousness" meaning "class chauvinism." Hundreds of thousands of ballyhooers and barkers are engaged in this business of shouting into the deaf ears of the almighty proletariat the axiomatic truth that it is the ivory tower upon which all the golden shields of industry, commerce and finance are hung.
<quote>
“The immense Socialistic literature is increasing every day ; thousands of organs of the press in the old and the new worlds endeavor to elaborate , develop and spread Socialistic ideas.” (Tugan - Baranovsky, Modern Socialism , p.1, London, 1910.)
“The party has, also, its own journalism . . . . Journalism and schools besides.” (Reginald Wright Kauffman, What Is Socialism ? pp . 174-75 , New York, 1910.)
</quote>
Thousands of books and booklets, millions of tracts are written and disseminated by members of another class, another layer of society with the sole purpose of mesmerizing the workers into the acceptance of a Communist world-view, a doctrine based on fulsome flattery, but which, if we credit its exponents, is the very essence of the working class psychology and ideology, is nothing but an exact, somewhat refined, reflection of its economic existence, industrial standing and functioning in communal life, is but a precise delineation of its place in present day society.
<quote>
“A class ... from which the consciousness of the necessity for a thoroughgoing revolution, the communist consciousness, proceeds . . . .” (Marx and Engels, Die Deutsche Ideologie, Otto Ruehle, Karl Marx, p. 96, New York, 1935.)
“Modern Socialism is nothing but the reflex in thought of this actual conflict, the ideal reflection in the minds of the class which is directly suffering under it - the working class. (F. Engels, Anti - Duehring, p. 301.)
“In fact, these two, Socialism and the militant proletariat, tend constantly to become identical.” (Karl Kautsky, Class-Struggle, p. 183.)
“Socialism is the workers' side of the class-struggle.” (Joseph E. Cohen, Socialism for Students, p. 47, Kerr Publ.)
</quote>
We must do justice to the working masses. They show unusual sanity, robustness of intellect and strength of will-power in their resisting with all the forces of their mental equilibrium the deadly effects of this megalomania-poison administered to them by Marxianity.
*** 3. Class - Struggle Horizontal or Vertical
How is the class-struggle to be visualized graphic ally? How is it drawn? In other words, does the class struggle run along horizontal or vertical lines? More light should be thrown on this all too obscure subject.
There are sociological formations which are, so to say, anti-pathetically symbiotic. They are situated historically on one plane. They dwell contiguously, like neighbors, in one epoch.
<quote>
“As is well known, however, from the moment when, like a butterfly from the chrysalis, the bourgeoisie arose out of the burghers of the feudal period, when this 'estate' of the Middle Ages developed into a class of modern society, it was always and inevitably accompanied by its shadow, the proletariat.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 122, New York, 1935.)
</quote>
These aggregates come into being, grow up, and march through social life resembling the proverbial, legally married, quarrelsome couple that always tiff and bicker, but never contemplate a separation or divorce. They are indissolubly tied together by the very act of their clashing constantly, by the very fact of their colliding and yet doing team-work, acting, functioning jointly.
<quote>
“Closer investigation also shows us that the two poles of an antithesis, like positive and negative, are just as inseparable from each other as they are opposed, and that despite all their opposition they mutually penetrate each other.” (Ibid. p. 29.)
</quote>
Opposition does not always lead to separation, quite often it keeps the opposites together.
They realize that they are unable to discharge their duties separately. For they are halves of one whole, counter-agents of the self same process.
On the other hand, there are societary groupings that make their entry upon the stage of history in a way reminding us somewhat of the succession of generations. The van of the one and the rear of the other come into hostile contact on the border-lines of a given epoch. They supersede one another.
Now, how are we to understand the class-struggle phenomenon, as a battle pitched between those that are in time, or as a fight going on between those that are in space, in co-existence or in succession? In brief, does the class-war resemble the struggle of sexes, male and female, or the battle of ages, old and young, “Fathers and Sons”?
The answer to this question is that class-struggle is fashioned after both patterns, it takes place in both succession and co-existence. Class-struggle runs along criss-crossing lines, along, intersecting one another, horizontal and vertical planes. The truth of the matter is, that while the 'masses' struggle horizontally, the 'masters' fight vertically. From the standpoint of philosophy of history-sociologically examined into, not merely politically – class-struggle was always and invariably a fight of rulers, of successive and, therefore, different gradations and styles, among themselves, a fight of the future masters against the past-masters.
<quote>
“Later, with the cities, but younger than they, <em>Buergherdom</em>, <em>bourgeoisie</em>, arises as the “Third Estate”'. The Burgher, too, now looks with contempt upon the countryside, which lies about him dull, unaltered, and patient, and in contrast with which he feels himself more awake and freer and therefore further advanced on the road of the culture. He despises also the primary estates ' squire and parson ', as something lying intellectually below him and historically behind him.” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. II, p. 334, New York, 1932.)
</quote>
So that, from a deeper, more penetrating view, it was a struggle of the “top” against the “bottom”, these two words taken in their connotation of potentially topographic positions in the spheres of economic, political and cultural endeavor. A higher stratum, but unrecognized as such and, therefore, not given its proper place, combats the factually lower, though “erroneously” juridically, or, rather, traditionally situated higher, stratum.
The fight is carried on and brought to a successful end, as we call it, vertically, but this is done with the direct aid and unqualified and unreserved assistance of the “oppressed” masses that fight their battle horizontally. That is why the latter always plow and sow the social field that is irrigated with their blood, but never reap the harvest, never garner in the new crop of progress. That is why the “oppressed” always plant the tree of liberty, but never eat of its fruit, for when it comes to do the “eating” there are always on the spot other claimants with sharper teeth and keener appetites, more will-power and quicker alertness.
<quote>
“But side by side with the antagonism between the feudal nobility and the bourgeoisie was the general antagonism between the exploiters and the exploited, the rich idlers and the toiling poor. And it was precisely this circumstance that enabled the representatives of the bourgeoisie to put themselves forward as the representatives not of a special class, but of the whole of suffering humanity.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 24.)
</quote>
In other words, there is an antagonism running vertically and one asserting itself horizontally, an antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, two ruling classes situated in succession, and an antagonism between the exploited and the exploiters, the ruling class and the subordinated mass. “And it is precisely this circumstance” that allows the vertical antagonism to utilize the horizontal antagonism.
<quote>
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class-struggle. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on uninterrupted, now hidden, now open, fight-a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or in common ruin of the contending classes.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, Essentials of Marx, p. 31.)
</quote>
Well, this is the two-horned dilemma of class struggle as described in the Communist Manifesto: it invariably ends either “in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or in common ruin of the contending classes.” The fatal horn of “common ruin” threatening us with a collapse of our civilization, we shall break off and chuck away. Let us avert our eyes from the ghastly scene depicting both classes, in the given case, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the modern Israel and Egyptians as being drowned in the Red Sea of bloodshed of a civil war.... We shall, therefore, confine ourselves to considering the other, the brighter possibility-alternative, namely, the “revolutionary reconstruction of society at large,” the great hope and brilliant promise held out to “the whole of suffering humanity.”
Let us be a little bit inquisitive about the future, within the limits of general outlines, not trying to anticipate utopian particulars upon which a ban was placed, as a measure of precaution, by the Marxian concept, and ask, What will we find after the period of <em>revolutionary reconstruction of society at large</em> has drawn to its glorious close? A millennium of loving kindness? An era of solidarity reigning supreme?
Not having a gift for prophecy, all we can do is to go, in search for an answer, to the past, to recorded revolutionary reconstruction periods, and measure the distance between the promises and the fulfillments in the preceding epochs, and this way gain an understanding of the hiatus that is bound to yawn between the promises and fulfillments of our epoch. In other words, we must take an historical perspective.
<quote>
“Hegel was certainly right when he said that the only thing we can learn from history is that neither rulers nor peoples have ever learned anything from it.” (Rudolf Eucken, Socialism, An Anlysis, tr. by Joseph McCabe, p. 157, New York, 1922.)
</quote>
Not belonging to either of the two categories, “rulers” or “peoples”, but to the third, the philosophers who do learn from history, no matter how little, even according to the pessimistic view of Hegel-we shall consult the ungarbled record of history.
And what does it tell us? It tells us in plain language, without any circumlocution, that the cloth of our society went back to the social mill for renovation and amendation a number of times. And that the interlacement existing between the masses and the high classes was more than once rewoven and retwined, but each time, without fail, without exception, were designed new meshes wherein to entwine and entangle the low masses. Upon having disclosed the “treacherous” character of the horizontal class-struggle, how can we, in good faith, recommend it to the proletariat as the only means conducive to its liberation! The plodding along the historical groove, the old trodden routinous path of class struggle cannot lead the workers to their goal of full emancipation. The toilers should beware of methods that had proved fatal to the aims and aspirations of the masses so many a time. It would be stupid, and may be even felonious, to call upon the working class to follow confidently in the ruts of the historical “beneficent” process and believe that this itinerary will bring them to their glorious destination, and still more stupid-if not altogether too cunning and malignant-would it be to counsel the toilers to place their glowing hopes in the natural tendencies inherent in our society, that in the long run must raise the bottom layers to the top, and thus break up our sociological pyramidical structure and make of it a one-storied affair all built on one level.
Marxism assures the laboring masses that their deliverance, not unlike a pie-a-la-mode, will be served to them upon a golden platter by the mythical waiters called “objective conditions,” “proletarization” and “concentration of capital,” ostensibly mischievous, but at core friendly trolls and laprecawns of the Scientifico-Communistic fairyland.
<quote>
"... 1) Concentration of means of production in a few hands, whereby they cease to appear as the property of the immediate laborers and transform themselves into social power (our italic) of production... 2) Organization of labor itself into social labor....” (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III, p. 312, Chicago, 1909.)
“A growing concentration of capitals... is therefore one of the material requirements of capitalist production as well as one of the results produced by it. Hand in hand with it, and mutually interacting, goes a progressive expropriation of the more or less direct producers. It is then a matter of course for the capitalists that they should control increasing armies of laborers.” (Ibid. p. 257.)
“As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labor and further transformation of land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form.” (Ibid., Vol. I, p. 836.)
“The theory of concentration of capital, which had first been advanced by Louis Blanc, is worked out in great details by Marx... This theory lays it down that... the unit of capital will tend to increase, until eventually all the small capitalists will be destroyed or absorbed, and industry will be controlled nationally or internationally by one huge unit of capital. The concentration of capital is preparing for the social ownership and control of it-in other words, capitalism is preparing the way for socialism.” (Philip Snowden, Socialism and Syndicalism, p. 71, London, 1913.)
</quote>
These are the natural tendencies leading toward socialization. But this process, though sure, is quite slow. And in order to accelerate it, to speed it up, Marx prescribes the class-struggle, in itself again a natural phenomenon that light of class-consciousness being thrown upon can be utilized more effectively for the cause of labor. So far so good. But what does history say to the Marxian mythically optimistic interpretation of its tendencies, intents and purposes? Marx settled all accounts with the high classes in favor of the low masses, to the satisfaction of many a social evangelist, but he did it without the hostess-history. Recorded similar settlements were not honored by the actualities of social life, and why should this one fare any better?
History, through its registered events, described transitions, recorded revolts, successful ones, not abortive, warns us time and again that the class-struggle of the masses, being, according to its very nature, confined to one horizontal plane, can do no more than lead them out of the old regions of misery, and lead them right back into new ones, take them out of old spheres of exploitation, and bring them right back into new ones.... The midwifing and nursing of the hulking oaf of progress has never as yet brought into the world of social relationships the expected Immanuel, the charming prodigy-child of salvation.
The slaves revolted, rose in arms against their ancient masters. But neither Greece nor Rome was wrecked and ruined, stormed and conquered by its respective mutinous bondmen. Greece succumbed to the onslaught of Rome which in its time and historical turn was vanquished by the vandals. Sure enough, the ancient civilization was undermined, rocked to its very foundations by the tumultuous uprisings of its slaves, the revolts of its downtrodden masses. The rebelling slaves, the discontented low masses largely contributed to the final destruction of the antique world, but they were neither the initiators nor the executors of its downfall. Furthermore, the collapse of the ancient commonwealth along with its civilization did not signify the triumph of its slaves. They did not become, as a con sequence of the overwhelming catastrophe, the ruling class of ancient society, and still less was achieved by them in the direction leading towards the complete liberation of suffering mankind from all forms of subjugation, oppression and domination exercised by man over his fellow-man.
True, slavery as a predominant institution was abolished. The stigma was obliterated from the countenance-not the body-of civilization. New characters were engraved upon the tables of economic intercourse. But the new scribblings were very far from being love letters, effusions of sympathy. The newly indited chapters were very much like those deleted. Feudalism fol. lowed upon the heels of slavedom. The serf replaced the slave as a predominant social economic factor. And when the feudal system had gone bankrupt, serfdom discarded, the nobility shorn of its privileges-who rushed in and occupied its place of honor, leadership, wealth, power? The bourgeoisie, the capitalists, the industrial magnates, the commercial barons, the princes of finance.
The classes and the masses came to close quarters, the peasantry and serfs fought quite valiantly against the landed aristocracy. But, contrary to all expectations, disappointing all the visionaries, the levelling down of the high estates, the truncating of the feudal pyramid, did not yield the promised results, namely, the enthronement of the serfs, the turning the oppressed into a ruling class, the breaking up and dissolving of all forms of oppression. Upon the sites of the torn down seigniories and baronial castles not the husbandman, nor the crafts man, but the 'bourgeois' has erected his skyscraper of power and glory, magnificence and exploitation, grounded this time neither in slavery nor in serfdom but in so called free wagedom. Hiredom and firedom is a mitigated form of economic dependence and subordination, mitigated only juridically, but most thoroughgoing socially, economically. Class-struggle, according to its historical record covering thousands of years and the area of the entire civilized world, is invariably complemented by class-succession. New magnates, youthful, vigorous high strata, take the place, move into the palaces, of the old and worn-out potentates....
The oversanguine contention that by means of the class-struggle, conducted horizontally, will the proletariat gain the position of a ruling class, what is it based upon? Where are the historical data to substantiate such an all too optimistic prophecy? What is the purpose of manufacturing and selling such fantasmogorias to the naive, indiscriminating masses?
To our mind, the eager to become masters befuddle, though unknowingly, unintentionally, the brains of the rebellious proletarians and thus blind them to the obvious fact that they are being deceived by the expectant rulers who, themselves self-deceived and vision-drunk, keep busy plotting against the “masses,” forging newly patented chains wherewith to fetter them right after the short breathing spell of liberty enjoyed by them during the brief interregnum stretching between the two regimes, one demolished, the other as yet not solidified. The future bosses, themselves glowing with radiant expectations, destined to become realizations in so far as they are concerned and which will be shattered, cruelly belied at their attempts to go behind their inner closed circle of beneficiaries of the new order of things-keep the working and suffering low layers of the population in a state of effervescent agitation and ebullient trance. The overabundant and somewhat justified optimism of the prospective rulers is contagious, the masses catch the fever of the “future” that holds in store domination and grandeur, not for them, but for their “leadership”, the emerging masters of the emerging situation.
<quote>
“Man is a mystical-religious-emotional-instinctive animal, not a reasonable or scientific animal.” (Benjamin de Casseres, Mencken and Shaw, p. 86, New York, 1930.)
“Religion is <em>apriori</em>, like hunger, sex and the instinct to steal.” (Ibid. p. 36.)
</quote>
The instinctive messianic spark glimmering in the heart of the laborer, his inborn ardor, his flickering ecstasy, the future masters fan into a blaze which devours his hard-won common sense, his healthy realistic look on life, and he forgets himself and becomes an easy victim of fantasms.
<quote>
“Historically, indeed, Socialism is more closely related to religious than political propagandism. It is from the prophets, apostles and saints, the religious mystics and heretics, rather than from statesmen, economists and political reformers, that the Socialist movement derives the example and ideals that inspire its nobler enthusiasm and hopes today.” (John Bruce Glasier, The Meaning of Socialism, pp. 225-26, London, 1919.) The “nobler enthusiasm and hopes” of Communism are administered to the workers as some kind of an eschatological opiate with the purpose of making them overlook, in their state of spiritual inebriation, the snares spread by the objective, cold-blooded process of historical unfoldment and its representative the emerging rulers in their way which they tread with so much confidence that is so little warranted. The innocent and guileless toilers do not surmise that traps and ambushes await them right around the first curve on the Red Road...
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class-struggle.”
</quote>
But in the long course of this continuous and protracted <em>one-dimensional</em>, as far as the masses are concerned, struggle we have never as yet reached a state at which the high classes in general, not of a definite historical shape and form, have disappeared, or, which would be more miraculous, that the masses have gained the upper hand over the classes for any considerable length of time.
*** 4. Class Struggle as Old as History
THE KNOWLEDGE THAT class-struggle is no callow chick just now hatched out of the addled egg of modern industrialism, but a venerable, super-annuated cock whose crowing awakened the very dawn of recorded civilization and whose roosting pole could be found in all the backyards of communal habitations as the statement that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class-struggle” explicitly tells us this know ledge should have made the exponents of the horizontal class-struggle panacea less cock-sure. Should... but they are Hegelians in that sense that they are ever so reluctant to learn anything from past history. History tells us that the class-struggle is as old as the hills and dales in the crust of society, and its effectiveness, under the best of circumstances, went never one step beyond causing slight modifications in the inter-relationship of the lower and higher classes.
<quote>
“Greece made its entry into history, as far back as the heroic epoch, with a class-structure which itself was evidently the product of a long but unknown previous history.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 201.)
</quote>
Where there was a class-structure there, certainly, was a class-struggle in evidence. No class-regime could have been introduced without overcoming resistance of one kind or another. A class-structure presupposes the existence of upper and lower strata in society, and the stratification process is invariably accompanied or preceded by social earthquakes, shocks or tremors.[2]
<quote>
"... There were in the lower classes elements capable of taking an interest in politics, namely, the plebeians of the town, small artisans and shop-keepers, workmen and laborers, fisher men and sailors, the humblest of the craftsmen whom the epic calls demiourgoi and the whole mass of the hired men whom it classes under the name of thetes. This proletariat lived from hand to mouth on wages which the increasing use of that human chattle, the slave, was ever forcing down.... The army for the revolt was ready; it lacked only leaders. The bourgeoisie fitted by its courage, its habit of work and intelligence to exercise the political rights which were denied to it, placed itself at the head of the force which it found ready to its hand. From that time the city was split into two camps. The time was past when the discontented were content to groan and invoke the Gods.... Mystics gave place to men of violence. The conflict of classes had begun.
“It was long and bitter. From the seventh century to the time of the Roman conquest Greek history is full of revolutions and counter-revolutions, of massacres, banishments and confiscations. Party hatred was never expressed with more ferocity than in the small cities where the intestine struggle assumed the form of veritable vendettas.” (G. Glotz, The Greek City, p. 104, London, 1929.)
“The next struggle, extending over centuries, was the struggle of the organized proletariat for effective participation in the government. The resistance was stubborn. In 494 B. C. the people obtained special officers called tribunes as their leaders, but their power was so limited that nothing was gained in the way of sharing in the government of the State. In 451 B. C. the publication of the Ten Tables made a legal tradition common property and wrested from the patricians one privilege. In 449 the plebeian assembly began to legislate.... In 445 B. C. the legal barrier against intermarriage was removed.... Seventy-eight years went past; the Gaul came down on Rome in 390, compelling for a time the unity that is bred of common danger; and then in 367 B. C. the consulship was open to plebeians, at first in junction with a patrician and afterwards, if it so happened, both consuls might be plebeians.
“By the victory of 367 B. C. the plebeians seem to have won all that they cared to demand.” (G. S. Brett, The Government of Man, pp. 126-27, London, 1913.)
“The class struggle of the ancient world took the form chiefly of a contest between debtors and creditors, which in Rome ended with the ruin of the plebeian debtors.... In the middle ages the contest ended with the ruin of the feudal debtors who lost their political power together with the economical basis on which it was established.” (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 152, Chicago, 1918.)
</quote>
One is almost tempted to quote the Preacher:
<quote>
“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes, I, 9.)
</quote>
There is, certainly, nothing new about the horizontal class-struggle being crossed, and double-crossed, by the vertical one. The only difference between the ancient class-struggle and the modern is that the circumstances, under which they are being fought, were in antiquity more favorable for the militant lowly. For besides the horizontal class-struggle of the masses that were led by the “bourgeoisie” that fought its own battle vertically, revolts of slaves used to break out from time to time.
<quote>
“Slave revolts broke out in 501, 498, 497 and 419 B. C. In 190 B. C. Italian agriculture employed a million and a half slaves, who from time to time throughout the succeeding century were involved in formidable revolts (198, 196, 185, 40B. C.)” (Paul Louis, art.” Agrarian Movements” in Encyclop. of Social Sciences, Vol. I, p. 494.)
</quote>
Under such conditions, the higher-ups should have been more willing to “listen to reason,” to negotiate and compose the differences, existing between them and the masses, peacefully, realizing the precarious state the whole Greek society was in. Their glory and grandeur was built upon a volcano that as a rule was sup posed to be dormant, but not extinct, and the contingency of its awakening and doing mischief at any moment was by no means precluded. This constant threat of eruptions imperiling the very existence of “civilized” Greece was hanging like a gusty cloud over their heads and it counselled moderation. Yet what were the net results of the class-struggle? It never yielded more than crumbs of reforms, negligible concessions, political and economic modifications rather than amendations, changes rather than real improvements, and even that was not always the case.
And the abolition of slavery that took place many a century later could not be accredited to the class struggle of the free, urban or rural, population. There was no “united front” effected between free and compulsory labor.
<quote>
“In classical Rome the class war was carried on only within the pale of the privileged minority, between the free rich and the free poor. The slaves, who formed the great productive mass of the population, were nothing more than a passive pedestal upon which the struggle was waged.” (Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, preface, p. 19, New York, 1926.)
</quote>
They were very far from being passive. Revolts and insurrections are no passivity. But the rebellions of the slaves were not connected, were not synchronized with the political struggles taking place within the community of the free. The rising of the slaves constituted a chapter for itself, not unlike the national wars of our times that are an external affair whereas class-struggle is an internal occurrence.
<quote>
“In like manner, should the common's champion find the populace so very compliant that he need make no scruples of shedding kindred blood-should he, with unrighteous charges, as is the wont of such persons, prosecute his victims and render himself blood guilty, making away with human life, and tasting the blood of his fellows with unholy tongue and lips-should he banish, and kill, and give the signal for cancelling debts and redistributing the land; is not from henceforth the inevitable destiny of such a man either to be destroyed by his enemies, or to become a tyrant, and be metamorphosed from man into wolf? There is no escape from the alternative. Such is the fate of the man who is at feud with the moneyed class.” (Plato, Republic, VIII, 566.)
</quote>
Plato treats the subject in terms of the individual, the outstanding personality of the leader, the champion of the militant commons. And he arrives at a strictly realistic, which is not over optimistic-overdone optimism is the fool's paradise, and a philosopher is not supposed to be found there, in the Sociological Eden, where all the morons of all times and nations are quartered conclusion, and that is that “there is no escape from the alternative.” It is a plain, but as inexorable as fate, case of either or.
Either one is defeated, bodily destroyed by one's class enemies, or one is victorious, and being victorious means to do, be forced by circumstances, by the unstoppable march of events, to do <em>henceforth</em> the very same economic and political things that those who were defeated by one had done <em>hitherto</em>, in Plato's concrete expression, become a tyrant.
Now, let us translate Plato's sound and basic sociological thought into terms of classes and their modes of interrelationship. Class-struggle has no escape from the alternative. It is either defeat, which in the given case would not spell physical annihilation of the totality of the warring class, but the destruction of a number of its best members, the staunchest, fearless and most audacious fighters or victory which can be registered only in one direction, namely, <em>vertically</em> and will be bringing along with it the unavoidable repetition, with slight alterations, of the deeds, economic and political, that were condemned and fought against; in a word, victory will mean not more than a duplication, with minor variations, of the existing sociological order of things, and the emerging of a new master-class instead of the dis carded, routed one.
<quote>
“The oligarchs in certain towns took this oath : ' I will be an adversary of the people and in the Council I will do to it all the evil which I can.” (Aristotle, Politics, VIII, 7, 9.)
“But of your wars with oligarchies, there were different causes : with those you fought for your constitution, your liberty... for it is not possible that a few can entertain an affection for the many; or the friends of arbitrary power for the men who chose to live in free equality.” (Demosthenes, De Rhod. Lib. 17-18; tr. Leland Orations, 275-277.)
</quote>
Demosthenes being an orator, not a philosopher, is not bound to tell the truth, his task is to encourage, not to discourage, to arouse emotions, not thoughts about the future, about the events subsequent to the victories scored...
Like all agitators he dangles before the eyes of his listeners the dazzling words of “liberty” and is even speaking of “free equality” without troubling himself any too much about the realities of the Greek commonwealth, an island submerged in a sea of slavery. Could upon a basis of slavery be erected a free equality, even when understood in a circumscribed application concerning only the free citizens? But orators, propagandists are not supposed to bother about scientific exactitudes, and thus compete with the “philosophers”
Now we shall quote an oration that sounds as good as any a speech delivered to any labor audience by the hottest rebel of our own time. But the oration dates back to the first century.
<quote>
“Lucius Sergius Catiline... spoke to them in the following manner:
“... Is it not better to die in a brave attempt than to drag a wretched and infamous life, and to lose it at last shamefully, after having been the sport of other men's indolence? But I take gods and men to witness, that success is in our hands.... All that is necessary is only to make the attempt.... For who that has the spirit of a man can bear with patience, that they should have such a superfluity of riches, as to lavish with them, in raising mighty edifices on the deep, and leveling mountains, whilst we have not so much as the necessaries of life, that they should be multiplying their seats, whilst we have no fixed habitations; that, though they are constantly buying pictures, statues and vessels of curious workmanship, pulling down new houses, and building others; in short, though they waste and dissipate their wealth by every extravagant method; yet, by all their efforts of profusion, they are unable to exhaust it. As for us, we have poverty at home, and debts abroad; our condition is bad, our expectation much worse; finally, what have we left but a wretched life. Rouse then to action! Behold the object you have often wished for, behold liberty! and in her train, riches, glory and honor, all full in your view! All these rewards fortune has prepared for the conquerors... Let your dangers, your poverty, and the glorious spoils of war animate you more powerfully than any words of mine!’” (C. C. Sallust, The History of Catiline's Conspiracy, pp. 19-20, London, 1751.)
</quote>
Evidently class demagogism was not invented by the Communists, neither can they claim the discovery, both in theory and practice, of class-struggle. The battle of classes goes on for thousands of years, according to the very testimony of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. But no matter how doggedly the oppressed masses fought-and annals dripping with blood bear witness to their unsurpassed prowess and intrepidity-yet the class-structure of society remained intact. How many a wave of stormy rebellion surged over the cliff of Differentiation in its audacious attempt to carry it off and hurl it into the abyss of oblivion, and yet, despite all those repeated strenuous efforts, this rock of hatred, this boulder of antagonism stands as erect and as unshakable now as ever.
The working class is confronted with a twofold task to which it cannot sociologically prove equal. Class struggle in order to be efficacious, in the sense of eradication of classes in general and obliteration of all social stratifications, must be carried on by the low masses in two directions, <em>horizontally and vertically</em>, simultaneously. And this is beyond their powers, no matter how hard they try, if they do, which will never be the case. It is as easy as to square a circle. Concerning our present times and situation, the expulsion of the bourgeoisie is the minor part of the reconstruction program; the forestalling of the advent of new masters, the frustrating of their aims and ends, the <em>vertical</em> class-struggle, this is the major issue, this would be an exploit worthy of daring and doing, but this is historically unachievable. A low class as such cannot carry on its fight vertically, upward, anticipatorily. It is not possessed of such intuitive anticipations. It, according to its very nature, <em>follows</em> historical epochs, but it cannot precede them. It understands them, their meaning, their mechanism, their modes of functioning, and that quite dimly and after having been propagandized by an emerging class of new rulers, post factum, when the existing systems have matured, exposed themselves, but it cannot grasp their essence, it cannot evaluate them properly in pre-vision, in prospect. Even in retrospect it does it in a quite faltering way.
The workers must come, sooner or later, to the realization of the great truth, that it is not sufficient to oust the capitalists, to wage a <em>horizontal</em> class-war, but, if they want to get rid of the higher classes, they must watch and guard each opening and crevice through which new masters will, inevitably, unforestallably, squeeze themselves in almost unnoticed. For the exit of one ruling class becomes the entrance for another dominating class, the egress of the ex-masters serves as an ingress for the emerging masters. And this is unpreventable. The working class is in no position to stem the tide of history, to reverse the course of the stream of social life. And that was the reason why the horizontal class-struggle, when it went beyond bargaining and haggling about conditions of work, like shortening of hours, of days, of raising wages and similar demands, had but one effect and that was the hastening of the process of succession of classes, the replacement of one class of rulers by another, the ushering in a new class of masters and ushering out an old one.
*** 5. Dishistorization of History
Marx and his collaborator Engels, a Communist thinker and scholar in his own right, assuage all these painful fears about the delinquency, historically proven beyond any reasonable doubt, of the <em>horizontal class struggle</em> carried on by the masses, with the salve of an asseveration:
<quote>
“The proletariat, the lowest stratum of present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up without the whole super incumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air” (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, Essentials of Marx, p. 42.)
“The history of these class-struggles forms a development in which a stage has now been reached where the exploited and oppressed class the proletariat cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class the bourgeoisie without at the same time and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-struggles” (F. Engels, Preface to the Communist Manifesto, p. 28.)
</quote>
To our mind, it is axiomatic that the proletariat designating by it the working class, the class of manual laborers, cannot raise itself up to the very top of society unless, as a preliminary or in the very act of its uplift, it breaks up the whole make-up of modern society.
But how do we know that the proletariat is going to do it, that it is going to achieve this extraordinary, unparalleled exploit of raising itself so as to reach to the very surface of social life? This is the question. It may behave more in accord with historical precedence, and confine its efforts to improving its condition. This, surely, would not be tantamount to rising to the top and would not presuppose a springing into the air of “the whole superincumbent strata of official society.” The amelioration of status and conditions under which the laborers live and function as producers would be registered as a result of a common increase in well-being. In such a fashion the proletariat would rise and the whole of society, meaning the other classes, would rise simultaneously with it, so that its relative position within society would not be changed radically. The assertion of Marx-Engels is too general, on the one side, and too “prophetic”, groundless, unhistorical, on the other. It is not a question of revolution as something more effectual than mere reform. Revolutions, no less than other social phenomena, are, too, behaving “historically”, they do not go out of their orbits. A revolution is not a sociological omnipotent.
What Marx said of the proletariat would be true of any bottom-layer, it could not raise itself up unless it caused a general perturbation, a readjustment of all the interrelations existing between the various groupings of the given social complex unit. And that is the very reason why such things, touching upon the border line of the impossible, of the preternatural in sociology, never happened as yet. No sociological bottom-stratum as a whole without undergoing a process of decomposition and recomposition, no submerged social formation taken in its entirety, in its totality or overwhelming majority of members, ever rose to the surface, to the sea-level of social life. And where are the convincing proofs that what has never happened is going to happen right now, in our time? Where are the data to show us clearly that history is on the eve of a total reversal, of a drastic change of its age-long course?
<quote>
"... In the formation of a class in radical chains, a class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but which is not of it, an order which shall break up all orders, a sphere which possesses a universal character by virtue of its universal suffering, which lays claim to no special right, because no particular wrong but wrong in general is committed upon it, which can no longer invoke a historical title, but only a human title, which stands not in a one-sided antagonism to the assumptions of the... community, a sphere finally which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating all the other spheres of society, which represents, in a word, the complete loss of mankind, and can therefore only redeem itself through the complete redemption of mankind. The dissolution of society reduced to a special order is the proletariat.” (Karl Marx, Hegelian Philosophy of Right, Selected Essays tr. by H. J. Stenning, p. 37, New York, 1926.)
</quote>
This dissertation of Marx about the proletariat is an abortive attempt at <em>dishistorization</em> of the labor movement. Marx describes the proletariat as a class situated on the outskirts of all given historical epochs, outside of all limitations and characteristics that go with a definitive environmental and chronal setting. And upon having secured the proletariat in that envious position of Utopia, outside of place and time, in the great and charming “beyond” of anti-historical speculation, Marx can, with a calm conscience and unperturbed intellect, assure us that the proletariat is adequate, not unlike Archimedes armed with his lever and in possession of the point outside the globe, to turning upside down the whole machinery of history.
An arch-radical quasi-prophecy, a bubble-like inflated prediction that clashes with the well-established rule, that knows of no exceptions, and course, that knows of no deviations, of universal history has not got much of a chance with the hard “conservative” actualities of social life, even if the seer Marx fathers it; and it takes no great amount of prophecy to foretell with utmost sureness the outcome of this fatal collision, and which of the two is going to be the worse for it...
<quote>
“A class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but which is not of it”. Such a depiction could befit an emerging master-class, an aggregate fighting vertically its way through to domination, but not the working class, a class that was born together with the bourgeoisie, that is its actual corollary, that lives alongside of it, and is reared and brought up in the very process of industrialization, the fount out of which the bourgeoisie draws its strength and sustenance.
“A sphere which possesses a universal character by virtue of its universal suffering”. No class of living beings if it is not a category of a theological character that suffers universally for suffering humanity, suffers universally, in general, but if it does it at all, it does it in a limited, circumscribed way as a definite grouping occupying a definite position in production and, consequently, in distribution. No class can afford to leave, all of a sudden, by fiat of a revolution or by inspiration of a “mission” its historical set-up, its historical background, and act and behave as a vague, formless entity belonging to all times and all milieus and, therefore, belonging nowhere altogether, to no time and no milieu.
</quote>
The statements of Marx quoted above are the crudest negation of history ever to be found in writings claiming to be “scientific” and basing their assertions or foretellings upon an historical process and tendencies. Marxism when it comes to prognostications is an attempt at violation of history, to force it to get off its own track and stop developing along its own lines, to cease to be its own self. Fourier called himself “inventor” and claimed to be near omnipotence in matters sociological. Marx branded that school of thought and experimentation as Utopian and discarded their psychology and methodology. Marx follows history to a certain point. But upon reaching it he turns against his guide and assumes the disguised role of leader and forces his guide, history, to lead him according to his own directions. In this way he <em>unhistorizes</em> history, he would like to compel history to overcome its own limitations and hemmed-in possibilities.
The mere fact that the proletariat “can no longer invoke a historical title” does not free it from its historical moorings, does not detach it from its historical anchorage. The bourgeoisie did not claim a historical title either. What of it? To abstain or to be deprived of the privilege of claiming a historical title, is one thing, and to step out of one's own historical frame, is quite a different thing. And no class, a concrete living social formation, not an abstraction, an apparition spun out of pure imagination by a transcendental speculator for a special “mission” to upset history, to do away with its basic laws – can work such a wonder as to abandon its own historical sphere and orb and walk off into a historyless infinite…
“But only a human title”... The proletarian does not invoke any title, but if it does consider necessary to invoke a title, that will not be the vague, meaning less, for it is too broad and too all inclusive, “human title”, but a laborer's title, whatever that may be.
“The dissolution of society reduced to a special order is the proletariat”. No more so than the dissolution of feudal society reduced to a special order was the serf-proletariat, no more so than the dissolution of ancient society reduced to a special order was the slave-proletariat. The generality should be particularized. If the wage-proletariat can be said to be the “dis solution of society reduced to a special order”, we must lend that “society” color and style, consign to it its place and specify its time, and formulate it as follows : the dissolution of capitalist society reduced to a special order is the wage-proletariat, and even this will contain but a half-truth. The dissolution cannot occur unless there is a process of re-evolution, no destruction without the corrective of reconstruction, and a society is not decomposed with the purpose of recomposing it unless there is a combination of the lower and higher layers of society in full intensified operation. “The dissolution of capitalist society reduced to a special order is the wage-proletariat “could be true, if by dissolution was meant a total collapse, a breakdown, a disbandment of society and a decay of civilization, but even in this case it would require a combination of forces, external, like invasions of vandals, famine, plagues, devastating national wars, and internal, like civil clashes, upheavals of the discontented proletarians.
The way Marx formulates it, the categorical, sweeping manner, all it conveys is that the proletariat is going to dissolve society in general, and after that heroic act of the proletariat all we shall have to do is scatter humanity over the solar systems, billet them on the stars, and thus break up society altogether, and put an end to social life . Human beings henceforth will go hundred percent individualist, not unlike the First Individualist of the realm, the Almighty.
Marx's imagination, though quite flighty and winged, does not go that far. "Scientific" prophecy is not without stints. But the proletariat is not going to pull any of the lesser stunts either. It cannot dissolve society in general, for it is a class living and asserting itself within the frame - work of society and the mold of history, and as such it has to do with an historical style, an historical mode of a given society, and not with society as such.
In a word, the proletariat cannot help being "historical". It is subject to the laws of history no less, if not more so, than any other class, whether ruling or ruled.
<quote>
"People have forgotten Sismondi's notable utterance: "The Roman proletariat lived at the expense of society, whereas modern society lives at the expense of the proletariat'. So extensive are the differences between the material, the economic, conditions of the class - war in classical and modern times, that the political incidents born out of the struggle in one epoch and the other can have no more semblance to one another than the Archbishop of Canterbury has to the High Priest Samuel" (Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, preface, p. 19.)
</quote>
The fact of its being different, makes the proletariat of our modern time no less rooted in its environment, attached to its historical soil and conditions. The proletariat of modern time is a part of modernity no less than the ancient proletariat was a part of antiquity. And it must behave historically, which means acting, in broad outline, in the same way other subjugated classes acted before it, naturally allowing for more or less significant modifications which the march of historical events always brings along in order to relieve its monotony and make advancement possible. But advancement, Progress, too, outside of Hebrew and other varieties of exalted prophecy, is subject to the basic rules and binding regulations of historical procedure.
The proletariat, as well as any other class, no matter how revolutionary and radical it may profess to be, cannot break up the continuity of the historical process.
“The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society”... The mere fact of the proletariat constituting the lowest stratum of present day society does not give it any special privileges, any safe conduct along the high ways and by-ways of history, a carte blanche concerning matters sociologique. It can take no liberties with historical trends.
*** 6. Marxism and the Lumpen-Proletariat.
<quote>
“The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society”
</quote>
First of all, it is not correct, anyway, not exact. Beneath the working masses one finds cadres of roust-abouts, legions of tramps and hoboes, battalions of pan handlers, blobs, ragamuffins and the like wreckage and driftwood tossed about by the social current.
<quote>
“The 'dangerous class', the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may here and there be swept into the movement by the proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, Essentials of Marx, p. 42, New York, 1926.)
“The slum proletariat which in all large cities forms a class entirely distinct from the industrial proletariat, and which is a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds. Its members living on the refuse of society, are without any definite occupation... diversified as the structure of the nation to which they belong, and always 'lazzaroni'“ (Karl Marx, Die Klassenkaempfe in Frankreich, p. 34.)
“For them there is nothing but to beg, steal or prostitute themselves. They were compelled either to perish or to throw overboard all sense of shame, honor and self-respect. They prolong their existence only by giving precedence to their immediate wants over their regard for their reputations. That such a condition cannot but exercise the most demoralizing and corrupting influence is self-evident.
Furthermore, the effect of this influence is intensified by the fact that the unemployed poor are utterly superfluous to the existing order; their extinction would relieve it of an undesirable burden. A class that has become superfluous, that has no necessary function to fulfill, must degenerate. And beggars cannot even raise themselves in their own estimation by indulging in the self-deception that they are necessary to the social system; they have no recollection of a time when their class performed any useful services; they have no way of forcing society to support them as parasites. They are only tolerated. Humility, consequently, is the first duty of the beggar and the highest virtue of the poor. Like the menial, this class of the proletariat is servile toward the powerful; it furnishes no opposition to the existing social order. On the contrary, it ekes out its existence from the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich.” (Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle, pp. 168-69, Chicago, 1934.)
</quote>
Thus the thesis that the proletariat is “the lowest stratum of our present society” is refuted by its very originator, by Marx and his most distinguished and able disciple and popularizer, Karl Kautsky. Now, as the proletariat is deprived of the high “distinction” of constituting the “lowest stratum of our present society” it cannot any more claim, by the law of passage into the opposite, called dialectics, the privilege of becoming, after the overthrow of the system and the transvaluation of all social values, the highest stratum of our future society. The last shall become first, but not the middle that is “conservative” and stays put... The proletariat not being the lowest stratum cannot fulfil the duty or “historical mission” assigned to it by Marx and Engels, namely, the liberation of all suffering humanity,” emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression and class-struggles”. It could be thought of as being in a state of breaking up, in a revolutionary salavationary way, society from its position upwards, but it, surely, would not be able to do this kind of work down wards. So that the emancipation of the proletariat cannot mean any longer the emancipation of all mankind, for there is a portion of it that is situated much lower than the proletariat and it would not reach them. For this duty one must choose the lowest of the low, a rock-bottom layer. And, then, command it to rise, and when it does so, it rises, it, quite naturally, will lift up along with itself the whole under-world, underground dwellers. Mut Marxianism shrunk from this, extremely difficult and exceedingly praiseworthy, task. Marxianity proved to be too shy to look into that unfathomed well of human misery and affliction and draw out of its depth of perdition the water of salvation to be offered free to all the thirsty children of lost mankind without regard of status or standing, position or conduct, right or wrong. And, thus, the picture of the Class-Christ, the Collective Messiah came out pale, anemic, achromatic, for lack of prophetic color and humanitarian vision. Christianity sank its shaft much deeper into the heart of man and its cravings, and it went much farther in its audacious-and, therefore, so irresistibly appealing to all oppressed, fallen, lost, shipwrecked, choice. Christianity, armed with deep penetrating psychological insight was neither ashamed nor afraid to take its Individual Savior right off the gallows, off the cross, where He was dangling in the bad company of thieves, criminals, underworld characters... Marxianity is too much of a philistine doctrine, too moderate and “respectable”, or, plainly pusillanimous, to venture to duplicate the prototype, the divine image of the Savior. And it stopped in its traces, short of its goal. That is why Marxianism is neither here nor there. It is not realistic and modest enough to be truly scientific, nor is it mythical and mystical enough to become virtually religious. It is a hybrid. It sucks two breasts, but gets out of them too little nourishment. For it does not go in the right way about it. It tries to combine the uncombinable. It arrays forces and moods that clash and mutually neutralize each other. Marxianity was venturesome enough to borrow the grand and alluring, capable of stirring the deepest emotions and calling forth the noblest feelings, symbol of the Savior. But it had no courage to “pick” the right kind of a class for it. The proletariat is too “capitalistic”, its “capital” is its skill, labor-power, its job, employment, and, therefore, too materialistic and realistic to fit into the hallowed and haloed picture of a Class-Christ.
<quote>
“To carry through this world-emancipating act is the historiacl mission of the modern proletariat.” (F. Engels, Anti Duehring, p. 318.)
</quote>
The Proletariat wears a crown of labor, not of thorns...
It has a trade to ply, a vocation to follow, a function to fulfil. It is not “utterly superfluous to the existing order.” The proletariat is not a “futilitariat”. And that is why it cannot call to all sufferers to rally to its banner. It has nothing to offer them, neither comfort, nor solace...
<quote>
“In speaking of the 'lowest stratum of society' Marx was thinking, not of a community divided into numerous strata, but chiefly of three classes, the large capitalist, the workers, and the middle class. It was the lowest of these three, and not the lowest of their many subdivisions, that he had in mind. From the first the whole Socialist movement has recognized the almost complete hopelessness, as an aid to Socialism, of the lowest stratum in the narrow sense, of what is called the 'lumpen proletariat,' the bulk of the army of beggars...”, (William English Walling, Socialism As It Is, p. 333, New York, 1912.)
“The lowest ranks of the workers are referred to in German Socialist literature as the ' Lumpen-proletariat '. Lumpen means rags and also rabble. Lump means ragamuffin or even black guard. So all the connotations of this conveniently elastic word are anything but flattering.” (William English Walling, Progressivism And After, p. 233, New York, 1914.)
</quote>
Neither Marx nor his disciple Kautsky, nor any of the Communist theorists have a friendly word, a brotherly feeling for these “social invalids”.... Marx and his followers, being utilitarians, not humanitarians, fully realized, “from the first”, that this wreckage of humanity could not be made use of “as an aid to Communism”. These anti-social types could not be propagandized, pressed into shock-troops, disciplined, officered and made to fight the battles of the Organisateurs, and thus help break up the old system and aid in ushering in the new one. Nor can they be exploited in the field of production, planned on a national scale, after the period of revolution has closed. In a word, the Communists hate and denounce these “sick and meek” for they see clearly that they are unrecruitable in the prerevolutionary time, – humility, consequently, is the first duty of the beggar and the highest virtue of the poor”, – and <em>unemployable</em> in the post-revolutionary time. They are no asset, but an out and out liability. A burden, a charity proposition... And the Marxians keep away from the “poor relations” of the proletariat.
<quote>
“The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society”…
</quote>
Were it true, which it is not, as shown above, it would not have proved the Marxian contention, but served rather as a plump refutation thereof. Was not the ancient slave still lower, was he not sunk in misery a few fathoms deeper than the present day toiler, and yet his deliverance, his salvage did not sound the death knell for all oppression, but it only chimed out the old, who overstayed their time, masters, and chimed in new The riving of the chains of the bondman, his emergence from the netherland of wretchedness did neither signalize, nor symbolize the proclamation of freedom for all subjugated and oppressed. In spite of all the Good Tidings of Christianity, not the Savior, but the serf put in his woebegone appearance in actual, secular life. And in the Middle Ages who could have possibly been lower, in the social scale, than the human being appended to the soil he tilled? He was, no doubt, near the very bottom of society, and, nevertheless, his emancipation, all assurances, given by the liberal minded journalists of that time, to the contrary, not the last triumphing accord of the social, not so excellently conducted, concert…
<quote>
“That as in the order of the social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all man kind... That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.” (Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.)
“That as the proletariat is the last class to achieve freedom, its emancipation will mean the emancipation of the whole of mankind.” (Social Democratic Federation, Programme and Rules, Bradford, Easter 1906.)
“This proletarian revolution will completely abolish the division of society into classes and, consequently, all the social and political inequality arising out of that division.” (V. I. Lenin, Draft-Programme for S. D. P. of Russia, Selected Works, vol. II, p. 225.)
“The capitalist relations of production constitute the last antagonistic form of the social process of production.” (Karl Marx, Critique of Political Economy.)
</quote>
What about the <em>cleavage</em> between the <em>producers</em>, the direct participants of the process of production, and the <em>directors</em>, the <em>indirect</em> participators? What about the antagonism between the <em>toilers</em> and the <em>planners</em> of the social industry? Marx is reticent about these imminent clashes of interests and contrasts of positions. Marx, in this respect as in many other, constitutes no exception to the rule of conduct applied by all the scholar spokesmen, reformers, champions of the former master classes: with them their epoch, the epoch they live in and fight against is always the last... The literature of all the movements, of a secular or religious character, is abounding in assurances that the antagonistic forms inveighed against of the given epoch are the ultimate and final ones. And no sooner is this bitter leaf turned over than a new chapter begins, a chapter that will be as full of harmony and solidarity as its preceding ones were full of antagonism, hatred, strife, in a word, of evil.
*** 7. Communist Eschatology.
<quote>
“That the end of the world was at hand was a common idea of the day. No one was more thoroughly possessed by it than Luther.” (Cambridge, Modern History, vol. II.)
</quote>
Marxianity, in as much as it is a “quasi-religion”, a class-messianic Faith, has, which is quite natural, developed its own eschatology, its teaching about the “last days”. This teaching, as a matter of fact, is more than a mere prediction about the impending collapse of Capitalism. This pseudo-doctrine is more than a statement, claiming scientific validity, about the approaching end of the capitalist system as such, as a species of the genus of economo-political orders. Such a meager prophecy about the imminent fall of Capitalism would contain only the prosaic foretelling that our economic system was going to be, in the near future, replaced by a basically similar, though somewhat different order of things economic. Such a qualified prognosis would, thus, acknowledge the law of continuity whether asserted in a revolutionary or evolutionary way, a law which excludes both the “end”, “consummation”, and its opposite, “the beginning”. Marxianity goes much further than that. It is bold enough to bring the Good Tidings about the disappearance of all, whether or not resembling Capitalism, antagonistic, irrational, disorderly and, therefore, condemned, found wanting, systems that ever existed within the time-limit of recorded history. By the way, History, both as a whole and a part, taken universally or nationally, was never as yet properly systematized. It was always and at all times shot though with “chaoticalities”. It was framed by a series of shapeless and formless events, factors and causes that came and went without strict control being exercised over them by the consciousness of man. History until now was a plaything of blind inimical powers. It could not, therefore, have contained within its scope anything nicely-fitted, dove-tailed, well-knit, properly co-ordinated, so harmonized and arrayed as to deserve the name of a “rational system” in distinction from “Anarchy”, whether of production, distribution-consumption, or of the whole social intercourse, in general.
And upon the “last days” of social Chaos <em>breaks</em> the First luminous Day of social Creation. The social Cosmos emerges as a result of a conscious act of Man.
Marxianity, in its philosophy of history, draws a deeply incising demarcation line that separates “light” from “darkness”, Prehistory of all our “past” from History that, like the career of the genuine artist that always starts on the morrow, begins with our next period, with our “future”! Marxianity forgets that our “future” will some day be looked upon as a part and parcel of the long and continuous “past” and that our “past” was for centuries and for many a generation of dreamers a dreamed of “future”. In a word, Marxianity, in its prognostications, its analysis of our miserable present in contradistinction to the days to come in full glory, asserts that <em>this time</em> is a <em>special time</em>, when “the history of these class-struggles forms a development in which a stage has now been reached, where the exploited and oppressed class the proletariat cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class without at the same the bourgeoisie time and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-struggles”. Marxianity assures us that we are approaching <em>this time</em> not the brink of an epoch, the <em>usual</em> butt-end of a <em>usual</em> social period, an ordinary transformation that has already materialized a few times previously and “consisted in the development of class-antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs” (Communist Manifesto, pp. 51-52), but that a catastrophe of an extraordinary nature, something exceptional is about to occur; and that it comes to pass for the <em>first time in history</em>. It is definitely unequalled. In short, according to Marxian philosophy of history we are at present times at a <em>turning point</em>, we are entering upon a redemption era. A complete <em>renewal</em> of the <em>social order</em> is the history-overwhelming event of our days. Marxianity teaches that a brand-new, never as yet tried, never <em>precedented</em> for the whole stretch of recorded history mode of living and behaving, economically, politically and culturally, will be ushered in upon the breakdown of the capitalist system.
<quote>
“... The most profound revolution in the history of man kind... the first transference of power from the exploiting minority to the exploited majority that has ever occurred in the world....” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 230.)
“<em>And at this point</em> (our italics), in certain sense, man finally (our italics) cuts himself off from the animal world, leaves the conditions of animal existence behind him and enters conditions which are really human. The conditions of existence forming man's environment, which up to now have dominated man, <em>at this point</em> (our italics) pass under the dominion and control of man, who <em>now for the first time</em> (our italics) be comes the real conscious master of Nature.... It is only <em>from this point</em> (our italics) that men, with full consciousness, will fashion their own history; it is <em>from this point</em> (our italics) that the social causes set in motion by men will have, predominantly and in constantly increasing measure, the effects willed by men.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 318.)
</quote>
Engels stresses with full force the idea of the “end”, of the “point” lying on the long line of uniform history and the breaking off of its drab continuum. From now on, from this point men will fashion their own history, they will be masters of the situation, shapers and makers of their historical destinies. It is a full-fledged social eschatology.
Engels does not bother himself to ask: Who are going to be those New Adams, those “men”? Will they belong to some definite groupings? Will they be differentiated, set in definite strata of a sociological or “psychological” crust? They will be just “men” without any affiliations with and loyalties to special subdivisions within the collective, men in the nude of abstraction, and, nevertheless, they will go on living and acting and fashioning history that probably will not be empty, void of any content of events, occurrences, enterprises, great or small deeds, exploits, achievements. Those abstract New Adams will always be in completely unanimous agreement among themselves concerning all matters, all problems, all emergencies, so that their wills and their minds will always be in accord. They will constitute one will and one mind that is always at one with itself, and never clashes, never regrets, never cancels adopted resolutions, never recalls made decisions, never contradicts itself, never argues, never splits and thus breaks up into many factions. It will have to be so, for otherwise there will soon appear different “men” with different “views” on various subjects concerning the “fashioning of their own history,” and a controversy or a clash will ensue as regards the very course their own history has to take. And thus some individual or group will have to decide upon it, and overrule other wills in such a way that not all “men” will be actively directly making their own history, but a “few” will make it, and the rest will “suffer” it, and another “few” will do their best in trying to break it. “Man” in the singular could be said to be able to fashion his own history. Of course, under such conditions, it would be no history which is a record of events that have a collective significance, that occur within the circle of a communal life, but a plain autobiography, not written post factum, but lived through according to one's desires and ideas, if he be a new Robinson Cruso dwelling on an island-star without a wife and without children. The latter, naturally, would interfere with his making or fashioning his own history, for in the last case it would become a history of a family with a few authors to compose it. But “men” in plural, as mere men, in their abstract capacity of human beings, belonging neither to classes nor groupings of any kind, being subject neither to gradations, nor differentiations, of a psychological, physiological or sociological nature for these variations must according to their very character breed some kind of antagonism, a thing that is non extant after the turning of the “crucial point” -how are such perfect beings going to fashion their own history? The very attempt at doing it will divide them, stratify them, gradate them. And there will spring up as many “fashions” of history as there will be “fashioners” and for some that “history” will be “their own”, and for others it will be an imposition, and not “their own”. Fashioning of history is a dangerous business. This activity contains all the germs of class, group or party divisions.
“The social causes set in motion by men will have... the effects willed by men. ' All depends on who are going to be those “men”. If those men are kings, rulers of an economic or political character, there is nothing “messianic” about it. Tyrants, exceptional men of one kind or another, distinguished men, whether in the realm of economics, politics or culture, religion or science, always did the “willing” and their wills were counted as laws or advices, or powerful suggestions that became “social causes”. But if by “men” Engels under stands all men and women, old and young, then, again, the question arises as to how can “social causes” be “the effects willed by men”, unless all men are endowed with one will that is always equal to itself, otherwise the “social causes” are bound to be “the effects” willed by prominent men, by outstanding personalities, or powerful groupings, and remain plain “social causes” for the rest of the commonwealth.
<quote>
“The condition of existence forming man's environment, which up to now have dominated man, at this point pass under the dominion and control of man.”
</quote>
What does the word “man” in the quoted passage stand for?
If it be the abstract man, a non-entity, then Engels' statement is mere empty phraseology, so many words void of any practical social meaning.
If it connotes the collective man, the group as a unit, the whole of society as a body economic and politic, in this case, Engels expresses the thought that on the morrow, after the great overthrow has taken place, society will control the conduct of its economic affairs. But these transitions, from non-control to control, from chaos to order, from primitive anarchy to authority, describe for the individual an inevitable transference of his subjection, he passes from the “jurisdiction” of physical nature to that of social, and from that of social (disorganized) to that of political (organized as a volitional unit) “Nature”.
<quote>
“As the savage must struggle with nature to satisfy his needs to preserve and to reproduce his life, so must the civilized man, and he must do this in all forms of society and under all possible ways of production. As he develops, this realm of necessity extends, because men's needs extend, but his powers of production which satisfy these needs extend at the same time. There can be freedom in this sphere only to the extent that men in society, the associated producers, govern rationally the material given them by nature, and bring it under their common control, instead of being governed by it as by a blind force; develop it with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions worthy of and adequate to their human nature.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, p. 954.)
</quote>
This “freedom” is originated not by the totality of the “associated producers”, but by a few, by the “associators” of the “associated producers”, by an “initiative minority”. The majority all it does is passing from one state of governance into another. Hitherto it was governed by a blind physical or social force, henceforth it will be governed “rationally” more or less by a human force, by a class-force. For the “control” is never “common” in the full sense of the word, it requires the segregation of “controllers” who while controlling the blind forces of nature, or “the material given them by nature”, control, at the same time, the people, the producers.
The “noble savage” was free socially when and if he lived outside the social pale, avoiding any social inter course, not being tied by any of the social bonds, regulations and obligations without which no community, no matter how primitive, could function. This imaginary “social freedom” all it could have registered was the total absence of communal life, of social interrelation ships, and the considerable sum of real advantages that went with it as a compensation for the compulsions placed by it upon the individual members of the collective family, tribe, group, horde, or nationhood. This “freedom” of the under-social or ante-social existence, if it ever was more than mere speculation, could but have one meaning and that was full-measured “slavery”, duress, constraints imposed on the fictitious liberty-loving individual savage by physical nature, and its rigors and severities, surely, outweighed those practiced by social nature.
Savagery passing to barbarism, or barbarism to civilization, recorded a shifting of vassalage, from the Lords Physical, the feral forces and furious powers of physical nature, to the Lords Social, the comparatively mild agencies and factors of social nature.
Returning to Engels' contention, so long as “he conditions of existence forming man's environment” are not regulated, have their free play, they “dominate men” directly. When they are subdued and made to “pass under the dominion and control of man,” at this very moment, when this act takes place, the conditions change, from <em>social</em> they become <em>political</em>, and the <em>man</em>, exercising his dominion and control over them, splits up into two types; one, a minority engaged in the acts of con trolling and dominating the conditions; the other, a majority dominated and controlled, henceforth, not directly by the “conditions of existence forming man's environment,” but <em>directly</em> by those men, formed into a social political aggregate, who are busy controlling and dominating those conditions, and <em>indirectly</em> by those conditions.
Man cannot control and dominate his “environment” unless he takes hold of it politically, or economically organizationally, and thus, juridically or circumstantially, dominates and controls other men besides himself who constitute that environment; and a stratification is immediately effected, a cleavage separating the controllers from those controlled by them.
But when an allegedly secular teaching reaches “<em>this point</em>”, it is futile to argue against it, to debate its validity. “This point” is altogether beyond limited, fallible, human reasoning. It belongs somewhere in the prohibited realm of revelation. And in this part Marxism as Marxianity represents a class-christology, and has nothing to do with social science. It is a Collective-Messianism. And the social revolution, as the culminating point of the long series of class-struggles, preached by Marxism, is not a revolution in the <em>secular</em> sense of the word, meaning a more or less accelerated process of evolution. It is decidedly a new start upon a new road achieved by the dialectical process. Marxianism does not envisage evolution as a straightforward, recti-linear process of development, a slow, gradual advancement sped up and quickened at intervals by revolutionary periods, leaps and bounds. Marxism considers a dialectical shuttling, a shifting from positive to negative, from thesis to anti-thesis, a process of making and breaking, doing and undoing, some kind of a mythical trans formation, conversion of objects and relations into their very opposites, a manipulation reminding somewhat the theological teaching about the sudden transmutation of sins into virtues by the magic touch of repentance.
According to the Marxian concept, each succeeding order of things does not represent a continuation, a prolongation coupled with complication, variation and involvement, of its antecedent, but is its diametrical contrariety, its contradiction. As if social “systems” were scientific concepts that ever so often clash and refute one another. As if the coming generation inheriting all the acquisitions and achievements of the preceding one is rebutting its predecessor, rejecting its parentage. With out taking recourse to dialectics, Marxism could hardly explain the passing from capitalism-a system it describes in the darkest colors as being chockful of “sin”, iniquity, oppression, exploitation, antagonisms, wars, prostitution, etc., to Communism that is supposed to be the sum total of good, a dove of peace and loving kindness, full of harmony and solidarity. Neither an evolutionary process, nor a revolutionary act could easily account for such a transition. And here dialectics offers its services, it is a continuation, a development, and yet an opposition, a full negation. So that a trained Marxian is neither an evolutionist, nor a plain revolutionist, he is a dialectical revolutionist and revolutionary.
But to be conscientious about it, even dialectics with its bag full of tricks, of thesising and anti-thesising, with its allowance of thaumatology, falls short when it comes to account for the promise of consummation, the Communist eschatology. For dialectics, according to Marx and Engels, is no modern agency, it has been operative, even before the class-struggle that made its appearance with recorded history, from the beginnings of times, and permeates whole of nature, physical nature, not only social. So that it was present and took an active part in the long chain of transitions and transformations gone through by our present society. And yet all it had managed to accomplish in days of yore was to call forth some modifications of the antagonistic forms of social life, and was absolutely unequal to the task of removing them altogether and changing them into their opposites of solidarity. This being the case, why should it now, while passing from capitalism to Communism, outdo itself and prove unusually efficacious. For such an unprecedented operation we would need a new factor, a new “force”. And wherefrom will come the new broom that shall sweep the community-floor clean from all dust and impurities of hatred, strife, antagonism, class-struggle? The Social Revolution, the way it is described by Marxianity, has something of the “advent” about it, and there is no accounting for it in an ordinary, natural way of reasoning. Marxian Leninists, other militants belonging to various schools of the same evangelist faith included, are not social revolutionists, but Social Adventists. They firmly believe that social nature is capable of overcoming its own nature and acting in a super-natural way, not as it behaved till now. They believe and teach that history is approaching its “finis”, and social relations will be rewoven after a new pattern, in a new fashion. Rationalism and solidarity are going to replace emotionalism and antagonism completely and for good.
<quote>
“But the typical Socialist of Germany, France, England, and America, the man or woman who gives his or her energies to educating and organizing and disciplining the wonderful, world-wide army, ever growing, ever marching forward, undismayed by defeat, sure of ultimate victory, already thirty million strong the largest army under a single banner the world has ever seen-this typical work-a-day, militant Socialist does not look upon himself or herself as a patent medicine vendor, but as a John the Baptist proclaiming with no uncertain sound <em>the advent</em> (our italics) of a New Order.” (Robert Rives La Monte, Men Versus the Man, Correspondence Between La Monte and H. L. Mencken, p. 3.)
</quote>
The <em>parvenant class</em> always shouts itself hoarse, vociferating, with the high tonalities of its apostles and the top-speeding pens of its scribes, about its sacred and exclusive “mission” to remedy all faults, straighten out all curves, rectify all bents in the highways and byways of the commonwealth. And it always proves that society and the evils contained therein have matured and are ready for the operation it is going to perform upon the body economic and politic, and that these days are “the last days”, and all the signs of time testify to that effect.
<quote>
“If Socialist eschatology has forged for itself, in the domain of revolutionary romanticism, an appropriate lay symbolism, we find, also, that there is no lack of mythical and symbolical creations which link it up closely with Christian eschatology.
“Almost all the attempts to connect chronology with the hopes of the masses have a religious trend. Thanks to this principle, the various forms of Christian eschatology, from that of the early believers in Christ's second coming to the later chiliasts and millenarians, those who expected the end of the world in the year 1000, and so on, are closely connected with the chronology of the calendar.” (Henry de Man, The Psychology of Socialism, p. 145, New York.)
“The general picture of the millennial kingdom on earth includes such features as that the earth will be renewed. Men would be perfectly righteous and happy and would have numerous offspring. There would be no sorrow, no labor. The earth would produce abundantly, and a table would always be spread with food.... The present state of things (temporal, evil, corruption) is often contrasted with the future state (blissful, eternal, incorruptible). Hence arose the doctrine of two ages.... The end, completion, or consummation of the age, or the times, or of all things, is often referred to and confidently awaited....
“The Ebionites (Jerome, Com. on Is. 66, 20) and Montanists also cherished millennial views of an unspiritual kind. With the latter Christ was speedily to come and found an earthly Kingdom of the Saints... to be established at Peruza in Phrygia. Montanus wished to separate believers from all worldly affairs and so prepare them for the kingdom, by gathering them together in the region where Christ would have his seat.” (J. A. MacCulloch, art. “Eschatology” in Encyclop. of Religion and Ethics ed. by James Hastings, vol. V, pp. 381-88.)
</quote>
The difference between the two kinds of eschatology,[3] the Christian and the Marxian, lies not so much in the nature of the expectance and the preparations made to meet the occasion, the imminent “advent”, the “coming”, as in the character of the “comer”, the Messiah. Christ as man, as son of God, is an individualist, a personality, and Christianity, therefore, is an individualist teaching, is concerned about man, his sorrows, tribulations and shortcomings, and these are more than mere social perplexities. There is such a fatality as sin that dogs the heels of man, a calamity such as sickness, a catastrophe as death, the humble state of humanhood, in general, the very fact of man being an animal and a social animal is a stigma, a disgrace for a son of God. He should have been neither animal nor social, but elevate himself to the status of a pure personality and thus leave far behind him all the foibles and imperfections or impurities that biological flesh and sociological body politic are heirs to. Marxianity preaches the gospel of the collective Messiah, the class-savior is an entity that is not biological, but exclusively sociological. That is why he is not afflicted with any of our biological infirmities : he does not age, he does not die, does not fall sick. Marxianity because of this peculiarity could not elaborate a “biological” redemption, like the over coming of death in future, immortality, and in the past, resurrection. A collective, a class, does not need it, is possessed of it, anyway. And the individual believer, the Marxian, what about him? He is submerged in the class, his consciousness is supposed to fuse with the class consciousness to self-forgetfulness.
“Man, who now for the first time becomes the real conscious master of Nature.” Not of biological nature, he does not after the advent, called Social Revolution, live forever and evermore, he does not rise above mortality. He drops only his animality, and that is sufficient. He “leaves the conditions of animal existence behind him and enters conditions which are purely human.” And even this overcoming of “animality” is effected in a very narrow sense-men, surely continue to eat, love and multiply, all these are animal functions being reduced to “social animality”, whatever that may be. And the conscious mastery over nature, promised by Engels, implies but mastery over social nature, physical nature being affected by it in a circuitous way and to a very slim extent.
So that, after all is said, the Marxian variety of Messianism is of a very much diluted vintage and is hardly satisfactory. It can make an appeal and offer some allurement only to individuals who are underdeveloped, who lack in self-assertion, who are deficient in ego consciousness, and feel themselves merged, to self-loss, self-obliteration, in their collective, in their class, and have no problems of their own that should demand an answer, an individual answer, an individual guarantee against the onslaught of inimical forces touching the personality as such.
Marxianism, those parts of it that are busy with the outlining of the blissful future allegedly following upon the close of the class-struggle period, is of a very crude make, when looked upon as a 'religious aspiration', for it harkens back to group-primitivity and socio-psychology antedating the rise of the individual and his self-determination, when taken as a ' scientific doctrine ', it is of still lower quality and coarser stuff, it cannot stand the slightest breath of sober analysis altogether. In short, Marxianism is a hybrid born of quasi-religion and pseudoscience.
*** 8. Conclusion
“THE PROLETARIAT is the lowest stratum of our present society.” This is the rub. Just because slavery was situated in the subterranean regions of ancient community life therefore its abolition could by no means have signified the elimination of all contradictions inherent in the social order. To employ gospel imagery : the straining off of a camel is no safeguard against swallowing a gnat. The condemning and junking of the crude and rude forms of oppression do not indicate that its milder forms will, also, be done away with in the same process of reformatory reconstruction.
The working class, just because it is a groundling, must go about its business of self-liberation very care fully, and show a high degree of deliberation and level headedness, and not allow itself to be swept off its feet by the flourishes of the trumpets of angel Gabriel heralding in the coming of a new order of things social. Religion with its messianic tendencies cannot be mixed with social doctrine. Political aspirations and economic demands cannot be made an eschatological proposition with promises of full-measured salvation being at hand, with à millennium around the left corner coming as a sequence to class struggle. Not that the proletariat should oppose these all-too human and, therefore, divine cravings and longings, but leave them stay there where they have been staying for the last hundreds of years, since the Anabaptists' uprising of 1534, in the domain of poetic sublimity and holiness, ideal metaphysics and ideal psychology, and keep them out, at all costs, of politics and economics. Where shop should be talked, business trans acted in full realistic sobriety, there is no place for reveries, day-dreamings, ecstatic fits and prophetic visionarism. Marxianism mixes not only politics with economics, but politics and economics with religion, disciplines that civilization has long ago separated.
The working class must realize, if it wants to understand the social difficulties we are confronted with, that the breaking or easing of the yoke of private capital is by far not identical with the lifting of all social burdens and the solving of all social problems.
The working class must realize that if it intends to abolish classes in general it would have to fight on two planes, horizonally with the present ruling class, and vertically with the emerging class, and all this simultaneously and in a way that should bar the springing up of any kind of labor-leadership, which contains the embryos of high class formation. And it would have not only to fight, but to be victorious. And this is an utter impossibility, a utopia of the purest water. A labor-movement without leadership would be absolutely impotent. A labor-movement with leadership, well trained and well disciplined, constitutes a socially stratified formation, for either labor borrows its leadership, as far as the individuals, the personnel is concerned, from other higher classes, like the case is with Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc., or it raises its own leadership, as far as individuals are concerned, for instance, the prominent figures of the British labor, trade-unions and party-crystallizing them and bringing them up, gradually separating them from itself, and forming them into a higher class.
It is high time the workers comprehended that they are clapped in three pairs of shackles and that the snapping of one brace of manacles not only does not herald their complete liberation – an obvious outright absurdity, which is the basic credo of Marxianity and serves as cornerstone for the Marxian Temple of Labor redemption-but that the very act of snapping the first brace of manacles is achieved by combined forces, of labor and the organizers of labor, which means by the working class and a new ruling class. These two classes are at the present time allied, united, fraternized, but by no means identical, and they will part company right after the act of “snapping” is carried out more or less successfully.
A tripled cordon made of finance, political authority and social organization guard and bar the entrance into the garden of the imaginary social Eden and block the way leading to the imaginary tree of social life....
** II. MARXISM-VULGAR OR PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC
*** 1. Numbers
<quote>
“Because it is impossible to emerge from a society in which one class oppresses another except by establishing the dictatorship of the oppressed class. Because the proletariat alone is able to conquer the bourgeoisie and overthrow it, for it is the only class that is united and ' schooled ' by capital ism....” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. II, p. 222.)
“The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their involuntary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, pp. 43-44.) Marx's thesis on the gradual increase of the forces of the proletariat and their eventual overwhelming those of the bourgeoisie courts a critical interpretation.
</quote>
The growth of capitalism, according to Marxian concept, leads in the long run to its decay and downfall. The concentration of capital inevitably causes a diminution in the numbers of the capitalists engaged in industry, commerce or banking, on the one hand, and brings about an intensification and extensification of the continuous process of <em>proletarianization</em> of the impoverished masses, on the other hand.
The question now arises whether dominance, in the economic or political field, is virtually conditioned by or connected with a preponderance in numbers. History teaches us the great truth, at first sight bewildering and even repelling, that it is always the minority that rules, governs and controls all things social, economic enterprises, political affairs, and cultural achievements. And the minority manages to do it not despite the fact of its being small numerically, but right down due to this very condition which is a sine qua non for mastership as well as excellence.
<quote>
“The sovereign body is always the less numerous. But numerical inferiority is supplemented by mental superiority and greater military discipline.” (Ludwig Gumplovitcz, The Outline of Sociology, p. 116, Philadelphia, 1899.)
“The sovereignty is always exercised by a minority organized control of the minority over the majority.” (Ibid. p. 118.)
“Minority... possesses the instincts of statesmanship and represents the rest of the nation in the struggle of history... It is always a definite minority that represents the world historical tendency of a state; and within that, again, it is a more or less self-contained minority that in virtue of its aptitudes... actually holds the reins.” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, vol. II, pp. 369-70, New York, 1932.)
</quote>
And the reason for this political paradox, or absurdity, is easy to grasp. The smaller the social grouping the more facilities it commands for effecting its own unification. It has less centrifugal forces to hem around, less friction to overcome, less resistance to subdue, less contrasting ambitions to rein in.
<quote>
“It is much easier to organize things on a small than on a large scale. Hence, in particular, little communities may be quite effectively organized for their limited purposes. As the community grows, a much higher technique is required to secure any effective cooperation.” (L. T. Hobhouse, Social Development, pp. 33-34, New York, 1924.)
</quote>
The same concerning the nucleus, the commanding staff of a political, economic, or military character, within the community. Leaning upon its inner stalwart cementation, strong cohesiveness, the minority manages to take hold of the affairs of society. It is, ordinarily, successful in bending to its crystallized will the majority of the community. The latter, not being coordinated, usually, in the nature of things, clash and thus neutralize one another, and sometimes reduce, in such a fashion of unintentional balance and counter-balance, their common power to the very zero point. The minority either scares the majority into a state of undemurring obedience, or, still better, crushes it, in single, sporadic combats with small portions thereof, into pulp of utter submission, spineless self-abnegation. Rulership is seldom, if ever, for that matter, based on mere quantity. It is quality, of a negative or positive character, that it looks for.
Returning to the subject under consideration. Does it really matter so much that the capitalists become, in the process of evolution of the industrial system, fewer, and the laborers, reversely, larger in bulk and size? The money-men will be few and far between, but to offset their numerical insignificance, they will grow big of power, in monopolistic grandeur. With their drop in numbers, they are sure to register an ascent in opulence, in economic and political weight, through the very fact of their having amassed a greater amount of riches which is being distributed, in large quantities, within a constantly becoming smaller circle. Capital growing centralized grows stronger and along with it the class of capitalists is being elevated to high, dizzy altitudes of unprecedented glory, magnificence, and munificence which shall express itself in distributing small shares of wealth among constantly growing larger and wider circles, a luxury of “bountifulness” it can easily afford.
The bourgeoisie and the proletariat, let us say, are two knights engaged in a joust. Capital got the better of Labor at the dawn of the industrial era, bested it, brought it down to the ground. And we witness now, at noontide of industrialism, as the sun, the golden yellow sun, displays its blinding splendor, the same situation, Labor prostrate before Capital.
How is the drastic change bound to come about in the evening? Where are the new forces that are ready to rally to Labor's succor? Wherefrom are the reinforcements to be drawn and rushed to the tilt in order to turn the course of the tournament-taking place be tween these two classes-from continuous defeat for labor to its sudden victory? Where are we to procure the novel make-weight to be thrown into the scales of fortune and tip them in favor of Labor?
<quote>
“In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed, a class of laborers who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 37.)
</quote>
With the further development of capitalism the proportional relation, concerning their economic strength, not physical, existing between the two “combatants”, rather, factors, participants of one process, either remains static, or else its social center of economic and political gravitation slides, slowly but surely and constantly, toward capital.
The ranks of the proletarians swell, the size of the battalions of those engaged directly in the productive process bulges, inflates, while the figure of the financier grows slimmer and lankier.
<quote>
“The proletariat grows concomitantly with the bourgeoisie. Under the identical circumstances wherein the bourgeoisie gains wealth, the proletariat gains in numbers. Since proletarians can only be employed where capital is available and since capital can only increase when it employs labor, the growth of the proletariat must go hand in hand with the growth of capital.” (F. Engels, Principles of Communism, Appendix F, Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels with an Intr. and Expl. Notes by D. Ryazanov, pp. 325-26, New York, International Publ.)
</quote>
Reality with its tabled data in the form of employment statistics does not bear out these prognostications of Engels. And he knew it very well, and said so explicitly.
<quote>
“But the perfecting of machinery means rendering human labor superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery meant the displacement of millions of hand workers by a few machine-workers, the improvement of machinery means the displacement of larger and larger numbers of the machine workers themselves, and ultimately the creation of a mass of available wage workers exceeding the average requirements of capital for labor-a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it as long ago as 1845-a reserve that would be available at periods when industry was working at high pressure, that would be thrown out into the streets by the crash inevitably following the boom.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, pp. 307-08.)
</quote>
The seeming contradiction between these two statements of Engels can easily be composed: Proletarization with Engels means converting large masses of independent laborers, artisans or ex-shopkeepers into proletarians seeking employment as hired men, though virtually employed only at intervals, part of the time or at boom periods. Our understanding of the role of the machine is somewhat different. To our lights, and it is proven by figures, the ripening of capitalism does not keep an even pace with the process of converting free men into wage-earners. It does not convert them altogether. It cannot absorb them even at boom times. The unemployed, a large portion of them, are no reserve army, for they are never mobilized, never recruited.
<quote>
“The absolute decrease of the demand for labor necessarily following therefrom will naturally be so much greater, the more these capitals going through the process of rejuvenation have become accumulated in masses by means of the movement of centralization. On the one hand, therefore, the additional capital formed in the course of accumulation attracts fewer and fewer laborers in proportion to its magnitude. On the other hand, the old capital periodically reproduced with change of composition, repels more and more of the laborers formerly employed by it.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 689.)
</quote>
The labor saving devices, a straight result of the highly complimented concentration of capital, perceptibly reduce the numerical strength of the cohorts of the proletarians. The proletariat does not grow in numbers any longer. And if measures would not be taken in a drastic way to shorten the hours of labor, it would have been shrinking quite noticeably.
*** 2. Association and Associators
Besides numbers the proletariat evinces strength, according to Marx, due to another factor, namely, concentration and organization.
<quote>
“But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in numbers; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows and it feels that strength more... The collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trades ' Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision before hand for these occasional revolts.” (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, pp. 39-40.)
</quote>
The sentence “Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations against the bourgeois” is misleading in more than in one way. It is deficient in precision and in comprehension of the phenomenon. The combination of the workers does not face the single bourgeois, but the no less fortified positions of the combination of the bourgeoisie.
<quote>
“The workers to-day are confronted not by individual employers, but by huge combinations of employers, great in financial resources, perfectly organized and in every way well equipped for whatever contingency may arise.” (Tom Swan, Fraternity and Evolution, p. 55, London, 1926.)
“Every improvement in the organization of labor is answered with an improvement in the organization of capital.” (Karl Kautsky, The Class-Struggle, p. 200.)
</quote>
Trade unions clash with associations of bosses, of manufacturers. Marx, alluding in the quoted phrase to the proletariat as a unified force and treating the bourgeoisie as something sociologically amorphous, tries, may be unwillingly, unintentionally, to create in the mind of the reader a false impression, that the problems confronting the workers are easy of solution, and the victories are easy of attainment. There is nothing so harmful as the overestimation of one force and the underestimation of the power opposing it.
Further, “the collisions... take more and more the character of collisions between two classes.” Two classes one situated above the other cannot clash unless there is a third class in the middle, between the two. A low, subordinated class does not rise against its commanding class, unless it is led into battle by an emerging commanding class of a higher order than that of the present ruling one. History does not go backward into the future.
Marx does not, or, rather, as the ideologist of the politico-economic variety of organisateurs, does not want, for it does not pay him historically, from his own class-standpoint, to notice that the “strength” of the proletariat indicated by him is not as “strong” as he would like us to believe. It contains an element of weakness. For that additional strength that comes with concentration and association, though it serves as if the cause of labor, assisting the laborer in his struggle for higher wages and shorter hours against his “archenemy,” the bourgeoisie, is ultimately directed against labor even more than against capital. That strength which is generated by organization is not proletarian strength. It belongs to those elements that organize labor. First the laborers are organized purely industrially by the capitalists, by the “bosses”. Having them organized industrially, they appropriate the products produced by them. Now, an additional force enters and modifies the inter relationships existing between labor and capital. True, labor grows stronger. In other words, the laborers produce a surplus of force above that they were capable of producing while being unorganized into associations. This “surplus” of strength which is registered in their proportional weight against the bourgeoisie, not unlike the economic surplus product, does not go to labor, it is appropriated by their organisateurs. And as labor and organization of labor did not coincide in the first move, when labor was involuntarily cooperated by capital, so now, when labor is being organized semi-politically trade unionally, politico-professionally, labor and organization are two different entities, two different social formations. Capital is the expression of the economo-industrial embodiment of organization, and the capitalist is its living representative. The organisateur, the organizer of labor is the representative of the complication of the process, namely the politico-industrial combination of the laborers. These two formations, labor and organization of labor, are in a relation of domination and subordination, it is a connection built between higher and lower, it is a stratification, a gradation. And in the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie a combination of two classes is to be seen, an alliance against the third. The bourgeoisie is attacked by two forces, one situated above it, the politico-economic variety of the type of organisateurs, and one placed beneath it, and that is the working class.
<quote>
“It is also confirmed by the whole science of political economy, by the whole content of Marxism, which explains that under any system of commodity production the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is economically inevitable and that nothing can take the place of the latter except the class that is developed, multiplied, organized and consolidated by the very development of capitalism, viz., the proletarian class.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 230.)
“They club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations.”
</quote>
Each association when it is permanent segregates “associators.” These associators by the very nature of their activity and position are situated above plain labor, for they must control it, they must lead it, in a word, they must head it, and thus form a sociological super structure erected upon the foundations of labor and laborers. The founding of an association requires initiative, daring, understanding even for the mere act of execution, running it, keeping it up, the more so, for ' inventing ' it, introducing it for the first time in opposition to the bosses, the economic organisateurs who resent the interference of an heterogeneous body, and look upon the trade-unionists either as rebels or interlopers, busy-bodies, and offer resistance, and, sometimes, even persecute and prosecute the organizers of the trade unions and discriminate against its membership. All this must be overpowered, and the “overpowerers” rate above the average worker energetically, intellectually, “characterally,”and in time they are to form a higher class ranking above labor. Nothing can stop these tendencies from asserting themselves in spite of all opposition.
Marx while reasoning on this subject of organization of labor effected either purely economically, by the bosses, or semi-politically, by the organizers, shows himself either as one who is naive, when we take his statements as they were made by him personally sincerely, or as one who is altogether malignantly cunning, when we take his statements as a part of a strategy, or conspiracy of an emerging master-class, and look upon him as its unconscious spokesman.
The proletariat being “unorganized” politico-economically, on a trade-union scale, but “organized” exclusively within the factory and purely economically in the production process through division of labor and its functions, is “bossed” by the capitalists, being organized industrially, professionally in a trade union, is “bossed” by the organizers of the union. And with the growth of that organizational institution, the “syndicate” or Labor-party, with its capture of power, seizure of industry, as the case was in Russia, the worker is transferred from the jurisdiction, sway and domination of the purely economic boss to that of the politico-economic boss. And so long as the tug-of-war between these two “masters” is going on, and this is an historical affair and quite protracted in some countries, both will try their best to ingratiate themselves with the laboring masses.
The capitalist all he does, after some half-hearted resistance, is give in, make concessions to his employees, hire lings. A great many strikes lead to agreements that meet more than halfway the demands of labor. Capital is yielding, retreating all the time along the whole frontal line. And as regards the labor-lord, it goes without saying, to the utmost of his ability and resources of skill he furthers the interests of the workers, that are entrusted to him. He conducts their class-struggles, he manages their peace-affairs, he settles their quarrels, he composes their differences. And all this is done by him with a considerable amount of sincere devotion to the cause of labor. But this idyl of unselfishness will not outlast the period of war raging between the two clashing forces, two varieties of labor-lordship, a war the prize of which is undivided mastery and full sway over the proletarian. And no sooner is the victory won, and one “master” remains to run the economic affairs, than the worker is treated as a slave. The new boss, fearing no rivals, finding himself monopolistically autocratically situated, exploits the workers no less than the old one, when the latter being confronted with dangerous competitors fully realized his precarious situation, but more so. And that is what actually happened in Soviet Russia.
<quote>
“Moreover, no way has been discovered to prevent the organization of workers around the instrument of production. On the contrary, given the machine, organization around that machine becomes imperative; it is practically automatic and cannot be avoided... Thus arises what may be termed an organization intelligence which is well able to grasp the mechanism and the extent of the machine process as are the capitalists themselves.
This development grows ever more rapidly, so that the proletariat of to-day, at least in the persons of its most active members, who may be called the thinking apparatus of the organization, is gaining a breadth of view commensurate with the scope of the machine process itself.” (Austin Lewis, Militant Proletariat, pp. 94-95, Chicago, 1911.)
</quote>
About the automatic “character” of the organization, it is sufficient to mention the fact that there are paid staffs of organizers. Things done automatically do not require such effort, so much propaganda, force and violence against the so called “scabs” and so much persuasion coupled with rough or mild intimidation of a moral and physical nature against the bulk of labor, the indifferentism of the workers at large. The “organization intelligence” is not a spirit, it is embodied in persons who combined constitute the nucleus of an emerging class, and their grasp of the mechanism must exceed that of “the capitalists themselves,” for that amount of intelligence possessed by the capitalists would suffice to run industry only along the same lines of “anarchy of production,” and not otherwise. But the organisateurs are intending to have it “organized” and managed on a national scale, have it transformed into a political concern.
<quote>
“For the party of the proletariat and its vanguard have <em>no experience</em> of independent work in organizing giant enterprises which serve the needs of scores of millions of people.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 375.)
</quote>
True, the proletariat has no experience either of an economo-organizational or politico-organizational character, but this cannot be said of the “party of the proletariat”, it has plenty of experience gained by it in the process of organizing the proletariat, creating a mass movement. And this experience, though of a politico organizational character, it turns to good account, it utilizes it to its full, while transforming the economic gigantic enterprises into colossal political concerns.
“The most active members, who may be called the thinking apparatus of the organization,” all these expressions are calculated to cover a stubborn fact of labor reality and of social life in general, and that is that a process of segregation sets in, a new stratification develops, a new layer is emerging.
<quote>
“The point is <em>to test</em> their sincerity, to compare their words with their <em>deeds</em>, not to be satisfied with idealistic or charlatan <em>phrases</em>, but to get down to <em>class reality</em>.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VII, p. 172.)
</quote>
A very good advice. We take it.
And the <em>class reality</em> is the fact of the emergence of a new class, no phraseology can cover it, disguise it.
*** 3. Natural Non-Selection.
<quote>
“Along with the constantly diminishing magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. (Karl Marx, Capital vol. I, pp. 836-37.)
</quote>
Well and good, the capitalists sustain heavy losses in their numbers. They grow weak quantitatively, but, therefore, do they wax strong qualitatively. The process of survival of the fittest and fattest exhibits its tendencies in all their naked and merciless efficacy. Competition, natural selection in the field of economics, weeds out those human plants who are not acquisitive, aggressive enough to get, grab all the sunshine, all the dew, rain, soil-nourishment for themselves, to the exclusion of their rivals. Capital grows more complex, more intensive, and because of that the capitalists gain in vigor.
While the proletariat is being driven by the industrial process in the very opposite direction. It gains in magnitude, in mere bulk, but not in selectivity, refinement, intensivity. Its numerical increment is a sheer accrue, and not a result of a purposive act, of cultivation, culturization or fosterage. It is not a case of picking out the best, the choicest specimens, assorting them by grades and rates, separating the sheep from the goats…
<quote>
“Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians had lost all individual character and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, the most monotonous and most easily acquired knack that is required of him.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, pp. 37-38.)
</quote>
So that labor's qualifications, standards of virtuosity, skill and dexterity are lowered, and the laborers along with the drop in their standards are pressed down, lose in their expertness and deftness.
<quote>
“Already in the days of the first division of labor on an extended scale, in the days when town and countryside became divorced from one another, the rural population was condemned to long centuries of mental torpor, while the town workers were condemned to be enslaved each by his special occupation With the division of labor, man himself became a divided being
.. This crippling of men's capacities increases concomitantly with the growth of the division of labor which finds its highest development in manufacture.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, pp. 314-15.)
“The independent peasant or handicraftsman develops knowledge, insight and will, even though it be only to a moderate extent. The savage exercises all the arts of war as manifestations of personal cunning. Under the manufacturing system, these faculties are now needed only by the workshop as a whole. Intelligence in production is amplified in one direction because it disappears in numerous other directions, what the detail workers lose, is concentrated in the capital that employs them. As a result of the manufacturing division of labor, the worker is confronted by the intellectual powers of the material process of production, whose property, whose slave, he has become. This process begins in simple cooperation, in which the capitalist, as against the individual workers, represents the unity and the will of the associated working organism. It goes further still in manufacturing, which cripples the workers by making them into detail workers.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 382.)
</quote>
Marx and Engels worked out an impoverishment theory, a doctrine about the pauperization of the proletarian, covering both spheres, that of economics, material culture, and that of psychology, intellectual culture. The workers are all the time on the glissade.
<quote>
“The modern laborer... instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law. is unfit to rule, because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under the bourgeoisie.” (Communist Manifesto, p. 43.)
</quote>
And these “paupers,” the starving workers, who sink deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of their own class, these good for nothing, who, instead of feeding society and fulfilling their function of direct producers, are fed by society, which, according to Marx, is incapable of producing anything and is wholly dependent on labor and its productive capacities, its surplus-value, in order to make its both ends meet,-in a word, these beggars whom the labor-saving devices made superfluous by having them crowded out of their trades, are going to become, due to a sudden change, the rulers of society, the dominating class... And how is this supernatural metamorphosis, from beggars to bosses, from tatters to purple and throne, going to take place, in a natural way? The omnipotence, revolution, is certain to intervene in their behalf. Providence is about to transform their ruin into rulership.
<quote>
"... Civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.” (Ibid.)
</quote>
Pauperism does not lead, as it is supposed, in an ordinary way, to do, to degredation, degeneration, but to regeneration and triumph... Sable instead of sack clothes... And these stupefied and “crippled” workers, these “degenerates” regenerates will replace the bourgoisie in the latter's capacity of high-skilled directors of the industrial and commercial processes, and manage success fully, by far excelling the bunglers, the capitalists, the “anarchists of production,” in systematization, coordination, harmonization of supply and demands, the affairs of our economics on a planned basis, on a national scale. And all this will be accomplished by the over throw of the old regime, a magic that will rejuvenate, intellectualize, culturize, and lift up the low masses and place them on the pinnacles of glory and achievement! And the crippled and maimed will become whole and hale! Credo quia absurdum esto!
It is social messianism of the purest water!
Furthermore, according to Marx, society makes of the working class some kind of a dumping ground. All those broken and vanquished on the battlefield of economic enterprise, shipwrecked on their voyage amid the stormy sea of speculation, all failures, all flops, culls and discards, economic invalids and business cripples flock to the proletariat and are welcomed into its ranks.
<quote>
“The lower strata of the middle class the small trades people, shop-keepers and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 39.)
“The working class is likewise swelled by persons drawn from the higher strata of society. Numerous petty industrials and lesser recipients of unearned income find their way into the ranks of the proletariat, and side by side with the workers, offer their hands for sale in the labor market... The small scale factory owners who are... qualifying for entry into the proletarian army.” (Karl Marx, Wage-labor and Capital, Essentials of Marx, p. iii, New York, 1926.)
</quote>
By one and the same canvass belonging to the brushmanship of one and the same painter we are being treated to the sight of two entirely different scenes presenting the same identical hero in two contradicting one another roles.
One depicts the proletariat as a conglomerate constituted of heterogeneous elements, loosely held together, but mostly made up of derelicts, maimed and lamed, overrun and crushed by the wheels of the juggernaut of high finance, flattened out, bruised and broken by the merciless blows of the sledge hammers of cruel economic competition. The other portrays the proletariat as an impregnable tower of strength, bristling with courage, bubbling over with audacity, breathing with inflexible will to power, bursting with challenge and hurling defiance at its exploiters in full and unshakable confidence in the final and decisive victory over its class-enemies that it is about to score in the very near future.
Two armies, in full war formation, are arrayed, confronting one another, the decimated battalions of the capitalists are pitted against the multitudes of the militant workers.
<quote>
“To bring the rest of mankind into alignment with some symmetry, as though they, too, are magnitudes of the same order, prepared to march with automatic step against a bourgeoisie which they are to annihilate by sheer weight of numbers for victory belongs to the big battalions to imagine two armies in perfect alignment and perfect order, one of which, continually adding to its recruits, crushes the other with its weight, all this is merely the conception of a Prussian corporal.” (Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies, pp. 132-33, New York, 1910.)
</quote>
We fully agree with Guyot that the Marxian concept of sociology is quite militaristic, meaning civil militaristic, and, consequently, crudely schematic. Life does not become simpler, but grows more and more complicated. The more so, that social life is yet all too young to wax sterile, it is still teeming, now as ever, with new forces, new possibilities, new unexpected contingencies. And classes split up, and give birth to new formations, and those that stay more or less “static” fissure intern ally, calling forth new subdivisions. The proletariat is not monolithic, neither is the bourgeoisie, nor any social aggregate, for that matter, and the higher layers of a low class come very near the low layers of a higher class, they fraternize, and even migrate from one camp into another.
<quote>
“Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, how ever, this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class antagonisms.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 31.)
</quote>
Our epoch could not have simplified the antagonisms unless it had beforehand simplified the class formation and the class-interrelationship, a thing it could not accomplish without being aided by a process of decomposition. Normally the course runs from the simple to the complicated. But in spite of all its distortions let us accept the Marxian picture of society.
<quote>
“Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” (Ibid.)
</quote>
Were we to apply to this struggle, the prize of which is our national economy, a democratically ethical criterion, based upon the cardinal principle, the validity of which is above questionableness in the realm of mathematics, of the whole being always preferable to its part, then the issue of the struggle would be a matter of a foregone conclusion and the path of duty would be lying before us clearly marked off, and we could tread it without any hesitation whatsoever. The proletarians, being many, are right, the capitalists, being few who oppose the many, are wrong; the proletarians, being many, are strong, the capitalists, being few, are weak. And who would care to fight for a cause that has neither moral support nor physical backing? And it would not have taken any too much courage and moral fortitude on the part of any one to espouse the cause of those who are sure winners, for right and might, con science and muscle-power are siding with them. According to the Marxian concept, the overwhelming majority of the nation will be, sooner or later, included in the ranks of the proletariat that fights not its own egotistic battle, but that of humanity and progress.
But the problem before us is not a moral one. Still more so that Marx and Engels ridicule the moralists, the Utopians who were busy preaching justice and trying to establish a just order.
<quote>
“They wish to establish the kingdom of reason and eternal justice... To all these Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and needs only to be discovered to conquer the world by virtue of its own power.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, pp. 25-26.)
“What you think just or equitable is out of question. The question is : What is necessary and unavoidable with the given system of production.” (Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, Essentials of Marx, p. 146.)
</quote>
Marx claims to be, first of all and last of all, an economist, an objective investigator of the capitalist mode of production and the tendencies inherent therein, and, in addition to it, a hard-boiled materialist who believes that the productive forces are the all in all in social life, and the juridical concepts and ethical notions are mere “ideas,” shadowy reflections in the brain of man, that are more or less in correspondence with the economic actualities. This being the case, all we have to do in order to gain a proper understanding of the trends of our times and be thus in a position to adumbrate the course the future of economics is going to take, is not to consult a textbook on morals, nor one on strategy and military science, but to take a good look at our industry and see which of the two claimants, if one of them and not a third party, is entitled, – not morally, according to the idealistic notions of right and wrong, or according to the dictates of the absolute imperative, and not physicaly, for it is not a militaristic affair, not numerically, for it is no voting, no election proposition, but socially and technically, – to run our industry and manage the distribution of its products in a more or less satisfactory way. The decision rests with our industry as such. And its verdict is the verdict of history, and irrevocable. There is no higher court of appeals, according to the Marxian concept.
Upon reaching this point, we are impelled, upon the basis of Marx's own premises, to arrive at the disillusioning conclusion that the bigger our industry grows, the wider its scope waxes, the larger its scale expands, the less chance there is for the working class, — not for those who organize the working class, to take hold of it and conduct its affairs. The higher rises the level of productivity and complexity in our national economy the farther it is being removed from the grasp and grip of the proletariat, from its ability to comprehend its involved processes, the less opportunity our economy offers to the worker to orientate himself both as concerning its ramified particularizations and practices so its all encompassing generalizations and theoretic implications.
The bare fact that the workers are crowded, congested in the plants, means very little. Their concentration was not of their own choosing. It is a case of involuntary cooperation, not unlike that of an army based on compulsory military service... And the bene fits thereof do not accrue to them. Their amassment presupposes an “amasseur,”and it fortifies therefore not their position, but that of their “boss,” the class that concentrates them. For along with it, the bringing and keeping the workers together, the billeting them in one industrial barracks, goes the complication of the manipulations involved in the process of production and distribution.
<quote>
“Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia.” (Karl Kautsky, Neue Zeit, 1901-02, XX, I, No. 3, p. 79.)
</quote>
Lenin endorses this statement:
<quote>
“Profoundly true and important utterance by Karl Kautsky.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. II, p. 61. Marx Engels-Lenin Institute. Moscow.)
</quote>
The proletarians are absolutely in no position to seize our industry and manage it without the guidance and direction of another class which is situated above them, which leads them, directs them, rules them. Thus it is a question of a choice between two masters, choosing the better one, but not of getting rid of masters altogether, and, henceforth, to go scotfree, masterless...
*** 4. Large-Scale Production.
<quote>
“Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into factories, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants.” (Communist Manifesto, p. 38.)
“The workers are advancing towards socialism through the capitalist management of trusts, through gigantic machine industry, through enterprises having a turnover of several mil lions per annum-only through such a system of production and such enterprises.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 374.)
“Socialism is impossible unless it makes use of the achievements of the technique and culture created by large-scale capitalism.” (Ibid, p. 375.)
</quote>
The smaller the scale of production, the more primitive the means of distribution, the closer their resemblance to the artisan's methods of work and management, the easier it would be for the workers to master them and take possession of our industry. It, the working class, could then control production, industry and commerce, with its own forces, though limited, but adequate enough to handle miniaturized, simplified, de composed industrial concerns, and, consequently, could dispense entirely with the “hierarchy of officers and sergeants,” a fungus that grew up upon the “unhealthy” soil of modern large scale industry. And the fact is that when industry was in its childhood, in the phase of handicraft, it actually belonged to the “workers,” to the direct producers, who worked separately, individually or in small combinations of guilds. They were not recruited, were not pressed into an industrial army. They did not place above them drill sergeants, over seers, managers, and the like “parasites”. But our industry matured, came of age, grew larger and more complicate, and in such a way it grew out of the individual or small group control and private possession of the workers. And how is it now to be reshaped and remodeled in order to be able to return to the control, possession of the workers, unless it is dismembered, simplified, decomposed. But Marxism stands for the very opposite policy, namely, the enlargement of the size, and the complication of the processes. It advocates the nationalization of industry and commerce, socialization of the means of production and distribution. And if our small-scale industry, controlled by the bourgeoisie, we design it as small-scale for in comparison with the gigantic scale advocated by the Marxians it is surely dwarfish, was already beyond the control, capacity to control, of the ordinary worker who was unable to take care of it, the more so the colossal scale industry planned by the Communists.
<quote>
“… It is obvious that large scale farming always gives rise to a distribution which is quite different from that of small-scale farming; that large-scale agriculture presupposes or creates a class-antagonism slave-owners and slaves, feudal lords and serfs, capitalist and wage-workers while small scale agriculture does not necessarily involve class-differences between the individuals engaged in agricultural production.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 168.)
</quote>
The same holds true concerning industry in general: the larger the scale, the more complicated the processes involved, the more stratification it presupposes, and with it come class-antagonisms, friction, “exploitation.” All this is inevitable. Physical division of labor calls forth a sociological division of functions. Communism championing large-scale industry, planned economy, must pre mise the existence of a commanding class that will take care of our nationalized industry. For the individual worker, surely, cannot do it. Only the “association of the workers,” or the workers as a class would be able, willing and ready to manage the affairs of production and distribution. But the whole association as such, again, is unable to do it, only the “associators” will be equal to the task, in other words, those who will manage, organize the workers, will manage, organize, and plan our industry. But no class is expected to do something for nothing, to discharge duties without being remunerated for its labors. And, no doubt, history and class nature warrant it, a commanding class is never naive or idealistic enough to “serve” for the mere pleasure it derives from “service”... The new Communist bosses may run our industry not on the basis of property, for if it be enlarged to encompass the political unit, to encircle the national territory, it may be treated as a political concern, and the same methods that are employed in the sphere of political activities would be applied in the sphere of economic endeavors. But this circumstance should not weaken the class-character of the commanding top, but, on the contrary, intensify it, put it in bolder relief.
The process of evolution does not bring industry, its management and control, nearer unto the workers, but, the very reverse, removes it, the further the more, from the workers, the manual participants of its low processes. And there is not a scheme, no matter how ingenious, that could show a way how to bring them together, how to cut out the distance lying between labor and capital, a distance that keeps on all the time growing, expanding.
Wealth concentrates in the sense that its units as functional mechanisms grow bigger and better. Indus trial capital converts into high finance. Production reaches its height of intricacy, of complicatedness. The market assumes a cosmopolitan character, being spread all over the civilized and semi-civilized world.
<quote>
“The world market forms itself the basis of this mode of production. On the other hand, the imminent necessity of this production to produce on an even enlarged scale tends to extend the world market continually.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, p. 392.)
“The sudden expansion of the world market, the multiplication of the circulating commodities, the zeal displayed among the European nations in the race after the products of Asia and the treasures of America, the colonial system, materially contributed toward the destruction of the feudal barriers of production.” (Ibid. p. 391.)
Capitalism has long ago created a world market. In proportion as the export of capital increases, and as foreign and colonial relations extend on every side, things tend “naturally” towards an international agreement among these associations and toward the formation of international cartels. This is a new degree of world concentration of capital, and production, infinitely higher than any predecessor.” (Nikolai Lenin, Imperialism, p. 52, New York, 1926.)
“While capitalist concentration in the national market leads to the super-trust, it leads, on the other hand, to inter national trusts. This, too, is a necessary development. First of all, the national trusts strive with each other to capture their own markets, and the world market. The struggle is carried on by means of dumping, or selling at a loss in order to snatch away customers from each other; until, at last, the point is reached when they decide to abandon this ruinous strife and to share the world market.” (Edgard Milhaud, The March Toward Socialism , tr. H. J. Stenning, p. 144, London, 1920.)
"It has been said that electricity has given the world a common nervous system. Nations are knitted together by the radio, cable, telegraph and telephone in a way that was undreamt - of a century ago. Moreover, rail and ocean shipping make it possible to exchange goods rapidly and cheaply between countries. In a word, modern methods of communication and transportation have made the world smaller . . . This may be seen by observing the constant growth of imports and exports of the world nations since 1850. At the present time (1930) the combined value of world trade is over 65 billion dollars a year. U. S. Department of Commerce, Commerce Year Book, 1928, vol. II, p. 735. " (Francis Haas, Man and Society, pp . 408-09, London, New York, 1930.)
</quote>
The balancing of import and export becomes an operation subtle far beyond the understanding of the usual business man and his single firm, and trusts are a usual phenomenon of our economic life . New mergers crop up daily. The State as the most powerful and gigantic combine is being called upon, by some elements who are politically, may be quite a bit too much politically, minded, - to take care of, to watch over, our economic affairs, much to the delight of the Marxians. In the face of all these tendencies and facts, how can one , if he be neither a man's fool, nor a social - nature faker, suppose that we have reached a point in our industrial development, when and where the only course prescribed for us is to hand over the management and control of our industry to the working class. How can one honestly and sincerely believe that the laboring class, in all its simple - mindedness, narrowness of view and outlook, ignorance and backwardness, is the only class, in our present society, that is appointed by history to handle our economy, conduct our business on a large scale, on a planned basis, adequately. Furthermore, after the industry has been still more enlarged through nationalization and complete concentration, in strict obedience to the Marxian program and project.
<quote>
“The economic quintessence of socialistic programme. is as follows: To replace the system of private capital by a system of collective capital, that is, by a method of production which would introduce a unified organization of national labor, on the basis of collective and common ownership of the means of production.” (Prof. A. Schaeffle, Quintessence of Socialism, p. 8, The Humboldt Library, March 25, 1880.)
“Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist technique based on the last word of modern science; it is inconceivable without planned state organization which subjects tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a single standard in production and distribution.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 365.)
“Socialism is nothing but the next step forward after state capitalist monopoly... State monopoly capitalism is the fullest <em>material</em> preparation for socialism, it is its <em>threshold</em>, it is that rung on the historical ladder between which and the rung called socialism there are no <em>intervening</em> rungs.” (Ibid, p. 367.)
</quote>
Private capital presupposed private capitalists, collective capital, all the more, presupposes collective capitalists, or, rather, collectivizers. For this transformation demands effort. The replacing of one system by another would not come about by itself, in a natural way, effected by inner forces. A system of things social has <em>systematizers</em> back of it, and a change of the system means a change in the personnel of the <em>systematizers</em>, the representatives of the system. An organization has organizers, a unified organization presupposes the existence of <em>unified, hierarchysized, organizers</em>.
<quote>
“I think we shall come nearest to the essence of socialism by defining it as the advocacy of communal ownership of land and capital.” (Bertrand Russel, Proposed Roads to Freedom, p. 1, New York, Blue Ribbon Book Publ.)
“All the various schools of Socialist thought, Collectivist, Communist, Guild Socialist, Syndicalist set out to provide a basis for economic equality on the principle, not of the general diffusion and distribution, but of the concentration of social ownership of the means of production.” (G. D. H. Cole, Social Theory, p. 152, London, 1920.)
</quote>
Even private ownership of the means of production upon reaching the phase of manufacture could not function without the segregation of a special class taking care of the means of production. Social ownership will, surely, have as its precondition, as its indispensable preliminary, the crystallization of a special class to take care of the socially owned and socially operated means of production.
<quote>
“Socialism is a system of industrial and social organization where the common needs of individuals will be supplied by the organized co-operative efforts of society.” (Philip Snowden, What is Socialism? A Symposium ed. by Dan Griffiths, pp. 69-70.)
“The Socialist program advocates a reorganization of the existing industrial system on the basis of collective or national ownership of the social tools. It demands that the control of the machinery of wealth creation be taken from individual capitalists and placed in the hands of the nation, to be organized and operated for the benefit of the whole people.” (Morris Hilquit in “Everybodys”, October, 1913, p. 487, quoted from Joseph J. Mereto, The Red Conspiracy, p. 81, New York, 1920.)
</quote>
Nothing can be done within the confines of society without individuals doing it, and the individuals, the “doers” constitute a special class occupying a specific position determined by its function in the given community. The individual's needs must be supplied. But supply is not automotive or automobile, it requires “suppliers”. Under capitalism they are merchants, wholesalers and retailers. Under Communism they, surely, will be called by another name, but this would not make them give up their existence as a special class, on the very contrary, their function rising in significance, in complication, will raise along with it its functionary. There is no co-operative without co-operators, as there is no operation without operators. Control of wealth creation cannot be accomplishtd without controlleurs. We can place nothing in the “hands” of the nation for the simple reason that the “nation” has not got any hands for holding economic objects. These hands must be made.” “Organs” must be shaped. For their shaping we need shapers, thus, not only the the collective “hands” will occupy a special position in the body economic and politic, but above them will be placed the “social hand-makers.” The same concerning the “benefit of the people,” there must be benefiters, a group of individuals who will make it their business to “benefit” the people and tell the people when and how and why it is being benefited.
<quote>
“It is the general good of them and all the people in the Kingdom. That's the question, what's for their good, not what pleases them.” (Cromwell, 1647, Camden Society, The Clarke Papers ed. by C. H. Firth, 1891, vol. I, p. 209.)
</quote>
It is not so much a question as to what the good is as <em>who</em> is going to say <em>what</em> is good, for it is the “sayer” who makes the things good or bad. And the “sayer” is usually not an individual sociologically, if even he is only a single person politically.
<quote>
“Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Comm. Manifesto, p. 36.)
“The dominant great bourgeoisie has fulfilled its historical mission, that it is no longer competent to lead society on the forward march and has actually become a hindrance to the development of production (as we can see from the occurrence of commercial crises, and especially from the last great collapse and from the depressed condition of industry in all lands.” (Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, Man, Thinker and Revolutionist, a symposium ed. by D. Ryazonov, p. 31, New York, 1927.)
“The private undertaker cannot possess the necessary over sight over the wants of the nation.” (John Karl Rodbertus, Das Kapital, vierter sozialer Brief, 1884, 152 footnote.)
“In all things that make for the social and moral progress and for the right government of men, the ruling class of the traders has steadily failed in its duty. It has not only failed utterly in actual administration, but as a class has failed to comprehend the social need. It has now played its part, and must in time, by reason of resistless forces everywhere at work, give way to the rule of another class.” (William James Ghent, Mass and Class, p. 241, New York, 1904.)
</quote>
Quite explicitly Marx, Engels and their followers assure us that the bourgeoisie, this shrewd, highly efficient class, is no longer able to attend to our present day business which has grown out of its control, and that is why it will be forced to quit the arena of its historical activity for good, it will be impelled to resign its social leadership.
If the bourgeoisie, the sorcerer, is not skillful enough, not resourceful enough, to control the forces of our industry, how can this function be discharged by the proletariat, that never was a “sorcerer,” a class much inferior to its masters, the bourgeoisie, as regards business-understanding and executive ability?
There can be but one answer to this question: society will have to form a new ruling class, a type of organisateurs par excellence, and this new formation will take care of the Communist nationalized industry, planned economics, mapped out production and chartered and systematized distribution.
<quote>
“The social forces of production, which have outgrown the control of the bourgeoisie, only await seizure by the associated proletariat in order to bring about a state of affairs in which every member of society will not merely participate in the production of social wealth but will have an equal share in the distribution and administration of wealth.” (Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, Man, Thinker and Revolutionist, a symposium ed. by D. Ryzanov, p. 31, New York, 1927.)
</quote>
The humble word “associated” throws light on the obscure subject: the “associators” will attend to it. This is the only interpretation that can read any more or less realistic meaning into Engels ' statement, if we do not want to discard it as an expression of sheer visionarim. Concerning the promised “equal share in distribution” we cannot help saying that it is an absurdity. Distribution when it is “socialized” must have special distributors who, if they be not angels, a rare quality among humans no matter under which system they are to live and act, so long as that system is outside of a cover of a propaganda booklet, will help themselves to bigger shares than those given to the non-distributors, plain and simple laborer-producers…
<quote>
“The cry for an equality of wages rests, therefore, upon a mistake, is an insane wish never to be fulfilled. It is an offspring of that false and superficial radicalism that accepts premises and tries to evade conclusions.” (Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, Essentials of Marx, p. 146.)
</quote>
Wages or shares in distribution cannot be equal unless all the functions fulfilled within society are equal, which is an impossibility.
<quote>
“Thus, no matter from which standpoint one looks upon the question, one arrives at the same sad result, the governance of the great majority of the masses by a privileged minority. But this minority, say the Marxians, will consist of workers, yes, likely, of former workers, who no sooner will they become rulers or representatives of the people, than they will be workers no longer, and will begin to look down upon the whole world of unskilled manual labor from the height of statesmanship.” (M. Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, IInd ed. Russian, p. 234, Moscow, 1922.)
“The ‘Communist Manifesto' makes it a supreme con sideration to ' centralize the means of production in the hands of the State.’
There will be at least two classes, one consisting of officials to distribute the burdens and the results of labor, the other of the drudges to execute their commands. Such a dispensation would not bring with it social peace.” (Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies, p. 256, New York, 1910.)
“Such a task, in all its baffling complexities, is clearly not for the man on the street... We must have a wise, experienced director at the helm, surrounded by a corps of highly trained specialists, each dealing with some phase of our complex problem. The one great need of the hour, proclaimed by spokesmen everywhere, is purposeful and intelligent social planning. And in answer to this call a troop of expert planners, groomed in economics, statistics, engineering and finance are coming forward laden with solutions.” (Floyd Henry Allport, Institutional Behavior, pp. 281-82, University of North Carolina Press, 1933.)
</quote>
But such an admission on the part of the Communists would prove to be fatal for the messianic elements of Marxianism. This would knock the bottom out of this peculiar doctrinaire-demagogy. And Marxism conceals its hidden plans, its esoteric intents, from the masses, the multitudes of its blind and blinded followers. Marxism does not dare utter explicit statements in a plain everyday language. It prefers to speak “scientific” Greek, to use metaphysical formulae in addressing its highbrow adepts, on the one side, and to air beatific platitudes, and to foam at its mouth with prophetic promises, sometimes eclipsing the apocalypse, for the benefit of the deluded masses, on the other side.
How impelling is the Communist prophecy of salvation, the kingdom of labor, being at hand! Capital concentrates more and more, in the hands of an ever growing smaller circle, the ways and means of production and exchange grow more intricate, the laboring masses sink lower and lower economically and culturally, because of the machine that makes their skill worthless, and themselves superfluous therefore a catastrophe will soon break loose, and as a result of the cataclysm, we shall find the capitalists discarded, “laid off,” and the workers, stupefied by the drudgery of their accursed mechanical, imitative, repetitive labors, placed at the helm of industry. They will pilot our boat of national economy, tossed about on the storm-plowed ocean between Scylla of demands and Charybdis of supplies, and bring it safely into haven of harmony, solidarity, peace and well-being for all.
How will this come about? asks the man of little social faith. How will such an overwhelming transformation take place? questions the social infidel.
<quote>
“What the bourgeois democracy of 1848 could not accomplish, just because it was bourgeois and not proletarian, namely, to give the laboring masses a will whose content was in accord with their class position-Socialism will infallibly secure.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 194.)
</quote>
The bourgeois democracy promised no less than the politico-economic organisateur – Communist. It could not keep its promise, though it was given in no less good faith than the Communist promise. For its assurances went against the grain of history which could do either of the two, rising upwards or sinking downwards. But it cannot sink upwards or rise downwards. It cannot make progress, evolve and at the same time register a dissolution, a set-back, from a higher formation to a lower, from the capitalists to the laborers. The bourgeoisie will be replaced, but not by a lower class, only by a higher one.
*** 5. Erroneous Analogies
<quote>
“The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons-the modern working class, the proletarians.” (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 37.)
“The bourgeoisie destroyed the feudal conditions of property; the proletariat will put an end to the bourgeois conditions of property. Between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie a struggle, an implacable war, a war to the knife, is as inevitable as was, in its way, the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the privileged estates. But every class war is a political war. In order to do away with feudal society the bourgeoisie had to seize upon political power. In order to do away with capitalist society the proletariat must do the same. Its political task is therefore traced out for it beforehand by the force of events themselves, and not by any abstract consideration.” (George Plekhanoff, Anarchism and Socialism, p. 35, Chicago, Kerr Publ.)
</quote>
The proletariat in its historical role is likened to the capitalists and the part played by them in their struggle against the nobility.[4] This analogy, used quite often by Marx and his disciples, throws abundant light on their understanding of the class interrelationship existing in our present time. All the proletariat has to do is to follow in the historical footsteps of the bourgeoisie and thus, by imitating its predecessor, come by power and dominance. But here the analogy breaks off abruptly, for the proletariat is a class sui generis, a class not with an “historical” similar to that of the bourgeoisie, but a special super-historical, or, rather, anti-historical mission. Its task is to put an end to all oppression, exploitation, to all classes itself included. In a word, it is supposed to usher in the collective Messiah. But how can a savior-class imitate a sinner-class like that of the bourgeoisie? And how can it, as a result of this imitation, achieve its messianic goal?
It is confusion confounded, and not because the analogy is not drawn to its conclusive end, namely, that the proletariat is bound to play the part of a “bossing” class, begin its career under the disguise of a savior and then, with its maturity, unmask and display itself as a burly sinner, the way the bourgeoisie acted. No, not this alone. The trouble with the analogy is that its very beginning is utterly wrong. The position occupied by the proletariat, by the working class, in its relation to the bourgeoisie, is not in the least analogous to that held by the bourgeoisie in its relations to the feudal lords, to the nobility of the previous historical epoch. The position of the worker in our era is identical with that of the serf, in the preceding historical segment of inter class nexus. The feudal magnates were replaced, by whom? Not by the serfs, but by a new ruling class, namely, the bourgeoisie.
<quote>
“A new social class appeared, greater in numbers and power than the pre-existing: the middle class. This astute middle class possessed one thing, above and before all: talent, practical talent. It knew how to organize and discipline, how to give continuity and consistency to its efforts.” (Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, p. 129, New York, 1932.)
<quote>
Now, by whom are the capitalists harassed and by whom will they be superseded? By the working class, reads the answer of the “vulgarian” Marxian; by a new ruling class, an emerging class of politico-economic organisateurs, must be the answer of the student of “scientific” Marxism.
<quote>
“In the 'People's State' of Marx, they tell us, no privileged class will be found.... There will be a new class, a new hierarchy... and society will split into a dominant minority.. and an immense majority....” (Michael Bakounine, Oeuvres, vol. IV, pp. 476-77, Paris, 1910.)
“They will concentrate the reins of administration in their firm hand, for the ignorant people require a vigorous tutelage; they will found a Central State Bank that holds in its hands all the commercial, industrial, agricultural and even scientific production; and the masses of the populace will be divided by them into two armies : the industrial and the agricultural, under the direct command of state engineers who will constitute a new privileged scientifico-political estate.” (M. Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, 2nd ed. Russian, p. 237, Petersburg, 1922.)
“But if it be granted that, through some plan not yet imagined, the division of labor will be effected satisfactorily in socialdom, there arises the further question : How will it be directed? No doubt the direction of labor will then be as necessary as it is now. Direction is necessary to the simplest motion; there is not human action that is not directed by the human brain! So long as the act of one person has no immediate connection with that of another, one's own brain directs the act. But when the acts of two or more persons are connected in their immediate and unexpected consequences, the direction of another than the actor comes into play.” (Benedict Elder, A Study in Socialism, p. 264, London, 1915.)
</quote>
Communism will require directing power to a much larger extent than that which was employed by capital ism. A new ruling class of politico-economic organisateurs will be segregated. Its rule will be cast of iron, its regime-blood-drenched. The new masters will act tough. Their eagerness to domination will clash with both the reluctance of the lowly to grant them recognition and the stubborn resistance of the recalcitrant elements of the ousted master-class. The broad masses remembering full well the time when the “comrades” were courting them, flattering them, outdoing themselves in their efforts to prove to the “forgotten man” that they are a “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh”, will not bend any too easily their will to that of the new rulers. The plebs will not kotow before the new Patricians submissively, obsequiously out of sheer habit and tradition the way it was wont to do before the “legitimate” lords, the “powers to be”. The elevated position, the enthronement of the upstarts is of too recent a date to have the halo of history to sanctify and sanction it. The new power-wielders have had no time as yet to put caste-distance artificially between themselves and the common people, and that is why they have at their disposal no other obedience-commanding agency but bare and brutal force majore, unstinted fear and fury; the only course of action open to them is full measured intimidation. The only conformity-bringing expedience at their service is to strike red terror into the hearts of the refractory individuals, and “scare to death” the rebellious sections of the citizenry so as to prove beyond doubt that they, the hardly recognized, scarcely seriously taken, new masters, are in dead earnest about the imposition of their “arbitrary” will and the enforcement of the “impossible” decrees issued by them. Thus the new rulers are being impelled-by circumstances of an internal and external character, of a psychological and sociological nature, over which they may have mighty little control-to display in their dealings officially and otherwise with their inferiors or subordinates in their close entourage as well as with the populace at large much more despotism, much more cruelty than the “softies”, the mollycoddles, the capitalists and the old rulers have ever done; of course, the “ever” will not go to cover the whole length of their domination-era, but only the latter periods thereof when the authority of the commanding higher-ups was well established and rather enjoyed a considerable measure of popularity among the population, so that the common man thought its burden light and lawful instead of awful....
<quote>
“If the crises revealed the incapacity of the bourgeoisie any longer to control the modern productive forces, the con version of the great organizations for production and communication into joint-stock companies and state-property shows that for this purpose the bourgeoisie can be dispensed with. All the social functions of the capitalists are now carried out by salaried employees. The capitalist has no longer any social activity.... Just as at first the capitalist mode of production displaced the workers, so now it discards the capitalists, relegating them, just as it did the workers, to the superfluous population.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 312.)
</quote>
The bourgeoisie can be dispensed with, but who will take its place? This is the question, the most serious, consequential problem of our modern time.
The bourgeoisie can be superseded either by the politico-economic organisateurs, in plain language, by “proletarian” politicians usurping the functions and privileges of the captains of industry; or by a higher stratum of its own class.
The first plan, namely, the bureaucratization or politicalization of economics, is advocated by Marx and Engels and their followers, the Communists. Of course, they do not say it in so many plain words, for they are busy agitating, arousing the masses, and they are compelled to take recourse to economic messianism, without which they would have no mass-appeal, and no mass following. And without mass-action they stand no chance to capture our industry. They, as political organizers of proletarian parties or even trade-unions, can approach our industry and take hold of it only via the seizure of political power by the proletariat, which means, naturally, capture of the state machinery by the organizatory minority of the laboring masses. This plan militates against laissez faire, understanding this formula as the achieved, to a certain extent, separation of economics from politics and as the supreme command never to allow the latter to tyrannize, brutalize the former. For these two operate on two basically different principles. One, economics, on the basis of contractual relations not free under actual circumstances from economic pressure brought to bear on the weaker party. The other, politics, on the basis of juridical compulsion and force. And it is quite doubtful whether the state, an institution that was founded for another purpose, could be re-adapted to the new role of an economic establishment. Anyway, since the days of primitive slavery, which was a national institution run by the community of conquerors as a political and military unit-these two main branches of human activity, economics and politics, have been kept somewhat apart, autonomous to some degree, though quite often interfering with one another. Under “protectionism” and “mercantilism” the separation was running on a very narrow margin, still, even then, there was no absolute absorption, no fusion.
The second plan, rather, trend: out of economic feudalism will emerge an economic absolutism, as the monarchy grew out of the seingiorial manors, the national state out of the local governments, reigning families. The monarch was one of the nobility, the first gentleman, so now some strong and mighty firm will create a vertical and horizontal trust, or combination of trusts. This amalgamation will control all our industrial and commercial activities. It will integrate them, centralize them after a certain fashion. Indications of these tendencies are in evidence in all highly industrialized countries. The big national trusts are the first steps on this road leading from <em>industrial feudalism</em> to <em>industrial absolutism</em>. A third possibility, which is, rather, a modification of the second, is not excluded. We may go with the trends of industrial development and yet avoid the pitfalls of absolutism. For even in the field of political endeavor absolutism was not a universal institution, many a civilized nation escaped it. We may pass over from <em>industrial feudalism</em>, with its manufacturing and banking houses, to some form of <em>industrial democracy</em> and fashion a network of trusts wherein physiological labor and organizational effort would be properly represented. Thus an economic commonwealth, based on a broad foundation of share-holding, would be constituted eventually. This formation could preserve the liberties and some of the opportunties of <em>economic feudalism</em> and, at the same time, enjoy all the advantages that an organization, on a national scope, can offer.
“Just as at first the capitalist mode of production displaced the workers.”... The capitalist mode of production never displaced the workers, all it did was to organize them into multi-individual units, pressing them into in voluntary co-operation. Labor saving devices, machines, technical inventions displaced, to a considerable degree, physical labor. But this is a phenomenon which lies in another realm altogether. Where are the “inventions”, the organization-effort-saving devices of a mechanical nature that could be said to be at hand ready to displace the managerial, the organizatory class? Engels uses pseudo-scientific phraseology intending to replace therewith facts... or working hypotheses. He would like to see and make us see an evolutionary process, where we see none. His analogy is meaningless, or highly misleading. If the capitalist is bound to be displaced in the same fashion as the worker was displaced by the machine, it is the task of the engineers, first, to invent such “machines”, and, then, to install them. The workers did not install the machines that displaced them. They quite often fought against them. A higher class introduced machinery. Who will introduce the machinery that will displace the bourgeoisie, and where is that machinery? Where is that class that stands above the bourgeoisie and is willing and capable of introducing those capital-saving devices that will make the capitalists superfluous?
The capitalist mode of production did not displace the workers; what it did was to <em>interindividualize</em> them, bring them and hold them together. The same will, probably, happen now. Super-capitalism, joint-stock companies, trustism, may <em>organize</em>, <em>interindividualize</em> the individual capitalists, force them to fall in line, abolish competition and make economy function jointly, do team-work on a national and international scale.
The worker was displaced by something superior, not inferior to plain muscular labor. If the capitalist is destined to be displaced, this will be done by economic organization, by super-capitalism, but not by labor that is below capital in its evolution and involvement. Labor did not go, in the course of history, save periods of degeneration and utter decay, backwards to primitivity, neither can capital, barring a calamity like the breakdown of our entire civilization, fall back upon its primitivity, labor. Labor went upward, to machinery, so will capital do; it will overcome itself in a progressive way, not in a reactionary. And “scientific” Marxism must admit this thesis. For Marxism is a scientific or, rather, pseudo scientific doctrine, in its heavy treatises on economics and history, though an entirely anti-scientific concoction, a crude imitation of religious messianism, in its pamphlets.
The “scientific Marxist” never speaks his mind freely.... He always lets his double, the “vulgarian Marxianist”, do for him all the talking, soap-boxing, stump-orating and tub-thumping. No denying, the latter made a hit with the deception-relishing masses of the skilled laborers and unskilled intellectuals.
<quote>
“We must, therefore, carefully distinguish between informing the people and inflaming them. Indignation, resentment and fury are to be deprecated; and all we should ask is sober thought, clear discernment and intrepid discussion.” (William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, ed. and abridged by Raymond A. Preston, vol. I, pp. 133-34, New York, 1926.)
</quote>
No agitator, who knows anything about his business, will ever take this sincere, but utterly naive, advice. It would mean suicide. It would leave him without a mass-following, without a “movement”, things that are achieved by economo-political jazz and jesuitism combined. The “vulgarian Marxianist” knows his vulgar “customers”.
To sum up:
Marxism, understood as an ideology of the working class, is the crudest piece of vulgarity ever conceived by the human mind. It is an out and out absurdity. But Marxism interpreted critically as an ideology of the emerging class of the party-political or trade-union political, or their combination, organisateurs, that conceals its aspiration to tripled power and unprecedented grandeur under the thick veil of “proletarianism”, Marxism thus construed is a scientific doctrine that does honor to human genius of subtlety and sophistry.
** III. THE PERIOD OF AGITATION
<quote>
“... An agitational means in order to rouse the workers against the capitalist.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 123.)
“An agitator... will strive to rouse discontent and indignation among the masses... The agitator operates with living word.” (V. I. Lenin, What is to be done, Selected Works, vol. II, p. 86.)
“It is this late appearing mass and not ' mankind ' that is the object of Stoic and Socialist propaganda... It appeals not to the best, but to the most, and it values its means according to the number of successes obtained by them. It substitutes for the old thoughtfulness an intellectual male prostitution by speech and writing, which fills and dominates the halls and the market-places of the megalopolis.” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, vol. I, pp. 359-60.)
</quote>
*** 1. The False Hope and the False Alarm
**** A. False Hope
The agitation-period is unique in its essence. It is possessed of a specific characteristic. It could be properly described as a critical, transitory time of painful, rapid readjustments. It is the epoch of “storm and stress”, when the bombardment, theoretical and actual, of the citadels of the master-class takes place.
These are the seasons when the millennial promises blaze and the social messianic pledges flare.
<quote>
“The damnable idea of being marshalled and drilled or numbered and docketed like any other merchandise in a state of glorified capitalism is not the Socialists ' ideal, but its anti-thesis... With the advent of Socialism, the whole of the capitalist state, and its superstructure will collapse, with its cant of living wages, its brotherhood of man, and the rest of its nauseous humbug.” (Socialist, December, 1907.)
“There is no such a thing as a hierarchical system under Socialism.” (August Bebel, Woman in the Past, Present and Future, p. 181, William Reeves, London.)
“Socialism will raise the struggle for existence into a sphere where competition will be emulation, where the treasures are boundless and eternal, and where the abundant wealth of one does not cause the poverty of another.” (Philip Snowden, The Individual Socialism, p. 1, Independent Labor Party, London.)
“Under Socialism there will be no classes, but all the people will form one class (Ibid. p. 12.)
“Such a society (Socialist society) would shift the emphasis from possession to creation (production) by rewarding the workers rather than the owners. The result may be accomplished quite simply by giving the chief awards to those who create.
When economic rewards are withdrawn from possession and given to creation, it will pay better to create than it will to own.” (Scot Nearing, p. 157, The Next Step, New Jersey, 1922.)
“The sailors and stokers (under Socialism) will be well fed and lodged as the captain or passengers, and the captain and the stoker will have the same pay.” (William Morris, Communism, pp. 14-15, Fabian Society, London 1903 and 1907.)
“It shall be a rational society that abolishes class, and builds a creative peace on the cooperation of all who work.” (Henry Noel Brailsford, Property or Peace, p. 329, New York, 1934.)
“We shall be of the army of the workers who seek to create the federation of the cooperative commonwealths of mankind in which peace and plenty shall be universal heritage, and freedom and fellowship the law of life.” (Norman Thomas, As I See It, p. 173, New York, 1932.)
</quote>
Obese checks of staggering sums are issued by the agitators on the banks of the future to be cashed in the days to come. They are made out for the large masses of the populace, to all those who are maltreated, dis contented with the existing order of things. This is the fee offered for the help that the low masses are to render in the great cause of liberation of all mankind.
<quote>
“Bolshevism has supplied the new religion. It promises glorious things: an end of the injustice of rich and poor, an end of economic slavery, an end of war. It promises an end of the disunion of classes which poisons political life and threatens our industrial system with destruction. It promises an end to commercialism, that subtle falsehood that leads men to appraise everything by its money value, and to determine money value often merely by the caprices of idle plutocrats. It promises a world where all men and women shall be kept sane by work, and where all work shall be of value to the community. It is to sweep away listlessness and pessimism and weariness and all the complicated miseries of those whose circumstances allow idleness and whose energies are not sufficient to force activity. In place of palaces and hovels, futile vice and useless misery, there is to be wholesome work, enough but not too much, all of it useful, performed by men and women who have no time for pessimism and no occasion for despair.” (Bertrand Russel, Bolshevism, Practice and Theory, p. 15, New York, 1920.)
</quote>
At such times of agitation pretty words and sweet phrases are turned out by the bushels for the consumption of the candy-minded children of man. Most brilliant prospects and most fascinating vistas are projected upon the retina of vision for the benefit of all mirage-seekers.
Agitation eras take a special pride in announcing with great solemnity that they are about to wipe clean the slate of the past with its hag-ridden nightmares, and to make a new unparalleled start. A new heaven and a new earth, a new social life and a new society are served on the red platter, to be gotten for the mere asking, or, rather, clamoring vociferously.
The Renaissance, in some of its aspects, could be characterized as an agitation-period. It declared or decreed the liberation of the flesh, spirit and conscience. A quite odd combination. But such periods are not discriminating. The declarations were made under an impressive fanfare, flourishing of trumpets and blaring of bugles. All that swagger, spiritually revolutionary rodomontading, boiled down in actual life to the revocation of certain punky inhibitions, definitely decrepit “don'ts” imposed upon civilized humanity by medieval institutional religion, with which science, represented by its institution, namely, the university, had entered into a contest for dominance over the minds and hearts of the multitudes.
**** B. False Alarm
<quote>
“All the oracles of the departing gods exclaim with terror that the abomination of desolation is in the holy places and that the end of the world has come... The slightest progress cannot be realized without spreading panic among the peoples,” (P. J. Proudhon, System of Economic Contradictions, vol. I, p. 325.)
</quote>
In periods of social transformation, when old structures are being reshaped, ancient injunctions countermanded, antiquated laws revoked, outlived regulations rescinded, naive-thinking people are inclined to imagine themselves witnessing the total collapse of civilization, the irretrievable discard of ordinances and statutes, the liquidation of authority in general, and not but the substitution of certain particular commandments. It seems to those unsophisticated that vandalism is about to swamp our spiritual life, that a diabolic devaluation of all values is promulgated. Whereas, in actuality, some slight tinkering is taking place, some scrapping of junk is done, form-deep changes are carried out in a quite timid fashion.
The outdated behests, the moss-covered imperatives are thrown overboard, or, what happens more frequently, are being remodelled, refurbished, are driven through a process of renovation. That is about all the din and racket and high-falutin phraseology used by the arch-destroyers amount to. Under the cover of the artillery-barrage of deafening catchwords full of defiance, the heavily stepping infantry of vigorous rules and tightly binding norms are introduced.
<quote>
“Laws, decrees, edicts, ordinances, resolutions, will fall like hail upon the unfortunate people. After a time the political ground will be covered with a layer of paper, which the geologists will put down among the vicissitudes of the earth as the papyraceous formation.” (P. J. Proudhon, The General Idea of the Revolution, p. 132, London, 1923.)
“No doubt, in the early days of the Commonwealth, a rage of positive legislation set in, which was rather an anticipation, by some two or three centuries... of the constitution than a denial or contradiction of it.” (Sheldon Amos, Science of Politics, p. 437, New York, 1883.)
</quote>
The faint-hearted are alarmed. They are panic stricken: all maxims of moral conduct are swept away by the tornado of criticism, by the hurricane of animadversion. The foundations of regulated communal life are shaken. The beams and rafters of the social buildings are carried away by the tidal waves of the unruly freshet. All the tin-gods are smashed to pieces; potentates dethroned, pedestals overthrown; the reign of chaos is at hand. Pandemonium stalks along our streets.
<verse>
“Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,<br>
And unawares Morality expires...<br>
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored;<br>
Light dies before thy uncreating word;<br>
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,<br>
And universal darkness buries all”<br>
(Alexander Pope, 1688-1744.)
</verse>
Wild, sanguine passions break loose, uncontrollable appetites take hold of the heart of man and woman. Debauch and debacle walk arm-linked and threaten to trample underfoot our domestic and along with it our social life. Decadence is gripping at the heart of civilization.
<quote>
“The most threatening danger at present is that we shall have a new barbarian invasion, this time coming from the interior of society itself to lay waste custom, civilization and wealth.” (Rodbertus, in 1850.)
“This confession, that the future belongs to the communist, I make in sorrow and great anxiety. This is no way a delusion. In fact, it is only with fear and shuddering that I think of the epoch when these dark iconoclasts come to power; with their callous hands they will destroy all the marble statues of beauty....” (Heinrich Heine) (Quoted from the Social Revolution by Karl Kautsky, p. 44, Chicago, Kerr ed.)
"... This is what it destroys by its notion of the Fourth Estate, the Mass, which rejects the culture and its matured forms, lock, stock and barrel. It is the absolute of formless ness, persecuting with its hate every sort of form, every distinction of rank, the orderliness of property, the orderliness of knowledge... Thus the Fourth Estate becomes the expression of the passing of a history over into historyless. The mass is the end, the radical nullity.” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, v. II, p. 358.)
“The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select.” (Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, p. 19, New York, 1932.)
“…The mass-man in revolt.. If that human type continues to be master in Europe, thirty years will suffice to send our continent back to barbarism...’The masses are advancing ', said Hegel in apocaliptic fashion. ' Without some new spiritual influence, our age, which is a revolutionary age, will produce a catastrophe ', was the pronouncement of Comte. ' I see the flood-tide of nihilism rising, ' shrieked Nietzsche from a crag of the Engadine.” (Ibid. pp. 56-58.)
</quote>
Nothing of the sort!
Pretty soon, and instead of the worm-eaten weirs and lichen-coated sluices, right now plucked down, new solid, iron-clad dams will be installed!
Before long, and the sites, upon which the torn down edifices stood, will be graced, after the wreck and debris have been cleared away, with palatial palaces and sumptuous temples.
The king is dead long live the king! The old laws have been outlawed, former authorities banished in order to make elbowroom for the new comers...”..
*** 2. Discontentment and Its Vitalization.
<quote>
“But tell me, have you found on the earth a government, of whatsoever kind, which claimed to make happy all the people it governed? But this would mean the squaring of the circle! Whatever government, be it even directed by men participating in the Divine Wisdom, whatever measures it takes, will make some people discontented.” (Mussolini as Revealed in his Political Speeches, p. 356, New York, 1923.)
</quote>
At all times and seasons there is plenty of malcontentment. There are multitudes of instinctively or thoughtfully disgruntled individuals walking about our streets in the cities, or tramping along the highways and byways in the country, with curses and abuse, called for or uncalled for, on their parched lips.
<quote>
“The good feelings and the good sense of mankind are rising up in judgment against it. The earth is weary of it, the voice of the weak and the poor and the overtasked masses is rising to witness against it. The ear of the just and clear spirits everywhere is open to their cry.” (Frederick Harrison, On Society, p. 183, London, 1918.)
</quote>
But they, the fault-finders, seeing everything dark, make no effective political showing. These “weak and poor and overtasked masses” constitute no socially active factor, force to reckon with, so long as they continue in their primitive state of lone, disorganized individuals, so long as they are not united, and their personal grudges and individual grievances and com plaints are not incorporated into a commonly adopted platform; in a word, so long as they are not tied together by a more or less unified program of action.
The “weak and the poor” are grouchy. They grumble against certain social conditions. But they are in no position to offer remedies for those ills, real or imaginative, they privately and disjointedly so enjoy inveighing against. In brief, they are socially raw material...
The discontentment of the “overtasked masses” lies fallow, is a virgin soil overgrown with weeds and brambles. A new social layer aspiring to leadership, must take possession of it, plow it up, and sow therein seeds of rationally conceived, articulately expressed, dissatisfaction and deliberately made accusations and indictments.
<quote>
“Development is effected by the free play of individual energies, the mass is by its nature barren, passive, and hostile to everything new. It is, if I may venture to use the comparison, the womb, sterile by itself, but to which come to deposit themselves the germs created by private activity, which, in hermaphroditic society, really performs the functions of the male organ.” (P. J. Proudhon, System of Economic Contra dictions, vol. I, pp. 277-78.)
“The average citizen crying aloud that his feudal shoe pinches is fitted with the leg-irons of laissez faire; protesting next that his fetters are more than he can bear, he is promptly clapped into the iron-boots of modern quasi-nationalization and monopoly. At each stage of his progress he is either told to be grateful that he is so well shod or he is offered as an alternative some equally menacing piece of foot-wear. Never is he permitted to fashion shoes to his liking or to go barefoot. He must limp as best he may in the handiwork of political patchers and economic cobblers.” (Collin Brooks, Our Present Discontents, p. 20, New York, 1933.)
</quote>
The upstart class, grown up and reared under the very wing and protection of the “liberal” section of the old master-class, is seeking power, domination, rulership. Its schemes and designs are concentrated upon one point, and that is how best and speedier to shove aside the present ruling class and occupy their significant, leading, commanding, and accordingly remunerative, positions.
Where could it probably find forces adequate to the task and willing to take the risk of an encounter, a fight for life and death with the present ruling class? A thorough search is constituted. The would be master class is looking for a “bearer” of its hidden aspirations and plans. And social simulation, historical masquerading, social mimicry is resorted to.
What do the future rulers need the “bearer” for?
They who advocate the radical reforms, and propagate the reconstruction-plans are unable to be the “bearers” of their own social devices. They are unequal to the job of putting the designs of theirs directly into action and materialization.
<quote>
“In no modern revolution have the privileged classes been known to fight their own battles. They always depend on the armies of the poor (Elise Reclus, Evolution or Revolution, p. 16, London, 1885.)
</quote>
Not only the present privileged classes, but the prospective privileged classes do not fight their own battles. “They always depend on the armies of the poor.” They cannot do their own fighting. Their numbers are too small for that. This quantitative smallness is the tragic and comic, weak and strong point of every ruling class which must be, according to its very nature, a numerically insignificant minority.
<quote>
“It has already been pointed out that it is not the size of the social group which determines its power. The lords were always in the minority, and in modern states with millions of inhabitants the power rests with the ' upper ten thousand ', The intimacy of the union and the resultant organization and discipline together with mental superiority complement numerical inferiority giving the minority the preponderancy... The masses always lack unity and organization as the result partly of their great bulk, partly of indolence. Since the result of the social struggle depends on discipline the minority has the advantage because it is small.” (Ludwig Gumplovicz, The Outline of Sociology, p. 143.)
</quote>
The new aspirants are a handful of people, and they are in no state to unseat the dominant class. A fight between two comparatively diminutive groups would ensue. And the old entrenched minority would, in all probability, carry the day, repulse and rout the daring assailants.
The prospective rulers are resourceful. They do not throw themselves into battle without the preparatory work having been carried out in advance. They go out into the slum-districts, they call upon the hovel and hut-dwellers.
<quote>
“He will tear off the fine clothes that burn into his very flesh; he will put on the rough coat and the wooden shoes of the peasant, and, abandoning the splendid paternal palace, which oppresses him like the reproach of a crime, he will go forth ' among the people ' in some remote district, and there, the slender and delicate descendant of a noble race he will do the hard work of the peasant, enduring every privation in order to carry to him the words of redemption, the Gospel of our age What to him are exile, Siberia, death? Full of the sublime idea, clear, splendid, vivifying as the midday sun, he defies suffering, and would meet death with a glance of enthusiasm and a smile of happiness. It was thus that the Revolutionary Socialist of 1872-74 arose.” (Stepniak, Under ground Russia, pp. 11-12, New York, 1885.)
“Thus in the winter of 1872, in one of the hovels in the outskirts of St. Petersburg, a number of working men gathered round Prince Peter Kropotkin who expounded to them the principles of Socialism, and of the Revolution. The rich Cossack Obuchoff, though consumptive and dying, did the same upon the banks of his native Don. An officer, Leonidus Sciscko, became a hand-weaver in one of St. Petersburg's manufactories, in order to carry on the propaganda there. Two other members of the same society- an officer, Demetrius Rogacheff... and a friend went into the province of Tver as sawyers for the purpose of carrying on the propaganda there among the peasants.” (Ibid. p. 20.)
</quote>
The future bosses cement those elements of the populace who bear a grudge, nurse a grievance, of one or another nature, against the present potentates and the existing system personified by them.
The future masters start their activities with the organization of the discontented. of the discontented. They incite them. They enlighten them. They array them in marching, ready for battle, columns. They drill them. They instruct them in class struggle tactics and strategy.
<quote>
"... The Party must be merely the vanguard, the leader of the enormous mass of the working class, the whole of which (or nearly the whole of which) works under the control of the Party.” (V. I. Lenin, Speech at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, 1903. Collected Works, vol. II, pp. 276-78, Russian ed.)
“The proletariat is their army, which they love in the same way that a colonial administrator loves the troops which enable him to bring large numbers of negroes under his authority; they apply themselves to the task of training the proletariat, because they are in a hurry to win quickly the great battles which will deliver the State into their hands; they keep up the ardor of the men, as the ardor of troops of mercenaries has always been kept up, by promises of pillage, by appeals to hatred, and also by the small favors which their occupancy of a few political places enables them to distribute already. But the proletariat for them is food for cannon.” (George Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 190.)
</quote>
The prospective masters instill into the masses the spirit of negation and indignation. They provoke and cultivate their combativeness. And with the direct help of these disciplined cohorts, officered, marshalled by them, they overthrow the throne of the hated ruling class.
To this great and sacred purpose, their historical mission, they sacrifice their emotions and feelings, their deep-seated antipathies. They sham. They pretend. They lie without being conscious of it. They confess their boundless love and devotion to the needy and destitute. They cloak their genuine class-aspirations. They never allow their cherished, but suppressed and secreted within themselves, desires to grow articulate, and, for still greater safety, they tuck them away in the thick volumes of their “scientific” literature, which being couched in Greek and Latin terminology with quite a dose of metaphysical reasoning, remain undiscovered by their ignorant, quite often outright illiterate, followers.
<quote>
“The monument of the proletarian culture of our day is Marxist doctrine... But Marx's creation, which as a scientific achievement is a titanic whole, transcends the plain demands of the proletarian class struggle for whose purposes it was created.” (Rosa Luxenberg, ' Stagnation and Progress of Marxism ', Karl Marx, a Symposium ed. by D. Ryazanov, New York, 1928.)
</quote>
Marx's obscurity of exposition serves a purpose and that is to hide the real aims and claims of Communism under the thick cover of metaphysical circumlocution and speculative equivocation.
The coming masters play pretty skillfully the game of pursuing the common interest of the community, or, still better, of oppressed mankind as a whole. They affect to be absolutely unselfish, saintly, idealistically minded, self-abnegated servants of the downtrodden. They submerge their semi-crystallized class-Ego in the vast amorphous mass of the pariahs, the manual laborers, in order to be able to emerge later on all the more victorious, all the more glorious. They stoop to conquer. They secrete their pride and the contempt they cannot help but feeling for the lowly, the stupid, unconscious masses that allow themselves to be “exploited” and have neither sense nor courage to shake off the yoke of capital..
<quote>
“He (Marx) knew almost nothing of love for his fellows. On the other hand, he was amazingly prone to hate, so that in him hatred of the oppressors had extinguished love of the oppressed.” (Tugan Baranovsky, quoted from Karl Marx, Symposium ed. by D. Ryazanov, p. 262.)
</quote>
Marx, as the ideologist of the future master-class, hated both, labor as well as capital. His love he preserved exclusively for his own class of politico-economic organisateurs...
The emerging master class submits its will, and bends its arrogant head to the rule of the slaves, flattering their vanity, currying favor with them, in order eventually to lord it over them all the more ruthlessly and with vengeance for past, though temporary, but deeply felt, humiliation.
What distinguishes the given master-class from the rest of society? Let us say that this class of superiors is set off from the common ruck by a sum total of privileges, certain prerogatives which it enjoys to the detriment, at a certain period and stage of development, of the overwhelming majority of the nation.
This being the case the prospective ruling class will necessarily advocate, and do it quite vociferously, with out sparing its vocal cords, the unqualified abolition of all privileges.[5] *) Thus the future bosses make sure of the adherence to their program of all those who are, under the given conditions, deprived of privileges. The plebeians, the riffraff will flock to their recruiting offices and enlist without hesitation, to serve under their banner which they take to be the banner of social justice in general.
After the victory is won, the former ruling class ousted, shoved aside politically or economically, the new positions fortified, the privileges, as a matter of course, will be restored. But now they will be based on new foundations and more solidly and unshakably entrenched, differently explained and justified by new reasons, even sanctified by the same individuals who condemned them in their old shape.
In our present time, when the prospective masters of the proletariat, the politico-economic organisateurs, are contemplating the overthrow of the capitalist regime, the first thing they do is to institute an investigation of the power sources of the bourgeoisie. What forms the backbone, the pith and marrow of this class? What are its actual forces composed of?
Its vigor and sap are contained in accumulated wealth, in amassed capital. Its counterpart, its counter-agent is hired labor.
Under these circumstances, those who groom themselves for rulership and are bent upon breaking the capitalist class in order to inherit its leadership in society, will grab the first opportunity to issue a manifesto wherein they will proclaim that their sincere intention is to establish equality, or, still better, to do away with capital, with private property in general, and all those who suffer under the present economic system, who are employed but badly paid for their work, or unemployed, will surely subscribe to that manifesto, will accept it as their gospel. The existing order of things economic divides society into two antagonistic camps, that of the proprietors and that of the propertyless, the dispossessed. The good tidings of the abolition of worldly possessions will cheer up the sad spirits of the unfortunate. All those who have a complaint to make against the heartless domination of the capitalist class will fall an easy prey to the class-wolves parading in the skins of lambs. They will admire their new leaders who promise to free them from the bondage of capital. Little suspecting that a new yoke is kept ready for them by their new masters who appear now, as all master-classes in the beginning of their career, in the shape of comrades, friends, well wishers, rescuers, idealists, knights without fear and foibles, fighters for justice, but who will not be slow to unmask, strip themselves of all shammed benevolence, feigned charitableness, simulated humaneness and show right afterwards, not without flourish and cynical frankness, their true face and genuine character of ruthlessly exacting masters. They will pursue their class-egotistic aims with the utmost severity and grim determination so characteristic of political parvenues. They will unleash their dogged ambitions of caste, unbridle their racy appetites for distinction and rank with complete disregard for their previously given pledges and blank oblivion of their indebtedness to the multitudes of their “fellow travelers” and collective aides-de-camp.
*** 3. Words and Deeds.
<quote>
“As early as 1438 a prophet of German reform had declared: 'It is a shame which cries to heaven, this oppression of tithes, dues, penalties, excommunications and tolls of the peasant, on whose labor all men depend for their existence.”“ (Hayes, Political and Social History of Modern Europe, vol. I, p. 127.) (Quot. from Development of Social Theory by James P. Lichtenberger, p. 153, New York, London, 1923.)
</quote>
Each coming ruling class goes through two periods. One period is wholly dedicated to the comparatively easy and even pleasurable occupation of mouthing high sounding words, forging felicitous, metallically clanking, phrases. In brief, this time is given without reserve to high-strung oratorical exercises. The other period is consecrated to irksome drudgery, to social chores, to positive, constructive activity. The time of sermonizing and speechifying, of disseminating subversive ideas, is over. Now has struck the moment of materialization of the ideal championed by the prospective master-class. This group of ambitious individuals is coming into its own, is grasping the reins of power, is taking possession of the wealth of the nation.
<quote>
“To the tasks of destruction, new tasks are added, in credibly difficult tasks, viz., organizational tasks.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 286.)
</quote>
Between the years given to recruiting and training the army of rebels, awakening the slaves to the realization of their situation, stirring them up, inciting them, calling to the final battle, and the years following closely upon the victory, stretches a period of transition, a time for re-equipment. The passing from the state of war, of aggression, of militancy, of attacks upon the existing establishments of the community and the attempts to carry by storm the strongholds of the upper class-to that of peaceful, conscientious masonry, of building up new institutions, or repairing the old and damaged ones, this passage is a gradual, evolutionary process. And it has, as a concomitant, which is quite natural, deep shiftings, far-reaching shuntings effected in the whole make-up of the given militant body and in its ideological constitution.
<quote>
“After the repartition is accomplished the second period sets in the stabilization of the plunder and the development of the deteriorated reflexes of ownership. A decree is issued, proclaiming the sacred right of ownership. Every attempt to violate it is rigidly put down. All socialistic, communistic movements are repressed (Babeuf and others). Society throws itself avariciously into stock-jobbing and spoliation. Greed of wealth, of material values possessed it; we see a new class... a new profiteering zoological bourgeoisie.” (Piterim A. Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution, p. 78, Philadelphia and London, 1924.)
"’The revolutionists forgot their promises and showed themselves more greedy than the old rulers. Those that were loudest in clamoring that all property should be in common, excluded their own comrades from a participation in it. Riches, which were considered criminal as long as they belonged to Catholics, were ruthlessly appropriated by themselves. They had promised absolute freedom of the use of the forests, waters and meadows and they were the first to prohibit it and reduce the people to a state of serfdom, ' E. Denis : Huss et la guerre de Hussites 1878, pp. 348-48.” (Ibid, p. 75.)
</quote>
An oppressed class is different from a ruling one. Its ways and forms of rationalizing and emotionalizing are other, are entirely dissimilar. A ruling class occupies a special position in society. And its methods of arguing and judging, being a reflection, to a certain extent, of its actual conditions of existence, must necessarily differ from those of the oppressed group.
The prospective master-class, while being still in a position of oppression, inferiority, degradation, or, more exactly, during the time preceding that of its domination, when it feels sure of its imminent success and near victory, is busying itself exclusively with rallying round its slogans and barricades adherents, devotees, staunch fighters. It finds them, without much looking around, among the weak and the meek, among the economo-political derelicts. And it dangles before their bleary eyes the prospects of a glaring abundance, well-being for all and sundry. It paints for them, the hungry and thirsty, lecherous pictures, appetizing landscapes, rivers flowing with milk and honey between banks made of wheat cakes.
<verse>
“The rivers run with Oatmeal and black Broth,<br>
Murmuring, when new-bak'd Biskets stopp'd their speed.<br>
Links and hot Sausages in Fish-pools stood,<br>
And fatt'd Oysters skimm'd the wealthy Stream.<br>
Fowls nicely dress'd serv'd up themselves, and flew<br>
About Men's Mouths, still courting them to feast”<br>
(Pherecrates)
</verse>
The same class acts differently in the period of its ascendancy. Now as an emerged master class, it is in need of strong characters, whom it promises nothing, for its new adepts are no man's fools, they are realistically minded individuals. And the master-class, on the other hand, must not take recourse to fooling any longer, it is in a position to conduct its business, of State and Municipality, on the solid basis of “cash and carry.” It offers advantages, lucrative jobs. The weak and the meek, the ne'er-do-wells, it brushes now aside. It needs them no more. They are no help, they are rather an hindrance, a disturbing element. And it shakes them off. The new master-class is in a hurry to detach itself, dissociate itself from the “negative” types who would hold on to it and drag it down to the bottom, to the low level of their wretched existence.[6] And as a rule it enters into conflicts and bloody clashes with its own erstwhile faithful myrmidons. For some of them, who took the pledges and promises, given by the prospective master class in time of hardships and bitter struggles, for Gospel truth, assessed them at their face value, are now fuming and fretting. They clamor about their having been betrayed, deceived. Why, they were promised comforts, an easy life, a super-abundance, an over flowing of goods, of luxuries, and all they are offered now are crumbs shaken contemptuously from the over laden table at which the new lords are feasting. They were assured that they would be domiciled in palaces, and now they are quartered in barracks, in huts and hovels.[7]
The real facts are that the “initiative minority” of them, of these social warriors, get their deserts. Those select “few” who prove to be aggressive and acquisitive enough, without clashing with their class interests, without discrediting the class prestige and position by over-hasty acts, receive their rewards quite lavishly.
The majority of them, lacking in initiative and adventuresomeness, being afflicted with sloth and laziness, or, some of them, being victimized by their over refined susceptibilities, unnecessary scruples, or, being devoid of them altogether, letting their personal egotism outrun that of the class, part of which they are, remain on their self-same level, or, which is more corresponding to post-revolutionary reality, suffer, at the outset, a precipitating throwback, as regards their standard of living, are flung downward to the bottom of misery, penury and starvation.
*** 4. The Bourgeoisie and the Politico-Economic Organisateurs Passing Through Two Periods.
The bourgeoisie went through two such periods, one of agitation, the other of materialization; one of rabid radicalism, the other of mild, staid conservatism; a period of challenging youth and that of reconciliatory middle age.
<quote>
“Conservatism, then... has, for political and economic reasons, taken hold of the middle class, which a generation ago was the backbone of liberalism. Owing to the very success of liberal efforts there has been a great transfer of material interests from the reforming to the conservative side. I would not suggest that all ardor for political and social justice is merely collective self-interest.” (L. T. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, pp. 65-67, New York, 1905.)
</quote>
We would do more than merely suggest it, we would assert it and quite strongly. All mass-movements have a collective egotism back of them. Neither classes nor masses are idealistically inclined.
In its infantile state the bourgeoisie proclaimed with the pens of Rousseau, of the Declaration of Inde pendence and similar historical documents, that all men were born equal and free.
<quote>
“Man is born free and everywhere he is found in chains.” (J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, p. 10, London, 1895.)
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America, in Congress July 4, 1776).
“It (Declaration of Independence) was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the humanizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.” (Thomas Jefferson, Writings select. and ed. by Paul Leicester Ford, vol. X, p. 343, New York, 1899).
</quote>
Upon its reaching maturity, the middle class employed all the incantations and exorcistic formulae it could get hold of to lay the mischievous ghost of equality. It substituted for the equality principle the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, formulated the law of natural selection and the struggle for existence. It found itself, it unmasked itself.
<quote>
“If variations useful to any organic being ever do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life... This principle of preservation, or the survival of the fittest, I have called natural selection.” (Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, p. 125, New York, 1927, repr. from the 6th ed.)
“When we reflect on this struggle we may console ourselves with the full belief that... the vigorous, the healthy and the happy survive and multiply.” (Ibid. p. 73.)
“Those individuals whose functions are most out of the equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces, will be those who die; and those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces. But this survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest . " (H. Spencer , Principles of Biology , vol . I , pp . 530-31 , New York , 1904.)
</quote>
As a matter of fact the bourgeoisie as a practical minded class was shocked at the mispresentation of social relations found in our political creed , was indignant at the distortion of them reflected in the ad nauseam sweet sermons on equality .
<quote>
"But arguments of another kind are brought forward, which have at least the merit of not being based upon a lie. The reign of the strongest is now evoked . . . Darwin's theory, which has lately made its appearance in the scientific world ... " (Elisee Reclus, Evolution and Revolution, p . 15, London, 1885.)
</quote>
It was the Third Estate in France that was so diligent in shouting down from the housetops about egalitarism . . . an estate of penniless and pantless people, a conglomeration - chrysalis out of which the golden winged butterfly, the class of capitalists , had gradually evolved and grown out . And it were the great grandfathers of the magnates on Wall Street , who incorporated the plum of equality into the wedding cake of the new Union.[8]
<quote>
"In point of fact such equality is approximately realized under colonial conditions . It was approximately realized in early American life . . . Approximately they were in fact equal and free, as the political writers assumed. " (Franklin H. Giddings , 'Sovereignty and Government' in Political Quarterly, vol. XXI, p. 26, New York, 1906.)
</quote>
The same fate, we may rest assured on this score, will befall the party or Trade-Union organizers of the proletariat. They will soon leave behind them, with contempt mixed with longing, due and paid to childhood by adolescence, the period of agitation, and pass over, with heavily clumping steps, and quite clumsily, as the case is in U. S. S. R., to the period of action and practice.
Before long and the political bosses of the proletariat will slough off their “infantile leftism”, their childish-poetical and saintly prophetical concerns about the remote future with its perfect society, eschatology and visionism. The new master-class will settle down to present day actualities with their petty and annoying problems.
How widely, abysmally, will these two periods differ from one another! How endlessly vast will yawn their chasm!
<quote>
“The misfortune of the ' Lefts ' is that they have missed the essence of the ' present situation ', viz., the transition from confiscating (the carrying out of which requires above all a determined policy) to socialization (the carrying out of which requires a <em>different</em> quality in the revolutionary).
“Yesterday, the main task of the moment was, as determinedly as possible to nationalize, confiscate, beat down and crush the bourgeoisie, and break down sabotage. Today, only a blind man could fail to see that we have nationalized, confiscated, beaten down and broken more than we have been able to <em>keep count of</em>. And the difference between socialization and simple confiscation lies precisely in the fact that confisca tion can be carried out by means of ' determination ' alone, without the ability to count up and distribute properly, <em>whereas socialization cannot be brought about without this ability</em>.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, “Left Wing” Childishness, p. 359).
</quote>
In the first period the labor-vanguard, the handful of individuals busy organizing and leading the working masses, is engaged in the business of alluring, attracting at all costs of hot-air pledges, the under-dog, the hoi poloi, enlisting their sympathies first and then pressing them into the valiant legion of the uprooters, the crew of the wreckers, whose task is to smash up the existing order of things social.
The second period, invariably, in case of a success, following upon the first, is a time of construction, a time of erecting palaces and stables, temples and shacks, a time of harnessing the masses, of putting a new and onerous yoke upon their unwieldy necks, hitching the nags to the heavy chariots of production, and providing them with ruthless jockeys and heartless charioteers armed with new fangled whips... to urge them uphill, through one five year plan to another, ad infinitum …
During the second period all forms of inequality that existed and were condemned and nearly demolished during the social scuffle, are now rigorously restored. Of course, they are refashioned, modernized, readapted to the new times and new demands... And some supplementary weight is thrown into the scales of inter class relationship, for full measure. The pluses are added as an allowance for natural growth, increment and”progress”. And all the sallies of the new rebels are repulsed. The mutineers start, in the usual routine way, organizing uprisings, and carrying on”scientific”attacks on the newly established institutions. And thus they assure the rotation of the wheels in the mill of history...
<quote>
“The disappointment of the masses follows very quickly, it follows even before their vanguard has cooled off after the revolutionary struggle. The people imagine that with a new blow they can carry through, or correct, that which they did not accomplish decisively enough before. Hence the impulse to a new revolution... On the other hand, those... layers which have arrived at the power are in a way only waiting for a stormy outbreak from below, in order to make the attempt decisively to settle accounts with the people.” (L. Trotzky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol. II, p. 78, New York, 1932.)
</quote>
* Book Two: Communism Is Not “Socialism”; It Is “Politicalism”
** I. OBJECTIVE AIMS OF THE MARXIAN COMMUNISTS
*** 1. Two In One.
Within the womb of Marxism a twin is enclosed. Marxism offers simultaneously an answer to two questions: one concerning the size of the separate economic unit, and the other-the composition of the given unit, its structure, its stratification. The first problem may be termed external, while the second is an internal one. The external problem is puzzling over the inter relations of the various semi-independent economic concerns. It tries to elaborate an intricate system of balances and checks adequate to prevent collisions and clashings taking place, under the capitalist chaotic system, between the competing firms and warring trading houses. The internal problem concentrates upon the investigation of the anomalies afflicting the interrelation ship woven between the two counter-agents of the same process of production, namely, labor and capital. Its solution is an attempt to devise ways and means how to do away, once and for all, with the conflicts and friction, enmity and hatred raging within the confines of every and sundry economic unit taken separately or combinedly.
<quote>
“Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antagonism, existing in the society of to-day, between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production.” (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 47, Chicago, Kerr pub.)
</quote>
In other words, there is a problem of production in general, of national economy as a whole, the felt necessity for its unification, adjustment of its parts, so as to make of them one harmonious, well-coordinated whole. And there is, alongside of it, the labor problem, the desire and intention to eliminate the contradictions prevailing between the employer and his employees, perturbances that shake, on some occasions, the industrial edifice to its very foundations.
*** 2. Marxism-Leninism As A Plan.
Marxism assures us that it is able to solve both problems with one stroke. And its plan is quite simple, somewhat too simple.
<quote>
“<em>All</em> the citizens are here transformed into the hired employees of the State All the citizens become the employees and workers of one national State “syndicate”. It simply resolves itself into the question of all working to an equal extent, of all carrying out regularly the measure of work appointed to them...” (Nikolai Lenin, State and Revolution, pp. 204-05, New York, 1929.)
</quote>
This is Marxism, as a plan, as a State-practice, in a nut-shell.
Let us analyze the statements made by Lenin.
<em>“All</em> the citizens are here transformed into the hired employees of the State.” Lenin stressed and underscored the word “all”? He instinctively feared the exception.... “The citizens are here transformed.” They will not transform themselves, not all of them anyway, they must be transformed, partly by persuasion and partly by force. These processes are acts carried out with great difficulty. And there will appear on the stage of social life “transformers” called revolutionists, or they will go by another name describing their party affiliations. They shall be set off from the common ruck of citizenry. For those are <em>transformed</em>, and these ones are the <em>transformers</em>. Further, all citizens are employees of the State. Who constitutes the State, the employer? The same citizens who are employees. How are they going to fulfil two functions which negate one another? A minority of the citizenry will discharge the duties of the employers, and the rest those of the employees. It can hardly be other wise.
<quote>
“It simply resolves itself into the question of all working to an equal extent, of all carrying out regularly the measure of work appointed to them.”
</quote>
This is not “simple”, it is a highly complicated affair. “All working to an equal extent.” In order that “all” shall work there must be “some” whose work consists in making the “all” work, in supervising their work, coordinating their work, planning out the work for them, so that not “all” are working, for the majority will “work” and a minority will be busy “directing” the work done by others, the more so that “all” must be “carrying out regularly the measure of work appointed to them”. In order that work should be carried out <em>regularly</em> there must be <em>regulators</em> who take care of this end of the “work”. Functions, tasks are not self regulatory. They require regulation, and regulation presupposes a group of people engaged in the business of regulating. And if the work be <em>appointed</em>, some one, an individual or a collective, must do the <em>appointing</em>. Behind these acts human beings, flesh and blood, are standing. Nothing is performed by itself. If all the citizens become the employees and workers of one national State “syndicate”, somebody, a body politic, is situated above those employees and workers, whose office it is to keep that <em>national State syndicate</em> functioning as <em>one</em>, as a coordinated, well-knitted whole. The social cosmos must have a <em>personal</em>, a <em>collective</em>, creator, regulator, supervisor, whose duty it is to see to it that chaos does not swallow the “order”, the <em>rational system</em>. For chaos surrounds it, washes it on all sides, and is lurking in every shaded corner, patiently waiting for an opportune moment to pounce upon it and devour it, put an end to it. The forces of “disorder” must be kept in leash. They may be subdued, but never annihilated. And this function of “chaining up” the mad dogs of social chaos is discharged by a special group, not by the common run of citizenry. And Marxism proposing to integrate the separate concerns and plants and weld them into one state-merger, presupposes implicitly the segregation of a group of “mergerers”, “integrators” who are constantly on the job. This task is neither a process, nor a singular act, but a function to be fulfilled day-in day-out, for it is not enough to “merge” separate plans, they must be kept operating together.
*** 3. Anarchy Of Production.
<quote>
“Anarchy reigns in social production. But commodity production, like all other forms of production, has its own laws, which are inherent in and inseparable from it; and these laws assert themselves in spite of anarchy, in and through anarchy. These laws are manifested in the sole form of social relationship which continues to exist, in exchange, and enforce themselves on the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 305.)
</quote>
If by “anarchy” Engels designates the absence of government control, legislative measures prescribing in details the conduct of economic affairs, “anarchy” is the only form that can be prevalent in <em>social production</em>, for law enactment and law-enforcement are <em>political phenomena</em>. Social production being non-political may be described as “free” or as “anarchy”. The word “anarchy” is employed by Engels to give us a “scare”, by an effect of verbal magic. A social phenomenon is not necessarily a political phenomenon. All social activities, that are not regulated politically, by means of legislature or police ordinances, are, so to say, “anarchic”, meaning nothing more frightful, nothing more prejudicial, than non-political. “Social production” being “social” cannot have other laws, save the immanent law-conformity, so to say, embodied, in a socially natural way, in its own processes, in its actions and interactions and their systematizations. As far as government and juridical law formulation and decree issuance are concerned, “anarchy” reigns supreme in the immense domain of physical nature. The laws regulating its processes and phenomena, their sequels and co-existences are of a cause-and-effect character. They are by no means legislative acts originated by parliaments or other political legislative bodies. The same holds true as regards social nature. It manages to keep out of chaos, of disorder, of disarray and confusion by applying its own inherent devices, in such a way it accomplishes order, maintains a certain discipline without taking recourse to political instrumentalities. In other words, it shuns both extremes : governance and “anarchy”, if the latter word stands for absence of all kinds of laws and regulations. It is law-abiding, it is disciplined, but not <em>politicized</em>, not subject to <em>political laws</em>, to fiats, to ukases issued by a body politic. Instead of “anarchy”, a word that may have misleading connotations, we would prefer to use the term “freedom” in our describing social production.
Language is surely a “social” phenomenon. There are not as yet individual languages shaped for the purpose of “internal” intercourse, for thought-clarification. But language is surely not a political phenomenon, and the language activities of the group, whether of a creative or imitative character, coining words or phrases or borrowing them for use in interhuman inter course, are not regulated politically. There are no laws, norms, enjoining us to talk so much and not more, to use this word and not that, this idiomatic, or slangy expression and tabooing the others by a legislative act. There are no linguistic, philological “offences”, felonies, misdemeanors for which one can be arraigned before a magistrate or judge of peace and speech. Some countries muzzle their talkers and writers, but this is as far as content goes, the “form” is “free”. The use of a language is, certainly, regulated, and quite strictly so, but this is achieved not by political means.
The same is applicable to our intellectual and artistic productions. They are, no doubt, “social”, meaning: interindividual as far as effort, creative strain or impulse, is concerned and “social” as far as the linguistic integument, their form, is concerned, yet they are free from political usurpation, sway and dominance.
The truth of the matter is that most of the compositions of art and sciences are first of all “works”. products, if not exactly made to order, then, anyway, fabricated with a view to satisfy demands expressed by a market. They are commodities. The halcyon days when the individual was wont to “create” logical or aesthetical values for his own delectation, his own amusement, were long gone, if not forgotten. The delicious fruits, the lascivious berries, fall no longer from the tree of knowledge, or the bush of imagination, shaken down ripe and red by the evening breeze leisurely swinging and winging its way through the garden of personal delight. Creative worths are no longer rolled up to the surface by the incessantly bubbling well of overabundance. The self-sufficient, self-contained closed inner circle of the primitive not-trafficking spiritual household is an idyl of the past. Then things cultural were produced for home consumption. Only on very rare occasions were they offered to strangers as a treat. Now is come the age of barter and swop. All goods, whether of wisdom or naivete, whether of science or of art, are equally stamped as wares, marketable articles. And yet every one who is capable of “producing” theories, doctrines, views, has a right to do so, he may, if he can, elaborate them, express them and propagate them. The same applies to the creation of artistic values, one has a right to “sell” them to the public that is willing to buy, to capture the market or part of it. Anarchy reigns in mental and emotional production, in fact, in all social endeavors, save those that are marked “political” and are <em>univolitional</em>, instead of being <em>multi-volitional</em>.
“These laws”, the immanent social laws, “assert themselves in spite of anarchy, in and through anarchy”. There is hardly any spite work done. “These laws” and ”anarchy” do not clash, do not militate against one another. For “anarchy” is a political term that describes a political situation, indicating the disorder resulting from the absence of political laws where those laws are supposed to be, and are considered indispensable for the enforcement of unity and discipline, but it does not designate the absence of laws in general, the lack of certain conformities without which nothing that exists as any kind of a unit, can exist and function.
The non observance of grammatical rules is not tantamount to the non-observance of philological rules, linguistic immanent laws. All sins against grammar, etymology or syntax “anarchy”, are regulated, dictated by immanent laws that are operative within those very infractions of the grammatical “laws”.
“These laws are manifested in the sole form of social relationship”, this is the only way in which a social law can exhibit itself without transgressing upon the domain of the political.
*** 4. Marxism As Politicalism.
Marxism, being the most elaborate school of Communist thought, is, virtually, more than Communism Communalism. It is “Politicalism”. It is the advocacy that economo-social phenomena should be treated, should be forced to become “political”. Nationalization of industry and commerce, or, more exactly, the statization of the means and instruments of production this is, in short, applied Marxism.
<quote>
“It is the proletarian masses who will ultimately put an end to the anarchy of production.” (Ibid. p. 307.)
</quote>
The two problems, the external and the internal, instead of being treated separately, are fused by Engels to the detriment of both. “Anarchy of production”, meaning the looseness of the connections existing between the economic units of national economy, will be remedied, and should be remedied, economically, through the establishments of trusts. And this is done daily, this is the means our economy applies as a cure against the “disease” of cut-throat competition. The proletarians have another grievance which is located in the inter relationship existing within each industrial unit. The workers have absolutely nothing to do with the question of how best and more expedient to connect the independent units. But the Marxian attitude toward them, toward he workers is tinged politically, for Marxism being <em>politicalism</em> would like to make use of the <em>workers</em>, not as producers, but as citizens who have votes and hands to support their votes, namely, as soldiers, as <em>militants</em> which means <em>civil militarists</em>, in the civil war waged as if in their interests…
The workers as such, as producers, are not concerned about the “anarchy” or “order” end of the productive system any more than the independent crafts men or small shopkeepers. Why should they bother with this? Why should they shoulder this extremely onerous burden. Their interest is focused on another problem altogether, and that is the question of wages or property rights to, or share holding in, the given economic unit. All other problems, though of exceedingly great moment, may interest them exclusively as citizens, as human beings, as consumers in general, but not as producers, as “proletarian masses”. And in their former capacities or titles they do not constitute any special category with any special intensivity or exclusiveness of interest-taking as a productive body.
The ”proletarian masses” as such have nothing to gain from this drastic reform, namely, the putting “an end to the anarchy of production”. And why should they go to the trouble of carrying out this piece of strenuous work even “ultimately”? Unless they are just fine fellows, good Samaritans who are going to do “historical” favors, and accomplish this act for the sake of Marx and Engels, more exactly, for the benefit of the new master class of organisateurs whose vital interest, reason d'etre lies in this very point, in this heroic exploit of establishing a new politico-economic regime, of calling forth a “political” cosmos out of a political “chaos”, more precisely of substituting a “political” for a “social” cosmos.
*** 5. Industrial Feudalism And Industrial Democracy.
<quote>
“We are marching with rapid strides toward a commercial feudalism... We shall thus see the reappearance of feudalism in an inverse order, founded on mercantile leagues and answer ing the baronial leagues of the middle ages.” (Charles Fourier, Social Destinies, p. 141, Sociological Series no. 1, part II, New York, 1876.)
“These corporations contain the germ of a vast feudal coalition which is destined soon to invade the whole industrial and financial system, and give birth to a commercial feudalism.” (Ibid. p. 149.)
</quote>
Thus anarchy of production and commerce is left behind, we enter upon an era of feudalism, in our modern language, trustism which resembles the feudal political forms of the preceding epoch. And as the passing from “anarchy” to feudalism in economics was achieved by economic means, not political, so the further development should go along the same lines. And out of feudalism two ways are open; they lead us either toward <em>industrial absolutism</em>, a <em>monocapitalistic</em> system based on trustification, or toward industrial republicanism based on joint-stock companies in which the masses at large hold shares.
But Marxism offers to reroute the march forward, to detour it and direct it along political highways. Instead of industrial feudalism that sprang up, that came into being industrially, commercially, financially, with its semi-independent trading houses and their associations and leagues, Marxism advocates the establishment of a <em>politico-economic absolutism</em>, a <em>politico-eco nomic autocracy,</em> a governmental economy, a <em>state mono economy</em>, a <em>political</em> economy living up to its name and placing all the emphasis upon the adjective POLI TICAL.
<quote>
“In this way, to avoid commercial absolutism, you would rush into administrative absolutism.” (P. J. Proudhon, System of Economic Contradictions, vol. I, p. 81, Boston, 1888.)
</quote>
“Commercial absolutism” is in the offing. The highly industrial and commercial countries are still in the feudal stage. Commercial absolutism can be avoided by directing the integrating, centripetal forces toward <em>commercial</em> and <em>industrial republicanism</em>. What Marxism offers is a case of usurpation, an attempt to put an end not to “anarchy” of production by introducting a “monarchy of production”, but to put an end to production as an autonomous economic concern, a special discipline, and by force and violence, through legislative measures, or civil military maneuvres, convert it into a political discipline, a political concern run and controlled by the state and its functionaries, the politicians of the proletarian brand, or the politico-economic organisateurs. Marxism aims not at combining and unifying our eco nomics by the application of economic means, following up the economic tendencies inherent in modern industry and commerce and letting them mature, attain to fruition, but it wants to subjugate it, conquer it by political means, dominate it, enslave it politically, destroy its home-rule and run it as an appanage of the state.
On this score Marxism is unequivocal, emphatic and outspoken.
*** 6. Marxism and the Labor Problem.
As regards the labor problem, the readjustment of the not all too wholesome and proper relationship existing between the capitalist and his laborer, or the operative and the organizer, Marxism is, to say it as mildly as possible, inarticulate and ambiguous. It is satisfied with the carrying out of puny reforms. It hardly goes beyond a juridical fetishism. It does not examine into the sociological essence of the antagonism. It confines itself to scratching the surface of the legal formulae, and is done with it. Concerning the internal problem Marxism is utterly ineffective. The replacement of the capitalist, the private owner, by the public “servant”, the organizer, to direct labor, to supervise it, makes a difference, as far as the laborer is concerned, and that judged purely subjectively-naively, of a legalistic character, but nowise of a sociological nature. And the objectively sociological difference constitutes a change not for the better for labor, but for the worse. And Marxism, looked upon from the angle of labor, does not deal, in the positive sense, with the kernel and meaty content of the social process, with the de-facto, namely, with the vertical division and distance that lies between labor and organization of labor, the gulf separating plain physiological labor from sociological effort spent in the very act of making labor more productive, but engages in sporting with the integument and husks of the de-jure. Marxism, concerning the internal problem, does not touch upon the sociological substance, but chases the law-shadows, thus beating around the bush of juristic categories, and overlooking the sociological root and cause of all internal “disharmonies”, to wit, the split of society into <em>organisateurs</em> and <em>organisees</em>.
Marxism, viewed from the labor standpoint, even when taken in good naive faith, is but a timid shifting of scenes, a petty reformism. It does not revolutionize the base, the mode of the interrelationship existing in our present society, but contents itself with offering superficial modifications. It tinkers with legal trappings. Marxism champions the abolition of private ownership, the discarding of the ruling class of proprietors, capitalists, and thus, intentionally, or rather subjectively unintentionally, it aims at enthroning another ruling class in their capacity of plenipotentiary politico-economic autocrats, political Czars of nationalized, usurped industry. Marxism alters the law-expression, the juridical status of the commanding class, but does by no means weaken, rather on the contrary, class-rule as such.
<quote>
“But every society, based upon the production of commodities, has this peculiarity : that the producers have lost control over their own social interrelations... No one knows whether his individual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his cost of production or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialized production.” (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, pp. 105-06.)
“Free competition which would be better named anarchical competition.” (Charles Fourier, Theory of Social Organization, p. 213, New York, 1870.)
When were there so many abuses, so much anarchy in the industrial world as now.” (Charles Fourier, Social Destinies, p. 143, Sociological series, no. 1, part II, New York, 1876.)
</quote>
Marxism has a clear-cut proposition, a ready-made-irrespective whether we agree with it or reject to the question of “anarchy”, as Engels prefers to design the state our industry is in, it offers a full blooded tyranny. But Marxism is entirely impotent, helpless when it comes to the solution of the inner problem, the readjustment of the constituent elements of the productive process, namely labor and organization of labor. Not only does it not try to answer this question, it ignores it, or rather does not suspect its very existence.
“Labor shall rule the world.”
What kind of labor, whether the toil, the sweat of the brow of the skilled or unskilled manual worker, or the strain and exertion of those who organize labor? On this point Marxism is non-committal, is reluctant to make its stand clear.
<quote>
“He (the worker) cannot become <em>en masse</em> sole owner and master of a scheme of things he did not make and is incapable of directing... The workers at a low level may be flattered by dreams of “class-conscious” mass dominion from which all sense of inferiority is banished, but they will remain dreams.” (H. G. Wells, The Open Conspiracy, pp. 92-93, New York, 1928.)
</quote>
The worker cannot become <em>en masse</em> the ruler of present society but he, who does rule labor <em>en masse</em> politically through the labor-parties and politico-eco nomically through the trade unions, is very eager to become the ruler, the master of economics and politics.
“Yet this is the ambition implicit in an exclusively ' labor ' movement.” (Ibid.)
This is the <em>explicit</em> ambition of those who “move” the “labor” movement... This is their ambition, but they will not say it explicitly. On this point they are either ambiguous or reticent
What makes the usually garrulous Marxism so taciturn? The fear of the proletariat, of the working class. It makes use of the toilers, of their numbers, energy and enthusiasm, it employs them for the rough and tough task of breaking up the existing system, and, consequently, it cannot afford to tell the laboring masses the whole truth about their situation and the Marxian aspirations.
*** 7. Communist Leadership.
Marxism, considered objectively, aims at the formation of a social aggregate, a privileged class of politico economic organisateurs.
<quote>
“Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labor arises a class freed from directly productive labor, which looks after the general affairs of society; the direction of labor, state business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law of division into classes. But this does not prevent this division into classes from being carried out by means of violence and robbery, trickery and fraud. It does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working class, from turning their social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses.” (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, pp. 130-31.)
</quote>
<em>Social leadership</em> tends toward “<em>intensified exploitation of the masses</em>”, the more so <em>Communist leadership</em>. At the light of this rule how easily one can grasp the full meaning of the <em>Communist</em> objective : <em>turning social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses</em>. And the milestones along the red road are calcimined so that one should without difficulty discern them and keep to the right course and proceed in the right direction along the historical highway of <em>rulership</em> that begins with modest, innocent and self-sacrificing leadership. They embark upon their career as labor-leaders. They will go the whole length of the way, to overt “intensified exploitation” of labor. For <em>leadership</em> and <em>exploitation</em> are the two extreme ends of the self same road.
And the whole history of mankind, from the view point of objective “scientific” Marxism, should be under stood as a preparatory process, a paving of the road for the advent of the new class, not of laborers, but of directors of labor.
<quote>
“The great division of labor between the masses discharging simple manual labor and the few privileged persons directing labor.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 207.)
</quote>
This is the realistic politico-economic content of the Marxian millennium, the splitting history into two sections of ante and post, before the emergence of the commanding type, and after. A class is subjective, and it cannot help seeing the march of historical events as reflected in the mirror of its own selfish interests.
*** 8. Marxism Objectively Considered.
<quote>
“The extension of enterprise and the increasing forms of production especially by intensification has tended rather to minimize more and more the value of individual capitalists and, consequently, has caused capital to become more and more Inhuman, disembodied, and to exercise the silly pranks of an occult agency as the individual is being more and more over shadowed by his wealth which constitutes his chief recommendation for the privileges he enjoys materially and even socially.” (Jacques Cohen, Social and Economic Values, p. 33, London, 1922.)
</quote>
Capital is objectified, and this is the reason why the state is being tempted to take hold of it, appropriate it, confiscate it, and discard the capitalist. The new class is different, its power and potence is intrinsic, not externalized and, therefore, absolutely inseparable from the personalities of its members, and, consequently, not subject, under any means, to expropriation. For the new class deals with an entity that stands under the sign of imperium and not dominium, it is a politico-economic class, not an economic occupational group. At the beginnings of history the organizing class appears in the form of a slave-owning corporation. Later on, it becomes a mere land-owning group. Then it is trans formed into a capital-owning class. In its next metamorphosis, the epoch-making occurrence of our time, it will grow to become a social type of organisateurs. This is a socially natural process. What Marxism-Communism is after is the distortion of the natural growth of organisateurship taking place to a certain extent autonomously on the plane of economics, by wrenching our economy out of its own sphere and transplanting it into the soil of political endeavor, and thus fusing the two species, the economic and the political, of the genus organisateur into one, and shape a titan ruling class, an hierarchisized, all-powerful monopolistically commanding group.
Marxism dwells at length on the topic of exploitation. It discourses about value and surplus-value, employing scientific formulae and terminology, going into a painstaking analysis of the capitalist mode of production, ostentatiously bent upon the difficult task of solving the problem of “exploitation”, cutting the Gordian knot of large-scale industry, whereas in reality it has focused its attention upon a matter of quite a different nature. What it wholeheartedly is in for is the elimination of competition, the eradication of the particularistic tendencies prevailing in the capitalist system, the banishing of personal initiative that stirs and ruffles the smooth surface of social economics. The cardinal, overshadowing all other, task of Marxism is the abolition of the separation of the factory, not unlike that of the church, from the state, a separation that splits the ruling class into two somewhat independent units, that some times, though very seldom, clash, but quite often do not see eye-to-eye about things, anyway, have a different psychology and a different, conditioned by their different positions, approach to social affairs. The realistic goal of Marxism is the introduction of a unified discipline, a rigid constitution that would put a stop to the “licentious”, semi-independent behavior not only of the magnates of industry, which is a minor issue, but of our whole industry as such. Marxism is the advocacy of the suppression of the autonomy of interindividual and interclass economy.
<quote>
“The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation now presents itself as an antagonism between the organization of production in the individual work shop and the anarchy of production in society generally.” (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 110.)
“All actual social life is part organized and part unorganized. Thus in a competitive industry, though it is without an organization as a whole the competitive units may be highly organized houses of business.” (L. T. Hobhouse, Social Development, p. 211, New York, 1924.)
“The social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual.” (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 126.)
</quote>
Who is able to carry out this “revolutionizing” plan? Who is called upon by the objective process of history to fulfil this mission? One answer can be given to this question : the type of politico-economic organisateurs, those who are possessed of a special talent for this kind of social activity. They and only they will find here an application for their capacities. The capitalist proprietor, being attached to economics exclusively, is not, and cannot become, a highly qualified politico-eco nomic organisateur, for in his person he contains two types in one, he is proprietor and organisateur on a small economic scale, and the very essence of capitalism is the holding apart the two spheres of social endeavors, economy and administration of state affairs. Only Marxism Communism when materialized in the form of a fusion of economics and statesmanship will widely open the portals of opportunity for the glorious entrance of the special variety of the new type of organisateurs and offer it a vast field of activity where it could exhibit in full, without restraints, its capabilities and qualities, for it would need to share its organisatory monopoly with no other independent social formation. In the previous historical stages of development the organisateur was obscured by the proprietor, the owner of slave, soil or capital. He could not unfold, to full capacity, his powers and endowments so long as he was basically a particularist, a separatist. The petty firm, the single concern was of too narrow a scope and it cramped his grand style, the property conditions offered very little playroom, they hemmed him in on all sides and restricted his possibilities.
<quote>
“…Beneficial ownership is centrifugal, tending to divide and subdivide, to split into ever smaller units and to pass freely from hand to hand.” (Adolfe A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, The Modern Corporation, p. 9, New York, 1933.)
</quote>
Competition, warfare raging between firm and firm is the greatest obstacle to organization, and the economic remedy for it is trustification.
<quote>
“…The stock company business, which represents an abolition of capitalist private industry on the basis of the capitalist private industry, on the basis of the capitalist system itself and destroys private industry in proportion as it expands and seizes new spheres of production.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, p. 519, Chicago, 1909.)
</quote>
The trust, the cartel, the combine are not destructive, but reconstructive. Growth is not decay. It is the introduction of organisateurship of a purely economic character to supplement proprietorship, but not to annihilate it. This is the economic answer to the problem of systematization of interindividual and interclass economy. This is but the first timid step, but it is made in the right direction and carried out by the proper means, by economic means. Trustification is some kind of an industrial feudalism, following, in a natural way, upon the strictly “individualistic” small-scale financing of privatism-capitalism. It is a modification, an enlargement, of partnership, an institution that begins with two individuals but which has the capacity for growth, while holding to its own sphere of economics and its own factors of development, and can, eventually, encompass a whole industry with all its participants as well as a sum of industries with their full cadres of direct and indirect operators.
The politico-economic variety of the organisateur type being specialized in political intrigue and activities militating against the purely economic organisateur-type, elaborates its doctrine called Marxism. It pleads, with all the cogent vigor of its arguments, for concentration, centralization of industry, achieved by purely political means, which would terminate the fight of the proprietors among themselves : The prerequisite condition for the coming domination of the politico-economic variety of the organisateur-type is an economy submerged in politics and run as a governmental concern on a national scale.
*** 9. Marxism And The Most Advanced Class.
<quote>
“Marxism claims its general validity precisely for the reason that it is the theoretical expression of the most advanced class, whose ' needs ' of knowledge are far more audacious than those of the conservative and, therefore, narrow-minded mode of thought of the ruling classes in capitalist society.” (Nikolai Bukharin, The Economic Theory of the Leisure Classes, p. 8, New York, 1927.)
</quote>
Marxism is the “theoretical expression of the most advanced class”, but not of the working class, a class, that is basically, in as much as it is “class-conscious” and guards and is jealous of its own class interests and objectives, more “conservative”, less advanced than the bourgeoisie. Marxism is the ideology of a new, emerging formation, a variety of the oranisateur-type, a class of the future. It has no past of its own, in so far as its own variation is concerned, and it cannot be “conservative”. It is “radical” to the very limit, for it has nothing to lose and everything to gain, a world of economics and politics to conquer. And it, surely, is “audacious”, venturesome, for it is young and hungry for power and domination.
<quote>
“’Nothing in society shall belong in singular property to anyone ', says the first article of this code (Code de la Nature by Morelly). ' Property is destestable, and whosoever shall attempt to re-establish it, shall be shut up for life, as a maniac or an enemy of mankind. Every citizen is to be supported, maintained, and employed at the public expense”, says article II... Such a book... appeared in 1755 …” (Alexis de Tocqueville, France Before the Revolution of 1789 tr. by Henry Beeve, p. 301, London, 1856.)
“Private property is the demon which arises from the absurd belief, opposed to all facts, that man forms himself, and not God and society. Truth and honesty or goodness and happiness, could never exist with the injustice and cruelty of private property.” (Robert Owen, The Inauguration of the Millennium, p. v., London, 1855.)
“With private property there can be no union of mind, and feeling such as the Millennial State requires.” (Ibid. p. vi.)
”No one having a knowledge of human nature will expect truth, honesty, goodness, or common sense, under a system based on a principle leading to individual responsibility and to the practice of private property.” (Ibid. p. viii.)
“Property, in short, is the principle of anarchy and the enemy of society. It must conspire against an ordered economic plan, nor can it tolerate an authoritative organization of international life.” (Henry Noel Brailsford, Property or Peace, p. 249, New York, 1934.)
</quote>
Property is the enemy of mankind and society, for who is humanity and who is society, if not the politico economic organisateur? The ruling class is always trying its best to identify itself with the totality of society. Property must conspire against a political plan trying to usurp the economic functions of production and distribution. Property opposes usurpation and imposition, for property is the rock upon which the independence of the individual is built. But property does not “conspire against an ordered economic plan” if the latter is introduced by economic means.
In order that the politico-economic national scale organisateur should live and thrive, the class of proprietors, small scale and medium-size economic organisateurs, must die and thus make room for the new arrivals. And this attempt at elaborating an anti-property ideology and striving to turn it into practice, organizing a mass movement round it, and with the help of the aroused mobs remove by force and violence the class of proprietors under the pretext that property, being the root of wealth, of earthly acquisitions, is, at the same time and because of it, the source of all evil, was repeated many a time during the length of recorded history. There is not much news value about it.
<quote>
“Neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold. And laid them down at the apostles ' feet : and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. And Josef, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas... a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles ' feet.” (Acts, IV, 34-37.)
“Nature poured out all things in common to all men; for so God commanded the whole stock of things to be produced, that men should have a general supply of sustenance and should hold the earth as a general seat.” (St. Ambrose, De Off. Lib. I, c. 28.)
“Gratian says that by the law of nature all things are the common property of all men; and that this principle was not only followed in the primitive Church of Jerusalem, but was also taught by the philosophers... Gratian cites an important passage from a spurious letter of St. Clement in the pseudo Isidorian collection, in which it is stated that the use of all things in the world ought to be common to all men, but through iniquity it has come about that men claim things as their private possessions (Gratian, ' Decretum ' C.XII, Q.I., c.2) and the writer refers to Plato and to the example of the Apostles and their disciples.” (R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle, History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, vol. II, pp. 136-37.)
“The traces of common ownership which are also found in the early stages of the new religion can be ascribed to the solidarity of a proscribed sect rather than to real equalitarian ideas.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 120.)
</quote>
The real reason of it is the intention of the political organisateurs to do away with the independence of the individual and his property serving him as protection against encroaches.
A strong frontal attack on the institution of property was led by the Christian Church in its primitive existence. Being young, vigorous, and not realizing, as the case is always with youth, its own limitations, it desired to usurp all economic activities, to control them, to “organize” them on the basis of pseudo-religious concepts. These attacks were repeated at long intervals, chiefly during transition periods, when the Church imagined itself rejuvenated and felt an influx of inspiration and strength as a throwback to its apostolic simplicity and youthfulness.
The private owner and the nascent organisateur fight a desperate battle in the bosom of the modern capitalist. The owner demands that the factory, plant, estate, concern be his own. The organisateur hankers for an amalgamation of many firms into one, though decidedly not his own. The trust is an outgrowth of this inner battle. It came into existence by way of a synthesis, of a reconciliation of two principles. Marxism makes one step farther, which is a misstep, since it is a side-step, and in another direction. Marxism would take the economic train off the industrial rails and propel it along political lines. Marxism insists upon the ousting of the proprietor-class. But the doing away with the property-class means, willingly or unwillingly, the ushering in of a new ruling class, a new type of politico-economic organisateurs. For classes cannot be done away with, they must be substituted.
The religiously robed political organisateur, in the past, working as a Christian in the interests of his totalitarian Church, bitterly opposed its rival institution, private property, and sought, with all means at his disposal, to annihilate this competitor. He did it with no less fervor, insistence and quasi-idealism than his colleague across many ages, the scientifically garbed politico-economic organisateur of our own time, the Marxian, who is trying his best to abolish this inimical institution in the interests of the proletarian, totalitarian all the same, though differently named, – state. And as the pseudo-religious attack on private property, the only refuge and standby of the individual man, the citadel of his independence, was repulsed by sane and sound humanity, so now, we hope, will the pseudo-scientific onslaught on this universal and civilizational institution be repelled with the same determination and success.
** II. COMMUNISM AND EXPLOITATION
*** 1. The Organisateurs as “Exploiters”.
How does Marxism intend to solve the problem of exploitation? How does it propose to redress this wrong existing in our economic life?
Marxism assures us that it is going to eliminate the evil of exploitation by a plain device, namely, the socialization of the means of production.
Let us stop for a while to consider, at some length, the Marxian plan.
Our comparatively small-scale industry, the fragmentary, helter skelter economic enterprise, has made imperative for its proper functioning, for a certain period of time at least, the segregation of a whole class of industrial organisateurs, like manufacturers, promoters, managers, superintendents, financiers, etc.
The politically socialized, nationalized large-scale production will, all the more, necessitate, the calling into life and maintaining a whole host of politico-economic organisateurs without whose directorship, supervision, the process of production would not run smoothly, regularly. And if we accept the theory of exploitation in its dogmatically unqualified interpretation as meaning the spoliation of the direct producers effected by the indirect producers, under Communism this new class of functionaries-organisateurs will, certainly, exploit the laborers engaged in the industries supervised and managed by the higherups, the bureaucratic organisateurs. According to the Marxian concept, they will live off the workers.
<quote>
“The transmission of power from one privileged class to another would take place, and... the mass of producers would merely change masters. These new masters... would make more flowery speeches than the capitalists, but there is every evidence that they would be much harder and much more insolent than their predecessors.” (George Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 202, New York, Huebsche pub.)
</quote>
So long as there is in existence a directing class and direction is synonymous with exploitation, the directing class will, surely, exploit the directed class, which means exercise its functions and receive remuneration, in one form or another, for it. Who is going to stop them? What considerations can prevail against this most natural mode of interrelations existing between the higher and the lower strata from times immemorial? Certainly not the disinterestedness, unselfishness of the commanding class. Classes, no matter which, are essentially egotistic, cannot help being self-seekers. No moral law is written for them. And if it were written, it would not be morally binding anyway, for who could have enforced the moral prescription through purely psychological means, like persuasion, pressure of environ mental approval, crystallized class-opinion, besides the rulers themselves, and this would be the most unnatural thing for them to do.
<quote>
“Individuals can consider ethical requirements, they have consciences, but societies have none. They overfall their victims like avalanches with irresistible destroying power. All societies, large and small, retain the character of wild hordes in considering every means good which succeeds.” (Ludwig Gumplovicz, The Outline of Sociology, p. 146, Philadelphia, 1899.)
</quote>
Would it not be fatally easy for them, without altering economic structure reintroduce the old inequalities of wealth? What motive would they have for not doing so? What motive is possible except idealism, love of mankind, non-economic motives of the sort Bolsheviks decry... If human nature is what Marxians assert it to be, why should the rulers neglect the opportunities of selfish advantage? It is sheer nonsense to pretend that the rulers... when they have become accustomed to power, retain the proletarian psychology, and feel that their class-interest is the same as that of the ordinary working man.” (Bertrand Russel, Bolshevism, Practice and Theory, pp. 158-59, New York, 1920.)
The organizing classes exploit the organized ones, they have done it from the beginning of history, and who can put an end to this practice now, after the social revolution has been achieved, a revolution the sole mission of which is the inauguration, installation, or, rather, the solidification of a new politico-economic master-class? Their scruples, their moral susceptibilities acquired and developed in the period of the revolution and civil war, a time hardly opportune for the cultivation of noble, humanitarian feelings? Will ethical factors, usually weak and insufficient, proverbially so, prove all of a sudden effectual enough to serve as a curb for the cormorant appetites of the upstarts, of the class militarists, and force them to abstain from fleecing the innocent sheep and lambs of labor? The more so that the latter ordinarily come around bleating and clamoring for this very thing, explicitly begging to be sheared, to be relieved from excess income... The masses always meet and greet a new master class as their friend, proclaiming it to be their benefactor. They kick out the old ruling class after it has grown somewhat senile and unable to attend to its business of exploitation. Then, never before, they brand it, under the instigation of emerging rulers, as a bunch of blood-suckers, exploiters, robbers.[9] * And the new rulers who rush in, riding on the tidal waves of the victorious revolution will, no doubt, harness the gullible and beguiled laborers, hitch them to their gilt chariot of luxury and comfort.
*** 2. Profit Unessential For “Exploitation”.
“But is not the profit-system bound to be abolished on the next day of the successful social revolution? and where there is no profit-making, but production for use, there can be no exploitation” – will argue the not over-sophisticated Communist.
In all earnestness and truth, the last assertion, though accepted by all social naivists for sound reasoning, is utterly erroneous.
The element of profit was, certainly, non-extant in the self-contained and self-sufficient estate-household of the medieval Baron. He did not sell the produce of his land, he did not traffic in the products of his serf artisans, consequently, he could not derive any profit, commercially speaking, from the labor of his retainers, and production, under those special circumstances, was, certainly, for use. The question was but hinging on a trifle, who was going to be the <em>user</em>? The phenomenon of exploitation was there in its full bloom, and, we safely dare say, in no lesser degree than under the profit-making, or price-system. Production for use is no guarantee against exploitation, unless it is meant as “production for the exclusive use of the direct producers”. But, then, in this formulation, it would become a para phrase of the absurd demand that the “whole product” belong to the worker, which is an utter impossibility for the plain reason that the “product” in its entirety is neither produced by the single worker, nor can his share in the product be established with any precision. The more so that the workers, under modern complicated conditions, do not work unless they are directed. So that “exploitation” did not begin with “profit” and, naturally, it could not be removed with the abolition of the latter. These two categories are not indissolubly bound together. “Exploitation” under capitalism is realized under the historical form, a form which is not essential, does have mighty little bearing on the contents, of “profit”. Without “profits” exploitation may rise higher than its rate is with “profits”.
<quote>
“Under a natural economy in a feudal structure we dis cover maintenance of king and feudal superiors out of the product of labor upon the land, surplus to what is requisite for the maintenance of laborers, this surplus accruing to them by feudal right.” (R. T. Evans, Aspects of the Study of Society, p. 130, New York, 1923.)
“But by kings, nobles, and ecclesiastical bodies, this sur plus was either consumed in luxury or accumulated as treasure, and was therefore not available to be used in organizing business for the making of profit.” (Ibid. p. 131.)
“In most of the German States, as late as 1788, a peasant could not quit his domain... To the service of that master a large portion of his time was due. Labor-rents (corvees) existed to the full extent, and absorbed in some of these countries three days in the week. The peasant rebuilt and repaired the mansion of his lord... drove his carriage, and went on his errands. Several years of the peasant's early life were spent in the domestic service of the manor-house.” (Alexis de Tocqueville, France Before the Revolution of 1789, tr. by Henry Beeve, p. 39, London, 1856.)
</quote>
Were the slaves of the ancient world or the slaves and serfs of the Middle Ages not exploited, or exploited to a smaller degree than the modern proletarians only because their masters were, unlike the capitalists, no profiteering speculator - tightwads, but rather splurgy wastrels?
*** 3. "Exploitation " Not Conditioned By Ownership .
<quote>
"Capital has not invented surplus - labor. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the laborer free or not free must add to the working time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production, whether this proprietor be the Athenian Kalos Kagathos, Etruscan Theocrat, Civis Romanus, Norman Baron, American slave-owner, modern landlord or capitalist." (Karl Marx, Capital, vol . I , p . 260.)
</quote>
"Exploitation" not being invented, brought into being, by capitalism, but inherited, so to say, by it, taken over from its predecessor - systems and modified, would not end its existence with the expiration of capital, but be handed over by capitalism, for further modification, to its successor - systems. The phenomenon of "exploitation” is not necessarily connected with "ownership" concerning the means of production. This connection, manifested under the capitalist system and even under the feudal system, is not logically, economically a sine qua non of the existence of "exploitation". If the means of production are owned by the community as a whole, but this community is divided into classes, like that pictured by Plato in his Communistic Republic, then the higherups, the directors of the productive process, will, of necessity, human nature taken for what it is, exploit the direct, the directed, participants of the productive processes. Though, not being private owners of the means of production, they are, certainly, not supposed to sell the products produced by the laborers working under their director ship, and, of course, they will, by no means, be able to make “profits” out of the exchange transaction that may never, if the distribution within the political unit is more or less organized, take place altogether. the element of “exploitation” will be there, nevertheless, if the directors, from the Marxian standpoint considered as non-producers, as idlers, will share in the products, and get, naturally, a bigger share than the plain worker producers or distributors. For the directors will direct and supervise not only the <em>process of production</em>, but the <em>process of distribution</em> as well. Politically organized, centralized, unified production will, of necessity, be accompanied by centralized, unified distribution. So that the directing class having no share in the process of <em>direct production</em>, neither in the process of <em>direct distribution</em>, will have the <em>largest share</em> in <em>direct consumption</em>. For the <em>distributors</em>, no less than the <em>producers</em> will be under its direction, sway and control, and no class is liable to underestimate its own services and not remunerate itself generously, if it has the power to do so, if it occupies a commanding position. And this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the “profit-system” as such, or with ownership rights to the means of production.
The more so that according to Marxian concepts the stranglenoose of “exploitation” has a very remote, if any, relation to the traffic shuttle running through the transactions of buying and selling.
*** 4. "Exploitation” Unified.
<quote>
“Marx says expressly that merchants ' profit also forms a part of surplus value, and on the assumption made this is only possible when the manufacturer sells his product to the merchant below its value, and thus relinquishes to him a part of his booty.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 242.)
</quote>
“Exploitation”, to the Marxian understanding, is realized in the very process of production, and not in the manipulations of commodities-exchange. Commerce, barter, are a case for themselves, they get a rake-off. Not the squeezing, the “robbing”, only the sharing of the “booty” gotten in the process of production, a relinquishing of a part of the spoils, is done here, in the field of exchange, of commerce. For their go-between services, useless, nay, harmful operations unqualifiedly condemned by the Marxian dogma, the wholesalers as well as the retailers see their way how to squeeze out some excess remuneration. The “squeezing” is done not on the bled white workers who have nothing left to them above their bare means of subsistence, but on the arch fiend, the first appropriator of surplus-value, the accursed manufacturer.
<quote>
“The capitalist who produces surplus-value, i. e., who extracts unpaid labor directly from the laborers, and fixes it in commodities is, indeed, the first appropriator, but by no means the ultimate owner, of this surplus-value. He has to share it with capitalists who fulfill other functions in the com plex of social production, with land-owners, etc. Surplus-value, therefore, splits up into various parts. Its payments fall to various categories of persons, and take various forms, independent the one of the other, such as profit, interest, merchants ' profit, rent, etc.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, pp. 618-19.)
</quote>
Surplus-value is the bosom wherefrom “exploitation” sucks its nourishment. The real profits are pro cured not in the marts, but in the plants that under Communism will be unified, organized on a national scale, so that there will be much greater possibilities and much easier facilities for “exploitation”. The appropriated surplus-value will not be shared with any one situated outside the commanding class. Since the new master-class, like production and distribution, will be unified, cemented upon a strict principle of hierarchy.
So that “its payments” will not “fall to various categories of persons and take various forms, independent the one of the other, such as profit, interest, merchants ' profit, rent, etc.” Surplus-value appropriation, being connected with industry, with economic endeavors, with political services, will be unified, centralized and intensified to its highest degree. The commanding class will “relinquish” no “part of his booty” but hold it wholly to itself. Unified production, unified distribution will have as its result unified “exploitation”, a surplus-value realized on national scale and appropriated by a unified directing class. Marx enumerated in the above quoted passage a whole host of exploiters, “the Athenian Kalos Kagathos, Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus, Norman Baron, American slave-owner, modern landlord or capitalist”, we would add but one more exploiter, and that is the Russian Communist Commissar. This would complete his list and make it look more up-to-date.
“This (surplus value)... is a value newly created by the laborer during the process of production materialized labor. But it does not cost the owner of the entire product, the capitalist, anything. This circumstance permits the capital ist to consume the surplus-value entirely as his revenue, unless he has to give up some portions of it to other claimants This same circumstance was also the compelling motive which induced the capitalist to engage in the first place in the manufacture of commodities.
But neither his original benevolent intention of securing some surplus-value, nor its subsequent expenditure as revenue, by him or others, affect the surplus-value as such. They do not impair the fact that it is coagulated, unpaid labor.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. II, p. 448, Chicago, 1915.)
The only difference between Communism and capitalism concerning the appropriation of the surplus value created, according to Marx, “by the laborer during the process of production”, would consist therein : 1) the capitalist class calls itself “owner of the entire pro duct,” the Commissar-class would never describe itself as owner of the surplus-value product; 2) the capitalist class in spite of its claimed ownership “give up some portions of it to other claimants,” the Commissar-class, on the contrary, disclaiming all ownership rights would give up no portions thereof but appropriate it completely as well-deserved remuneration for its organisatory labors, and “consume the surplus-value entirely.” “The subsequent expenditure “of surplus-value does not affect “the susplus-value as such.” Ownership has nothing to do with surplus-value appropriation, or, rather, consumption. Sur plus-value came ages before capitalism and it, no doubt, would linger ages after capitalism, in the limited sense of the world, has been long gone. All it is necessary for surplus-value to materialize and be turned into a phenomenon of “exploitation” is that the laborer work hard or skillful enough, be productive enough to produce a sur plus above that he consumes. In other words, he should be frugal enough, or rather made frugal by a commanding class. These two conditions, being one, namely, to produce over and above the average mass-standard of living and consume beneath it, these circumstances that make for the existence of a directing class that forces the laborer to produce more than he consumes, are present under Communism. The name of the directing class, the mode of production, the methods it applies in enforcing its rule, in controlling labor, are not essential. What is essential is this, that the productivity of the masses definitely outrun their consumptivity. And this is easy of achievement when there is a controlling class that takes care of these two processes. It forces labor to be operative, and it forces it to abstain from too much con suming. All other things do not matter, “they do not impair the fact that it is coagulated, unpaid labor”, unpaid labor means labor that produces more than it consumes in the process of its materialization, and the”surplus”is consumed by a higher class, by a command ing group standing above labor and directing its operations.
*** 5. Imposed Overproduction And Underconsumption
“Exploitation” is a result of the plain fact that the capitalist, or the commissar, or the ruler, offers to the laborer less than the latter earns, or produces under the given circumstances. There is a part of labor that is not paid for, not recompensed with the products of its own making, that the capitalist, or some one else occupying a similar position of command, of control of labor, gets gratuitously, without a direct participation in the process of production in which those very products were produced. Wages constitute part of the products given back to the laborer in compensation for his efforts in order to keep him in a fit condition to continue his work. The surplus is the resultant of additional energy spent in the productive process, the extra labor-hours put in by the worker above his salary, or its equivalent in pro ducts consumed by him and his family. And this residue, or surplus, which remains after wages have been subtracted, is not divided, as should be done, among the producers, the legitimate proprietors, the entitled consumers, thereof, but appropriated by the capitalists, or by some other class that preceded the capitalists historically or would succeed them historically. The laborers produce more, they are made, commanded to produce more than they are given a chance, or, rather, allowed by their bosses, of an economic or political character, to consume. The part a commanding class plays, or, rather, the function it fulfills, is a double one. It forces, in one way or another, either economically or juridically politically, or plainly physically, the laborer to produce and forces him to abstain from consuming too much. While naturally the “laborer” would not produce but would rather like to consume. The business of a commanding class is to bring about a state of overproduction, meaning to drive the masses of laborers to produce more than they need, and an underconsumption, meaning to keep them in check so that they do not consume all they were instrumental, in a direct way, in producing. And as their “overproduction” is imposed upon them, so is their “underconsumption”. The wages, or their equivalent in products, in items of consumption, of the laborers are, as a rule, niggardly doled out to them. They run pretty close, according to the Marxian concept, to the margin of starvation. The laborers receive a poor allowance which enables them to keep body and soul together, to stave off hunger, to maintain a small family. Nothing more.
<quote>
“What, then, is the value of laboring power?
“Like that of every other commodity, its value is determined by the quantity of labor necessary to produce it. The laboring power of a man exists only in his living individuality. A certain mass of necessaries must be consumed by a man to grow up and maintain his life. But the man, like the machine, will wear out, and must be replaced by another man. Beside the mass of necessaries required for his own maintenance, he wants another amount of necessaries to bring up a certain quota of children that are to replace him on the labor market and to perpetuate the race of laborers After what has been said, it will be seen that the value of laboring power is determined by <em>the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate the laboring power.”</em> (Karl Marx, Value, Price, and Profit, Essentials of Marx, pp. 145-46.)
</quote>
*** 6. Intensification Of “Exploitation”.
The workers forge wealth, amass fortunes, but not for themselves, they do not get more than a subsistence minimum, they slave and enrich their employers, their exploiters, who appear at different historical epochs under different disguises. Now, “exploitation” that is as old as history, and has changed forms with every new era, new mode of production, but has never as yet been eliminated, why shall it perish with the collapse of capitalism? Why shall it expire on the same day that the capitalist breathes his last? In other words, where is the guarantee that “exploitation” that underwent many modifications, but survived all structural changes effected in our economics, is going to be abolished this time with the ushering in of Communism? Why should it not adapt itself to the new circumstances? Systems came and systems went, but “exploitation” stood its ground all the time, through the whole length of recorded history, why should it fall this time with the downfall of capitalism? If it was vigorous and vital and adaptable enough to survive the collapse of ancient civilization, slavery, and after that, the abolition of serfdom, why could it not survive the system of hiredom and continue existing and flourishing, thriving better than hitherto, under the new system called Communism? Does Marxism pledge the elimination of “exploitation”, and if it pledges, does it intend to live up to its pledge?
<quote>
“And then (under Socialism), no longer will the profit taker, the despoiler of labor-the appropriator of surplus value stand legally entrenched between the working people and the fruits of the soil.” (Ward H. Mills, Evolution of Society, p. 225.)
“Socialism is the political movement of the working class which aims to abolish exploitation by means of the collective ownership and democratic management of the basic instruments of production and distribution.” (Jessie Wallace Hughan, What is Socialism? p. ii, New York, 1928.)
</quote>
To our mind, the very reverse will happen. Social ism-Communism would lay down the most solid foundations upon which class-domination and, consequently, class-exploitation would erect its skyscrapers. For it makes the existence of an upper class a sine qua non for the very functioning of a unified, centralized industry. And if Capitalism is branded by the Marxist Leninists as an economic system that is based on exploitation of the producers by their employers, Communism should be stigmatized as a politico-economic system founded upon the intensification of exploitation of the producers, the laborers, by their “political employers”, the governmental functionaries who usurped the role and privileges, in addition to their bureaucratic commanding positions, of the captains of industry.
An industry <em>socialized</em>, according to the Marxian plan and program, is an industry <em>politicalized, statisized,</em> organized politically, upon the principle of <em>service</em>, coming mighty near <em>servitude</em> with its elimination of private ownership, on a national scale. Thus the various branches of the hitherto independent productive enter prises are brought together, by political compulsion, force and violence, anti-economic factors, under one head. They are incorporated, in an unnatural, unindustrial way, unlike the process of transformation asserting itself in the transition from small handicraft to manufacture that was carried out by economic forces and means, into one complex-unit that becomes a political concern operated by political means. Such a mammoth industry submerged in politics would require, for its proper functioning, a whole caste of highly qualified “virtuosos”, a whole host of politico-economic captains. It would demand the fusion of two ruling classes, the economic directors and the political directors, into one politico-economically directing class. And its regime would mark the height of tyrannical class-rule.
The plain worker is hardly developed enough to cope even with the problems placed before him by the small workshop, the miniature plant of the capitalist system. Under the new puzzling conditions called forth by the ramified net of colossalized works and complicated processes of production and distribution, the rank and file will lose their bearings altogether. They will be utterly bewildered and entirely helpless. The common laborer will be in constant need of a nurse-class, tutor-class and naturally be absolutely disregarded, ordered about, tyrannized, by the expert organisateurs, men of special training, endowed with unusual capacities for handling the gigantic apparata of politicalized, incorrectly called socialized, economics.
*** 7. Bukharin On “Exploitation”.
<quote>
“This thought (of Socialist exploitation) is wrong from start to finish It will be a matter of indifference to a socialist society whether labor is applied to the direct production of articles of consumption or to some ' more remote purpose ', since labor in such a society is performed according to an economic plan drawn up in advance, and the various categories of labor are considered as parts of a general social labor, all of which is necessary for an uninterrupted progress, reproduction and consumption. Just as the products of the units of various remoteness are being consumed uninterruptedly and simultaneously so the processes of labor, however different their goals, also proceed with the same quality of continuousness and simultaneity. All the parts of the general social labor are fused in a unified indivisible whole, in which only one sector is of importance in determining the share of each member. namely, the amount of labor put in.” (N. Bukharin, The Economic Theory of the Leisure Classes, p. 177, New York, 1927.)
</quote>
Bukharin speaking of labor under Communism obliterates quite arbitrarily, and, certainly, unscientific ally, all distinctions existing between imitative, repetitive muscular or brain work and creative flashes, ingenuity effort, origination strain. He recognizes only quantitative differences, “the amount of labor put in”. Thus quality is gone overboard which is, of course, absurd, for no society can allow itself to ignore quality as such. But even so quantity stays with us under the wonder working system of Communism. “One factor is important in determining the share of each member namely, the amount of labor put in”. Now, if the “amount” amounts to so much that it is playing a paramount part in future society, in the Communist commonwealth, there must be some one whose office it is to measure that “amount”. And now the question arises as to the labor spent in the most important, in fact, the only important act upon which the whole Communist economy hinges, namely, that of measuring labor.
<quote>
“The regulation of the labor-time and the distribution of the social labor among the various groups of production, also the keeping of accounts with this, become more essential than ever.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, p. 992.)
</quote>
That kind of highly qualified labor which is to render decisions concerning the total and individual quantity of labor, assign quotas, allotments, that sort of labor will of necessity be of a higher quality than ordinary labor, if it be true that “quantity”, “amount” will occupy the highly exclusive position consigned to it by Bukharin. As an Hegelian, every Marxian must be an Hegelian, Bukharin, surely, knows that “quantity” passes into “quality”. In our case, the measuring of quantity would give birth to a new quality of labor. This would be a stunt pulled by “dialectics”. And as we have already discovered a new “quality”, we may rest assured that quantity will not be decisive any longer, for it plays its grand part only among equals, and it is out of place where qualitative differences are to be found. Plain labor and labor measuring labor will not be measured by the same yardstick or weighed on the same scales, and, consequently, will not be remunerated equally.
<quote>
“Labor in such a society is performed”, informs or, rather, enlightens us the quoted author,” according to an economic plan drawn up in advance”. This point is of the utmost significance. There must be a plan and the plan must be drawn up in advance. All right! But, again, some one will have to go to the trouble of drawing up the plan. The plan, not being automotive, will not, even under Communism, draw itself up of its own free accord. Some one will have to work it out. And that labor involved in drawing up the plan and the following labor spent in supervision, in seeing to it that the plan drawn be executed according to its blue prints, will never be equal in its quality, in its significance, in its bearing upon the whole make-up of nationally politicalized economy, to ordinary skilled or unskilled labor applied in the direct production of articles of consumption or of “some more remote purpose”. For the latter are dependent on the former, they must materialize them selves in accord with its dictates, they are subordinated to it in the very nature of things, and therefore cannot help being “inferior”. And this “inferiority” of theirs must keep the workers, the performers of these inferior duties or tasks in an inferior position economically, politically, sociologically. In other words, they must be “exploited” by their superiors. Bukharin overlooked the most obvious truth that behind each national eco nomic plan must be standing a “planner” or, rather, a class of “planners”. And planners as a class, being busy planning out not only the quantity of labor and quality of it needed for the given commonwealth but the positions of the laborers and their categories within the framework of the planned economy and planned community, will not place themselves, unless it be a class of secular saints, idealists, holy men, a thing existing only in social messianic literature,-on one plane with the plain laborers to whom they assign their places and niches. Such an act of placing the “planner”, in other words, the “placer”, on one level with those for whom the plan is made, and places assigned, is contrary to common sense and sound, realistic policy, and would be militating against national economy.
“All the parts of the general social labor are fused in a unified indivisible whole”. This is the very quint essence of Communism. No gainsaying. But we should realize that the various parts of labor are not possessed of an inherent quality that drives them toward fusion in an irresistible spontaneous way. Some one will have to do the “fusing” and “unifying” of labor. And these “fusers” and “unifiers” will constitute a privileged group under Communism, and they will do all the “exploiting”. Only those who are blinded either by social-religious fanaticism, the worst kind of obscurantism, or are biased by class-egotism, themselves aiming to be incorporated into the new emerging class, the monopolists of economic and political and cultural activities, do not see the self-evident truth of it.
</quote>
*** 8. Lenin On “Exploitation”
<quote>
“The exploitation of one man by many, will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize as private property the means of production, the factories, machines, land and so on.” (Nikolai Lenin, State and Revolution, p. 197, New York, 1929.)
“The exploitation of one by many will have become impossible under socialism-communism, assures us Lenin showing by this very statement of his that he fell a “theoretical” victim of Commissar-class-egotism. Why will it be impossible? "Because it will be impossible to seize as private property the means of production, the factories, machines, land and so on.” First, though this is not essential, “exploitation” is not a case of “one by many”, but of “many by one”. On rare occasions it would ever pay the “many” to combine in order to exploit the “one”. The yield of surplus-value created by “one” would hardly be enough to go round and keep the “many” satisfied. Exploitation is rather a case of “many” being taken advantage of by “one” or more exactly by “few”.
“Exploitation of the many by the few.” (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 45.)
</quote>
The exploited outnumber the exploiters in our times, and the same outnumbering, though not in the same proportion, existed in the Middle Ages and antiquity. Secondly, and this is basic, “exploitation” in general, not the modification thereof effected under capitalism, has nothing, essentially, to do with private ownership of the means of production.
The feudal barons exploiting their serfs were no private owners of the estates the serfs tilled, cultivated. The land as far as ownership rights were concerned belonged to the Crown. The landlords were merely land-holders, fief-holders. True, it is no easy task to unravel the property entanglements of that time, and it is quite difficult to define with precision the exact meaning and contents of the legalistic category and formula of land-tenure under feudalism. Anyway, the nobleman under feudalism was by no means a landowner in the modern sense of the word. And yet this was not in his way when he came to exploit his dependents. No system will stop functioning because of lack of a juridical norm to clothe its actualities in.
History offers us a brilliantly striking example by which to prove conclusively that private ownership and exploitation are not connected, and that the absence of private property rights to the means of production is not only no obstacle to exploitation, but, on the very contrary, is a facility, if not an outright encouragement. And that is the Catholic Church which was “holding fully one third of the soil of the Catholic world”. (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 24.)
The Catholic Church, no less than the Marxian Communist of our present time, was opposed to private ownership of the means of production, or, rather, of wealth, of land, for this terminology is quite a bit too modern to suit the Church of the Middle Ages.
<quote>
“The earth is common to all and therefore produces its fruits for the common use of all.” (Gregory I, Regulae Pastoralis Liber, pars III, admonitio 22.)
“God's will was that the possession of the earth and enjoyment of its fruits should be common to all, but avarice has controlled the distribution of the rights of possession.” (Ambrose, PS. CXVIII, sermo VIII, No. 22.)
“For one to use his property only for himself is to rob the poor of it, that is, to play the robber with the property of another, and subject himself to all the penalties which threaten him who steals. What thou mayest keep for thyself is that which is really necessary, the rest belongs to the poor. It is his property not thine.
The blessings dwelt among them, because none suffered want... All turn what they have into a common treasury. No one would have to worry, neither rich nor poor. How much money would come together?... If this has been such a brilliant success among two to five thousand (the early Chris tians) so that none suffered want, how much better would it work with a great multitude? Division leads to waste, but con centration brings about saving on that which exists. This is the way they live in convents now and so lived the Saints.” (St. Chrysosto, Bibliothek der Kirchenvaeter, vol. 19, pp. 27-52.)
“God twice gave us the earth as a <em>common stocke and patrimony</em> to live on, after the Creation and after the Deluge, act. XVII, 26. Men then lived at ease enough, feeding only on herbes and those things which nature prepared for them, without their labour: And this state of Community might have lasted still, if we had but two qualities which were proper to those times, Charity and Simplicity.” (Ascham, Of the Confusions and evolutions of Governments, p. 8, London, 1649.)
"... He who byes, and he who sells the earth to a fellow Creatture removes the land-marke from a third person, to who the same land belongs as well as to the other two, from whence come all the great mischiefs of Property and of Law which defends it, under both which the Creation groans.” (Ibid. p. 18.)
</quote>
No cleric, no matter how high his rank in the Church hierarchy, Bishop, Archbishop, Cardinal or even the Supreme Pontiff, could have claimed Church Estate as his own private property. The land belonged to the body religious, politic and economic as a unit, and to no individual in particular. So that the institution of private property concerning the land held under the jurisdiction of the Church was as good as non-existent. In spite of all that, contrary to Lenin's categorical assertion that without private property rights to the means of production no exploitation was possible, the serfs sweating on those estates, the Church-Communal proper ty, tilling the ground, though they were themselves Chris tians, and as such were members of the Church, and in their capacity of members of the Church were themselves owners of the estates, nevertheless, they were exploited by the clergy, by the Lords Spiritual. And what the Holy Church did, the Communist State would, surely, not be too squeamish to duplicate. “The factories, machines, land and so on” will belong to the State, will belong to the proletarians organized as a State, like the Church and all its possessions belonged and still be long to the sum total of believers, members of the Catholic Church, and the laborers will slave and labor, and be exploited by the secular clergy of the Marxian State-Church, by the Communist Bishops, Cardinals called in Russia Commissars. And the absence of private property will serve as an excellent excuse to get rid of protective social legislation and to prohibit strikes and trade-unions organized by the laborers. For the workers will be told that they need not protect themselves against themselves since now everything belongs to them and they work for the well-being of the community, forgetting thereby that the community is divided into two classes, one class slaving, the other class driving the slaves of manual labor. For, though capitalism, contrary to Marxian prediction, did not simplify the class interrelation, the class structure of modern society, Bolshevik-Communism would. The minority of the politico-economic and cultural organisateurs, a combination of the three factions of the ruling class, will exploit, and quite mercilessly, the majority of the economically dependent, politically enslaved and through high-pressure propaganda, control of news and information, of the press and the spoken word, school, club, library, printing shop and publishing house, culturally bewildered and besotted masses.
*** 9. Tugan Baranovsky On “Exploitation”.
<quote>
“We can therefore define Socialism as the social organization in which, owing to equal obligations and equal rights of all to participate in the communal work, as also owing to the equal right to participate in the produce of this work, the exploitation of one member of the community by another is impossible.” (Tugan Baranovsky, Modern Socialism, p. 14, London, 1910.)
</quote>
The diapason of naivete, concerning the phenomenon of “exploitation” and the guarantee against it allegedly offered by Socialism-Communism, was struck by Prof. Tugan Baranovsky whom Lenin mockingly called “ours”.
“Owing to equal obligations and equal rights of all to participate in the communal work... the exploitation of one member of the community by another is impossible.” Rights even when they are equal do not amount to much, and, surely, cannot stem the tide of actual life. Communal life is rather a sum of de-facto's than that of de-juro's. In defining Socialism Tugan Baranovsky uses all the time juridical categories not suspecting that he describes Socialism in terms applicable exclusively to feudalism, or rather mercantilism. “Equal rights to participate in communal work and in the produce of this work” would mean nothing at all in the face of actual inequality existing between those few who organize labor and those many who are engaged in the very process of laboring. He defines Socialism as a “<em>social</em> organization”, which is, by the way, not exact, for Socialism-Communism of the Marxian school is a political, more than a “<em>social</em>”, organization. One can too easily see that the law-fences erected by him for the protection of labor against the contingency of exploitation will be of no avail outside his own book... Where there is organization, a cleavage between the organisateurs and the organized is inevitable. This cleavage means a stratification. Where there is stratification, a division into higher and lower, exploitation, in the Marxian interpretation of the word, must necessarily be in evidence, sooner or later.
The profit-maker will be removed, and between the working people and the fruit of their labor will stand a whole host of commissars, economo-political and cultural monopolist-organisateurs, some novel variety of governmental functionaries. Names make no difference. It is the function that counts.
*** 10.“Exploitation” Under Communism.
<quote>
“The authors of all inquiries into moderate socialism are forced to acknowledge that the latter implies a division of society into two groups : the first of these is a select body, organized as a political party... second is the whole body of producers... This division is so evident that generally no attempt is made to hide it.” (George Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 183.)
</quote>
There is no basic difference, save details of tactics-that only to those who are engaged in the squabbles of factions seem to be of a colossal magnitude and great significance, between the Bolsheviki-Leninists, Communists, or the Trotskyists, Maximalists. They are all identical in the fundamental thing, and that is the segregation of a special class of organisateurs, monopolists of economics, politics and culture. They leave the masses without any means of protection against the tyranny of the master-class. Since they all concur in their demand for abolition of private property of the <em>laborers</em> and the transference of industry to a collective body, dictatorial state or corporate state, to own and control it. Communism of any variety, -with the exception of the purely ethical which has nothing to do with the mass-movements that are fundamentally political whether they say so or not, whether they are parliamentarian, dictatorial or anti-parliamentarian and anti dictatorial but corporative,-has as its definite aim the formation of a new master-class. And this master-class will be constituted by men who as individuals are taken from different classes or subclasses of modern society. These men, composing the special class of masters of a novel style and fashion, being human, not angelic, rather, diabolic in the beginning of their career while they burn with zeal and limitless egotism, will insist upon their being rewarded according to the significance of the services rendered by them and appraised by themselves. A class, occupying a singular position in production, must necessarily occupy a corresponding position in distribution. Classes, collective aggregates, never were and never would be altruistic. They are fanatical self-seekers.
<quote>
“When we consider the vast powers that will be wielded over the individuals by the Socialist edition of this conservative idea, powers more personal, more inquisitive, and less easy to evade than any previous despotism, we may well pause to ask ourselves, not that conundrum so dear to philosophy, ' What is the State? ' but that far more important and more easily overlooked question, ' Who is the State.”“ (Oliver Brett, A Defense of Liberty, pp. 190-91, New York, 1921.)
</quote>
And the answer to the question will ring out loudly : the politico-economic and cultural organisateurs, all three classes combined in one tyrannical master-class of usurpers and super-exploiters. For the relative share of the worker in the product produced by his direct effort and energy expenditure will naturally, with each step made in the direction of socialization, nationalization, centralization of industry, become smaller and smaller. And his sociological weight, and, consequently, his eco nomic and political value will grow less and less with the concentration of powers achieved by the combination, the sociological trustification-unification, of three master-classes and their formation into one super-master class. And this must necessarily have its effect upon the laborer's portion in distribution. In other words, the worker will be paid less, comparatively, for his contribution to the social product. And this means he will be exploited more.
<quote>
“Exploitation appears not only where things are administered capitalistically, but very often elsewhere as well. The destruction of capitalism will not signify the end of exploitation, but will merely prevent the appearance of some of its forms and will open new possibilities for others.” (Leopold von Wiese, Systematic Sociology adp. and ampl. by Howard Becker, London, New York, 1932.)
</quote>
New possibilities and incomparably bigger and better ones will open for the masters in their “exploitation” of the masses. For Communism means the magnification, the colossalization of the defects of capitalism and the elimination of its redeeming features. We can safely predict that the worker under Communism will get less in wages or products or comfort, life amenities, than under the present mode of production, for the part played by him in industry and in political life, in general, will show an outspoken trend toward decline and diminution. The category of physical labor will go down, the relative weight of the masses will grow slighter with the ascendancy of the masters, the <em>socializers</em>.
The privileged, highly remunerative positions will be occupied by the political planner-schemers, by the state dictators, by the autocratic commissars.
** III. COMMUNISM, OR STATISM.
*** 1. State Or Society.
<quote>
“State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict The solution can only consist in the recognition in practice of the social nature of the modern productive forces; that is, therefore, the mode of production, appropriation and exchange must be brought into accord with the social character of the means of production. And this can only be brought about by society, openly and without deviation, taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control other than that of society itself. Thereby the social character of the means of production and of all products-which today operates against the producers themselves, periodically breaking through the mode of production and exchange and enforcing itself only as a blind law of Nature, violently and destructively-is quite consciously asserted by the producers, and is transformed from a cause of disorder and periodic collapse into the most powerful lever of production itself.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 313.)
</quote>
“State-ownership is no solution of the conflict...“ assures us Engels. Why is it no solution? It, surely, is adequate to solve the external problem of “anarchy of production” by introducing regimentation and compulsory unification, bringing into close correspondence the two magnitudes of supply and demand, and thus putting a stop to the crises periodically devastating industry. State-ownership would coordinate all the various branches of production and commerce and thus create order out of chaos, archy and hierarchy out of the pandemonium of “anarchy”. Yet Engels is outspokenly against it. He insistently reiterates that state-ownership can offer no solution whatsoever to the problem of conflict.
Why is statization of industry and commerce not a satisfactory answer to the problems we are confronted with?
Not because of the conviction that under no circumstances should politics be allowed to usurp eco nomics, a separate domain of human endeavor. Our present society is, under prevailing conditions, divided into three groupings, those who control economic enter prises, those who run the political institutions of the given community and those who care for and administer to the spiritual needs and intellectual wants, educational necessities included, of the members of the commonwealth.
Through the act of statization and usurpation of economic activities the master-class would grow into a monstrosity of a monopolist and concentrator of powers which would crush and grind into dust the masses, the entirety of the population by the sheer weight of its tripled tyranny. Engels ' rejection of statization could not be based on these apprehensions. For in such a case he would be forced by his own reasoning to admit the dangers lurking in the Marxian and his own scheme.
State-ownership is no solution of the internal conflict, offers no satisfactory answer to the problem of adjusting the interrelationship existing between capital and labor.
<quote>
“The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished, it is rather pushed to an extreme.” (Ibid.)
</quote>
What is the essence of the “capitalist relationship”? Why would it stay intact under state-ownership? Is it merely because the state would pay its workers, compensate them for their services in the form of wages expressed in a monetary medium? Well, this being the trouble, its abolition would present no great difficulties for the state as owner of our industry. It could easily offer to the workers payment in kind, or introduce some other mode of compensation, like that practiced in the army, for instance, or in the monasteries. The state, without having to overcome unsurmountable obstacles, may establish, we safely suppose, a whole net of dormitories, refectories and the like mass-institutions that would not bear upon them the “abhorrent” stamp of individualistic liberty and choice in matters of remuneration of the individual producers. Would state-ownership with these innovations satisfy Engels? Certainly not. Engels mentions the condemned “capitalistic relationship” as argument against state-ownership only because of his sureness that the state, meaning the liberalistic, more or less democratic state as it functions under capitalism, will never dare to go to such lengths of tyranny and enslavement of the laboring population, as turning them into its serfs or peons.
Now, let us ask, what is the solution of the conflict? The answer given by Engels reads as follows:
<quote>
“Society openly and without deviation taking possession of the productive forces.”
</quote>
The answer leaves us entirely bewildered. If under “society” we are to understand something that is altogether different from the state, and society-ownership being not identical with that of state-ownership, then, what is it expressed in concrete terms, in clear-cut concepts, not mere words? Who or what, after all, is “taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control other than that of society itself”? And, further, where and what are those productive forces that outgrew state control and demand nothing short of societary control? Are they situated and operative outside the national state boundaries? Are they crossing countries, cutting through border-lines without respect for political geography and fully ignoring tariff-walls and military fortifications, so that they cannot be crammed into the Procrustean bed of national territory and state jurisdiction? Are they essentially, organically, structurally and functionally, international, universal and have, naturally, outgrown the state, an institution confined to its limited area and limited population?
This being the case, the only society that could handle more or less properly the “productive forces” would be nothing short of civilized humanity organized on the basis of its cosmo-economic resources; or expressing it in a somewhat more concrete way, a combination of international trusts would be equal to attend to the business of our economics that is no more national, but universal, having left behind it the national state-scope and its limited means. But this is not in accordance with the Marxian teaching. And the “society” Engels speaks about is confined within the boundaries of a definite state and territory.
The state should not control the “productive forces”, “society” must do it, for it alone can do it in a satisfactory way.
“Society” as such, as a natural social formation, consists of farmers, workers, merchants, capitalists, landowners, soldiers, lawyers, politicians, preachers, writers, painters, musicians, lecturers, explorers, travelers, inventors, engineers, promoters, financiers, beggars, physicians, philosophers, poets, saints, criminals, tramps, hoboes, policemen, administrators, idlers, and what not.
“Society” being a multifarious conglomerate of multi tudes of individuals of the most various occupations, how can such a chaotic body, that like every natural formation is the very embodiment of “anarchy”, take hold of our “productive forces”, control our industry and lay the mischievous ghost of “anarchy”? This is absolutely beyond our comprehension.
Society to be in a position, no matter how precarious, to undertake anything whatsoever, no matter how insignificant it may be, leave alone controlling the totality of the economic activities of its individual member's, must preliminarily assume some shape, some definite form, be constituted in a certain way. And which shape it is going to assume if not that of an organized state that as such, as a political unit, takes possession of our industry and controls it, owns and manages it as a political concern, is entirely above our powers of understanding. And if state-ownership is no solution, we take Engels at his word, where is the solution offered by Marxian Communism?
“Society” should control the productive forces!
Society in its social way does control the productive forces. But Engels brands that way as “anarchy”. What Engels demands is that society control the productive forces not socially, loosely, “anarchistically”, through the free play of supply and demand and unhampered competition, nor through a complicated network of trustification and a combined banking system, but “politically”, in a strictly organized, coordinated, regularized fashion. But “society” used in contradistinction to the state is a term designating not a political body, but merely a social organism, a social aggregate, that itself being non political, multi-volitional, disorganized, unplanned, un chartered, decentralized in behavior, how could it possibly control our industry in a univolitional, centralized, planned, political way?
If “society” does organize itself into a body politic, and afterwards takes over the management and owner ship of our productive means, then that “society” is no society any longer, but the state to all intents and purposes. And such society-ownership and society-control is nothing more and nothing less than outright state ownership and state-control. And if “state-ownership is no solution of the conflict”, Marx and Engels have no solution to offer us. Society-ownership and society control in juxtaposition to state-ownership and state control is meaningless word-jugglery that deceive only the illiterates, the Communist propaganda-fodder.
*** 2. Producers Or “Socializers”.
<quote>
“Thereby the social character of the means of production and of the products... is quite consciously asserted by the producers…
</quote>
The “producers” are engaged in the process of production. They are busy producing and are in no position to assert anything besides the bare fact of their being kept busy transforming matter, changing its shape or quality, adapting it to certain human needs. The “producers” create commodities that are under definite conditions marketable or exchangeable or distributable, have value outside the narrow circle of the participants of the given productive process themselves. And this has been done by the “producers” all the time, so long as they have had in mind exchange and not personal use. In order to assert <em>consciously</em> the “social character” of the productive forces and of the products, the producers will be impelled to delegate for that purpose special “<em>socializers</em>”. As a matter of fact, the <em>socializers</em> will <em>assert themselves</em> as such and only through this assertion of theirs will the social character of the productive forces and products controlled by them be asserted or established. This, consequently, will amount to much more than a mere assertion of the “social character of the productive forces and products”. It would be a declaration made to the effect that the “productive forces and products” hitherto having been merely social now attained a political character, for they were controlled by a political body. This transformation is not so easily done as written about. This “assertion” will require regular, energetic, insistent “asserters”. First, they will have to talk part of the producers into the acceptance of their “assertions”, of their politico-economic leadership, and they will be forced to engage in “proselytizing” activities for a certain period of time. They will have to “convert” the workers to their Communist creed, next, force the rest of the producers, all those who cannot be prevailed upon by mere propaganda, to bow to their iron-rule. They must do it, for political concerns, unlike economic enterprises, are, according to their very nature, uni-volitional, controlled from one centre, and allow of no secession, of no splits, independent or semi-independent existence and self-determination. Within the body politic strict uniformity is required. And the producers will have to be organized by the “assertors” into an industrial army, hierarchically constructed. And only under these conditions will they be in a state to assert <em>consciously</em> the so called “social character”, actually, the political, or, still better, military character of the productive forces and the products.
But under these, right now described by us circumstances, again, the “assertion” of the “social character” could not pass for a solution of the “conflict”. For the “capitalist relationship”, concerning its essence, not bare, insignificant, “historical” form, -was not abolished. The cleavage displayed between the plain “producers” and their socializers, the politicalizers of the productive forces, the producers themselves included, for by this act of socialization they are demoted to the low level of usual productive agencies and factors, will-less, personality-less, disindividualized forces, is not only not abolished, but, on the very contrary, widened, enlarged, deepened, in Engels ' own words, “pushed to the extreme” by the tripled master-class.
“The producers” as a body, as a conglomeration, as a part of disorganized society, are amorphous, when a standard of political design and symmetry is applied to them. The producers are chaotical, “anarchical”, and they can, by no means, while continuing in that disorderly state of theirs, impress a “political character” upon the “productive forces”. Unless they are previously brought into order, licked into form, politicalized, framed into a well-knit unit. And who is equal to this task of disciplining the unruly producers? Surely, not the producers themselves.
<quote>
“But once their nature (of the productive forces) is grasped, in the hands of the producers working in association, they can be transformed from demoniac masters into willing slaves.” (Ibid. p. 314.)
</quote>
Grasping alone is not sufficient. Something more than mere comprehension is required. Understanding by itself will not do. It must be followed up by action, by an organization, by a sum of systematized acts based upon penetrating understanding.
“The producers working in association...” The producers work in association under capitalism, too, in large scale industry. But that association is too small. The largest of it does not encompass the totality of the producers even of one branch of industry. “The association of the producers” under Communism will be one and indivisible, commensurate with the body politic, with the state. It will be congruous with citizenship.
Capitalism is a <em>social</em> system. This means it is pluralistic in its outlook and economic endeavor. It allows the parallel existence alongside it of other systems, other modes of production and distribution, not only juridically, but even factually, economically. Primitive barter, self-sufficiency, cooperation of producers and consumers, private ownership of capital and labor combined, handicrafts, all these are tolerated. The greatest variety of styles and fashions in weaving and regulating inter individual economic relations operative on different planes and in various keys somehow manage to stay together and cooperate loosely, vaguely and freely. The “capitalist system” is not one system but a multitude of systems with one mode predominating economically, not exclusively. Communism is a rigid system, is a monistic discipline. It is jealous. It suffers no rivals. It tolerates no deviations from its uniformed course. Capitalism is inclusive, Communism is exclusive. It forbids any other system of economics, any other independent unit of affairs, to function within its territorial jurisdiction. In other words, capitalism is a social, while Communism is a <em>political</em> system.
Who is to effect this tremendous change, involving the tabooing of our prevailing economic pluralism and the establishing instead of it a politico-economic and cultural monism? And who are those who will take charge of that monistic system and keep it operating on a monistic basis without allowing it to backslide, fall into the “vices” of pluralism? Who are those who will be re straining and holding in check the centrifugal forces every society abounds in? Who will be the transformers and the constant unifiers?
The productive forces will be “transformed from demoniac masters into willing servants”... By whom? Surely, not by the producers, but by the political bosses of the producers. And the impersonal demoniac masters will be replaced by personal demoniac class-masters. These masters upon becoming an organ of the modified state will control and manage all the economic affairs of the given community. In other words, the industry will be state-owned and state-controlled. But Engels assures us that he is opposed to state-ownership which he considers as “no solution of the conflict” for in this way “the capitalist relationship is not abolished”…
Whatever way we may turn, we hit against an iron enclosure. We are within a vicious circle. And there is no way out, no logically legitimate way. We must force our exit through a maze of contradictions and sophistications, or escape through a loophole of a brazen confession that “state-ownership is no solution of the conflict” so long as the state is not captured, not controlled by the Communists and the like new political bosses; but state-ownership is “<em>the</em> solution of the conflict” as soon as the state is owned by Marx, Engels, Lenin et Com., meaning captured by the emerging master-class of compulsory planners, political coordinators, the self-appointed <em>socializers</em> of all shades and nuances.
And now one should stop talking about “society” and its imperative hold-taking of “the productive forces that have outgrown all control other than that of society”. State and society from now on, since the state is in the firm grip of the Communists, are identical entities, for the state is controlled no longer by the inefficient, hemmed in on all sides by pluralistic tendencies, <em>bourgeois</em> politician, but by the omnipotent monopolist, the Communist politician, who is economist, politicist, and culturist, all three in one.
*** 3. Seizure Of The State By The Proletariat.
<quote>
“By more and more transforming the great majority of the population into proletarians, the capitalist mode of production brings into being the force which, under penalty of its own destruction, is compelled to carry out this revolution. By more and more driving towards the conversion of the vast socialized means of production into state property, it itself points the way for the carrying through of this revolution. The proletariat seizes the state power, and transforms the means of production in the first instance into state property.” (Ibid.)
</quote>
For the sake of capturing state power, and Mammon into the bargain for full measure, why should not one be willing to part with a bit of one's possession, namely, that of mnemic power? Engels forgets, when circumstances press, the statements made by him so solemnly, and with so much pomposity about his great discovery, a few pages back in the same book, that the capitalist mode of production replaces the workers, makes them utterly superfluous. The “contradictory” capitalist mode of production can not accomplish, no matter how willing it would be to accommodate Engels, two such mutually excluding acts, as making the workers superfluous, pauperizing them, crowding them out by machines, and at the same time “transforming the great majority of the population into proletarians” ... What about his theory concerning the reserve army?! Lumpen proletarians, unemployables, those who instead of feeding society are fed by it, are a charge, an object for charity, and not a revolutionary power. They are unfortunate sufferers appealing to benevolent society, or threatening it with riots, but not proud, militant proletarians, pillars of the social edifice. “Superfluous” people are no “force” that is “compelled” to carry out this revolution”. “Humility… is the first duty of the beggar and the highest virtue of the poor,” instructs us Kautsky.
The seizure of the state by the proletariat means practically the capturing of the state power by those who as a small cunning minority, an emerging master class, have captured, through high-pressure propaganda, pseudo-prophetic promises, futuristic fantasmagorias, jazzed “social science”, burlesque-economy, a part of the proletariat. And these new emerging barons, bullies of labor, are, certainly, no more identical with society at large than the capitalist class, but, rather, much less so. And state-ownership of our industry, in case the state is owned and controlled autocratically by this numerically small minority of labor-lords, slave-labor drivers, is, undoubtedly, “no solution of the conflict”…
But the questions considered are not of an academical nature, and they cannot be treated as such. The mistakes are not “scientific” misjudgments that come under the excuse of erring is human. Marxism is not a pure theory. It is a movement first and last, it has a class-background, it is dictated by class-interests. The logic of Marxism is quite too often weak, indeed, and not convincing at all. But, in compensation thereof, the appetites of the emerging labor-lords, their hunger and thirst after domination are strong enough to override roughshod any illogicalities. Such a prize as a full measured monopoly over all the activities of a nation is at stake! Who can have patience to listen to reasoning and critical remarks when the winning ticket is in full sight and within grabbing reach.
It is folly to be wise, when wisdom does not serve the holy cause of fooling the innocent fools of labor. Reason itself becomes unreasonable, when unreason offers reasons for capturing the state and our industry. Such a Paris is worth more than a mess of reasoning.
“State ownership is no solution of the conflict” so long as the state is bourgeois, meaning liberalistic, democratic, and the conflict is allowed to continue, and people are allowed to continue asking social questions and looking for answers to them, and upon finding them, examine them, consider them and have a choice to reject them. State-ownership is a solution as soon as the state becomes proletarian, is controlled by the high moguls of labor, by the communists. The communist state solves all problems by the clever device of prohibiting to pose, to formulate openly, problems ...
<quote>
“But in doing this, it puts an end to itself as the proletariat, it puts an end to all class differences and class-antagonisms, it puts an end also to the state as the state.” (Ibid.)
</quote>
There is no use arguing any longer. Now the fount of foul and falsified eschatology is opened wide, and its waters of pseudo-salvation flood the earth of reality and wash off common sense and all sense of pro portion and measure. A spiritual sailor is on a spree!
However, this quasi-prophetic raving when soberly interpreted amounts to nothing more millennial than this:
The proletariat is put an end to, for one part of it unmasks and shows its true colors of a commanding minority, a new master-class. The rest of the working class do not exist any longer as proletarians, as free workers who have a right and a chance to enter into contractual relations with their bosses. They exist and function as slaves of the communist state. The state is put an end to means, in plain prose, that the democratic, capitalist state with its division of political powers, legislature, judiciary and administration kept somehow apart, and the division of sociological powers, the separation of the master-classes, capitalists, politicians and intellectuals, secular or religious, “is put an end to”, does not exist any longer. Its place is taken by the tripled tyranny, by the three-headed hydra of despotism enthroned by Communism.
The top on the list of the marvelous “abolitions” is graced by the paramount abolition of reason and reasoning, of free discussion. All social problems are solved with one stroke of the pen in a most thorough going way. Classes do not exist any longer, neither do antagonisms mar the idyl, nor do clashes of interests disturb the calm and peace of the communist society, for who dares to say that they do exist, is locked up, exiled to Siberia, to Solovetzky, or silenced by a bullet, the final and most conclusive argument. And this is the best, pragmatically speaking, proof that classes do not exist, that they are abolished. The communist millennium is ushered in by the Secret Police in conjunction with the firing squad. And the Messiah of Marxianity walks the promised land of the proletariat flanked, accompanied and preceded by a swarm of spies and agent provocateurs…
** IV. COMMUNISM OR INTERINDIVIDUALISM AND INTER-CLASSISM
*** 1. Preliminary Remarks.
Society in its primordial shape of family, horde, tribe or community of any other style of structure, antedates the existence of its self-conscious individuals. Its members, its component parts are immersed, beyond separate recognition, self-identification, within the whole. And when, in the course of historical development, the individual does show up, he comes forward in a heroic fashion as the representative of the social. He appears not in his own right as a self-sufficient being, but in the capacity of Patriarch, Priest, King, etc., etc., as the miniaturized embodiment, as the epitome, of the collectivity, as the absorber of the communality. He is, so to say, its soul, its spirit, its essence.
In this peculiar, at first sight seeming contradictory, way the individual puts in his timid, somewhat disguised, appearance. And the social, due to this, complicating the situation, circumstance, is given a new start. It is being transformed, unnoticeably, through a replacement of its parts, into the embryo of an inter-class formation, a new sociological entity. For the relation of the representative individual, providential personality, to the rest of the social body constitutes not a plain and simple interindividual relation, which as such could not have existed within a primitive social unit that is, according to its nature, monolithic, carved out of one sociological piece, — but forms forthwith, simultaneously with the most rudimentary emergence of the inter-individual, that is not pure, for it is unilateral, the individual being placed at one end of the connection and the group, at the other, an inchoate inter-class linkage. The out standing individuals, priests, shamans, angekoks, chieftains of any sort, form a higher stratum. So that the birth of the individual signals and signifies the rebirth of the social. The emergence of the individual serves as a symptom and indication of, and is virtually but a derivation from, the fact that a process of stratification and gradation has set in, is already at work, indites an elementary stratigraphy of sociology.
Within each stratum the relations of its members, upon their having attained to a certain level of minimal self-consciousness, are shaped by them <em>interindividualistically</em>, they are being woven on the plane of plain and pure, more or less, excluding or overlooking internal subdivisions that are too insignificant to be taken cognizance of as modifiers, <em>interindividualism</em>. The relations of the higher and the lower strata when they act as units, as sociological wholes, overlooking the fact that these relations can be woven only via representative individuals, are, again, but plain and pure, more or less, <em>inter-class</em> connections. But when a member of a higher stratum in his capacity of a superior, in the economic, political or cultural field, contacts a member of a lower, subordinated stratum, in the latter's capacity of an inferior, that relation begotten by this act is an inter class relation disguised as an interindividual relation, or, more exactly, it is a combination, a crossing of the interindividual and the inter-class.
A collectivity in its state of “nature”, existing and functioning as a unit subconsciously, is one entity.
Upon attaining to self-consciousness, it undergoes a process of transformation and splitting up, and it becomes, imperceptibly, another entity. A “natural” class and a “class-conscious” class are two different entities.
A class, a nation, or any collectivity for that matter, upon its becoming, so to say, self-conscious, forms its “loyalty” in an artificially rational way. It elaborates a certain design of “patriotism”. It develops an obligatory, in the moral sense, “devotion”. It makes some kind of a secular “cult” out of its cohesiveness, of its living and functioning as an “organism”, a sociological unit. It tries to embody certain emotionalizations and intellectualizations into self-conscious communal acts. Such a body sociologic is, virtually, doing the very reverse of what its obvious intents are. While apparently embracing its cause so ardently, so fervently, it, actually, abandons it, betrays it due to a subtle process of substitution, a replacement taking effect unnoticeably.
The class acting self-consciously, not naturally instinctively as an indivisible whole, is, as a matter of fact and deeper penetration, acting not as its own self, but as one overridden by another entity. A super-class brings, surreptitiously, all the pressure to bear upon it and makes it behave in a definitive way, which can, rather, be characterized as anti-class. For its class self-consciousness is never, under no circumstances, a consciousness of its own class-self, of its own real formation, but an articulate consciousness of another self, of a formation of another nature. That other self-claims to be the corporealization, the social quint-essentiation of the class-self, while virtually it alone is its own in the true sense of the word. It is a social entity in its own right and title. And it succeeds in achieving its self sufficiency, its independence just because it denies its own identity, and is utterly void of rational ego-centrism.
It is unaware of its own existence as a social unit. It does not suffer its own self-determination to come to assertion. This super-class sincerely believes in its non-existence as a separate entity, and claims to be the receptacle of the very essence of “classiness”, the mere crystallization of the <em>class-spirit</em>, a substantiation of pure class-solidarity.
The analysis and proper understanding of the sociological actualities taking place in our daily, civilized, complicated, not primitive, life would spare us many a blunder and miscomprehension found so frequently in statements, made by the not-deep-enough-penetrating theorists, concerning such highly delicate subject-matters, as, for instance, the interrelationship existing between the social, the interindividual and the inter-class processes of communication. Various combinations of the interindividual and the international, inter-class and international and interindividual intercourse, and their intersections and recrossments, all of them are involved in our economic, political and cultural activities.
*** 2. Community or Interindividual Association.
<quote>
“A community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labor power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labor-power of the community.
The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and <em>remains</em> social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion among the members is consequently necessary.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 90).
</quote>
An association of <em>free individuals</em> is, according to its very nature, not a plain, primitive social formation, but an <em>interindividual</em> creation. The genuine “social” is there where the <em>individual</em> does not as yet exist, does not assert himself more or less voluntarily as a self-determined unit that enters at its own risk, of its own free, more or less, accord, into a union, into a combination with other, equally self-willed, deliberately acting, individuals. Such an association would be not unlike the union of egoists, the dream of Stirner's. This is no community in the usual sense of the word. This is no “society” which is a natural growth preceding that of its individual-members. And the product produced by such a cooperation would be, by no means, a social product, but an interindividual product, to the creation of which contributed each individual laborer as such, as an independent and freely cooperating partner of an economic enterprise. In the shaping of this product each individual worker, as a normally active member of the producing association, had embodied a part of his individual energy, personal effort, muscular, and other wise, strain. And the combined shares of labor-power of the sum of individual toilers have materialized into a fabricated, remodelled, readapted object suiting the taste, or coming up to the requirements, expectations, of the individuals engaged in the process of production.
“A community of <em>free individuals</em>”... is a contradiction in terms, free individuals do not constitute a <em>community</em>, if they have been free and they still stay free, without leaving their freedom on the threshold of the community. They constitute a union, a productive coalition. “<em>Free individuals</em>”, if they were free not in the abstract juridical, political meaning of the term, but in its concrete, economic interpretation, would become co-proprietors, share-holders, partners. They would be “free” to enter and quit the union, without running the risk of losing their shares, in labor or capital embodied in the means of production and the raw material, they had placed at the disposal of the producing coalition for a certain period of time, not for all eternity, and under certain conditions stipulated beforehand and made obligatory in the form of a written document, charter, agreement, covenant, or constitution, Such "<em>free individuals</em>" are no easily catchable game for "communistic <em>hunters</em>"… They are too "egotistic" for that. And they would not be " carrying on their work with the means of production in common", they have too much sense to "fall" for that folly, but in partnership, in <em>interindividual</em> possession.
<quote>
"That form of socialization of huge masses of means of production which we find in the various kinds of joint - stock companies." (F. Engels, Anti - Duehring, p. 311.)
</quote>
This is not <em>socialization</em>, but <em>interindividualization</em>. It is a case of an enlarged partnership, partnership on a more or less large scale. Neither Marx nor his aide de camp Engels understood that a big difference lay between these two notions, one of which negated or ignored the individual, and the other affirmed him through a higher and a larger sphere of activity offered him.
"Means of production in common . . . To whom do those means belong? To the community as a unit. Such an arrangement could have been quite satisfactory to members of a primitive ante - civilizational community, who were not <em>individuals</em> either in the political or economic sense. As "economic subjects" they did not exist as yet in those antediluvian times. They were not self-conscious. They had nothing of their own, and they claimed nothing. They were utterly submerged in their family, horde, tribe or "natural" community.
How can "free individuals" hold things in common if not on the solid basis of differentiated partnership, unless the things be of a special character that makes them unfit for personal avail, and as such they are given up, sacrificed to the community, and the individuals, as independent subjects, have nothing to do with them. But such could never be the case with means of production, so long as the "free individuals" had an understanding of economic problems and they took their productive activities seriously. Means of production are no pavements, lanterns illuminating the streets of a city, objects acquired by city or borough administrations on money procured through taxation and the like revenues.
What Marx, and the Marxians following him, cannot realize is the plain fact, that "free individuals" who are free economically, meaning , are more or less independent, and would like to stay independent to some extent, will never form a "social" combination, but an <em>interindividual</em> corporation. Unless they are resolved to commit economic and political suicide, to give up their economic and along with it their political freedom. Or they be so ignorant and innocent of sociological analysis as a good Marxian is supposed to be, and they would not know the difference between institutional ownership, property belonging to no one in particular, but controlled by a juridical body representing the given institution under certain conditions of trusteeship or stewardship, and partner co-ownership, property in which each partner has a certain share that he can claim and withdraw under certain afore- agreed to conditions.
This is the "community" considered from the <em>interindividual</em> standpoint. But there is yet another side to it, and that is the inter-class relation which is totally ignored by Marx and his disciples, who live theoretically, sociologically in a fool's paradise ... or a felon's Eden ...
If the "community of free individuals" consists of a small number of "free individuals", the community as such, in its totality of membership of "free individuals”, is capable of discharging all its functions that, naturally, will be of a very much limited scope. As its membership is not big, it can well attend to its business, transact most of its affairs, in plenum. But if the "community of free individuals" were numerically more or less considerable, it would, by all means, differentiate and stratify. In a large community “the labor power of all the different individuals" cannot be "consciously applied as the combined labor - power of the community" unless a special class is segregated with the express purpose to take care of this highly important function consisting in consciously applying the combined labor - power of millions of producers belonging to the community. The average worker, the "free individual" of the large-scale community, is, as a rule, unfit for the discharge of such a highly qualified duty that, according to its very nature, must tower above all other commonly productive activities of the totality of the participants of the productive process. And even if the average worker were fit to do it psychologically, mentally, he would be unfit sociologically, for this could not obviate the necessity of choosing a <em>certain number</em> of individuals for this job, and thus take recourse to an embryonic class-structure. Fitness in psychological abstract is not sufficient. A definite sum of individuals will be assigned, rather, self- assigned, to attend to it, to fulfil this highly complicated and involved, exceedingly significant function, upon which the welfare of the whole community is contingent, namely consciously, in a planned , calculated way , to apply the combined labor- power. And while doing this, they will, unwillingly, maybe, from the start, but very much willingly after keeping on at it for a certain period of time, build up a higher class whose office it is to coordinate, control, and, consequently, dominate, the lower class of laborers. And the products produced by this “community of free individuals”, under the best of conditions, with all available measures for the protection of the members taken and efficiently applied, will not be, as Marx, in his naive benevolence as a personal thinker and malign mischief as an ideologist of an emerging master-class, fancies, “a social product”, but an interindividual product with an incisive inter-class cachet. And this fact of production being carried on in an inter-class way will necessarily reflect itself in distribution, which will become, inevitably following the lines along which the production activities run, a class divided operation. And inter-class considerations and antagonisms would insert themselves in the decisions as to which portion of the total product of the community should “serve as a fresh means of production” and which portion of it might be “consumed by the members as means of subsistence.” The notion of subsistence is a very elastic one and easily subject to contracting and expanding manipulations. The conscious appliers of the combined labor-power, the conscious distributors of energy of the given community will be, which is quite natural, anxious to broaden out the field of productive activities and to accelerate its momentum as much as possible, and for this purpose they will demand the biggest share of the total product to be made use of as “fresh means of production”, in Marx's naive expression, to keep it <em>social</em>. And their colleagues, the conscious distributors of the total product, will see to it that the laborers go not in their allotted consumption beyond the skillfully drawn class-line of subsistence, so that the expansion of production be carried out at the expense of the toilers kept near starvation and not at the inconvenience of the lords of labor for whom a different line be demarcated. And the Marxian sweetly idyllic picture will be marred by class-egotism and brutal group-selfishness.
<quote>
“That such a complete harmony of selfish interests could be brought about by collectivism or by any other kind of change in the means of production is surely an optimism only less fatuous than the individualist view that it was to be brought about by laissez faire.” (A. D. Lindsay, Karl Marx's Capital, p. 44.)
</quote>
In the Marxian sketches of society the human element, that passes almost of itself into a class-element with its not too pleasant implications and unavoidable, advantages and defects, complications, -is conspicuously absent. We find there either the demoniac, Satan incarnate in the shape of the hoof-cloven capitalist, or the angelic, in the shape of the winged and dove-hearted proletarian who includes all men without exception. And Marx himself, not unlike his society portraitures, is a combination of both elements held in a precarious balance. He is angelically innocent, naive as a child and idealistically minded as an oriental saint who knows nothing of the sinful earth, perverted society with its alluring, irresistible temptations, this is when he is taken as an individual thinker and abstract theorizer, a speculator about a future perfect society. But he is, at the same time, satanically malevolent, pernicious and vicious, when taken as the spokesman of the now emerging master-class, the labor-lords, the tripled monopolists, when looked upon, what he actually has been, as the representative of a broadcast political movement. For his very naivete, just because it is so much overdone travesty, touching upon the quasi-prophetic suiting an unworldly, sequestered monk, but not an economist and politician of the first rank, the like of which he was, – is suspicious and is, rather, fathered by an explicit desire to play the <em>naive fool of futuristic economy</em>, the harbinger and herald of a social millennium, of a perfect, classless, stateless, almost society-less, society. The pantomime is staged in order the easier to deceive his followers among the half-baked intellectuals and entirely raw laborers, and thus, the surer, with greater facility, to attain his great objective, the establishment of a new super-class domination under the very deafening din and racket of shoutings about the doing away with all classes existing as well as imaginable.
*** 3. Contradiction Between Production And Appropriation.
<quote>
“But the social means of production and the social products were treated as if they were still, as they had been before, the means of production and the products of individuals.
Thus, therefore, the products, now socially produced, were not appropriated by those who had really set the means of production in motion and really produced the products, but by the capitalists. Means of production and production itself had in essence become social. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which has as its presupposition private production by individuals, with each individual owning his own product and bringing it on the market.” (F. Engels, Anti Duehring, pp. 303-04.)
</quote>
The individual producers leave their sanctuaries of individual endeavor, their castles of production. They take their products, a result of individual effort and personal, physiological and psychological, labor and strain expenditure, and <em>desecrate</em> them by bringing them to the anti-individualistic market. They offer them for sale, as so many <em>impersonal</em> objects, prostitute things, <em>commodities</em>. No sooner is this done than the contradiction between production and appropriation, pointed out by Engels as something peculiar to the capitalist mode of production and appropriation, is present, though in a reversed order, in all its glaringly flagrant manifestation. The market being a <em>social</em> institution, according to the not too precise terminology of Marx and Engels, and production, in its primitive stage of handicrafts, being <em>individualistic</em>, how could these two strangers, opposite poles, cooperate, enter into any communication, without contradicting one another, clashing antagonistically, and parting enemies without being able to effect a transaction?
It is clear enough, that the <em>contradiction</em>, discovered by Marx and Engels and made so much of by their “scientific” followers, is not of capitalistic origin, but goes back all the way down to the very beginning of exchange, to the first break-up of the self-contained household.
<quote>
“These surplus products, thrown into social exchange, offered for sale, become commodities. The town artisans, it is true, had to produce for exchange from the very beginning.” (Ibid. p. 306.)
</quote>
This presumably appalling <em>contradiction</em> is contained within each commodity as such, within each product, object that is produced by an individual and yet, despite its individualistic extraction, its personalistic parentage, is negotiable. A commodity makes an appeal to out siders, to “foreigners”, indiscriminatingly. It looks for adoption, solicits patronage from whomever it may come. It promises to serve the purposes of stranger-individuals, no less but more so, than those of the individual maker. If this contradiction is allegedly the mortal sin of the capitalist mode of production, a sin the wages of which is death, and it must tear capitalism apart, all exchange economy without exclusion, whether dealing in objects, trafficking in individual labor embodied in things, in goods, or in deeds, in acts, services, is born in this unforgivable transgression and is chock-full of this iniquity.
<quote>
“We saw that the capitalist mode of production thrust itself into a society of commodity producers, <em>individual producers</em> (italics ours), whose <em>social cohesion</em> (italics ours), resulted from the exchange of the products.” (Ibid. p. 305.)
</quote>
So that alongside <em>individual producers</em> we find a <em>social cohesion</em> in ante-capitalistic production, and the abominable thing, the contradiction is right there staring fully into the face of our logical consistence.
The plain truth of the matter is that the awful <em>contradiction</em> contradicts nothing, for it is no contradiction at all, it is a synthesis, a combination of two factors. And it can easily be traced to the problem of the interrelationship existing between the individual as such, as a separatist, and his environment, society, out of which he emerges through a long and painful process of evolutionary analysis.
The mere fact that an act or an object is created, made, invented, discovered, found, produced, brought to light, originated, through the agency of an individual does not, necessarily, imply that the given act, process, method or object is of an individualistic character, of an idiosyncratic make-up, and can be made use of, appreciated, utilized, exploited only and exclusively by its personal originator.
<quote>
“But the organization of labor touches only such labors as others can do for us, e. g., no one can in your stead elaborate your musical compositions, carry out your projects of painting, etc.; nobody can replace Raphael's labors. The latter are labors of a unique person, which only he is competent to achieve, while the former deserved to be called 'human', since what is anybody's <em>own</em> in them is of slight account, and almost 'any man' can be trained to it.
Now, as society can regard only labors for the common benefit, <em>human</em> labors, he who does anything <em>unique</em> remains without its care; nay, he may find himself disturbed by its intervention. The unique person will work himself forth out of society all right, but society brings forth no unique person.” (Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, pp. 354-55, Tucker series, London, New York, 1915.)
</quote>
There is imitative, repetitive labor which is utterly impersonal. There is creative strain, ingenuity effort, which is personal as far as the endeavor, the process of accomplishment is concerned, but the result, the product, the creation as embodied and objectified, is not personal any more.”Nobody can replace Raphael's labors”, but many can and do enjoy the results of his labors, his paintings, that though they are “unique” in their way of coming into existence, in production, are not “unique” in the sense of exclusion of others beside their creator artist from their “consumption”. For they make an appeal to the <em>human</em> sense of beauty and symmetry, coloration and portrayal.
That is why Stirner is wrong, when he asserts that “now, as society can regard only labors for the common benefit, human labors, he who does anything <em>unique</em> remains without its care”. All inventors, all creative geniuses, all discoverers, explorers, great scientists, poets, artists, do something <em>unique</em> and yet it is for the <em>common benefit</em>, and as much as society does not consist exclusively of blockheads, they do not remain “without its care”.
The interindividualistic characteristics of man were overlooked by both, by the Communist as well as by the individualistic school. An individual is not all the way individualistic, he is much more social and interindividualistic than individualistically particularistic. And human intercourse is based on this fundamental fact. The individual personality, the pure EGO, in as much as he is unique in the full sense of the word, is hermetically closed up within his own inner microcosm which internally, purely subjectively considered, is his real macrocosm, his own internal world out of which he never sallies forth, and he has nothing whatsoever to do with the outside world of other individuals. He can have nothing whatsoever to do with them, for he can establish no connection, no relations. He is the self-contained absolute, the psychological all in all. But the individual insofar as he is one of the many, a member of a certain grouping, of a certain aggregate, is not individualistic at all, but interindividualistic. He asserts himself actively, volitionally, and <em>socially</em>. He is acted upon, framed, shaped prenatally and post-natally, as far as his national affiliations and natural linguistic preferences or racial marks, stampings, etc., etc., are concerned. Man as an “interindividual being”, neither as a social animal, nor as a unique God-ego, enters freely and ever so much willingly into connections with other individuals who are interindividualistically minded like himself and are, therefore, members, with certain rights attached to them that are inalienable, inviolable to that degree that their possessors are interindividual beings and by the deprivation of them of those rights they would have been reduced to the status of “mere social animals”, – of the same commonwealth or of another social-political association. The actions, performances of the individual, to that extent to which they are considered and valued by his environment, have a validity far transcending his own inner soul-sealed circle. For what he can use, his fellow-man, his neighbor, far or near, can use as well. And production activities, though performed sometimes individually, within a certain enclosure as if partitioned off from the rest of the community, are not, according to their very nature, individualistic phenomena, but interindividualistic. And they evidence their interindividual characteristic, beyond any reasonable doubt, and materialize, objectify it in the act of exchange, by marketing their products. The more so that the latter were brought into existence with the explicit aim of making of them goods that are accessible to a large patronage, and not confined to home-consumption, suiting the individual taste of the individual producer.
Now, let us take up the same <em>contradiction</em> in its reversed manifestation.
The product is produced, in the Marxian defective terminology, socially, meaning <em>interindividually</em>, by a smaller or larger number of producers working together in cooperation. The product, it is self-evident, is not changed basically by the mere fact that it is fabricated not by a single producer putting in it, let us say, ten or twenty hours, but by ten or twenty producers storing up in it each one an hour or two of skilled labor. The product, as regards its appeal, its ability to satisfy certain human needs, stays intact, is unaffected by the change in the personnel of its operators. The fact that modifications took place in the interrelations of the producers has no effect, neither for the better nor for the worse, upon the marketability of the product. It neither deletes nor incises more deeply its interindividual features, it neither weakens nor strengthens its almost indifferently even appeal to various individuals as prospective buyers. A hat made by an isolated hatter, or made by ten hatters working cooperatively, – other factors and conditions, like shape, make, quality of material used, style, elegance, durability, prices, being equal, – will proceed to the market with the same even and sure step, and make its bid for an unknown head with the same success. For it has not become a different, a <em>social</em>, a <em>multi-individual</em>, product by the mere fact that it had been produced socially, as the Marxians erroneously term it, or multi-individually. The sociological change in the mode of production does not oblige it to look for a multitudinous, let us say, a tenheaded poll, for a head made of ten separate heads, in order to keep in consonance with the ways of its having been produced. A <em>social</em> product, to our understanding, would be an object, an item of use-value that society as a unit, and not individual persons as such, is able to employ, utilize, consume. The hat, we talk of, is still a usual commonplace hat fitting a usual common place head. And that is all there is to it. And that is why we see no contradiction between the fact that the hat was made by ten individuals and yet it is offered on the market for sale and wear to an indefinite sum of single heads of single individuals; and the highest bidder, in case of “appropriation ' of the hat, will wear it as a headgear fitting the head of an individual, and not of a collective, and thus make its consumption to <em>disharmonize</em> with its process of production.
Exchange, as well as production, is an interindividual phenomenon. Whether the producer works single handed or does team-work, makes no difference, does not affect in the least bit the essentially sociological character of production as such. It alters only the technical form of its expression, but touches not its content. The same holds true concerning exchange. Whether the buyer and seller face one another as single individual merchants or as associations of commercers, does not have any bearings upon the interindividual characteristics of exchange and market as sociological economic phenomena. It may, though, considerably modify their technicalities, methods of procedure applied in particular transactions.
From the producer, individual or multi-individual, the product, the stream of goods, flows invariably, unalterably in the once for all times established direction, and that is to the consumer. It stops, on its way to its ultimate destination and eternal rest, temporarily at the marketplace, sometimes physically, other times figuratively.
<quote>
“The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation became manifest as the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 305.)
“Into this society of individual producers, producers of commodities, the new mode of production thrust itself, setting up, in the midst of the primitive planless division of labor which then existed throughout society, the planned division of labor organized in the individual factory; alongside of individual production, social production made its appearance... The factories in which labor was socially organized produced their commodities more cheaply than the separate small producers.” (Ibid. pp. 302-03.)
“The products, now socially produced, were not appropriated by those who had really set the production in motion and really produced the products, but by the <em>capitalists</em>.” (Ibid. pp. 303-04.)
</quote>
The miscomprehension is caused by the impersonal, the classless treatment of the subject. The passages run as follows: “<em>Social</em> production made its appearance, “setting up, in the midst of primitive <em>planless</em> division of labor... the planned division of labor,” “the new mode of production thrust itself”... As though all these changes were brought about either by “production” as a living and evolving entity outside of men, or by a certain sum of individual producers, who, not unlike the society-builders in the schemes of the speculative jurisprudents of the Natural School, upon having made up their mind as to the advantages of “social production,” clubbed together and introduced a new mode of production. And then, after the thing was completed, and was working in the most satisfactory way to all concerned, a band of capitalists showed up, and swooping down upon the “social producers” and their socially produced products appropriated them individually, carried off the spoils.
The ”<em>robbers</em>,” the capitalists, do not <em>appropriate</em> the products that were “produced socially” without them, without their assistance. They act not as outsiders, as spectators of the process of production that assumed, upon the initiative of the producers, a <em>social character</em>. These statements are propaganda absurdities of the lowest order.
The raw material out of which the products are made were acquired beforehand, and it was done upon the usual, legitimate basis of purchase. So that that part, a very considerable one, at that, was not appropriated as a particle of the “social product,” but it belonged to the capitalist right along, before the “<em>social producer</em>” ever had a chance to come near it, to bestow upon it his <em>social</em> skill. Now, the labor-power-as Marx erroneously prefers to call the quantity of labor embodied in the product and hired tentatively for the explicit purpose of being immediately embodied into a certain quantity of raw material-was bought in advance and when it was procured by the capitalist it was still in its <em>presocial</em> state. In other words, the capitalist purchased the labor-power of so many separate individual workers. And while purchasing them, they were not social, they were not as yet combined. In such a way the capitalists <em>appropriate</em> the two component parts, the two elements out of which the product is made before it ever has any claims to any “social” quality, and out of these two separate purchases the appropriation of the product results but as a derivation. The product, consisting of two elements that are both owned by the capitalist, is anticipatorily <em>appropriated</em> by the capitalist; in other words, it belongs to him to whom it has belonged all the time, beginning as a piece of raw material and ending up as a more or less worked over product. And it runs all the way along an individualistic, or interindividualistic and inter-class line, without any break, any hitch of a special contradiction, unless purchase as such, or hiredom as such is contradictory according to its very nature; but this is out of the point in the present argument.
<quote>
“The bourgeoisie was unable to transform those limited means of production into mighty productive forces except by transforming them from individual means of production into social means of production, which could be used only <em>by a body of men as a whole</em>.” (Ibid.)
</quote>
The bourgeoisie did more than that, it transformed the very producers, the individual, separate producers, and formed them into “a body of men” acting productively, on the basis of division of labor,” as a whole, ' not on a national scale, but within a considerable group size. After the capitalist has bought the individual labor-powers of the individual workers, he “socializes” them, to use the confusing terminology of Marx and Engels, he <em>interindividualizes</em> or multi-individualizes them, in plain words, he combines them. And thus, by this very act of his, by bringing them together and making out of them a multi-individual combination, they are, simultaneously, inter-classified, stratified. Through the act of productive interindividualization, the capitalist be comes an active economic interindividualizer on a more or less considerable scale and with a certain measure of regularity about it.
Further, let us imagine that the producers are really operating in a “socialized” manner upon their own and exclusive initiative as a fully developed association. They own their tools, and the raw material belongs to them, and they keep on embodying their unsold labor-power in it, and the goods created by them in such a “social” fashion are now full-blooded “social products.” Now, the capitalist, the villain in the economic piece, makes his sudden unheralded appearance at the gate of the work-shop and forces its entrance into the sanctum santrorum of “social” labor, and he tries, audacious and shameless as he is, to “appropriate,” in plain language, to purchase the product. The cooperative workers would, surely, not stone him for his attempt to “appropriate” for the proper price their social products which they produced with the sole purpose and hope to get rid of as soon as possible, to find a buyer for them. And there would be no contradiction here, to talk of, between “social production” and “individual-capitalist appropriation” if the price offered would look alluring enough to the sellers. For the process of production carried all the time an interindividual character which is demonstrated, no less emphatically, by the supplementary process of acquisition. The latter looks ostensibly to be an individualistic act. But this is mere appearance. It will not mislead the observer. The capitalist buys the products for the market. And even if he purchases them as a consumer, coming direct to the producer, skipping all exchange complexities of the market and avoiding the various manipulations of the go-betweens, this would not change the basic feature of the products as being marketable, popular, good mixers, being interindividualistic and not snobbishly unique and exclusive.
The worker-cooperators will command their price. The procedure gone through will be equal in every typical detail to that of any commodity transference, the transaction of selling and buying.
The same thing is done with slight variations under the general usage of the capitalist mode of production. A legitimate argument can be put up about the “price,” about the wages, their scale. That is all. The contention that the so-called capitalist “appropriation,” coming in wake of “social production,” commits, thus, some kind of an “economo-logical” sin of unforgivable contradictoriness, belongs to a special variety of subtle stupidity.
This accusation, or flaw-finding, is groundless. The capitalist mode of production being based upon the foundation of buying and selling is not more contradictory than buying and selling in general.
How can one acquire the other man's product created by him through his personal effort by so prosaic an act as fatuous exchange or barter?
The answer is plain, the producer creates nothing that is purely personal or unique, but a most common commodity, and it is done by him with the express aim of offering it without regret to any one who will come across and meet his price-requirements.
There is nothing to be indignant about or puzzled over. Still less cause is here for a dialectical discourse, Engels so rapturously indulges in to the detriment of the subject and utter confusion of economic categories pre valent from times almost prehistoric.
<quote>
“In <em>Capital</em>, Marx proved with absolute clarity... that at a certain stage of development, the production of commodities becomes transformed into capitalist production, and that at this stage the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become, by their own inner and inexorable dialectics, changed into their very opposite. The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we started, has now become turned round in such a way that there is only an apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the capital which is exchanged for labor-power is itself but a portion of the product of others ' labor appropriated without an equivalent; and, secondly, that this capital must not only be replaced by its producer, but replaced together with an added surplus… At first the rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man's own labor… Now, however… property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labor of others or its product, and, on the part of the laborer, the impossibility of appropriating his own product. The separation of property from labor has become the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity.”“ (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 185.)
</quote>
“The laws of appropriation of private property… changed into the very opposite.” We do not see it. All Marx and Engels do is beg the question. Instead of proving their thesis, they go on reasoning as though it requires no proof, it is axiomatic. Of course, if the theory of exploitation is true, there is a change into opposites, but not otherwise. The laws of appropriation are effective here as elsewhere. It is a case of buying services and paying for them. It started with an exchange of equivalents and it continued so, all the time in the same direction. It is only an apparent exchange, why? Because Marx is anxious to fashion a theory that would be of great use for the propagandists of Communism and would serve the interests of the labor-lords. Economic science and practice is not bound to substantiate Marxian sophistry.
“At first the right of property seemed to us to be based on man's own labor.” There hardly was such a time when property was based exclusively on man's own labor without the laborer's having a right to dispose of his product through exchange.
There are three methods of acquiring property, one is considered criminal, and that is the acquisition of property by physical force and violence called robbery or theft; the other two are either by productive labor, physiological force and skill or by purchase, through exchange. The last two modes are considered equally legitimate. Either one produces a thing, or one buys it, pays for it with an equivalent. Under capitalism, the artisan is allowed, juridically anyway, to produce his commodities and own them, consume them if he wants to or sell them, dispose of them, if he so wishes; or to sell the labor placed in those commodities, which means to hire himself out. Under the latter conditions, he does not own the products produced by him, for, first, he did not acquire the raw material into which his labor went; secondly, he received compensation for his labor in the form of wages, so that he cannot get both, wages for his labors and the products in addition to his compensation received for his labor-services. If he had labored without being paid for it, without hiring himself out, and placed his labor into raw material owned by him through a pre liminary purchase or any other form of acquisition, none could legitimately claim his products, appropriate them without his consent.
The individual producer, the artisan, has a full right to sell the products produced by him and of which he is the full owner. What does he sell in that owned by him product? Not the raw material which he re-sells, for he has acquired it with the explicit purpose of selling it. So, what is he selling actually as an owner, not as a go-between trader, who buys to dispose of? His labor skill embodied in the products created by him. And for this item, namely, his energy and ability embodied in the products, he gets paid. For instance, if he receives on the market two dollars for his product and the raw material is worth one dollar, he actually gets one dollar, for the other dollar he immediately transfers to the owner of the raw material. Either he transmits it now, after the transaction, or before, in advance. Under capital ism, if he is an employee, he sells his labor-skill embodied in the products minus the raw material which he does not own and therefore is not forced to resell. The artisan buys raw material and resells it while selling his labor embodied therein, and the industrial worker sells his labor embodied in the products without buying and reselling the raw material. Nothing strange or “dialectical” occurs here. It is a case of division of functions. The laborer drops his function of trader, of buyer of raw material and reseller thereof, and remains a seller of his own labor, exclusively.
Marx sees an “anomaly” in the fact that the worker works and does not own the product produced by him. For how long a period should the producer stay a full owner of the products created by him? If the shoe makers were going to own all the shoes they produced all the time, what would they eat? They could not feed on shoes. The shoes are produced not for the purpose of owning them, but for getting rid of their ownership as soon as possible. Their “ownership”, if it continued beyond a certain time limit, would spell the ruination, the starvation of the producers of commodities, of articles made not to own but to dispose of, to be deprived of their ownership the sooner the better.
Marx sheds “scientifico”-economic tears over the deplorable fact that the industrial laborers are no owners of the products they produce. Let us fancy they do own those products. For how long a period would they enjoy the property rights to their products without detriment to their economic situation? The real “owners” are the consumers, the rest enjoy not their ownership but their “sellership”. And the industrial workers “sell” their “products”, that part in the products which belongs to them, namely, their labor and skill that they stored up in the products by transforming them from raw material into marketable goods. And this they sell as soon as they produce, as soon as their services are rendered. For hiredom means to prepare the “purchaser” beforehand so as to be sure of the “buyer”.
The workers do not “own” their products for the plain reason that they have sold them. They would own them anyway but for a short space of time after their production and before the expected appearance of the buyer; now the “production” and the appearance of the buyer is synchronized, for the industrial laborer does not produce unless the buyer is ready at hand and under obligation to acquire the products produced, that part therein which belongs to the laborer, namely, his labor; and the guarantee is given by the fact of the other constituent part of the products already belonging to their “purchaser”, the capitalist. Property rights are based on labor and are alienated by selling and acquired by the other party through purchase. Here the same thing is taking place. The laborer sells his “product” minus the raw material, and the capitalist buys it, and pays for it. The “hiring” is but a preliminary preceding and preparing the smooth completion of the bilateral transaction.
The whole mess is caused by the misuse of the word “appropriation”. Had Marx-Engels said that products produced cooperatively are bought seemingly individually, everyone would have understood them, and immediately rejected their doubly inaccurate statement. For the products while they are bought are not yet social, and when they become social, they are not bought, but stay with their owners that acquired them before they had undergone any change, besides that the products are not social altogether, and neither is their acquisition purely individualistic.
*** 4. The One And The Many.
<quote>
“Means of production and production itself had in essence become social. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which has as its presupposition private production by individuals, with each individual owning his product and bringing it to the market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation, although it removes the presuppositions on which the latter was based.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 304.)
“There is no need here to explain that although the form of appropriation remains the same, the character of the appropriation is revolutionized by the process described above, to no less a degree than production. My appropriation of my own product and my appropriation of another person's product are certainly two very different forms of appropriation.” (Ibid., footnote.)
“… The character of the method of appropriation and the social character of the method of production. The means of production are the property of individual capitalists who appropriate to themselves the results of the production, but the production itself has become a social process; that means, a production of commodities for use made by many workers on a basis of systematic division and organization of labor.” (Edward Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism tr. by Edith C. Hardey, pp. 18-19, New York, 1909.)
</quote>
The “contradiction” between “social production” and “individual appropriation” comes easily enough under the head of the common “contradiction”, if one insists on designating this phenomenon by a term that outside of logic has hardly any valid application, between the one and the many, a contradiction-phenomenon that is to be found in nearly the totality of human activities in which a number of individuals are involved. For instance, one teaches, many are taught, one discovers, many use the discovery, one invents, many imitate, one blazes the path, many follow. This is in an especially striking way evidenced in the political or in the military field : one commands, many obey, one rules, many are ruled, one leads, many are led. Overabundant proof that such a “contradiction” contradicts nothing at all is to be gathered by handfuls from every page of recorded history. Not only is this no “contradiction”, which invariably has the under-connotation of being something objectionable, anomalous, prejudicial, hurtful, out of the proper order of things, but it is, on the very contrary, the most usual, the most frequently practiced, the most resultful, effort-saving, age-old modus operandi of nearly all human relations. In Science, Art and Religion, – it is the master and the disciples; in other branches, – the originators and their imitators, initiative act and the endless number of its repetitions, original and copies.
In economics, a realm wherein power, achievement is translated in terms of property, this general, universal phenomenon, of the one leading and the many being led, whether the one is a person or an outstanding process, act, is expressed in the relation of the many workers being found under the supervision of one capitalist, in other words, Capital as leader and Labor as led. Capitalism renders in its own, proper terms of economics a system of relationship existing in all fields of human intercourse.
Now, let us pass from the indication and description of the character of the “contradiction” to its “solution”, plan for elimination, offered by Marxian Communism. What does it propose? The handing over of our industry, of all national economy, to the Communist state or society.
Does this “solution” solve anything? Nothing, absolutely nothing. All this proposal amounts to is the transmutation of relations grounded in possession into relations grounded in power. Both ends by this scheme would seemingly be reconciled, “production” and “appropriation” would apparently be brought under one denominator, for both would, superficially looked upon, become “social”, and to the dull-witted appear to be situated in one sphere, but, actually, the contradiction of the one and the many, between “production” and the “direction of production”, would not only remain in its previous state, but gain a tremendous increase, grow more out spoken. All Marxian Communism could achieve by its nationalization or socialization plan would amount in actualities, not phraseology, to the doing away with the specific character of economic activities, so that there would be, under the new system introduced by the Communists, no private, individual “appropriation”, but class-appropriation.
*** 5. Laissez Faire As Separation Of Economics From Politics.
In the Middle Ages property concepts, possession notions tinged, if not fashioned, all political activity, thus polity was, so to say, dominated by “economy”, “economized”. Monarchy is a patrimonial institute, it is <em>Dominium</em> intermixed with <em>Imperium</em>. With the establishment of Republics, – or modified Kingdoms that are governed approximately on the same principles and run pretty close to republican forms of government, with the addition of the throne and court that have a rather decorative, more than administrative, value, yet serve as a national emblem and symbolization of unity with mighty little constitutional prerogatives, imperium was freed, purified from its slag, from its economic vestiges, from the dominional heterogeneous elements. Modern time saw the separation of these two concepts and spheres of endeavor. Politics was emancipated and it became independent. It has, under present conditions of statesmanship, very little, or nothing at all, to do with the concept of power-property, with ownership concerning political authority. Laissez faire was double-edged, and worked both ways. It demanded a divorcing act, it liberated politics from the sway of economics, it allowed it to be shaped in its own image and after its own peculiar likeness; and politics was henceforth cast in the mold of pure power.
Marxian Communism combating laissez faire, branding it as bourgeois, and prejudicial, would have politics overwhelm economics. The Marxian advocates the application to economic activities of a mode of relations employed in the realm of social polity, he recommends that we adopt the concept of authority in a sphere wherein possession notions are dominant. Marxism Communism champions the fusion of the two domains and the discard of the notion of dominion, of possession altogether, thus expanding the conception of imperium and its region of influence and making it cover the whole field of economics. In other words, what Marxism proposes is to “politicalize” economy, and reverse medievalism, instead of the <em>economic polity</em> of the Middle Ages it intends to introduce a political economy. The private impress of appropriation would thus be obliterated, and along with it would go into discard private economy as well as partner, trust, combine, merger economy, with all their peculiarities, derivations from the specificity of the economic discipline.
But this transformation would have no effect, -un less in the reverse from the promised direction, namely, of sharpening, instead of dulling, the tapering, -upon the pyramidal shape of societal relationship. For in “production” proper would be occupied the many, the multi tudes, and in “appropriation”, meaning now, under Communism, rendered into political terms, compulsory, authoritative supervision and regulation of production, would be engaged “the few”. And in the still higher brackets, the lofty altitudes where the “supervising of the supervisors”, the commanding of the minor commanders was taking place, still fewer individuals would be kept busy, till we would reach the peak, the pinnacle of the political structure, and there find stationed, in all the splendor of an unlimited authority, one, or two or three, exceptionally powerful individuals.
The capitalist mode of production presents to us the same picture, though not thrown into such a clear-cut relief. The capitalist-proprietor, as the hidden, remote, indirect, asserting himself through the intermediary of finance and ownership, director of the productive process, is on the one side, and the producers, the many, are placed on the other side. There is nothing exceptionally alarming, and there is nothing removable, eliminable, about this situation. It is only a case of the one placed in juxtaposition of the multitude of a smaller or larger bulk. There is nothing specifically “capitalistic” in all this, save the form which is that of property. It is a particular application, expressed in economic terminology and, consequently, in concepts of possession, of a general societary rule.
*** 6. Private And Public.
<quote>
“The private character of the method of appropriation and the social character of the method of production.”
</quote>
How are we to suppose this putative “contradiction” to be equal to the strenuous and quite consequential task of breaking-up, disintegrating the capitalist system, when it is found, upon any, no matter how furtive, examination into the matter, to be nothing else but the very essence, the pith and marrow of the economic system as an economic system as well as of any other “system” in as much as it contains elements of “systematization” however rudimentary. Capitalism was born and brought up by this so called pernicious “contradiction”. The same way as its predecessors, its antecedents, the previous orders, were made and were sustained, nursed and nourished by this very “contradiction”. One appropriates, controls, disposes of that which is produced by many. Under slavery, under serfdom as well as under hiredom, called capitalism, we witness all the time the same, basically constant, phenomenon. One owns, uses, the produce, the labor results, the effort-fruits of the many. The special characteristic of capitalism begins with the modification of the juridical and economic character of the one and the many and the transformation of the legal and factual mode of their interrelationship. The one is no longer a political potentate who exercises authoritative dominion over the many, his retainers, slaves or serfs. The many are “free”. They are not forced to work altogether, if they do not want to. They must not belong to the laboring masses, as individuals they can quit their ranks, disperse, attach themselves to any group in existence in society. No legal status, no juridical norms coerce them to belong to the labor-camp. They are compelled to do so, in most cases, allowing for individual exceptions, by economic circumstances. A certain economic pressure is brought to bear upon them, a whole chain of factual difficulties holds them bound to their benches. But while they are forced factually to labor, to hire themselves out, they are free to change their hirers, their occupations or the places where they are kept occupied. They are not tied up, neither juridically, not factually, with a certain definite individual or firm beyond their contractual time-limits.
According to Marx, Engels, Bernstein, etc., “appropriation” as such, as a complement of “production”, is not objectionable. There is no unbridgeable abyss separating these two functions, these two extremities of the economic pursuit. No more so than there is a “contradiction” between “production” as such and “consumption” as such. as such. The former leads straight forward, or through intermediate connections in a round about way, to the latter, and the latter gives the former meaning and purpose. The trouble starts not with the nouns, production, appropriation, that would get along nicely without any altercations, but with the cantankerous adjectives, the “social” and the “private”, it is they that are to blame for the clash, for the antagonism, and conflict.
What is the matter with them, anyway?
Do not all “social” affairs and functions realize themselves through the medium of private agencies, no matter how socially veneered those agencies, individuals, private persons, may be? If the “social” clashes with, militates against, the “private”, then it does it in all the spheres of “social” activity, economics being no exception, but, on the other hand, it is not the only one that constitutes the rule. In the realm of economics this very “conflict”, if there be one, is, naturally, supposed to be expressed in economic terms, in the political field it would assume a political manifestation, in the domain of ideologies, an ideological, a psychological, one. A President of a Republic signing and thus turning into law a decree, a Mayor of a city issuing a regulation, and an endless amount of similar acts, testify clearly to the effect that an individual is made to serve as a substitute for society, for a smaller or larger aggregation of individuals. Thus a basically “social” function that concerns the many, is carried out by one single individual or by a delegation or committee of them.
The ”private character” of the functionary and the “social character” of the function fulfilled by him contradict one another along the whole length of the frontal line of public endeavor. And in the political field it is much more palpable than in the economic. For the duties, the functions, are here, in most cases, if not in all, genuinely “social”, concern the entirety of the commonwealth as an integrated whole, and not only a small fraction, a nucleus of it.
So that the “social” passes all over into the “private”. And we cannot help it. There is no way of abolishing it. The sphere of economic activities is less affected by it than the political or ideological. This is conditioned by the very nature of society as such and by the very nature of the individual as such. And so long as individuals keep on living in compact masses that are constituted in a certain political way, we are utterly unable to cope with this difficulty or defect, if we choose to describe this circumstance with such censorious epithets.
*** 7. Size: Social or Corporational.
<quote>
“The social character of the method of production.” “Means of production and production itself had become social.”
</quote>
How did it become “social”? By what means did it come by its social characteristics? By the mere fact that “many”, a number of workers are being employed simultaneously on one job? Do all activities in which more than one individual is engaged become because of that “social”? This being the case we shell be obliged in each particular case to indicate clearly the sum of the individuals, to specify the size of the concern, so that we be able to get some information about the measure, the magnitude, described with some degree of precision, of the “socialiness”, the rate and grade of the “social” character of the activity or phenomenon. We would have a whole scale of “socials”: vicinity social, local social, state social, national social, partner ship social, trade-union social, family social, stock company social.
Production in our present time, under capitalism, organizationally and technologically considered, is a synthetic abstraction, a far-fetched generalization, for it does not exist in actuality as an integral unity, but as a sum of many units, independent or semi-independent, or quite precariously related, anarchically or feudalistically detached. And the “social character” of such a production is, surely, not nationally, still less internationally, social.
If we intend to talk concrete economics, we cannot soar in the blue skies of generalities, but must keep close to the gray ground of particulars. We must come down to the separate or interconnected workshop, plant operating under a certain definite firm, one individual boss, or a company. And when we look upon the economic subject of production at such a close range, all we behold is smaller or larger groups of workers employed on the basis of hiredom, by one individual capitalist, or by a partnership, a group of capitalists. The appropriation in the latter case would be no less “social”, concerning its character, than the “production”. Though the “appropriators” usually, as a rule, belong to an aggregation that is numerically smaller than that of the producers. And it would be a case of a group of producers facing another group of “appropriators”. If the character of the first process, that of “production is grandiloquently described as “social”, then the second process, that of “appropriation”, cannot legitimately be denied the same meaningless, though high-sounding, title. A question may, then, arise as to the queerness of the economic system that allows a separation line to run between these two functions, and the principle of specialization, of “division of labor” to be applied in such a peculiar way and concerning such delicate matters, so that as a result of such “perversity” we witness such an odd spectacle: they who “produce” do not appropriate, and they who appropriate do not produce. This would have been quite shocking to common usage no less than to common sense. But it would have absolutely nothing to do with the alleged conflict of the “social” and the “private”.
If production were of a private character and appropriation of the same private character, but these functions were being carried out by two separate individuals, the same absurdity, the peculiar and unaccountable change of personnel, would be present and quite unbearable. The same if production were fully social, and appropriation not lagging behind it in “socialness”, and as regards the number of the appropriators even transcending numerically that of the producers, so that the latter's socialness would be of a higher co efficient, but the separation being present, namely, the participants of the process of production having no share in appropriation, and the lucky appropriators taking no part whatsoever in production, the same phenomenal paradoxicality would be staring at us. So that is another problem altogether.
Such a bizarre “relation”, one agent doing all the appropriating and the other doing all the producing, and between the two no exchange of a compensatory nature, could be tolerated by no economic system. This would signify outright robbery, and economics as a system of internal replenishment making for its perpetuity, a mechanism provided with a reproductive apparatus, could not operate for any length of time under such an exclusively thoroughgoing dichotomy.
<quote>
“What therefore, the wage-laborer appropriates by means of his labor, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence.” (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 46.)
</quote>
So that even the Communist Manifesto must acknowledge that the “robbed” producer is receiving some compensation, has a share, no matter how meager, in appropriation which he is getting under one form or another. For otherwise the producer would be unable to continue slaving and the economic contraption would collapse of its own inanity. And, on the other hand, the “robber”, appropriator is fulfilling some kind of a function, he takes chances, pays out advances, carries some load, no matter how light, of responsibility for the concern. This being the case, the issue loses all its strange incomprehensibleness touching upon plain absurdity, and reduces itself to the problem of proportional distribution, how much productive activity, how much effort is invested by them, and how much appropriative gain does one and the other net as a result of their combined efforts as two counter-agents of one process. On the face of it, it is an economic litigation, an argument of two participants of the processes of production and appropriation concerning their respective givings and takings. The settlement of the difference would engage the attention and painstaking studies of practical and theoretical economists so as to bring into some dynamic, variable, shifting, harmony the investments in effort and strain and the returns in the shape of results derived from the amount of products produced and paid out in one form or another. This is a highly interesting subject for study, and a great field for scientific arbitration.
But the trumped up “contradiction” between the private character of capitalist appropriation and the allegedly social character of production is a bubble filled with hot air of Marxist argumentativeness, and the slightest prick of criticism deflates it irretrievably, frees it from all its quasi-scientific pomposity.
Production, taken in concrete, as a functioning system, not a metaphysical concept, has no “social character”. We deal nowhere, outside of theoretical speculation and statistical generalization, with “production” in general as a unit on a national or international scale, but with workshops, factories. And then, standing upon the solid ground of practice, daily actualities of industry and commerce, we see clearly that the “sociality” of production is an imagination of the Communist doctrinaire. This sociality, shorn of its extravagant exaggeration, comes down to involuntary cooperation, to the prosaic fact that a certain number of workers, through a method called hiredom, are brought together, held together, and made to function productively together. They constitute a small unit that is controlled by a still slimmer unit, and that is a corporation of capitalists.
<quote>
“The means of production are the property of individual capitalists who appropriate to themselves the results of production, but the production itself has become a social process; that means, a production of commodities... made by many workers on a basis of systematic division and organization of labor.”
</quote>
The “social character” of production is rather a matter of philosophical insight. But such a speculative “socialness” we detect in “production” carried out by a single individual as well. An isolated producer so long as his eye is focused on the market, and he does ply his trade, not a hobby to satisfy his personal whims, producing goods, objects capable of supplying a public demand, is fulfilling a social function in spite of his apparent sequestration, hermit fashion of working. The “socialness” in the given case is of a very tenuous nature and it is based exclusively upon the fact that the producers are creating commodities, objects of common use, items of goods that bear no individualistic marks, that have no uniqueness stamp on them. From this angle, things economic, all performances carried out in this field, are of a social character. And this was the very standpoint of the classical school. The capitalist as well as the individual laborer, tradesman, artisan, shopkeeper, farmer, all of them without exception fulfil a social function despite their own wishes, their own egotistic desires, personal objectives, selfish aims and petty, narrow ends. For they all, while striving for their own good, contribute to the good and welfare of the community as a whole of which they are but the constituent parts, and their personal good becomes, through a process of natural synthetization, the good of the public at large.
But when the Marxist, the Communist points out the <em>social</em> character of production as contradicting that of <em>individual</em> appropriation, he has in mind some special kind, a more intensified manifestation of “socialness” than that indicated by the classical economists. Otherwise appropriation, no matter what it may look like on the surface, should be considered as basically <em>social</em> in no less degree than the process of production. The classical school of political economy played no favorites. It took a bird's-eye view of all economic activities. It saw the trees and the forest, it overlooked the groupings of the trees, their varieties, their classification. This was its fatal mistake. But, at least, no charge of inconsistency can be brought against it. Whereas the Marxian Communist is so busy chasing after the contradictions of the capitalist system that he does not notice how he gets himself caught in a net of self-contradictory statements. At one moment he sees the classes and their relations embodied in productive activities, at the other moment, he does not see them. At one moment he is cognizant of the <em>latently</em> “social” character of economic pursuits, at the other moment, concerning another item of the same unit, he is entirely unaware of it. His arbitrariness in ideology is a prefiguration of the coming arbitrariness of his politico-economic regime. It is dictatorial reasoning done by fiats.
Our production, even when it is carried on on the largest scale of trustification, is not yet “social” in the economic, matter of fact, sense of the term, but corporational, not more, even when looked upon from the angle of mere size, overlooking the internal functioning that is invariably, under all conditions, an inter-class phenomenon, and by no means purely “social”.
Practically economically, all we see, from the stand point of bulk, is a portion of workers, an infinitesimal fraction of the working class taken as a whole, a certain definite group, being kept busy in a separate local that constitutes an independent tiny bit of an island in an ocean of a trade. The division of labor and form of organization, the economic regime established within the four walls of the single plant could not have made that segment of production look “social” in the broad sense of the word. It is a division of labor that is confined to a dwarfish association. The same concerning the “organization” of labor. It does not reach out, strictly economically productively, beyond the precincts of the individual workshop, factory, plant or field-estate. It is not “social” even structurally, not only functionally. Unless the Marxian Communist takes <em>his</em> wish, <em>his</em> plan, <em>his</em> project concerning the future and treats it as an actuality of <em>our present</em> economic life. The Marxian Communist <em>intends</em> to introduce systematization, unification, and that only on a narrow national state scale, and thus put an end to the feudalism of modern economics. But <em>intentions</em> are not counted for realizations. The Marxian Communist, whether he admits it or not, is an economic nationalist. He advocates the nationalization of industry and commerce. But these are planks in a program elaborated by “theorists”, and not pieces of economic reality concerning bourgeois economic life. National economy is a misnomer. Our economy is not “national” in its connotation of state and nation unitariness; economy is not, outside the Communist speculation and experimentation meaning compulsory imposition, a well-knit together, rigidly regimented national state concern directed from one centre through the embodiment of one general will. Capitalist economy is not “social”. Capitalism is private, in some parts of it, and corporational, in other parts.
*** 8. Political-Social or Economic Interindividual.
Economic activities are not cut-and-dried after one measure, according to one standard. Economics allows a number of degrees and various levels of development to co-exist. For it is a voluntary, an interindividual, system and, therefore, it is not uniformal. It is not a “system”, but a multiple of systems combined together. Economics is pluralistic, not monistic. We are not permitted to have at the same time in one and the same country three political systems operating alongside one another. Feudalism, monarchism and republicanism will not dwell in peace, like the prophetical lamb and wolf, in one body politic, in one polity. It is always either a monarchy or a republic or a kingdom, a combination of principles and practices borrowed from both. And this combination, again, is strictly defined, its elements indicated precisely in a constitutional formula. While the very essence of economic activities, under the so called capitalist “system”, is their manifoldedness, multifariousness, nondescriptness, intermingledness. Here is a private individual plying his trade in a way that his small “capital” and his no less insignificant “labor” are kept, through his personality of a laborite-capitalist, harmoniously together as emanating from one and the same source. He either produces and consumes his own products, or, else sells them. Nearby, within a stone's throw is located a workshop based on hired labor of <em>many</em> employed by <em>one</em>. Its production activity assumes the form of a cooperative controlled and manipulated, – because originated, brought into existence and, consequently, into motion, – by one so that its form of appropriation, as a result, is of a private character. And right across it, on the same street, there is an establishment that is run by a cooperative of producers on the basis of their joint stock. To think of economic activities in terms of politics and its special methodology derived from the monolithic nature of its unit, is no less irrelevant than to consider technics in the light of statesmanship. Let us take locomotion as an illustration: one walks, the other runs, the third goes horseback, the fourth drives a horse and buggy, the fifth speeds in an automobile, the sixth boards a train that is pulled along by a steam engine, and the seventh is piloting an aeroplane or an airship, while the eighth sails on a boat. The same applies to economic pursuits.
Political systems are “systems” in the full sense of the word. They are mono-typed, one-tracked. For they are based essentially on “sociality”, on the unity of the aggregate, of the social organism preceding in time the separate existence of its organs, the self-consciousness of its individual members.
Economic systems, with the exclusion of the “Communist system”, are no systems in the strict sense. For economic activities are interindividual acts. And that is why the economic units do not coincide with the national political unit. On the one side, it is much smaller, it is sometimes private altogether, infinitesimal; on the other hand, it unrolls, like a long ribbon, traversing one fatherland after another, crossing borders, spanning deserts, bridging oceans, covering continents, enveloping the globe. The reason of it is its character as an individual and interindividual process and activity. Ford's factories must not stop on the border-line of the political unit called U. S. Ford's economic enterprises must not be commensurate with the nationally political territory. Economics is not and should not be “patriotic”, fatherlandish. The wedding of economy to polity, the design of Marxism and non-Marxian Communism, National Socialism, is a distortion of economics and a violation of politics. This fusion is pregnant with the most disastrous consequences for our human civilization, it would usher in a neo-imperialism, a super imperialism the like of which history had not known.
Economics is based on voluntarism, physical and juridical. Politics is based on force and compulsion, physical and juridical. To combine economics with politics, as advocated by the Communists, in a way that the former should be subject to the latter, would lead invariably to the most maddened form of chauvinism, that of economic imperialism; and oceans of bloodshed in wars motivated by national economic jealousies and rivalries, substituting our present more or less mitigated forms of competition, conducted by political, armed to their teeth and quick on the jump, units acting in their double capacity of politico-economic monstrosities, would deluge our earth and wipe off completely humanitarian ism, the little bit of religious culture, of morality in interhuman relations we are still in possession of. For political units, as collectivities are subject to no other law save that of the jungle. They are as blood-thirsty as tigers and as ravenous as rapacious wolves.
Economic activities have for their basis an <em>interindividual</em> and an <em>interclass</em> relation. They are not “social” in the sense of oneness of the group-action involved in them to the extent of effacing the individual. And they are not “social” in the sense of the oneness of the group-action involved in them to the elimination of the class. Economic combinations are based on a double partnership, in them the individual participant preserves his integrity and identity, and the class attains in them its manifestation and clear-cut incision. And that is why it is preposterous, from the scientific standpoint, and dangerous, for considerations of humaneness, to demand the <em>politicalization</em> of economic activities, to insist that they be organized and run on a political unit basis.
Society as such does not produce. Production cannot and must not be handed over to society. Society has nothing to do with these activities. Men produce, men labor, men strain themselves and combine as separate individuals entering into contractual, or of some other kind, connections. But when they do this, they do it not on the basis of their being social animals, but as individuals who weave voluntarily weave voluntarily their inter individual relations.
*** 9. Social or Interindividual Relation.
<quote>
“Large production, on the contrary, means co-operation, social production. In large production the individual does not work alone, but a large number of workers, the whole commonwealth, work together to produce a whole.” (Karl Kautsky, Class-struggle, p. 94, Chicago, 1934.)
</quote>
Two concepts are here interchanged, that of “co-operation” and that of “social production”. “Co-operation” is by no means identical with “social production”. A “co-operation”, first, concerning its structural dimensions must not necessarily encompass the whole of the commonwealth, the totality of the society-members. A “co-operation” is a nucleus formed artificially within society for a certain productive or consumptive purpose. It enlists or incorporates only those individuals who are interested personally in the work to be done and are fit, more or less, for its proper accomplishment on a basis of an average standard. Society, in comparison with it, is a natural growth, a natural organism. Co-operation is a micro-interindividual mechanism placed within a macro-social organism. Co-operation is constituted by a sum of persons who are going about this business of its construction more or less consciously and purposefully. They have set before them a definite task to fulfil.
So much as regards its size, the number of the individuals it contains and the active roles played by them as constituent parts of the whole.
Secondly, a “co-operation” of that kind Kautsky speaks of is, according to its very nature, an inter-class combination, and cannot, therefore, be defined as merely “social”. It is too vague and too misleading a term for it. A “social” construction can be, and was in its primeval architectural styles, a one-storeyed building. Whereas an industrial co-operation of the capitalistic type, and of this Kautsky discourses, is inevitably two-storeyed, at least. It could not be built otherwise. Large scale production must have as its prerequisite an inter-class relation incorporated into its very frame.
Two gross errors lie at the bottom of Karl Kautsky's thesis. And he is not to blame for his mistakes. It is Marxism that he, as an ardent apostle and most able popularizer, is expounding. And these misconceptions constitute the very essence of the Marxian doctrine.
Blunder number one:
Co-operation, as it clearly says even literally, meaning co-work, team-action, joint-labor, incorporates a certain definite number of individuals answering to certain definite requirements. It assembles, clubs together individual laborers who are, though, may be, exceedingly minimally, self-conscious, and who become, in the act of their being associated, <em>interindividualized</em>. Under the capitalist mode of production, this act of <em>interindividualization</em> of the individual workers is carried out, directly or indirectly, by a member or a few members of a class that is situated, sociologically economically, not politically juridically, above the laboring masses. Co-operation, therefore, is an <em>interindividual</em> formation. It is not nationally social, and surely not <em>universally social</em>. It does not encompass all and everybody. It is restricted concerning its magnitude. It is limited regarding the number of individuals it contains. And its size should, therefore, be indicated, specified. There can be a co-operation of ten individuals, of twenty, of hundred or thousand and We should know where we stand. The size in the given case is the most decisive factor and must not be overlooked. Further, the individuals co-operating do not form thereby an organic whole, they do not constitute a unit that absorbs, by its right of priority, on the basis of its preceding in time of origination, its constituent parts to the complete annihilation of their separate existences in the given act or process. They as such are active contributors to the sum. They make the sum, they are not made by it.
Blunder number two:
A “co-operation” is not “social”. It is an inter class affair, though mitigated by interindividual connections. For in a co-operation not two classes as fully manned, plenary units are supposed to be engaged as counter-agents, but members of one class, one or few of them, are entering into an economic interrelationship with members, usually by far outnumbering them, of another class-formation, and thuswise do team-work of a double character, in an interindividual and inter class fashion combined. It is not an exclusively inter class relation, but an inter-class relation realized as an inter-individual connection, or an interindividual relation materialized and modified, complicated by an inter-class linkage.
Production to be genuinely “social” would have to be conducted on an exceptionally small scale and be of an extremely low grade concerning its developmental facilities and only in that case could it be held in a favorable position that would enable it to operate wholly and exclusively on one plane, without being pressed to take recourse to a sociological division of labor. And, besides, the “social unit” that acts in its capacity of a collective producer, as the active agent of the whole “social production” enterprise, would have to be, again, of an exceedingly diminutive size and of an extraordinarily rudimentary structure, so that it might be in a state to assert itself, to function productively without being compelled to split up, as a matter of necessity and expedience, into various tier-like arranged stratifications.
<quote>
“In large production the individual does not work alone, but a large number of workers, the whole commonwealth, work together to produce a whole…”
</quote>
In large scale production the individual laborer does not operate alone, in an isolated way, but a large number of individual toilers are combined and they work together in a more or less disciplined fashion. But this combination is not an outcome of their volition, their own intents and plans, their own initiative, their own organisatory capacities and associative inclinations, co-operative predilections. Not so. But a member or members of a superior, economically, class of proprietors hire them, in most cases, – excluding those of collective bargaining and trade-union representation which again is an inter class formation though of a somewhat different character, – separately as individuals and then, upon the act of hiring being completed, incorporate them into association and, thus, keep them working as a mechanism constructed of various well-assorted, properly assembled parts. Otherwise, in large production the worker would have been confronted with a double task that would, naturally, overtax his limited abilities, namely, that of discharging simultaneously two functions, one of laboring, exerting oneself in the direct process of production, and the other of herding together many laboring units and welding them, and keeping on regulating and directing the multi-individual labor-process in a way that averted its becoming an inter-class case.
Consequently, the salient feature of large scale production is its obvious, well-defined, sharply expressed, inter-class character, the fact that a member, or a small group of members, of one class is the originator of an interindividual relation realized between members of another class. In other words, the essential point about large scale production is the outstanding circumstance that the director,-taken financially, economically, not technically, these two concepts should not be inter mingled and mangled thereby, belongs, according to the very nature of his function, to one class, and the direct participants of the process of production, again, according to the very nature of their functions, belong to another class, to another, lower stratum.
This understanding of the situation exhibited by large scale production proves the close of the sentence of Kautsky's to be utterly obscure and meaningless, “Many workers, the whole commonwealth, work together to produce a whole.” Since the beginning of civilization there never was a collectivity of one kind or another that went on record as one that worked and did not, in the process of its work accomplished, break up into two strata, one consisting of workers, the other of directors, of one style or another, magicians, priests, chieftains, taskmasters, of work and workers. Even if the “commonwealth” be but another name for the most primitive patriarchal family, it could not function as a whole without setting off a process of differentiation. In our times, the words of Kautsky's sound like a faintly reverberating, somewhere lost, detained for millennia on its way, many a time relayed, echo of prehistory descending to us as a message about things of a forgotten bygone. Where can we find, under capitalism or under any “ism”, for that matter, the enchanting, heart gladdening and mind-bewildering, scene of a common wealth of considerable proportions working together in an organized fashion and being localized, quartered in a series of plants that are interlocked, and all this done without the segregation of a superior class of regulators, directors.
Perhaps Kautsky purports to convey to us, in his own words and a somewhat distorted fashion, the old reflection of the classical school in political economy that, philosophically looked upon, the whole commonwealth, – though many of its members are “idlers”, fulfil various non-productive functions, some of them being engaged in purely political activities, others committing anti-social acts, others, again, in their turn, checking and hunting them down, discharging duties of internal protection, like those of the police-force and the detectives, or of external, like those of the army and navy men, others, again, being busy with ideological matters of an emotional, intellectual or semi-intuitional character, notwithstanding the remoteness of all these multifarious activities from the field of production proper, yet the commonwealth with all its branches of ramified and scattered endeavors, of the most dis similar points of application of its energies, works together, not organizationally, as one concern directed and motivated from one power-station, but sociologically as a unit of a high complexity. In this interpretation of the end of the quoted passage of Kautsky's, it would assert the underlying systematicality of the unrelated activities of the commonwealth, despite their glaring discrepancies and disparities. But this characteristic of the commonwealth as such could have absolutely nothing to do with the particular of “large production”. The classical school saw altruistic social order emerging out of egotistic chaotic pursuits everywhere, along the whole range, without confirming its vision to large scale production. Small scale production, any kind of production, would have given them the same impression.
When production was going through its elementary stages, and social life was not far removed from its fountainhead, then the commonwealth as a unit was more cohesive, more agglutinated than it is now, for the plain and obvious enough reason that its centrifugal forces generated by the individual and the class were then almost entirely absent. In near our own epoch, when production was still in its adolescence, though there was already in evidence a market of a somewhat considerable scope, the commonwealth could have been said, with quite a number of reservations, to be working together in solidarity, with the exclusion of those who were not engaged in productive pursuits altogether, “to produce a whole”. But in modernity such and similar contentions are absolutely out of place and tune. They are all too anachronistic.
Large scale production has very little to contribute to the “social” character of our economic activities, if under the “social” we understand what it stands for, namely the absence of conflicts of an individualistic and class character. The larger production grows, the more it expands, the more involved it becomes, and the more, consequently, inter-classified and interindividualized it waxes, and the less and less it is “socialized”.
“Society” itself in urban parlance becomes synonymous with a high class.
Do not Marxian Communists advocate to hand over our industry to “society” in the sense of a high stratum of elite?
Our language is a racial, national phenomenon, it is a <em>social</em> creation. No less <em>social</em> is ancient culture with its oral unnamed tradition and scripture of anonymity, its penmanship being attributed to the maker of all, meaning the socially undifferentiated aggregate as a whole. But our modern literature which has at its foundation individual authorship can by no means be described as being merely “social”. Each literary production is accredited to a definite personality, or to a conclave of them, as the case is with encyclopedias. No less so economic pursuits, where each drop of energy is accounted for, registered, checked up and put on record to be drawn against it by a definite economic subject, a productive agent who conducts his own bookkeeping, despite all the Communist propaganda.
Neither the “social” nor the “interindividual” magnitude is constant. The “social”, the sum of relations strictly social, is on the decrease, on the decline in modern society, under normal conditions of evolution taking place without artificial state-interference. The “interindividual” element, on the contrary, is all the time on the steady, slow, but sure, increase. For the individual becomes more and more self-conscious, and his activities, his connections, his co-operative work assumes more and more an “interindividual” coloration and stylization.
Progress of civilization and culture tends in the direction of undermining, sapping the “social”, and transforming it through a slow process of evolution into an interindividual and inter-class relation. Industry, economic activities through the whole length and breadth of history, with the exception of primeval epochs, when the tribe, or a grouping of some formation, was acting as one man in a natural way, without artificial make shifts, contrivances, of a juridical and purely ideological nature, – those taken recourse to, for the lack of better, more effective means, by modern sociological and poli tical manipulators and soul-string-pullers, have been and are emphatically, unequivocally of an interindividualistic and inter-class expression. Man is no longer an exclusively social or political animal, but an interindividual personality. And his interindividuality grows more and more manifest with the rise of his internal soul-culture and the unfoldment of his psychological and logical endowments.
The ”social” is to a certain degree a residue of the past, it is to a considerable extent anachronistic. It fights a losing battle against the advancement of Man, and that is why it is so reckless and so aggressive, so barbaric in its methods. Its policies of savagery are dictated by despair. The factor of time and development works against it.
Marxian Communism is enveloped in half-truths that are worse than patent lies, full-blooded falsehoods. It recognizes the fact of the existence of classes, but it does it reluctantly. For it looks upon it as an anomaly of social intercourse, an excrescence upon the body sociologic. And the Marxian assures us that he is about to remove this unhealthy growth by a surgical operation that is nothing short of the miraculous in the sphere of applied sociology and has all the signs and symptoms of the pseudo-messianic about it. The Marxian is body and soul for class struggle that he considers as the means with which the class-cancer is to be cut out of the social system. He does not see, and he does not want to see, — himself being a member and spokesman of an emerging top-class of society and as such being interested to minimize the class-issue of society and treat it as something transitory, accessory, evanescent, — that this pretended removal of the class-division is but an excuse, a pretext, under the cover of which a new solidified super-class is ready to break in and take the fore-stage of history by force and violence.
Nations were not abolished by wars. No matter how many of them were waged, no matter how bloody and how destructive of human life they were and will be. And internationalism was formulated as the only way out of the horrors of chauvinism and as a legitimate and historically logical sequence to nationalism, as its complement and sublimation. Even so, and much more so, classes. Class-wars, serial civil fights, no matter how blood-drenched, how cruel they may be, revolutions no matter how thoroughgoing, how left-radically executed, will not and cannot, by any means in social existence, even taking recourse to wholesale physical annihilation of the members of the superior stratum, as advocated by the arch-revolutionaries who show more zeal than rea son, -will not and cannot put an end to the existence of classes. Alongside <em>classism</em>, <em>inter-classism</em> should be formulated. For classes, of one formation or another, are going to be with us for ever and ever more. Society is split into strata, and will stay split, and never be made whole, under no circumstances of natural sociology. Its <em>classlessness</em>, its wholeness was a deep primitive, a primevalism, an ante-civilizational state to which society, without its complete decomposition and set-back hurling it down the ladder of evolution to a depth of ten thousand years ago, will not return. This so considered radical idea of classlessness is either the most reactionary or most social messianic thought ever conceived by men laying futile claims to modernity, unless it be looked upon as one of the subtle subterfuges employed by a cleverly manipulating, fooling itself in order to have a moral right to fool others, emerging super-class.
Industry is an inter-class and interindividual phenomenon combined and it will never be anything else till its last days of existence as a human endeavor.
A scientific investigation of economic processes and activities must proceed from these two cardinal premises, <em>interindividualism</em> and <em>interclassism</em>.
The so called Utopian Socialism was to its great credit a Utopia of love and kindness, whereas the Marxian Communism is a Utopia of hatred and civil war, but it is the same Utopia, only magnified, enlarged, – when we take it seriously at its word and aspiration, and do not interpret it as a pernicious class-maneuver. The Utopians wanted to <em>invent</em> a perfect harmonious society. But this did not satisfy Marx at all. He wanted to charge History itself to do for him all the <em>inventing</em> and thus produce for his delectation the <em>perfect</em> society.
Classes are a sociological formation of an inter individual character. Classes, unlike races, castes, nations, tribes are occupational, not biological, not blood-bound, birth-determined combinations. – To premise the existence of classes, the co-workings and clashings in our industrial activities and then arbitrarily deny the inter-class and consequently interindividual character of our economic enterprises and treat production and distribution as a “social” endeavor that will take place in a vacuum of classlessness and individuallessness, to insist upon the ushering in or coming in, being introduced by “natural” tendencies, of Communism as an anti-thesis to classism, is more than a scientific approach to and treatment of sociological phenomena can stand.
** V. COMMUNISM-COLLECTIVISM OR INTER-PRIVATISM.
*** 1. Absence of Economic Guarantees.
The Marxian Communist, insisting upon the “social” character of our economic activities and coming, on the ground of it, to the conclusion that they be subjected to a political treatment, goes one better on modern, more or less democratic, political methods. The Marxist does not recognize the right of the laborer to a share, on the basis of partnership-property, of labor. trust ownership, in the “socialized” means of production. Democratic states offer to their citizens constitutional rights, guarantees of civil safety, remedies against abuses on the part of the agencies of the government. The democratic state does not treat its citizens as a “mass”, but as a sum of individuals, separate units with separate interests, to some extent, at least. Suffrage becoming universal, freedom of speech, press and assembly, testify to the fact that the liberal state is operating upon the principle of “atomism”, a charge brought against it by the theorist of French syndicalism, George Sorel, who unwittingly became the spiritual father of the corporate state. His accusation we consider as the best compliment ever paid the state. For atomism means, translated in terms of sociology, individualism and inter individualism as its corollary. These rights, offered us by the “bourgeois” state, rendered into economic expression, would mean the recognition of the property rights of the individual producer or individual citizen.
Marxism leaves the individual laborer, – the toiler upon whom it is generous enough to bestow highly laudatory epithets bordering on fulsome flattery and adulation, but which carry with them not one grain of economic substance or recognition of labor-claims, – helpless and hopeless to the tender mercies of the monopolistic Communist state. Under the pretext of abolishing capital, it wipes off with one sweep private ownership rights to the means and products of production, and thus along with capital it discards the individual and interindividual labor-rights. Instead of economic guarantees, instead of economically constitutional rights, Marxism-Leninism offers the workers promises of a quasi-prophetic nature, – that count for less than nothing in life actualities, – about the coming abolition of classes and antagonisms and evil, etc., etc. So that there is no use for them, for the wretches of labor, for them who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow to watch their step in their dealings with their fellow men belonging to a superior class of labor-regulators, labor-lords. The Marxian Communist assures the workers that there will be no friction between higher and lower strata in society under his regime. Full har mony is the order of the Communist day, a day of light without shadows, a day of love without hate…
*** 2. Bourgeois Property an Invention of Marx.
<quote>
“The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property… In this sense the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 45.)
</quote>
Is there in existence such a category of special characteristics as that of “bourgeois property”? Property is nothing more and nothing less than plain and simple ownership. Whether the proprietor is a bourgeois, a laborer, a farmer, a small tradesman, an artisan, a functionary, a beggar in all these particular cases the category of property as such stays unchanged. It reduces itself to the question of the object of property and its quantity. What does one own, and how much does he own of it?
Under slavery one was allowed to own a man, a number of men, women, children. They were stationed juridically on one level with cattle, with beasts of burden or domestic animals, in general. Under feudalism one could command a sum of services, for a life time, of a man, or a number of men, considered as attached to the soil, to the estate one owned or held in fief. In modern times, man and his services for a life time in one continuum cannot be acquired in toto, but in parts, for definite time-limits and that independently, not as an appendage to another object of property, but on the basis of contractual relationship.
As regards the objects or services that are legally acquirable under our present economic system and political regime called capitalism and democratism, all hinges on their amount. The difference of one acquisition from the other is quantitatively. The capitalist, the banker, the big real estate man, owns more quantitatively, commands objects, controls services in bigger blocks and for longer periods of time than the average member of the commonwealth. Concerning the essence of property <em>per se</em> there is not such a special juridical or economic entity which can be described as “bourgeois property”, a form of property attached in a specific way to the bourgeoisie.
Marx invented this category of “bourgeois property” in order to use it as an excuse for the advocacy of abolition of private property in general, a legislative fiat that would deprive every individual of his basic rights in the community, and reduce him to the status of an economic pariah, wholly dependent on the will and whim of his superiors, the state functionaries, the organisateurs of labor, the planners of production and regulators of distribution.
To abolish “bourgeois property” has as much sense and meaning as to abolish “bourgeois money”. Money as a medium of exchange is no respecter of persons or classes. It operates in the same way whether it is in the hand of the capitalist, or small-shop-keeper, or laborer. One may have a cent to his name, the other a billion dollars. In both cases they are possessors of money. One makes out a check for a dollar, the other for thousands of dollars. The check in both cases is identical, and the way of making it out is, also, the same, basically. Though the sums indicated are quantitatively different. The “bourgeois” owns in the self same fashion in which any other individual, not belonging to the bourgeoisie, exercises his property rights. In his capacity of an “owner” there is nothing “bourgeois” about the bourgeois. What makes of him a capitalist manufacturer is the category of hiring. Individual or interindividual hiredom functioning on a, more or less, systematic, not sporadic, and, on a more or less, large scale constitutes an inter-class relation. And this is the very, and only, thing that makes a “capitalist” out of a manufacturer. Ownership is not the salient feature of the capitalist system, even when looked upon from the exclusively industrial angle.
*** 3. Marxism as Anti-Laborism.
In order to do away with “capitalism” as regards its essence as a sociological division of labor and regulation of functions, we would have to discard large scale industry, and go back either to exclusively individual or to small size corporational production that could be run without the admixture of inter-class elements. Then labor would be in a position to operate self-regulatorily, self-organisatorily, and be subject in the long run, exclusively to the free play of supply and demand as registered by the fluctuations of the prices and feats of the market.
In order to do away with “capitalism” not substantially, but formally, as far as its historical integument is concerned, all there is to be done is to interdict, outlaw hiredom, salariat, on a large and continuous, more or less, perpetual scale, barring casual, exceptionally brief short-term service-rendering for monetary compensation. The steady, organized, productively engaged employees would, then, become either part-owners, of the means of production, or profit-sharers, in some measure. Or “firedom” which is a counterpart of hiredom, of the salariat, should be taken remedies against through the introduction of certain methods or forms of seasonal security.
But Marxism runs along different lines altogether. It scorns reformatory ameliorative policies, branding them as ineffective palliatives. It promises to do away with “capitalism” in a substantial way. At the same time it champions not only the preservation of high scale industry, but its further development in that direction, namely, <em>colossalization, nationalization</em>. By these so called “revolutionary” changes, thoroughgoing over whelming reforms, Marxist Communism not only cannot alter the essence of “capitalism”, the substance of the capitalistic mode of production, but it is unable to mitigate in the slightest degree its “formal” evils. All it can and wants to do is to make bad things worse. Marxism-Leninism in stark economic actualities, shoving aside its revivalistically sermonizing exercises it indulges in with the sole purpose of recruiting soldiers for the civil war it intends to declare and wage, aims at modifying the <em>historical expression</em> of the capitalist mode of production. And this will be carried out by it after a fashion that will not ease the burden of labor, but, on the contrary, make it more onerous. Marxism Leninism is directed with its sharp point more against labor than against capital. That is why Marxism-Leninism, Communism, concentrates its attack not upon “hiredom and firedom”, the salient features of capitalism, but upon the only economo-democratic establishment that the masses are still in possession of and are still able, though to a very narrow limit, to make use of, namely, the civilization-old institution, the strong hold of liberty, the citadel of economic independence, – private property. This institution blocks their way to the complete enslavement of labor and laborer. And they batter away at it with all their fury.
Marxism-Communism abolishes private ownership of the <em>laborer</em>, the right of the worker to own his share in the means of production, no less than that of the capitalist. This is done under the false and groundless pretext of production being “social” and, therefore, belonging to society at large.
According to Marxian lucubrations industry be longs neither to capital nor to labor, but to the totality of the given commonwealth, to the body politic, to all the members of the collectivity, whether they work, or they do not work, and contribute absolutely nothing to production as such. And the “belonging to all” is materialized not on the basis of interindividual property, of shares, of joint stock companies organized on a national scale, but on the basis of negation of property, and the proclamation of communality, of communism. Holding things in common can have practically one meaning, and that is the handing them over to the political organisateurs of the given state for control and disposal according to their wishes and whims.
Marxism, as a matter of deeper understanding, is opposed to the rights and claims of labor no less, but more so, than to those of <em>capital</em>. Naturally, it advocates the <em>appropriation of capital</em>, and not the <em>expropriation</em>, — meaning militarization, rock-bottom subsistence wage scales, and the like “reforms” it holds in store for the laboring masses, – of <em>labor</em> carried out by the <em>fictitious</em> classless society, the Communist state. This plank of its program it keeps for the time being under the cover of silence, hidden away in the shadowy corners of its books to which the common laborer has no easy access. The more so that the advocacy of <em>expropriation</em> <em>of</em> <em>labor</em> does not require propagandizing, soap-boxing about, for this policy of <em>confiscation of labor</em> will be carried out by the Communist state as a matter of course without meeting with active opposition. After the low layers, the farmers, artisans and small shop-keepers, and the higher layers, the merchants, manufacturers, business people, of the middle class have been crushed economically and politically, expropriated and compulsorily proletarianized or pauperized, declassed, the working class is all at the mercy of its lords. The working masses re main now all by themselves, without any help to expect and receive, without any reinforcements, to rely upon in cases of emergency, from their ally-classes, fraternal groups that were somewhat economically independent. The toilers, all alone, isolated, are facing now their autocratic bosses, their hierarchically built, functionally tripled commanding super-class of organisateurs. The laboring masses are confronted with a dilemma, one horn of which spells starvation, while the other reads supine submission. This is their not very seductive alternative when they as an inferior class of laborers remain alone with their cruel rulers, their organisateurs.
<quote>
“We Communists have been reproached with the desire to abolish the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of man's own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form?
There is no need for us to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, or is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property? But does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit.” (Ibid.)
</quote>
“A form of property that preceded the bourgeois form.” It preceded and it runs parallel with the “bourgeois form”. The capitalist system, unlike Communism, is not grounded in a monistic principle. The capitalist class is not organized politically upon the foundation of a juridical hierarchy. Its gradations, as far as the personnel is affected, are shiftable, moveable, replaceable, they are of an economic nature. It is always a case of possessing wealth in a larger or lesser degree, of being able to run, own, control a bigger or smaller amount of business concerns. But all this is indefinite and unstatic. No fixety of charters, of muniments, no hide bound conservatism, norm-stagnancy about it. The same holds true concerning capitalism as a whole. It is not subject to a “militaristic” discipline. It is not regimentally, governmentally pedantic. It is fluid and flexible. “The property of the petty artisan,” of the small dirt farmer, of the small shop-keeper, of the push cart-peddler, of anyone who managed somehow to save up a few cents in one way or another, mostly by denying himself his elementary necessaries, and become a savings bank depositor, no matter how microscopic that sum may be, or a policy-holder, a flivver-owner, no matter in what condition, of what make and of which hand, or a stock holder, no matter how small the share, the property of all these individuals, non-capitalists, lives and exists unhampered juridically alongside “bourgeois property”.
Capitalism cannot, and will not, for such a policy goes against its grain, make a clean job of it. Certain tendencies are predominant. But they dare not usurp the whole field of economic pursuits, they are no whole hoggers. Their very “predominance” is of an economic nature which is pluralistic, tolerant, and not monomaniac fanatical, as the case is always with a political regime or devotional bigoted exclusiveness.
<quote>
“But does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit.”
</quote>
Suppose labor does not create any property for itself under the capitalist conditions of production and distribution, meager labor-remuneration, which, by the way, is not accurate. But suppose it is so, what of it? Must Communism be the duplicate of capitalism concerning the latter's treatment of labor? Why should not Marxism, claiming to be the avowed friend, the only friend of labor, restore labor-property to the laborers organized either as a stock-company or labor-trust, and give them a share, on the basis of joint-property, in the means of socialized production which they co-operatively “set into motion”?
Capitalism did not do it. It was considered contrary to its policies. Is the behavior of capitalism exemplary, a model worthy of emulation, a maxim of conduct raised to the dignity of an imperative, of a moral law that the future system of economics must not dare impinge upon? Capitalism, the Marxist-Leninists keep on reiterating ad nauseam, is condemnable, exploitatory, is a wage slave system, and that is why it must be overthrown, obliterated by militant labor. Why should not the Marxist-Leninists, the Communists, redress the wrong labor has suffered at the hand of the greedy capitalists, the appropriators, the “robbers”, and reinstate labor-property?
Besides, capitalism, capitalist economic, when collated with Marxist Communism and its gargantuan production, is a poor and petty affair. And the workers, being deprived of, or, rather, not given a chance to acquire, property, a considerable share in the means of production, have at their disposal some other guarantees that serve as some kind of a bulwark against the encroachments of their boss-class. First, the master-class is more of a “class” nominally than actually, it is not unified, it is not united. Competition saps its foundations, undermines its class-loyalty, class solidarity. And due to this factor of hostility raging between the members of the higher class, the individual worker has a right, and a possibility to apply his right, to change his individual boss, his particular patron. Further, he has a right, and a possibility, in case he be organized and connected with other workers of the same trade through a trade-union, to strike, and even to picket, measures of protection that under Marxist Communism would have become obsolete, even if not juridically ruled out. The workers under Marxist Communism face a united master. They cannot, or are not permitted, to lay down their tools. Their trade-unions, being enclosed within the national territory that is under the state-authority, in case they are not usurped or disbanded or reorganized and taken over by state-appointed functionaries, would be less effective than a company union. They would amount to nothing at all as defenders of labor and instruments of collective bargaining, if even they were not placed under a ban. One cannot come forward armed with bow and arrows and face a squad of trained machine-gunners, and expect to get the better of them.
So that the capitalist conditions are more favorable to labor than the communistic ones. The reason for it is all too obvious to demand much dwelling upon. The weight of the worker relative to that of his hirer employer under capitalism is greater than it will be relative to that of his militarizer-employer under communism. Under hiredom-wagedom the toiler is still able somehow to protect his position, no matter how precariously. Under Marxian Communism the individual laborer as well as the working class as a whole stand in dire need of some guarantees of an economic nature. And labor-property, if it would not do a great deal of good, in the way of easing the yoke imposed upon the laborer by the state as a usurper of economics, would still be better than no property at all. And where are the guarantees offered the laborer against the contingencies of abuse on the part of the labor-lords, the Communist master-group?
All labor is offered by Marxism-Communism is dubious sermonology, futuristic emotionalism, feat-throwing ecstatism, quasi prophetism, pseudo messianism, things that can deceive only outright fools, the deceiving of whom would constitute a case of supererogation.
The Russian Communist-Leninists are brazen enough to preach and practice openly full-fledged autocracy served under the sauce of proletarian dictatorship meaning the dictatorship of the commissars of labor, the modern slave-drivers. But even political democracy would not be a sufficient guarantee under Communism to safeguard labor against the Communist tyranny. Democracy of modern times, with its institution of representation, was designed, developed and has been introduced and operated, under the capitalist mode of production, not as an economic term or system, but as a political method.
In the sphere of politics, under capitalism and laissez faire, Democracy is more or less effective. But under Communism it would turn out to be utterly impotent, unless it were translated into economic terms, meaning private property rights, for the individual producer, the artisan, the handicraftsman, the small trader, and inter private property rights, for the industrial proletarians, to the means of corporational production that are super vised, controlled by the state, but owned by the trusts of laborers. But this scheme is contrary to the tenets of Marxism-Leninism.
*** 4. Interindividual Ownership.
<quote>
“Accordingly, the modern instruments of production are extensive and powerful. It has become wholly impossible that every single worker should own his own instruments of production. Once the present stage is reached by large production, it admits of but two systems of ownership.
First, private ownership by the individual in the means of production used by co-operative labor; that means the existing system of capitalist production... Second, ownership by the workers in common of the instruments of production; that means a co-operative system of production and the extinction of exploitation of the workers, who become masters of their own products and who themselves appropriate the surplus... To substitute common, for private, ownership in the means of production, this it is that economic development is urging upon us with ever increasing force.” (Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle, pp. 94-95.)
</quote>
Overlooking the roseate pictures of the future and the exaggerations of the statement about the workers becoming masters, and the like nonsense, all of which is an integral part of the Marxian-Communist conspiracy against labor, we have to point out that there is a third system which would have neither “private ownership by the individual in the means of production used by co-operative labor”, nor “substitute common, for private, ownership in the means of production”, but establish inter-private ownership in the means of production.
The Marxian proposal would deliver the toilers, tied hands and feet, hapless and hopeless as a bunch of ragamuffins, beggars depending for their living on state charity and favors, into the blood-stained hands of the soulless satraps of the despotic communist-state.
If it is true that the modern means of production and distribution have outgrown the control of the private individual laborer, it is no less true that they are still within that of the cooperation of the individual workers. And the body of the laborers organized as a corporation or a trust should control and own those means of pro duction and distribution not on the basis of <em>common</em> property as proposed by the Marxists, but on the ground of <em>interindividual</em> property.
To proclaim common ownership means to go back to antiquity, to the antedeluvian time when private ownership was as yet not in existence, because there was no private individual as a self-conscious being to claim it, to assert himself as the subject of this elementary right and humanly personal privilege. But how can it be done now, having to deal not with anthropoids, but with he-men who are individualistic, egoistic to some extent?
<quote>
“It has become wholly impossible that every single worker should own his own instruments of production.”
</quote>
What are the capitalists doing in such a predicament when the acquisition and upkeep of the enterprise is beyond the financial means of the individual owner? They do not substitute “common, for private, ownership in the means of production”, do they? Well, the capitalists are too well trained in economic discipline to talk so out of the way and act so impractically. They do not organize “communes”, but mergers, stock-companies. In a word, instead of private ownership, when the latter turns out to be inoperative, insufficient, they <em>introduce inter-private ownership</em>, partnership.
Common ownership is the abolition of private ownership, whereas interprivate ownership is its continuation, straightforward development, its healthy and further advancement. “Ownership by the workers in common of the instruments of production” in juxta position to “private ownership by the individual in the means of production used by co-operative labor; that means the existing system of capitalist production” is faulty, jumpy reasoning, to common – from private.
The existing system of capitalist production is based, under present circumstances, predominantly not on private ownership, but interprivate ownership in the means of production. And all the Marxist has to do – if he were what he claims to be, namely, pro labor and anti-capital, and not what he actually is, namely, pro the state and the emerging class of politico-economic organisateurs and anti-labor and anti-capital, — is to substitute, not common ownership which savors of ancient ante individualism and spells the enslavement of labor and the laborer, making of him a serf of the state, but labor <em>inter-private ownership</em> for <em>capital inter-private ownership</em>, instead of the capitalist trusts to establish labor trusts protected and supervised by the proletarian state.
*** 5. The Primitive and the Modern Man.
<quote>
“Man has always been a social being, as far back as we can trace him. The individual has always been thrown upon co-operation with others in order to satisfy some of his principal wants; others had to work for him and he, in turn, had to work for others.” (Ibid. pp. 95-96.)
</quote>
Man has been a social being, and he is still a social being, though less so than he used to be. But he is surely no social being while being engaged in high scale production, an activity, a system that cannot be traced back.
<quote>
“Cooperation, such as we find it at the dawn of human development, among races who live by chase, or say, in the agriculture of Indian communities is based, on the one hand, on ownership in common of the means of production, and on the other hand, on the fact, that in those cases, each individual has no more torn himself off from the navel-string of his tribe or community than each bee has freed itself from connection with the hive.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, pp. 366-67.)
</quote>
As an economic subject modern man is no social being, but an interindividual being. He, it is true, combines with others, but he does not lose thereby his identity, he still keeps in mind his own interest, guards it, protects it, and is quite careful in his dealings with other men as co-workers or co-partners.
Employees when they combine, they still exist individually and receive their pay individually, every one getting his share. They do not get a <em>common</em> wage, a common remuneration, the way the Communist, in his “benevolence” as the staunch “fighter” for labor-rights, offers him, to hold all things in <em>common</em>.
Employers combine, and they, surely, do not lose their identities within their close mergers, trusts, cartels, and the like combinatory associations. It is either labor property individual or interindividual, or capital-property, individual and interindividual and their mutual interaction. What Marxian Communism intends to establish, and that upon a basis of exclusiveness, is state property, which it misleadingly designates as <em>common</em> property. Marxism-Communism is in opposition to both counter-agents of the productive process, capital and labor; its opposition and hostility to capital is open and vociferous for with it it covers its no less determined and bitter, though temporarily kept under a damper, opposition to labor. What Communism champions is the cause of the politico-economic organisateur, the monopolistically ruling class of new oligarchs.
Labor-ownership, private and interprivate, could have exercised a mitigating, mellowing, influence upon the hardships and strictures that Communism would of necessity have imposed upon labor, under the best of conditions, barring those of the Asiatic variety, the policies practiced in Moscow. That is why Marxism is against labor-property. It fears and shuns the bit it would have put into the mouth of the unbridled and coltish ambitions of the monopolistic class. And Marx-Engels try their best, employing all manners of sophistry, the ends justify the means, to talk the workers out of this heresy of ownership.
*** 6. Capital as an Embodiment of an Interclass Relation.
<quote>
“Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion. Capital is therefore not personal, it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, in the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class-character. (K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 46.)
</quote>
The quoted passage contains as many errors as there are words in it. Capital can be set into motion only by the united action of all members of society. What kind of capital, that of the flighty imagination of the authors, or that functioning in the markets, banks, workshops, plants, mines? Which capital? Which capital? And how does it tally with the statements of the same authors characterizing capitalist production as anarchistic production? Where do we find under capitalism, not under primitive patriarchate or matriarchate, a united action of all members of society? Invalids in the hospitals, lunatics in the asylums, professors on the cathedras, thieves in the jails, scribes in their offices and studios, all of them keep on in a united way moving capital which “only by the united action of all members of society can be set in motion”. What kind of motion do the authors have in their minds? And the society they are mentioning of what size is it?
Wherever any group of men come together as hirelings of one, or of a few individuals, and they create products, using the employer's raw material and tools, as a result of which the employer, or employers, becomes owner of those products, and he markets them and makes profit by this transaction, the phenomenon of capital is right there.
Capital travels freely, more or less, from country to country, from land to land, from nation to nation, with much greater ease and alacrity than individual men change their abodes. It is always on the go, in flux.
It knows of no national, or state boundaries. And what for does it need the united action of all members of society to set it in motion?
Capital under Communism would become sedentary, attached to a certain territory beyond which it would not be allowed to go, under usual conditions, unless the Communist state starts acting not unlike a private firm. Under Communism capital would become nationally social, “social” meaning attached to a definite social grouping, to a definite political unit. Under capitalism, capital is scot-free, is a wander-foot, goes where it listeth.
Capital is not a “social” power, but an inter-class and inter-individual power. When it is converted into common property, into state or society property, society taken as a whole regarding the separate existences of its individual members, it is not converted “into the property of all members of society”. In the latter case, it would have become <em>interindividual</em> property, every member having his share therein. This would not harmonize with the above-mentioned statement of the same authors about the abolition of private property being the distinguishing feature of Communism.
Further, what capital loses by the Communist operation is not its <em>class</em>-character, but its <em>interindividual</em> characteristics. Capital cannot lose its <em>class</em>-character, for the latter is immanent and it is impossible to remove it by effecting changes in the category of property. The property-relation is not essential for the class-relation, for the inter-class connection is able to utilize any mode of production and appropriation so long as it offers a chance for a class of regulators of one variety or another to rise above labor and to lord it over it, command it through means of superior organization and sociological division of functions. What capital sheds through the effected Communist transformation is its <em>interindividual</em> character. Capital becomes, under the Communist regime, an outspokenly <em>inter-class</em> phenome non manifest within the national state-frame.
Marx and Engels ' assurance to the contrary is based either on a pious, pseudo-religiously naive, wish, or, rather, on self-deception as an introduction to mass deception.
<quote>
“In communist society accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.” (Ibid.)
</quote>
Why not to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of those who promote labor, those who organize the laborers, make them work?
Wherefrom such boundless optimism and such groundless altruism? In communist society accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the Communists, of the labor-lords, of those who drive the laborers, compel them to sweat, toil and moil and amass wealth for the Communist state and its functionaries, while the laborers will feel lucky if and when they get a subsistence wage according to the “iron law” that fits so marvelously into the “iron regime”.
*** 7. Dialectics.
For the purpose of giving the laborer everything and all, and yet, at the same time to give him nothing at all, a highly intricate piece of sophistry is employed. For the performance of this Communist piece of magic, the superlatively clever act of prestidigitation, there is nothing so suitable as the dialectical method. Dialectics is Marx's demiurge, as good a factotum as its double, the class-struggle, the highly acclaimed wonder-worker in Marxian revolutionarism. Marx's flirtations with Hegelian phraseology and metaphysics are not, as he would like us to believe, of an exclusively platonic nature.
Dialectics comes in handy whenever something must be put over on labor. No denying, it is an exceedingly subtle method and maneuver wherewith to get back from the untrained in metaphysics proletarians what they might have gotten from the capitalists.
<quote>
“The capitalist mode of production and appropriation, and hence capitalist private property, is the first negation of individual private property founded on the labors of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of the negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era; i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 837.)
</quote>
The sinuous path of Marx's reasoning runs over hill and dale... The workers owned their tools in the previous, somewhat rudimentary, stage of economic development. The workers are now separated from their tools and means of production. A reunion of the tools and the workers will soon take place under the auspices of the benevolent proletarian state. It is a case of the omnipresent thesis, antithesis and synthesis, the holy trinity of Hegel and Marx, displaying its putative virtues and powers in the historical process, in its application to the particular of labor and its problems.
But the working class is hardly equal to the task of stomaching and digesting such a chunk of metaphysical raw meat. If the workers really are interested in getting the tools and the means of production, either by a slow process of gradual reforms, or by an accelerated process of revolts, naturally, they would have preferred to get those implements in a plain human way, to own them, and not in the Marxian cabalistic interpretation of “individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era”.
The only “acquisition of the capitalist era” that any economist, – who does not juggle souls with tricky words and notions, who uses no legerdemain in order to confuse one's own brains and thus get a legitimate alibi to confuse the brains of other individuals on a mass production scale, — sees clearly is partnership property, interindividual property.
<quote>
“This does not re-establish private property for the producer.”
</quote>
Why does it not establish interindividual property for the producers? This surely would be more firmly based “on the acquisition of the capitalist era” than the Marxian “possession in common of the land and the means of production”.
What the workers, in their overwhelming majority, are really after are shorter hours and higher wages. And when their desire and ambition, – <em>their</em> desire and ambition and not <em>those of their propagandists</em>, the Communist-Leninists who <em>plague</em> labor as <em>pernicious parasites</em>, <em>feed on it</em>, <em>harass it, badger it,</em> – would run above the mark of a “full day's wages for a short day's work,” then it would be to become owners, or part-owners of the tools and means employed by them in the process of pro duction, namely, to be labor-co-proprietors of the plants they work in. They, certainly, would not resort to the trickery of the Hegelian “synthesis” which was adopted by Marx and readapted with the sole purpose of befogging the minds of the laborers and thus the easier to cheat them out of their own or of that which might become their own.
*** 8. Splitting the Ranks of Labor.
<quote>
“The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and fortify. Their mission is to destroy all previous securities for and insurance of private property.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 42.)
</quote>
The workers, under no circumstances, can become the plenipotentiary masters of the productive forces, for they are not alone in the field, there are other agencies, no less important than manual labor, to reckon with. But why cannot the proletarians become co-proprietors of the means of production, and stop, at least, being “slaves” of the Marxian state, between mastery and slavedom there are many gradations? Why? Because such a plan would run counter to the centralistic and monopolistic interests of the politico-economic organisateurs, the oligarchs of labor.
If the workers have nothing to secure and fortify, according to Marx and Engels, why should they engage in battles altogether? What have they to fight for? For whose benefit should they sacrifice their lives and limbs? Because they are assigned a task by their present and future taskmasters, the Communists? The Marxian Communists “discovered” a “historical mission” for their recruits. And what does the “mission” consist in?
“Their mission is to destroy”, proclaims the Communist Manifesto,” all previous securities for and insurance of private property”. Why should the workers be opposed to “all previous securities for and insurance of individual property”? They could be opposed to capitalist monopoly, for they have no share in it in form of ownership, only in that of wages. But why should they destroy individual property based on labor ownership?
The proletarians cannot be, according to their eco nomic position, enemies of individual property grounded in labor. Why should they combat the property rights of the artisan, of the farmer, of the low layers of the middle class? They cannot be interested in abolishing all previous modes of appropriation, but, rather, in securing and fortifying their positions as labor-owners, as trade-skill-owners, as job-owners, demanding security for their occupation, and co-owners of the tools and instruments used by them jointly, if they wish to.
The Marxists, in placing with the workers such a large order of destruction have one purpose in view, and that is to sow seeds of dissension in the camp of the laboring masses and thus break up their ranks, impair the instinctive, natural solidarity existing between the industrial workers, handicraftsmen, farmers, etc.
The emerging masters of labor follow the example of all rulers whose maxim has been : divide and rule. They aim at isolating industrial labor, separating it from its counter-agent as well as from its natural allies and friends, the lower strata of work and commerce, and then, upon having achieved their pernicious aim of mutual antagonization, attack them separately and crush them one by one with the very help of, blinded to its own interests, industrial labor, and ultimately to enslave their very helpers, their unwitting tools of destruction...
** VI. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OR POLITICAL STAMPEDE.
*** 1. Competition as a Problem of Capital.
<quote>
"The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation reproduces itself as the antagonism between the organization of production in the individual factory and the anarchy of production in society as a whole. " (F. Engels, Anti - Duehring, p. 307.)
“. . . The antagonism (between labor and capital) conceals in itself, or has, a second conflict, as a supplement: the systematic division and organization of work within the establishments for production (workshops, factory, combination of factories, etc.) is opposed by the unsystematic disposal of the produce on the market. " (Edward Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, pp. 18-19.)
</quote>
The antagonism between labor and capital has nothing to do with the fact that our whole industry as a unit, or that production as a whole, is not organized, not systematized. In other words, the external problem of industry, the interconnection existing between its units, is not necessarily interlinked with the internal problem, the interconnection existing between the counter-agents enclosed within each unit.
Let us suppose for a moment that the individual factory is owned by the workers who are organized on the basis of voluntary co-operation. Anarchy of production, meaning competition between the individual factories though they be owned by co-operations of producers, would thereby, through the mere shift in owner ship, from capital to labor-capital, not be abolished. Now let us take the reversed case, anarchy of production is done away with, our industry as a unit is fully and completely trustified by the capitalists who have eliminated competition altogether and have taken hold of the market and control it definitely. This would have no effect, from the Marxian class-struggle standpoint, upon the antagonism of labor and capital.
<quote>
“Hence it is that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working day presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i. e., the class of capitalists, and collective labor, i. e., the working class.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 259.)
</quote>
Marxism asserts that the two classes, that of labor and that of capital, clash, wage war upon one another, are as collective aggregates irreconcilably antagonistic. We do not share this gloomy view. We recognize that a conflict between labor and capital takes place. But it is caused by the fact that labor is split into fractions, and capital, in its turn, is fragmentary, is crumbled into tiny bits. We are thus confronted with an inter-class situation that is aggravated, distorted by an interindividual relation. The unification, the formation of labor into a whole of a considerable size, which would bring about a combination of the laborers, and a full trustification of capital having its reflection in the cementation of the capitalists as a unified, interconnected class, would have a pacifying effect upon all labor-capital relations. It would press down their friction and hostilities to the zero-point. These two classes, upon facing one another as units, could not help but see that they were counter-agents of one and the same productive process, that they were two halves of one whole. Capital cannot fight labor. The capitalists need the laborers as their patrons, as their customers, besides the fact of their being their helpers, the “direct” producers. Labor cannot fight “capital”! The laborers need regulators of labor. They cannot “produce” and “direct” the process of production at the same time. Labor and capital must bargain, negotiate and co-operate, applying the principle of inter-classism.
But this is not a Marxian idea. This will be branded by any Marxist as heresy. This undermines the class-struggle doctrine, the foundation of the Marxian edifice.
The Marxians confuse the two problems, the internal and external, with the purpose of inducing, in this subtle way, labor to fight a battle that is not its own. They want to enlist labor in a fight for socialization. An issue that has nothing to do with labor as such. Labor is not “social”. And the so called “sociality” that the Marxians discovered in large scale production was not a contribution made by labor, but by capital. Production from the standpoint of labor, of the labor-elements contained therein, contrary to the biased assertions of the Marxists, is not “social”, for the so called erroneously “social character” is of capital's making. It is the capitalist who makes the laborers work together. When they are outside of the sphere of capital's influence, they work separately, individualistically. Labor is either individual, when it is left to its own devices and resources, in small scale handicraftsmanship, or it is interindividual, as the case is in large-scale production, but then it is manipulated by an inter-class power, namely, by capital.
Capital is either private or partnerized, trustified. That is concerning itself, its ownership relation, but in its attitude toward labor it is outspokenly interindividualistic. For its own good, for its thriving and multi plying it must keep many laborers together as some kind of a unit.
The question of the elimination of the disturbances that stunt the growth and hamper the smooth function ing of industry is by no means a labor problem, but an industrial problem. And capital, being more advanced than labor, has more to do with it than labor. The problem about the interrelationship existing between the independent units within our industry or production is, primarily, a capital-problem, and, secondarily, a labor problem.
The same as the mere fact of having a Monarchy constituted would not by itself have solved the question of the proper interrelationship between the ruler and the ruled. Monarchy is an autocracy, sovereign authority vested in one single individual. Thus it put an end to “anarchy” and to feudalism, to the multiplicity of the reigning families through the establishment of one dynasty. But this institution or hereditary rulership did not grant universal suffrage, or any other inalienable human rights, to its subjects. It did not make citizens out of them. This was done by Democracy. Similarly in the realm of economics. The elimination of “anarchy” by itself would not turn a labor-subject into a labor citizen, a wage-earner subject to hiring and firing into an independent worker.
*** 2. The Size of the Economic “Society”.
Furthermore, the question of size cannot be over emphasized, for upon its determination the whole issue pivots.
How big must be the economic unit not to allow the derogatory epithet of “anarchy” to be plastered upon it? The outside “chaos” or “anarchy” is not supposed to interfere with the inside order. No monarchy was absolute in that sense that it enclosed within its iron vise the whole of political existence on a universal scale, encompassing the totality of humanity. A monarchy is established within a certain geographically limited area. And as far as the interrelationship existing between the sovereign monarchies is concerned there is “anarchy”. And nobody having any elementary knowledge about statesmanship ever thought of this situation as being a contradiction, or an antagonism, or a conflict of systems. Organization within does not presuppose organization without, meaning an inter-organization, linking together various organizations, to be functioning on the same principle and in the same organic way. All living organisms live and function, conduct themselves on that basis. They carry within themselves a systematized unit, a monarchy, and outside of them there is an “anarchy”. The Marxians have discovered this “anomaly” in the realm of economy, an anomaly which is the basic modus of the organic kingdom!
“The antagonism between the organization of pro duction in the individual factory and the anarchy of production in society as a whole” is going to be with us till we are able to create a cosmo-economy and, maybe, an <em>interplanetary</em> economy-unit. Economics knows of such a thing as export and import. Why should organization, the laying of the ghost of “anarchy”, stop at the edge of the national territory right on the state line, on the political furrow drawn, in most cases, by the plow of war and conquest, or, in some cases, by the hand of physical geography, both of them agencies that have little to do with economic activities as such.
A Prussian militaristic thought lies in the back ground of Engels ' reasoning. “Society as a whole” concerning economic, industrial problems, is not conterminous with the national political state unit. Products as well as capital cross borders easily enough, if they are not disturbed by makeshifts. Wheat is produced in many a country, not in one, the same is meat, and many other items of consumptive quality.
Some vulgarians, demagogues speak of <em>international</em> banking. Banking is not international for the plain reason that it never was as yet <em>national</em>. It is interindividual and individual, and loans and investments because of their being <em>interindividual</em> disregard, on many an occasion, the political border-lines drawn for polity, not economy, purposes.
“Society as a whole” regarding matters economic is the whole of civilized humanity, and not the given political governmental sector. But with Engels the “society as a whole” means the state. And that is what the Marxian Communists have in their mind when they use the word “society”. Let Engels say so, and not hide behind “society”, a word that misleads and confuses the issue. Engels points out the alleged “antagonism” between the organization of the individual factory and the anarchy of production in “the state as a whole”. In other words, he indicates that the economic unit, the individual factory, does not coincide, as regards its size, with the state unit. And this “incongruity” he chooses to designate, for some reason, by the negative term “antagonism”. Such antagonisms are aplenty within the political unit of the state. To pick one out of many, let us take, for instance, the family. Is the family unit commensurate with the state unit?
*** 3. An Economic Answer to an Economic Question.
Order and discipline prevail within the confines of the individual factory, the actual, the real living organism of modern production taken as it is, not as it should be according to speculation. Outside of it, the relations between the various factories are materialized through the medium of the market and the organizationally free behavior of their products, the commodities and their price fluctuations. It is quite natural that the smaller unit should precede the larger one concerning this matter of being well-knit, strictly systematized. There is no antagonism here that we can see. It is a case of evolution, a process that begins with small-sized units and passes gradually to larger ones. The road of advancement leads from the individual factory to the interindividual factory, to the trust, merger, combine. Production as a whole does neither from the labor, nor from the financial end, operate as an organized unit. Competition, the civil economic war, rages between the individual capitalists, or between the “feudal leagues” of capitalists, between the companies. The economic answer to all this is given by economy itself, by its own natural unfoldment, and that is trustification as an answer to individual competition, and supertrustification, inter-trustification as a remedy for company-competition. The point of direction of this economic process of growth is clearly indicated and that is a world-economy. A universal economy based on interindividualization and interclassification is the ultimate goal.
This is an economic answer to an economic problem thought and worked out, immanently by the internal forces and tendencies inherent in this discipline, economically, without political usurpation or “invention” of political and otherwise Utopias, without screeching pseudo-salvationist slogans and revivalistic ballyhoo.
<quote>
“That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many... The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, pp. 836-37.)
</quote>
So far so good. The question is but about the means, in what way will this “expropriation of the expropriators” take place, whether in the same style and fashion as the previous expropriation, that of the laborer working for himself, or some new methods will be applied? Marx tells us, “this expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself”, now, what about the impending “expropriation of the expropriators”, will it materialize in the identical way, namely, <em>economically</em>, be carried out by the immanent laws of production itself, of the so called by Marx “socialized” production, without outside extra-economic interference?
“One capitalist always kills many”… How does he do it? Surely not by extra-legal means like organizing a gang and himself becoming their ringleader and going to war on the bloody capitalists, to “put them on the spot” or put them out of business by acts of violence, and undoubtedly not by arousing the masses of the propertyless, of the dispossessed and call them and lead them to plunder and sack these “many” capitalists.
And, also, not by the magic word of legislature, by laws issued against them, not by legal means does one capitalist do the killing of the many. He achieves it through the medium of competition, applying <em>economic means</em>. The capitalist does not capture the state machinery and via this juridico-political instrumentality lay low all his economic enemies, his competitors. It is a case of the survival of the fittest and fattest financially, of the shrewdest and the most alert. In other words, it is a particular of the general struggle for existence.
“The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument.” What kind of capital becomes a fetter? Individual capital is too narrow, too small to contain the productive forces, it called into being, and operate them successfully, that is why it “bursts asunder”, or rather, combines, trustifies, it merges and meets the occasion, the new demands put to it by the process of development. Labor was interindividualized by capital, now capital, the interindividualizer of labor, in its turn, undergoes a process of interindividualization and, simultaneously, of interclassification, the super-capitalist, high finance becomes the director of the show of economy. All this is effected economically, according to the immanent laws inherent in the very process of economic development.
If competition is wasteful, it shall be eliminated economically. But not by the clever device of the Marxists, which amounts approximately to that, to eliminate competition by eliminating economics altogether and turn it into a political state-affair.
*** 4. Civil Militarism Versus Industrialism.
<quote>
“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 52.)
</quote>
What has this to do with the “immanent laws” of production? This is a political venture or adventure that has nothing whatsoever to do with the gradual unfoldment of the productive forces. No use making a “scientific thesis” out of a militaristic, civil war maneuver. The Marxian train of reasoning is derailed, taken off the economic lines and placed on political ones. Marx starts out with one thesis and, then, without noticing it, he passes to another one that has no connection with the first.
Capital centralizes. Yes. But how? not politically, but purely economically. Centralization of capital is achieved not through a <em>political civil war</em> conducted by one group of capitalists against the other. This battle is fought out <em>economically</em>; competition is the weapon that is used, and instead of marching battalions of soldiers or armed “militants” we see squads of trained salesmen and lots of advertising…
<quote>
“Marx merely shows from history that just as the former petty industry necessarily, through its own development, created the conditions of its own annihilation, i.e. of the expropriation of the small proprietors, so now the capitalist mode of production has likewise created the material conditions which will annihilate it. The process is a historical one.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 152.)
</quote>
Marx plays with the word “expropriation”. But he uses it in the same passage in two different connotations. He employs it as a term designating an economic form of “conquest”, in the first part of his statement, and then, in the end, he uses it to describe by it “confiscation” effected by the state. In such an undignified, scientifically speaking, way Marx switches off the economic plane and lands right into the political field without being aware of the change of regions, shifting of scenery, modification of methods. That is why Marx's reasoning is so helplessly defective, contradictory. The analogies he adduces are, almost always, out of place, tune and key. He never continues his line, he breaks it off, and spins a “historically irresponsible” yarn born of his glowing imagination and scientific recklessness.
<quote>
“It would be an irretrievable mistake to declare that since there is a discrepancy between our economic forces ' and our political ' forces ', it follows ' that we should not have seized power.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 371.)
</quote>
Lenin is certainly right. Seizing of power has mighty little to do with the high state of economic development. Power lies in another sphere. Lenin does not refute Marx theoretically. He sticks to the Marxian thesis, but he would not sacrifice for the glory of the Marxian faulty reasoning the golden opportunity of capturing political power in an economically backward country. Practically he understood that these two phenomena, advancement of capitalism and seizure of power by the organisateurs, are not connected necessarily, and Lenin acted accordingly.
Capital is growing. Small private capital is being overpowered by big private capital, by interprivate capital, by trusts, cartels, super-trusts, super-combines of a universal character. But what has the state to do with all this? What has labor as a political force embodied in the Government to do with this process of growth, with this evolution? How does capitalism, all of a sudden, by mere fiat of legislature and political violence and force, heterogeneous agencies, factors lying outside the economic sphere and its tendencies of growth and complication, transform itself into state-Communism? The state can do anything, this is understood, but its action of overpowering and usurping economics does not follow <em>naturally</em> out of the development of economics. Unless growth means decay and economics dies of its own abundance and prosperity amid its bloom and boom. It is an absurdity. The state as a tyranny, as a dictatorial power can do anything short of turning men into women and vice versa, and this limitation is of a temporary nature, so long as the sexes are considered fixities. But the usurpation of economics by politics carried out by state-despotism cannot be looked upon as a natural step in the course of economic development.
*** 5. From Polycapitalism to Monocapitalism – Not Politicalism.
Furthermore, centralization of capital is a result of the growth of capital, and, consequently, of the capitalists. Did the centralization of the estates, of land-possessions, spell the ruination of the Lords, of the titled nobility? It contributed, maybe, to the emergence of the Monarchy, as a theory and an institution. But the Monarch was no outsider, he was one of their own, “the first gentleman”, he was the super-lord. Centralization is an inner force. It cannot fight against itself. Centralization of capital all it can achieve is mono-moneyism, monocapitalism, mono-finance. And this will be accomplished by the economic order <em>economically</em> without falling a prey to political ambitions and machinations, plots and conspiracies entered into by the labor lords with the express aim of subjugating economics and making of it a slave of politics.
The fact that centralization of capital centralizes the working masses and thus facilitates their trouble making, their revolts, if it were true, it would have meant very little positively. For not the revolts of the serfs have broken feudalism and ushered in monarchism and commercial capitalism, and, then, broken monarch ism, and ushered in liberalism and industrial capitalism. “Commerce”, “industry” were the positive factors in originating all these transformations. And Marx knew it very well. Engels said it in so many words.
<quote>
“The struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal nobility is the struggle of the town against the country, of industry against landed property, of money economy against natural economy; and the decisive weapon of the burghers in this struggle was their <em>economic</em> power, constantly increasing through the development first of handicraft industry, at a later stage progressing to manufacturing industry, and through the extension of commerce.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 186.)
</quote>
The setback of the nobility was caused by the growth and prosperity of the cities. A new economic order emerged and its centre was situated outside the villages and the estates. The city as the representative of a new mode of production and distribution, of commerce, handicrafts and manufacture, pitted itself against the village with its old, backward form of production and barter, mainly focused in the realm of agriculture. The nobility was attached indirectly, through the medium of its serfs, to the soil to which the serfs were attached directly. Both were beaten by the upcoming city, by the new order of things. Both were shoved aside by the upsurge of the new forces, both, meaning the ruling class and its correlative, subordinated class. For when a system is bankrupt, both counter-agents, both constituent elements of the system, both hemispheres, the upper and the lower, go into the cool shadows out of the sunny spots.
Passing to our epoch, the question arises as to which and where are the new economic institutions that are being framed under the very eyes of the bourgeoisie and yet are situated outside of its reach, sphere of influence and sway? Where does the new class, that boasts that it is going to take the place of the bourgeoisie, have its habitat? Where is its stronghold? In the very camp of the bourgeoisie, in the factories controlled by the bourgeoisie, in the “masses” that are massed and clubbed together by the bourgeoisie. What achievements does it claim to its credit as an independent class, as a class asserting itself without being tutored and led and mustered and “socialized” by its enemy? What exploits can it indicate as having been accomplished by it on its own initiative?
Marxism, when driven into these tight corners is pathetically helpless and vague...
The bourgeoisie existed as a powerful class eco nomically. It was not recognized politically; juridically it was hampered, hemmed in on all sides. And it broke these barriers. It jumped over the hurdles. It conducted a revolution, and thus adapted the political institutions, the legal relations to the new economic situation. The bourgeoisie, the third estate, had been a tremendous economic power before it ever seized political power. Whereas the proletariat, according to the tactics prescribed for it by Marx and Engels, must seize political power first and then wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie.
Marxism at its best has very little to do with the economic actualities, contingencies and eventualities of our epoch.
Monocapitalism knocks at the gate of economy, not Marxian Communism, and it is going to make its triumphal entry by economic means.
What Marxism is trying to do is to force the economic slow development into a political stampede, to accelerate economic evolutionary revolution by poli tical explosions, volcanic eruptions, by a cataclysm made to order through a mass-movement artificially created, demagogically directed.
** VII. ETHICS AND POLITICS.
*** 1. Ethical and Political Concepts and Their Interaction.
Concerning ethical and political concepts, their interaction, upon examination, shows peculiar features worthy of special scrutiny.
The extremely ethical notions and demands, when taken up by the so called “radical” movements and championed by the would-be commanding groups, are not made use of by them, but manifestly made “abuse” of. The “abuse” turns these notions into their negation through a queerly operating “dialectical process”.
Let us take for an example the two lofty moral concepts and formulae: “Property is theft”, “Authority is violence”.
“Property is theft... Ethically treated, properly applied, this dictum would lead us to the unequivocal rejection of personal property and the disowning of all earthly possessions as unworthy of a moral personality of high standing and standards. Politically applied it would stand for the very reversal of its ethical content, namely, for plain robbery that inevitably brings in its wake the right of property. For property is but one of the forms of stealth, of thievery practiced on a small or large scale.
“Property is theft”, when read straightforward in a moral mood and connotation, is overdone, out of close contact with wholesome reality, “extreme” ethics, but when read backwards:”Theft is property”, it constitutes the political variant of the self-same moral adage, and means, instead of the superficially interpreted condemnation of property, the deeper lying, the carefully hidden, justification of theft.
The backward reading must not necessarily be done physically with the mouth, it can be done mentally, in the mind. The formula contains a double meaning, one is the negating of property because of its being tantamount to theft, the other is the acceptance of theft because, after a more penetrating analysis, it is the basic form of property. Thus extremes meet, saintship and crime. The gangster and the moral Communist apply both one and the same formula, and its enunciation leaves one guessing as to who is the enunciator, the ethical property-opponent or the perverted property-friend, the highwayman. And still more difficult it is to decide with any measure of precision in each case the proportion of the banditical and “communistical” elements contained within the enunciated dictum and within the individual making the solemn enunciation.
“Killing an animal is an act of assassination”, would likewise stand for two interpretations. One would convey the condemnation of zoophagy, the other the recommendation of anthropophagy. This saying could serve as a meeting ground for both the ethical vegetarian and outspoken cannibal, for the low and the high as two extremes are indiscernible in their radical expression. “Killing a chicken is like killing a man,” could mean the advocacy of abstaining from killing any living creature, or the acceptance of homicide as one of the customary varieties of life-destruction practiced by men.
Here lies the source of deceptiveness of all radically ethical demands. Their broadcast is fraught with danger. For all of them are double-edged.
The same holds equally true concerning the other formula, “Authority is violence”, “Right is might”. These sentences are ethical when read, irrespective of letter mouthing, in the spirit, from left to right. They are “political” when read, mentally, from right to left. The first construction is a negation of authority; no matter how little violent, how much considerate, hedged around by guarantees, how little intrusive it may be. Authority is rejected, for at its core it is coercion, compulsion, and, therefore, must be looked askance at by high morality that, by its very nature, is voluntary. The second interpretation of the same formula, verbatim left intact, is of a political coloration. It conveys the very opposite idea, namely, the glorification of violence, of brutal, open, shameless, brazen despotism, so long as it is instituted by those who claim to be vested with authority, though they establish their usurpatory regime, their tyrannical rule, their gangdom styled “authority” through the most inhuman acts of violence and terror.
And the apparently ethical condemnation contained in the dictum is but a disguised preparation of the ground for the prospective apology for the incoming “banditry”, an apology carried out by the clever trick of anticipatorily repelling all criticism and accusation that might be afterwards advanced against the bloody regime. It is done with the aid of a high-sounding moral concept asserting that, anyway, all authority as such is nothing more than sheer violence, no matter how nicely pedicured are its paws and claws, and what is here to be indignant about! So that the moral dictum is exposed to the danger of being all too easily reversed.
And the reversal takes place in a most natural, inobtrusive way. It is merely a result of “quantity” being turned into very low “quality”. It is merely an outcome of the growth of the numbers of the devotees, of the “followers” of the too lofty, too elevated moral doctrine contained within the shell of the formula.
When few adhere to it, it is, naturally, kept in the realm of morals, and self-edification, and it is only “used”. Upon the “few” making headway, spreading the glorious teaching, and thus becoming “many”, the formula unnoticeably passes the prohibitive borderline separating individual conduct from political mass behavior, mob-action. At this newly arrived stage the formula is no longer “used”, it is inevitably “abused”.
The ethical elevation upon which stood those exceptional personalities who originated this sentence due to their over-sensitiveness, highly refined conscience-consciousness, is too high an altitude for the average man in the street and his quite low level of moral culture. And the moral utterance can be understood and accepted by the many, by the broad masses, by individuals lacking those higher susceptibilities, only in its coarse misconstruction, namely, as a political demand, not as an ethical command. Upon becoming the basic principle of a mass-movement, the moral dictum cannot help being transmuted into its opposite, into a new insidious form of hyper-hypocrisy. This hypocrisy is not satisfied with preaching one way and acting the other way, but it signifies a preaching and behaving according to the very preachment but taken in its diametrical opposite.
“Right is might”, ethically deciphered advocates the rejection of juridical norms and their substitution by an inner quest after righteousness that soars high above the vault of jurisprudence and its unsatisfactory, unsavory to the gourmet of manners, means for the regulation of inter-individual relations. Politically decoded the same formula conveys the insistence upon the employment of outright fist-force, it posits the validity of violence by sanctifying it through an act of identification with right.
*** 2. Communism as a Political Movement Is Antithetic To Communism as a Moral Teaching.
<quote>
“In spite of the foreground appearance, Socialism is not a system of compassion, of humanity, peace and kindly care, but one of will-to-power. Any other reading of it is illusory. The aim is through and through imperialist; welfare, but welfare in the expansive sense, the welfare... of the energetic man who ought to be given and must be given freedom to do, regardless of obstacles of wealth, birth and tradition... The Stoic takes the world as he finds it, but the Socialist wants to organize and recast it in form and substance, and fill it with his own spirit. The Socialist commands. He would have the whole world bear the form of his view. This is the ultimate meaning of the categorical imperative which he brings to bear in political, social and economic matters alike act as though the maxims that you practice were to become by your will the law of all.” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, vol. I. pp. 361-62, New York, 1932.)
</quote>
Marxian Communism is political, exceedingly so, exclusively so. It is not ethical altogether. Marxism deals not with the free-willed man, who is only socially “static”, environmentally set, but who as an individual is responsible for his actions, has his own account of a personal debit and credit, whose conduct may be regulated by voluntary ethical maxims or not be regulated, not systematized internally, volitionally, and, therefore, be considered as not moral; man is not its concern. Marxism-Communism is busy with the transformable, dynamic, floating group whose conduct is preordained historically and predetermined by antecedents, scientifically explained and classified.
Marxian Communism is the expression of the will-to-power and the tantalizing hunger for authority and communal life-control of the politico-economic organisateurs . These labor-lords as an aggregate are naturally composed of individuals. But the single individuals, with the exception of a few outstanding personalities of "leaders", are looked upon and considered as immersed in the group-will, in the collectivity-consciousness.
To speak of Marxian Communism in terms of individualistic philosophy and concepts is to commit a theoretical misdemeanor. It means treating Communism liberalistically, and this should not be done.
<quote>
"In reading Marx, 'class', in phrases like 'class-struggle ' and 'class consciousness', should be regarded as a species of community held together by some kind of group loyalty , by its members being prepared to sacrifice their individual interests to the interests of the community . " (A.D. Lindsay, Karl Marx's Capital, p. 45.)
</quote>
Not to the "community" in general, but expressly to the "class-community".
Marxian Communism, therefore, should be treated accordingly, not as a doctrine conceived, elaborated by an academician, by an individual theorist, who as a man is subject to errors of an individual nature resulting from the natural limitations of human intellect, but as a <em>class-ideology</em>. Marxian Communism must be dealt with on its own ground and scrutinized in the light of class tactics and class-interrelationships. This doctrine is not a doctrine in the usual sense of the word, it is a class maneuver, a class-weapon.
Marxian Communism is the embodiment of the aspiration after welfare, glory, domination and stardom on the historic stage of the type of political mass-organizers who strive to capture the national state-machinery, economy and culture and fuse and centralize these three separate branches of communal activity in the hands of one dominating group that through this very accomplishment transforms itself into a threefold master-class , a super-class. This great "revolutionary" modification of communal life and class-structure would pry wide open the floodgates for the most intensive and extensive exploitation of the masses, a rate and grade of exploitation that for its prototype would have to hark back to ancient slavery and find there only its timid prefiguration.
Communism, in its stage of so called Utopia, was launched upon its career as an ethical doctrine, it was inaugurated as a humanitarian praiseworthy endeavor. It made, in those days, its aristocratic appeal to philanthropists, to those few and chosen who felt deep compassion for the sufferings of their fellow-men. Being moral, Communism was charitable, touching the noble chords in the hearts of the elite, it advocated humaneness. It taught love and kindness.
Then Marxian Communism became a "mass-movement", a grandiose political affair. Upon becoming <em>political</em>, Communism passed into its diametrical contrariety. From morality it turned to immorality, from love to hatred, the most intensified expression of which is Leninism. It “is <em>not</em> a system of compassion, of humanity, peace and kindly care". Instead of peace it brings the sword of "civil war", the holy class struggle with its concomitant civil, internal, militarism disguised as "militantism" and economic <em>super-imperialism</em> under the mask of the one and indivisible Internationale. Instead of <em>mankind</em> it posits either a class or a state, championing <em>class-patriotism</em> and <em>state-patriotism</em> and their odd combination. And the Marxian theory of exploitation is not, as it is superficially understood, a condemnation of exploitation but a preliminary justification of, and theoretical prelude to, the augmentation of the volume and enhancement of the rate of exploitation that is going to take place under state-Communism.
How does this strange metamorphosis of Communism come about? It materializes so gradually, so possibilistically that the unsophisticated, and quite often outright intellectless, part of the intelligentsia is hardly cognizant of the drastic change, scarcely aware of the complete shifting of positions occupied by the champions of Communism, from vanguard to rearguard, from enlightenment to the most benighted obscurantism, from progressivism to reactionarism.
Marxian Communism is a case of ideological alchemy applied in the reversed direction, that of trans muting the precious metals of morality, the silver and gold of love and kindness into the brass and iron of politics and warfare, civil and national.
<quote>
"The Stoic takes things as they are."
</quote>
This is the only path, which is not infected with poisonous class-ambitions, open to the true moralist. The ethical personality cannot act otherwise. The moralist should do nothing more, if he desire to stay pure and clean and not lose his own moral standard from over - anxiety, too much zeal for hasty reform, which would inevitably lead him to take a plunge, head and heart first, into the morass of politics, and thus, belie and bedraggle his own moral precepts. Ethics is the longest road, not the short-cut. The mill of ethics grinds exceedingly slow, but, therefore, exceedingly fine. Ethics is a modifier of human realities, of interindividual, interclass or international relations. But its modification work it carries out via the <em>individual person</em>. It refines, improves the human material, and leaves, meanwhile, intact the social status quo which will alter of itself as a result of the alteration to the better wrought in man, in the atom. Reform work, revolutionary work, the changing of a social system carried out on a mass-scale at one time, encompassing a whole country with all its inhabitants without discrimination, this is political activity. And ethics being forced down to the political level does not give the effect expected by the short sighted, narrow-hearted and shallow-minded immature amateur-intellectual or “radical” philistine, namely, that of ennobling politics, but that of unnobling ethics. The result of this confusion, the hitching of the star of ethics to the bandwagon of politics, is the total demoralization of society, the lowering of all moral standards, the temporary eclipse of the constellation of conscience.
<quote>
“The Stoic takes the world as he finds it, but the Socialist wants to <em>organize</em> and <em>recast</em> it in form and substance.”
</quote>
The “Communist”, taken not singularly, but plurally, as a collective is surely busy rebuilding the social system, recasting it in form and substance so that it should suit his class-interests. So long as the Communist, or any other adept of any other moral teaching, for that matter, is a seeker after truth, a thirster for justice, a hungerer after righteousness, without political class-ambitions, he is a positive factor in the community, he is a contribution to the moral, and otherwise, welfare of the commonwealth. But the Communist as a collective, as a militant congregation, as the embodiment of a <em>mass-movement</em>, as an army of drilled and trained cohorts for the purpose of conducting a bloody civil war and a ballyhooing political campaign, is a highly negative factor, is a detriment to society. For he abuses his erstwhile <em>ethical</em>, lofty aspirations. He degrades them, drags them down and sinks them in mire and mud. He desecrates the Holy of Holies, the temple that is in the heart of man conscience, he unlaws and outlaws the moral law, the categorical imperative.
“This is the ultimate”, political, abusive, reversed, negational “meaning of the categorical imperative which he brings to bear in political, social and economic matters alike”. The Communist movement applies this imperative not individualistically, for which purpose and application it was formulated by Kant, but collectivistically, not as a moral command that is externally facultative and only internally obligatory, but as a police ordinance, a state-fiat, an ukase, which is, on the contrary, internally facultative and externally obligatory, comminatory.
“Act as though the maxims that you practice”, and which practice consists exclusively in preaching to others to practice them, “were to become by your will”, by the will of the emerging super-class, the will of the commanding group, “the law of all”, for it will be imposed upon them by violence and terror of usurpers.
**** OTHER BOOKS BY ABBA GORDIN
I. Anarkhia Dukha. Moscow, 1919.
II. Anarkhia v Mechte. Moscow, 1919.
III. Interindividualism, 2 vols. Moscow, 1920-22.
IV. Egotica. Moscow, 1922.
V. Yiddishe Etik. New York, 1937.
VI. Gruntprincipn fun Yiddishkeit. New York, 1938. VII. Di Froi un di Bibl. New York, 1939.
VIII. Yiddisher Weltbanem. New York, 1939.
[1] “That ideology (Socialism) was in its origins a class ide ology, and as such served to rouse important masses of workers to a sense of the iniquity of modern capitalism and the necessity for its suppression by a better social system.... For it is this working class social ideology which has been its motive force, and which will ultimately be its historical justification.” (G. W. Thomson, The Grammar of Power, pp. 47-48, London, 1924.) In its origins Socialism was no class-ideology, but a moral teaching.
[2] "The rectified annals place the political revolution in the year 510 B. C. and the social in the years 495-494 B. C.... The strict enforcement of the law of debt-so runs the story-excited the indignation of the farmers at large. When in the year 495 B. C. the levy was called forth for a dangerous war, the men bound to serve refused to obey the command; so that the consul Publius Servilius suspended for a time the application of the debtor-laws, and gave orders to liberate the persons already imprisoned for debt as well as prohibited further arrests. The farmers took their places in the ranks and helped them secure the victory. On their return from the field of battle the peace, which had been achieved by their exertions, brought back their prison and their chains : with merciless rigor the second consul, Appius Claudius, enforced the debtor laws, and his colleague, to whom his former soldiers appealed for aid, dared not offer opposition... They endured, however, what could not be changed. But when in the following year the war was renewed, the word of the consul availed no longer. It was only when Manius Valerius was nominated dictator that the farmers submitted.... The victory was again with the Roman standards; but when the victors came home and the dictator submitted his proposals of reform to the senate, they were thwarted by its obstinate opposition. The army still stood in its array, as usual, before the gates of the city. When the news arrived, the long threatening storm burst forth.... The army abandoned its general and its encampment, and under the leader ship of its commanders of the legions-the military tribunes, who were at least in great part plebeians-marched in martial order into the district of Crustumeria between the Tiber and the Anio, where it occupied a hill and threatened to establish in this most fertile part of the Roman territory a new plebeian city... the senate gave way. The dictator negotiated an agreement; the citizens returned within the city walls; unity was outwardly restored. The people gave Manius Valerius thenceforth the name of “the great” (Maximus) and called the mount beyond the Anio “the sacred mount”. There was something mighty and elevating in such a revolution, undertaken by the multitude itself without definite guidance, under generals whom accident supplied....” (Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, Everyman's Library, p. 269-70.)
[3] "Moimeme, en 1918, j'ai publié un livre ' Le christia nisme et le marxisme ou la sociomagie et la sociotechnologie ', qui parut en russ à Moscou, puis fut confisqué par la Guépéou (ou Tchéka). Dans cet ouvrage philosophico-sociologique et culturologique, j'avais exposé les éléments messianiques, mis sionnaires, etc., en un mot sociomagiques du marxisme, que je comparais avec le rève du salut du monde et l'eschatologie prophético-chrétienne.” (Beoby W. Gordin, Qu'est-ce que la Societe? l'En dehors, July and August, Paris-Orleans, 1935, p. 23.)
[4] “After the 1905 revolution Russia was ruled by 130,000 landowners. They ruled by the exertion of unlimited power over 150,000,000 by means of pouring unlimited scorn on them, by means of subjecting the vast majority to penal labor and semi-starvation. And yet they tell us that Russia will not be able to be governed by 240,000 members of the Bolsheviki Party.” (V. I. Lenin, Will the Bolsheviki Maintain Power? p. 198, Preparing for Revolt, London, 1929.) Lenin's thought is illuminating, it leads straight up to the idea that his aim was to constitute a new ruling class that should be able to take the place of the discarded landowners....
[5] ”We read in the manifesto at Everard : ' All landlords were thieves and murderers. It was now time for the English to free themselves from the landlords. Break in pieces quickly the bond of private property... and give their full consent to make the earth a common treasury, etc. ' Gardiner : vol. vi, 43” (Piterim Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution, p. 76, footnote 24, Philadelphia and London, 1924.)
[6] “We quote from the words of Poehlman, who makes the following resume of all the ancient revolutions : ' In Greece (and Rome) in the course of a few centuries a struggle was waged, the motto of which was : equality, justice and fraternity. The attempt to establish in practice an economic and social equality was accompanied with unbridled outbursts of hatred and rancor, pillage, robbery, wild licentiousness. Also with righteous indigna tion, called for by extreme poverty and exploitation, we con stantly witness greed towards the wealth of their neighbors, whom they cast out only to set themselves, and only themselves, in their places. Consequently, it is not by chance during the last centuries of the Greek culture, that in nearly all classes when equality was the slogan, every individual strived to set himself above all others, and practiced the coarsest of tyrannies. The latter was a characteristic embodiment of the greed of the masses. Those who profited by the revolution were not apt to show that spirit of solidarity and justice to which social democracy aspired. No traces of equality or fraternity were to be found anywhere. As soon as the primary aim of the social revolution was achieved, that is, as soon, as a more or less considerable number of its agents had acquired money and landed property it would regularly become evident that not self-denying loyalty to a common idea, but personal interests had supplied the actuating motive [ Rather class-interests, or group-interests ]. And these interests required that each individual should retain what he had acquired during the general pillage. Now these people had reason to fear the saturnalia of revolutionary speeches, for a new revolution could only make them lose, not gain, and so they had no reason to go around masquerading as proletarian-revolutionists. Usually they suddenly acquired the most reactionary ideas, both in the realm of economics and politics. Beati possedentes. The new owners were little worried by the new growth of inequality and poverty. They would not listen to the idea of a new division of property now that they themselves were the owners. Consequently, fraternity lasted only till the opposing side was conquered and the process of spoliation had been accomplished. Poehlmann, History of Ancient Communism and Socialism p. 469-70, 494-8, 503-82” (Petirim Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution, pp. 72-3, Philadelphia and London, 1924).
[7] “But even from the ranks of the army itself protests were not wanting. On March 1st there appeared a ' Letter to General Fair Fox and his Council of Officers '... being a protest... charging Cromwell with striving after the royal dignity, calling Parliament a mere reflector of the Council of War, and the latter the tool of Cromwell... inweighing in strong terms against the establishments of the ' Rule by the Sword '... On March 3rd they were brought before a court martial” (Edward Bernstein, Cromwell and Communism, tr. by H. J. Stenning, pp. 135-36, London 1930). “The nicknames 'gentlemen independents' and 'grandees' of the Army began to be used, in distinction to the 'honest noun substantive soldiers', as the peasants and the artisans in the army called themselves, while the 'grandees', on their side, reproached the soldiers and their leaders, the ' agitators ' with being destructive ' levellers '“. (Ibid. p. 66). On March 21st a new Levellers ' pamphlet appeared... It bears the arresting title... The Grandee Deceivers Unmasked Printed in a corner of freedome right opposite the Council of Warre, Anno Domini, 1649 ′... A still more scathing denunciation of Cromwell and his staff was read by Lilburne, on Sunday, March 25th, to an enormous crowd assembled in front of his house. and was entitled, The Second Part of England's New Chains Dis covered... No sooner had it appeared in print than it led to the arrest of Lilburne and his three consignatories, simultaneously with a public notice to the effect that all who were guilty of distributing this pamphlet which incited to mutiny... would be considered enemies of the Commonwealth, and treated as such” (Ibid., pp. 137-38).... The sequence was that matters remained as they were left on the day after the arrest of the four Levellers, when Cromwell in the Council of State, striking the table with his fist, addressing the chairman, Bradshaw, Milton's brother-in-law, exclaimed :”I tell you, sir, there is no way to deal with these men but to break them in pieces '.. (Ibid. p. 139).”... This was open mutiny, and if allowed to spread further, the worst might be expected. But Fairfax and Cromwell did not allow matters to go further They appeared on the spot with other officers, accompanied by a number of reliable soldiers... Fifteen were arrested as ringleaders, to be tried by court martial. Five of the fifteen were sentenced to death next morning, but of those four were, at Cromwell's request, pardoned, while one only, Robert Lockyer... was shot on April 27th. He was a brave and pious ' soldier, who, although but twenty-three years of age, had served from the very beginning of the struggle against the King and enjoyed great popularity with all his comrades... ' I pray you, let not this death of mine be a discouragement but rather an encouragement, for never man died more comfortably than I do ', were his last words. His funeral which took place on April 29th was made the occasion of a great political demonstration by the extreme elements among the population. Thousands of craftsmen and laborers, with their wives and daughters followed the coffin decked with rosemary... Outside the city they were joined by many more mourners” (Ibid. pp. 140-41). “… The 10th of May brought still worse news to London. In Salisbury almost the whole regiment... had declared in favor of the agreement ' of the Levellers, and had placed themselves under the command of the Ensign Thompson They fell upon the place about midnight, being conducted, it is reported, by Quartermaster Moore, whom they had gained over, and who had been entrusted by the Levellers with the posting of the sentries. The Levellers, suddenly roused from sleep, defended themselves as best they could, but, fighting without plan or leader, they were overwhelmed by superior numbers, Cromwell having two thousand men with him... The next day a court martial was held on the prisoners. Four of them.. were sentenced to death. Young Thompson and two corporals who were condemned died courageously. Of one of these we are told : ”Without the least acknowledgement of error or show of fear, he pulled his doublet, standing a pretty distance from the wall, and bade the soldiers do their duty; looking them in the face till they gave fire, not showing the least kind of terror or fearfulness of spirit '“ (Ibid. pp. 143-46). “Its Girondists were the Presbyterians; its Jacobins its Independents; its Hebertists and Babeuvists were the Levellers” (Ibid. p. 10). The same can be told about the Russian Revolution : The disarmament of the Anarchists, Left S. R. Maximalists, then the struggle and persecution of the Labor Opposition within the Communist Party, and all other sorts and kinds of Oppositions, Trotzky faction included. The German National Revolution has the same to tell. It corroborates the law of splitting up by its notorious 'purges' which are not unlike the Russian Communist 'cleansings'.
[8] "Democracy, as we have inherited it, was a system invented and established by the middle class in the age of its confident expansion , when it asked of the State only that it should desist from interference . " (Henry Noel Brailsford , p . 93 ; New York , 1934.) "This liberal middle class had inherited from Locke and the Encyclopaedists an atomistic view of the human mind and of human society . For it the individual was the absolute, and right was no longer the consequence of a duly ordered and happily functioning society: it was an inalienable perquisite of the abstract individual . " (Ib . p . 69.)
[9] La bourgeosie est un corps que l'histoire a use, a fletri.” (Michel Bakounine, Oeuvres, Vol. V. p. 14, Paris, 1911.)
|
#title An Anti-Civilization Mythology
#subtitle A Review of Lierre Keith’s “The Vegetarian Myth”
#author Abbey Volcano
#LISTtitle Anti-Civilization Mythology
#SORTtopics anti-civ, myth, book review, Northeastern Anarchist, vegan
#date 2011
#source Retrieved on December 2, 2016 from [[https://web.archive.org/web/20161202013212/http://nefac.net/node/2549][web.archive.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-10-17T13:36:51
#notes Published in <em>The Northeastern Anarchist</em> Issue #15, 2011.
I understand completely why someone might want to write a book about the “myths” of vegetarianism. We live in a world where capitalism has this amazing ability to co-opt anything and everything (you’ve almost got to admire what a good job capitalism does at that). “Green” capitalism is a case in point. Even radicals may have a hard time resisting the pull of green capitalism, though perhaps by accident. For vegans and/or vegetarians (heretofore referred to as “veg*ans”) who use their diets as a radical act, if they are promoting what to eat or not eat, buy or not buy, then there is really no way to avoid advocating for a different way of consuming—something capitalists can make loads of profit off. In addition, it’s easy to critique the idealism that some veg*ans hold: that, by way of their diet, they are not engaging in the hurting or killing of any animals, nor hurting the earth for the most part. This is of course obviously not true. Another easy critique to have of veg*ans is of their often-claimed belief that we can change the world by our diets alone; a silly idea, at best.
Lierre Keith’s book The Vegetarian Myth aims to discuss the “myths” of vegetarianism, but she sees these myths as something quite different than what most anarchists advocate for: a basic critique of capitalism and the need for actual movements that not only resist the structures we live under, like capitalism and the state, but also movements that provide space for resisting the ways we’ve come to relate to ourselves, each other and the non-human world (and create new, egalitarian and sustainable relationships!). Keith does point to a few things that are easy to get behind, but most of her book is a diatribe against veg*ans as people, as well as how, health-wise, a veg*an diet is a diet that will kill you—literally. I went back and forth from reactions like “that’s a good point” when she wrote of the destruction of the earth that is part and parcel of monocrops and agriculture in general, to reactions like “wow, that’s really offensive” when she wrote three entire chapters dedicated to explaining why a veg*an diet is basically “wrong” and “immature.”
The book has two different themes that are distinct. One theme focuses on the material ways that mass-agriculture and the cultivation of monocrops are destroying the earth—and quickly. The other theme is that of a couple different philosophical arguments like: agriculture is the base of all evil, as well as the argument that veg*anism is actually wrong and detrimental to the earth and our human bodies, and that veg*anism is “immature” and that all humans should be eating meat. I’ll break this review down by responding to the question of agriculture, responding to her critiques of veg*anism “the diet” as well as “the person,” and I will finish off the review with my take on the violent pieing of Lierre Keith that took place at the 2010 Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair.
<quote>
“Agriculture, as we know it, is swallowing entire ecosystems whole ”
</quote>
As far as agriculture being the basis of all (organized) evil—that needs to be challenged, of course. Having said that, the way agriculture often (mis)utilizes irrigation and deforestation; plants annual grains; depletes (almost all) top soil, rivers and aquifers; causes desertification and total removal of tons of species; misplaces animals, human and non-human alike—I think it’s easy to make the case that agriculture, as we know it, is swallowing entire ecosystems whole (p. 42). At the same time, Keith concludes, like many anti-civilization theories, that agriculture is the basis of all domination, coercion and control and that we need to go back to a way of living that came before agriculture (agriculture is synonymous with civilization in her text). To do that, we’d need to kill about 5 billion people; so, it’s easy to see immediately, the problem with this analysis. In my thinking, domination, coercion and control are what we need to eradicate. I am so used to reading texts that reduce domination to the economic sphere that reading a “civilization-reductionist” text was a breath of fresh air—a breath, however, that will never bring us to a state of being that is truly free, participatory and healthy for all living things. Killing off (or the need to kill off) 5 billion people is not an answer to anything. We need to find ways to exist sustainably (buzz word of the year) with each other and the non-human world, something I think is possible without killing off billions of humans and forcing people to eat meat.
Keith is correct that veg*an monocrops are detrimental to the earth. Anyone who has studied diet and sustainability has seen those statistics that “growing” meat is less sustainable and more wasteful than growing vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes: for as much water as it takes to grow the grain to feed the cattle, we could just grow the grain and eat that; that far more fossil fuels are used to “grow” meat rather than to grow crops; that methane from cattle is awful for the environment. At the same time, we need different ways of growing crops; the way we’re doing it now is depleting top soil, creating salinization of the waters and causing desertification. It’s not as simple as “eating meat will save the world”. On the other hand, there are different ways of raising cattle and other animals that we slaughter for meat. One of Keith’s main points in the book is that cattle and such aren’t supposed to be eating grain in the first place; factory farming itself is unsustainable and has caused much of the crises that many blame “meat” in general for, when we need to be blaming the ways we “grow” and feed cattle and other livestock, perhaps not the existence of livestock itself.
This is where Keith could use a much bigger (or any, really) analysis of capitalism and its role in the livestock “industry”. Keith’s main point about grain-fed beef and other livestock is that the reason humans eat other animals is that the animals we feed on feed themselves on the grasses that we can’t digest, that is, we get the grass’s nutrients through the animal we eat that have eaten the grasses. Eating animals that eat grain is pretty ridiculous since we can just eat that grain ourselves. At the same time, the grain we feed animals is awful for their own health and livelihood, and ours, in return, when we eat them. Eating animals can be nutritious if they eat the food they naturally feed on, if you look at the nutritional content of factory-farmed and grain-fed animals (as food for humans), the nutrients aren’t there and the animals have become unhealthy to eat in the first place.
Moving on from there, the rest of the book is a diatribe against veg*ans as people. She writes three chapters: “moral vegetarians,” “political vegetarians” and “nutritional vegetarians”. All three types of vegetarians are proven “wrong” by Keith. Funny thing is, none of those chapters describe me and my veg*anism—but that’s beside the point. She argues that vegetarianism is an “immature” standpoint and that when and if folks adopt an “adult knowledge,” we will see that eating meat is “natural,” glorious and correct (I’m paraphrasing here). “Adult knowledge,” according to Keith, is basically that death is embedded in all life, that we should accept that and stop trying to get out of “killing” and start eating meat like we’re supposed to (p. 77). Keith seems to think that vegetarians are folks with “child-like” brains that ultimately want to close their eyes and pretend like death isn’t happening all around them—I’ll let readers decide how they feel about this notion on their own. There are a slew of other silly conclusions from Keith, one being that anorexia is ultimately the fault of vegetarianism (p. 230) and that vegans are “obsessive” and “rigid” due to their lack of proteins and fat (p. 236)—in my opinion, some vegans are obsessive and rigid because of their dogmatism and ideological arrogance (along with many anarchists, for that matter). In short, it doesn’t take any particular diet to be an asshole with the Correct Line that everyone MUST adhere to.
<quote>
“it doesn’t take any particular diet to be an asshole with the Correct Line that everyone MUST adhere to.”
</quote>
I ultimately feel like her book is a rant, filled with massive sweeping statements (many quite insulting) that rely on some really unfounded “scientific” claims that don’t seem to have any good sources, or that are the exact opposite of other “scientific” studies—so who do we believe if both premises can be “proven right” (veg*anism is “good” and also “bad”) ?
<quote>
“ filled with massive sweeping statements (many quite insulting) that rely on some really unfounded “scientific” claims that don’t seem to have any good sources, or that are the exact opposite of other “scientific” studies”
</quote>
If you want to pull something useful from this book, here it is: 1) we need to reassess the way we mass-produce everything from lettuce to cattle, 2) we need to let go of ideologies as “identities” and use them as ways to understand, not let them control us or our conceptions of, well, anything, really, 3) capitalism is one of the main causes of unsustainable food production (I’m being generous here, she never really states this, which is one of my main critiques of the book), 4) a veg*an diet won’t save the world.
Having written all this, and as a veg*an, I am totally against the attack of Lierre Keith at the 2010 Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair this past March. I attended the book fair, randomly, and was outside during her talk. But three able-bodied men attacked a woman who needs a cane to walk. They didn’t try to embarrass her or humiliate her with a pie plate full of (veg*an) whipped cream. Instead, they directly attacked her with three pies filled with not only whipped cream, but also with hot pepper and cayenne (à la what cops use as pepper spray). Furthermore, what does this say about the anarchist “movement” in the States? That if we disagree with people we should physically attack them? That doesn’t give much hope for progress within our struggling “movement,” or the fact that many veganarchists thought the attack was “delightful” and not sexist or ableist at all. Ok, I’ll let the readers try to figure out that one too. Funny thing is—they attacked Keith in the middle of her speech when she was denouncing factory farming.
<quote>
“We need to reassess the way we mass-produce everything from lettuce to cattle”
</quote>
My conclusion of all of this in a nutshell? Diets alone won’t change the world, but we need to contract, specific to this book, different relationships with animals and the non-human world, relationships that are good for all of us. We also need to develop different ways of conception: ways that allow folks to exist as veg*ans or not, but that don’t create identities out of diets (or much at all, really) and find ways in which we can rally around broad agreements instead of physically attacking folks we disagree with. New social relationships combined with mass movements can change everything—and must.
|
#title Insurrections at the Intersections
#subtitle Feminism, Intersectionality and Anarchism
#author Abbey Volcano, J. Rogue
#LISTtitle Insurrections at the Intersections
#SORTauthors Abbey Volcano, J. Rogue
#SORTtopics anarcha-feminism, feminism, transfeminism, intersectionality, trans
#date 2012
#source From the 2012 edition of Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader from AK Press. [[http://libcom.org/library/insurrections-intersections-feminism-intersectionality-anarchism][libcom.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2019-08-15T08:32:08
<quote>
We need to understand the body not as bound to the private or to the self—the western idea of the autonomous individual—but as being linked integrally to material expressions of community and public space. In this sense there is no neat divide between the corporeal and the social; there is instead what has been called a “social flesh.”
— Wendy Harcourt and Arturo Escobar[1]
</quote>
*** The birth of intersectionality
In response to various U.S. feminisms and feminist organizing efforts the Combahee River Collective,[2] an organization of black lesbian socialist-feminists,[3] wrote a statement that became the midwife of intersectionality. Intersectionality sprang from black feminist politics near the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s and is often understood as a response to mainstream feminism’s construction around the erroneous idea of a “universal woman” or “sisterhood.”[4] At the heart of intersectionality lies the desire to highlight the myriad ways that categories and social locations such as race, gender, and class intersect, interact, and overlap to produce systemic social inequalities; given this reality, talk of a universal women’s experience was obviously based on false premises (and typically mirrored the most privileged categories of women— i.e. white, non-disabled, “middle class,” heterosexual, and so on).
Initially conceived around the triad of “race/class/gender,” intersectionality was later expanded by Patricia Hill Collins to include social locations such as nation, ability, sexuality, age, and ethnicity.[5] Rather than being conceptualized as an additive model, intersectionality offers us a lens through which to view race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. as mutually-constituting processes (that is, these categories do not exist independently from one another; rather, they mutually reinforce one another) and social relations that materially play out in people’s everyday lives in complex ways. Rather than distinct categories, intersectionality theorizes social positions as overlapping, complex, interacting, intersecting, and often contradictory configurations.
*** Toward an anarchist critique of liberal intersectionality
Intersectionality has been, and often still is, centered on identity. Although the theory suggests that hierarchies and systems of oppression are interlocking, mutually constituting, and sometimes even contradictory, intersectionality has often been used in a way that levels structural hierarchies and oppressions. For instance, “race, class, and gender” are often viewed as oppressions that are experienced in a variety of ways/degrees by everyone—that is, no one is free of the forced assignations of identity. This concept can be useful, especially when it comes to struggle, but the three “categories” are often treated solely as identities, and as though they are similar because they are “oppressions.” For instance, it is put forward that we all have a race, a gender, and a class. Since everyone experiences these identities differently, many theorists writing on intersectionality have referred to something called “classism” to complement racism and sexism.
This can lead to the gravely confused notion that class oppression needs to be rectified by rich people treating poor people “nicer” while still maintaining class society. This analysis treats class differences as though they are simply cultural differences. In turn, this leads toward the limited strategy of “respecting diversity” rather than addressing the root of the problem. This argument precludes a class struggle analysis which views capitalism and class society as institutions and enemies of freedom. We don’t wish to “get along” under capitalism by abolishing snobbery and class elitism. Rather, we wish to overthrow capitalism and end class society all together. We do recognize that there are some relevant points raised by the folks who are talking about classism—we do not mean to gloss over the stratification of income within the working class.
Organizing within the extremely diverse working class of the United States requires that we acknowledge and have consciousness of that diversity. However, we feel it is inaccurate to conflate this with holding systemic power over others – much of the so-called middle class may have relative financial advantage over their more poorly-waged peers, but that is not the same as exploiting or being in a position of power over them. This sociologically-based class analysis further confuses people by mistakenly leading them to believe their “identity” as a member of the “middle class” (a term which has so many definitions as to make it irrelevant) puts them in league with the ruling class/oppressors, contributing to the lack of class consciousness in the United States. Capitalism is a system of exploitation where the vast majority work for a living while very few own (i.e.: rob) for a living. The term classism does not explain exploitation, which makes it a flawed concept. We want an end to class society, not a society where classes “respect” each other. It is impossible to eradicate exploitation while class society still exists. To end exploitation we must also end class society (and all other institutionalized hierarchies).
This critical issue is frequently overlooked by theorists who use intersectionality to call for an end to “classism.” Rather, as anarchists, we call for an end to all exploitation and oppression and this includes an end to class society. Liberal interpretations of intersectionality miss the uniqueness of class by viewing it as an identity and treating it as though it is the same as racism or sexism by tacking an “ism” onto the end. Eradicating capitalism means an end to class society; it means class war. Likewise, race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, age—the gamut of hierarchically-arranged social relations— are in their own ways unique. As anarchists, we might point those unique qualities out rather than leveling all of these social relations into a single framework.
By viewing class as “just another identity” that should be considered in the attempt to understand others’ (and one’s own) “identities,” traditional conceptions of intersectionality do a dis- service to liberatory processes and struggle. While intersectionality illustrates the ways in which relations of domination interact with and prop up each other, this does not mean that these systems are identical or can be conflated. They are unique and function differently. These systems also reproduce one another. White supremacy is sexualized and gendered, heteronormativity is racialized and classed. Oppressive and exploitative institutions and structures are tightly woven together and hold one another up. Highlighting their intersections—their seams—gives us useful angles from which to tear them down and construct more liberatory, more desirable, and more sustainable relations with which to begin fashioning our futures.
*** An anarchist intersectionality of our own
Despite having noted this particularly common mistake by theorists and activists writing under the label of intersectionality, the theory does have a lot to offer that shouldn’t be ignored. For instance, intersectionality rejects the idea of a central or primary oppression. Rather, as previously noted, all oppressions overlap and often mutually constitute each other. Interpreted on the structural and institutional levels, this means that the struggle against capitalism must also be the struggle against heterosexism, patriarchy, white supremacy, etc. Too often intersectionality is used solely as a tool to understand how these oppressions overlap in the everyday lives of people to produce an identity that is unique to them in degree and composition.
What is more useful to us as anarchists is using intersectionality to understand how the daily lives of people can be used to talk about the ways in which structures and institutions intersect and interact. This project can inform our analyses, strategies, and struggles against all forms of domination. That is, anarchists might use lived reality to draw connections to institutional processes that create, reproduce, and maintain social relations of domination. Unfortunately, a liberal interpretation of intersectionality precludes this kind of institutional analysis, so while we might borrow from intersectionality, we also need to critique it from a distinctly anarchist perspective.
It is worth noting that there really is no universally-accepted interpretation of intersectionality. Like feminism, it requires a modifier in order to be truly descriptive, which is why we’ll use the term “anarchist intersectionality” to describe our perspective in this essay. We believe that an anti-state and anti-capitalist perspective (as well as a revolutionary stance regarding white supremacy and heteropatriarchy) is the logical conclusion of intersectionality. However, there are many who draw from intersectionality, yet take a more liberal approach. Again, this can be seen in the criticisms of “classism” rather than capitalism and class society, and the frequent absence of an analysis of the state.[6] Additionally, there is also at times a tendency to focus almost solely on individual experiences rather than systems and institutions.
While all these points of struggle are relevant, it is also true that people raised in the United States, socialized in a deeply self-centered culture, have a tendency to focus on the oppression and repression of individuals, oftentimes to the detriment of a broader, more systemic perspective. Our interest lies with how institutions function and how institutions are reproduced through our daily lives and patterns of social relations. How can we trace our “individual experiences” back to the systems that (re)produce them (and vice versa)? How can we trace the ways that these systems (re)produce one another? How can we smash them and create new social relations that foster freedom?
With an institutional and systemic analysis of intersectionality, anarchists are afforded the possibility of highlighting the social flesh mentioned in the opening quote. And if we are to give a full account of this social flesh—the ways that hierarchies and inequalities are woven into our social fabric—we’d be remiss if we failed to highlight a glaring omission in nearly everything ever written in intersectional theories: the state. We don’t exist in a society of political equals, but in a complex system of domination where some are governed and controlled and ruled in institutional processes that anarchists describe as the state. Gustav Landauer, who discussed this hierarchical arrangement of humanity where some rule over others in a political body above and beyond the control of the people, saw the state as a social relationship.[7]
We are not just bodies that exist in assigned identities such as race, class, gender, ability, and the rest of the usual laundry list. We are also political subjects in a society ruled by politicians, judges, police, and bureaucrats of all manner. An intersectional analysis that accounts for the social flesh might be extended by anarchists, then, for insurrectionary ends, as our misery is embedded within institutions like capitalism and the state that produce, and are (re)produced, by the web of identities used to arrange humanity into neat groupings of oppressors and oppressed.
As anarchists, we have found that intersectionality is useful to the degree that it can inform our struggles. Intersectionality has been helpful for understanding the ways that oppressions overlap and play out in people’s everyday lives. However, when interpreted through liberal frameworks, typical intersectional analyses often assume myriad oppressions to function identically, which can preclude a class analysis, an analysis of the state, and analyses of our ruling institutions. Our assessment is that everyday experiences of oppressions and exploitation are important and useful for struggle if we utilize intersectionality in a way that can encompass the different methods through which white supremacy, heteronormativity, patriarchy, class society, etc. function in people’s lives, rather than simply listing them as though they all operate in similar fashions.
Truth is, the histories of heteronormativity, of white supremacy, of class society need to be understood for their similarities and differences. Moreover, they need to be understood for how they’ve each functioned to (re)shape one another, and vice versa. This level of analysis lends itself to a more holistic view of how our ruling institutions function and how that informs the everyday lives of people. It would be an oversight to not utilize intersectionality in this way.
*** From abstraction to organizing: reproductive freedom and anarchist intersectionality
The ways in which capitalism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy—and disciplinary society more generally—have required control over bodies has been greatly detailed elsewhere,[8] but we would like to offer a bit of that history in order to help build an argument that organizing for reproductive freedom would benefit from an anarchist intersectional analysis. Reproductive freedom, which we use as an explicitly anti-state, anti-capitalist interpretation of reproductive justice, argues that a simple “pro-choice” position is not sufficient for a revolutionary approach to reproductive “rights.” Tracing how race, class, sexuality, nationality, and ability intersect and shape a woman’s access to reproductive health requires a deeper understanding of systems of oppression, which Andrea Smith outlines in her book Conquest.[9] Looking at the history of colonialism in the Americas helps us understand the complexities of reproductive freedom in the current context. The state as an institution has always had a vested interest in maintaining control over social reproduction and in particular, the ways in which colonized peoples did and did not reproduce. Given the history of forced sterilization of Native Americans, as well as African- Americans, Latinos, and even poor white women,[10] we can see that simple access to abortion does not address the complete issue of reproductive freedom.[11] In order to have a comprehensive, revolutionary movement, we need to address all aspects of the issue: being able to have and support children, access to health care, housing, education, and transportation, adoption, non-traditional families, and so on. In order for a movement to be truly revolutionary it must be inclusive; the pro-choice movement has frequently neglected to address the needs of those at the margins. Does Roe v. Wade cover the complexities of the lives of women and mothers in prison?
What about the experiences of people who are undocumented? Trans* folks have long been fighting for healthcare that is inclusive.[12] Simply defending the right to legal abortion does not bring together all those affected by heteropatriarchy. Similarly, legal “choice” where abortions are expensive procedures does nothing to help poor women and highlights the need to smash capitalism in order to access positive freedoms. Reproductive justice advocates have argued for an intersectional approach to these issues, and an anarchist feminist analysis of reproductive freedom could benefit by utilizing an anarchist intersectional analysis.
An anarchist intersectional analysis of reproductive freedom shows us that when a community begins to struggle together, they require an understanding of the ways that relations of ruling operate together in order to have a holistic sense of what they are fighting for. If we can figure out the ways that oppressive and exploitative social relations work together—and form the tapestry that is daily life—we are better equipped to tear them apart. For instance, to analyze the ways that women of color have been particularly and historically targeted for forced sterilizations requires an understanding of how heteropatriarchy, capitalism, the state, and white supremacy have worked together to create a situation where women of color are targeted bodily through social programs such as welfare, medical experiments, and eugenics.
How has racism and white supremacy functioned to support heteropatriarchy? How has sexuality been racialized in ways that have facilitated colonizers to remain without guilt about rape, genocide, and slavery, both historically and contemporarily? How has white supremacy been gendered with images such as the Mammy and the Jezebel?[13] How has the welfare state been racialized and gendered with an agenda for killing the black body?[14] Systemic oppressions such as white supremacy cannot be understood without an analysis of how those systems are gendered, sexualized, classed, etc. Similarly, this kind of analysis can be extended to understanding how heteropatriarchy, heteronormativity, capitalism, the state—all human relations of domination function. This is the weight behind an anarchist intersectional analysis.
An anarchist intersectional analysis, at least the way we are utilizing the standpoint, does not centralize any structure or institution over another, except by context. Rather, these structures and institutions operate to (re)produce one another. They are one another. Understood in this way, a central or primary oppressive or exploitative structure simply makes no sense. Rather, these social relations cannot be picked apart and one declared “central” and the others “peripheral.” And they are intersectional. After all, what good is an insurrection if some of us are left behind?
[1] Harcourt, Wendy, and Arturo Escobar. 2002. “Women and the politics of place.” Development 45 (1): 7–14.
[2] Combahee River Collective Statement. 1977. In Anzalduza, Gloria, and Cherrie Moraga (Eds). 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, Mass: Persephone Press. Available at [[http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee.html][circuitous.org]]
[3] “Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality.” [[http://libcom.org/library/refusing-wait-anarchism-intersectionality][libcom.org]]
[4] For example: Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, 43 (6): 1241–1299.
[5] See: Purkayastha, Bandana. 2012. “Intersectionality in a Transnational World.” Gender & Society 26: 55–66.
[6] “Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality.”
[7] Landauer, Gustav. 2010. Revolution and Other Writings, translated by Gabriel Kuhn. Oakland: PM Press.
[8] For more analysis on how race, gender and sexuality shaped capitalism and colonialism in the U.S., see: Smith, Andrea. 2005. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
[9] Smith, Andrea. 2005. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
[10] For example: [[http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8640744-victims-speak-out-about-north-carolina-sterilization-program-which-targeted-women-young-girls-and-blacks][rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com]]
[11] For a good book that shows examples and the history of reproductive justice, see: Silliman, Jael M. 2004. Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice. Cambridge, Mass: South End Press.
[12] Trans* is taken generally to mean: Transgender, Transsexual, genderqueer, Non-Binary, Genderfluid, Genderfuck, Intersex, Third gender, Transvestite, Cross-dresser, Bi-gender, Trans man, Trans woman, Agender.
[13] Hill Collins, Patricia. 1991. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
[14] Roberts, Dorothy E. 1999. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Vintage.
|
#title Pissing blood
#author Abbey Volcano
#SORTtopics work, Health Care, anti-work
#date November 7, 2012
#source Retrieved on 21<sup>st</sup> June 2021 from [[https://libcom.org/blog/pissing-blood-08112012][libcom.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-06-21T20:06:12
This is a story about anger, “non-profits,” and pissing blood. I was in my fifth year working at an independent health food store run by religious fanatics in a suburb outside of the city and I needed more money. I started off part-time at a cultural center, working the events. I would mainly be there at night, during performances and exhibits—taking people’s tickets, helping the artists set up, serving hors d’oeuvres, cleaning the toilets, etc. I was paid $12/hr to do this work and it was the most I had ever made in my life and it was the only job that wasn’t in the service industry, so I was pretty excited. Pretty soon after I started they asked me if I could take over the secretarial position. This was a full-time desk job. I really needed the money, especially because the health food store was closing down since a Whole Foods had moved into town. I took the job since I couldn’t have really done much better as far as pay went.
I know some people think that non-profits are non-capitalist or are somehow better for society and people who work there and so on. People who work in management positions at non-profits tend to be kind of smug because of this. The place I worked didn’t really operate much differently from any other job, so if there’s a non-profit difference, I didn’t see it. This job had been salaried before I took it but they switched it to hourly and they had me work 10-5p instead of 9-5p so they could opt me out of health insurance, sick days, vacation leave, or bennies of any variety. At first I was happy about being able to start working later in the day (I’m a nocturnal insomniac) and I had never had insurance through a job before, so didn’t think much of it. But I realized pretty quickly that this was bullshit. Everyone else in the office was on salary. Sometimes I felt bad for them because if they worked longer hours, they still received the same pay, but I was mainly upset that I was the only unsalaried person. Others clocked in: the janitor, the tech people, part-time people, but I was the only one in the office who had to clock in.
Pretty much everyone mostly just fucked around on the job. Now, I’ve done my share of fucking around on the job. I’m all for fucking around on the job. It beats actually working. But in this job, other people would get mad at me if I needed to do something that meant they had to do some work instead of fucking around on the job. My job made me the first person anyone calling or coming into the cultural center made contact with. If I wasn’t there, someone else had to take calls or questions, or give tours, or the worst: make their own copies and fax their own memos. The other people in the office would be pretty pissed if I wasn’t there on time, or if I was in the bathroom, or late, whatever. They weren’t mean to me, but it disrupted their regular schedule of fucking around in the back and I could tell it annoyed them.
So there was me in the front office and four people in the back: grant writer, administrative person, accounts manager, and the executive director. Everyone else had a lot of flexibility, like you would expect at a salaried job at a cultural center to have. When they had dentist appointments, doctor appointments, their children were sick, they were sick, or anything that required them to be out of the office, they were allowed to go without penalty. Now I didn’t have health insurance like the rest of them, so I didn’t need to worry about getting time off to go to the doctor or dentist. Lucky me! I was pretty bitter about these dynamics, especially since we were all supposed to get along and be friends and what not. I found myself pretty focused on the fact that they had access to all these things and I didn’t. I’d see them laughing and joking around and I’d just think to myself how much easier it is to put a smile on at work when you at least get bennies. (Of course, work sucks, full stop. Fuck work.) So I hated my job, I hated almost all my co-workers because they were smug and on power trips. The executive director—that’s another story all its own; she is a character. A character you love to hate. She’s a rich liberal who thinks she’s a radical. Gross.
Here’s a brief story to demonstrate her fake radicalness, her loyal opposition. The executive director seemed to fetishize me as a radical. She knew my politics since I had been cooking with Food Not Bombs for a couple years and we used the center’s kitchen. So we had chatted a bunch and she considered herself a fellow radical. I’m not sure why she thought this of herself, but she did. When I first started the secretarial position, it was not explained to me that I was to be both a secretary and a personal assistant to this woman. One of the first things she had me do was look over a schematic she came up with that demonstrated how the office was organized in a non-hierarchical manner. She asked me to look it over and offer her suggestions—I think she wanted to pass these out to the office workers to boost morale, but I’m not really sure. The only suggestion I could offer is that it was completely untrue. She was interested in why I thought this, so I took the time to explain to her that the office is not organized in a non-hierarchical manner, as she had clear authority over tasks and the division of labor, she clearly made about $50k more than the other salaried employees, and as looking at it from my own standpoint, I didn’t even have insurance, sick-leave, vacation days, nor salary. It wasn’t just pay that divided us, but the division of labor was clearly and rigidly set by the board and the executive director who also established the various rules and regulations (formal and informal) which we were all to follow. It was really gross to have my boss try to convince me that we were working in a cooperative, non-hierarchical office situation. I continued to oppose everything she offered to support her argument, but she eventually dropped it and just laughed it off. I never saw that schematic again.
So one day I felt like I had a urinary tract infection (UTI) coming on. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular malady— congratulations because they are the worst. It causes you to have to pee constantly, but when you try to urinate it doesn’t really work, and it feels like razor blades are coming out of your urethra instead of urine. It’s awful. Vaginas are more susceptible to them and if you’ve had one, you’ll likely have another since it causes scar tissue, which causes more UTIs, which causes more scar tissue, etc. There are some over-the-counter drugs to ease the pain, but you need to take an antibiotic to clear up the infection so you can pee normally again. When you have a UTI, you can’t really leave your house. It’s awful. A 5-minute ride to work can be too much to handle. When I say you have to pee constantly, I mean it. Sometimes you just sit on the toilet waiting to pee. Sometimes you wear a pad so you can let out little bits of pee. Perhaps I’m getting a little TMI. But the point is, holding in your pee, even if it’s a miniscule amount, is pain that no one can bear.
So I had a UTI coming on and I knew it. I did whatever I could to try and address it with natural things so I didn’t have to go to the walk-in clinic. I drank incredibly expensive gallons of 100% unsweetened cranberry juice, I drank more water than I thought possible, and I also took incredibly expensive cranberry extract pills. That will usually steer me clear and take care of things, but not this particular time. I had symptoms for over a week. I was incredibly uncomfortable and in a lot of pain, but I knew that I didn’t have money to pay for the walk-in, to pay for the meds, and especially to take time off from work and lose those hours.
One morning, about eight days into this ordeal, I woke up to go to work and realized I was now pissing blood. UTIs that get bad enough to piss blood are rare. They’re rare because most people wouldn’t put up with the amount of pain and length of time it takes to have an untreated UTI develop into one which causes pissing blood. Pissing blood is kind of the last straw. So I was pissing blood and knew I had to get to the walk-in as soon as possible. I reluctantly called into work, explained the situation, and told them I’d get there as soon as possible, but that I needed to go to the walk-in first. This was a pretty difficult task since I also didn’t have a car at the time since mine had been stolen from that same job (wee! And also my wallet was stolen off my desk at one point). So I borrowed a car, went to the walk-in, they confirmed I had a UTI and scolded me on waiting so long to treat it, gave me a prescription, and sent me on my way. I went to the pharmacy, got my pills, and drove to work so I could at least make some money that day.
UTIs are treatable and one of the most common infections—all you really need is to take an anti-biotic for a few days and it’s over. My co-workers were shocked that I was pissing blood, they were very concerned and asked why I waited so long to take care of things. The women, especially, winced when I told them the pain I was in. They even told me to go home for the day. At this point, I had pretty much lost any ability to remain calm. I explained to them that I couldn’t afford to take time off of work, I couldn’t afford the walk-in clinic, and I couldn’t afford the prescription, and that was “why” I waited so long. I stayed the rest of the day, of course. I didn’t speak to anyone and my eyes were daggers.
The fact that I had to be pissing blood in order to justify taking off a few hours from work is bullshit. When smug well-off women at “non-profits” are shocked and ask you why you waited so long to go to the doctor when you have a UTI, you pretty much want to kill them, and anyone else, hell, everyone else. They couldn’t understand what it meant not having insurance, not having sick-leave, and not having the ability to even get to a doctor without borrowing a car. They were so used to their salary, their benefits, their vacation time, that they seemed unable to understand the problems I was having and why I didn’t do things the way they would have. I didn’t mince my words, so they started to get it a little. Then they just walked around in a kind of guilty manner the rest of the day. These are the same people who could’ve made my job full-time, offered me benefits, etc. They made the choice to change the job when I took it. I think they knew I’d take it since I was desperate and they weren’t worried about filling the position, so why not screw me over? Worst is, 35 hours in my state is considered full-time and I believe I was entitled to sick leave. Trimming my position to 35 hours/week made them feel better about taking away any benefits, but it wasn’t legal. They felt guilty when they found out how their decision to change my job had affected me, but not so guilty as to pay me more or provide me with health insurance. Fuck liberals, their useless guilt, and their loyal opposition. Furthermore, like I said, fuck work.
|
#title Yippie Manifesto
#author Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin
#SORTauthors Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin
#SORTtopics yippies, manifesto, Elections, anti-voting, USA
#date 1968
#source Retrieved on 28<sup>th</sup> August 2020 from https://faculty.atu.edu/cbrucker/Amst2003/Texts/Yippie.pdf
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-08-28T17:26:18
Come into the streets on Nov. 5, election day. Vote with your feet. Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball! Demand the bars be open. Make music and dance at every red light. A festival of life in the streets and parks throughout the world. The American election represents death, and we are alive.
Come all you rebels, youth spirits, rock minstrels, bomb throwers, bank robbers, peacock freaks, toe worshippers, poets, street folk, liberated women, professors and body snatchers: it is election day and we are everywhere.
Don’t vote in a jackass‐elephant‐cracker circus. Let’s vote for ourselves. Me for President. We are the revolution. We will strike and boycott the election and create our own reality.
Can you dig it: in every metropolis and hamlet of America boycotts, strikes, sit‐ins, pickets, lie‐ins, pray‐ins, feel‐ins, piss‐ins at the polling places.
Nobody goes to work. Nobody goes to school. Nobody votes. Everyone becomes a life actor of the street doing his thing, making the revolution by freeing himself and fucking up the system.
Ministers dragged away from polling places. Free chicken and ice cream in the streets. Thousands of kazoos, drums, tambourines, triangles, pots and pans, trumpets, street fairs, firecrackers–a symphony of life on a day of death. LSD in the drinking water.
Let’s parade in the thousands to the places where the votes are counted and let murderous racists feel our power.
Force the National Guard to protect every polling place in the country. Brush your teeth in the streets. Organize a sack race. Join the rifle club of your choice. Freak out the pigs with exhibitions of snake dancing and karate at the nearest pig pen.
Release a Black Panther in the Justice Department. Hold motorcycle races a hundred yards from the polling places. Fly an American flag out of every house so confused voters can’t find the polling places. Wear costumes. Take a burning draft card to Spiro Agnew.
Stall for hours in the polling places trying to decide between Nixon and Humphrey and Wallace. Take your clothes off. Put wall posters up all over the city. Hold block parties. Release hundreds of greased pigs in pig uniforms downtown.
Check it out in Europe and throughout the world thousands of students will march on the USA embassies demanding to vote in the election cause Uncle Pig controls the world. No domination without representation.
Let’s make 2‐300 Chicago’s on election day.
(On election day let’s pay tribute to rioters, anarchists, Commies, runaways, draft dodgers, acid freaks, snipers, beatniks, deserters, Chinese spies. Let’s exorcise all politicians, generals, publishers, businessmen, Popes, American Legion, AMA, FBI, narcos, informers.
And then on Inauguration Day Jan. 20 we will bring our revolutionary theater to Washington to inaugurate Pigasus, our pig, the only honest candidate, and turn the White House into a crash pad. They will have to put Nixon’s hand on the bible in a glass cage.
Begin now: resist oppression as you feel it. Organize and begin the word of mouth communication that is the basis of all conspiracies....
Every man a revolution! Every small group a revolutionary center! We will be together on election day. Yippie!!!
|
#title Fuck the System
#author Abbie Hoffman
#SORTtopics yippies, anarcho-communism, system, anti-state, anti-capitalism, lifestylism, NYC, New York
#date 1967
#source Retrieved on 26<sup>th</sup> September 2020 from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fuck_the_System
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-09-26T14:27:39
#notes This booklet was made sometime in the late 1960’s, likely the summer of 1967. Although the author is given as George Metesky, a notorious criminal nicknamed the “Mad Bomber”, it was in fact written by Abbie Hoffman, who included it as an appendix to his later book <em>Revolution for the Hell of It</em>.
FREE VEGETABLES — Hunt’s Point Market, Hunt’s Point Avenue and 138<sup>th</sup> Street. Have to go by car or truck between 6–9 A.M. but well worth it. You can get enough vegetables to last your commune a week. Lettuce, squash, carrots, canteloupe, grapefruit, melons, even artichokes and mushrooms. Just tell them you want to feed some people free and it’s yours, all crated and everything. Hunt’s Point is the free people’s heaven.
FREE MEAT AND POULTRY — The closest slaughterhouse area is in the far West Village, west of Hudson Street and south of 14<sup>th</sup> Street. Get a letter from Rev. Allen of St. Mark’s on the Bowerie, Second Avenue and 10<sup>th</sup> Street, saying you need some meat for a church sponsored meal.If you want to be really professional, dress as a priest and go over and ask. Bring a car or truck. A freezer unit will save a good deal of running around. Don’t give up on this one. Turning a guy on to the free idea will net you a week’s supply of top quality meat. There is some law that if the meat touches the ground or floor they have to give it away. So if you know how to trip a meat truck, by all means ...
FREE FRESH FISH — The Fish Market is located on Fulton Street and South Street under the East River Drive overpass. You have to get there between 6–9 A.M. but it is well worth it. The fishermen always have hundreds of pounds of fish that they have to throw away if they don’t sell. Mackerel, halibut, cod, catfish, and more. You can have as much as you can cart away.
FREE BREAD AND ROLLS — Rapaports on Second Avenue between 5<sup>th</sup> and 6<sup>th</sup> Streets will give you all the free bread and rolls you can carry. You have to get there by 7:00 A.M. in order to get the stuff. It’s a day old, but still very good. If you want them absolutely fresh, put them in an oven to which you have added a pan of water (to avoid drying them out), and warm them for a few minutes. Most bakeries will give you day old stuff if you give them a half way decent sob story.
A&P stores clean their vegetable bins every day at 9:00 A.M. They always throw out cartons of very good vegetables. Tell them you want to feed your rabbits. Also recommended is picking up food in a supermarket and eating it before you leave the store. This method is a lot safer than the customary shoplifting. In order to be prosecuted for shoplifting you have to leave the store with the goods. If you have eaten it there is no evidence to be used against you.
FREE COOKING LESSONS — (Plus you get to eat the meal) are sponsored by the New York Department of Markets, 137 Centre Street. Thursday mornings. Call CA 6–5653 for more information.
Check the Yellow Pages for Catering Services. You can visit them on a Saturday, Sunday afternoon or Monday morning. They always have stuff left over. Invest 10c in one of the Jewish Dailies and check out the addresses of the local synagogues and their schedule of bar mitzvahs, weddings, and testimonial dinners. Show up at the back of the place about three hours after it is scheduled to start. There is always left-over food. Tell them you’re a college student and want to bring some back for your fraternity brothers. Jews dig the college bullshit. If you want the food served to you out front you naturally have to disguise yourself to look straight. Remarks such as “I’m Marvin’s brother” or — learning the bride’s name from the paper — “Gee, Dorothy looks marvelous” are great. Lines like “Betty doesn’t look pregnant” are frowned upon.
Large East Side bars are fantastically easy touches. The best time is 5:00 P.M. Take a half empty glass of booze from an empty table and use it as a prop. Just walk around sampling the hors d’oeuvres. Once you find your favorite, stick to it. You can soon become a regular. They won’t mind your loading up on free food because they consider you one of the crowd. Little do they realize that you are a super freeloader. All Longchamps are good. Max’s Kansas City at Park Avenue South and16th Street doesn’t even mind it if you freeload when you are hungry and an advantage here is thatyou can wear any kind of clothes. Max features fried chicken wings, Swedish meatballs and ravioli.
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS is located at 26 Second Avenue. Every morning at 7:00 AM a delicious cereal breakfast is servedfree along with chanting and dancing. Also 12 Noon more food and chanting and on Monday,Wednesday and Friday at 7:00 P.M. again food and chanting. Then it’s all day Sunday in Central Park Sheepmeadow (generally) for still more chanting (sans food). Hari Krishna is the freest high going if you can get into it and dig cereal and, of course, more chanting.
FREE TEA AND COOKIES — In a very nice setting at the Tea Center, 16 East 56<sup>th</sup> Street. 10-11A.M. and 2–4 P.M. Monday to Friday.
THE CATHOLIC WORKER — 181 Chrystie Street, will feed you any time but you have to prayas you do in the various Salvation Army stations. Heavy wino scenes. The heaviest wino scene isthe Men’s Temporary Shelter on 8 East 3<sup>rd</sup> Street. You can get free room and/or meals here if you are over 21 but it’s worse than jail or Bellevue. It is a definite last resort only.
The freest meal of all is Tuesdays at 5:00 P.M. inside or in front of St. Mark’s Church on the Bowerie, Second Avenue at 10<sup>th</sup> Street. A few yippie-diggers serve up a meal ranging from Lion Meat to Guppy Chowder to Canteloupe Salad. They are currently looking for a free truck to help them collect the food and free souls dedicated to extending the free food concept. The Motherfuckers also dish out free food on St. Mark’s Place from time to time.
If you are really looking for class, pick up a copy of the New York Times and check the box in the back pages designating ocean cruises. On every departure there is a bon voyage party. Just walk on a few hours before sailing time and start swinging. Champagne, caviar, lobster salad, all as free as the open sea. If you get stoned enough and miss getting off you can also wiggle a free boat ride although you get sent back as soon as you hit the other side — but it’s a free ocean cruise, even if it’s in the brig.
You can get free food in varying quantities by going to the factories. Many also offer a free tour. However, the plants are generally located outside of Manhattan. If you can get a car, try a trip to Long Island City. There you will find the Gordon Baking Company at 42 25 21<sup>st</sup> Street, Pepsi-Cola at 4602 Fifth Avenue, Borden Company at 35 10 Steinway Street and Dannon Yogurt at 22–11 38<sup>th</sup> Avenue. All four places give out free samples and if you write or call in advance and say it is for a block party or church affair, they will give you a few cases.
FREE BOOZE — Jacob Ruppert Brewery at 1639 Third Avenue near 91<sup>st</sup> Street will give you a tour at 10:30 AM. and 2:30 P.M. complete with free booze in their tap room.
The Sun is free. Hair is freee. Naked bodies are free. Smiles are free. Rain is free. Unfortunately there is no free air in New York. Con Edison’s phone number is 679–6700.
WELFARE — If you live in lower Manhattan the welfare center for you is located on 11 West 13<sup>th</sup> Street, 989–1210. There is, of course, red tape involved and they don’t dig longhairs. Be prepared to tell a good story as to why you cannot work, however your looks (which they cannot make you change) might be good enough reason. This is one place where sloppy clothes pay off. You have to be over 18 to get help. A caseworker will be assigned to you. Some will actually dig the whole scene and won’t give you a hard time, others can be a real bitch. Getting on welfare can get you free rent, phone, utilities, and about $20.00 a week to live on. There are also various food stamp and medical programs you become eligible for If you can stomach hassle, welfare is a must. The main office number is Dl 4–8700 if you do not live in lower Manhattan.
FREE CLOTHES — Try ESSO, 341 East 10<sup>th</sup> Street or Tompkins Square Community Center on Avenue B and 9<sup>th</sup> Street. Also the streets are excellent places to pick up good clothes (see section on free furniture for best times to go hunting)
FREE LAWYERS — Legal Aid Society, 100 Centre Street. BE 30250 (criminal matters) and the New York University Law Center Office, 249 Sullivan Street. GR 3–1896 (civil matters). Also for specialized cases and information you can call the National Lawyers Guild. 5 Beekman Street 227–1078 or the New York Civil Liberties Union, 156 Fifth Avenue, WA 96076. For the best help on the Lower East Side use Mobilization for Youth Legal Services, 320 East 3<sup>rd</sup> Street between Avenues C and D. OR 70400, ask for legal services. Open Tuesday to Friday. 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. anduntil 8 P.M on Mondays some of the best lawyers in the city available here.
FREE FLOWERS At about 930 A.M. each day you can bum free flowers in the Flower District on Sixth Avenue between 22<sup>nd</sup> and 23<sup>rd</sup> Streets Once in a while you can find a potted tree that’s been thrown out because it’s slightly damaged.
FREE FURNITURE — By far the best place to get free furniture is on the street. Once a week in every district the sanitation department makes bulk pick-ups. The night before residents put out all kinds of stuff on the street. For the best selection try the West Village on Monday nights and the east Seventies on Tuesday nights. On Wednesday night there are fantastic pick-ups on 35<sup>th</sup> Street in back of Macy’s. Move quickly though, the guards get pissed off easily; the truckers couldn’t careless. This street method can furnish your whole pad. Beds, desks, bureaus, lamps, bookcases,chairs, and tables. It’s all a matter of transportation. If you don’t have access to a car or truck it is almost worth it to rent a station wagon on a weekday and make pick-ups. Alexander’s Rent-a-Car is about the cheapest for in-city use. $5.95 and 10c a mile for a regular car. A station wagon is slightly more. Call AG 9–2200 for the branch near you.
Also consider demolition and construction sites as a good source for building materials to construct furniture. The large wooden cable spools make great tables. Cinder-blocks, bricks and boards for bookcases. Doors for tables. Nail kegs for stools and chairs.
FREE BUS RIDES — Get on with a large denomination bill just as the bus is leaving.
FREE SUBWAY RIDES — Get a dark green card and flash it quickly as you go through the exit gate. Always test the swing bars in the turnstile before you put in the token. Someone during the day was sure to drop an extra token in and a free turn is just waiting for the first one to take advantage of it. By far the most creative method is the use of German fennigs. Danish ore or Mozambique 10 centavos pieces. These fit most turnstiles except the newest (carry a real token touse in case the freebee doesn’t work). These foreign coins come four or five to a penny. Large amounts must be purchased outside New York City. Most dealers will not sell you large amounts since the Transit Authority has been pressuring them. Try telling dealers you want them to make jewelry. Another interesting coin is the 5 aurar from Iceland. This is the same size as a quarter and will work in most vending machines. They sell for three or four to the penny. There are other coins that also work. Buy a bag of assorted foreign coins from a coin dealer and do a little measuring.You are sure to find tome that fit the bill. Speaking of fitting the bill, we have heard that dollar bills can be duplicated on any Xerox machine (fronts done separately from backs and pasted together)and used in vending machines that give change for a dollar. This method has not been field tested.
The best form of free transportation is hitch-hiking. This is so novel in New York that it often works. Crosstown on 8<sup>th</sup> Street is good.
<br>
FREE PHONE CALLS — A number 14 brass washer with a small piece of scotch tape over one side of the hole will work in old style phones (also parking meters, laundromat dryers, soda and other vending machines). The credit card bit works on long distance calls. Code letter for 1968 is J, then a phone number and then a three digit district number. A district number, as well as the phone number, can be made up by using any three numbers from about 051 to 735. Example: J-573-21OO-421 or J-637-3400-302. The phone number should end in 00 since most large corporations have numbers that end that way. The people that you call often get weird phone calls from the company but not much else. There are also legitimate credit card numbers available. One recent number belonged to Steve McQueen. A phone bill of $50,000 was racked up in one month. McQueen, of course, was not held responsible
FREE MONEY — Panhandling nets some people up to Twenty dollars a day. The best places are Third Avenue in the fifties and the Theater District off Times Square. Both best in the evening on weekends. Uptown guys with dates are the best touch especially if they are just leaving some guilt movie like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” The professional panhandlers don’t waste their time on the Lower East Side except on weekends when the tourists come out.
Devise a street theater act or troupe. It can be anything from a funny dance to a five piece band or a poetry reading. People give a lot more dough and the whole atmosphere sings a little. SMILE!
Panhandle at the rectories and nunneries on the side of every Catholic Church. Contrary to rumor the brother and sister freeloaders in black live very well and will always share something with a fellow panhandler. Also see previous sections on the use of foreign coins.
FREE BOOKS AND RECORDS — If you have an address you can get all kinds of books and records from clubs on introductory offers. Since the cards you mail back are not signed there is no legal way you can be held responsible although you get all sorts of threatening mail, which, by the way, also comes free.
You can always use the Public Libraries. The main branch is on Fifth Avenue and 42<sup>nd</sup> Street.There are 168 branches all over the city. Call OX 5–4200 for information and a schedule of free events.
POEMS are free. Are you a poem or are you a prose???
FREE GAS — If you have a car and need some gas late at night you can get a gallon and then some by emptying the hoses from the pumps into your tank. There is always a fair amount of surplus gas left when the pumps are shut off.
FREE LAND — Write to “Green Revolution” c/o School of Living. Freeland, Maryland, for their free newspaper with news about rural land available in the United States and the progress of various rural communities. The best available free land is in Canada. You can get a free listing by writing to the Department of Land and Forests, Parliament Building, Quebec City, Canada. Also write to the Geographical Branch, Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, Parliament Buildings, Quebec City. Canada. Lynn Burrows, c/o Communications Group, 2630 Point Grey Rd. Vancouver 8, British Columbia, Canada, will give you the best information on setting up a community in Canada.
If you really want to live for free, get some friends together and seize a building at Columbia University. 116<sup>th</sup> Street and Broadway. The cops come free, as do blue ribbon committees with funny long names
<br>
FREE BUFFALO — In order to keep the herds at a controllable level the government will give you a real, live buffalo if you can guarantee shipping expenses and adequate grazing area. Write to the Office of Information, Department of the Interior, Washington, DC.
MEDICAID — Medicaid Center. 330 West Street. 594–3050. Medicaid is a very good deal if you can qualify and can stand a little red tape. According to the new law you have to be under 21 or over 65 years of age and have a low income ($2900 or less if you are single) to qualify. It takes about a month to process your application, but if you get a card you are entitled to free hospital and dental services, private physicians, drugs and many other medical advantages
AMBULANCE SERVICE — Call 440–1234. You get 1 cop free of charge with this service. There is no way to get an ambulance without a cop in New York.
EMERGENCY DOCTOR — TR 9–1000.
EMERGENCY DENTIST — YU 8–6110.
NEARBY HOSPITALS — Gouverneur Clinic, 9 Gouverneur Slip, 227 3000 St. Vincent Hospital, 7<sup>th</sup> Ave. and West 11<sup>th</sup> St. 620–1234. Bellevue Hospital, First Avenue and 27<sup>th</sup> Street, 679–5487. On the above medical services you have to pay but you can file the bill or send it to the National Digger Client Center in Washington, D.C. They will pay it for you.
THE WASHINGTON HEIGHTS HEALTH CENTER — 168<sup>th</sup> Street and Broadway, provides free chest X rays as well as other services. You can get a free smallpox vaccination here at 10: A.M.weekdays if you’re traveling abroad. Call WA 7–6300 for information.See special section on clap in this booklet for information on VD treatment.
FREE DRUGS — In the area along Central Park West in the 70’s and 80’s are located many doctor’s offices. Daily they throw out piles of drug samples. If you know what you’re looking for,search this area.
FREE SECURITY — For this trick you need some money to begin with. Deposit it in a bank and return in a few weeks telling them you lost your bank book. They give you a card to fill out and sign and in a week you will receive another. Now, withdraw your money, leaving you with your original money and a bank book showing a balance. You can use this as identification, to prevent vagrancy busts traveling, as collateral for bail, or for opening a charge account at a store.
<br>
FREE BIRTH CONTROL INFORMATION AND DEVICES — Clergy Consultation Abortion, call 477–0034 and you will get a recorded announcement giving you the names of clergymen who you can call and get birth control information, including abortion contacts. Parents Aid Society, 130 Main Street, Hempstead, Long Island. (516) 538 2626, provides by far the most complete birth control information Pills are provided as well as diaphrams. Referrals are made to doctors willing to perform abortions despite their illegality because of medieval, menopausal politicians. Call them for an appointment before you go out there. They are about to establish an office on the lower East Side.
FREE INFORMATION — Yippie: Youth International Party, 32 Union Square East. 982–5090
ESSO — East Side Service Organization, 141 East 10<sup>th</sup> St., 533–5930
DIAL-A DEMONSTRATION — 924–6315 to find out about antiwar rallies and demonstrations
DIAL A SATELLITE — TR 3–0404 to find out schedules of satellites.
NERVOUS can be dialed for the time
WEATHER REPORT — WE 6–1212
DIAL A PRAYER — CI 6–4200. God is a long distance call
If you want someone to talk you out of jumping out of a window call IN 2–3322.
If you have nothing to do for a few minutes, call the Pentagon (collect) and ask for Colonel John Masters of the Inter-Communication Center. Ask him how the war’s going. (202) LI 5–6700.
If you want the latest news information you can call the wire services: AP is PL 7–1312 or UFI is MU 2–0400.
LIBERATION NEWS SERVICE — At 3064 Broadway and 121<sup>st</sup> Street will give you up to the minute coverage of movement news both national and local, as well as a more accurate picture of what’s going on. Call 8651360. By the way, what is going on?
THE EAST VILLAGE OTHER — Office at 105 Second Avenue and 6<sup>th</sup> Street, 228–8640 might be able to answer some of your questions.
THE DAILY NEWS INFORMATION BUREAU — 220 East 42<sup>nd</sup> Street, MU 21234, will try to answer any question you put to them, unless it’s “Why do we need the Daily News?”
THE NEW YORK TIMES RESEARCH BUREAU — 229 West 43<sup>rd</sup> Street, LA 4–1000 will research news questions that pertain to the past three months if you believe there was a past three months.
FREE lessons in a variety of skills such as plumbing, electricity, jewelry malting, construction and woodworking are provided by the Mechanics Institute, 20 West 44<sup>th</sup> Street. Call or write them well in advance for a schedule. You must sign up early for lessons as they try to maintain small courses.MU 7–4279.
Ron Rosen at 68 Thompson Street will give you free Karate lessons if he considers you in the movement.
FREE YOGA LESSONS — Yoga Institute, 50 East 81<sup>st</sup> Street, LE 5–0126. Call in advance for lecture schedule. You might be asked to do some voluntary kitchen yoga after the lessons.
FREE RENT — There are many abandoned buildings that are still habitable especially if you know someone with electrical skills who, with a minimum of effort can supply you with free electricity. You can be busted for criminal trespassing but many people are getting away with it. If you are already in an apartment, eviction proceedings in New York take about six months even if you don’t pay rent.
You can sleep in the parks during the day. Day or night you can sleep on the roofs which are fairly safe and comfortable if you can find a shady spot. The tar gets very hot when the sun comes out.
Make friends with someone in the building, then if the cops or landlord or other residents give you a problem you can say you are staying with someone in the building. Stay out of hallways, don’t sleep on streets or stoops, or in the parks at night.
FREE BEACHES — Coney Island Beach (ES 2 1670) and Manhattan Beach on Oriental Boulevard (DE 2 6794) are two in Brooklyn that are free. Call for directions on how to get there.
The Bronx offers Orchard Beach, call TT 5–1828 for information.
FREE COLLEGE — If you want to go to college free send away for the schedule of courses at the college of your choice. Pick your courses and walk into the designated classrooms. In some smaller classes this might be a problem but in large classes, of which there are hundreds in New York, there is no problem. If you need books for the course, write to the publisher telling him you are a lecturer at some school and are considering using the book in your course.
FREE THEATER — The Dramatic Workshop — Studio # 808, Carnegie Hall Building, 881 Seventh Avenue at 56<sup>th</sup> Street. Free on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8:15 P.M., JU 6 4800 for information.
New York Shakespeare Festival — Delacourte Theatre, Central Park. Every night except Monday.Performance begins at 8:00 P.M. but get there before 6:00 P.M. to be assured tickets.
This is our favorite way to sneak into a regular movie theater: Arrive just as the show is emptying out and join the line leaving the theater. Exclaiming, “Oh, my gosh!” slap your forehead, turnaround and return, telling the usher you left your hat, pocketbook, etc., inside. Once you’re in the theatre just take a seat and wait for the next show. Another method is to call the theater early and pose as a film critic for one of the mini magazines and ask to be placed on the “O. K. list.” Usually this works.
Pageant Players, The 6<sup>th</sup> Street Theater Group and other street theater groups perform on various street corners, particularly on the Lower East Side. Free Theater is also provided at the United Nations building and the Stock Exchange on Wall Street, if you enjoy seventeenth century comedy.
If you look relatively straight you can sneak into conventions and get all kinds of free drinks, snacks and samples. Call the New York Convention Bureau, 90 East 42<sup>nd</sup> Street, MU 7–1300 for information. You can also get free tickets to theater events here at 9:00 A.M.
FREE MOVIES — New York Historical Society — Central Park West and 77<sup>th</sup> Street. Hollywood movies every Saturday afternoon. Call TR 3–3400 for schedule.
Metropolitan Museum of Art — Fifth Avenue and 82<sup>nd</sup> Street. Art films Mondays at 3:00 P.M.Call TR 9–5500 for schedule.
New York University — Has a very good free movie program as well as poetry, lectures, and theater presentations. Call the Program Director’s Office, 598–2026 for schedule.
Millennium Film Workshop 2 East 2<sup>nd</sup> Street. Fridays be ginning at 7:15 P.M. open screening of films by underground directors.
<br>
FREE MUSIC — Greenwich House of Music School – 46 Barrow Street (of Seventh Avenue),West Village. Fridays at 8:30 P.M. Classical.
Donnell Library Center — 20 West 53<sup>rd</sup> Street. Schedule found in “Calendar of Events” at any library. Classical.
Frick Museum — 1 East 70<sup>th</sup> Street. BU 8–0700. Concerts every Sunday afternoon. The best of the classical offerings. You must do some red tape work though. Send self — addressed stamped envelope that will arrive on Monday before the date you wish to go. One letter — one ticket.
The Group Image — Performs every Wednesday night at the Hotel Diplomat on West 43<sup>rd</sup> Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, and you can get in free if you say you have no money (sometimes). If you promise to take your clothes off it’s definitely free. If you ball on the dance floor, you get a season’s pass.
Filmore East — 105 Second Avenue. If you live in the Lower East Side you can generally get into the Filmore East after the show has started, if there are seats. Just go up to the door with a half way decent story. You’re with the diggers or Eve or something will generally work.
There are various free festivals put on in Central Park. You can call the City Parks Departments for a schedule at 734–1000.
Washington Square in the West Village is always jumping on Sunday. Check out the Banana Singers either here or on St. Mark’s Place. Cop a kazoo in Woolworths or a tambourine and join the band.
FREE MUSEUMS — Metropolitan Museum — Fifth Avenue and 82<sup>nd</sup> Street.
This works very well at pre-released screenings. You can phone the various screening studios andfind out what they are screening.
Frick Museum — 1 East 70<sup>th</sup> Street. Great when you’re stoned. Closed Mondays.
The Cloisters — Weekdays 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., Sundays 1 P.M. to 6 P.M. Take INO Eighth Avenue express (A train) to 190<sup>th</sup> Street station and walk a few blocks. The #4 Fifth Avenue bus also goes all the way up and it’s a pleasant ride. One of the best trip places in town in medieval setting.
Brooklyn Museum — Eastern Parkway and Washington Avenue. Egyptian stuff best in the world outside of Egypt. Take IRT (Broadway Line) express train to Brooklyn Museum station.
Museum of the American Indian — Broadway at 155<sup>th</sup> Street. The largest Indian museum in the world. Open Tuesday to Sunday 1 to 5 P.M. Take IRT (Broadway Line) local to 157<sup>th</sup> Street station.
Museum of Natural History — Central Park West and 79<sup>th</sup> Street. Great dinosaurs and other stuff. Weekdays 10–5 P.M., Sunday 1–5 P.M.
The Hispanic Society of America — Broadway between 15<sup>th</sup> and 156<sup>th</sup> Streets. The best Spanishart collection in the city.
Asia House Gallery — 112 East 64<sup>th</sup> Street. Art objects from the Far East.
Marine Museum of the Seaman’s Church — 25 South Street. All kinds of model ships and sea stuff.
Chase Manhattan Bank Museum of Money — 1256 Sixth Avenue. Free people consider property as theft and regard all banks, especially Chase Manhattan ones, as museums.
THE STATEN ISLAND FERRY — Not free, but a nickel each way for a five mile ocean voyage around the southern tip of Manhattan is worth it. Take IRT (Broadway Line) to South Ferry, local only. Ferry leaves every half hour day and night.
FREE CRICKET MATCHES — At both Van Cortland Park in the Bronx and Walker Park on Staten Island every Sunday afternoon. Get schedule from British Travel Association, 43 West 61<sup>st</sup> Street. At Walker Park free tea and crumpets
FREE POETRY, LECTURES, ETC. — The best advice here is to see the back page of the Village Voice for free events that week. There are a variety of talks given at the Free School, 20 East 14<sup>th</sup> Street. Call 675–7424 for information. For free brochures about free cultural events in New York go to Cultural Information Center, 148 West 57<sup>th</sup> Street.
FREE SWIMMING POOLS 1. — East 23<sup>rd</sup> Street and Asser Levy Place (near Avenue A). Indoor and outdoor pools, plusgymnasium. 2. — 83 Carmine Street (at Seventh Avenue, West Village). Indoor and outdoor pools plusgymnasium.Bring your own swim suit and towel. 35c admission at certain times after 1:00 P.M. if you are over 14 years of age.
BRONX ZOO — Bronx and Pelham Parkways. Largest zoo in the U. S. Great collection of animals in natural settings. IRT Broadway (Dyre Avenue line) to 180<sup>th</sup> Street station and walk north. Free every day but Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday when cost is 25c.
BOTANICAL GARDENS — 1000 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn Another peaceful trip center.This and the Cloisters best in New York if you want to get away from it all quickly. Open 8:30A.M. ‘til dusk. Take IRT (Broadway line) to the Brooklyn Museum station.
FREE PARK EVENTS — All kinds of events in the Parks are free Call 755–4100 for a recorded announcement of week’s events.
You can get free posters, literature and books from the various missions to the United Nations located on the East Side near the U.N. building. The Cuban Mission, 6 I 67<sup>th</sup> Street, will give you free copies of Granma, the Cuban newspaper, Man and Socialism in Cuba, a book by Che.
You can get fingerprinted free and have your phone tapped at no expense by going to the F.B.I, at 201 East 69<sup>th</sup> Street Call LE 5–7700, ask for J. Hoover. Tell him you’re Walter Jenkins.
FREE PETS — ASPCA. 441 East 92<sup>nd</sup> Street and York Avenue. TR 6–7700. Dogs, cats, some birds and other pets. Tell them you’re from out of town if you want a dog and you will not have to pay the $5.00 license fee. Have them inspect and inoculate the pet which they do free of charge.
DRAFT RESISTANCE ADVICE — Many of you have problems that require draft counseling or maybe you have gone AWOL and need advice. There are numerous groups that will help out. Go down to 5 Beekman Street (near City Hall) and find your way to the 10<sup>th</sup> floor There are many anti-draft groups located there who will give you the right kind of information. Call the Resistance,732–4272 for details.
FREE CLOTHING REPAIRS — All Wallach stores feature a service that includes sewing on buttons, free shoe horns, and shoe laces, mending pants pockets and linings, punches extra holes in belts, and a number of other free services.
FREE CARS — If you want to travel a long distance the auto transportation agencies are a great deal. Look in the Yellow Pages under Automobile Transportation and Trucking. You must be over 21 and have a valid driver’s license. Call them up and tell them when and where you want to go and they will tell you if they have a car. They give you the car and a tank of gas free. You pay the rest.
Go to pick up the car alone, then get some people who also want to go to help with expenses. You can make San Francisco for about $80.00 in tolls and gas in four days without pushing. Usually you have the car for longer and can make a whole thing out of it. You must look “straight” when you go to the agency.
If you would like to meet a real ghost, write Hans Holm c/o New York Committee for Investigation of Paranormal Research. 140 Riverside Drive. New York. N. Y. He’ll put you in touch for free.
<br>
RADIO FREE NEW YORK — WBA-FM, 99–5 on your dial, 30 East 39<sup>th</sup> Street, OX 7 2288,after midnight radio station provides air time for free souls who need help or offer it.
NEW YORK SCENES, a magazine has a monthly column called “The Free Loader” with good advice on getting stuff free.
MIMEOGRAPH MACHINE — Both the ESSO office and Yippie have a free mimeo machine that you can use to print poetry, criticism, your life story or anything else.
FREE BAKERY — Every Wednesday some people get together and cook bread at St. Mark’s Church on the Bowerie, Second Avenue and 10<sup>th</sup> Street.
Write to major corporations and tell them you bought one of their products and it doesn’t work, or it’s shit, or it tastes bad. Most firms will send you up to a case of merchandise just to get you off their back. Try Tootsie Roll, Campbell’s Soup and cigarette companies for starters. Also General Mills for cereals. Write to their public relations office. One day at the library and a few stamps will get you tons of stuff.
CLAP AND THE TASMANIAN PIG FEVER — Clap (syphilis and gonorrhea) and Tasmanian Pig Fever (TPF) are two diseases you can easily pick up for free on the Lower East Side. One, the Clap, you catch, and the other, TPF, catches you. The Clap comes from balling. There are some that claim they get it from sitting on a toilet seat but that is possible only if you dig that position.
Generally, using a prophylactic will prevent the spreading of Clap. If you don’t use them and you ball a lot your chances of picking it up are pretty good.
Syphilis usually begins with a sore which may look like a cold sore or any other kind of sore or pimple around your sex organ. Soon the sore disappears, even without treatment, and is often followed by an inflammation of the mouth and throat, and rashes on the body. These symptoms also disappear without any treatment. But even if these outer signs disappear the disease remains if untreated. If it remains untreated years later syphilis can cause serious trouble such as heart disease, blindness, insanity, and paralysis.
Gonorrhea is more common than syphilis. The first sign of gonorrhea is a discharge from your sex organ. It may not be noticed in women. In men there is usually itching and burning of the affected areas. If untreated it can result in permanent damage to sex glands. Both syphilis and gonorrhea can be cured in a short time with proper medical attention. The doctor’s instructions must be followed to the letter if you want to shake the disease. Sometimes someone will get a shot of penicillin, go home and wait three days, and seeing no change in his condition he will assume the treatment is not working and not go back for more. Some strains are resistant to penicillin but will respond to other medication. Keep going to the clinic until the doctor says No. Free Treatment regardless of age is available for Lower East Side residents at the Chelsea Hygiene Center, 303 Ninth Avenue at 27<sup>th</sup> Street. Call LA 4–2537 for more free information. You can also get tests for a variety of other illnesses here, including hepatitis, which is common and dangerous. Free cancer check-ups also given. Day and night phone information at 269–5300.
Tasmanian Pig Fever is a disease common to the Lower a variety of reasons. Let’s face it, the Lower East Side is a ghetto and getting busted by a cop is common in any American ghetto. The following is some general basic advice and some help on the chief causes for busts — dope and runaways, although runaways are not technically busted.
The TPF is the riot control squad in New York and is called out to handle many street demonstrations. The local police come out of the Ninth Precinct located on 5<sup>th</sup> Street between First and Second Avenues. The local cops are under the direction of Lieutenant Joe Fink. There are numerous arrests down here and a working knowledge of what to do about the cops can be very helpful. Never let cops in your house if they do not have a search warrant. Ask them to slip it under the door. They only have a right to enter without a search warrant if they have strong reason to believe a crime is being committed on the premises. Most cases without a search warrant are thrown out of court. If you are arrested, give your name and address. If you do not you will have bail trouble. You can give a friend’s address. Do not discuss any details of your case with the police. Demand to see your lawyer (See Free Legal Aid Section). You are allowed a phone call and generally they will give you three. Call your closest friend and tell him you are arrested. He should be instructed to meet you in court at 100 Center Street. On the fourth floor your friend can find out what court room you will appear in for arraignment. There is a Legal Aid lawyer in the courtroom who will handle the arraignment. If the charges are misdemeanors he should be used, if the charges are felonies you might be advised to get help from a private lawyer, Mobilization for Youth or some other agency. A good lawyer can get a bail reduction that can save you a good deal of time if you are hard up for bread. Bail depends on a variety of factors ranging from previous arrests to the judge’s hangover. It can be put up in collateral, i.e. a bank book, or often there is a cash alternative offered which amounts to about 10 to 20% of the bail. Try and have your friend show up with at least a hundred dollars in cash. For very high bail there are the bail bondsmen in the area of the courthouse who will cover the bail for a fee not to exceed 5%. You will need what they term a solid citizen to sign the bail papers and perhaps put up some collateral.
<br>
DOPE BUSTS — Possession of less than a quarter of an ounce of pot is considered a misdemeanor. The penalty can be up to one year. In actuality, a conviction for possession is very rare. The New York courts are quite lenient on this charge. More than a quarter of an ounce is considered possession with intent to sell. This along with sale (to an agent) are considered felonies and punishable by terms of up to 15 years in prison. A few precautions are in order. If you are carrying when busted eat it as soon as it is cool. Never sell to someone you do not know. Never make a sale with two other people present. Agents always buy with another person or agent present as a witness. Never sell to anyone facing an indictment for they are subject to pressure. Undercover agents have some pretty interesting disguises. Black undercover cops are very hard to spot. Often undercover cops wear beards and mustaches but few, contrary to rumor, have very long hair. Longhair that takes a year to grow is not possible since agents are switched around and anyway long hair doesn’t grow in Queens. Undercover cops always carry a gun so look out for that noticeable bulge or a jacket being worn on a hot day.
There is a new bill already passed, waiting for the governor’s signature, that would upgrade the dope penalties, for example, sale of pot to a minor could get you up to life imprisonment. If this bill is passed and you are caught selling to a minor, pull out a gun and shoot the kid. You can only get 10–20 years for first degree manslaughter and can be paroled in 6 years. Acid and other dope, although against the law rarely result in busts and even less in convictions (heroin is another thing,of course). There are too many technicalities involved in analyzing the substance, many such as STP are not covered by the law. For this reason, they generally go after the grass unless there is a major production or sale involved.
<br>
RUNAWAYS — Laws governing runaways are equally ridiculous. Persons who look underage (under 16 for males, under 18 for females) can be stopped by a cop anytime and asked to produce identification. If you are underage or do not have identification to prove otherwise you can be brought to the police station. There your parents or guardian is called. If you have permission to be here they let you go, if not, your parents can pick you up there. If they don’t want you, you can be sent to the Youth Detention House which is a very bad trip indeed. If you are a runaway, get fake identification and quick. People who put up runaways are subject to arrest for contributing to the delinquency for a minor. If you want to go name and need a contact or if you want to stay a few days in a good place call Judson Memorial Church in Washington Square, GR 7–0351. This is the first year this program has been in effect but the people running it are cool. If you don’t want them to call your parents or the cops they assure us they will not. They can house and feed about twenty-five young people.
DEMONSTRATIONS — A word should be said about demonstrations. Demonstrations with large numbers of arrests rarely result in convictions. Lawyers inform us of the over 3,000 arrests in recent anti-war, Yippie demonstrations, etc. there nave been no convictions. This does not mean things couldn’t change drastically but these are the facts up to now.Remember when arrested give only your name and address. Demand a search warrant if they want to come into your pad. The only know cure for Tasmanian Pig Fever is revolution. Paranoids unite!
<br>
DOPE — As you probably know, most dope is illegal, therefore some risks are always involved in buying and selling. In the legal section we have discussed the selling problems. Now let us consider the problems involved in buying. Arrests are not a problem unless you are inside and happen to get caught in a raid on a major dealer. What is a major hazard is getting burned. The usual trick is to take your dough and just vanish, leaving you standing on the street. Another method is substituting oregano or parsely for grass, chewing tobacco as hash, and aspirin and barbiturates as acid. A general rule is no bread up front. If you’re getting an ounce or more of grass you are entitled to sample it. Hash can also be sampled. If you’re considering buying a large amount of acid, buy one tab for a sample and try it first. Another rule is to buy from a town dealer or a close friend.
Have you considered growing your own? Being a weed, grass is very easy to grow if it gets enough water and sun. Get your seeds together, travel over to Jersey or Staten Island, find a field and plant your seeds. Draw a furrow in the ground about half an inch deep and plant the seeds about two inches apart. Cover the seeds with soil and water the area. Returning every two weeks to tend your crop will be sufficient. No matter how high the shoots get they are smokeable if dried out but it is best to let them grow to maturity (when the flowers bloom). This takes three to four months depending on soil conditions and sunlight. With a little effort, you can grow kilos galore. Growing grass indoors is a big hassle but it can be done if you construct a planting box with a light bulb or artificial growing lamp. Some hardy souls have planted grass in Carl Schurz Park next to Gracie Mansion, 89<sup>th</sup> Street and East River Drive.
There are also legal highs, the most famous of which is bananas. Scrap the insides of the banana peel and roast in a 200c oven for a half hour or until dark brown. Crumble the scrapings and roll in a joint or pack in a pipe. This will produce a mild pot high. Mornings glory seeds will produce a high similar to LSD if prepared properly. Use only the white, blue, or blue-white varieties that are not coated with chemicals. If they have been coated a good washing in alcohol will remove it. You need about 400 seeds to get you up there. Generally there are about 40 to 60 in a packet. We prefer the following method: grind the seeds in a pepper mill and stuff them into gelatin capsules that you can get in any drug store. Another method is to boil the seeds, strain the mixture and drink the liquid. It tastes bitter but it’s easier than the grinding method, it’s an 8–10 hour trip. Whipped cream containers are 80% nitrous oxide or laughing gas. Hold the container upright and release the nozzle slowly as you inhale. It’s really a gas; even the whipped cream gets you high.
Some people claim you can get high on cabbage centers. Others claim cigarette tobacco mixed with powdered aspirins will do the trick. A hint on grass: boil the twigs and seeds and make a very groovy tea — sort of a tea-tea.
<br>
BAD TRIPS — The best method for bringing a person down from a bad trip is calm, understanding talk by a sympathetic soul. Generally this works. Orange juice and sugar works well.
A cup of sugar to a quart of orange juice. Drink as much as you can. Niacinimide, a vitamin B derivative also works. You need 1000 milligrams for every 100 micrograms of LSD. Say the tablets you have are 100 mg. That means ten tablets for each 100 micro-grams of LSD. If you do not know the LSD dosage, assume 500 micrograms and use 50 tablets of Niacinimide. Too much Niacinimide cannot hurt you. Landing time for both the orange juice-sugar method and Niacinimide is between 30–40 minutes. Niacinimide has better results. It is available without a prescription and is fairly cheap. You can get a thousand tablets for about three dollars. As a last resort you should call in a physician who can administer a tranquilizer, generally thorazine. Bellevue should be considered a bad trip. Be careful of drugs you know nothing about. STP is only for people who have been into acid for a time. Heroin is addictive and can be a mighty expensive habit. Amphetamine, usually called A or meth or speed, is also quite dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing. Both heroin and meth are self-destructive. They ruin your appetite, often causing malnutrition. Since they are needle drugs there is always the chance of missing a vein, which leads to a stiff arm for a few days or of contracting serum hepatitis from unsterilized needles. You can kick the habit by just refusing to take it for a few weeks or switching to a groovier drug. Don’t get hooked on any drug,whether it be heroin, school, coca-cola, benzedrine, suburbia, meth, or politics. They can all rot your brain ... Be advised.
<br>
COMMUNES — Communes can be a cheap and enjoyable way to live. They are a good tribal way to live in the city because they are tribes each has a personality of its own. This personality depends on the people in the commune and how well they get along together. For this reason the most important part of setting up a commune is choosing people who are compatible. It is vital that no member of the commune has any strong objection to any other member. More communes have been destroyed by incompatibility than any other single reason. People of similar interests (speed freaks with speed freaks, painters with painters, and revolutionaries with revolutionaries) should get together. Preferably the members of the commune should know each other before they begin setting up quarters.
Once there is a nucleus of 4 to 7 people that are compatible establishing a commune is not difficult.
The first thing to do is rent an apartment. The initial cost will probably be two months rent. Don’t pay more. The landlord is not legally allowed to ask for more than one month’s rent as security.
Don’t go to a rental agency unless you are willing to pay an extra month’s rent as a fee. Two ways you can find an apartment if you don’t know of one are: walk up and down every street and look for rent signs; the other is to look inside the front doors of some buildings in the area for a sign giving the landlord’s name. When you find buildings owned by one company there is a pretty good chance that the company owns other buildings in the area. Call that company and ask if they have any vacant apartments.
When you get an apartment, furnishing will be the next step. You can double your sleeping space by building loft or bunk beds. Nail two by fours securely from ceiling to floor about three feet from the walls where beds are wanted. Then build a frame out of two by fours at the height you want the beds. Make sure it is strong enough to hold the weight of people sleeping on it. Then nail a sheet of 3/4 inch plywood on the frame. Mattresses and other furniture can be gotten for free. See the section on free furniture. You can cop silverware in self-service restaurants.
How you govern your commune depends on where the member’s heads are. One method which works well is the Indian tribal council in which from time to time all members of the tribe (commune) get together and discuss problems that come up and solutions are worked out. At the meeting it should be decided which members are responsible for things that have to be done (i.e. cooking, cleaning, raising the rent), this assures that they will be done. It is a good idea to have a meeting when you first form to make decisions on some of the important things that are sure to arise. The first is whether you want a crash pad or a commune. The difference is that a commune is a closed unit. Other people may join, but unlike a crash pad, they may not join for one day. Other things to consider are drugs (no drugs in the pad, communal stash, etc.), property (personal, communal), age limits and so on. The important thing to remember is that with experience and basic trust for each other, this form of tribal living is by far the best way to live in the city jungle.
Ask around for an experienced commune and get one of their members to come to your first tribal meeting. The more stable communes that are established the sooner we can begin to realize a freer more humanistic society.
Revolution is Free. Venceremos!
<quote>
Take what you want
Take what you need
There is plenty to go around
Everything is free.
-- George Metesky
</quote>
Free New York
YIPPIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
<quote>
“America is the land of the Free.
My ol’ man George always told me that
Free means you don’t pay.”
-- Jim Metesky
</quote>
Nothing in this manual is copyrighted. Anyone may reprint this information without permission. If you paid money for this manual you got screwed. It’s absolutely free because it’s yours. Think about it.
|
#title Chaos-causing diseases are spreading
#author Abdullah Öcalan
#LISTtitle Chaos-causing diseases are spreading
#SORTauthors Abdullah Öcalan, Komun Academy
#SORTtopics COVID-19, democratic confederalism
#date March 26, 2020
#source Retrieved on 2020-03-28 from [[https://komun-academy.com/2020/03/26/chaos-causing-diseases-are-spreading/][komun-academy.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-03-28T07:28:28
<em>In light of the current coronavirus crisis, we publish an analysis of Kurdish People’s Leader Öcalan adressing the issue of spreading diseases caused by Capitalist Modernity. The text is t</em><em><em>aken from Öcalan’s defense called “In Defense of a People”, which will be published soon by the International Initiative “Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan – Peace in Kurdistan”.</em></em>
----
Power and exploitation in the hands of the bourgeoisie have developed like a cancer devouring society. This social cancer has the same effects as cancer hitting people, AIDS or similar diseases. The moment capitalist society was born, Hobbes defines power (the state) as a necessity “to prevent every man from becoming a wolf for the other man”. The opposite is correct. Capitalism establishes its dominion to make man become a wolf for the other man. In modern times man has become a wolf, not only for man, but for the entire nature. How could this class aiming at maximizing profit and accumulation not exploit society and nature once it comes to power?
*** No dominant social system has attacked the foundations of society as capitalism has done
Marxism scrupulously analyzed concepts such as value, profit, work, imperialism and war. In order, however, to better understand their function within Marxism, it is necessary to observe them in the context we have presented here. The descriptions of the “fake messiah” in the Holy Scriptures, which should arrive shortly before the apocalypse, are quite well suited to this class. No dominant social system has attacked and destroyed the foundations of society and the natural environment, as capitalism has done. The nation is transformed into nationalism and fascism with racist connotations, the domination of nature in an ecological catastrophe, the profit in massive unemployment. At the same time capitalism devours itself. It gradually loses its specific characteristics and falls apart. It is capitalism itself, not the proletariat, which makes the counterrevolution against itself. It will be possible to start a new social age only by overcoming capitalist class society.
*** The society for the first time has realised that it’s trapped in chaos
The fact that capitalism considers “everyone a wolf for the other” creates a general security problem. Social security is not only threatened by external factors, such as crime or legally defined crimes, instead elementary threats are above all hunger and unemployment produced by the system itself. Due to rising costs on the one hand and population growth on the other, education and health problems remain unresolved. Chaos-causing diseases such as cancer, AIDS and stress are spreading. The society, which sees itself robbed of basic vital needs, such as the environment, housing, health, education, work and safety, realizes for the first time in history that it cannot find radical solutions and that it is trapped in chaos. The lack of a way out causes dizziness.
When communitarian solidarity breaks down and traditional defense mechanisms are weakened, individual power or a small group take their place. The terror of the tribe and clan develops to oppose the terror of the powerful. To the extent that the political-military power system emerges openly in state structures, a situation of legitimate self-defense is created for society. To the extent that the general state legal norms of equality are not applied, the embargo on human rights and democratic freedom of opinion applies and popular defense forces also necessarily emerge. This leads to a spiral of power and counterpower, which instead of contributing to the solution of the crisis, exacerbates it.
*** Sport and art are transformed into anesthetizing tools
Activities such as sport and art, which should in fact help to mitigate and eliminate material contradictions, as well as facilitate mutual understanding, are instead transformed into anesthetizing tools, which contribute to creating false illusions. A similar function is attributed to religion, congregations and sects, which prevent society from discerning reality. Transcendental worlds and conservative communities are built, which act as obstacles on the way to a real solution. The trio sport, art and religion is robbed of its true historical-social essence, in order to make society blind and insensitive, with fenders and stone hearts. With them, illusory paradigms are created, in order to make the lack of a way out accepted as inevitable. This type of resistance against chaos generates the opposite effect, that is, it multiplies it further.
Especially in similar times, art, science and technology should act as protective mechanisms and play an illuminating, constructive and guiding role in the reorganization. The extreme monopoly of official power, however, prevents them from performing this function and from producing social solutions. Science is limited to analyzing the aspects of the individual parties, without an overview, or to shooting sparrows with a cannon. Huge resources are wasted on useless armaments and wars, rather than on solving urgent problems; men are directed towards profit-oriented products, opposite to the basic needs of society. The negative effects of all of this help to reinforce chaos.
We could expand beyond the definition of chaos, for which the system is responsible and in which the whole society has been involved. But for our purpose this description is sufficient. If we do not become aware of this chaos situation, but think and act as if we were living in a normal situation, we will not be able to avoid elementary errors that we will repeat indefinitely, instead of finding a solution.
*** The battle must be won especially on the level of the intellect that is, of the mentality
In times like these, intellectual efforts are far more important than in other times. In particular, since traditional scientific structures, such as universities and religion, contribute more to incomprehension than to understanding, any truly enlightenment intellectual effort is even more precious. Science and religion, slaves of power, are extremely effective in spreading false and distorted paradigms. In times like these we should be very careful about the counterrevolutionary role of religion, art and sport. There is an ever greater need for a certain science and scientific structures capable of offering society real projects and the right paradigms, which I would call “socio-scientific schools and academies”. The battle must be won especially on the level of the intellect, that is, of the mentality. We live in a time in which the intellectual revolution is of decisive importance.
A mentality revolution must take place in union with moral values. When mentality conquests do not go hand in hand with moral and ethical ones, the result remains uncertain and, in any case, transitory. The enormous ethical ruin wrought by the system must be borne in mind and, consequently, the ethical and moral conduct, personalities and institutions necessary and precious for society must be put in place.
A battle against chaos, which is devoid of ethics and morals, can engulf the individual and society. Morality can never ignore social traditions, but must develop a new social ethics in harmony with them. Since the dominant system in the chaos phase uses political institutions and their tools only for demagoguery, one must be particularly careful with the choice of means and political instruments. In order for parties, elections, parliaments and regional governments to have their role in the realization of the ecological-democratic society, they must be able to develop the tools for solving problems.
There must be a close relationship between the political organization, with its practice, and the society built in a democratic, municipal and ecological sense. In the chaos phase, these generally formulated procedures must be implemented.
|
#title Declaration on the Democratic Solution of the Kurdish Question
#subtitle The Defence Arguments that the Head of the PKK Abdullah Ocalan Presented at “The Trail of the Century”
#author Abdullah Öcalan
#SORTauthors Abdullah Ocalan
#SORTtopics kurdistan, kurds, pkk, court, transcript, the state, Turkey
#date 1999
#source Retrieved on 2007-10-20 from [[https://web.archive.org/web/20071020183517/http://www.geocities.com/kurdifi/ocelan.html][web.archive.org]]
#lang en
#notes This is Ocalan’s 1999 defense in court
#pubdate 2018-12-16
** Introduction
My defence is not so much based on detailed replies to the charges in the indictment prepared by the Chief Prosecutor [of the State Security Courts], but rather, is it about what I see as a more important topic: how to reach a historic reconciliation from a revolt under the leadership of the PKK and increase the possibility of a solution to the Kurdish issue. I have created an opportunity for peace to these [armed] activities that could very well be called a law-intensity war.
Actually, I voiced these views for the first time as a response to President Turgut Ozal’s call [for a ceasefire?]. At the historic press conference on 15 March, 1993 [where I declared the ceasefire], this is exactly what I said: “We are not demanding an immediate separation from Turkey. We are realists on this subject. Do not interpret this [ceasefire] as a simple tactic [serving a hidden agenda]. There are many reasons as to why [we are realists]. Those who understand the historic, political and economic situation of the two peoples [the Kurds and Turks], know well that separation could not take place. They [the Kurds and Turks] are intertwined like flesh and bone. I have emphasised this in many interviews. We want the relations to be rearranged. Knotted relations and contradictions of a thousand years await untangling. Our fundamental understanding rests on a free and equal rearrangement of [Kurdish-Turkish relations]. To dub us “separatists” at every opportunity, is in fact the attitude that aims to fan separatism. The current arrangement of relations is hugely draining the life and the wealth of both the Turkish and the Kurdish people.”
Here is what I clearly said on the occasion of our latest unilateral ceasefire on 1 September 1998 before I was handed to Turkey at the end of a plot carried out by an international force: “The war, if not originating from a very important contradiction, is a madness. Especially, meaningless terror and violence should never be part of human affairs. If this huge oppression of us is let up a bit and stopped; if human rights and democracy are promoted to improve our relations; and if problems are solved through dialogue, I don’t think you will find any other people and organisation that are as thirsting for peaceful methods as us.” I continued with these words, “right now the most fundamental problem of Turkey is to take democracy out of its state of demagoguery and trust it to the care of the people. This should not be taken as bashing the Republic. Especially, divisive and separatist, it never is. If anything, it is a wish for democratizing the Republic. This indeed is in the interest of Turkey. This is, if anything, to resuscitate Turkey from its currently choked off state. Those who speak and act in the name of the Republic must do something about this counter-democracy. This is basically what I said about violence.”
“We are the side that has suffered the most from this violence. Who could blame us if, in this state of horrific imbalance of forces, in order to avoid extermination, we were forced to defend ourselves, our most legitimate rights, our identity and culture? The UN Constitution and even the Constitution of the Turkish Republic recognizes [the legitimacy of] the defense of these rights.” I am quoting these because, some people might falsely interpret that I have adopted these views due to the harsh conditions of my solitary confinement. I have the impression that even in the indictment, my statements advocating the same views — taken under interrogation — were by-passed.
However, [my statements] also express the need to transform the structure of the PKK, its narrow and strict ideological approach — a remnant of the fiery 1970s -, and its political structure in the light of the developments in the world and in Turkey in the 1990s. I have emphasised the need for reviewing, revising and updating its principles and programme in the aftermath of a huge experience. Throughout these years, I have increasingly searched to broaden [the PKK’s worldview]. The same is true about my views on violence. [Excessive] violence even in defence of basic human rights, identity and cultural survival is rejected. It is well known that I have struggled within the organisation against practices of violence that went beyond the basic minimum. The indictment does not touch on these points. Also, it is not objective to heap under the rubric of “terror” all the negativity on one side [of the warring parties]. I do not feel compelled to criticise these aspects much. I do not find it necessary to defend myself on these points. Perhaps, my lawyers could open these matters more in their defence that concentrates more on the legal aspects.
The most important thing for me — irrespective of its name, origins and rationale — is to lay bare the necessity of peace for this extensive armed movement which is even officially dubbed a “low intensity war”. To find a reasonable solution, remembering the rule that “each war has a peace”, became the main focus of my defence. It is of great importance [for me] to evaluate the past, to update the programme and the political line [of the Kurdish movement] in the light of the current, concrete facts in order to facilitate a solution. This is also one of many things expected from me. It was the most practical thing to transform [the PKK platform]into a platform for peace since this is what I was striving to do just before my abduction. In general, the PKK’s [ideological] defences have followed the two opposing extremes: Either a stubborn defence of the classical line, or the abandonment of that line. This, in a sense, is the same as having no solution. In my defence, I made it a point to I go beyond this.
In my defence, I did not revert to either a classical Kurdish nationalist line or a leftist interpretation of a similar tendency. Developments went beyond [both tendencies]. I did not find it very necessary to go into lengthy discussions of the historical, social, and identity issues. It was more appropriate to leave them to social scientists as topics for research. Otherwise, my leaving them aside does not emanate from any serious political concerns. Also, we had several similar expositions and evaluations in the past. For the same reason I did not go into a political criticism of Turkey either. To reiterate often-debated points did not appeal to me as creative. The same point is valid for the PKK’s programme, its structure and actions. Rather than discussing these topics which I have done elsewhere extensively, I found it important to emphasise as to what kind of transformation is needed to satisfy the need for a solution at this time. Political parties are a means to an end. If they do not transform themselves as time requires, they will become an obstruction, outdated and inevitably defeated. An unproductive repetition, no matter how heroic, cannot contribute much to the ideal of freedom.
In my defence statement, I am not concerned with a legalistic defence for myself. It is so obvious to me that even the most basic rules of the existing constitution [in Turkey] are violated in my case. In addition, at a time when [the state] is insistent on denying the [Kurdish] identity, what is essential is to emphasise the ethical and political need for resistance. This, perhaps, will not change the outcome of the trial. However, it will leave for future [generations] a very precious legacy of solving the problem. I especially made sure that I paid attention to this [poignant issue].
I have put the issues into writing in the form of theses without being overly concerned with more details. Under these circumstances, I did not deem it necessary. Besides, I have not had much opportunity [to have access to defence materials] anyway.
The main thread that runs through my defence, even if repetitious at times, is the concept of a “democratic solution”. This time I went into details of this approach which I had touched on in a limited way previously. Leslie Lipson’s book The Democratic Civilisation which accidentally reached my hands, contributed to [my understanding of this [detailed approach]. “The right of nations for self-determination” which was fashionable in the 1970s, and which in practical terms meant establishing a separate state, was, in fact, a blind alley in this specific [context]. In the case of Kurdistan, it was obstructing the solution rather than solving the problem. In my practice, I have tried to surpass these [limitations]. When I saw in practice, how backward and sometimes obstructive even the alternatives such as establishing a separate state, federalism, autonomy and similar approaches were in comparison to the rich mode of solutions democracy offered. It became very important for me to concentrate on the democratic system. The gradual occlusion of the military approaches, that is the armed struggle also has a share in this change of [directions] in our movement. Especially, given the traditional [Kurdish] uprisings where the rebellion — suppression cycle predominates, an approach that did not contain force and violence was urgently needed, not only in the Kurdish movement but also globally.
The uniqueness of Turkish — Kurdish relations, the inviolability of the national pact borders, and the current political and military situation necessitated a solution within a democratic system not only as historically correct, but nearly the only alternative. The urgent need for a comprehensive peace yearned for by everyone constituted the basis of our offer. Due to these reasons, the charming richness of the “democratic mode of finding a solution” is superior to the obstructing military and even to the [old] political style. [This offer] soothes the fundamental problem of Turkey and this historic stage of its general democratisation like a [well-prescribed] medicine. And moreover, the key approach of the state — which unobtrusively and gradually shaped policies and programmes and even reflected to us — was also along the same lines. As such, I did not shy away from opening it out with hope and doing all I can to make it a success. However, at this stage, it would be extremely optimistic — and even dangerous — to say that “the two sides are reaching an agreement”. However, I strongly believe and I am of the impression that, sooner or later, this is the most suitable way of solving the problem among all else.
The last part of my defence is related to my personal situation. Perhaps there was not much of a need for it. However, I found it necessary for it completes the overall picture. To investigate in depth the search for a great freedom that also relates to my case, has become the methodology for me. I had to apply it to myself. A reply of this kind to the indictment would be very instructive. Here is what I observed: What characterises [marks] my life is the motto of “Give me my freedom or give me death.” Any other stance is unthinkable. However, to open its essence, to show its intricacies was very instructive. At this point, my greatest fear is the non-completion of this humanitarian project. Therefore, my greatest expectation from life is [to have a chance] to reach from an overly-competent character of a rebel for freedom to that of a struggler for peace which contains freedom. To analyse the character of a man of peace and that of a society of peace do require more than what is assumed, not only in terms of a political and social analysis, but also, a theoretical endeavour that requires a detailed psychological analysis. As I have emphasised, a war (or all kinds of violent actions) which do not aim at a noble, sacred and very necessary peace, is madness. In accordance with this rule [understanding], it was important that I should analyse in depth, not only the theoretical but also the moral, political and practical aspects of the character (in the Turkish text the literal word is personality) of the man of peace.
With such features, my defence lays bare in a remarkable and creative way the necessity of both, how the profound democratic stirrings Turkey is currently going through should become a fundamental attribute of the Republic and how the Kurdish question with its democratic spirit of unity, soul and will should unify at this historic stage with the Republic. My defense also emphasizes the need for change in our organization and in our people to incorporate the above transformations. Instead of the now classical kill — get killed cycle, [my defence advocates] that it is much better to live and let live as our modern times require. [My defence] concludes with the hope of a 21<sup>st</sup> Century that ushers in a new period of history which is possible only within the framework of a democratic republic, in democratic unity and its unparalleled power of solving problems, instead of the nearly two hundred-year -old tradition of the rebellion and the consequential suppression-and-denial policies of Turkey.
** At the End of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century: Victorious Democracy
Even though the roots of the democratic system go way back to the early history of humanity, it acquired a comprehensive meaning when it was incorporated into a state system in ancient Athens. Basically, democracy is the most realistic system that insures the most freedom for the individual while allowing society to exercise self-rule. It derives its real power from corresponding to the natural in society. Perhaps, authoritarian regimes bring about rapid development, but no matter how strong, sooner or later, they collapse because they alienate themselves from what is socially natural. Giant empires based on slavery, capitalist fascist totalitarian dictatorships and even the totalitarian real-socialism, all shared the same fate [due to this alienation].
The fact that democracy declared its total victory at the end of this Century, the century of astounding production and technology, is no coincidence. This is closely related to the [functional operation] of democratic system’s mechanisms. No other system has managed to render the society and the individual this creativity in their own naturalness. The democratic system obtains its power from freeing people. Democracy is simple, but develops slowly. However, without a doubt, the results it bore in our times are more impressive and rapid than those a most powerful regime can afford. Democracies possess mostly an evolutionary language, but essentially, they rest on revolutions. The most crucial thing to know is when to democratize a revolution. Revolutions that fail to democratize might either lead to dictatorship or deteriorate into anarchism. Revolutions that succeed in democratizing life become permanent and manage to bring about creative development. To become stuck to a revolutionary stage is to become stuck to bureaucracy as much as to counter-revolution. It is this [principle] that constitutes the secret of past and present success of the mightiest societies that pursued successful democratization.
The theoretical — ideational dimension of today’s democracies developed during the 17<sup>th</sup>-18<sup>th</sup> centuries. The institutional and administrative developments relating to democracy gained momentum starting with the mid-19<sup>th</sup> Century. During the 20<sup>th</sup> Century, democracy resisted the totalitarian, unforgiving dictatorship of fascism and its adversary, real-socialism. It was at the end of the century that democracy announced its final victory. The two totalitarian systems, although producing rapid (economic) development, collapsed because of excessive suppression of the freedom and creative abilities in the individual and in society. Coercion could produce rapid development, but also a rapid downfall. Whereas the democratic system develops slowly, but it does not collapse easily. This is because the individual and society would not easily let go of it. Democracy derives its power from this. Society’s enlightenment of itself, that is, its acquisition of scientific power [understanding] is mostly related to its level of democracy. Likewise, it is no coincidence that scientific and artistic talent develops in societies that provide the most freedom.
Even with the collapse of the socialist system in the 1990s and its transformation into [some form of] democracy, the great advance of democracy is still in the making. In a way, the remnants of other systems will continuously exert a pressure on democracy and a pure version of it could, one way or another, not be established. However, [more and more democratization] will be the trend of the future. The crucial thing is to apply democratic values to solve social problems and to rule the society. The best politics or politician is the one that seeks its/his identity through the individual, the party and the leadership that represent power.
Generally speaking, societies where democracy is likely to flourish are the ones that — after manifesting their very sharp conflicts in the form of revolutionary explosions — choose to solve the rest of their problems (relating to conflicts in group’s and individual’s interests) through non-violent methods with the mediation of political parties and institutions. If and when a society matures to this degree, all it takes is to correctly identify the principles and institutions of democracy, and then, make them operational to solve existing problems. This requires creativity on the part of the political leaders and defines the democratic essence of political leadership.
The art of successful democratic politics requires the ability to correctly identify the interest groups, the nature of social conflicts and to balance the relations among them peacefully. It also includes the ability to handle power and the fall from the power.
The economic wealth of a nation or the lack of it cannot be the criteria for the practice of democracy. Democracy can be implemented in rich and poor countries alike. Perhaps the only condition that is required is to accomplish one or a few of the necessary revolutionary steps.
Democracy has little to do with political borders or with the existence of the state. Democratic systems do not deal with these issues. Democratic systems deal essentially with the interests, freedom and equality of the social groups and the individuals; and the rules and regulations that govern political institutions, governing, coming to power or losing power. National borders are a datum, a given. They are a framework within which policies are made and implemented. Coercion does harm democracy. Democratic politics does not relate to the existence of the state or its indivisibility. It relates intensely, though, to the forms of the state, how it handles social problems, its rules and regulations, how it selects and delineates political-moral values, the issue of representation and harmonious-peaceful transfer of power. The recognition of the rights and freedoms for those individuals and groups that lack them, and the incorporation of these actors into the system are also one of the essential political and moral requirements of democracy. As long as there are oppressed and powerless individuals and strata who lack basic freedom and rights, that democracy has major shortcomings. If conflicts and tensions are not solved peacefully, rebellions, civil wars, insurgencies and other revolutionary conflicts would break out and cause bloodshed, ushering in perhaps a new democratization process.
Democratic development in societies dominated by dogmatism, authoritarian principles and institutions, requires above all, a struggle with these hurdles. What feeds the authoritarian and the totalitarian regimes is such dogmatism and traditionalism.
Democracy has its own principles, institutions and traditions too. They are freedom, equality, lack of oppression, evolutionary development, respect for rights and responsibilities and consensual solutions. Democracy is closely related to scientific [objective] definition of the society and [the need for] its enlightenment. With such qualities, democracy is a wonderful way of creating mature, responsible individuals and social classes.
This comprehensive framework in which we have defined democracy, very clearly shows as to why democracy is both the cause and the outcome of scientific-technological developments and the enlightened society.
The failure of the suffocating totalitarianism of fascism and bourgeois nationalism, and the excessive egalitarian totalitarianism of the working class are related to having moved out of the democratic framework described above. It seems that the democratic system has insured its victory into the 2000s and cannot be stopped spreading in depth to all societies. It is certain that those who resist this [wave of democratization] will lose while those who implement it will surely win.
** Turkey’s Agenda for the 2000s
Developments during the last 150 years of modern history that we have presented here in very broad outlines, point to the victory of democracy. This process of democratisation could be successful in Turkey if very serious mistakes are avoided especially in democratically solving the Kurdish problem; if the Turkish left manages to transform itself into legal political parties and the Islamic movement assimilates democratic ideals.
The democratisation of those who approach this process from a narrow, opportunistic and selfish motive cannot go beyond demagoguery. One must see in depth that Turkey is going through an important period that is qualitatively different. Recent history, while inheriting a heavily centralised feudal tradition that was devoid of democracy, has been stuck in a stage of producing no solutions as a result of devastating blows of the frequent coups and counter-coups, revolutions and counter-revolutions. A very tense society that is resistant to democratic openings, state officials who have always viewed democracy with suspicion, intellectuals who have stood aloof to any struggle for democratic values, are all fundamental aspects of this problem. Truly, the Republic could have realised a lot less onerous path of democratisation. The process [of democratization] in Turkey has been truly hard, as the same is true for other countries. Turkey failed to have a democratic system due to lack of conviction, serious efforts and a true understanding of democracy (as opposed to demagoguery). In the name of democracy, the demagoguery always ruled. That is, in the name of democracy — ism, a play was staged in an ugly way with an accompanying rhetoric that both concealed and served to vested interests. There could be no place for demagoguery any more. The process (period) we are going through right now will either lead to an enduring, truly democratic republic with its social milieu, institutions, administrative structure and real democratic ideals, or it will lead to the repetition of more of the same. The [Turkish] society has matured and is ready for democracy and its system of peacefully solving problems. Political parties [in Turkey] have learned their lessons to a great extent. Dysfunctional institutions have been exposed. An effective administration would not fail to obtain the sustained support of the people. The military as the most ready institution is inclined to turn this process in favour of democratisation, but at the same time, has no intention of relaxing its control of society.
As one of the most serious problems [of Turkey], if the Kurdish problem is solved in a way that incorporates the [Kurdish] guerrillas and the PKK in an appropriate democratic system that can solve the problem, it will be a permanent victory for democracy. The integration of Islam as represented by the RP/FP has already been accomplished to a good extent. Here is what awaits Turkey on the horizon: the, at least, two hundred year old effort toward Westernisation would finally bear its fruit. Violence embedded in society and the social structure that played an important role in moving the centuries forward [engine of change] will lose its meaning and be dumped to the dustbin of history. Not only violence has become unnecessary, but also, due to increasing apathy and stagnation of society, will not even be noticed. Even if society in Turkey has truly reached to some degree of maturity, political institutions and cadres have not yet set an effective and well-established pace of progress. This is where the trouble lies. Lack of any other alternative makes the democratic solution the only option.
The democratic option (alternative), as it is in other matters, is the only alternative in [solving] the Kurdish question. Separation is neither possible nor necessary. Kurdish interests are definitely best served in a democratic union with the whole of Turkey. If the democratic solution is fully implemented, it would become even a more successful and realistic model than autonomy and federation. Even at this very moment, developments are all pointing in this direction.
If Turkey solves its toughest problem in this manner, violence in all its forms, be it revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, military muscle flexing (such as under martial laws) or religious fanaticism, will rarely be an issue. A Western-style problem solving will considerably gain momentum. Then, economic resources, society’s level of education, the non-demagogic administrative structure and loyalty to truly democratic values such as liberty, equality and justice, could make a great leap forward.
Even though similar approaches have been conceptualised in discussions on a Second Republic, we believe a democratic republic [envisioned in this defence] is a more correct approach. The 2000s [the new millenium] is imposing an evolution in this direction [toward a democratic republic], which, becomes more inevitable with every passing day. It is not hard to see that for those individuals, political parties and social groups that feel deeply about [the change], history is providing a chance to take a great leap forward, if they take the necessary steps. While the need is increasingly making this search [for peace and democratisation] as the urgent item on the agenda in need of a solution, the absence of a leader [as an interlocutor for peace] is sorely missing. Distrust created by worn out politicians, lack of a complete understanding of the armed forces’ role, the weakness of an evolutionary and fear of a revolutionary leadership, have all led to the current leadership crisis of the democratic system.
** A short history and some fundamental characteristics of Turkish-Kurdish relations
The arrival of Turks — and in particular of Turkmens who broke away from their ruling elements — in the areas heavily populated by Kurds in the tenth century, led to the intermingling of the two peoples. The relatively more settled way of life of the Kurds led to the absorption of the Turkish tribes in these centuries. In political organisation the Turks, and in social organisation the Kurds were relatively dominant. While the Turkish upper strata in general took over the local political culture and achieved dominance, the lower orders on the whole were absorbed by the Kurds. The socio-economic and cultural and religious similarities between the two peoples play an important role in this intermingling. The feudal social structure is quite similar in both settled and nomadic tribes. Such, in brief, are the foundations of the brotherhood of the Turks and Kurds that is often alluded to.
When we look at history we see that, especially in the Seljuk Empire set up in Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Kurdish lands and later with the Mervanis, Artukogullaris, Ayyubis and the Akkoyunlus and Karakoyunlus, and many small states, the Turkish and Kurdish upper social strata and therefore the social orders under them share a common land and state. Rather than being in conflict with each other, they live in harmony in close proximity to one another. With no other nation — be it the Arabs, the Iranians, Armenians or Byzantines — is such a concept of a common state shared. This is how the Kurdish Turk or Turkish Kurd is born. It is important to bear this in mind as an outstanding characteristic in order to make sound objective assessments. It is important to have such a scientific approach to the brotherhood of Turks and Kurds.
We see a striking example of this phenomenon on a very high level in the Ottoman-Kurdish relations which begin with Selim I. Despite Selim’s wish to the contrary, the dominant Kurdish lords chose not to set up a separate state, but felt their interest were better served by staying under the umbrella of the same state under a governor sent by the Sultan himself. This approach led to success against the Saffevis of Iran in the battle of Caldiran and against the Arabic Mamluks in the battles of Ridaniye and Mercidabik. Under this arrangement, the Kurds continued to develop until the early nineteenth century. Their language and culture developed to a high degree. Only very rarely were there problems. This was largely due to the large measure of autonomy granted to the local governments under the umbrella of the common state, independent tribal structures, and the freedoms enjoyed in the fields of language and religion by all except the Alevis. What we see here is a multi-layered, rich experiment in government that can set us an example even today.
This system started falling apart in the nineteenth century as a result of the Empire’s failure to compete with Western capitalism. The British Empire in particular entered into the region and the central authority upped its demands regarding taxation and military service; a process of rebellion was put in motion that continues to this day.
It is highly typical that, while the rebellions by all the other nations were successful, these rebellions failed despite being on such a large scale. The reason for this is once again the concept of a common land and a common state that is such a fundamental guiding principle. Some of the rebels were always on the side of the state. Breaking away is not what their outlook or policy is fundamentally about. They are more interested in securing advantages and concessions. Their attitude is one of “If you don’t give it to me, I’ll get in touch with this or that foreign power and rebel”. This is not only the fundamental characteristic but also the misfortune and tragedy of Kurdish uprisings. It is an exaggeration even to look at these uprisings as progressive or reactionary, political or national. That is not their fundamental nature. That is more of a cover story. They are directed more by the self-interests of tribal leaders and by dynastic and family concerns, and they deepen the impasse, filling the history of the Kurdish people with suffering and massacres and leading not to progress but ruin. It is important to reassess these rebellions which have no philosophy, no political programme or organisation, have two leaders even within the same tribe or family in every rebellion, seldom abide by military rules, and consequently always end up failing. Indeed their belief in success is practically non-existent. They are spontaneous and primitive. It is clear that it is not possible to reach anywhere on the basis of following whoever offers the most. This is where the tragedy and misfortune lie. One is tempted to say, “It would have been better if their history did not consist of these uprisings.” This is once again the reason. Undoubtedly, the entry of imperialist forces, oppression by the central authority and increased demands regarding taxes and military service play an important role. But the most fundamental cause, as often mentioned in our day, is the notion of a common country, being one of the fundamental original elements of the state, assimilation between the two peoples, their having gone through many a war together, or, in other words, their being close to one another in destiny and joy, the dangers of separation, and their historical knowledge of all they stand to lose. These have led to a fundamental notion of togetherness. Even at the start of the twentieth century, when everything was being done to provoke nationalism, this notion was preserved and a successful war of national liberation was waged together.
** The War of National Liberation and a new stage in Turkish-Kurdish relations
In both the last Parliament and at the meetings and congresses led by Mustafa Kemal at Amasya, Erzurum, Sivas and Ankara, national liberation was clearly seen as a joint liberation effort by Turks and Kurds. This was not only the right and practical path, but also the one demanded by the historical notion of a common country and state. To engage in separate, and especially opposed, struggles for liberation would have played into the hands of the “divide and rule” policy favoured by the imperialists of the day and especially by Great Britain. Here Mustafa Kemal’s political outlook tested and developed by realities is clear and it is the only possible one. Without going overmuch into the theoretical reasons, he maintained unity virtually by ordering it, and that was what was needed at the time. This was so, because there were those on both sides who were working hard, with a good deal of help from the Sultan and Caliph, to cause a rift, and national liberation was a movement against these uprisings as much as against external enemies. What counts here is not intention but practice. Even within Parliament those in favour of the sultanate and the caliphate were quite powerful until 1924. Having to contend with these and also with the followers of the old Ottoman Union and Progress movement and with Bolshevik influences, the leading power had to follow intense and different tactics. Add to this the extensive claims of ethnic Greeks in the West emboldened by the Greek attack on Turkey, and equally extensive claims by the Armenians in the East, and it was obvious that national liberation had to be based on the two fundamental peoples, the Kurds and the Turks. If the two nations went their separate ways, and especially if they acted against each other, they would end up losing all they had. It is useful to explain some matters here which have not been gone into in depth: the national liberation movement was undoubtedly led by the Turkish side which was the one with the political and military experience and the developed national consciousness. Not only was this not opposed, it was expected. The Kurdish side found this natural and was not uncomfortable or anxious about being an auxiliary force under command. The notion of a common history, state, country and religion was fundamental here, and no one doubted that the struggle for national liberation would be waged together as well. Contrary to what has been maintained by some intellectuals, there was no question of deception or being deceived here. What was happening was the necessary outcome of natural togetherness. This was definitely the right strategy and it amounted to a unified tactical understanding. One has to admire Mustafa Kemal and those leading the movement. It is a mistake to think of the Kurdish side as collaborators during this period. They did the right thing, but suffered from an important lack of consciousness and organisation as far as the negative developments that would occur in the future were concerned.
An important impasse would eventually develop on both sides on this point, when in fact the beginning was absolutely right and the successful national liberation struggle and the Republic proclaimed at the end of it are in fact a beautiful joint achievement. Indeed, at the press conference in Izmit — and it is important to bear in mind that this took place after the proclamation of the Republic — Mustafa Kemal gave a speech which can still offer guidance today, and in which he clearly states that Kurdish and similar problems can only be solved by the establishment of a democratic style.
Given the state of mixed areas and the insoluble problems likely to be caused by border changes, a type of local autonomy, the method employed today everywhere in the world in democracies and proposed by Mustafa Kemal, is once again the correct solution for this problem. However, because the caliphate and the sultanate had powerful support on both sides and because some primitive Kurdish intellectuals could not detach themselves from imperialism, could not share their programme with the Turkish Parliament under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal and became narrow-minded separatists, they ended up participating in the uprising of 1925, even though they were not in any way ready for it. In fact, however, they did not have such an intention at the start. A large portion of them were state officials and army officers who supported the national liberation movement. Meanwhile, in the case of the local tribal and religious leaders, a combination of their ideological opposition to the Republic, the threatening of their material interests, and their relations with Istanbul and hence with the Allied powers was to drive them to the same wrong course in an untimely and unprepared manner. These were people who had supported the national liberation movement, believing it would result not in a republic but the restoration of the sultanate and the caliphate, when this did not happen, they rebelled. As will be seen from this, limited Kurdish nationalism was not a fundamental factor in the uprising. The uprising was a weak affair, without a programme, disorganised and leaderless. The masses and most of the upper-class intellectuals chose to support the Republic. This rift that occurred on the Kurdish side occurred in a more intense manner on the Turkish side.
There were more open exponents of the sultanate and the caliphate, the old Unionists were not happy with the Republic and as the Progressive Republican Party they represented the conservative wing and from time to time achieved a majority. During the uprising of 1925 Mustafa Kemal would objectively treat all these elements as a unified force with a common aim and firmly proceed to eliminate them. If one pays attention, it is clear that they are not seen as a special democratic group on the Turkish side and a Kurdish nationalist group on the Kurdish side. In any case, such a situation does not clearly arise. What is being debated is not the democratic nature of the Republic. Such a question is not on the agenda apart from the interjections of a few faint voices. The fundamental question is the protection of the Republic which is but a year-or-two-old. At least this is definitely so for Atatürk. He does not say, “I am crushing democrats and Kurds”; he says, “I am eliminating those opposed to the Republic.” This might perhaps be a little extreme, but it is a realistic approach. Let us imagine one of the other two sides triumphing. Sultan Vahdettin was ready and waiting. In other words, what would have come was neither democracy nor an independent Kurdish state, but a sultanate collaborating with the British. This is the truth. There was no third way. The weak communist movement, which could not even save itself from being defeated by simple tactics, could hardly achieve power.
The triumph of the national liberation movement and of the Republic must therefore be seen as an historic common country and state for the two peoples. One cannot ascribe to Atatürk either a particular opposition to democracy or to Kurds. He was for progress and had expectations. The lack of intellectual depth, the absence of any experience of democracy, feelings of being under siege by domestic and foreign forces and of weakness; the reality of these things led to an authoritarian concept of the Republic at an early stage and render the concept of violence open to criticism. If Fethi Okyar, who can be seen as an unsuccessful liberal intellectual of the period — and who, it must be borne in mind, was a close friend and colleague of Atatürk’s — had been successful, the Republic could have become more liberal and eventually more democratic. But the harsher and more bureaucratic premiership of Ismet Inonu, who was put in power by the uprising, played an important role in this authoritarian development.
Although influenced by Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, he nevertheless did not want to render the Republic founded by Ataturk authoritarian in the extreme. This can also be seen in the Free Party incident which is the second liberal experiment with Fethi Okyar. He was for a liberal development, but did not have the power to grasp the philosophical and social foundations this required. Subsequent Kurdish uprisings must be assessed along similar lines. Indeed, the traditional inability of the local powers to toe the general line, their traditional habit of doing as they pleased, and limited foreign influences, play a role, and this means that they had little chance of success against an increasingly powerful republic.
This is how the authoritarian republicanism of the Atatürk period appears within its concrete reality. It is a major error and injustice to blame the Republic and Atatürk for not moving in a more liberal-democratic direction and especially for Kurdish uprisings and the inability to produce anything more than these uprisings of a society which does not follow its national movement but — and exceptions do not change the rule — is led by scattered and disorganised local lords. Furthermore, it leads to the adoption of the wrong approach and leads to extremism, and this leads intellectuals, Islamicists, socialists and Kurdish nationalists to major errors of assessment, and indeed action. Had the claims that are made been true and had they had a material basis in that period, surely they would have achieved some success. Something that has a basis in reality will be successful. At most, this can be seen as an important historical experience both for democracy and the Kurdish question which is a part of it. It is hard to say it has yet been assessed properly. Those who do not assess history correctly will have great difficulty assessing the present and themselves correctly. This will often lead to failure, and where it leads to success, success will come about as a result of the chains of coincidences that are often encountered in social affairs.
The Kurdish ideological and political movements that fail to assess the founding of this Republic and its authoritarian development correctly end up creating by this means the fundamental reason for their tragedy and defeat. As an act of self-criticism it would be closer to the truth to express the real situation regarding this period as follows.
What should have been done was to accept unconditionally the Republic and the reality of a common country pertaining to it, then to seek democratic solutions for social problems including the Ataturk personality within this framework by discussing them in Parliament, forming groups where necessary and finding solutions which, without ever becoming reactionary or separatist, would carry the same republican and national unity principles, but in a more democratic way, to many social units. New parties and alliances should also have been tried, democracy should have been allowed to become widespread as in many European countries, and the republican revolutionary movement should have been taken forward through democratic evolutions to a democratic republic. This would have been the right solution and it still cannot be implemented today. The Democratic Party came to power by almost creating a democratic storm on the basis of the pressures exerted by the authoritarian republic and in general by two world wars. Or rather, by adding to the general power structure, land-owners and the expanding mercantile upper class, it transformed the character of the republic in the direction of an oligarchy. It was the suppressed feudal dignitaries of the East and the newly emerging land-owning bourgeoisie and the mercantile upper class of the West that became prominent during this period in the history of the Republic.
In this period, the Kurdish question manifests itself in the form of returning from exile after the period of suppressed uprisings, the binding of wounds, and a very weak ideological Kurdism. This is a very weak bourgeois-feudal Kurdism. They still have intellectuals, but their activities remain ideological. They do not seriously form parties, do not become a movement, and their ideological activities are not very scientific or comprehensive. They are some way behind even the state of affairs at the start of the century. Although, under the leadership of Barzani, they are influenced by and try to make use of the Turkish left, here, too, they fail to establish a structure with character. In brief, they stay considerably behind the uprisings of the feudal period and fail to transcend the classical collaborationist-cum-separatist stance of the dominant class. They fail to establish the correct definition of the Republic and the correct approach to it. The fearful and hollow criticism that is practised produces many a diseased personality. With the suppression practised during the period added to all this, a healthy Kurdish bourgeois national movement fails to materialise. Their failure to analyse from a Kurdish point of view the fact of the Republic being a fundamental element and to develop an approach which is not separatist but seeks equality and freedom pushes them into the old state of affairs where even the smallest criticism is seen as separatism. With the extreme accusations of extreme Turkish nationalism added to all this, the Kurdish Question, which is in fact a fundamental democratic problem, cannot as a rule even avoid being provoked. The branding of even a minimal democratic demand as separatism and treason led to its opposite, i.e. anti-democratic attitudes, becoming powerful as a result of the situation. Chauvinism and fascism grew strong. Even within the Turkish left this chauvinism was influential. The Kurdish movement which suffered physical elimination during the uprisings, could not save itself from ideological and political paralysis during this period. In fact it could not transcend its fundamental error. It could not come up with a successful democratic programme and an accompanying form of organisation that would present the common country and state analysis and the rights which were not granted and remained missing in this context. If it had been able to explain in a scientific and convincing way the Turkish and political and national forces, and state that the country was unified and separation from the Republic was not an option; if it had adopted this method way back in the Atatürk period, the situation would have developed in the opposite direction, i.e. towards a democratic republic. Here, too, however, the fundamental responsibility rests with the upper social strata, the local lords and tribal leaders. The reactionary collaborationist and separatist and also undemocratic stance of this class born of its fundamental nature led the question into an impasse from the start despite a very important beginning, and gave rise to profound tragedies and losses. Kurdish intellectuals always blame all this on the Republic. In reality, their failure to question their own fundamental, albeit class-based role in this, is the real reason the Kurdish Question has become intractable. The failure, despite an oligarchic struggle and a quite serious conflict between the right and the left during this period, even to pose the question correctly was to be influential in the emergence of the PKK.
** The Emergence of the PKK and a New Stage in the Kurdish Question
The indictment of the Chief Prosecutor contains a picture of the PKK. Like all pictures, however, it is devoid of spirit. It is not enough to present the bill for an entire war and actions of a large scope. Again, to determine the objective on the basis of the initial programme and to demonstrate it with some extracts from speeches by the leadership without being influenced by the changes and transformations in the world during the last quarter of a century, might perhaps endow the indictment with meaning from the point of view of legal procedure, but it clearly cannot exactly express its political significance. There is an accusation of wanting to found a state, but who is going to found this state? If it is the people, what sort of historic and social reality do they have? Again, is it possible objectively, i.e. from a scientific point of view? Not to mention such matters at all will prevent it from being anything more than a subjective legal text heavy on accusation. Indeed, even from a legal point of view, it will only be one-sided in this state. We are of the opinion that to express the true nature of the PKK here in terms of theory, politics and action is a historic duty and it will supplement the indictment and provide a reply to it. We will not discuss its legal side in any detail. If there is an opportunity, perhaps some of our lawyers could go into that. How then should the PKK be approached?
The PKK is the last major Kurdish rebellion movement which was created and developed by an utopian theoretical group given to the study of the stormy revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements in the world, and which pursued ideological rebellion in the period from 1970 to 1980 and politics and action in the period from 1980 to 1990. It has taken major steps in uniting politics with the art of war, and is an unique liberation movement which, while Kurdish in form, is regional in character. It has presented the Kurdish Question in a way that transcends the classical approach to it, and is a Kurdish Question movement that is modern and democratic in terms of its social basis, objectives and tactics. In other words, as well as developing the Kurdish Question into maturity, it has, for the first time, brought to the solution the democratic style of working-class elements. It is a movement which is characterised by these factors. It has developed the question into maturity and rendered it highly capable of being solved by abandoning and rendering void the approach of traditional dynastic leaderships based of relying on outside powers and, in the event of finding no help from such a quarter, capitulating immediately. It has found its place on the stage of world history as a lasting movement which is based on free individuals and a free society and is thus both quite modern and capable of offering a genuine social solution. Until the 1990s it was concerned with proving the existence of the problem to Turkey and to the world and asking for a solution, and in the 1990s it progressed by having the solution placed on the agenda. While its inability to grasp the solution at the start of the 1990s resulted from lack of preparation, errors and lack of experience, from 1993 onwards it was in a period of difficulties and turmoil. It was indeed in this period in the 1990s that it should have transformed itself. Especially its failure to detect world-wide developments after 1993 and to be creative in terms of a solution can be seen as a defect. It repeated itself excessively in this period. Consequently, it moved away from its capability for a solution and caused the problem to worsen again. Undoubtedly, the derailment, on both sides, of the style of war it followed played an important role here. With misfortunes added to all this, the problem worsened. As we approach the year 2000, should the PKK manage to solve its contradictory position of both having to transcend itself and once again directing the problem towards a solution, it will have played its historic role. It can bring this about by transforming itself from a revolutionary organisation into a democratic organisation.
As far as the separatism-versus-union question is concerned, it is important to distinguish between two stages in the history of the PKK. During the process of its emergence, years of oppression and denial extending as far as the banning of the Kurdish language, the utopian approach based on simple slogans then dominant on the left, the separatism born of the fear and anxiety within Kurdish nationalism, and the perception on the part of national liberation movements all over the world that the only solution was a separate state, led to a heavy emphasis on separatism in the programme and propaganda of the PKK. There was often an emphasis on international unity, but the dominant side had broken away from the existing union brought about by force. We often compared this to a marriage brought about by force and said it could not last. In a sense, this was a valid approach. But answers had to be found as to what extent and in what way. This period extended as far as the nineties. Together with mass support, the need arose to transcend this period at about this time. In other words, the foundations were being laid for a free union. The lifting by the state of the language ban, the limited freedoms granted in the areas of language and culture, the acceptance of the problem by senior statesmen and their efforts to solve it, and finally my own ceasefire approach in March 1993 clearly indicated a period when both sides were emphasising a free union. After this point free union propaganda becomes dominant. From 1996 onwards our verbal and written responses to the indirect messages we received were openly based on the principle of “democratic union within the framework of the unity of the country and the independence of the state”. This was due to a very large extent to both the state transcending its former harsh approach and it becoming clear that, in practice, separatism was not a realistic option and entailed too much pain and loss. Life was showing us more clearly every day what was true and a basis for union. Consequently, I regard it as a great defect that, in its indictment, the Office of the Chief Prosecutor regards this as a simple tactical manoeuvre and fails to assess it as an important transformation. The call for a democratic Republic and a democratic union must be seen as not only a piece of strategy but also a solution indicated to, and made inescapable for us, by the struggle itself.
** The Role Played by Kurds in the History of the Republic, the Kurdish Question and Its Solution
The classical narrow legal approach is undoubtedly inadequate in terms of assessing and judging the PKK in the correct manner. Again, it cannot be presented correctly through the primitive separatist approach any more than it can through the traditional nationalist approach based on denial. If Turkey wants to get rid of this most important problem, she has to unearth the facts by applying the scientific standards of the historical and social approach to opt for a conciliatory solution. Assessments which do not take into account the social reality of the PKK and the existing political system, and which have got particularly subjective of late, can neither destroy the PKK nor attract it to a solution. If both sides soften the language used in their propaganda and adopt a more objective approach, the problem will slowly stop being intractable and it will be possible to take it towards a solution. Hardline ideological and political approaches are not in keeping with the need for a democratic solution that characterises this period. If the Kurdish question is treated in the context of the Republic and a solution is sought, it will be seen that the PKK phenomenon is the most mature instrument for a solution. In historical terms it is very important to pose and answer some questions openly. Everyone now gives voice to these. If the Kurds are one of the founding members of the Republic — and they are — why did the displaying of their identity became the greatest problem in the period of founding and development? What are the historical errors committed by both sides? And in order to solve the problem it is now inevitable that Kurds should be scientifically redefined as one of the fundamental dynamic elements of founding and development, and they should also be defined as conscious free citizens and a social group of the Republic, and their share in the general constitutional rights and responsibilities should be indicated. If this is not done, the completely unscientific old method whereby everyone draws conclusions that suit their self-interests of the moment will become the dangerous basis of this matter. Some will use it to seek an undemocratic voter base, others will make it the target and subject of nationalism and others still will find in it grounds for rebellion. It is indisputable that, despite all its utopian and extreme political approaches, the PKK played an historic role by presenting the problem and the need for a solution in the most striking way and by making a solution necessary. Its methods, its hardline political approach and its confusion of being ideological with being political notwithstanding, it has no equal and it has left a large and rich legacy to history. In this sense, it has paid the highest price not only to have the existence of Kurds accepted but also to stop it being a problem. It has lost almost 25 thousand members, more than 10 thousand of its members have been sentenced to prison for almost 20 years, millions have been forced to move, it has suffered great hardship and made great sacrifices in the war, and more that 3,000 thousand villages belonging to the masses from it derives its strength from have been emptied. These facts not only indicate the source of the problem, they also indicate the fact that a solution must be found. If one adds to this the other side of the war, i.e. the losses suffered by the state, the dimensions of the problem and the overwhelming need for a solution will become apparent. The profound effects on domestic and foreign politics and the socio-economic structure and indeed the virtual deadlock that has developed in these areas make it still more necessary to find a solution.
In reality Turkey and the Republic have to a large extent become familiar with this aspect of the phenomenon. However, the heavy official rhetoric and the timid approach to finding a solution have turned into a problem. We must admit the following to ourselves. We have always lived with this phenomenon and we will continue to do so. That being the case, why not become known as an unproblematic, free, dynamic and democratic element of progress and become the power, the free democratic power of the Republic? Why balk at this? Why should the transformation of a founding element into a recognised element with democratic participation be against the constitution and the law? If anything is wrong, it is this constitution and these laws which are against the fundamental principles of the Republic. What needs to be changed is not the phenomenon but the laws that cannot express it adequately and in a democratic manner. This aspect of the laws has played an important role in the worsening of the problem. In fact this situation does not exist in the founding assembly of the Republic and in the Atatürk of the founding period. Here, notwithstanding its amateurish and utopian emergence and its errors as regards its methods of action, the PKK has rendered the Republic a genuine service by saying, “See and solve the problem that has troubled you for so long”. In this sense, it has tried to play a role as important as that played by the Kurds as a liberated and founding nation in the history of the Republic: it has tried to play a role in its transformation into a democratic republic. With their rebellion in the form of the PKK the Kurds have proved the following: If you don’t recognise our freedom, separatism and rebellion will always be on the agenda. Either I enter into a free union with you or I die or run away. This is what they have ended up saying. This is what the rebellion has expressed. The PKK has arrived at the nearest level of maturity for a free union. Seeing this is its history. Not to see this cannot be regarded as protecting the Republic and, above all, it cannot be regarded as defending it. To see the free union, which recently expressed itself through the millions of votes cast for the HADEP party and to take it to a democratic union with the legal system of the Republic is the correct way to defend the Republic. The PKK is a movement of consciousness and free will that has shown that union cannot be achieved through the suppressed and frightened reality of the Kurds which ignorance has rendered almost unrecognisable, that the existence of such a group is not compatible with the enlightenment to be associated with the Republic, and that, if the Republic stands for enlightenment and freedom, it has to have these qualities for its founding member as well. The last elections have demonstrated this clearly. In this sense, the PKK is the historical reality of the correct definition and free union which are the rights of the Kurdish people under the Republic. If this historical reality is fully successful, it needs to be said in the last section of the indictment not that the PKK calls for a separate state, but that it very clearly calls for a democratic republic and is the founding force for such a republic. History may not state this clearly today, but sooner or later it will do so. With the PKK, history is unearthed, corrected and also provided with a solution. Just as the Kurds were among the National Forces during the struggle for national liberation in the 1920s, as we approach the year 2000, they have been a democratic force with the PKK, with all the correct and incorrect actions, and all the suffering and happiness that entails. This is not separatism but perhaps a move for the greatest union with Turkey and the Turks, a move towards strength and once again becoming a leader in the Middle East, the Caucasus and the Balkans. There is no way of achieving this other than through a free union. The PKK has also served to prove this. Nothing can be more powerful than reality and this is especially true for laws. To be not for separatism but for union at this historic crossroads regarding the PKK it is necessary to see and define this dominant aspect of reality.
** Transformation Problems within the PKK
It is a striking fact that towards the end of the twentieth century social and political systems have undergone major changes and transformations and those resisting these changes and transformations have not been very successful. Essentially, systems which cannot answer the needs of individuals who have become free as a result of the scientific-technological revolution are under great stress. No matter how they try to patch things up, they are in difficulties, and regardless of their attempts at suppression changes are taking place on a level and with a speed not encountered in any other period. It is as if we are experiencing the social and political repercussions of the atomic age. Socialism, which represented the highest stage of democratic progress and its most egalitarian and free expression at the start of the century, and which, beginning with the upheaval in Russia, went on to exert considerable pressure on capitalism which was evolving towards a single system, has virtually died though shortness of breath. This of course happened because, like many systems, socialism was rigid, and because it could not open channels within the system to the freedom and equality that are part of its essence, and it failed to carry forward to the people the positive developments in both the economic and the political fields experienced and partly carried forward to people even under capitalism, it brought about its own downfall. Its experience of a type of intense sectarianism also encountered in religions was also a factor here. This of course does not mean that socialism left no positive legacy. The historic role it played in bringing about the social and national institutions that characterise our age and in the emergence of classes and nations enjoying a greater degree of equality cannot be disputed. What capitalism had achieved in only a limited way over several centuries, socialism exceeded in half a century. Its inability to provide a solution to the heavy global crises, in which capitalism played the fundamental role, is not entirely its fault. However, because it was held responsible for finding a solution, it either had to find one or go under. Because it did not find a solution, it went under. This is a development often seen in history. There is no doubt that it will flower again on its roots. Again it is inevitable that, regarding the basic human problems, socialism, i.e. scientific socialism as the expression of the solving of social reality by science, will flower again. It will form the antithesis to the thesis posed by contemporary capitalism with its great inequalities and especially its inability to cope with history, with nature and with many social problems. The socialist experiment, which has left a great experience behind it, will form a synthesis between its achievements and what it has to achieve. Especially in the areas of nature and the environment, women, children and population, history and culture, ethnic and religious minorities and the solution national situations and social imbalances will it be effective. It will achieve this by renewing its theories and combining this with the right practice. It will reach its period of maturity and renew itself by adding to the democracy that led to its downfall everything from the ways in which even capitalism can be used to the aforementioned ethnic and cultural groups, so as to reach its broadest democratic system. Just as capitalism incorporated the achievements of socialism into its own democracy, even allowing the founding of Communist parties and paying more attention to the human rights at the roots of socialism than socialism itself, and thereby outstripping socialism, the new socialism will incorporate all the values of not only capitalism but also all human history. It will face the dangers before humanity and reach its great potential for offering a solution. Those who respond in time to this law of evolution of the social dialectic will enjoy development, while those who do not will only suffer pain and be left under the wreckage of meaningless losses. In the context of the social transformations we are undergoing at an intense rate in our day, we see the application, virtually under laboratory conditions, of some law in some corner of the world every day.
Not to draw a conclusion from this is possible only if one is blind or extremely conservative. Even if change and transformation extend over the entire century in Turkey, which is one of the focal points where these general changes are experienced in an intense manner, it would be true to say that, in the social sense, they have occurred to a greater extent during the last thirty or forty years experienced by our generation. This has involved socialism, the main ideology that had an impact on the period, and right-wing and religious ideologies that were struggling against it. The transfer of socialism to Turkey was conducted in a more eclectic, slavish and schematic manner than that of capitalism. Domestic social thinking was at a low level of development and dogmatic. It was thought that, instead of identifying and analysing social characteristics, it would be sufficient to apply socialism in an schematic manner to achieve progress. Socialists were prey to vapid generalisations and were slipshod in practice. It might be enough to say “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet” to become a Moslem. Such an act might be important and significant in the context of its day, but socialism in Turkey in the 1970s was even more of a mechanical exercise and even more irresponsible. Socialists did not have an approach befitting the seriousness of their ideology. It bore a close resemblance to that “false belief” that believed easily and abandoned its beliefs when to do so suited its interests. In other words, a false faction was in existence. This was a degenerate style that dominated in general. Socialism was also partly just a fashion. In the superstructure, in the adherence to the official ideology, too, the same style obtained. Consequently, not only was the healthy form for social change, that isthe main change needed in the period, not found, but things ended up in chaos. The chance to establish a democratic movement that would have provided the most results historically was lost, and extreme violence caused a reaction on the part of society at large. Inevitably, the classical right and conservative trends gained ground. Once again the law that states “if you can’t pose the right solution, you will go under” applied. The left, which espoused change, was unable to transcend its empty slogans and demagogical stance. The right was incapable of bringing about change. With the army exercising its traditional balancing function, these years were lost in a routine but very painful way along with the loss of many chance of development.
Although the PKK was born amid the whirlpool of these turbulent years, the open wound of Turkey and its all-too-obvious contradictions meant that this organisation did not have much difficulty in grasping the Kurdish Question and partly solving it in a manner that was nearly right. Consequently, it developed rapidly. Contrary to the claims made by some, this was not fundamentally due to violence. It was connected with that, but also with the level of social contradictions. This is like picking a ripe fruit on the principle of “Strike and it’ll drop”. Here the belief of the leader and the fulfilment of the requirements based on certain fundamental truths were enough for a start. It was especially easy to outstrip similar groups, cross official and unofficial barriers and to be striking with the very first actions undertaken by the organisation. Even an amateurish approach was sufficient. Even a decade was too much time to surpass similar groups, the ideologies of the system and feudal barriers. By the time the 1980s were reached, the system had been transcended both feudally on the local level and officially on the general level. It was clear that ideological and political systems and barriers could no longer be a deterrent. This rested on the power of a socialism that was not understood in any depth and of Kurdish consciousness of history and society which were once again poorly examined and superficial. In other words, these were enough for an amateur movement. This is essentially how the development upto the 1980s can be explained. Only the army could stop this development, and indeed that was what happened. There was, however, a partial response to this in the form of the refuge found in the Middle East and the situation was partly transcended. This was how the army’s traditional method of suppression was transcended by the time we arrived at the 1990s. Of course this did not amount to the defeat of the army. It was only a striking proof that the classical method of suppression of the army could be transcended, perhaps for the first time in history.
The response to this by the army and the state was the recognition of the Kurdish problem and the acceptance of a limited solution in official quarters. This was indeed an historic development. In the context of the realities of Turkey it was the ultimate point to arrive at, no matter how much one fought beforehand. The Kurdish reality whose main features as a founding element of the Turkish Republic were neglected, and which was suppressed and frightened into submission following its uprisings, allowed to stay backward and ignorant, and further distorted by the feudal style, had turned into an ugly monster, was recognised. On the founding of a new government, Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel said at Diyarbakir, “We recognise the Kurdish reality”. The same point was made in a more comprehensive manner by President Ozal and became the first item on the agenda for all official and unofficial parties and milieus. This shows that there was a chance of solution. However, everyone was really unprepared and amateurish. The problem was a big one, but approaches to it were superficial. This was true of the PKK as well. A partial ceasefire was a bold move, but the parties did not have the necessary depth and preparation. With the traditional rebellious stance being dominant on the part of the PKK and the traditional suppressive stance being dominant on the part of the state, the chance of an historic solution was missed. Needless to say, opportunist politicians, provocations and the influence of outside powers played no small role here.
In reality, during this period the state was undergoing serious changes. The collapse of the Soviet Union and developments that genuinely affected Turkey in the aftermath of the Gulf War made it vital to find a solution for the Kurdish problem, and the route that would lead to this lay through a belated comprehensive democratisation. Here the PKK put up a resistance. It resisted by excessively repeating itself instead of developing itself. It thought this was the only solution. In reality, from the collapse of the socialist system it should have deduced a democratic solution. It should have seen that the principle of “self-determination of nations” was no longer valid, that scientific-technical developments had undermined the concept of the nation state produced by the developments from the seventeenth century onwards, that a solution based on developing democracy within the existing borders without altering these borders in any way was more realistic. To put it briefly, it should have abandoned its programme dating from the 1970s and embarked on a new programme. It should have analysed Turkey again, taking into account the development the country had undergone both when it was being founded and in the 1990s, and it should have based its programme on these new developments. Socialist systems were collapsing all over the world, the Soviet Union was falling apart, and a blind and lame democracy was being looked to for a solution.
The PKK should have drawn important conclusions from this. Instead of espousing being a separate parts and a separate state, something that did not transcend an ideologically utopian rhetoric; instead of calling for being a separate part of a state, something which, in the context of the fundamental geography of the common motherland, would have been very difficult to realise — and, if realised, could not be maintained and was not necessary either. It should have opted for a democratic society within the same borders, the trend all over the world. It should have clearly seen and shown the free union of Kurds with the Republic. Especially with extreme intermingling, intense assimilation, and half the population being in a different geographical region, the solution to be arrived at and preferred was a deeper democracy. It should have found the language for this and, instead of the violence which got ever more degenerate and led to great pain and losses, should have moved towards a line of action that concentrated political-democratic activity. It should have acted in an expert and responsible manner and ended the war that was steadily getting dirtier. It should have seen that even continuous guerrilla activity against the army could play no other role than eventually arriving at the same solution and should have placed a controlled transformation into a political-legal alternative on its agenda.
After 1993, instead of insisting on guerrilla warfare and repeating this, it should have laid the ground work for this alternative. However much one may blame the cliques in government and the losses suffered by the guerrillas, the PKK should have seen the changes in both the world at large and the state at the start of the 1990s and come up with a response. Although it sensed this and felt the need for it, lack of experience and fear played an important role in preventing it. The PKK was not defeated during this period, but nor did it develop, because it was difficult to advance very far in its existing state under those conditions. This is the PKK’s failure to see, to find a solution and to save itself from repetition. The Vth and VIth Congresses thus ended up becoming congresses of repetition in this sense. It will be seen from this that the PKK is genuinely at a major crossroads and it will either harden its traditional line further and continue its existence with the help of extensive domestic and foreign resources, or it will give up armed struggle on the basis of certain legal assurances, will make the unity of Turkey the basis of its programme and turn itself into an organisation that is based on transforming a better understood Kurdish society through political-legal action and organisation. This is definitely the historical stage that has been arrived at. This transformation, far from being seen as a renegade act or elimination, should be seen as a truly revolutionary transformation.
The alternative, i.e. the failure to achieve a transformation in the approach and nature of the organisation, will lead to extreme conservatism and eventually elimination. Or, like similar organisation, this, too, will descend into a hardline sectarianism. This reality, which is fundamentally experienced within the PKK but not formulated, clearly displays its need for transformation. To achieve a solution it is necessary not only to see the problem but also to prevent repetition as soon as possible, to prevent the loss of force and, without allowing disintegration, to move slowly with a common will from guerrilla warfare to an assurance-backed solution based on a democratic Turkey and towards the political-legal process and its line of action. Contrary to what is thought, this is not connected with the leadership but is a problem and a solution that goes considerably beyond the leadership and has considerable depth. The leadership at most speeds up the process. In many processes the leadership has in fact played a similar role. It is highly important to grasp this particular situation properly. Undoubtedly, it would have been healthier under free conditions. However, correct solutions demand and maintain their validity even if individuals are in captivity or in their graves. What is of defining importance here is the fundamental stage and the correct expressing of it and its need for a solution. Undoubtedly, the position of individuals, and especially, with the PKK, the position of the leadership, plays a defining role. If it has played a fundamental role, the leadership will last for a long time and its ability to offer solutions and its influence and power will continue. This is essentially how we can express the transformation problem within the PKK and its main platform.
How things will develop in practice in the long process before us depends on numerous factors; what we have to do is to foresee things and not allow ourselves to be caught in an unprepared state. At this stage in its history, the PKK should behave in a mature and self-confident manner while setting a new course for itself. It should not fail to see that self-examination and the identification of fundamental errors and mistakes is a necessity for a major organisation and movement, and failure to do this in time betokens, on the contrary, the weakness of an organisation. Some changes finish one off, others create history. To keep walking in the same way, repeating oneself all the time may tire one out, but, like a horse used to turn a wheel drawing water from a well, one will walk in circles and cover no real distance. The loss of creativity in the revolutionary struggle and the conservatism that comes with it must ultimately be transcended. Life will not tolerate those who stand outside it for long. A force that does not take life further turns into an obstacle, and life itself becomes the revolutionary reality and transcends the obstacles in its way. Sectarianism is living life in a twisted way. The PKK has undoubtedly not descended into this. It can comfortably stay on its traditional path and the gains that will accrue from this cannot be despised. However, it is clear that this cannot be achieved through simple confidence and established methods, but through the finding of the solution sooner or later.
Briefly, to reassess principles, the programme and the mode of action — this is as necessary as not to have done so despite the fact nearly a quarter of a century has passed — is dangerous. To achieve progress it is essential to examine with weary eyes a major practical experience, and especially one that was undergone under the most backward social, national and international conditions in the form of a highly unusual rebellion-war. Not to do this will put one under a heavy responsibility before history. It does not matter if some criticise this; what matters is being able to respond to the requirements of the historical moment. Some do not want to see this, others see it but do not want to believe it. But what is correct and new always starts in this way. The picture of the PKK in the indictment will of course not change. A picture can only suffer erosion and become vague. However. the PKK is the free life not only of this nation but of a new humanity. The fact that it gave birth to itself by force does not mean that that is the way it is going to grow up. A child, too, comes into this world through a difficult birth, but then its natural development takes place without any difficulty. This is a law of nature. Qualitative leaps force things, but it is quantitative development that is fundamental. Why should it be wrong to apply this to human life and the life of an organisation as well? If everything ended the way it began or stayed the way it was, there would not only be no development but such a state of affairs would be contrary to the laws of nature as well. Especially if great resistance and force is being experienced in a phenomenon, it will either decay or renew itself and reach a new stage of development.
These dialectical truths indicate that the picture painted of the PKK in the indictment fails to establish a connection with its living reality. This might be sufficient to condemn it, but it will achieve nothing further than making social problems worse. As many examples in history indicate, to convict such a movement that has posed such a danger to the state, has exacted such a heavy toll in its war, has had an effect on so many political developments on a daily basis, has exerted pressure on more than ten governments and rendered them unsuccessful, on the basis of laws which are a long way behind social practice, is an example of great conservatism and will deprive the state of the reform it has to undergo and society of an important opportunity for democratisation. The right thing would have been not only to accuse, not only to point out what is right, but also to show how it could be achieved. The indictment has not been able to make good use of this opportunity, and it fails to transcend a traditional, one-sided and entirely negative condemnation. Both for the Republic and the PKK there is an historic environment and opportunity of conciliation as regards democracy in general and the Kurdish problem that lies at its roots in particular. If the Republic were to act maturely and see that democratisation would not be a loss but a gain and stop insisting, and if the PKK could see that to transform itself it must opt for conciliation with regard to the Republic and historical conciliation can only be achieved in this way, and if it were to take steps in this direction, there would be an enormous leap when the democratisation obtaining in society came together with a democratisation with the same frequency on the part of the Republic. Old laws are undoubtedly a major obstacle to this. New laws, on the other hand, will clear the obstacles, and the obstacles before the laws themselves will be cleared by political will.
In the PKK trial, the indictment and the defence have a chance of winning in a big way only by not dealing in opposites like greater/lesser and less guilty/more guilty and being magnanimous enough to use the wonderfully subtle creativity of politics to meet in this historic valley of conciliation, break the ice between them and end their estrangement. A new synthesis will be born out of the thesis and the antithesis. The State-PKK opposition will lead to the synthesis of a Democratic Republic and will be a victory. Life does not progress without contradictions, and, as stated by many official representatives of the Republic, in this greatest event, rebellion and conflict in its history, the Republic must choose not to strangle but to progress by resolving the contradiction. Nothing can be gained by strangling a baby that has been born in one’s own bosom. But if the baby is allowed to lead its life and treated as one’s own, it will add to one’s strength, and this time round history will not end bitterly but move towards the peace which is demanded by the democratic world at large and has become the greatest need of this society, the great contradiction will have been transcended and the path to strength will lie open. The trial of the PKK in the person of its leader has this potential. If the judges in the court see the deep social reality under this trial, if they look at the history of democracy, and if they assess the laws, which they know very well but which have become an obstacle before society, together with these, they will be able to reach their historic verdict in a more objective manner. If they reach a verdict by considering not legal formalities but the essence of society, if they bear in mind not the present moment but the recent past and the near future, and if they make room for the historic approach that has often been seen in the history of justice, this will be an opportunity for the Republic. The PKK will change from allegedly being a force working to break up the Republic into one of the primary sources of its strength. The judges must be able to see this. It is an historic duty not to turn into a convict and opponent of the Republic a movement that has lost nearly twenty-five thousand of its members, has more than ten thousand members in prison, and has received one and a half million votes in the last elections. Even if it has its faults and errors, what is going on is, as is often officially expressed at middle levels, a war. Every war is followed by a peace, and if the state opens the door to peace, albeit in a limited way, it will be seen that the PKK is strong enough to treat the Republic with the respect it deserves. Otherwise, both sides will lose, our enemies will win, suffering will increase, and history will be the loser. What is expected from this trial is a verdict that will enable history to win sooner or later.
In conclusion, the PKK must bear in mind the great changes of the last quarter of a century and especially the actual change in the democratic structure of the Republic brought about by the Kurdish Question, and also bear in mind the legal system that is under pressure, and make in its programme and principles the changes that are expected from it and are rendered necessary in numerous ways by these changes. It should develop a political programme based on the concepts of a democratic Republic and a common country, giving up the demands of the utopian period which are no longer the only form freedom can take and, in any case, no longer work and have been abandoned, and opting instead for the notion of free union; and it should render this programme official at a conference as soon as possible. Both sides can transcend the impasse only in this way. At a time when it is clear that the Republic has entered into a period of great democratisation as regards its social and ideological foundations, the PKK must abandon its programme influenced to a large extent by the socialist systems of the 1970s and a dogmatic approach to the reality of Kurdish-Turkish relations, and reach a programme of democratic politics in Turkey as a whole and, on a deeper and more detailed level, in Kurdish society itself. This will open the path to political-legal development and make it possible to transcend the impasse.
It is clear that in many countries problems, which in some cases had continued for centuries, have been solved by a softening of approach of this type, and the European democratic system is full of examples of this process. To insist on sticking to old ways is to insist on maintaining the impasse. Principles and programmes have a value if they exist to take life further. If they are making life difficult, changing them in keeping with concrete realities does not betoken a lack of belief or self-denial, but is a necessity. For such a great struggle not to make the necessary changes in its principles and programme is conservatism and dogmatism. Life is always on the side of principles and programmes that take it further. Whoever puts up a resistance against this will lose.
** The PKK’s Action Structure
The Chief Prosecutor’s Office states that they cannot present the entire reality as regards the PKK’s action structure and, by selecting some acts, tries to make the PKK responsible for the cruel side of the rebellion and to strengthen the accusation of terrorism. However, from the start to this present day many top civilian and military officials have referred to the phenomenon as a rebellion and indeed the 28<sup>th</sup> rebellion, have spoken of it in veiled terms as a guerrilla war or, more scientifically, a war of medium or “low intensity”; and this is in fact the truth. Many books have been written on this subject and it has been explained scientifically. Although the phenomenon has many features that are unique to it, it is the common view of all leading experts that, of the many semi-rebellions and guerrilla wars, this is the most important one in the last quarter of the century. It is known that, the view it expresses for propaganda purposes notwithstanding, this is also the real view of the General Staff.
Consequently, if we abandon the language of propaganda and look at the action structure objectively, it is clear that a conflict involving a great deal of suffering and heavy losses on both sides, has claimed the lives of 5,000 members of the security forces according to the official figure, and of 20,000 members of the PKK, along with the 15,000 civilians killed on top of this, amounting to combined death toll of 40,000, has led to more than 3,000 villages being evacuated and caused more than 3 million people to be displaced, has involved the use of all types of aircraft, heavy artillery and tanks, and has at times led to 40 or 50 thousand army personnel being involved in operations lasting weeks, cannot simply be called a war against terrorism. It can only be scientifically designated as war. In terms of the time it has taken, too, it is a comprehensive war that has lasted for 15 years. A conflict such as this of course has not only extremely important historical and social grounds but also political goals. The two sides express this every day through their propaganda. Consequently, the narrow label of “terrorism” is hardly adequate to describe the phenomenon. To define it as free war or rebellion would not only be more scientific but would also be the way to move towards the best solution. There have been many similar and different wars in history, but all of them have always ended with the restoration of peace and, in cases where this was unilateral peace, there have been various agreements until the restoration of a mutually agreed peace. They have given rise to very important social and political consequences leading to both development and regression. The most important question that needs to be asked here is what should be the best solution or best type of peace for this war. With this style of war the PKK has brought about a change in the Kurdish revolutionary tradition and shown that, rather than relying on a particular tribe or tribal leader or this or that foreign power in the traditional way, it can continue to exist on the basis of its own resources. However, it has become clear that the political formation expressed by the PPK as the ultimate goal of its programme is neither realistic nor necessary. Meanwhile, the state has seen that, in the conditions under which the war arose, it is pointless to deny the Kurdish reality, language and culture and, acknowledging this de facto and indeed de jure, has arrived at the point of agreeing to a solution leading to democratic development.
The reality of the 1990s showed that, following the perception of these truths, the war was moving towards peace. A meaningful peace was on the agenda in those years. It is extremely sad that it has not happened. If another decade passes, the point that is arrived at will still be the peace demanded by these actual conditions. The coming of the peace in conditions where society is becoming democratic and the state is responding to this positively is also the expression of an historic moment, and for the first time there is a chance that democratic conciliation will lead to this last rebellion being indeed the very last rebellion. To find the legal language for this is the fundamental problem of our age. Without being emotional and without seeing either the Republic or the PKK as an obstacle, the conflict must be viewed as a very sad one born of injustice and negligence between brothers, and a joint, brotherly move must be made towards the main reality, a peace under the democratic umbrella of the Republic. Serious accusations and demands for capitulation or a fight until the last member is killed can only increase suffering.
In brief, to view the action structure in this way would be both more scientific and lead to an approach that wins and develops the future. If this is not done, the foundations of new rebellions will be laid as was done in the past. The most fundamental conclusion to be drawn from the dates of wars, the dates of Kurdish uprisings, should be that we must find a way of establishing a social foundation that will prevent such wars in the future and will not even give rise to isolated actions. Undoubtedly, this social foundation and the solutions related to it, can only be found through peace, the only valid democratic path. If society is presented with the democratic mode of expression, if this is made convincing through democratic channels and democratic action, and if the state is tolerant towards all this, the necessity for rebellion and action will disappear. As there is now a strong chance of solving the Kurdish Question, the significance of this war should be that it has demonstrated that it need not occur again; this last rebellion should be treated as indeed the last rebellion in history, and this should also be the legal interpretation of, and the legal verdict, on the matter.
** The Biggest Problem in the History of the Republic Must be Solved Democratically
The most regrettable aspect of the Chief Prosecutor’s indictment is its refusal to refer by name to the Kurds who have been the biggest problem in the history of the Republic, are recognised as such by all leading politicians and military figures, and are accepted today as founding members of the Republic. This is a very backward approach based on denial and could have dangerous consequences. It would therefore be useful to indicate here through extensive quotation how the Kurds were viewed by Atatürk during the period of the founding of the Republic. To agree at least on these words by Atatürk would keep the opportunity for a solution on a reasonable level for everyone. These are the words that clearly express that Kurds were one of the pillars of the Republic that was the outcome of the victory in the struggle for national liberation. The following are Atatürk’s instructions of June 1920 to Nihat Pasha, the commander at El Cezire, laying the foundations of Atatürk’s policy with respect to the Kurds and Kurdistan:
“The Instructions of the Council of Ministers of the Grand Parliament of Turkey to the Commander of the El Cezire Front Regarding Kurdistan
1- It is a part of our domestic policy that throughout the country local administrations should be set up in which the masses are directly involved and influential. In Kurdish areas the setting up of a local administration throughout is necessary not only for our domestic policy but also our foreign policy.
2- The self-determination of nations is a principle accepted throughout the world. We, too, have accepted this principle. It is assumed that by now the Kurds have made their preparations for local administration, and their leaders and prominent personalities have been won over to our side for this cause, and when the time comes for them to express their wish, they will indicate that they are in charge of their own destiny and want to live under the will of the Turkish Parliament. It is up to the Commander of the El Cezire Front to see that all the work in Kurdistan is directed at the policy based on this goal.
3- General principles have been accepted such as driving the enmity between the Kurds and the French and especially between the Kurds and the British along the Iraqi border to a level where it cannot be resolved through armed conflicting, preventing any alliance between the Kurds and foreigners, explaining the reasons for setting up local administrations throughout the country and thus making sure they are genuinely won over to our side, and giving Kurdish chiefs civilian and military posts.”
** Mustafa Kemal, Leader of the Grand Parliament of Turkey
In this set of instructions, the principal points of which are quoted above, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk recognises Kurds and Kurdistan at the very start of the national war for liberation, and, because the Republic was not then yet in existence and the Grand Parliament of Turkey existed instead, says they should rule themselves under the Parliament. This is the very phenomenon of local administration that is still being asked for. It is a kind of democratic autonomy. The indictment states that Kurds are not recognised and this is what makes the problem worse. The solution will come through recognition. And now let us look at Atatürk’s approach to the matter after the founding of the Republic. This is very similar to his initial approach and is more analytical. It is to be found in his answer to the question posed by Ahmet Emin Yalman at the Izmir Press Conference, and this answer was repeated at Eskisehir. This is what M. K. Atatürk says:
“The Kurdish question cannot be raised because of the interests of local Turks. Because, as you know, the Kurds within our national borders are settled in such a way that only in a very few areas there is a concentration of Kurds. Elsewhere, they are dispersed throughout the Turkish population and this has led to the development of such a border that if one wanted to draw a border separating the Kurds, one would have to devastate Turkey. There would have to be a border that went as far as, say, Erzurum, Erzincan, Sivas or Harput. Indeed, one must not forget the Kurdish tribes in the deserts of Konya. Therefore, instead of imagining a separate Kurdish nation, it is better to abide by our Constitution, under which a kind of local autonomy will in any case form. This means that in those provinces with a Kurdish population they will enjoy autonomy. Furthermore, as far as the Turks are concerned, it is necessary to give voice to their existence as well. If this is not done, it is only to be expected that they will regard this as a problem. The Grand Parliament of Turkey consists of both Kurdish and Turkish deputies, and the Kurds and the Turks, these two elements have united their interests and destinies. It would not be right to attempt to draw a border between them.”
It is possible to find many similar passages. This can never be denied. However, when the problem developed in a dangerous way in the wake of subsequent rebellions, this approach was abandoned. What must always be borne in mind are the facts that Kurds and Turks are intermingled, their destinies are united, and drawing a border separating them would lead to ruin. But a solution was not developed. There is no denial here, but the complexity of the problem, the internal relations with the sultanate and the caliphate and the external ones with Britain led to suspicion, and the opportunity of finding a positive solution was lost. When the Kurds failed to unite within the Republic, mainly because of ideological reasons and their leaders, separatism brought about repression. The spirit that had obtained at the beginning was damaged. Estrangement and suspicion developed between the Kurds and the Turks, two elements which could not in fact do without one another. The possibility of the exploitation of the problem by foreign powers made it even more insoluble. That was the way the period ended, but the problem was to keep coming up.
It is clear that Kurds participated as founding members in the national struggle for liberation and the founding of the Republic and they are not together with Turks, it will be as if the Turkish nation has lost a foot and become lame. This has been proven again and again at all the important points in Turkish history, at the battles of Malazgirt and Caldiran. The united destiny of the two peoples and the brotherhood between them is the outcome of this history. The history or rebellion should not allow us to forget this. In any case, the rebellions were mainly a struggle for dominance between the central authority and Kurdish feudal lords. It is well known that the latter were not really acting out of nationalist fervour but were interested in achieving local dominance for their tribe and furthering its interests. It is also a historical fact that they moved over to the side of whoever supported these interests. The Kurdish problem is encountered mainly as a tribal problem, i.e. a problem born of a culturally and socio-economically backward social structure. Especially in the course of the history of the Republic, the narrowly nationalistic and separatist unscientific approach adopted by both sides has raised the problem to dangerous levels and made a solution difficult.
There are in fact approaches that almost amount to a solution during the period of the national struggle for liberation and the founding of the Republic. As indicated by the passages quoted above, the approaches adopted by Atatürk during the period prove this, as do the waging of the national struggle for liberation and the founding of the Republic together on the basis of a common war and a common country. A further proof is the way deputies are allowed to wear their national costumes and use their national language in the Grand Parliament of Turkey. Even the Kocgiri rebellion ended with an amnesty and conciliation during this period. A hardline approach did not find favour in the Grand Parliament. This is very evident in the Nurettin Pasha incident. If this had been continued, the problem would not have got worse in that period, would not have weakened the Republic, and would not have had such a heavy cost. Here the main problem consists of establishing links with the sultanate and the caliphate before the Republic has really reached the East, the Kurds and all of Turkey. There is also the refusal to give up local authority. These are the consequences of the rebellions in this period, and they led to conflict and suppression. The conclusion that must be drawn from this is not that the existence of problems should be denied but that the correct solution must be found for them. And the correct solution is that democratisation which, while not much in evidence between the two world wars, has been moving forward at a great rate since the Second World War. In this sense, Turkey’s great problem is her inability to wage a successful war for democracy and to develop democratic standards. The reason why, despite many developments, both capitalist and socialist authoritarian and totalitarian regimes have collapsed is that they were structures out of keeping with this development. In our day all rigid systems are experiencing a major collapse and transformation in their superstructures and moving towards a democratic evolution. All national, cultural, ethnic, religious, linguistic and indeed regional problems are being solved by granting and applying the broadest democratic standards. Every day we see examples of this all over the world. From Indonesia to the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans, Africa and South America the democratic method is looked to for the solution of all general social problems which have various characteristics. It is useful to dwell further on a few aspects of the matter. The first of these is the principle of national self-determination. This principle was applied mainly in the nineteenth century and the greater part of the twentieth century. It was based on the idea of setting up a nation state. The ideology it subscribed to was nationalism. The method it employed was mainly armed struggle and national wars of liberation. It was seen that it had a limited application, but led to great bloodshed and its extreme nationalism engendered long-lasting enmities. This approach which kept the world in a state of tension is still influential, is one whose unhealthy aspects have largely come to light in our day. The struggle that is currently going on in the Balkans clearly shows what a diseased approach this is. The reasons for this are of course its failure to grasp social reality, its narrowly nationalistic approach, and its attempt to find a solution by forcing society and a land where different peoples are intermingled. Naturally this has consequences that amount to savagery. There are many examples of this in history. Many a group or nation choosing to follow this path has, even where triumphant, failed to shed its backwardness and indeed failed to rid itself of many problems born of this inheritance. Because of the approach adopted, the national problem has given rise to even bigger problems every time an attempt was made to solve it. An example of this in history is the religious and sectarian wars in the Middle Ages, the effects of which can still be seen from time to time. Even though the nationalist approach emerged claiming to be a solution to the problems caused by the religious approach, it failed to refrain from following the same methods and made things still more difficult. Although there might be differences between old religious ideologies and the extreme nationalism and its various right and left-wing forms that followed, they are in fact movements that are quite similar and have influenced each other. By the time the twentieth century was reached they had shown that they were evenly matched in terms of bloodshed and savagery. The general democratic theory and practice has been highly successful in dealing with problems created by both extreme religious and extreme nationalist approaches, and countries and societies employing them have triumphed. As we approach the end of the twentieth century, victory belongs to a democracy that is becoming increasingly mature. Indeed the societies that employ this system with conviction and in a controlled knowledgeable manner are the most advanced societies in the world. Their states are the states whose power is acknowledged in the world. This is clear when one looks at the way the US and Great Britain lead and shape the world.
The power of the democratic system undoubtedly rests above all on its scientific grasp of social reality, its ability to provide correct definitions for the moral and philosophical levels and the substructures below these, and the political and legal levels, and to offer a solution which, without employing labels like “progressive” and “regressive” answers the needs of the social forces of the time and their demand for equality and freedom. There is neither denial nor an attempt to bring about a utopia by force. There is no attempt to impose the beliefs and goals, the utopias of a century ago or a century hence. As it presents solutions both in principle and in practice and proves its ability to solve problems, the democratic level of society becomes its level of solution. By forcing its state and its moral values to become democratic it demonstrates that it has a rich variety of solutions at its disposal. What is very important here is the power to offer a practical solution to every problem. What is even more important is that it has the least recourse to violence and that, even when following such a course, it immediately demonstrates its power to initiate a peaceful method.
There are of course historic reasons for all this as well. To put it in very general terms, in both religious wars and wars arising as national and social wars or in revolutions and counter-revolutions, there has been massive bloodshed and there are no major problems left that can be solved through bloodshed or at least there are very few. In general, the path followed by democracy is that of evolution and peace. This is a historical fact. Democracy moves forward on the legacy of suffering left over from the recent and distant past. Its claim is that there have been enough revolutions and counter-revolutions and it is interested in a method that offers more solutions and offers more development and could be termed more civilised, and it is interested in the social, political and philosophical standards associated with this. This is the claim of democracy, especially as it has become mature in the twentieth century, and it has definitely been verified. The number and magnitude of the problems brought about by scientific-technological development is of course also an important factor. If we view each problem as a revolution and an instance of violence, if we bear in mind that this technology has the power to wipe mankind off the face of the earth, if we consider in particular the developments in nuclear technology and all the other weapons, this violence or the old concepts of revolution and counter-revolution have the potential to spell the end of not just mankind but the entire planet.
This scientific-technological development has undoubtedly also played an important role in the development of democracy. Here the positive aspect is more dominant. Every ideology and mode of belief can, if true, implement itself by using the resources of technology and above all those of the media without having to resort to violence. In other words, violence has become unnecessary. In fact things have got to the point where violence cannot be afforded. The rich variety of institutions and practices the democratic system offers is built on this social and scientific-technological development, and whatever problem it tackles, it offers a certain solution. It itself is the solution. To go through the examples, the solution to religious wars is secularism. Here the standard and the implementation involve taking the approach that everyone is free to follow their religious beliefs and democratic criteria will apply to all of them. Democracy offers definite freedom of belief and this is the antidote to religious wars. Again the same applies to the fields of thought and ideology. There is freedom of thought and conviction. It is allowed to work as one wants and implement one’s beliefs as long as one does not infringe the rights of others in this respect. This also applies to political ideas and their expression in the form of parties. As long as it adheres to the democratic system and its state structure, every party can offer a solution without resorting to violence. There is no question here of either imposing a religion by force or breaking and shattering the structure of the state. Religion, thought and the parties based on them know to meet the standards of the democratic system of the state because they are based on them. If they don’t know how to do this, then democracy gets the right to defend itself. It is clear here that regardless of the social group they are based on (which might be a nation or an ethnic or religious group), beliefs, ideas and the parties through which they are expressed cannot, in the name of these beliefs and ideas, force the limits on which the state is based. There is no need for this, because it will render the problem they claim to be solving even worse. Consequently, there is no need for it, and, in any case, there are solutions within the system. These are the democratic rights of those groups. They are their freedoms of belief and thought. They are the parties. They are all types of coalitions. In the area of language and culture, the democratic solution is even more striking. This is the area where the greatest successes have been achieved. Because the intermingling of language and culture, these values that many national groups have assimilated together for centuries, do not want to separate and get weak and monotonous, but prefer to stay together to get enriched and achieve variety, strength and life. And the school and laboratory for this is democracy and its implementation with conviction. Democracy is almost a garden of language and culture. The most developed and powerful principles of our day once again express this clearly. All European countries and North America are clear proofs of it. The attempt to suppress new religious, linguistic, cultural, intellectual and political developments during past centuries was the cause of all major wars, and resistance against suppression gave to wars which could be seen as understandable. Particularly in European countries this experience led to the development of a determined democracy in the wake of all these wars and led to the supremacy of the West. Western civilisation can, in this sense, be termed democratic civilisation. The democratic system is at least as important as scientific and technological superiority. Feeding off each other, they both became strong and achieved the status of world civilisation.
Many other regions in the world remained backward and, in accompanying development, their political systems remained undemocratic. The Middle East is one of the most important of these regions. The religious wars it has experienced from the Middle Ages to the present have given society its dominant shape, and its being the birthplace of three major religions has led to its experiencing these contradictions in a major way. The religions lost the progressive aspects they had in their early stages and, as well as proving an obstacle to a scientific approach, failed to develop democratic standards and a democratic tradition. Increasing feudalism created an even more conservative environment and even the democratic elements that are characteristic of tribalism were eroded and a suitable basis was created for all kinds of democratic rule. Religious and sectarian wars did not even lead to a reform to the extent that was achieved in the West. Parochialism increased and this virtually put an end to the struggle of individuals and society for democracy. In particular thought and political freedom were almost forgotten.
Although the Republic of Turkey, founded in a revolutionary manner on the basis of national liberation on the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, was the first and most important move in this context, it failed to display a powerful trend towards democracy because of the internal rebellions and foreign threats during its initial years, and it achieved a limited development in the areas of thought and new social structures. Until the 1950s there was only a move ment from the autocratic style of government to a limited oligarchy under the influence of worldwide democratic developments. The coup of 27 May, the struggle between the right and the left in the 1970s, the coups of 12 March and 12 September followed. However, again with democracy achieving world-wide domination, it became necessary to take on the character of a Democratic Republic both for this reason and in the face of intense internal conflicts and socio-economic development. All indications show that the Republic is undergoing rapid democratisation in both its social standards and its ideological values, and it has arrived at a stage where this will no longer be prevented in any way.
With this long introduction we have tried to establish a framework as to how all problems should henceforth be solved under the democratic system. We have to concentrate in detail on how all problems pertaining to social groups, including the religious problem and the Kurdish problem, which gives rise to the greatest fears, can be solved within this framework. If problems have grown this is not only because the system has not established this framework but also because those with problems needing a solution have not put such a framework on their agenda. It would have been possible in the 1990s to reach this framework which should have been put in place in the 1960s and 1970s and represented in a consistent way. To try not to miss such an opportunity again in the 2000s and to make use of it should almost be the destiny of all democratic forces after the great experience they have been through. It is clear that the trial of the PKK and myself will play a most important role in this respect. Before entering into the subject of the general democratic system and the problems regarding its implementation in Turkey, in order to render these judgements easier to understand it would be useful to provide a summary of the European experience involving a great deal of putting things into practice. I consider it important to quote many passages from Leslie Lipson’s book Democratic Civilisation, which I have concentrated on before in my defence, and which, despite having been published in the 1960s, I feel is still relevant as far as Turkey is concerned. This study is not only scientific, but its almost triumphal vindication in our day makes it even more valuable. The example I have chosen is multi-sectarian, multi-lingual, multi-cultural Switzerland which also forms the core of Europe. This is the historic lesson they have derived from centuries of sectarian struggle: “When they were mutually exhausted, when none of the parties managed to eliminate its opponent, and when they realised that if they did not reunite, their confederation would fall apart, the Swiss realised the value of tolerance. Instead of killing and getting killed, they agreed to live and let live. Thus the tolerance of variety became the foundation of unity and democracy developed as an agreement concerning the mutual co-existence of between different entities.” The development regarding the linguistic divisions in Switzerland and the way in which this became the strength of the union is even more striking.
“Thus linguistic differences are added to a society already fragmented through the divisions within Christianity. It can be said in favour of the German majority — and they are a substantial majority — that they displayed an intelligent RESPECT towards the sensibilities of the citizens and made many important CONCESSIONS in the area of language. In the Constitution of 1848 French, Italian and German are recognised as national languages with equal validity for purposes of official use. However, the Swiss went even further. In the canton of Grison in the mountainous region in the southeast of the country lives a minority of some fifty thousand people who speak Romansch, a language which could roughly be described as a sort of Germanised Italian. This group wanted to raise their language from the status of a dialect to that of independent language and thus to be recognised as the fourth official language. In a referendum in 1938 this was accepted by a majority of ten to one. This is a striking example of the respect displayed by the majority towards the sensibilities of a minority.” It is then said:
“In contemporary Switzerland the problem of uniting a linguistically fragmented society and then governing it democratically may be deemed to have been solved. However, this should not be taken to mean that being multi-lingual does not entail any difficulties or complexities. On the contrary, I wish to say that in Switzerland the advantages of variety balance and indeed exceed its disadvantages. The Swiss have contributed to the ideals of democracy by using democratic techniques and granting each social group the right to determine its own future. It is necessary to ponder a little the principles and practices that led to this outcome. First of all, the Swiss force themselves to learn at least a second language. It is compulsory to learn German in French, Italian and Romansch-speaking areas and a Romance language in German-speaking areas. A well-educated Swiss speaks at least three languages.
“This linguistic variety establishes a special relation both between the Swiss and neighbouring countries and among the Swiss themselves. Through the languages they speak they share in the three great European cultures based on French, German and Italian. It is extremely natural that Italian Switzerland should feel a certain attachment to Italy, French Switzerland should hanker after Paris, and German Switzerland should have affinities with Germany and Austria. Consequently, the centrifugal effects of language bring the Swiss closer to their neighbours and prevent parochialism and isolation. Of all the nations in Europe the Swiss are the most European. At the same time, however, they are Swiss. And they are so in the most patriotic way. They are proud of their political independence from their neighbours and thankful for the peace and prosperity they enjoy. Swiss from all groups need the others in order to protect their identity. They have managed to turn their difference into a way of strengthening one another.
“The mutual effects of these contrasts are displayed in striking ways. It is impossible to travel in Switzerland without becoming aware of the richness born of the linguistic variety. Compared to other countries, this is a small country with a small population. It is not, however, a country with a monotonous standards and limited characteristics.
“The roots of the Swiss state, the success in creating a quite harmonious democracy despite independence and sharp differences, represents a political victory. When one looks at the condition of the Swiss, the important differences within the country and the pressures from without, it appears miraculous that they were able to create Switzerland, stay united and evolve as a democracy. Furthermore, as their country is an exception to many a generalisation, it presents an extraordinary subject of study to political scientists. Switzerland does not just confirm the rule, it amends universally held beliefs.
“In conclusion, the experience of the Swiss in the field of language and culture can be summed up by a paradox. Linguistic variety, rather than weakening their union, has strengthened it, and their tolerance of this variety is both the cause and the outcome of their democracy.” (Democratic Civilisation, pp. 125–128)
These examples offer a striking demonstration of the way linguistic and cultural differences are strengthened in a state of independence under democracy and end up being both its cause and outcome. There are doubtless many lessons to be drawn in terms of Turkey, too, becoming a mosaic of languages and cultures. The lessons to be drawn are striking indeed when one bears in mind that the Kurdish problem can ultimately be reduced to a problem of language and culture.
Let me quote another passage, this time concerning the meaning of a democratic constitution. This, too, is a subject that has a current relevance for Turkey.
“The first precondition for a democratic constitution is that everyone subject to the state should be equal as citizens and have an equal share in controlling the election of officials. What this means is that a democratic constitution will not distinguish between citizens and subjects, treating one as first and the other as second-class citizens. Within the context of fundamental rights and responsibilities, it will not distinguish between citizens on the basis of race, faith, language, sex, family or wealth. In a democracy everyone will be equal as regards these fundamental rights. The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that perhaps who are knowingly excluded or relegated to a secondary level by a constitution cannot be represented by it. To the extent such a group exists, the constitution is not democratic. If such groups oppose the constitution and refuse to be bound by it, they will be morally and politically in the right because the constitution has rejected them. Because of this, democracy cannot be implemented, through a constitution or any other means, among groups which reject each other’s natural human existence or the common character they share. A democratic constitution must first off all contain a unity accepted by everyone.” (Democratic Civilisation, p.348)
Another example is provided by Britain. It has the reputation of having the best applied constitution in the world. It is also the foremost country for solving problems within democracy without resorting to violence. It is striking how this state of affairs was arrived at.
“Twentieth-century Britons can have their small arguments in security, because the English and the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish, Protestants and Catholics, aristocrats and commoners have committed their acts of genocide and exploitation and murder in former times and are done with them. The peace of today is the fruit of the crises of yesterday.”
It is clear here what a perfect constitutional democracy they have managed to extract from the multi-faceted quarrels of the century. Their greatest virtue is the creation of a democratic system. The language of democracy is evolution and the British are experts at this.
Another important passage concerns the re-examination of principles and programmes after their implementation in this period.
“But, if principles are, as is natural, established before programmes, it is a fact that they have to be looked at again after programmes are developed. Ideals might and should be used to start a movement. However, as experience broadens, it might be necessary to re-formulate ideals in the light of what is possible. Consequently, there must be a constant exchange between political implementation and the philosophy behind it. Because constantly applied programmes change the population, they have an effect on society and politics. Goals which were exciting for grandfathers become meaningless nursery rhymes for their grandchildren. It is necessary to tailor abstract ideals to changing specific conditions.”
This makes it very clear how, in democracies, in specific circumstances or where principles are not compatible with practice, political organisations must adapt their principles and programmes and the state must adapt its constitution. It is also clear that principles and programmes which remain incompatible with practice for a long time can have no value. What must be gathered from the long passages quoted is that, in the words of a saying that has become famous in Turkey, “In democracies solutions are endless”. However, it is clear that practice has not altogether kept up with this saying. When we put the question of what stage we are at in the process of democratisation and what problems we are faced with on the agenda with conviction and determination, it will be seen that we have the opportunity for a great solution.
It is clear that European countries on the whole solved their most important national, linguistic and religious problems at the start of the twentieth century and set up their present strong democracies, and that this regime is mainly responsible for their extensive development and superiority. Europeanisation in this sense was a goal in the first years of the Republic. It is clear that Atatürk’s desire “to reach and even exceed the level of contemporary civilisation” and his saying “We set up the Republic; you will take it further” can become realities only through the democratisation of the Republic. The Republic itself, the Fethi Okyar cabinet with liberal leanings in the first years of the Republic, the Free Party experiment are expressions of Atatürk’s yearning for democracy. It is clear from his having seen two major forms of government of his day, the Nazi totalitarianism of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet dictatorship, and said, “These systems shall collapse”, that the superiority of democracy was perceived even in those days, but could not be put into practice. The flag of democracy waved by the Democratic Party after the Second World War was for show only and it failed to achieve anything more than leading to an oligarchy. Since the fifties Turkey has constantly spoken of a western-style democracy, but she has not applied it. This has brought about heavy conflicts between the right and the left and three major military coups. The fact that the political environment is constantly filled with this violence and is tense as a result proves that democracy has not developed. The fact that the effects of this are still being experienced today is the most relevant subject of our time.
*********
As for the regions with a concentration of Kurds, it is clear, that whatever one calls it, a rebellion and great suffering and violence are being experienced in these areas and that there are serious economic and social problems behind this. Many officials and government institutions frequently state this verbally and write it into their reports. However, it is clear that a democratic upsurge is also taking place. More than twenty parties representing ever shade of opinion and social group have entered the last elections and everyone could vote. This is no small development from the point of view of democratisation. It is equally clear that democracy is not compatible with violence and only the peaceful solution of all problems that lead to violence is compatible with democracy. It is therefore the case that the stage we are at and both the religious and ethno-cultural problems that underlie it demonstrate that we are face to face with democratisation, and that progress is synonymous with the solving of these problems by democratic means. It is important to see it very clearly that, in the course of the two hundred years since the toppling of Selim III at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the conclusion of the “Treaty of Agreement” with leading figures, that Turkey has lived through every kind of violence, revolution, counter-revolution and coup, and that it is now clear that violence is not a solution but an obstacle which indeed repeats itself to excess.
I believe this is the most fundamental subject on which there is a consensus amongst all groups in Turkey. No one believes problems can be solved through violence. This is proven also by the historic stage we are going through, which appears to have drawn its greatest lesson from history and, that despite its great capacity for violence, uses this capacity to direct a creative contemporary democracy instead, and has clearly been run by National Security Council concepts since the mid 1990s. The army does not stage a coup. The army is more sensitive than the most seemingly democratic parties. It bears in mind standards of democracy. In our day, when the relationship between the army and democracy is under study, the fact that the army has taken upon itself to be the protector of democratic norms, at a time when everyone wants more democracy for themselves, is of course connected with the security of the country. However, the army’s ability to perceive that even this security for which it is responsible is connected with democracy, is a high-minded approach worthy of respect. In this respect, too, this is an historic stage in democracy. It is clear that a solution is being looked for on the basis that in a democracy solutions are endless. If this had not been comprehended, there would have been a coup and nothing and no one would have been able to stop it. Today the army is not a threat to democracy, but on the contrary a force that guarantees that democracy will move on to the next stage in a healthy manner and continue working. Why is this so? It is so because there is no solution left to the problems other than words and action closely connected with the essence of democracy. It is so because violence can no longer solve problems but instead makes them worse, and solutions must henceforth come from the internal creativity of the democratic system. It is so because democracy has stopped being simply a need for Turkey and become inescapable. I feel the need to ask that it should be recalled as a historical fact that, since 1996, I have approved of this role played by the army with care, and said even back then that we had no option but to help them, and that I have increasingly sought a solution in this direction by instigating unilateral but unsuccessful attempts at a cease-fire.
The fact that more or less all other important political, economic and civilian institutions are, even if they do not explicitly say so, engaged in a great search for democracy, and there is no group which does not want a meaningful democracy, also serves to demonstrate the historic character of this epoch. It is possible to see this in many reports, conferences, discussion panels. The virtual bombardment in this respect in many media organisations also shows this is a historic period and its historic nature lies in its democratic nature. However, it is also the case that from the uppermost levels of government to ordinary citizens everyone is agreed that what is being implemented is not real democracy. Of the heads of fundamental state institutions, those of the Constitutional Court and the State Council nowadays speak of the need to remove the obstacles — starting with the bans against language, thought and political parties — in the way of democratic standards in the speeches they give on the anniversary of the founding of these institutions. There are even problems with swearing-in in Parliament. The position of the fundamental institutions of the state with respect to democracy demonstrate the sensitivity and historic importance of the epoch. The following passages are important as a summary of experiences elsewhere in the world which show how democracy can provide a solution to conflicts which have reached such a scale:
“However, conflict has the nature of imposing certain limits. If it is not controlled, it can be devastating enough to destroy itself. Unless we manage to limit our impulse to destroy, we cannot live as civilised beings. Consequently, the need arises to institutionalise our conflicts and to find methodical assurances for them. Furthermore, while discussing what ideals we have to reach in the future, we have to conduct our present lives within an orderly framework. Just as the conflicts of today will lead to the ORDER that will exist tomorrow, the present ORDER is the outcome of conflicts in the past. For society to remain in existence, its administration must be organised in a way that comprehends citizens, rules, an administrative apparatus, rights and persons with authority. In other words, there must be a state. However, again for this society to adapt to change and evolve, political discussion must, within the state, be able to find a way of responding to change and thereby bringing reality closer to ideals. Institutions which work well and continue to exist are those which establish a balance between being open to changes and protecting themselves. If this balance is not established, the apparatus of administration will find itself in conflict with the forces that evolve within the political process. Consequently, there is a tension between politics and the state. The dynamic qualities of politics push against the static nature of the state. Politics has the nature of being fluid. It is like a sea where forces that are difficult to govern and check are tossing about. In contrast, the state has a certain structure. It seeks unity and strength; its standards are law and order and authority. Just as the sea eternally batters the land, the waves of politics keep battering the state. Their point of contact is the government. This meeting is like a metaphysical riddle about an irresistible force lifting an immovable rock. Indeed, this is the sort of thing that happens in moments of political uprising such as a revolution. Consequently, a system needs to be established that will remove a TENSION of this kind. This system is DEMOCRACY. Among forms of government democracy is UNIQUE in its nature and its method of approaching these problems. From the point of view its goals it is preventive to some extent. It prevents conflicts between interests, groups and individuals from becoming destructive. However, to a larger extent, it is CONSTRUCTIVE. By bringing together the political energies of different groups it tries to serve the public good. DEMOCRACY tries to establish a relationship in which politics can be creative and the state can be sensitive. The goal of democracy is the render the rock moveable and the force resistible.” (Democratic Civilisation, p.235)
The point I really wish to emphasise here is that democracy acts as a real medicine in periods when the political environment is tense and is shaken from time to time by uprisings and rebellions. I wish to emphasise that, as well as preventing extreme moves on the parts of interests, democracy allows their justified aspects to be realised through state institutions. I wish to emphasise that it transcends tension and conflict with a wonderful balance. That it has ideal governments which, thanks to the suitability of democratic state institutions for such a purpose, can offer a solution without allowing different kinds of politics and the forces behind these to come into conflict. Here every problem is balanced through a state, i.e. a government, that has been rendered sensitive through democracy, without resorting to violence, and indeed problems are made to serve the public good in the best possible way. Tensions and the forces and conflicts behind these, which lead to devastation and massacres under other regimes, are rendered beneficial to all under democracy. This is where we see the immense creativity of democracy. This also shows where the superiority of western societies really comes from. Those who cannot transform their destructive energy into constructiveness — and what will achieve such a transformation is democratic standards — will of course lose in a big way, and those who can do so will win. Turkey’s losses have been enormous during the last half century because of her inability to transform the negative aspects of political tension and violence and the energy contained therein into something beneficial to individuals and groups. As well as losing a generation, resources of unlimited material and moral value have been lost. There has been infinite suffering. It is impossible not to regret this in a big way when one considers all that could have been won instead if the democratic system had been agreed on in the conviction that it could be managed and everyone had abided by its requirements. Especially the experiences of the last forty years indicate that the democratic epoch Turkey is in must not only be won in the most successful way possible but that it is also the one indispensable solution.
I have tried to sum up the character of the Turkish Republic, the historical conditions of its emergence and the national and social realities within it, I have given a brief history of its development, and even compared it to the international democratic system in order to establish a framework for this trial and the Kurdish — or, if you prefer to call it that, south-eastern or terror — problem. The joint struggle of the foundation period is transformed into a bitter problem when uprisings and the social reasons behind them prevent a free union from coming about. Every uprising makes the problem worse. Together with the historical reasons behind it, it is transformed into a reality that burns everyone who approaches it, into a wounded, extremely painful, tragic reality. Although the nations and various of groups in countries all over the world which experienced similar problems and were indeed at each other’s throats for centuries attained a wonderful power to solve their problems and brought about fruitful unions in the century of the Republic (Switzerland has been cited as a striking example), turning their languages and religions into the foundations of their independence and democracy and doing so despite the separatist forces surrounding them, why wasn’t this done here? Why, despite a common history and religion and indeed linguistic and cultural affinities, the waging of the war of liberation and the setting up of the Republic together, could rebellions not be prevented? Why was this aspect not developed, why were we unable to endow the democratic republic, which must be understood as government by the people, with the power to solve this problem? More importantly, how are we going to endow it with this power? In the light of the experience of other nations in the world it is possible to see that the problem is not only capable of a solution but is accompanied by nearly ideal conditions. The fact of intermingling, a common country, cultural affinities born of centuries of natural assimilation in language and religion, and, most important of all, having continuously lived under the umbrella of the same state, show how developed the objective conditions are for a democratic solution. It is also a fact that, under the existing conflicts, the two sides are of a type that is the closest to a union by world standards. Here union is as suited to the objective foundation as separatism is incompatible with it. I went into the grounds for this in the relevant sections. However, in essence both, on the one hand, the opposition to the Republic of the traditional Kurdish ruling class, the feeling of the dynasties and tribal leaders long accustomed to doing as they please that the new order was not compatible with their interests, and their ability to cause a people, whom they had tied to themselves with feudal tribal and religious ties over the centuries, to rebel; and, on the other hand, the inability of the Republic to establish its democratic foundations for this reason have undoubtedly led conflicts moving in the direction of destructiveness and separatism. Instead of blaming the parties, I am trying to assess them scientifically here. I am saying that, although the foundations were promising, soon the natural anxiety of one side to protect the Republic, and the struggle of the other side to protect its interests developed over centuries, made it difficult for them to cross the bridge in a friendly, brotherly manner, and the problem got worse. Extreme violence, fear, suffering and estrangement came about. It was as if henceforth the Republic would suppress and deny, and the Kurds would say, “I exist, but I am running away, I am rebelling”. This is how the tragedy and the bitter division came about. In fact this should not have happened. As natural assimilation had brought Kurds and Turks so close over the centuries, there was no need for denial and the use of force. Furthermore, the acceptance of Turkish as the official language and its development were only natural. The Turks were at the root of the transformation of Turkey into a nation, and so no one could object to this, it was natural. As they were fundamental founding element of the state, it could not have been otherwise. This was the historic meaning of everyone participating in this transformation into a nation and Atatürk saying, “Happy is the one who can say, I am a Turk”. It was first of all Atatürk who said this about the Turks whom the Ottomans had labelled “Turks incapable of comprehension”. Just as individuals from different origins can use the English they speak in common to say, “I am an American” and indeed even in a country like Switzerland, which has four languages and cultures, they can say, “I am Swiss”, there is nothing strange about speaking of the existence of a single national identity in which all share in Turkey. National unity is not being questioned here and it must not be questioned. The same is true to a greater extent of the unity of the country and the state. Although these facts are evident, their meaning from the point of view of sociology and political science is not examined in depth, and they are instead used for a chauvinistic and extreme nationalism and turned into a problem. Although Atatürkist nationalism is not a nationalism of race or origins and is based on a national culture that has evolved through history, deviation from this nationalism prepares the ground for a nationalism opposed to it. When these nationalist approaches, which were not much in evidence during the period of the founding of the Republic, combined with the dominant aspects of Kurdish society, they got deeper. It was not thought to opt for a European-style democratic acceptance and both to prevent linguistic, cultural, religious and ethnic differences from developing into conflicts and to turn them into forces serving the common good in the democratic cauldron. Indeed, democracy was pushed entirely to one side, and the class differences that grew after the fifties led to an oligarchic structure that was a barrier to democracy. When the democratic system was not given a chance to solve conflicts of class, language, culture and even religion which were to get steadily worse, the problems led to renewed fighting in the seventies. Although a democratic solution should easily have been found for the Kurdish problem together with other problems, both because of its historic foundations and because of the world-wide conflicts of the period in question, it turned into a powder keg in the hands of the young people of the day. Before we got to know the state, society and history, we found ourselves in the midst of a rebellion in the name of the PKK because of our dogmatic, ideological approach and our utopian politics. The problem which had been lying dormant for years burst into life again and turned into a rebellion. No kind of violence can get this far unless it has a social basis. Everyone knows that terrorism by individuals can go only so far. In any case, there is no act of violence which does not have a social significance. Violence without a purpose is the most dangerous kind of violence, and consequently it is a crime. However, it is clear that a conflict which has long ago moved beyond being a war, which at times has costs hundreds of lives on a single day, and which has affected millions for such a long time can only result from a problem with deep historical and social roots. The PKK can at most have acted as a fuse. What I am trying to show here is not only the way in which the problem emerged but also how it was solved elsewhere in the world and the form it has taken in Turkey under the influence of the PKK under my leadership. Because of their historical importance, I had to deal in detail with aspects not alluded to at all by the respected prosecutors in their indictment. From a legal point of view, the status of the PKK is clear, but if we do not underline the historical and social dimensions of the problem and compare it with problems elsewhere in the world to which a solution has been found, this trial will have been wasted. A historic trial should lead to a historic solution. This is what Turkey passionately demands from us. This time round, will the Republic demonstrate its power to find a democratic solution and create such a solution? This is the question everyone is asking. Will this last rebellion be solved by a historic democratic conciliation and democratic creativity — as I believe it will- and end up being indeed the very last rebellion? This is what they are asking.
Even if it involves repetition and involves going into things at length, it is as important to compare the problem to similar problems elsewhere in the world as it is to describe its links with history and society. If I have bravely dealt with these things in this trial, it is because this is made necessary by this Republic and its developing character and necessity for us to recognise this in the right way and consequently get reconciled. It is also because I wanted to show that, scientifically, we neither have nor need another option. From this point onwards I shall try to answer the following questions. Although it is the fundamental charge in the indictment, and although it is in the programme of the PKK and mentioned in many declarations I have made, is a separate state necessary? Is it possible? Is this confirmed by words and actions? What has life proven? Is union by force or separatism still an option? Can they offer a solution? And if not, will there be a historic opportunity this time round for a democratic solution based on a common country and a common state?
** The Kurdish Problem Involves not Separation but a Democratic Union with the Republic
The history of the Kurdish problem which we have attempted to summarise and the social reality it is based on, show that as far as both the common land and the state built on it are concerned, that although the Turks have done the leading, the Kurds have been their most brotherly followers. Those who rebelled did so more out of local interests than to found a separate state and were unable to go beyond the narrow framework of families and tribal authority pertaining to the ruling elite. From the start too, at least one group has been conciliatory. Even if Kurdish nationalism has ultimately made a claim to separatism, in practice it has never had the intention, power or preparation to bring this about. In this sense, it has from the start condemned itself to being unable to find a solution. It seems to pursue separatism, but in the end it is the people who suffer when the state takes action. And this gives rise to a damaged, diseased social structure. This in turn brings suspicion, fear, anxiety, ignorance and an increasing socio-economic backwardness with it. And as the state gets to see the Kurds as a people in a constant state of rebellion, going into exile becomes a feature of this society. It is as if everyone strives to get out of the region. The psychology of permanent rebellion is an expression of this social reality. A state cannot arise out of such a social structure. Neither its intellectual level, nor its geographical position, nor its economic state will permit it. When the relationship between the Kurds and the state is looked at in a scientific way, it will be seen that not only democratic union is the best solution but it is the one that the conditions are most suited to. When we bear in mind several alternatives in this context we will see that:
A- The alternative of a separate state is not a solution either in terms of its concrete foundations or its benefits, and although claims are made for it, of all alternatives, it has the least practical value. Even if it were to come into existence, it would not be recognised by any of its neighbours and would not be recognised in the international arena. Let us put that to one side. In order to remain in existence, such a state would need an economy, a language, social unity and defence, and it is obvious that it lacks the foundations to remain in existence for even one day. If, despite full outside support, even autonomy is proving impossible for the Kurds in Northern Iraq, this is also partly due to their internal social structure. In this sense, the alternative of a separate state cannot be anything more than an ideological slogan for the Kurds. In the programme of the PKK, too, it is referred to as a matter of ideology, but what practice and history have shown is the reality of union. However, the vital question is what sort of union this should be.
B- Alternatives such as a federation and autonomy can be implemented to some extent. Historically, the feudal and tribal structure in Kurdish areas can provide a basis for these. What is experienced in states where there is no democracy and what was formerly experienced under feudalism is mainly an ethnic and tribal autonomy. This not only has no national character but is valid only within a narrow tribal framework. Even in our day the Behdinan-Soran distinction among Southern Kurds and autonomous structures base on this are not fully developed. Once again, the main reason is the power of feudalism. What the Kurds experienced in the Ottoman period, too, was pockets of intense feudal autonomy. Even rebellions always came into being when these pockets were threatened. In this sense, it is difficult to view these uprisings as movements based on the free will of the population. Their social structure and outlook would not have permitted their reaching such a state. Dynastic ideologies and tribal interests take precedence over everything. In this sense, because even in our day, autonomy and the concept of federation which is now being discussed in this context would be dependent on a backward social structure, they would not really allow for the development of democratic values. These would do more to strengthen feudal and tribal remnants. The experience of the Southern Kurds largely proves this. Furthermore, these are the forms most conducive to collaborationism and being a tool in the hands of whoever wants to use it the most and has the power to do so. Because they have not evolved democratically, they are quite open to both traditional types of rebellion and destruction. Therefore, although it has been discussed a great deal and tried open, it is best to adopt a quite critical attitude towards this type of solution.
From the point of view of the Kurds in Turkey, the situation presents us with more important differences. As well as the existence of different dialects, the intermingling of Kurds and Turks, and the presence of at least as many Kurds in the west as there are in the east indicate that autonomy is not a practical option. Federation cannot be applied to the millions of Kurds in provinces like Istanbul, Izmir and Adana. This type of population dispersal is found in many examples around the world and indicates that democratic notions regarding language and culture offer a better solution than regional solutions. People of various different ethnic origins are to be found living in close proximity in the same cities and regions, and this is a contemporary indication that the solution lies in the turning of democracy into an institution. In any case, it is possible to derive greater benefits from the development of local administrations than those expected from autonomy. The demographic distribution of Kurdish and Turkish populations is suitable neither for separation nor for federation but for solutions that will lead to the strengthening of their union by means of the removal of the obstacles in the way of equality and freedom through the development of democracy into an institution. From centuries of natural assimilation to the mutual daily functioning of the economic structure and social fluidity, everything constantly narrows the material basis of autonomy even further.
C- The third alternative is the democratic solution. The failure to discuss the theoretical and practical aspects of this approach, which has provided solutions to very important problems all over the world, and to put it on the agenda in Turkey until now is not only unfortunate but also an outcome of the failure of democracy to develop in a consistent and serious way. In fact it would have been possible to find the ideal approach to the Kurdish problem in the theory of democracy and its rich variety of practical approaches, and develop nearly ideal solutions. It is clear that there was a historical basis for this during the period of the founding of the Republic, and Atatürk’s reply at the Izmit press conference clearly indicates that the solution must be sought in this direction. Before going into these matters it is necessary to examine this style further. For example in Switzerland, a country we have looked at, geographies, cultures, languages and religions which are intermingled can be seen finding the strongest democratic solution when a long period of conflict ends with their seeing they have a mutual interest in union. The country thus ends up developing the strongest democracy in Europe. This simultaneously makes for a powerful independence. As well as allowing them to see the damage caused by the internal and external forces working to break them up, their experience enables them to see the great benefits to be derived from union. If it wanted, each part could join with its language, culture and geography the main part, i.e. Germany, France or Italy; but they know very well that if they were to do this, they would be losing both their identity and their affluence and what they would be gaining would in no way be equal to what is granted to each of them by Switzerland. This is something we can see in many countries, including even places where apartheid is practised. In Belgium, Canada, the Republics of South America, New Zealand and even in the USA, despite regional, cultural, religious and linguistic differences, it is well known that the common good is based on a strong democratic state structure. Indeed they have achieved development by applying the principle that variety makes for power and wealth. Undoubtedly, as well as the historical experience of conflict, democratic struggle has played a role in this. Those who cannot succeed in this lose in a big way. In the contemporary world this has emerged as the successful solution, and the extreme point to which the blood-soaked alternative can lead has been demonstrated most recently in Kosovo.
What is saddest from the point of view of Turkey is the question of why we could not learn a lesson from the policies applied in the world, and why, although a nearly ideal solution was possible, we did not seize the opportunity. As happened with many problems, we always behaved as if rebellion and suppression were the only way. It is necessary to go into this in some detail with respect to the Kurdish problem:
** Separatism and rebellion by one side and suppression and denial by the other!
Even leaving aside the heavy and tragic losses these two frequently tried approaches have caused, they have no power to offer a solution and have presented society with major problems. When methods are not contemporary and therefore capable of offering a solution, this is the point where one ends up — the point where there is no solution. Although we say this is not an inevitable fate and in democracies solutions are truly endless, our inability to apply this in practice renders us all responsible before history. No problem can be presented correctly by blaming one person, one group, one side. By blaming a problem with such complex historical, geographical, cultural, social and international dimensions almost solely on my person everyone can at best hide their guilt, have an easy escape and live to fight another day. In Turkey everyone from the very top to the very bottom now follows this fashion. Everyone might be able to feed their emotions and their daily interests by blaming everything on me. However, this won’t make a contribution to history or towards solving the problem and will not do anything other than create an obstacle.
Consequently, it would be more correct from a moral and political point of view for everyone, regardless of their past approach, to assume their responsibilities and approach the matter with the intention of finding a scientific solution for it, to find a solution for a contemporary problem which daily causes suffering and bloodshed, and to make a contribution instead of making accusations. We are living through an historic moment when the democratic solution must come into effect, and its essence is the will of the people. It is sufficient to look at the last elections to see that the democratic solution has gained ground. The success HADEP achieved in local elections despite not having canvassed seriously at grassroots level, the displaying by the Kurdish masses of their intention to be governed by their collective will is a solution offered by democracy that is not inconsiderable if one bears in mind the heavy feudal characteristics of the area. It is an important step along the way. Its value is even greater from the point of view of a democratic solution. If this can happen despite the existing tension and conflicts, when the fighting stops completely, when the obstacles in the way of legal reforms and freedoms referred to by the Constitutional Court and other legal institutions, as well as by prominent statesmen and political party officials, are lifted, there will be a victory for democracy, which will have become consistent and been seen to have the capability of offering a solution. It is clear that Turkey is moving towards such an outcome with all her dynamism, regardless of whether such an outcome is desired or obstacles are put in its way. This is what we derive our belief and assurance from.
Let us go back to the beginning. No one can deny the democratic value of the Republic during the periods of liberation and founding, or deny that the Kurds were perceived as a founding element. Furthermore, Atatürk personally used expressions like “a type of autonomy” and “regional autonomy” and indicated his intention of finding a solution. However, the rebellions took this off the agenda and later led to a firm banning and denial of the problem. Things were taken to the extent of imposing a ban on the Kurdish language until 1992. It is clear that, as well as not being democracy, this is not consistent with Atatürkism. The Kurdishness that Atatürk objected to is not that Kurdishness which is going to form a union with the Republic in a civilised and eventually democratic way. What he objected to was the rebellion that established links with the sultanate during the early years of the Republic and was under the influence of foreign powers, and would probably have led to the collapse of the Republic and the greatest losses for Turks and Kurds alike. What he objected to was anti-Republicanism. In any case, the number of rebellions of this nature that occurred in western Anatolia was far greater. They were approached in the same way. I believe it is historically important to assess Atatürk’s approaches, these two important aspects, together. I also believe that if Atatürk were alive today, he would take the most appropriate stance, the one that supports a democratic union with the Republic. No one can either view the anxiety to protect the Republic during its most vulnerable period as suppression and denial or refuse to see that the Kurds were an officially accepted voluntary founding element at the start of the Republic. This is what I mean by the two important historical aspects. Furthermore, it was Atatürk himself who openly handed out the duty of taking the Republic further.
In any case, that period was not one when democracy was strong, it was the period of totalitarian regimes. There were not many years between the two world wars. It was more a question of protecting what existed. However, the increasing strength of the democratic movement after the Second World War and the realities of a changing world should have led us to concentrate on a Republic that would be irretrievably committed to solving its problems in a democratic way. When this was not done, in the undemocratic atmosphere of the period beset by conflicts, an attempt was made on the old basis to govern a rebellion by a limited amount of sociological knowledge. Even though under the leadership of the PKK there was talk of a “socialist state”, even though every organisation of the period spoke of its own concept of a state, these were concepts on a merely sectarian level and did not go beyond being utopian. When the PKK partially transcended this by achieving mass support, especially in the 1990s a search began for “free union” or, in other words, democratic union, which I personally tried to give voice to with intense assessments. This was a necessity which life had faced us with. Even it utopias are attractive, success in politics can come only through facing reality, and this was what we belatedly tried to do. Developments during these years were in favour of democracy and they were world-wide. The Soviet Union was falling apart because of a, lack of democracy, the entire system was moving towards democracy even if it was only limping, the whole world was changing in this direction. The point the conflict had forced everyone to arrive at in Turkey, too, was the opportunity for a historic democratic solution. The state had seen this. The language ban had been lifted and outlets such as the Kurdish Institute, the Roja Welat newspaper, the Mesopotamian Culture Association etc. were allowed. The Prime Minister of the period, Demirel made the statement “I recognise the Kurdish identity” in the name of the newly formed coalition government. President Ozal went even further and said even federation could be discussed. Even limiting military operations and a cease-fire were given serious consideration to. Kurdish society was staging the greatest democratic demonstrations in its history. What really should have been done was for both sides to end all fighting and to concentrate on the democratic solution which we have been trying to explain and for which there was now an opportunity even if it was a limited one. Failing to take the measures to render the cease-fire permanent, lack of trust, lack of experience, and the not inconsiderable machinations of outside powers caused this historic process to give way to meaningless fighting which bitterly repeated itself and led to heavy losses. This should not have happened. Personally I always felt the pain of this. However, the ruthless approach adopted by the government of the day is to blame as well. From time to time violence also rose to unlimited and ruthless levels. Killings by persons unknown and evacuations of villages were the process where virtual gang warfare became most intense. This process which should not have been gone through is a lost process. The concept which was voiced in the National Security Council in 1995–1996 for both Turkey and the PKK, the concept which was allowed to reach us by indirect means and which led me to believe the army was taking a new approach was that the PKK should bear in mind the transformation undergone by the state and should respond to it in the way expected. As I understood it, this attempt, to which I tried to respond quickly and in a positive way, was an attempt to look for a solution in the context of western-style democratic development under the control of the army, without questioning the concept of a common land or bringing in the notion of an independent state. I responded to this, if inadequately, by several times declaring a unilateral cease-fire. I tried to inform the organisation and slowly prepare it for the new concept. This is the approach I have had up to this day. The reason I go into these developments in such detail is this: What was important was that, as one of the most important institutions in the country, the army, looked in a new direction to ensure the safety of the Republic and, in a very different way from its previous interventions, reminded everyone, every group and every party, of the standards of legitimacy, democracy and secularism. The response this demanded from the PKK was not just that it should give up the armed struggle but also that it should review its separatist programme, find a solution for the Kurdish problem slowly through democratisation, treading the path that had begun to open up and would open further in this respect. Another important reason for regarding this concept or perspective as a positive development was that it was practical. I must point out that it was these messages, which I believed came from the right source and which I saw opening up channels for themselves day after day, that encouraged me to reach the conclusion that even toppling the state would not achieve anything, that separatism had nothing to offer, and that the best option was to develop the democratic nature of the state.
Briefly, what I have been trying to say is that, after looking at both the initial years of the Republic and an important rebellion in recent history, a rebellion that began nearly a quarter of a century ago and has had the dimensions of a war for the past 15 years, as the principal leader of the said rebellion, the historical conclusion I have arrived at is that the solution for this problem which has got so big, is democratic union with the democratic, secular Republic.
** The Democratic Union Solution is the Future of Turkey
A problem which has an important social power base and keeps itself alive through frequent rebellions will, however much it is suppressed, sooner or later erupt through different channels when the time and place are right, if it is not resolved. Suppression will only kill time and perhaps crush the elements active in a particular period. It will not get rid of the problem. Problems which have a serious and historical meaning only disappear when the interests of the power it represents are protected within the system through reforms or this power transcends the system and finds a solution in another system. They stop causing the system constantly to lose strength and turn into a positive source of strength. It is the historical duty of everyone and every institution in Turkey to find a solution to this problem which is regarded as the fundamental problem by both its public, private, political and social opponents and supporters, by nearly everyone and every institution, and seen as the problem that will hold Turkey back until it is solved. And this solution should be found through the scientific approach which we have tried to explain a little and countless examples of which can be found in every society.
The great democratic upsurge that is being experienced in Turkey is an indication that the problem has both emerged and is about to be solved. The worse a problem has got the closer it is to solution. The talking of many governments in recent times of the problem, their inability to solve it and their aggravating it is the main reason for their failure. We can see this in the failure of all political institutions and leaders. Furthermore, important economic and social problems are also obstacles. If they are not solved, obstacles grow and the matter becomes intractable. Many attempts have been made to cut this Gordian knot with a sword, but the very ones wielding the swords have stated that one cannot get anywhere by continuing to use sword. They have admitted that this is all that can be done by the sword, by military means.
The reason I mention these aspects which I cannot refrain from repeating is that a historic solution must emerge from this trial. My repetitions should therefore be excused. I want to demonstrate that otherwise history will not forgive anyone, that increasingly and with conviction the heaviest responsibility is placed on me, that I am ready to do what is necessary, and that I both bear a heavy responsibility for this rebellion and now in this trial wish to offer my solution, indicating that the time has definitely come for peace.
** Democratic Unity Solution Theses
1 — The Solution will strengthen the state’s unity as well as making a common homeland a reality.
The office of the Prosecution in its indictment indicates that based on the programme [of the party] and my speeches, an independent state of Kurdistan was to be established. It is true, when an idea or programme is subjected to the test of time, or wars are waged to see if it is viable, one learns if they can be implemented or not. The world is full of groups whose ideas when faced with the practical needs of [reality] have changed courses. Units that have been kept together by force of arms have dissolved, just as artificially separated units or entities have come together. The great state of the Soviets has dissolved after 70 years, [but] the European Union is coming together [just]as other [voluntary] formations are taking place in the world. I want to say this: separation does not happen by wanting it or by accomplishing it; this is not the way you reach your goal. If unity is beneficial, at the end, it will prevail.
The Turks and the Kurds fought under a National Pact [Misak-i Milli] and accepted it as their national oath. Even if the National Pact is not implemented fully it remains a national oath. This is verifiable by documents. No one can deny this. The regions where the Kurds dominate was recognized as such by notables such as Great Selcuk [ruler] Sancar, and other Ottoman Sultans down to Mustapha Kemal Ataturk. The word Kurdistan can not be a crime. The desire to live free and independent in it should not be construed as dividing it [from the National Pact]. The last part of that indictment ends with a similar sentence. I too believe this is the crux of the problem. If my practice is closely analyzed this will stand out; there are books full of documents to prove my point. The most meaningful freedom even if it is in a place called Kurdistan can only be possible within the borders of Turkey’s National Pact. It is not difficult to prove this by scientific evidence as well. A separated Kurdistan is not viable, will be a puppet of another power or tool of the collaborators. The separated Kurdistan will not belong to the people, it will belong to foreigners and collaborators, and that in itself is utopian, and for that reason it is an often repeated game for selfish interests. History proves that selfish interests manipulate the rebellions, but that a heavy price is paid by the people. We see this in our own rebellion. I mean to say this: my own struggle [tells me that], we can only reach our goal within Turkey. I did my best to instill this [spirit] into the PKK [rank and file]. This is not difficult to see. Free union is the goal of all our friends.
A close look at history, society, geography, language, culture [of Turkey] will show [how these peoples] have intermingled with one another. I am not going to dwell on these issues now since I plan to tackle them one by one later. Just as a vast majority of the Kurds [of National Pact], some 70 % of them live in Turkey [proper] and the others [Kurds] who live in the [Kurdish regions] and Turkmen because they live within the National Pact, are all considered as from Turkey. Those who have a bit of historical knowledge will acknowledge that their separation from one another in the 1920s would have resulted in the loss of their homeland. It would have also meant that the separation of the Turks and the Kurds would have meant that they would have been swallowed up or would have remained small minorities. The role Ataturk played in the formation of this state and our joint actions carried the day. We are all grateful for that. Those who question this will show disrespect to the cause of history. It means we do not recognize ourselves. The common geographies we have make us play a determining and continuing role [in our lives.] The advances in the field of science dictate that we go beyond ethnic differences and form beneficial unions above nations. We who are born on our homeland view the real freedom and liberty in this light. Even if you force it, we will not accept separation. Because, free union is richness, multi-coloured and [offers] strength. Our [party] programme which aimed to protest the forced union [of the Turks and the Kurds] went through changes in the 1990s, for the solution dictated to us that we opt for [voluntary] union. [And] this was natural, a lesson of life, and the [adaptation] to the changes that were taking place in the world. The best form of patriotism in a united state is the way to go in a free union: democratic unity and living on our common homeland. This latest rebellion has taught a lesson to both Kurds and Turks and all the other citizens of Turkey and that it is only through freedom, one can become a knowledgeable patriot. The Kurds more than ever before, want a united state that is free. Freedom is the strongest cement of a united homeland. This rebellion has taught us that. Painful as has been the struggle with many losses, it must also be noted that an historical gain has been made. There is no room for rebellions in a state that is free and defended with knowledge; as it is obvious that an unwavering unity and strong state is only possible then. Constitutional freedom can only have meaning when an individual feels [totally] free. An individual from the East more than ever before can now feel the meaning of Constitutional citizenship. This is the way we understand a free state and patriotism. This is the only way for a state to live and grow strong. Our struggle, which began as it did, with the aim of separation, has taught us the lessons of state unity. A Free united homeland is sacred and should not be questioned.
2 — The Solution will be via political unity, freedom and a democratic republic.
The indictment using the content of my speeches tries to prove that I intended to divide the country. The teachings of history, lessons from other nations, and what we have learned from our own past experiences, show that the most practical way to the solution of the Kurdish conflict is to live side by side under the principles of a democratic republic.
History shows that in the past, people considered the country to be a common state shared by both the Kurds and the Turks. They fought together for the founding of the republic. Even during previous rebellions the conflict was not a demand for separation from Turkey, but was related to the division of the classes. The wealthy, dominant class aggravated the Kurdish problem. Later, the oligarchy made it unresolvable and today, the pains of democracy in Turkey are directly related to that authoritarian system. The constitution proclaims Turkey to be a democratic state. If the government declined to enforce the Constitution, merely by adding a few amendments, democracy could be made to work. Instead the government ignored the Constitutional Proclamations and preferred to resolve the problem through oppression, thus exacerbating the problem. Certain privileged groups emerged and the government rewarded them with benefits and avoided democratization. This again brought the Kurdish problem to an unresolvable stage. In other parts of the world, similar problems have been resolved through the growth of democracy and social organizations.
The foundations of the Turkish state provided for the inclusion of certain social organizations and principles in the Constitution to guide it toward democratization. These were either not implemented or were not improved upon. At times, principles were misused to the extent that even the military demanded this misuse be stopped. Democracy in today’s Turkey has not reached the point of acceptance, but it has made some progress. There are comprehensive articles in the Turkish Constitution relating to fundamental human rights and freedoms. All segments of society desire improvement in the implementation of these articles, yet these articles are not implemented. Delaying the implementation of these articles is making their ultimate application more difficult. The Republic is undergoing many changes, both socially and constitutionally and in part, these changes are a result of our struggle.
Out of these changes has come a desire by the Republic for a solution to its social problems. Under the present system, however, either a separate Kurdistan or a federation between the Kurds and Turks would aggravate the problem. Historical and geographic characteristics of the Turkish and Kurdish cultures are intertwined. The State can easily resolve the differences. The United States, India and Switzerland are good examples of this and have even more complex, ethnic issues. It is obvious that this is not something Turkey has thought about. Present conditions are suitable for an ideal solution to the Kurdish problem. To make these changes for resolution, courageous steps must be taken by the government. In order to attain this, Constitutional Amendments are not even needed. But without good intentions on the part of the government their attempt will fail. Remnants of past rebellions have brought fear by the government of Kurdish issues, government paranoia of Kurdish intentions, and restriction of human rights provided by the Constitution. Elimination of these fears will help towards a solution and would not require much constitutional change. At the very least, it will provide basic rights for the Kurdish people.
The republic’s historic foundation and the Constitution’s self explanation is more suitable in resolving the Kurdish problem than what is thought about it. The biggest obstruction to the solution is the government’s fear of Kurdish intentions. This supports its policy of regression and causes it to rule in a chauvinistic way denying Kurdish identity. It poisons the possibility of improving democracy in Turkey. By curtailing the government’s fears, the resolution of the Kurdish problem will be much easier and faster. History will show that the resolution of the problem is more cultural and linguistic then political.
To be able to take full advantages of existing democratic principles is a matter of education. By improving local administration and by encouraging participation of the people in politics will help find solutions to the problem. For example, the legislation of local administration is still on the agenda of the government, and is the most suitable tool to resolve the problem. By modifying certain existing laws it will be easier to find solutions. What we mean is, the problem is related to full implementation of democracy in Turkey. It is as simple as that.
The local people feel a heavy pressure from the existing feudalistic system. To eliminate this feudalistic system, true democracy is needed. The ethnic tribal system, religious sects and wealthy village owners are obstacles to democratization. Feudalism which by nature is not democratic, gets its support from the state and contributes to the Kurdish problem by tolerating a totally non-democratic environment. Feudalism denies individualism and a free society. The people from these classes claim to espouse democracy but they are actually the ones responsible for the absence of democracy. The latest PKK rebellion crushed a large part of authority enjoyed by this class. For this reason alone, the PKK movement should be considered a democratic revolution. There has been improvement in the area of individual freedoms. The local people under the name of HADEP (Pro-Kurdish legal party), during the latest mayoral elections expressed themselves by electing their own mayoral candidates in various towns. On behalf of democracy, the Kurds proved their existence. They proved that they can contributed to the improvement of democratization in the country. Even this short explanation can prove that the Kurdish question can be resolved within the practicality of democracy.
We say, creating separate organizations to resolve the Kurdish problem is not needed. We say the problem is not political. Solution to the problem is democratic unity of the state and integration of the Kurdish people. Since 1990 the State has recognized the local peoples cultural identity. They created special development projects called GAP. These two things signify that the State no longer uses methods of intimidation. It approaches the local people with more respect. The GAP project contributes a great deal to local peoples’ economic and social progress. This proves that the State is able to take further steps and a positive feeling can develop toward the state. A democratic solution to the Kurdish problem can gain momentum, and be seen as the only to solve the problem.
The bottom line is the idea in this thesis: we can consider the state as a big piece of land beside the ocean, and the Kurdish rebellions are like waves which frequently strike the shore of this land. The heart of the matter is the existence of a tense atmosphere between the state and the Kurdish people. It is like the waves pounding on the shores of this land. The best solution to this problem is a democratic system. If this new democratic method is implemented and the state is realized the wave of rebellious destruction will turn into construction in various government entities. It will be converted to serve the public.
Here lies the unimaginable creativity of democracy. Neither past unconsciousness made a positive contribution to the problem nor did a destructive approach eliminate the problem. They only contributed to history. Today, the government’s agenda is the development of the country and improvement of democracy. A sustaining democracy able to remove obstructions in its path will resolve the Kurdish question in this historic stage of the Kurdish struggle.
3 — The Kurdish people’s language and cultural rights are at the core of the issue:
In the first and second thesis of mine I said that the Kurdish intention is not to create a state and a country of its own, but instead to live freely in the country and in democratic unity with the Turkish state. That is why historic, political, and constitutional grounds are ripe for resolving this problem. As long as we approach the matter with good intentions, both sides can attempt to agree under a minimum of democratic conditions that their good intentions are to resolve the problem. Once they make that clear they will see that the Kurdish problem is not that complicated to resolve.
In the meantime the biggest obstacles are the barriers which exist to speaking the Kurdish language and recognition of Kurdish cultural rights. These two elements have not been clarified and this has made the Kurdish problem more complex. The government considered the political and cultural dimensions to be intertwined and this belief was the basis of the problem. It is unfortunate that an approach to the resolution of the problem that included separation of the political and the cultural was not attempted. A dogmatic and ideological approach to the problem by Turkey, made it more complex. When we take a look at Switzerland’s example, we can see that four languages are used as official languages. Let’s look at big countries like the United States, India, and Russia which had similar language issues as the Kurdish issue. Their diverse languages are freely used and diverse cultures are respected. These countries do not lose power. Contrarywise, they get more powerful. In Turkey, by prohibiting and obstructing these rights the people are forced to rebel and distance themselves from the state. The environment does not even provide healthy conditions for assimilation. Instead of curing a disease, they want to activate the disease. In the Constitution there are no articles that prohibit these rights. The Supreme Judge of the Constitutional Court, himself, said there are obstacles to language, culture and free speech. He said those obstacles should be eliminated.
The state noticed this matter, and as of 1990 they permitted certain positive steps to be taken, such as broadcasting in Kurdish, lifting restrictions on the language, and permitting the foundation of Kurdish institutes. The function of the folklore associations is part of these positive steps. If these kinds of organizations are even slightly encouraged by the state, with their educational functions, they will contribute a great deal to the solution of the Kurdish problem. One of the main deficiencies is the extent of illiteracy. There is no prohibition in the Constitution about reading and writing. It is only a matter of resources and education and these problems can easily be overcome. Setting up preschools, institutes and permitting the learning of Kurdish history and the Kurdish language at the Universities will contribute a great deal in resolving the Kurdish problem. These privileges already exist in other countries. In the age of technology it is not easy to forbid them. The same thing is valid for radio and TV. Freedom in these areas is the most important element to a solution of the Kurdish problem. First, we must educate the non-Kurdish public about the problem. Preschools should investigate history, language and culture through the education of the people. Permitting the publication of books and newspapers, and airing of radio and TV will help resolve the conflict. Permitting this will not encourage separatism; on the contrary, it will discourage separatism. The state will be stronger and individuals will develop a loyalty to it because they will feel a part of it. The world has many examples of this kind of diversity. When Kurdish is permitted, Kurds will be more willing to learn and use the official Turkish language. Countries like the U.S. and in Asia where English is the official language, and in Africa, where both English and French are official, other languages are freely used among both aborigine and immigrant. Their peoples speak two, sometimes three languages while remaining loyal to their country.
When Turkey institutes a new policy permitting Kurdish rights, she will not need to be afraid of Kurds in neighboring countries anymore because she will have already provided its own people with their rights. Contrarywise, this step will contribute to the democratization of the region and will gain the support of the peoples of neighboring countries. A democratic solution to the Kurdish issue will have a great impact on the Middle East. The negative policies to date have had a negative impact on unity and progress. Resolving the problem by these methods will bring peace, democracy, unity and progress to Turkey. It will be proof that we will not have to experience once again the past sorrows and disappearances.
Consequently, if obstacles to cultural, linguistic, and human rights are lifted, complexities will dissipate. Turkish fears of division of the country will be eliminated and past mistakes generated by those fears will disappear.
Solution will bring wealth, unity and peace.
4 — A military approach to the problem is no longer relevant and should be abandoned.
Historical experience proves that a violent approach to a problem inflames the problem. In the beginning, violence may help to put the problem on the table. More violence, however, brings more destruction and sorrow and in the end a peaceful solution cannot be avoided. Kosovo is the latest example. Earlier Chechyna, Palestine and El Salvador were good examples. Of course, a peaceful approach is preferred.
The PKK’s rebellion using its own methods, and leading the movement as a military force was legitimate. In 1990, it could have changed its approach from military to nonviolent and it might have succeeded. If the 1993 unilateral cease-fire, which was declared by the PKK, had been accepted by the government, it would have been a turning point. After 1993, with the Government’s rejection of the cease-fire, violence increased on both sides and more destruction resulted. At times the violence moved beyond the principles of war.
In the indictment it is stated that I was responsible for the death of 33 unarmed soldiers and some civilians. They neglected to mention, however, who was responsible for the destruction of over 3 000 villages and the disappearance of thousands of people from the Kurdish regions. If these disappearances and the destruction of these villages had been as clearly described as the report of the Susurluk incident, then the judge would have been objective in his assessment of the warlike encounters between the PKK and the state. The last fifteen years can be described as a mid-size war between the PKK and the state. It cannot be justified by a description of day-by-day actions. If PKK members acted outside the principles of war, they were punished. We always adhered to this policy.Similar conflicts in other parts of the world can be dirtier. In the past couple of years, even in small towns, hundreds of Kurdish people disappeared or were executed by the state. These atrocities must cease. Both sides must attempt to stop these outrageous acts which do not meet even the minimum standards of the principles of war.
The most important thing is this: We can use the last rebellion as an historic turning point. Both Turks and Kurds as well as international organizations are demanding a halt to this conflict. Let these problems find a democratic solution within the boundaries of a democratic republic. Confrontation is not respected anymore nor is it need. The most recent Kurdish rebellion is not like the others. It is the reason for the democratization of Turkey and at the same time a result of that democratization. The PKK has proven that. The latest elections show that the Kurdish people have successfully passed the test of democratization. There is no need for violence anymore. A new era has opened the way for democracy.
The most practical way to stop the violence is for the government to accept the recent PKK call for cease-fire. By accepting the cease-fire, trust is created, then comes the silencing of arms. In order to reach this goal it is imperative that the state takes immediate action. If the state and the public are more forgiving and more democratic, as I mentioned in the previous statement, and if the obstacles to the use of the Kurdish language and culture [are removed], a historic turning point can be reached. Integration of the Kurdish people with the state will occur. Negative perceptions and distrust of the state changed to positive perceptions and trust. The basis for rebellion and confrontation will be finished. If fundamental membership in Turkey, constitutional citizenship, are united with individual freedom, they will result in the resolution of the majority of the problems. What is left is economic. The GAP project is good beginning. Turkey’s goal of reaching an historic democratic republic will be achieved. Under this formula there will be no reason for rebellion. Then, every corner of the country will experience unity, not separation, and togetherness instead of rebellion. Turkey will be stronger and no power will be able to destroy that unity.
5- All illegal organizations and primarily the PKK have to adjust themselves to normal political and legal ways within the frame work of peace
When a halt is put to armed conflict, all the illegal organizations so far will have to reinvent themselves in a democratic system. Especially under a general amnesty, when legal and political means of expression are respected, democratization will take a stronger hold. In the nineties, there was progress of freedom of assembly. The general political atmosphere due to maintaining strained relations brought about the last election results which are indicative of the lack of a system to offer a meaningful alternative through society’s long-sought-after yearning for democratic normalization. Those who insist on unproductive ways are being abandoned. This is true for left, center, and right wing organizations. Political efforts that have no democratic basis are things of the past. This is more so for the left. Along with renewal and legalization, to put forth realistic democratic solutions to the society’s challenges, and to this end, to forge extensive alliances are essential for progress and prosperity. Society’s challenges cannot be met with the classical organizations and personnel. It must be understood that if organizations and personnel do not renew themselves, the time for democratic renewal and developing real solutions will have come to an end. Without this renewal, we will neither have respect for our past heritage nor step into the future with clarity.
The PKK also falls into this framework of renewal. The division between the left and the right in the seventies, fascism, socialism, and programmes that addressed national issues, and type of organizations and their operations should have all been put in the open in the nineties and the necessary corrections implemented. Through a general democratization throughout Turkey, instead of armed conflict, legal channels within the political framework should have sought programmes to address society’s needs especially linguistic and cultural freedoms. These efforts would have been historical for the PKK and would have prevented the perpetual violence that brought so many years of pain to society. Of course, the state’s ineffectiveness in working towards a solution along with those who pushed for confrontation, played a role in the impasse. Especially between 1993 and 1996 the losses were great due to the increase in confrontations and violence.
As late as it might be, the PKK will have to seek peace in its own capacity rejecting, the insistence on violence and it will be more effective in this endeavour as the state responds positively to the above-mentioned approaches. If practical opportunities, especially with the state’s tacit approval, come about, a new “Peace Conference and Congress” will have to prepare for such an eventuallity. There would be increased efforts for such a solution in the region as well as in the world. Those who reject a democratic solution and peace, will find themselves in isolation day by day.
Hence, the state must act in a way that befits its greatness. Especially, the government that represents the state must see this as a historical moment and as an opportunity to boldly solve one of its own challenges that face the nation. Recent history shows us that those who did not act like this have failed and the succession of governments is an indication of that. A solution is as much a key to many other general problems as it is to attend to society’s need for peace, comfort, and basic necesities. History will not judgen well those who don’t act responsibly at this juncture.
The PKK will embrace democratic unity and programmes within the democratic republican principles by learning the meaningful lessons from its past experiences and discarding useless methods. It will demonstrate its creativeness with such implementations. Otherwise, it too will be eventually marginalized. Instead of repeating the methods of the painful and unproductive years, we must go forward on the path to peace with mutual and humble steps, with respect for each other and keeping in mind the delicate balances. To realize peace within the democratic republican system will be not only more difficult than war it will be more exalting and rewarding. Against all odds, those, who attempt to act for the sake of freedom, will, with time, realize the sanctity of their duty on the path of peace.
** My Personal Status
There have been many references to my personal status in the indictment. It is important for me, under a separate heading, to express my status with regard to war and rebellion and with regard to the history of the PKK.
My family was poor and had lost its tribal traditions, but it continued with strong feudal values. I studied in the Republic’s elementary school located in a different village while commuting barefoot. The villages surrounding us were half Turkish, half Kurdish. My family from my mother’s side could be considered Turkman and was from a neighboring village. Turkish and Kurdish were spoken together. Relations between our villages were very friendly, as there was no national animosity at all. As long as there was no provocation,
animosity would never develop and an exemplary brotherly coexistence prevailed. Their sympathy towards me continues, exceeding that of Kurdish villages. My opposition was to family feudal ties. It can be said, that my first rebellion was against a family and village structure which were far from responding to the expectations of a child. I believe this has been touched upon in a novel as a “first rebellion” by an author from Turkey. At an early age, after a sizable disagreement with the family and with many tears and continuous sobbing, I left the village. In this, the share of reaction to family members who want to live outside of a life of toil is great. At that time, the villagers who knew me as the one who would not “hurt a fly”. On the other hand, when they saw a snake, they would call me “the snake hunter”. I was also a hunter of birds. Roaming in the hills was a passion. I fought hard for wheat bread. My conflicts with my mother were strong. My mother was an independent, headstrong woman. My rebellious side may have come from her. My father was helpless, my mother was in control. I grew up without much love and discipline from the family. To bring myself up independently became an important part of me.
Up until the last year of university, I never fell below top ten in my class. Until high school, there were religious influences. This was a conservative, defensive reaction to a modern society. In the seventies, I developed an interest in leftist ideology and became aware of my Kurdishness. As a person, I had high ethical standards, since I did not have a social connection and life with society which I considered to be bourgeois. In time, I dedicated myself completely to ideological work. I acted in unison with the Turkish left for a short while. However, because of lack of their attention to the national struggle, in the spring of 1973, I played a very important role in establishing the foundation of the PKK movement by leading a small group in the name of studying the Kurdish reality.
This was a research and propaganda effort. It seemed to me that the group needed to grow independently with ideological and historical knowledge. We engaged in intense ideological opposition to backward and separatist Kurdish nationalism as well as chauvinistic leftist movements in Turkey. There were Turkish friends joining us too. There were those joining the effort at leadership level like Haki Kader and Kemal Pir. To us, this represented Turkish-Kurdish unity at that time. Kemal Pir, whom we considered the martyr of the great death-fast, always said “ I believe that the freedom of our people can be achieved through the freedom of the Kurdish people”; this to us has remained a slogan. There is much that can be attributed to this unity of the group as well as the PKK. In 1975, I was the head of ADYOD (Ankara Democratic Higher Education Group). Before this, on 30 March 1972, as a result of a boycott we initiated at Political Science Department protesting the death of Mahir Cayan and his ten friends who were killed at Kizildere, I served a seven month sentence at Mamak prison.
In 1977, we prepared the manifesto and in 1978, with the help of Mehmet Hayri Durmus, the PKK programme was put into writing. In 1978, in the village of Fis in Diyarbakir, we decided to establish a political party. In the beginning of July 1979, with Etmem Akcan, we joined the Palestinians through Syria and Lebanon. Since 1982, we attempted to establish a base in Northern Iraq while organizing a military and ideological education with two hundred friends who joined us.
In actuality, I believe if it weren’t for these efforts, there could have been many more tragic, merciless, and horrible events. The indictment, if it were to have analyzed the societal and individual reasons for these events, would not have had much trouble establishing reasons. Picture is not enough unless we can with all its aspects, place the living thing on display, we cannot make a healthy determination. Considering all activities as terrorism or terrorist only deepens the conflict. In reality, many of the actions that were taken were also the saddest events of my life. I have made criticisms of such incident which amount to volumes of books. Even the family feuds within Kurdish society that continue when they’re analyzed, it becomes obvious how the society is structured and how its structure influences individuals. If I were to compare my role with the role of tribal conflict, as well as uprisings in similar situations, I see my role being much in control and least destructive. A keen observer of the PKK would immediately notice that in this instance, I have almost waged an internal war within the PKK. In addition, if you look at Bosnia, Kosovo, and ostensibly more civilized English-IRA conflict, the massacres occurring in Africa, the events that took place under our responsibility should be seen as a great success. As the responsibility for the authority of the organization has increased, these types of events that exceed legally defensible levels have been minimized to a low level. I need to express my understanding of the use of force because I am constantly being branded chief terrorist and I am being condemned for having taken action.
It is clear that the actions taken under the leadership of the PKK are my responsibility. But it is not sufficient to analyze my philosophy of the use of force. The most difficult effort in my life has been containing, minimizing the destructive individual and structures under the guise of militancy and generally under the guise of rebellion. I would describe this with the following example. They have promoted the gypsy to governorship and the first thing he has done was to hang his own father. What has taken place is somewhat similar. I have branded some of the events as mindless, irresponsible gang activity. It is easy to understand, but difficult to establish control over personalities, whose character is such that they have grown up in an environment of tribal conflict, they are devoid of a political upbringing as well as military rules and they can kill each other for a chicken. In my opinion, the level at which we were able to control it has been a success.
From the beginning, the level of the use of force that I would tolerate was not allowed to exceed legal self defense. It is true that many suicide attacks that I considered to be heroic, but I did not order any one of them. In some cases, I did not even know of them. My efforts to contain and minimize these types of developments have been constant. This, to me, is necessary because of ethical reasons and my understanding of military rules. If it did not go like this, it would have been lost. My aim in self-defense can be linked to my freedom. In other words, freedom or death. Give us our freedom or kill us is the formula. My going abroad and establishing bases in the mountains was based on my connection to this understanding. Outside of this, use of force is in reality suicide. If within a state, even a limited amount of freedom is available, using force, even any kind of action that exceeds civil coexistence would be illegitimate.
At the beginning, particularly in the nineties, cultural, individual, and linguistic denials led to the circumstances of the use of force. Later, even the limitsed possibility of freedom became meaningless to me. Democratic and civilized ways of politics became more effective. First, in 1993, I expressed more frequently. It became more clear that in the event of a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the State, it felt increasingly likely that we forego the use of force. This was not because of the lack of choices, but rather than using meaningless force, the belief in the fact that achieving democratic politics was getting real.
In this regard, I find that my principle shortcoming was during the cease fire episode, in not seeing and evaluating the preparations the state went through and therefore missing an historic opportunity. A subsequent use of force resulted in much loss and much pain. In addition, it can be said that it led to both sides exceeding the control limits and causing much greater destruction with both sides looking like gangs. I realized this and as a result made an intense effort. After 1996 having received certain indirect messages from the State, I attempted to control this by way of cease-fires. I attempted to prepare the groundwork for democratic politics. I must point out, even though it was not at the desired level, I was able to bring about changes in a controlled manner to allow a democratic solution.
At a personal level, it must also be noted that one of the principal efforts I expended was to bring the PKK’s 70’s programme and propaganda style into the 90’s by changing it. I emphasize that democratisation in Turkey in a real sense would propell the heavily feudal Kurdish society into the mainstream democratic unity. This is well known by the appropriate departments of the state. As for the Kurds, the fact that the best kinds of freedom and independence can all be achieved within the framework of democratic republic would not be an over-statement. In the indictment the terms “freedom and independence” are viewed within the framework of a different state which I do not see as such. In [my] last evaluations I have alluded to a free society within a democratic republic of Turkey modelled after the agreements of the 1920’s, to be a more free and independent one. On the contrary, a separate Kurdish state would actually be a more dependent and a servile one. I am on the record for proposing such ideas on numerous ocasions. I have many times emphasized that those who are free and independent will unite and form a stronger union. When servitude is forced upon a unit, it will always weaken the union as it is demonstrated by many examples of uprisings [in the history of the state.] The main aim is, as was the intention when the Republic was founded, to keep in mind the shortcomings of the past and come up with a contemprary democratic solution. My recent analysis of the situation were all towards a solution by considering other experiments in the world and Turkey’s history overall. My defense, in essense. rests on the premise that it will set the stage for a historical solution [for our problem.]
After these developments, I voiced my suggestions of ending the armed struggle and if need be, adjusting the PKK along the requirements of a democratic republic. Alongside the need to make preparations for a response by the state body either directly or indirectly to our efforts, I expressed the necessity not to eliminate the possibility of this spilling over into even the creation of a “Peace Congress‰. At this stage, I see as my first and foremost duty to secure a comprehensive peace, one dictated by historical realities, and current world developments. It is time for an end to the two hundred year old heavy conflict both within the state body and with the Kurdish insurrections. The most important politic to answer this violent period must be societal consensus and reformation, and this I believe, can best be reached under a democratic system. I have tried to emphasize the need and my wish for the 21<sup>st</sup> century to be a century of peace.
There are certain important matters mentioned in the indictment regarding the approach to the Marxist ideology which I feel the need to stress. Along with my criticisms of real socialism which commanded the world of the seventies, I have criticized marxism for falling short from the attaining of a socialist democracy and as I gradually saw its growing influence. Coupled with a dogmatic outlook, marxism lessened the chances of creative approaches to the challenges which faced us. I tied the dissolution of the Soviets to this shortcoming. In fact, I forsaw it and I considered it not as the fall of socialism but as a result of the failure of democratization. I have also tied the dissolution of the Turkish left to this tradition. I have developed assessments similar in nature in writting as well. In this way, I have taken into consideration the struggle to overcome its influence in the body of the PKK. I have always felt the need and the necessity to overcome the challenges which historical and current developments have inevitably posed against the classic approaches to the [Marxist] Program. I retain the belief, however, that socialism can again respond to our foundamental societal and modern problems by demonstrating its democratic understanding and practice. This does entail, though, a reform starting from its very base. Until the destruction [caused by] real socialism is overcome, not a complete collapse like in Russia, nor a superficial critique can lead to democratic soscialism. Despite the fact that capitalism too has aged, its ability to reform itself along democratic standards is the key to its progress and durability. The lack of these mechanisms for development in socialism is a key factor in its dissolution as well as its inability to fix a strong starting point. We can see this most concretely in Turkey. Societal problems have worsened because democratic socialism could never develop in Turkey, despite the great societal need. It is clear the approach of the Right has aggravated Turkey‚s problems. In the future, as Turkey addresses its fundamental problems, including a democratic approach to the Kurdish problem, in a successful manner, the Left will regain its feeling of being useful and in fact essential for democracy to prevail. I strongly believe this, and a free union [of peoples] requires this.
I would now like to address my approach to homeland and patriotism. It carries some importance that the 125. article indictment against me includes treason and the intention to form a separate state. I find the slogan “A free homeland or death” meaningful.What is unique here is that the concept of a shared homeland and state and an understanding of a free citizen and society present during the initial national liberation and the formation of the [Turkish] republic never developed. In particular, a great weakness of the Kurds is that either their feelings of patriotism towards the land that they were born in is weak or else they fail to see and feel to belonging to Turkey, which they are a part of. This creates room for misinterpretations. The concept of a separate Kurdistan arises from these circumstances. If the reality is not put forward, it can be risky. The understanding that I have gained as a result of my experience in this struggle dictates that the concept of one shared homeland and nation can be best achieved by the multiethnic models demonstrated by the United States or Switzerland, where either one nation is given official status or more than one language is considered official. This concept must be grasped in Turkey for a democratic resolution of the Kurdish problem. That which Turkey has lacked until now is the aspect of democracy. The concept of a modern citizen includes freedom for all individuals, languages, and cultures, and when there is freedom, we can speak of an independent homeland. These two concepts in Turkey are thought of as contradictory, as though the one concept will weaken the other. This is a fundamental error. This is one of the most important democratic problems which needs to be reckoned with. I believe I have reached a comprehensive solution to this [problem].
A similar notion applies to the concept of an independent state. Before asking how much a state belonged to us, we began by blaming a certain person or a group and thus we fell into dogmatism. This affected our political thoughts and movement. When I contemplated this issue more scientifically, I came to the conclusion that instead of rejecting the authority of the state, we should have rejected it in so far as it was representative of an oligarchic system, and by seeking to destroy such a system not for the sake of independence but for democratization, and furthermore, not as a necessity for achieving a separate state but as a necessity of achieving a free union of peoples and as a democratic duty. I can confidently say that my conclusions on the concept of homeland and understanding of state, which is present in a weak and destructive form in the Turkish Left, and the concrete realities of this matter can, if realized, bear important results. If these wrong and superficial outlooks are not challenged and overcome, in particular by the [Turkish] Left and by Kurdish nationalists, problems will be aggravated and they will find it harder to develop alternatives. Their growing marginalization points towards this. The Right was able to rise to power and maintain it by adopting an ultra nationalism more as an opportunism and for the interest of expediency, and political gains. There is a danger in their outlook of a free citizen and an independent state as they lapse far from the concept of integration and instead flame the fires of separatism. The problem in Turkey of a positive approach to an integrational homeland, nation, and state is as much a problem of political culture as it is one of ideology. In my defence, I have essentially demonstrated my share of understanding of a proper integrational, democratic outlook and a political philosophy capable of grasping various political outlooks. I strongly believe my ideas can constitute a framework for the next stage of developments. Developing relations with foreign powers capable of transcending this framework has not been possible for me under my conditions. The ignoble conspiracy put out for me by those who I treated as friends is the greatest demonstration of this fact. If I was a puppet, I believe that they were strong enough to hide me from Turkey, with her many foes. Just the opposite, they knew that in the long term, they could not use me against Turkey, and without any regard to international laws or human standards, and in order to add fuel to the conflict raging in Turkey, they played various games of not accepting me and handing me over to Turkey. All my efforts outside of Turkey have been under the umbrella of the slogan, “Free citizen and democratic republic.‰ It is uncontestable that I have put my whole being forward towards this objective, and that I have crystallized my personality along the concepts of a free citizen and a democratic union. And every passing day, history substantiates this and will prove it. When I examine my own person under the impressions that important political developments and activism has left, I see that it can also be interpreted as a contribution towards societal knowledge, will, and activism. The reality is one of a sick people searching for a remedy under the problems which have accumulated over hundreds of years — they can neither live under the weight of the problems nor can they assimilate what is being forced upon them. It is the story of a people yearning to reach the modern age. In this revolution, I have felt the greatest amount of pain; all those faults of history, instead of it being owned up by others, have fallen solely on my shoulders. This great injustice that I have been inflicted with is clear. I feel it is my right to ask such questions as: Who is responsible for history‚s many rebellions? Who is it that aggravates problems? Where does hiding and suppressing a problem act as a solution? Who is responsible for this societal reality, like no other, which denies the right of [a people] to speak their language? Who has given much to the state and for the fraternity of peoples and in the end comes face to face with denial and [rejection]?
The totality of what I have wanted to do is to provide solutions to some of these problems. The rebellion that we are currently experiencing is part of the solution. Like an infection, if societal problems are not dealt with on time, they can fester. This problem has festered, and like an infected wound, it has burst and caused pain in all other parts of the body. Taking this parallel further, even normally healthy parts of the body have gotten affected from this infection even though it may not be fair, because it is a problem of a body whose sytems are interconnected. The eruption of this rebellion is only half of the solution. What needs to be done after this is to medicate the wound and heal it. I call this societal peace. I understand the depth of this concept, and feel responsible towards its fulfillment. I believe I have resolved in my personality and its depth the characteristics necessitated for attaining peace. I contemplate the theoretical and political dimensions and objectives of such a personality in great intensity. The thing which I would like to share most of all with the state and with all levels of the society is my study of peace. I have no doubts that what I can share about this subject will be relevant at a historical and societal level. The fundamentals of freedom dictate that we must once again develop our ties to the state and society, and make way for a reconciliation which has gained a historical foundation. This can be achieved around the framework of a democratic republic. If I am given the opportunity, I will direct all my efforts towards attaining, and representing the democratic union of free citizens and peoples with the republic, in peace and fraternity.
** Conclusion: Democratic Union is the next historic step of the Republic
Even though the Prosecutor may, on the basis of the programme and my extensive explanations, reach the conclusion that the aim was to set up a separate state and that my words “Everything for Independence and Liberty” means just that, I have attempted in this defence to explain that, as one of those most responsible for this historic experience, my aim was to achieve democratic union. While I do not have the documents of the speeches I made, I indicated, through the unilateral cease-fires I called and through indirect dialogues, that independence and liberty for the individual and for the people could only be achieved within the context of Turkey’s integrity and the democratic structure of the republic. Looking at it in a scientific way, the Kurdish people’s quest for a state of its own cannot be a realistic proposition, given that this people is surrounded on all sides by neighbours who would find it unacceptable, on a largely mountainous terrain, divided economically, socially, culturally and politically, weighed down by feudal values, lacking even an alphabet, with most of its members working in the metropolises. Moreover, both the historical experience of the past two centuries and the recent PKK uprising have shown that, given the existing balance of military forces, moves towards separation would exacerbate the problem. This method would cause difficulties for both sides, they would suffer great pain and losses. But neither would separation come about, nor would the problem be resolved. The disease would become more severe. The disease cannot be cured by annihilating the patient, and the part cannot be cured by separating it off from the whole, that is the state, of which it is a main element. The correct method is to overcome The rotten parts, the laws which cannot be democratised, which even the highest authorities of the state admit to being obstacles to liberty, the outdated institutions, the approaches based on fear and denial; the feudal social structures (tribes, sheikhs, landlords) in the region and the fear of the state — all these must be overcome; that is the correct method. Integration must be achieved with the republic, as true constitutional citizens in a democratic union, on the basis of free individuals and a free society.
Both the experience of our recent uprising and many experiences throughout the world show that the solution must be sought within such a democratic system and that insistence on suppression and on resistance lead to nothing but exacerbating the impasse. The recent problems in Kosovo show the necessity for conciliation. As I have tried to explain in my defence, our organised and active movement put forward the idea of a separate political structure more frequently in its programme and declarations at the beginning; but experience showed us and we tried to stress in the 1990’s the importance of free union, that the practical way to freedom as a peoples was through the integrity of the Turkish country and state, that the democratic system could resolve this problem. I believe that the state confidently knows that this was our decision. What is important is not words, not even the programme and principles, what matters is the reality of life and the struggle which should be enshrined in the principles and the programme. Life and the struggle have led us to the conclusion that “if you do not wish to live as a slave, as one whose existence is denied, you have to learn to live within a free union”. This cannot be doubted. Moreover, many similar problems in the world arose first with a separatist aim, but proved that living together is more correct and means powerful unity and wealth. The tendency towards unity is proving itself stronger than that towards separation and unions across the world are developing economically, culturally and politically. In short, the world-wide tendency also forces us towards free, democratic union. We live in a period when even historic enemies in the direction of such conciliation.
Therefore, the failure to see the problems within the context of the social reality our peoples’ who have largely made their history together, have opposed together common dangers and enemies in critical matters of life and death, and have lived very much side by side; the failure to reflect this reality in the constitution within the process of democratisation; and even where it is so reflected, the failure to eliminate certain barriers in front of freedom and equality — not only do these failures exacerbate social problems, but they sometimes lead to the hardest, most ruthless acts and to their consequences. You cannot talk about a joint founder member and then have a language ban which nobody in the world has. This in itself is enough strikingly to explain the painful truth.
In that case a failure to see the social problems of our people that have lived most of their histories together and at the most crucial periods of life or death have resisted joint dangers and enemies together, and to be unable in particular to find a constitutional expression within developing democratisation and the failure to lift certain obstacles to freedoms and equality, not only worsens social problems but can also lead to the most ruthless actions and consequences. You say “ joint founder member”, and then bring in an unprecedented language ban. This is sufficient to explain in a striking way our painful reality.
The most significant conclusion reached is that at last the period of historical rebellions has ended or has to end. However, for this to occur the historical democratic secularisation movement of the Turkish Republic has to succeed. In a democratic Republican system there is no place for violence. Revolt or revolution cannot be the way to resolve problems. A peaceful constitutional evolutionary path is valid. The end of the twentieth century ordains this. A single whole in these lands respecting the will for a free life is the path to a sacred peace and great development for the entire society.
Within this framework, it is up to our people in the East, to the Kurdish people, to manage the intensive need for a democratic society and to do this in unison with the State in a renewed democratic unity to overcome rotten feudal values. It is the task of the Kurdish people and bodies, to become enlightened with the democratic republic’s criteria of freedom and equality to gain a will and in this way to become the real founding element and become constitutional citizens and a society. As the history of rebellions ends the coming period is one of great democratisation and of combining this with the principles and institutions of the republic and with democratic criteria. This as a path of reform which will progress slowly but its consequences will be developing and stengthening. Our historical experience and reality demonstrate to us that there is no other way and that even if there is, it is a deadend deepened by pain and loss. It is a matter now of determining the democratic criteria for sharing fraternal life freely, together, on a reciprocal social historical basis, not to establish who is right, who is wrong, who lost more, caused more harms or who is strong and who is weak. We must found our democracy together and develop it. It is essential to be aware of the labour of all the martyrs in the founding and protection of the republic, of our martyrs, to commemorate the founder with gratitude and respect and to proudly salute the flag. But as the present generation we must fulfil our contemporary duties.
This is in fact what we wanted to do . We wanted to overcome the serious backwardness, ignorance and slavery in the East with progress, enlightenment and freedom. This is a republican duty. There can be no doubt that this was the essence. However, look at the paradox that we are on trial charged with the greatest crime against the republic. Within a seemingly legal framework. This is unfortunate. It is not an expression of our essence. History will demonstrate that this movement did not target the founder of the republic but was a movement aiming to curing a decaying, sick entity and to ensure its two legs or the part that needed to be healthiest was restored to health and strength. Ataturk also founded the republic under a death sentence, and against the Sultanate which appointed him. What he demolished was not the essence of the state but the Sultanate and Caliphate forms which could not adopt to the needs of the age. It should not be misunderstood, we are not claiming greatness for ourselves. How from the beginning I have asserted that it is not the essence of the republic which we oppose, but the oligarchic, undemocratic, feudal values and structures in Turkish society. The goal has been a democratic republic.
What should be realised under its constitution is a free citizen and society. The republic can only gain great strength from this. This was what we understood by the task of modernity. Not to take action would have been disrespectful to the republic.
Although its ideology, programme and actions may appear opposite, if, as a result of a great struggle through belief, determination and practice we have reached this stage, we must respect this. If necessary people can reach the truth by learning lessons from great mistakes and errors. History and society mainly progress in this way. It is only God who can move forward on a straight path without making mistakes. Even prophets have admitted that they are not immune to making mistakes and errors. Many mistakes have been made by us, by myself. They have caused great pain. In my defence I have explained this in essence. But it is also a fact that we have proved that we possess the will to turn from this. Perhaps this will not aquit us according to law but we are certain that history and society will acquit us. If we had grown up in a democratic society would such a revolt have occurred? Anything can be expected from people who prohibit themselves, who attempt to conceal the words that come out of their mouths in a guilty panic over their mother tongue. This should be well understood.
Doesn’t this situation, unique in contemporary civilisation, offer an excuse? I want to explain this insistently: If I am frightened of recognising even myself how can I recognise the republic and its whole legal order, how will I become contemporary? This is the people’s reality I have experienced. If even as an alternative a large majority have not become Turkicised this cannot be the fault of the people. In any case it has became apparent that such a method is not contemporary and cannot work through coercion. In the event the mistakes and errors have been reciprocated, grown larger and in the latest rebellion given their merciless verdict. If we have not lost our willpower and if we accept each other with real contemporary criteria on the basis of learning lessons, it is our fundemental task once again to open the way to freedom and equality within a democratic system on the basis of our motherland and republic, no longer ever resorting to violence. We should have a sacred unity founded on an unshakable consciousness and will as a response to the loss, pain and suffering of all sides, first and foremost the martyrs. This should not be seen as an illusion. Let us open the pages of history, we will see that all meaningful unities have been established in this way.
I see this trial, for all these reasons, as an historic, social trial. I see it as the bringing to trial of the latest explosion of a serious problem, the Eastern Kurdish Question that worsened as the Republic did not fulfil its tasks at the time. The esteemed judges will undoubtedly make their considerations and give their verdict according to law. However, with a question which has such a historical and social background understanding should be shown to the fact that I did not feel the need to make much of a legal defence. This is what I expect from the prosecutors. If necessary, my lawyers will and should make a defence concentrating on the legal aspects. What I am endeavouring to achieve with all my might is a resolution of the question without there ever again being a resort to violence. I have consciously concentrated my defence case in this direction, because it is a necessity of my loyalty and respect for the society and its lofty expression, the state. I never even talk about treason. At most about the fulfillment of the needs of the National Pact within contemporary criteria. In this context my defence is for the necessity to implement whatever the founding principles of the National Pact expressed, in particular, for the Kurdish people and, if it participated in the creation of the republic as a founding people, that this should be restored. I say that for the Kurdish-Turcoman communities living outside the National Pact (borders) it is the moral and political duty of the Turkish Republic to assist them to live in the state in which they are situated in possession of their democratic identities without suffering genocide. This is not interfering in the internal affairs of another state. It is an historical and humanitarian approach. In my defence it is the integrity of the country and existence of the independence of the state which I believe I have served to clarify. The essence of this is the implementation of democracy. In this context I believe I have carried out an historical service. What the Kurds all over Turkey and wherever they are concentrated should do is expend great efforts for democratisation. This may bring results. Economic and social — cultural development will lead to a strengthening, enriched unity within democratic politics and the republic. I have endeavoured to explain my great belief in the realistic nature of this approach and how it will lead to success. I have also explained how the violent approach no longer has validity and what a serious irresponsibility it would be to repeat it and how I have made great efforts to prevent this happening, that I need to do more, that even my sole justification for living is to seize the peace phase. I am determined to do this. I have stated that the peace option is more difficult than that of war but it is meaningful and I believe it will succeed. It will be my sole aim from now on to make great efforts in this direction. I am totally aware that it is my duty to take this to our whole people, including our organised forces. Every war has a peace and I believe and am determined that the democratic republic means a free peace and that the resolution will develop in this framework.
I have emphasised the need for the PKK, in the vanguard of the revolt, to pass beyond this period and orient itself towards preparations for change responding to the needs of the legal and political process and reconstruction and a new programme within the criteria of a democratic system. I have stated that organisations, as well as individuals, will only survive and achieve success as long as they respond to the historical requirements, otherwise they will regress and become marginalised. I have also stressed the need for the PKK to change according to the peace environment and if necessary, and the state is open to it, for a “peace congress”.
It is apparent that my defence is designed to be a contribution to a possible solution rather than a response to the allegations one by one. In addition to analysing the past I have sought to find an answer to shared life in the light of democratic institutions and experiences and also within history and our present reality. I have also stressed in particular that the manner of the democratic resolution will not only protect the integrity of the country and the power of the republic but also strengthen it. I have also pointed out that togetherness established through free will and consciousness is the soundest of unities, and that the republic and democratic unity are the soundest guarantees against all kinds of discrimination.
It is certain that when this, the most difficult problem in the history of the republic, is resolved, Turkey will, with the strength it receives from internal peace, be in a position to become a leading power in the region. Leadership in the Middle East will imply influence from Central Asia to the Balkans and the Caucasus. The resolving power of the democratic system will lead to offers of just interventions and support, and requests for them in these regions which have many contradictions and problems. Peace will then be the dominant force. A developed economy and cultural progress will also contribute to great wealth. Turkey is entering the next millennium with this perspective. The Kurdish Question has been a hindrance. Its solution means a considerable strengthening followed by the achievement of historic success. If we are to discuss foreign manipulation the fundamental aim is to push back the current process and that they believe they can succeed in this by using the Kurdish Question. Such manipulation has occurred at also critical periods in history. When there has been no solution it has been successful, too. In that case our task is to resolve the problem ourselves and turn it into our own powerful weapon against the manipulators and schemers. In my defence I have established that this is both very possible and our only hope. Our personal experience is the best proof of this. In that case when we say that this fraternal solution that we will realise for the first time with free will is to be a new historical process we are right. This trial should be the most important peace trial in the history of the republic. It is possible to leave behind all the pain, fear and backwardness brought on by rebellions through peace realized by a democratic system. It is my most fundamental democratic ideal to make my trial the opportunity for an honourable peace. My defence is fundamentally connected to this aim of mine, and this is the most correct path. We cannot pay our debt to the country and all our people with a more precious thing than this. The “peace at home, peace in the world” principle of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who saw before everyone else with his profound awareness that without a just and honourable peace life would have no meaning in the country or in the world, is our even more striking expression of life.
We believe that the republic he founded will only bring peace on a democratic basis and that this will be of the greatest service to the world and regional peace. Esteemed judges, in responding to the matters in the chief prosecutor’s indictment in this way I have endeavoured to answer not only on my behalf but also, since I am held responsible, on behalf of the PKK and the problems of the section of the people that rebelled in its name.
However documented the accusations may be I have established the existence of the problem and reasons pertaining to the necessity to make efforts for a solution. Reciprocal mistakes and errors have taken place in the revolt. I have stated the lack of need and mercilessness of many actions. I have tried to express the fact that I experience the pain to my marrow and am one of those who most thirsts for peace. There is ruthlessness in all rebellions, and also in their suppression. But our greatest consolation is to take this from being a constantly aching illness of our republic and turning it into a healthy part and into a force for peace. I believe our people need this as much as bread or water. For this reason I say that this trial should be the milestone of sacred peace. There is no way to pay the debt to the republic except through democratic unity. It should be definitely known that we will only be able to pay this debt as free citizens. A republic of enslavement and denial is not possible. In this context I have no doubt that our efforts and struggle have been loyal to the essence of the republic, and have been a necessity to achieving that. I believe in the achievement of the essence of the republic. In this context I wish to express my belief that our people, which has been unable to become a people of the republic on account of harsh feudal conditions, will at last be happy in peace under the slogan “ How happy to be the people of a democratic republic” and in reaching the reality of a free people that will reject secession, and that it has seized this historic process within Turkey’s territorial integrity and state presence along with all the people and will succeed in this.
|
#title Democratic Confederalism
#author Abdullah Öcalan
#LISTtitle Democratic Confederalism
#SORTauthors Abdullah Öcalan
#SORTtopics democratic confederalism, communalism, turkey, rojava, kurdistan
#date 2011
#source [[http://www.freedom-for-ocalan.com/english/download/Ocalan-Democratic-Confederalism.pdf][www.freedom-for-ocalan.com]]
#lang en
#notes The word “Qwam” plural “Aqwam” can mean “people”, “nation”, or “tribe” depending on the context. The translator incorrectly translated, in reference to the kurdish people as a kurdish “state” when in reality Ocalan rejects the notion of a state — originally published by: Transmedia Publishing Ltd. – London, Cologne International Initiative Edition
#pubdate 2018-11-10
** I. Preface
For more than thirty years the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has been struggling for the legitimate rights of the Kurdish people. Our struggle, our fight for liberation turned the Kurdish question into an international issue which affected the entire Middle East and brought a solution of the Kurdish question within reach. When the PKK was formed in the 1970s the international ideological and political climate was characterized by the bipolar world of the Cold War and the conflict between the socialist and the capitalist camps. The PKK was inspired at that time by the rise of decolonialization movements all over the world. In this context we tried to find our own way in agreement with the particular situation in our homeland. The PKK never regarded the Kurdish question as a mere problem of ethnicity or nationhood. Rather, we believed, it was the project of liberating the society and democratizing it. These aims increasingly determined our actions since the 1990s. We also recognized a causal link between the Kurdish question and the global domination of the modern capitalist system. Without questioning and challenging this link a solution would not be possible. Otherwise we would only become involved in new dependencies. So far, with a view to issues of ethnicity and nationhood like the Kurdish question, which have their roots deep in history and at the foundations of society, there seemed to be only one viable. solution: the creation of a nation-state, which was the paradigm of the capitalist modernity at that time. We did not believe, however, that any ready-made political blueprints would be able to sustainably improve the situation of the people in the Middle East. Had it not been nationalism and nation-states which had created so many problems in the Middle East? Let us therefore take a closer look at the historical background of this paradigm and see whether we can map a solution that avoids the trap of nationalism and fits the situation of the Middle East better.
** II. The Nation-State
*** A. Basics
With the sedentarization of people they began to form an idea of the area that they were living in, its extension and its boundaries, which were mostly determined by nature and features of the landscape. Clans and tribes that had settled in a certain area and lived there for a long period of time developed the notions of a common identity and of the homeland. The boundaries between what the tribes saw as their homelands were not yet borders. Commerce, culture or language were not restricted by the boundaries. Territorial borders remained flexible for a long time. Feudal structures prevailed almost everywhere and now and then dynastic monarchies or great multi-ethnic empires rose with continuously changing borders and many different languages and religious communities like the Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire or the British Empire. They survived long periods of time and many political changes because their feudal basis enabled them to distribute power flexibly over a wide range of smaller secondary power centres.
**** 1. Nation-state and Power
With the appearance of the nation-state trade, commerce and finance pushed for political participation and subsequently added their power to the traditional state structures. The development of the nation-state at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution more than two hundred years ago went hand in hand with the unregulated accumulation of capital on the one hand and the unhindered exploitation of the fast growing population on the other hand. The new bourgeoisie which rose from this revolution wanted to take part in the political decisions and state structures. Capitalism, their new economic system, thus became an inherent component of the new nation-state. The nation-state needed the bourgeoisie and the power of the capital in order to replace the old feudal order and its ideology which rested on tribal structures and inherited rights by a new national ideology which united all tribes and clans under the roof of the nation. In this way, capitalism and nation-state became so closely linked to each other that neither could be imagined to exist without the other. As a consequence of this, exploitation was not only sanctioned by the state but even encouraged and facilitated. But above all the nation-state must be thought as the maximum form of power. None of the other types of state have such a capacity of power. One of the main reasons for this is that the upper part of the middle-class has been linked to the process of monopolization in an ever-more increasing manner. The nationstate itself is the most developed complete monopoly. It is the most developed unity of monopolies such as trade, industrial, finance and power. One should also think of ideological monopoly as an indivisible part of the power monopoly.
**** 2. The State and its Religious Roots
The religious roots of the state have already been discussed in detail (A. Ocalan, The Roots of Civilisation, London, 2007). Many contemporary political concepts and notions have their origin in religious or theological concepts or structures. In fact, a closer look reveals that religion and divine imagination brought about the first social identities in history. They formed the ideological glue of many tribes and other pre-state communities and defined their existence as communities.
Later, after state structures had already developed, the traditional links between state, power and society began to weaken. The sacred and divine ideas and practices which had been present at the origin of the community increasingly lost their meaning for the common identity and were, instead, transferred onto power structures like monarchs or dictators. The state and its power were derived from divine will and law and its ruler became king by the grace of God. They represented divine power on earth.
Today, most modern states call themselves secular, claiming that the old bonds between religion and state have been severed and that religion is no longer a part of the state. This is arguably only half the truth. Even if religious institutions or representatives of the clergy do no longer participate in political and social decision-making they still do influence these decisions to an extent just as they are influenced themselves by political or social ideas and developments. Therefore, secularism, or laicism as it is called in Turkey, still contains religious elements. The separation of state and religion is the result of a political decision. It did not come naturally. This is why even today power and state seem to be something given, god-given we might even say. Notions like secular state or secular power remain ambiguous. The nation-state has also allocated a number of attributes which serve to replace older religiously rooted attributes like: nation, fatherland, national flag, national anthem, and many others. Particularly notions like the unity of state and nation serve to transcend the material political structures and are, as such, reminiscent of the pre-state unity with God. They have been put in the place of the divine
When in former times a tribe subjugated another tribe its members had to worship the gods of the victors. We may arguably call this process a process of colonization, even assimilation. The nation-state is a centralized state with quasi-divine attributes that has completely disarmed the society and monopolizes the use of force.
**** 3. Bureaucracy and the Nation-State
Since the nation-state transcends its material basis, the citizens, it assumes an existence beyond its political institutions. It needs additional institutions of its own to protect its ideological basis as well as legal, economic and religious structures. The resulting ever-expanding civil and military bureaucracy is expensive and serves only the preservation of the transcendent state itself, which in turn elevates the bureaucracy above the people. During the European modernity the state had all means at its disposal to expand its bureaucracy into all strata of the society. There it grew like cancer infecting all lifelines of the society. Bureaucracy and nation-state cannot exist without each other. If the nation-state is the backbone of the capitalist modernity it certainly is the cage of the natural society. Its bureaucracy secures the smooth functioning of the system, secures the basis of the production of goods, and secures the profits for the relevant economic actors in both the real-socialist and the business-friendly nation-state. The nation-state domesticates the society in the name of capitalism and alienates the community from its natural foundations. Any analysis meant to localize and solve social problems needs to take a close look at these links
**** 4. Nation-State and Homogeneity
The nation-state in its original form aimed at the monopolization of all social processes. Diversity and plurality had to be fought, an approach that led into assimilation and genocide. It does not only exploit the ideas and the labour potential of the society and colonize the heads of the people in the name of capitalism. It also assimilates all kinds of spiritual and intellectual ideas and cultures in order to preserve its own existence. It aims at creating a single national culture, a single national identity, and a single unified religious community. Thus it also enforces a homogeneous citizenship. The notion of citizen has been created as a result of the quest for such a homogeneity. The citizenship of modernity defines nothing but the transition made from private slavery to state slavery. Capitalism can not attain profit in the absence of such modern slave armies. The homogenic national society is the most artificial society to have ever been created and is the result of the “social engineering project”. These goals are generally accomplished by the use of force or by financial incentives and have often resulted in the physical annihilation of minorities, cultures, or languages or in forced assimilation. The history of the last two centuries is full of examples illustrating the violent attempts at creating a nation that corresponds to the imaginary reality of a true nation-state.
**** 5. Nation-State and Society
It is often said that the nation-state is concerned with the fate of the common people. This is not true. Rather, it is the national governor of the worldwide capitalist system, a vassal of the capitalist modernity which is more deeply entangled in the dominant structures of the capital than we usually tend to assume: It is a colony of the capital. Regardless how nationalist the nationstate may present itself, it serves to the same extent the capitalist processes of exploitation. There is no other explanation for the horrible redistribution wars of the capitalist modernity. Thus the nation-state is not with the common people – it is an enemy of the peoples. Relations between other nation-states and international monopolies are coordinated by the diplomats of the nation-state. Without the recognition by other nation-states none of them could survive. The reason can be found in the logic of the worldwide capitalist system. Nation-states which leave the phalanx of the capitalist system will be overtaken by the same fate that the Saddam regime in Iraq experienced or it will be brought to its knees by means of economic embargoes. Let us now derive some characteristics of the nation-state from the example of the Republic of Turkey.
*** B. Ideological Foundations of the Nation-State
In the past the history of states was often equated with the history of their rulers, which lent them almost divine qualities. This practice changed with the rise of the nation-state. Now the entire state was idealized and elevated to a divine level.
**** 1. Nationalism
Assuming that we would compare the nation-state to a living god then nationalism would be the correspondent religion. In spite of some seemingly positive elements, nation-state and nationalism show metaphysical characteristics. In this context, capitalist profit and the accumulation of capital appear as categories shrouded in mystery. There is a network of contradictory relations behind these terms that is based on force and exploitation. Their hegemonic strive for power serves the maximization of profits. In this sense, nationalism appears as a quasi-religious justification. Its true mission, however, is its service to the virtually divine nation-state and its ideological vision which pervades all areas of the society. Arts, science, and social awareness: none of them is independent. A true intellectual enlightenment therefore needs a fundamental analysis of these elements of modernity.
**** 2. Positivist Science
The paradigm of a positivist or descriptive science forms another ideological pillar of the nation-state. It fuels nationalist ideology but also laicism which has taken the form of a new religion. On the other hand it is one of the ideological foundations of modernity and its dogmata have influenced the social sciences sustainably. Positivism can be circumscribed as a philosophical approach that is strictly confined to the appearance of things, which it equates with reality itself. Since in positivism appearance is reality, nothing that has no appearance can be part of reality. We know from quantum physics, astronomy, some fields of biology and even the gist of thought itself that reality occurs in worlds that are beyond observable events. The truth, in the relationship between the observed and the observer, has mystified itself to the extent that it no longer fits any physical scale or definition. Positivism denies this and thus, to an extent, resembles the idol worshipping of ancient times, where the idol constitutes the image of reality.
**** 3. Sexism
Another ideological pillar of the nation-state is the sexism that pervades the entire society. Many civilized systems have employed sexism in order to preserve their own power. They enforced women’s exploitation and used them as a valuable reservoir of cheap labour. Women are also regarded as a valuable resource in so far as they produce offspring and provide the reproduction of men. Thus, woman is both a sexual object and a commodity. She is a tool for the preservation of male power and can at best advance to become an accessory of the patriarchal male society. On the one hand, the sexism of the society of the nation-state strengthens the power of the men; on the other hand the nationstate turns its society into a colony by the exploitation of women. In this respect women can also be regarded as an exploited nation. In the course of the history of civilization the patriarchy consolidated the traditional framework of hierarchies, which in the nation-state is fuelled by sexism. Socially rooted sexism is just like nationalism an ideological product of the nation-state and of power. Socially rooted sexism is not less dangerous than capitalism. The patriarchy, however, tries to hide these facts at any rate. This is understandable with a view to the fact that all power relations and state ideologies are fuelled by sexist concepts and behaviour. Without the repression of the women the repression of the entire society is not conceivable. The sexism within the nation-state society while on the one hand gives the male the maximum power on the other hand turns the society through the woman into the worst colony of all. Hence woman is the historical-society’s colony nation which has reached its worst position within the nation-state. All the power and state ideologies stem from sexist attitudes and behaviour. Woman’s slavery is the most profound and disguised social area where all types of slavery, oppression and colonization are realized. Capitalism and nation-state act in full awareness of this. Without woman’s slavery none of the other types of slavery can exist let alone develop. Capitalism and nation-state denote the most institutionalized dominant male. More boldly and openly spoken: capitalism and nation-state are the monopolism of the despotic and exploitative male.
**** 4. Religiousness
Even if it acts seemingly like a secular state, the nation-state does not shy away from using a mélange of nationalism and religion for its purposes. The reason is simple: religion still plays an important part in some societies or parts of them. In particular Islam is very agile in this respect. However, religion in the age of modernity does no longer play its traditional role. Whether it is a radical of a moderate belief, religion in the nation-state does no longer have a mission in the society. It can only do what it is permitted by the nation-state. Its still existing influence and its functionality, which can be mis-used for the promotion of nationalism, are interesting aspects for the nation-state. In some cases religion even takes on the part of nationalism. The Shi’ah of Iran is one of the most powerful ideological weapons of the Iranian state. In Turkey the Sunni ideology plays a similar but more limited part.
*** C. The Kurds and the Nation-State
After the preceding short introduction into the nation-state and its ideological basics we will now see why the foundation of a separate Kurdish nation-state does not make sense for the Kurds. Over the last decades the Kurds have not only struggled against repression by the dominant powers and for the recognition of their existence but also for the liberation of their society from the grip of feudalism. Hence it does not make sense to replace the old chains by new ones or even enhance the repression. This is what the foundation of a nation-state would mean in the context of the capitalist modernity. Without opposition against the capitalist modernity there will be no place for the liberation of the peoples. This is why the founding of a Kurdish nation-state is not an option for me. The call for a separate nation-state results from the interests of the ruling class or the interests of the bourgeoisie but does not reflect the interests of the people since another state would only be the creation of additional injustice and would curtail the right to freedom even more. The solution to the Kurdish question, therefore, needs to be found in an approach that weakens the capitalist modernity or pushes it back. There are historical reasons, social peculiarities and actual developments as well as the fact that the settlement area of the Kurds extends over the territories of four different countries which make a democratic solution indispensable. Furthermore, there is also the important fact that the entire Middle East suffers from a democracy deficit. Thanks to the geostrategic situation of the Kurdish settlement area successful Kurdish democratic projects promise to advance the democratization of the Middle East in general. Let us call this democratic project democratic confederalism.
** III. Democratic Confederalism
This kind of rule or administration can be called a non-state political administration or a democracy without a state. Democratic decision-making processes must not be confused with the processes known from public administration. States only administrate while democracies govern. States are founded on power; democracies are based on collective consensus. Office in the state is determined by decree, even though it may be in part legitimized by elections. Democracies use direct elections. The state uses coercion as a legitimate means. Democracies rest on voluntary participation. Democratic confederalism is open towards other political groups and factions. It is flexible, multi-cultural, anti-monopolistic, and consensus-oriented. Ecology and feminism are central pillars. In the frame of this kind of self-administration an alternative economy will become necessary, which increases the resources of the society instead of exploiting them and thus does justice to the manifold needs of the society
*** A. Participation and the Diversity of the Political Landscape
The contradictory composition of the society necessitates political groups with both vertical and horizontal formations. Central, regional and local groups need to be balanced in this way. Only they, each for itself, are able to deal with its special concrete situation and develop appropriate solutions for far-reaching social problems. It is a natural right to express one’s cultural, ethnic, or national identity with the help of political associations. However, this right needs an ethical and political society. Whether nationstate, republic, or democracy – democratic confederalism is open for compromises concerning state or governmental traditions. It allows for equal coexistence
*** B. The Heritage of the Society and the Accumulation of Historical Knowledge
Then again, democratic confederalism rests on the historical experience of the society and its collective heritage. It is not an arbitrary modern political system but, rather, accumulates history and experience. It is the offspring of the life of the society. The state continuously orientates itself towards centralism in order to pursue the interests of the power monopolies. Just the opposite is true for confederalism. Not the monopolies but the society is at the centre of political focus. The heterogeneous structure of the society is in contradiction to all forms of centralism. Distinct centralism only results in social eruptions. Within living memory people have always formed loose groups of clans, tribes or other communities with federal qualities. In this way they were able to preserve their internal autonomy. Even the internal government of empires employed diverse methods of self-administration for their different parts, which included religious authorities, tribal councils, kingdoms, and even republics. Hence it is important to understand, that even centralist seeming empires follow a confederate organizational structure. The centralist model is not an administrative model wanted by the society. Instead, it has its source in the preservation of power of the monopolies.
*** C. Ethics and Political Awareness
The classification of the society in categories and terms after a certain pattern is produced artificially by the capitalist monopolies. What counts in a society like that is not what you are but what you appear to be. The putative alienation of the society from its own existence encourages the withdrawal from active participation, a reaction which is often called disenchantment with politics. However, societies are essentially political and value-oriented. Economic, political, ideological, and military monopolies are constructions which contradict the nature of society by merely striving for the accumulation of surplus. They do not create values. Nor can a revolution create a new society. It can only influence the ethical and political web of a society. Anything else is at the discretion of the ethics-based political society. I mentioned already that the capitalist modernity enforces the centralization of the state. The political and military power centres within the society have been deprived of their influence. The nation-state as a modern substitute of monarchy left a weakened and defenceless society behind. In this respect, legal order and public peace only imply the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Power constitutes itself in the central state and becomes one of the fundamental administrative paradigms of modernity. This puts the nation-state in contrast to democracy and republicanism. Our project of “democratic modernity” is meant as an alternative draft to modernity as we know it. It builds on democratic confederalism as a fundamental political paradigm. Democratic modernity is the roof of an ethics-based political society. As long as we make the mistake to believe that societies need to be homogeneous monolithic entities it will be difficult to understand confederalism. Modernity’s history is also a history of four centuries of cultural and physical genocide in the name of an imaginary unitary society. Democratic confederalism as a sociological category is the counterpart of this history and it rests on the will to fight if necessary as well as on ethnic, cultural, and political diversity. The crisis of the financial system is an inherent consequence of the capitalist nation-state. However, all efforts of the neoliberals to change the nation-state have remained unsuccessful. The Middle East provides instructive examples.
*** D. Democratic Confederalism and a Democratic Political System
In contrast to a centralist and bureaucratic understanding of administration and exercise of power confederalism poses a type of political self-administration where all groups of the society and all cultural identities can express themselves in local meetings, general conventions and councils. This understanding of democracy opens the political space to all strata of the society and allows for the formation of different and diverse political groups. In this way it also advances the political integration of the society as a whole. Politics becomes a part of everyday life. Without politics the crisis of the state cannot be solved since the crisis is fuelled by a lack of representation of the political society. Terms like federalism or self administration as they can be found in liberal democracies need to be conceived anew. Essentially, they should not be conceived as hierarchical levels of the administration of the nation-state but rather as central tools of social expression and participation. This, in turn, will advance the politicization of the society. We do not need big theories here, what we need is the will to lend expression to the social needs by strengthening the autonomy of the social actors structurally and by creating the conditions for the organization of the society as a whole. The creation of an operational level where all kinds of social and political groups, religious communities, or intellectual tendencies can express themselves directly in all local decision-making processes can also be called participative democracy. The stronger the participation the more powerful is this kind of democracy. While the nation-state is in contrast to democracy, and even denies it, democratic confederalism constitutes a continuous democratic process.
The social actors, which are each for itself federative units, are the germ cells of participative democracy. They can combine and associate into new groups and confederations according to the situation. Each of the political units involved in participative democracy is essentially democratic. In this way, what we call democracy then is the application of democratic processes of decision-making from the local level to the global level in the framework of a continuous political process. This process will affect the structure of the social web of the society in contrast to the striving for homogeneity of the nation-state, a construct that can only be realized by force thus bringing about the loss of freedom.
I have already addressed the point that the local level is the level where the decisions are made. However, the thinking leading to these decisions needs to be in line with global issues. We need to become aware of the fact that even villages and urban neighbourhoods require confederate structures. All areas of the society need to be given to self-administration, all levels of it need to be free to participate.
*** E. Democratic Confederalism and Self-Defence
Essentially, the nation-state is a militarily structured entity. Nation-states are eventually the products of all kinds of internal and external warfare. None of the existing nation-states has come into existence all by itself. Invariably, they have a record of wars. This process is not limited to their founding phase but, rather, it builds on the militarization of the entire society. The civil leadership of the state is only an accessory of the military apparatus. Liberal democracies even outdo this by painting their militaristic structures in democratic and liberal colours. However, this does not keep them from seeking authoritarian solutions at the highpoint of a crisis caused by the system itself. Fascist exercise of power is the nature of the nation-state. Fascism is the purest form of the nation-state.
This militarization can only be pushed back with the help of self-defence. Societies without any mechanism of self-defence lose their identities, their capability of democratic decision-making, and their political nature. Therefore, the self-defence of a society is not limited to the military dimension alone. It also presupposes the preservation of its identity, its own political awareness, and a process of democratization. Only then can we talk about self-defence.
Against this background democratic confederalism can be called a system of self-defence of the society. Only with the help of confederate networks can there be a basis to oppose the global domination of the monopolies and nation-state militarism. Against the network of monopolies we must build up an equally strong network of social confederacies.
This means in particular that the social paradigm of confederalism does not involve a military monopoly for the armed forces, which do only have the task of ensuring the internal and external security. They are under direct control of the democratic institutions. The society itself must be able to determine their duties. One of their tasks will be the defence of the free will of the society from internal and external interventions. The composition of the military leadership needs to be determined in equal terms and parts by both the political institutions and the confederate groupings.
*** F. Democratic Confederalism Versus Strife for Hegemony
In democratic confederalism there is no room for any kind of hegemony striving. This is particularly true in the field of ideology. Hegemony is a principle that is usually followed by the classic type of civilization. Democratic civilizations reject hegemonic powers and ideologies. Any ways of expression which cut across the boundaries of democratic self-administration would carry self-administration and freedom of expression ad absurdum. The collective handling of matters of the society needs understanding, respect of dissenting opinions and democratic ways of decisionmaking. This is in contrast to the understanding of leadership in the capitalist modernity where arbitrary bureaucratic decisions of nation-state character are diametrically opposed to the democratic-confederate leadership in line with ethic foundations. In democratic confederalism leadership institutions do not need ideological legitimization. Hence, they need not strive for hegemony
*** G. Democratic Confederate Structures at a Global scale
Although in democratic confederalism the focus is on the local level, organizing confederalism globally is not excluded. Contrariwise, we need to put up a platform of national civil societies in terms of a confederate assembly to oppose the United Nations as an association of nation-states under the leadership of the superpowers. In this way we might get better decisions with a view to peace, ecology, justice and productivity in the world.
*** H. Conclusion
Democratic confederalism can be described as a kind of selfadministration in contrast to the administration by the nationstate. However, under certain circumstances peaceful coexistence is possible as long as the nation-state does not interfere with central matters of self-administration. All such interventions would call for the self-defence of the civil society.
Democratic confederalism is not at war with any nation-state but it will not stand idly by at assimilation efforts. Revolutionary overthrow or the foundation of a new state does not create sustainable change. In the long run, freedom and justice can only be accomplished within a democratic-confederate dynamic process.
Neither total rejection nor complete recognition of the state is useful for the democratic efforts of the civil society. The overcoming of the state, particularly the nation-state, is a long-term process.
The state will be overcome when democratic confederalism has proved its problem-solving capacities with a view to social issues. This does not mean, though, that attacks by nation-states have to be accepted. Democratic confederations will sustain self-defence forces at all times. Democratic confederations will not be limited to organize themselves within a single particular territory. They will become cross-border confederations when the societies concerned so desire.
** IV. Principles of Democratic Confederalism
1. The right of self-determination of the peoples includes the right to a state of their own. However, the foundation of a state does not increase the freedom of a people. The system of the United Nations that is based on nation-states has remained inefficient. Meanwhile, nation-states have become serious obstacles for any social development. Democratic confederalism is the contrasting paradigm of the oppressed people.
2. Democratic confederalism is a non-state social paradigm. It is not controlled by a state. At the same time, democratic confederalism is the cultural organizational blueprint of a democratic nation.
3. Democratic confederalism is based on grass-roots participation. Its decision-making processes lie with the communities. Higher levels only serve the coordination and implementation of the will of the communities that send their delegates to the general assemblies. For limited space of time they are both mouthpiece and executive institutions. However, the basic power of decision rests with the local grass-roots institutions.
4. In the Middle East, democracy cannot be imposed by the capitalist system and its imperial powers which only damage democracy. The propagation of grass-roots democracy is elementary. It is the only approach that can cope with diverse ethnical groups, religions, and class differences. It also goes together well with the traditional confederate structure of the society
5. Democratic confederalism in Kurdistan is an anti-nationalist movement as well. It aims at realizing the right of self-defence of the peoples by the advancement of democracy in all parts of Kurdistan without questioning the existing political borders. Its goal is not the foundation of a Kurdish nationstate. The movement intends to establish federal structures in Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq that are open for all Kurds and at the same time form an umbrella confederation for all four parts of Kurdistan
** V. Problems of the Peoples in the Middle East and Possible Ways to a Solution
The national question is not a phantasm of the capitalist modernity. Nevertheless it was the capitalist modernity which imposed the national question on the society. The nation replaced the religious community. However, the transition to a national society needs the overcoming of the capitalist modernity if the nation is not to remain the disguise of repressive monopolies.
As negative as is the over-emphasis of the national category in the Middle East as severe would be the consequences of neglecting the collective national aspect. Hence the method in handling the issue should not be ideological but scientific and not nationstatist but based on the concept of democratic nation and democratic communalism. The contents of such an approach are the fundamental elements of democratic modernity.
Over the past two centuries nationalism and tendency for nation-states have been fuelled in the societies of the Middle East. The national issues have not been solved but rather have been aggravated in all areas of the society. Instead of cultivating productive competition the capital enforces internal and external wars in the name of the nation-state.
The theory of communalism would be an alternative to capitalism. In the framework of democratic nations which do not strive for power monopolies it may lead to peace in a region which has only been the field of gory wars and genocides.
In this context we can speak of four majority nations: Arabs, Persians, Turks, and Kurds. I do not wish to divide nations into majority or minority as I do not find this to be appropriate. But due to demographic considerations I shall speak of majority nations. In the same context we may also use the term minority nations.
1. There are more than twenty Arab nation-states which divide the Arab community and damage their societies by wars. This is one of the main factors responsible for the alienation of cultural values and the apparent hopelessness of the Arab national question. These nation-states have not even been able to form a cross-national economic community. They are the main reason of the problematic situation of the Arab nation. A religiously motivated tribal nationalism together with a sexist patriarchal society pervades all areas of the society resulting in distinct conservatism and slavish obedience. Nobody believes that the Arabs will be able to find an Arab national solution to their internal and crossnational problems. However, democratization and a communalist approach might provide such a solution. Their weakness towards Israel, which the Arab nation-states regard as a competitor, is not only the result of international support by the hegemonic powers. Rather, it is the result of a strong internal democratic and communal institutions within Israel. Over the last century, the society of the Arab nation has been weakened by radical nationalism and Islamism. Yet, if they are able to unite communal socialism which they are not a stranger to with that of the understanding of a democratic nation then they may be able to find themselves a secure, long-term solution.
2. The Turks and Turkmens form another influential nation. They share a similar understandings of power and ideology with the Arabs. They are strict nation-statists and have a profound religious and racial nationalism engraved in them. From a sociological point of view, the Turks and Turkmens are quite different. The relations between Turkmen and Turkish aristocracy resemble the tensed relations between Bedouins and Arab aristocracy. They form a stratum whose interests are compatible with democracy and communalism. The national problems are quite complex. The power strive of the nation-state, distinct nationalism and a sexist patriarchal society prevail and create a very conservative society. The family is regarded as the smallest cell of the state. Both individuals and institutions have taken in these aspects. Turkish and Turkmen communities struggle for power. Other ethnic groups are subjected to a distinct policy of subjugation. The centralist power structures of the Turkish nation-state and the rigid official ideology have prevented a solution to the Kurdish question until today. The society is made to believe that there is no alternative to the state. There is no balance between the individual and the state. Obedience is regarded as the greatest virtue
In contrast to this, the theory of the democratic modernity offers an adequate approach to all national communities in Turkey to solve their national problems. Community based project of a democratic Turkish confederation would both strengthen its internal unity and and create the conditions for a peaceful coexistence with the neighbours that it lives with. Borders have lost its former meaning when it comes to social unity. In spite of geographic boundaries today’s modern communication tools allow for a virtual unity between individuals and communities wherever they are. A democratic confederation of the Turkish national communities could be a contribution to world peace and the system of democratic modernity.
3. The Kurdish national society is very complex. Worldwide, the Kurds are the biggest nation without a state of their own. They have been settling in their present settlement areas since the Neolithic. Agriculture and stock breeding as well as their readiness to defend themselves using the geographic advantages of their mountainous homeland helped the Kurds to survive as a native people. The Kurdish national question rises from the fact that they have been denied their right to nationhood. Others tried to assimilate them, annihilate them, and in the end flatly denied their existence. Not having a state of their own has advantages and disadvantages. The excrescences of state-based civilizations have only been taken in to a limited extent. This can be a benefit in the realization of alternative social concepts beyond the capitalist modernity. Their settlement area is divided by the national borders of four countries and lies in a geo-strategically important region, thus providing the Kurds a strategic advantage. The Kurds do not have the chance to form a national society through the use of state-power. Although there is a Kurdish political entity today in Iraqi-Kurdistan, it is not a nation-state but rather a parastatal entity.
Kurdistan had also been home to Armenian and Aramaic minorities before these fell victims to genocides. There are also smaller groups of Arabs and Turks. Even today there are many different religions and faiths living side by side there. There also rudiments of a clan and tribal culture while there is almost no presence of urban culture there.
All these properties are a blessing for new democratic political formations. Communal cooperatives in farming but also in the water economy and the energy sector offer themselves as ideal ways of production. The situation is also favourable for the development of an ethical political society. Even the patriarchal ideology is less deeply rooted here than in the neighbouring societies. This is beneficial for the establishment of a democratic society where women’s freedom and equality are to form one of the main pillars. It also offers the conditions for the creation of a democratic environment-friendly nation in line with the paradigm of the democratic modernity. The construction of a democratic nation based on multi-national identities is the ideal solution when faced with the dead-end street nation-state. The emerging entity could become a blueprint for the entire Middle East and expand dynamically into neighbouring countries. Convincing the neighbouring nations of this model shall change the fate of the Middle East and shall reinforce the chance of democratic modernity to create an alternative. In this sense, therefore, the freedom of the Kurds and the democratization of their society would be synonymous with the freedom of the whole region and its societies.
4. The reasons for today’s problems of the Persian or Iranian nation can be found in the interventions of historical civilizations and the capitalist modernity. Although their original identity was a result of Zoroastrian and Mithraic tradition these have been annulled by a derivative of Islam. Manichaeism that emerged as the synthesis of Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism with Greek philosophy was not able to prevail against the ideology of the official civilization. Indeed, it went no further then to nurture the tradition of rebellion. It has hence converted the Islamic tradition into Shi’ah denomination and adopted it to be its latest civilizational ideology. Presently there are efforts made to modernize itself by passing the elements of capitalist modernity through its Shi’ah filter.
The Iranian society is multi-ethnic and multi-religious and blessed with a rich culture. All national and religious identities of the Middle East can be found there. This diversity is in strong contrast to the hegemonic claim of the theocracy, which cultivates a subtle religious nationalism and the ruling class does not shrink back from anti-modernist propaganda whenever it serves their interests. Revolutionary and democratic tendencies have been integrated by the traditional civilization. A despotic regime skilfully governs the country. The negative effects of American and European sanctions are not negligible here.
Despite strong centralist efforts in Iran, from the grass-roots already some kind of federalism exists. When elements of democratic civilisation and federalist elements including Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, and Turkmens intersect, the project of a “Democratic Confederation of Iran” can emerge and become attractive. Women’s movement and communal traditions will play a special role here
5. The Armenian national question contains one of the greatest tragedies that the progress of the capitalist modernity has brought about in the Middle East. The Armenians are a very old people. They shared much of their settlement area with the Kurds. While the Kurds live primarily on agriculture and animal husbandry the Armenians engaged in arts and crafts. Just like the Kurds, the Armenians cultivated a tradition of self-defence. Apart from some short episodes the Armenians never successfully founded a state. They rely on Christian culture which gives them their identity and their faith in salvation. Because of their religion they often suffered repression at the hands of the Muslim majority. Hence, the emerging nationalism bore fruit with the Armenian bourgeoisie. Soon there were differences with the Turkish nationalists eventually ending in the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks.
Apart from the Jews the Armenians are the second-largest people which live primarily in the Diaspora. The foundation of an Armenian state in the west of Azerbaijan, however, did not solve the Armenian national question. The consequences of the genocide can hardly be put into words. The search for the lost country defines their national psyche and is at the heart of the Armenian question. The issue is aggravated by the fact that these areas have been settled by other people since then. Any concepts based on a nation-state cannot offer a solution. There is neither a homogenous population structure there nor any clear borders as is required by the capitalist modernity. The thinking of their opponents may be fascist; however, it is not enough to only bring the genocide to one’s mind. Confederate structures could be an alternative for the Armenians. The foundation of a democratic Armenian nation in line with the paradigm of the democratic modernity promises the Armenians an opportunity to reinvent themselves. It could enable them to return to their place in the cultural plurality of the Middle East. In the event that they renew themselves under the Armenian democratic nation not only shall they continue to play their historical role within the Middle East culture but they shall also find the right path to liberation.
6. In modern times the Christian Arameans (Assyrians) also suffered the fate of the Armenians. They too are one of the oldest people in the Middle East. They shared a settlement area with the Kurds but also with other people. Like the Armenians they suffered from repression by the Muslim majority paving the way for European-style nationalism among the Aramean bourgeoisie. Eventually the Arameans too fell victims to genocide at the hands of the Turks under the leadership of the fascist Committee of Unity and Progress. The collaborationist Kurds lent a helping hand in this genocide. The question of Aramean national society has its roots in the civilization but has also developed further with Christianity and ideologies of modernity. For a solution there is a need for a radical transformation of the Arameans. Their real salvation may be to break away from the mentality of classical civilization and capitalist modernity and instead embrace democratic civilization and renew their rich cultural memory as an element of democratic modernity in order to re-construct themselves as the “Aramean Democratic Nation”.
7. The history of the Jewish people also gives expression to the overall problematic cultural history of the Middle East. The search for the backdrop of expulsion, pogroms and genocide amounts to balancing the accounts of the civilizations. The Jew-ish community has taken up the influences of the old Sumerian and Egyptian cultures as well as those of regional tribal cultures. It has contributed a lot to the culture of the Middle East. Like the Arameans they fell victims to extreme developments of modernity. Against this background, intellectuals of Jewish descent developed a complex point of view towards these issues. However, this is by far not enough. For a solution of the problems as they exist today a renewed appropriation of the history of the Middle East is needed on a democratic basis. The Israeli nationstate is at war since its foundation. The slogan is: an eye for an eye. Fire cannot be fought by fire, though. Even if Israel enjoys relative security thanks to its international support, this is not a sustainable solution. Nothing will be permanently safe as long as the capitalist modernity has not been overcome.
The Palestine conflict makes it clear that the nation-state paradigm is not helpful for a solution. There has been much bloodshed; what remains is the difficult legacy of seemingly irresolvable problems. The Israel-Palestine example shows the complete failure of the capitalist modernity and the nation-state.
The Jews belong to the culture bearers of the Middle East. Denial of their right to existence is an attack on the Middle East as such. Their transformation into a democratic nation just as for Armenians and Arameans would make their participation in a democratic confederation of the Middle East easier. The project of an “East-Aegean Democratic Confederation” would be a positive start. Strict and exclusive national and religious identities may evolve into flexible and open identities under this project. Israel may also evolve into a more acceptable open democratic nation. Undoubtedly though its neighbours must also go through such a transformation.
Tensions and armed conflicts in the Middle East make a transformation of the paradigm of modernity seem inevitable. Without it a solution of the difficult social problems and national questions is impossible. Democratic modernity offers an alternative to the system that is unable to resolve problems.
8. The annihilation of Hellenic culture in Anatolia is a loss that cannot be compensated. The ethnic cleansing arranged by the Turkish and Greek nation-states in the first quarter of the last century has left its mark. No state has the right to drive people from their ancestral cultural region. Nevertheless, the nationstates showed their inhuman approach towards such issues again and again. The attacks on the Hellenic, Jewish, Aramean and Armenian cultures were stepped up while Islam spread throughout the Middle East. This, in turn, contributed to the decline of the Middle-Eastern Civilization. The Islamic culture has never been able to fill the emerging void. In the 19<sup>th</sup> century when the capitalist modernity advanced into the Middle East it found a cultural desert created by self-inflicted cultural erosion. Cultural diversity also strengthens the defence mechanism of a society. Monocultures are less robust. Hence, the conquest of the Middle East had not been difficult. The project of a homogeneous nation as propagated by the nation-states furthered their cultural decline.
9. The Caucasian ethnic groups also have social problems which are not insignificant. Again and again they have migrated into the Middle East and stimulated its cultures. They have unquestionably contributed to its cultural wealth. The arrival of modernity almost made these minority cultures disappear. They, too, would find their adequate place in a confederate structure.
Finally, let me state again that the fundamental problems of the Middle East are deeply rooted in the class civilization. They have tightened with the global crisis of the capitalist modernity. This modernity and its claim to dominance cannot offer any solutions not to mention a long-term perspective for the Middle-East region. The future is democratic confederalism.
Writings by Abdullah Ocalan Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation, London, 2007 ISBN: 978–0745326160 Prison Writings: The PKK and the Kurdish Question in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century, London, 2011 ISBN: 978–0956751409 War and Peace in Kurdistan, Cologne, 2009, PDF [[http://www.freedom-for-ocalan.com/english/download/OcalanWar-and-Peace-in-Kurdistan.pdf][www.freedom-for-ocalan.com]] The Road Map for Democratization of Turkey and Solution to the Kurdish Question (Summary), Cologne, 2011, PDF [[http://www.freedom-for-ocalan.com/english/download/Abdullah_Ocalan_-_The_Road_Map_-_Summary.pdf][www.freedom-for-ocalan.com]]
|
#title Interview with Abdullah Öcalan
#subtitle “We Are Fighting Turks Everywhere”
#author Abdullah Öcalan
#LISTtitle Interview with Abdullah Öcalan
#SORTauthors Abdullah Ocalan
#SORTtopics interview, Syria, Turkey, Rojava, PKK
#date June 1998
#notes Abdullah Öcalan: “We Are Fighting Turks Everywhere,” Middle East Quarterly, June 1998, pp. 7985, [[http://www.meforum.org/399/abdullahocalanwearefightingturkseverywhere][www.meforum.org]]
#source Retrieved on 2018-12-16 from [[https://www.academia.edu/31739562/Interview_with_Abdullah_Öcalan_-_Michael_M._Gunter_1998][www.academia.edu]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2018-12-16T14:05:02
Abdullah (Apo) Öcalan is the founder and leader of the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK) or Kurdistan Workers Party, an organization the U.S. government deems to be terrorist. Born around 1948 in southeastern Turkey, Öcalan was a sometime student in political science at Ankara University in 19678, where he began to form his ideas on Kurdish nationalism. Öcalan created the PKK in November 1978, moved to Syria in May 1979, and began the current war against Turkey in August 1984. By the spring of 1998, the PKK’s activities had led to more than 3,000 villages partially or totally destroyed, 27,000 deaths, and up to 3 million people displaced. Michael M. Gunter, professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University and author of three books on Kurdish issues, interviewed him in Damascus on March 1314, 1998.
*** Interviewer’s Introduction
My visit to Syria began by my obtaining a standard singleentry tourist visa to the country, which I did without any political contacts or sponsorship by the Syrian government. I paid my own way and flew into Damascus on British Airways. Having alerted the PKK (via contacts in Britain) to my arrival, I was met at the Damascus airport by PKK operatives.
On each of my two days of discussions with Abdullah Öcalan, I was driven from my hotel in downtown Damascus via a circuitous route to my destination; presumably, the roundabout trip was to prevent me from knowing exactly where I was going. The first meeting took place in a large apartment in the Kurdish section of Damascus. The second one took place a short distance outside of Damascus, in a nondescript structure off a main highway. Inside the walled compound, I found a surprisingly impressive villa and garden. Armed guards kept watch from the roof of the villa. Attached to the villa compound was another, larger, walled compound containing simple living quarters for some 170 male and female fighters, an open green area, a cemented athletic area, and a lifesized gilded statue of Mazlum Körkmaz, a PKK hero. The compound also seems to be a place for rest and recreation; I met several wounded fighters there, including
one who asked me to send his regards to relatives living in Great Britain. I was informed that this complex is a Kurdishlanguage political training school. I learned that a similar Turkish language political training school exists in the vicinity but did not see it. I also heard about a military training camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, but did not visit it either.
Each of my meetings with Öcalan lasted for some six hours and was interrupted by lunch. Each day, Öcalan had me wait while he attended to other business. The first day, I waited about an hour as he met with two parliamentarians of the PASOK Party, the Greek socialists (who later joined us for lunch). The second day, he excused himself immediately after lunch for a telephone call with his subordinates that lasted about an hour and a half.
I found Öcalan an engaging and polite host. During lunch breaks, for example, he showed me the pigeons he keeps. He also let a honey bee alight on his finger and mused how it was “half sweet and half poison.” On my second day, I was invited to play volleyball and soccer with Öcalan and his followers. When formally posing for a picture, Öcalan turned deadly serious and rather wooden but at other times he smiled easily. His conversation was often very animated. He showed a surprising knowledge of international tennis stars, deeming André Agassi his favorite but also talking about Jim Courier, Lindsay Davenport, Martina Hingis, Martina Navatilova, and Pete Sampras. Öcalan told me that he admires tennis because “it involves strategy as well as strength and power.”
I was permitted to take many photographs and to tape record each meeting in its entirety. In the first meeting, Öcalan spoke in Kurmanji Kurdish, a language I was told he had recently learned to speak much better; the second day, he spoke in Turkish. The discussions on both days were rendered somewhat amateurishly into English by translators Öcalan provided.
Why did Öcalan agree to see me and provide extensive taped remarks? Probably because he saw me as a
useful vehicle by which to convey his thoughts to a primarily American public.
Why, given that the Syrian authorities routinely deny Öcalan’s presence on Syria territory, did he (and implicitly, they too) allow me to see and photograph him in Syria? I can only speculate that it might have been to send a signal to the Turks. All I can say for sure is that no one in the PKK ever requested that I not mention where I had met Öcalan.
*** Turkey
<biblio>
MEQ: Why do you fight against Turkey?
Öcalan: In Turkey, they say there are no Kurds, that they don’t exist. The government says this. Even the professors at universities say this. The Turks don’t want to accept the Kurds; they want to finish [with] them. Turkey only accepts the Kurd who denies he is a Kurd. The 70,000 Village Guards [Turkish Kurds armed by the government to support the government] who claim they are the best Turks cannot even speak good Turkish. [laughs] Turkey’s obstinate, ignorant refusal to negotiate with me has led to a culdesac it cannot get out of. Only a dialogue between Turkey and its Kurds can get the victims out of this continuing trap.
MEQ: How have you been able to keep up the fight for so long?
Öcalan: Anyone who thinks as a Kurd in Turkey is with the PKK. If Turkey finishes the PKK, then it will have only the wall to talk to. I use Turkish stupidity to build a Kurdish movement. This is very important. Turkey’s harsh, ignorant treatment of the Kurds has helped give birth to a greater sense of Kurdish nationalism. I use Turkish mistakes to build up my power.
MEQ: What type of settlement do you seek with Turkey?
Öcalan: I accept the current Turkish borders. Nobody wants Turkey to be divided. This is very important! I want to negotiate a just, democratic solution to this twentyyearold struggle. The Turks must accept the Kurdish identity. They should say in the constitution that there are other people in Turkey and accept a federal system, as in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Spain.
MEQ: How can federalism work in Turkey when more than half the Turkish citizens of Kurdish ethnic heritage no longer live in the southeast?
Öcalan: It is a question of good will and terminology. We can find a solution. When the existence of the Kurds is accepted, 70 percent of the [Kurdish] problem will have been solved.
MEQ: If Atatürk were alive today, what do you suppose he would do to solve the Kurdish problem? Andrew Mango, a British historian writing a biography of Atatürk, says he would allow some local government and expression for Kurds while seeking to keep them under the Turkish roof.
Öcalan: We have two Atatürks, the one before and after 1925. Before 1925, Atatürk took a more positive attitude towards the Kurds. But after that date, he began a very negative policy. If Atatürk were alive today, however, he would not act like the Turkish leaders are now. He would see the bankrupt result of his policy and change it. I agree that if Atatürk were alive today, he would change Turkey’s policy.
MEQ: What Turkish politicians do you think might be willing to negotiate a political solution with you?
Öcalan: None of them are ready. [Former Turkish president Turgut] Özal wanted a political solution, but they [elements in the Turkish military against a political solution] killed him. They also killed [former gendarmerie forces commander Eşref] Bitlis.
MEQ: What would a political settlement mean for the future of Turkey? Will Turkey’s granting what you consider to be genuine democracy to all its citizens solve its Kurdish problem and save the country, or would it simply encourage more Kurdish demands and eventually break up Turkey?
Öcalan: A dialogue between Turkey and the PKK followed by an agreement would be good for Turkey and make it stronger. All I am asking for is real democracy in Turkey. I am more Turkish than the Turkish leaders!
MEQ: How much has the PKK been hurt by Turkish military actions in southeast Turkey and northwest Iraq in recent years? Is it true as the Turks say that you have been marginalized?
Öcalan: We don’t have fighting in the towns, but our guerrillas are stronger than before. We are fighting everywhere, even on the Black Sea. It is just a Turkish tactic to say we are finished. Why was it necessary just a few days ago to send 25,000 Turkish troops and 1,100 Village Guards against a small PKK unit near Diyarbakır? We have become even more powerful. Five days ago in Istanbul, 20,000 people made a demonstration for us in Taksim [Square] and just yesterday in Gazi Osman Paşha [Istanbul]. If they really think the PKK is finished, well, let them carry on.
MEQ: Are there any signs that the military leaders, the ultimate source of authority in Turkey, are willing to consider a political solution to the Kurdish problem?
Öcalan: In secret they are saying they want it [discrete negotiations], but not openly. All the Turkish army wants is to finish us. The key is in the military.
MEQ: Is there anyone in the military who can bring peace? How about Deputy Chief of Staff General Çevik Bir?
Öcalan: I am afraid he is playing a game like [former Turkish prime minister Tansu] Çiller. Çevik Bir i America’s man in Turkey. If he wanted to, he could bring a settlement very quickly.
MEQ: What happened to the 1996 agreement of cooperation you signed with Dev Sol [a leftwing Turkish terrorist movement now called the Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Army Front or DHKPC]?
Öcalan: We tried, but since they killed some people in Turkey like [prominent businessman Özdemir] Sabanci we cannot work with them. We have no agreement with Dev Sol. It is opposing us on many fronts. Dev Sol is an instrument of the Turkish police. It is the same situation as with [Abdullah] Catlı [of Susurluk notoriety].[1] The Turkish police use Dev Sol on the left and [used] Catlı on the right.
MEQ: What is the relationship between the PKK and the Islamists in Turkey?
Öcalan: There is no cooperation between us. Çevik Bir is saying that there is only propaganda.
<strong>THE PKK</strong>
MEQ: Whom does the PKK represent?
Öcalan: Clearly, the PKK speaks for Turkey’s Kurds. If anyone doubts this, let them have fair, democratic elections and see what happens. But the Turks are not even brave enough to consider the concept.
MEQ: Are there divisions within the PKK?
Öcalan: We have suspicions regarding [PKK commander Şemdin Sakık a.k.a. Parmaksız] Zeki. Sometimes Zeki says we should not kill soldiers and other times he wants to even kill civilians. The first time civilians were killed in Turkey was by Zeki. We removed him from his duties.[2]
MEQ: How are you able to maintain control of your organization from what appears to be this relatively isolated place?
Öcalan: I keep in daily contact with my associates by telephone and radio. Still, there are major organizational problems in running the PKK and its related organizations abroad. The PKK is fighting a big war and it is very difficult to control people. At any moment somebody could stab you in the back. It is more difficult to change the traditional Kurdish ways than to split the atom.
MEQ: At its fifth congress in January 1995, the PKK removed the hammer and sickle from its flag and continued to deemphasize its earlier Marxism. What do you say to those who say this was a cosmetic change and that you are still a Marxist, a communist?
Öcalan: This is just propaganda. It is not possible for us to be communists. Why did the Soviet Union collapse and the United States has not? It is because communism made the government everything, but the human being nothing. The United States represents development.
MEQ: When will the next PKK congress be?
Öcalan: At the end of 1998.
MEQ: What role will you and the PKK play in Turkey if the current struggle comes to a negotiated end?
Öcalan: We can play an active role. If there is a federal state, we will want to run it. The PKK is the voice of the [Kurdish] people.
MEQ: Will you seek to play a role in Turkish politics?
Öcalan: Yes, of course.
</biblio>
*** Non-PKK Kurds
<biblio>
MEQ: How can the Kurds achieve greater unity?
Öcalan: When the Turks stop interfering, Kurdish unity will be there. The Turks say “let one dog kill the other” when they deal with the Kurds. The Kurdish National Congress will be a solution for the Kurdish divisions.
MEQ: When will you create this congress?
Öcalan: We are not very far from it. The PKK will be the biggest group in it. Then the PUK [Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan]. The KDP [Kurdistan Democratic Party of Barzani] is near. Also there are many prominent Kurdish personalities like Ibrahim Ahmad and Mahmud Osman who support it. Only [Kemal] Burkay, [the leader of the Kurdistan Socialist Party (Turkey)] is not joining.
MEQ: What do you think of [the Iraqi Kurdish leaders] Barzani and Talabani?
Öcalan: There is a major difference between me and Barzani and Talabani. The PKK is a new movement. Barzani and Talabani are like caricatures of Saddam. Have you ever seen a more povertystricken policy than theirs? Why did they have to kiss Saddam? Where are their principles? Barzani is like a collaborator. When Iran asks Barzani to kill Iranian Kurds, Barzani does so. You cannot call Barzani’s movement a Kurdish movement.
MEQ: So who speaks for the Kurds? Who will negotiate for the Kurds?
Öcalan: Barzani and Talabani are like feet or arms, but I am the main head or mind. The United States should speak with me, the mind. I have twentyfive years of experience.
MEQ: What happened to your agreement with Kemal Burkay in 1993?[3]
Öcalan: It still stands. We follow it. There is no difference between our views and Burkay.
MEQ: Would you be willing to let other Kurdish organizations play a future political role in Turkey after the PKK reached a negotiated settlement with Ankara?
Öcalan: If I am the problem, Turkey should establish a dialogue with the other Kurdish organizations that are out there.
MEQ: Whom do you have in mind, Serafettin Elçi [a longtime Turkish politician in Turkey of Kurdish ethnic heritage] or HADEP [a legal proKurdish party in Turkey]?
Öcalan: Elçi is supported by virtually no one.
</biblio>
*** The Outside World
<biblio>
MEQ: What foreign support do you get?
Öcalan: Of course, we would like the world to support us. If the United States were objective, it must have a moral code, a sense of honor, and support us. But if we wait for some government to help us, we will be finished. The PKK is selfreliant. It is financed through voluntary donations from Kurds, not through extortion or drug trafficking, as the Turks’ propaganda claims. Turkey receives a great deal of foreign help from many different sources to use against the Kurds. Turkey is like the woman married to seven different men, satisfying them all at the same time.
MEQ: In the time of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, Israel gave covert support to the Kurds. Now, however, Turkey has close relations with Israel. Your thoughts?
Öcalan: The Turks made an agreement with Israel to kill Kurds. This time the Turks are getting the green light from Israel; earlier it was from the United States.
MEQ: Your thoughts on the United States?
Öcalan: The United States is a great power. It is a very objective country, but it does not have positive knowledge about us. Turks look upon the United States as a child beside their own thousandyearold history of running their own empire. Before you kill somebody, you should ask him. We don’t want too much. I don’t think the United States and NATO will accept massacres against the Kurds. Why does the United States become so concerned as soon as a few people are killed in Kosovo, while it ignores that Kurdistan has become an extreme killing ground? The recent visits of [assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor John] Shattuck to Turkey’s prisoners including Leyla Zana is a positive development, but just stressing human rights is not enough. The United States helped Çiller without any conditions. The Americans believed that Çiller was one of them because she had a U.S. passport and had been educated in the United States. The Turks killed many Kurds under the cover of Çiller. When Çiller was killing those people, she was sitting on America’s shoulders. Now the Turks are saying Çiller was responsible for Susurluk, that Çiller is a spy for the Americans. It’s a big game. [laughs] This is also very dangerous politics.
MEQ: What do you say to the U.S. charge that the PKK is a terrorist organization?
Öcalan: The Americans have a blind spot on the PKK; they act as Turkey’s mouthpiece. I am the real victim of terrorism. The United States is hanging me without judging me. This is an ignorant, blind policy without rational terms. It is extrajudicial killing. Let them bring me the proof. Once Arafat and Mandela were called terrorists, but look at them now. When I offer to negotiate, I am called weak, and when I show my strength I am called a terrorist. This is enormously illogical. The PKK has made mistakes. This is true. But compared to what Turkey has done to the Kurds over the years, it should be obvious who is the real terrorist. Susurluk has the facts. Everything is said in the Susurluk report.
MEQ: What one message would you direct to Americans?
Öcalan: [hesitates] The Kurds want the conditions the United States wants for itself—democracy, equality. We don’t want anything else. Have respect for life.
MEQ: Should the United States or the European Union be diplomatically more aggressive on the Kurdish issue, perhaps as the United States has been in the former Yugoslavia and Cyprus? For example, should they take a more active role to bring about a ceasefire, then push for Government of Turkey PKK negotiations?
Öcalan: Of course, they should—it’s the only solution, but only if America doesn’t play games. Recent German willingness finally to talk to the PKK is a good model. But Germany does not see itself as having an international role; the United States is the main protagonist. A dialogue between the United States and the Kurds is most important, and it should begin sooner rather than later. It would open the way to a most important change in U.S. policy. This dialogue, by the way, would be a risk not just for the United States but for me, too. It would increase the number of my enemies. Maybe my health would do better if I stayed away from the United States! [laughs]
</biblio>
*** Personal
<biblio>
MEQ: How many brothers and sisters do you have?
Öcalan: I have two younger brothers, Osman [a highranking PKK commander] and Mehmet. Mehmet lives in Adana; Turkey arrested him when he tried to leave the country. I have three sisters; two are older than I. They are very simple people. One sister lives in Europe.
MEQ: And your parents?
Öcalan: My mother died the same week that Özal died [in April 1993].
MEQ: What language do you speak best, Turkish or Kurdish?
Öcalan: Naturally, I know Turkish better than Kurdish.
MEQ: When did you live in Ankara?
Öcalan: I came to Ankara in 1966 and left in July 1978. I did not live in one place in Ankara, but was moving around.
MEQ: What did you do during your Ankara years?
Öcalan: I was a student. I studied in political science for four years but not very seriously because I did not want to go to the military. Normally I would have graduated in 1974, but I continued for another four years to avoid military service. I spent many years in Ankara going to the libraries and reading all the books on the Kurds. In the beginning I was not a Kurdish nationalist. I did not accept so easily being a Kurd. I fought within myself for a long time whether to be a Turk or a Kurd. Later after my studies, I came to the conclusion I should consider myself a Kurd.
</biblio>
[1] A Nov. 1996 traffic accident in the town of Susurluk uncovered how the Turkish state, among other misdeeds, hired rightwing criminals on the lam to murder extrajudicially hundreds of Turkish civilians of Kurdish ethnic heritage in an attempt to silence their support for Kurdish rights and the PKK. In exchange, the state turned a blind eye to their drug trafficking and other criminal activities. For an account, see James H. Meyer, “Çiller’s Scandals,” Middle East Quarterly, Sept. 1997, pp. 2930.
[2] Zeki defected to Mas‘ud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, an opponent of the PKK, just days after this interview, and shortly afterwards was captured by Turkish commandos.
[3] In which the Kurdish factions agreed to respect each other’s existence, settle their differences peacefully, work toward establishing a common front, and adopt a common approach toward the Republic of Turkey.
|
#title Liberating Life
#subtitle Woman’s Revolution
#author Abdullah Öcalan
#SORTauthors Abdullah Ocalan
#SORTtopics anarcha-feminism, feminist
#date 2013
#source [[http://www.ocalanbooks.com/#/book/liberating-life-womans-revolution][www.ocalanbooks.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-03-22T23:00:00
Liberating life is impossible without a radical
woman’s revolution which would change man’s
mentality and life. If we are unable to make peace
between man and life and life and woman, happiness is but a vain hope. Gender revolution is not just about woman. It is about the five thousand
years old civilisation of classed society which has
left man worse off than woman. Thus, this gender revolution would simultaneously mean man’s liberation.
I have often written about “total divorce”, i.e. the
ability to divorce from the five thousand years
old culture of male domination. The female and
male gender identities that we know ŧoday are
constructs that were formed much later than the
biological female and male. Woman has been
exploited for thousands of years according to this
constructed identity; never acknowledged for
her labour. Man has to overcome always seeing
woman as wife, sister, or lover — stereotypes forged
by tradition and modernity.
Claiming that we first have to address the
question of state then the question of family.
** Foreword by the International Initiative
The brochure before you is the third brochure of its kind prepared by the International Initiative. These brochures have
been compiled from different books written by Abdullah Öcalan in order to give you a short outline of his opinions on specific topics.
Before Öcalan‘s abduction and imprisonment in 1999, several books based upon his speeches on sex and gender were published, among them three volumes of Nasıl yaşamalı? (“How to live?”). The title of a book of interviews with him, Erkeği öldürmek (“Killing the male”), became a well-known saying
among Kurds. Öcalan coined several slogans like “A country
can’t be free unless the women are free,” thereby redefining national liberation as first and foremost the liberation of women.
In his prison writings, the liberation of women is touched
on numerous times as part of Öcalan’s discussions of history,
contemporary society and political activism. This brochure
has been compiled from excerpts on this topic from Öcalan’s
work, especially his most recent, as yet untranslated, works.
The practice he observed in real socialist countries and his
own theoretical efforts and practice since the 1970’s has led
Öcalan to the conclusion that the enslavement of women was
the start of all other forms of enslavement. This, he concludes,
is not due to woman being biologically different to man, but
because she was the founder and leader of the Neolithic matriarchal system.
Abdullah Öcalan is not only a theorist; he is the leader of a
movement that strives not only for the liberation of Kurdish
people, but also to find answers to the question of how to live
meaningfully. This is why his writings have such impact on
the lives of so many. He has been concerned with the issue
of women’s liberation all his life, and especially so during the
struggle. He strongly encouraged women in the movement to
take up the struggle against male dominance, providing inspiration through his critique of patriarchy. This approach and conduct from such an influential leader contributed to major
developments.
For many years he spoke not only of the importance of
surpassing constructed roles for women and men; he also encouraged the establishment of women’s movements and institutions so that women can question and reshape themselves,
their lives, men and society. Thus, hand in hand with the
Kurdish liberation struggle, there has arisen in Kurdistan an
untypically strong participation of women in all areas of life.
In fact, the outstanding dynamic and vitality of the women’s
movement in Kurdistan often surprise the observer who does
not expect this in a region of the world that is regarded as rather patriarchal.
Over the years, Abdullah Öcalan often suggested that the
level of woman’s freedom determines the freedom level of her
society. He stated this yet again during a recent meeting with
a BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) delegation, “To me, women’s freedom is more precious than the freedom of the homeland.”
This is how the idea for a special brochure on the question of women’s freedom came about.
** Introduction
The question of women’s freedom has intrigued me throughout my life. While at first I viewed the enslavement of women
in the Middle East and in general as the result of feudal backwardness, after many years of revolutionary practice and research I came to the conclusion that the problem goes much
deeper. The 5,000-year-old history of civilisation is essentially
the history of the enslavement of woman. Consequently,
woman’s freedom will only be achieved by waging a struggle
against the foundations of this ruling system.
An analysis of mainstream civilisation with regard to the
freedom question will make it clear that civilisation has been
weighted down by an ever-increasing slavery. This ‘mainstream
civilisation’ is the civilisation passed down from, and in return
influenced by, Sumer to Akkad, from Babylon to Assur, from
Persia to Greece, Rome, Byzantium, Europe and finally the
USA. Throughout the long history of this civilisation, slavery
has been perpetuated on three levels. First, there is the construction of ideological slavery (conspicuously, but understandably, fearsome and dominant gods are constructed from mythologies); then there is use of force; lastly, there is seizure
of the economy.
This three-tiered enchainment of society is well-illustrated
by the ziggurats, the temples established by the Sumerian
priest-state. The upper levels of the ziggurats are propounded
as the quarters of the god who controls the mind. The middle floors are the political and administrative headquarters of
the priests. Finally, the bottom floor houses the craftsmen and
agricultural workers who are forced to work in all kinds of
production. Essentially, this model has been unchanged until
today. Thus, an analysis of the ziggurat is in fact an analysis of
the continuous mainstream civilisation system that will enable
us to analyse the current capitalist world system in terms of its
true basis. Continuous, accumulative development of capital
and power is only one side of the medallion. The other side is
horrendous slavery, hunger, poverty and coercion into a herd-
like society.
Without depriving society of its freedom and ensuring that
it can be managed like a herd, central civilisation cannot sustain or preserve itself, because of the nature of the system according to which it functions. This is done by creating even more capital and instruments of power, causing ever-increasing
poverty and a herd-like mentality. The reason why the issue of
freedom is the key question in every age, lies in the nature of
the system itself.
The history of the loss of freedom is at the same time the
history of how woman lost her position and vanished from
history. It is the history of how the dominant male, with all
his gods and servants, rulers and subordinates, his economy,
science and arts, obtained power. Woman’s downfall and loss
is thus the downfall and loss of the whole of civilisation, with
the sexist society that resulted. The sexist male is so keen on
constructing his social dominance over woman that he turns
any contact with her into a show of dominance.
The depth of woman’s enslavement and the intentional
masking of this fact is thus closely linked to the rise within a
society of hierarchical and statist power. As women are habituated to slavery, hierarchies (from the Greek word ἱεραρχία or hierarkhia, ‘rule by the high priest’) are established: the path to the enslavement of the other sections of society is thus paved.
The enslavement of men comes after the enslavement of women. Gender enslavement is different in some ways to class
and nation enslavement. Its legitimisation is attained through
refined and intense repression combined with lies that play on
emotions. Woman’s biological difference is used as justification for her enslavement. All the work she does is taken for
granted and called unworthy ‘woman’s work’. Her presence in
the public sphere is claimed to be prohibited by religion, morally shameful; progressively, she is secluded from all important
social activities. As the dominant power of the political, social
and economic activities are taken over by men, the weakness
of women becomes even more institutionalised. Thus, the idea
of a ‘weak sex’ becomes a shared belief.
In fact, society treats woman not merely as a biologically
separate sex but almost as a separate race, nation or class — the
most oppressed race, nation or class: no race, class or nation is
subjected to such systematic slavery as housewifisation.
The disappointment experienced due to the failure of any
struggle, be it for freedom or equality, or be it a democratic,
moral, political or class struggle, bears the imprint of the archetypal struggle for power in a relationship, the one between
woman and man. From this relationship stem all forms of relationships that foster inequality, slavery, despotism, fascism and
militarism. If we want to construe the true meaning of terms
such as equality, freedom, democracy and socialism that we
so often use, we need to analyse and shatter the ancient web
of relations that has been woven around women. There is no
other way of attaining true equality (with due allowance for
diversity), freedom, democracy and morality.
But unambiguously clarifying the status of women is only
one aspect of this issue. Far more important is the question
of liberation; in other words, the resolution to the problem
exceeds the importance of revealing and analysing it. The most
promising point in the current chaos of the capitalist system is
the (albeit limited) exposure of women’s status. During the last
quarter of the twentieth century, feminism managed (though
not sufficiently) to disclose the truth about women. In times
of chaos, the possibility of change for any phenomenon increases in line with the level of progress or clarification available; thus, in such times, small steps taken for freedom may
amount to big leaps forward. Women’s freedom can emerge
as the winner from the current crisis. Whatever has been constructed by the human hand, can be demolished by the human
hand. Women’s enslavement is neither a law of nature nor is it
destiny. What we need is the necessary theory, programme and
organisation, and the mechanisms to implement them.
** 2. Women’s Revolution: Neolithic Era
Patriarchy has not always existed. There is strong evidence that
in the millennia before the rise of statist civilisation (roughly
before 3000 bc) the position of women in society had been
very different. Indeed, society was matricentric — it was constructed around women.
Within the Zagros-Taurus system, Mesolithic and subsequently Neolithic society started to develop at the end of the
fourth glacial period, around 20,000 years ago. This magnificent society, with its well-developed tools and sophisticated
settlement systems, was far more advanced than the preceding clan society. Tis period constituted a wondrous age in the
history of our social nature. Many developments that are still
with us can be traced back to this historical stage: the agricultural revolution, the establishment of villages, the roots of
trade, and the mother-based family as well as tribes and tribal
organisations.
Many methods, tools and equipment we still use today are
based on inventions and discoveries most likely made by the
women of this era, such as various useful applications of different plants, domestication of animals and cultivation of plants,
construction of dwellings, principles of child nutrition, the
hoe and hand grinder, perhaps even the ox-cart.
To me, the cult of the mother-goddess in this age symbolises reverence for woman’s role in these great advances. I don’t see it as deification of an abstract fertility. At the same time, the hierarchy based on the mother-woman is the historic root
of the mother-concept, by which all societies still respect and
acknowledge the mother as an authority. This authority she
demands because the mother is the principal life-element that
both gives birth and sustains life through nurturing, even under the most difficult conditions. Indeed, any culture and hierarchy based on this acknowledgement cannot help but revere woman. The true reason for the longevity of the mother-concept is the fact that the mother concretely forms the basis of the social being, the human; it is not due to an abstract ability to give birth.
During the Neolithic period a complete communal social
order, so-called ‘primitive socialism’, was created around woman. Tis social order saw none of the enforcement practices
of the state order; yet it existed for thousands of years. It is
this long-lasting order that shaped humanity’s collective social
consciousness; and it is our endless yearning to regain and immortalise this social order of equality and freedom that led to
our construct of paradise.
Primitive socialism, characterised by equality and freedom,
was viable because the social morality of the matriarchal order
did not allow ownership, which is the main factor behind the
widening of social divisions. Division of labour between the
sexes, the other issue related to this divide, was not yet based on
ownership and power relations. Private relationships inside the
group had not yet developed. Food that had been gathered or
hunted belonged to all. The children belonged to the clan. No
man or woman was the private property of any one person. In
all these matters, the community, which was still small and did
not have a huge production capacity, had a solid common ideological and material culture. The fundamental principles sustaining society were sharing and solidarity — ownership and force, as
life-threatening dangers, would have disrupted this culture.
In contrast to mainstream society, Neolithic society’s relationship with nature was maintained, both in terms of ideological and material cultures, through adherence to ecological principles. Nature was regarded as alive and animated, no
different from themselves. This awareness of nature fostered
a mentality that recognised a multitude of sanctities and divinities in nature. We may gain a better understanding of the
essence of collective life if we acknowledge that it was based
on the metaphysics of sanctity and divinity, stemming from
reverence for the mother-woman.
What we need to understand is this: why and how was it
possible to supersede the matriarchal system of the Neolithic
age?
Since the earliest social groupings, there had been tension
between woman’s gathering and man’s hunting, with the result
that two different cultural evolutions developed within society.
In the matriarchal society surplus product was, although
limited, accumulated. (This was the start of economy — not
as a concept but in terms of its essence — and it is here that
we find the roots of the different types of economies, such as
capitalist and gift economies.) It was woman, the nurturer,
who controlled this surplus. But man (quite possibly by developing more successful hunting techniques) bettered his position, achieved a higher status and gathered a retinue around
him. The ‘wise old man’ and shaman, previously not part of
the strong man’s band, now attached themselves to him and
helped to construct the ideology of male dominance. They intended to develop a very systematic movement against women.
In the matriarchal society of the Neolithic age, there were
no institutionalised hierarchies; now they were slowly being
introduced. The alliance with the shaman and elderly, experienced men was an important development in this regard. The
ideological hold the male alliance established over the young
men they drew into their circle strengthened their position in
the community. What is important is the nature of the power
gained by men. Both hunting and defending the clan from
external dangers relied on killing and wounding and thus had
military characteristics. This was the beginning of the culture
of war. In a situation of life and death, one must abide by authority and hierarchy.
Communality is the foundation on which hierarchy and
state power are built. Originally, the term ‘hierarchy’ referred
to government by the priests, the authority of the wise elders.
Initially, it had a positive function. We may perhaps even view
the beneficial hierarchy in a natural society as the prototype of
democracy. The mother-woman and the wise elders ensured
communal security and the governance of the society; they
were necessary and useful, fundamental elements in a society
that was not based on accumulation and ownership. Society
voluntarily awarded them respect. But when voluntary dependence is transformed into authority, usefulness into self-interest, it always gives way to an uncalled-for instrument of
force. The instrument of force disguises itself behind common
security and collective production. This constitutes the core
of all exploitative and oppressive systems. It is the most sinister creation ever invented; the creation that brought fourth
all forms of slavery, all forms of mythology and religion, all
systematic annihilation and plunder.
No doubt, there were external reasons for the disintegration
of Neolithic society, but the main factor was the sacred state
society of the priests. The legends of the initial civilisations in
Lower Mesopotamia and along the Nile confirm this. The advanced Neolithic cultures combined with new techniques of
artificial irrigation, providing the surplus product required for
the establishment of such a society. It was mostly through the
newly achieved position and power of man that the urban society which formed around the surplus product was organised
in the form of a state.
Urbanisation meant commodification. It resulted in trade.
Trade seeped into the veins of Neolithic society in the form
of colonies. Commodification, exchange value and ownership grew exponentially, thus accelerating the disintegration of
Neolithic society.
** 3. The First Major Sexual Rupture
In the vein of the revolution/counter-revolution scheme of
historical materialism, I suggest that we term the remarkable
turning points in the history of the relationship between the
sexes sexual rupture. History has seen two of these ruptures
and, I predict, will see another in the future.
In the social ages preceding civilisation, the organised force
of the ‘strong man’ existed for the sole purposes of trapping
animals and defence against outside danger. It is this organised
force that coveted the family-clan unit that the woman had
established as a product of her emotional labour. The takeover
of the family-clan constituted the first serious organisation of
violence. What was usurped in the process was woman herself,
her children and kin, and all their material and moral cultural
accumulation. It was the plunder of the initial economy, the
home economy. The organised force of proto-priest (shaman),
experienced elder and strong man allied to compose the initial
and longest enduring patriarchal hierarchic power, that of holy
governance. This can be seen in all societies that are at a similar stage: until the class, city and state stage, this hierarchy is dominant in social and economic life.
In Sumerian society, although the balance gradually turned
against the woman, the two sexes were still more or less equal
until the second millennium bc. The many temples for goddesses and the mythological texts from this period indicate
that between 4,000 and 2,000 bc the influence of the woman-
mother culture on the Sumerians, who formed the centre of
civilisation, was on par with that of the man. As yet, no culture of shame had developed around the woman.
So, we see here the start of a new culture that develops its
superiority over the mother-woman cult. The development
of this authority and hierarchy before the start of class-based
society constitutes one of the most important turning points
in history. This culture is qualitatively different from the
mother-woman culture. Gathering, and later cultivation — the
predominant elements of the mother-woman culture — are
peaceful activities that do not require warfare. Hunting, which
is predominantly taken up by man, rests on war culture and
harsh authority.
It is understandable that the strong man, whose essential
role was hunting, coveted the accumulation of the matriarchal
order. Establishing his dominance would yield many advantages. Organisation of the power he gained through hunting
now gave him the opportunity to rule and to establish the first
social hierarchy. This development constituted the first usage
of analytical intelligence with malignant intentions; subsequently, it became systemic. Furthermore, the transition from
sacred mother cult to sacred father cult enabled analytical intelligence to mask itself behind sanctity.
Thus, the origin of our serious social problems is to be
found in patriarchal societies that became cult-like — that is,
religionised — around the strong man. With the enslavement
of women, the ground was prepared for the enslavement of
not only children but also of men. As man gained experience
in accumulating values through the use of slave labour (especially accumulating surplus product), his control over and
domination of these slaves grew. Power and authority became
increasingly important. The collaboration between the strong
man, experienced elder and shaman to form a privileged sec-
tor, resulted in a power centre that was difficult to resist. In
this centre, analytical intelligence developed an extraordinary
mythological narrative in order to rule the minds of the populace. In the mythological world composed for Sumerian society (and passed down through the ages with some adaptations), man is exalted to the point that he is deified as creator
of heaven and earth. While woman’s divinity and sacredness
is first demeaned and then erased, the idea of man as ruler
and absolute power is imprinted on society. Thus, through an
enormous network of mythological narratives, every aspect
of culture is cloaked in the relationship of ruler and ruled,
creator and created. Society is beguiled into internalising this
mythological world and gradually it becomes the preferred
version. Thenit is turned into religion, a religion into which
the concept of a strict distinction between people is built.
For instance, the class division of society is reflected in the
story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise and condemnation to servitude. Tis legend endows the Sumerian
ruler-gods with creative power; their subjects are recreated
as servants.
Sumerian mythology knew the story of creation out of the
rib of an anthropomorphic god — only, it was the goddess
Ninhursag who carried out the act of creation in order to save
the life of the male god Enki. Over time, the narrative was
changed to benefit the man. The repetitive elements of rivalry
and creativity in the myths of Enki and Ninhursag-Inanna had
the twofold function of, on the one hand, demeaning woman
and diminishing the importance of her past creativity and, on
the other hand, symbolising the forming of a human that is
but a slave and a servant. (I believe that this last conception of
the Sumerian priests has played a role in all subsequent god-
servant dilemmas. To determine the truth of this is vital; nevertheless, religious literature either refrains from doing so or
rejects the notion out of hand. Is this because theologians feel
the need to disguise the truth and hence their interests in the
matter?)
The divine identities designed in Sumerian society are the
reflections of a new approach to nature and of new societal
powers; more than that, they are almost deployed for the purpose of conditioning the mind anew. Hand in hand with the
decreasing influence of the natural dimension, the societal
dimension gains importance; women’s influence gradually
decreases; and there are striking developments in the matter
of identifying the human being as subject, as servant. While
growing political power in society results in the prominence
of some of the gods, it also results in the loss of some identities and a significant change in the form of others. Thus, the
absolute power of the monarch during the Babylonian era
is reflected in the rise of the god Marduk. This last phase of
Sumerian mythology indicates that the threshold of the birth
of monotheistic religions had been reached.
In an order like this, where men owned the children, the
father would want to have as many children as possible (especially male children), for attainment of power. Command
of the children enabled him to seize the mother-woman’s accumulation: the ownership system was created. Alongside the
priest-state’s collective ownership, the private ownership of the
dynasty was established. Private ownership too necessitated the
establishment of fatherhood: fatherhood rights were required
so that the inheritance could be passed on (mainly) to the
male children.
From 2000 bc onwards, this culture became widespread.
Woman’s social status was radically altered. Patriarchal society
had gained the strength to make its rule legendary. While the
world of the male is exalted and hero-worshipped, everything
female is belittled, demeaned and vilified.
So radical was this sexual rupture, that it resulted in the
most significant change in social life that history has ever seen.
This change concerning woman’s value within Middle Eastern
culture, we can call the first major sexual rupture or counter-
revolution. I call it a counter-revolution because it has contributed nothing to the positive development of society. On
the contrary, it has led to an extraordinary poverty of life by
bringing about patriarchy’s stiff domination of society and the
exclusion of women. This tear in Middle Eastern civilisation is
arguably the first step in its progressively deteriorating situation, as the negative consequences of this rupture just keep on
multiplying as time goes on. Instead of a dual-voiced society, it
produced a single-voiced, male society. A transition was made
to a one-dimensional, extremely masculine social culture. Te
emotional intelligence of woman that created wonders, that
was humane and committed to nature and life, was lost. In its
place was born the cursed analytical intelligence of a cruel culture that surrendered itself to dogmatism and detached itself
from nature; that considers war to be the most exalted virtue
and enjoys the shedding of human blood; that sees the arbitrary treatment of woman and the enslavement of man as its
right. This intelligence is the antitype of the egalitarian intelligence of woman that is focused on humanitarian production
and animate nature.
The mother has become the ancient goddess; she now sits
in her home, an obedient and chaste woman. Far from being
equal to the gods, she cannot make her voice heard or reveal
her face. Slowly, she is wrapped in veils, and becomes a captive
within the harem of the strong man.
The depth of woman’s enslavement in Arabia (intensified in
the Abrahamic tradition by Moses) is linked to this historical
development.
** 4. How Patriarchal Authority became Deep-Rooted
A hierarchical and authoritarian structure is essential for a patriarchal society. Allying authoritarian administration with the
shaman’s sacred authority resulted in the concept of hierarchy.
The institution of authority would gradually gain prominence
in society, and as class distinctions intensified it would transform into state authority. At the time, hierarchical authority
was personal, not yet institutionalised, and thus did not have
as much dominance over society as in the institutionalised
state. Compliance to it was partly voluntary, commitment determined by society’s interests.
However, the process that was set in motion was conducive
to the birth of the hierarchical state. The primordial communal system resisted this process for a long time. Respect and
commitment to the authority of the alliance was shown only
if they shared their accumulated products with other members
of society. In fact, accumulation of surplus product was seen
as wrong; the person who commanded the most respect was
the one who distributed his or her accumulation. (The revered
tradition of generosity, which is still widespread in clan societies, has its roots in this powerful historical tradition.) From
the very beginning, the community saw accumulation of surplus product as the most serious threat to itself, and based its
morality and religion on resisting this threat. But, eventually,
man’s accumulation culture and hierarchical authority did defeat that of woman. We must be very clear that this victory
was not an unavoidable, historical necessity. There is no law
that states that a natural society must necessarily develop into
a hierarchical and subsequently statist society. There may be a
propensity towards such a development, but equating such a
propensity with an inevitable, incessant process that has to run
its full course would be an erroneous assumption. Viewing the
existence of classes as fate has become nothing but an unintended tool for class ideologists.
After this defeat, damaging tears appeared in woman’s communal society. The process of transforming into hierarchical
society was not an easy one. This was the transition phase between primitive communal society and the state. Eventually
hierarchical society either had to disintegrate or result in statehood. Although it did play some positive role in the development of society, its form of socialisation, the alliance between
the male powers, provided the strength for hierarchical patriarchy to develop into statehood. It was really the hierarchical and patriarchal society that subjugated women, youth and
members of other ethnicities; it was done before the development of the state. The most important point is how this subjugation was accomplished. The authority to do this was not
attained through laws, but through the new morals that were
based on worldly needs instead of sacredness.
While there is a development towards the religious concept
of an abstract and single god that reflects the values of the patriarchal society, the matriarchal authority of natural society
with its myriad goddesses resists. In the matriarchal order, the
essential rules are to labour, produce and provide in order to
keep people alive. While patriarchal morality legitimises accumulation and paves the way for ownership, the morality of
communal society condemns accumulation of surplus as the
source of all wrong-doing, and encourages its distribution. The
internal harmony in society gradually deteriorates and tension
increases.
The solution to this conflict would be either returning to the
old matriarchal values, or escalating patriarchal power inside
and outside the community. To the patriarchal faction there
was only one choice. The foundations for a violent, war-like
society based on oppression and exploitation were established.
Trough this process of conflict the state phase, the phase of
institutionalised authority based on permanent force, began.
Without an analysis of woman’s status in the hierarchical system and the conditions under which she was enslaved,
neither the state nor the class-based system that it rests upon
can be understood. Woman is not targeted as the female gender, but as the founder of the matriarchal society. Without a
thorough analysis of woman’s enslavement and establishing the
conditions for overcoming it, no other slavery can be analysed
or overcome. Without these analyses, fundamental mistakes
cannot be avoided.
** 5. All Slavery is Based on Housewifisation
Ever since the hierarchical order’s enormous leap forward, sexism has been the basic ideology of power. It is closely linked to
class division and the wielding of power. Woman’s authority is
not based on surplus product; on the contrary, it stems from
fertility and productivity, and strengthens social existence.
Strongly influenced by emotional intelligence, she is tightly
bound to communal existence. The fact that woman does not
have a visible place in the power wars based on surplus product is due to this position of hers in social existence.
We need to point out a characteristic that has become institutionalised within civilisational societies, namely society’s
being prone to power relations. Just as housewifisation was
needed to recreate woman, society needed to be prepared in
order for power to secure its own existence. Housewifisation
is the oldest form of slavery. The strong man and his entourage defeated the mother-woman and all aspects of her cult
through long and comprehensive struggles. Housewifisation
became institutionalised when the sexist society became dominant. Gender discrimination is not a notion restricted to the
power relations between woman and man. It defines the power
relations that have been spread to all social levels. It is indicative of the state power that has reached its maximum capacity with modernity.
Gender discrimination has had a twofold destructive effect
on society. First, it has opened society to slavery; second, all
other forms of enslavement have been implemented on the
basis of housewifisation. Housewifisation does not only aim
to recreate an individual as a sex object; it is not a result of
a biological characteristic. Housewifisation is an intrinsically
social process and targets the whole of society. Slavery, subjugation, subjection to insults, weeping, habitual lying, unassertiveness and flaunting oneself are all recognised aspects of housewifisation and must be rejected by the freedom-morality. It is the foundation of a degraded society and the true
foundation of slavery. It is the institutional foundation upon
which the oldest and all subsequent types of slavery and immorality were implemented. Civilisational society reflects this
foundation in all social categories. If the system is to function, society in its entirety must be subjected to housewifisation. Power is synonymous with masculinity. Thus, society’s subjection to housewifisation is inevitable, because power
does not recognise the principles of freedom and equality. If it
did, it could not exist. Power and sexism in society share the
same essence.
Another important point we have to mention is dependence
and oppression of the youth, established by the experienced elderly man in a hierarchical society. While experience strengthens the elderly man, age renders him weak and powerless. This compels the elderly to enlist the youth, which is done by winning their minds. Patriarchy is strengthened tremendously by
these means. The physical power of the youth enables them
to do whatever they please. This dependency of the youth has
been continuously perpetuated and deepened. Superiority of
experience and ideology cannot easily be broken. The youth
(and even the children) are subjugated to the same strategies
and tactics, ideological and political propaganda, and oppressive systems as the woman — adolescence, like femininity, is not a physical but a social fact.
This must be clearly understood: it is not coincidence that
the first powerful authority to be established was authority
over woman. Woman represents the power of the organic,
natural and egalitarian society which had not experienced oppressive and exploitative relations. Patriarchy could not have
been victorious if she was not defeated; moreover, the transition to the institution of the state could not have been made.
Breaking the power of the mother-woman thus was of strategic
significance. No wonder that it was such an arduous process.
Without analysing the process through which woman was
socially overcome, one cannot properly understand the fundamental characteristics of the consequent male-dominated
social culture. Even awareness of the societal establishment of
masculinity will be impossible. Without understanding how
masculinity was socially formed, one cannot analyse the institution of state and therefore will not be able to accurately
define the war and power culture related to statehood. I stress
this issue because we need to expose the macabre godlike personalities that developed as a result of all later class divisions,
and all the different types of exploitation and murder they
have done. The social subjugation of woman was the vilest
counter-revolution ever carried out.
Power has reached its full capacity in the form of the nation-
state. It derives its strength mainly from the sexism it spreads
and intensifies by the integration of women into the labour
force as well as through nationalism and militarism. Sexism,
just as nationalism, is an ideology through which power is
generated and nation-states are built. Sexism is not a function
of biological differences. To the dominant male, the female is
an object to be used for the realisation of his ambitions. In the
same vein, when the housewifisation of woman was done, he
started the process of turning men into slaves; subsequently
the two forms of slavery became intertwined.
In short, the campaigns for excluding women and for manufacturing reverence for the conquering, warrior male authority
structure were tightly interwoven. The state as an institution
was invented by males and wars of plunder and pillage were almost its sole mode of production. Woman’s societal influence,
based on production, was replaced by man’s societal influence,
based on war and pillage. There is a close link between woman’s captivity and the warrior societal culture. War does not
produce, it seizes and plunders. Although force can be decisive
for social progress under certain unique conditions (e.g. the
way to freedom is won through resistance to occupation, invasion and colonialism), but more often than not it is destructive and negative.
The culture of violence that has become internalised within
society is fed by war. The sword of war wielded in state warfare
and the hand of the man within the family, which are both
symbols of hegemony. The entire class-based society, from its
upper layers to its lower layers, is clamped between the sword
and the hand.
This is something that I have always tried to understand:
how is it possible that the power held by the woman fell into
the hands of the man, who is not very productive and creative. The answer lies of course in the role that force has played. When the economy was taken from the woman, atrocious captivity was inevitable.
** 6. The Second Major Sexual Rupture
Millennia after the establishment of patriarchy (what I call the
‘first major sexual rupture’) women were once again dealt a
blow from which they are still struggling to recover. I am referring to the intensification of patriarchy through the monotheistic religions.
Te mentality of rejecting the natural society deepened in
the feudal social system. Religious and philosophical thought
constituted the new society’s dominant mentality. In the
same way that Sumerian society had synthesised the values of
Neolithic society into its own new system, feudal society synthesised the moral values of the oppressed classes from the old
system and the resisting ethnic groups from the remote areas
into its own internal structures. The development of polytheism into monotheism played an important part in this process.
The mythological features of this mindset were renewed
with religious and philosophical concepts. The rising power of
the empire was reflected in the multitude of powerless gods
that evolved into an omnipotent, universal god.
Te culture concerning women that was developed by the
monotheistic religions resulted in the second major sexual
rupture. Where the rupture of the mythological period was a
cultural requirement, the rupture of the monotheistic period
was ‘the law as God commands’. Treating women as inferior
now became the sacred command of God. The superiority of
man in the new religion is illustrated by the relationship between the prophet Abraham and the women Sarah and Hagar.
Patriarchy was at that point well established. The institution
of concubinage was formed; polygamy approved. As indicated by the fierce relationship between the prophet Moses and
his sister Mariam, woman’s share in the cultural heritage was
eradicated. The society of the prophet Moses was a total male
society in which women were not given any task. This is what
the fight with Mariam was about.
In the period of the Hebrew kingdom that rose just before
the end of the first millennium bc, we see, with David and
Solomon, the transition to a culture of extensive housewifisation. Woman under the dual domination of the patriarchal
culture and the religious state culture plays no public role. Te
best woman is the one who conforms most to her man or patriarchy. Religion becomes a tool to slander woman. Primarily,
she — Eve — was the first sinful woman who seduced Adam,
resulting in his expulsion from paradise. Lilith does not subjugate herself to Adam’s god (a patriarchal figure) and befriends
the chief of the evil spirits (a human figure who rejects being a
servant and does not obey Adam). Indeed, the Sumerian claim
that woman was created from man’s rib was included in the
Bible. As pointed out earlier, this is a complete reversal of the
original narrative — from women being the creator to being the
created. Women are hardly mentioned as prophets in the religious traditions. Woman’s sexuality is seen as the most wretched evil and has continuously been vilified and besmirched.
Woman, who still had an honoured place in Sumerian and
Egyptian societies, now became a figure of disgrace, sin and
seduction.
With the arrival of the period of the prophet Jesus, came
the figure of Mother Mary. Although she is the mother of the
Son of God, there is no trace left of her former goddess-ness.
An extremely quiet, weeping mother (without the title of goddess!) has replaced the mother-goddess. The fall continues. It
is quite ironic that a mere woman is impregnated by God. In
fact, the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit represents the
synthesis of polytheistic religions and monotheistic religion.
While Mary too should have been considered a god, she is
seen as merely a tool of the Holy Spirit. This indicates that
divinity has become exclusively male. In the Sumerian and
Egyptian periods, gods and goddesses were almost equal. Even
during the Babylonian era the voice of the mother-goddess
was still heard clearly and loudly.
Woman no longer had any social role bar being the woman
of her house. Her primary duty was looking after her male
children, the ‘son-gods’, whose value had increased greatly
since the mythological period. The public sphere was closed
off to her. Christianity’s praxis of saintly virgin women was in
fact a retreat into seclusion in order to find salvation from sins.
At least this saintly, cloistered life offered some deliverance
from sexism and condemnation. There are good and strong
material and spiritual reasons for choosing life in a cloister
above the hell-like life at home. We can almost call this institution the first poor women’s party. Monogamy, which had been
well established in Judaism, was taken over by Christianity
and sanctified. Tis praxis has an important place in the history of European civilisation. A negative aspect is that women
are treated as sexual objects in European civilisation because
Catholics are not allowed to divorce.
With the coming of the prophet Muhammad and Islam, the
status of women in the patriarchal culture of the desert tribes
improved somewhat. But in its essence, Islam based itself on
the Abrahamic culture; women had the same status during the
period of the prophet Muhammad as they had in the period of
David and Solomon. As then, multiple marriages for political
reasons and numerous concubines were legitimate. Although
in Islam marriage is restricted to four women, in essence it is
unchanged because the owning of harems and concubines became institutionalised.
Both the Christian and Muslim cultures have become stagnant in terms of overcoming sexist society. The policies of
Christianity towards women and sexuality in general are what
lie behind the crisis of modernist monogamous life. This is the
reality behind the crisis of sexist culture in Western society.
This can also not be solved by celibacy as it is demanded
from priests and nuns. The Islamic solution, giving priority to
male sexual fulfilment with many women in the position of
wife and concubine, has been just as unsuccessful. In essence,
the harem is but a privatised brothel for the sole use of the
privileged individual. The sexist social practices of the harem
and polygamy have had a deterministic role in Middle Eastern
society falling behind Western society. While the restraining of
sexuality by Christianity is a factor that has led to modernity,
encouraging excessive sexual fulfilment is a factor that has led
to Islam regressing to a state worse than the old desert tribal
society, and to it being surpassed by the society of Western
modernity.
The effect of sexism on societal development is far bigger
than we assume. When analysing the growing gap between
Eastern and Western societal development, we should focus on
the role of sexism. Islam’s perception of sexism has produced
far more negative results than Western civilisation in terms of
the profound enslavement of woman and male dominance.
Societal servitude is not just a class phenomenon. There is
an order of subjugation which is more deeply hidden than the
slave-owning system itself. The softening of this truth contributes to the deepening of the system. The fundamental paradigm of society is a system of servitude which has no beginning and no end.
** 7. Family, Dynasty and State
I have mentioned the intense relationship between the power relations within the patriarchal family and the state. This deserves a closer look.
Te cornerstones of dynastic ideology are the patriarchal
family, fatherhood and having many male children. This can
be traced back to the understanding of political power in the
patriarchal system. While the priest established his power
through his so-called ability to give and interpret meaning, the
strong man established his leadership through the use of political power. Political power can be understood as the use of
force when leadership is not adhered to. On the other hand,
the power of priest rests on ‘God’s wrath’ when not abided;
it is spiritual power and thus has a stimulating effect. Te
true source of political power is the military entourage of the
strong man.
Dynasty, as ideology and in practice, developed as a result of
turning this system upside down. Within the patriarchal order,
patriarchal governance became deep-rooted as a consequence
of the alliance between the ‘experienced old man’, the ‘strong
man’ with his military entourage and the shaman who, as the
sacred leader, was the forerunner of the priest.
The dynastic system should be understood as an integrated
whole, where ideology and structure cannot be separated. It
developed from within the tribal system but established itself
as the upper-class administrative family nucleus, thereby denying the tribal system. It has a very strict hierarchy. It is a proto-
ruling class, the prototype of power and state. It depends on
man and male children; owning many is important in order
to have power. A consequence of this has been polygamy, the
harem and the concubine system. Creation of power and the
state is the dynasty’s first priority. More importantly, dynasty
was the very first institution that ensured its own clan and
tribes, as well as other tribal systems, became accustomed to
class division and slavery. In Middle Eastern civilisation it has
become so deep-rooted that there is almost no power or state
that is not a dynasty. Because it constitutes a training ground
for power and state, it is continually perpetuated and very difficult to overcome.
Every man in the family perceives himself to be the owner
of a small kingdom. This dynastic ideology is effectively reason
why family is such an important issue. The greater the number
of women and children that belong to the family, the more
security and dignity the man attains. It is also important to
analyse the current family as an ideological institution. If we
are to eliminate woman and family from the civilisational system, its power and state, there will be little left to constitute
the order. But the price of this will be the painful, poverty-
stricken, degraded and defeated existence of woman under a
never-ending, low-intensity state of warfare. The male monopoly that has been maintained over the life and world of
woman throughout history is not unlike the monopoly chain
that capital maintains over society. More importantly, it is the
oldest powerful monopoly. We might draw more realistic conclusions if we evaluate woman’s existence as the oldest colonial phenomenon. It may be more accurate to call women the oldest colonised people who have never become a nation.
Family, in this social context, developed as man’s small state.
The family as an institution has been continuously perfected
throughout the history of civilisation, solely because of the
reinforcement it provides to power and state apparatus. First,
family is turned into a stem cell of state society by giving
power to the family in the person of the male. Second, woman’s unlimited and unpaid labour is secured. Third, she raises
children in order to meet population needs. Fourth, as a role
model she disseminates slavery and immorality to the whole
society. Family, thus constituted, is the institution where dynastic ideology becomes functional.
The most important problem for freedom in a social context
is thus family and marriage. When the woman marries, she is
in fact enslaved. It is impossible to imagine another institution that enslaves like marriage. The most profound slaveries
are established by the institution of marriage, slaveries that
become more entrenched within the family. This is not a general reference to sharing life or partner relationships that can
be meaningful depending on one’s perception of freedom and
equality. What is under discussion is the ingrained, classical
marriage and family. Absolute ownership of woman means her
withdrawal from all political, intellectual, social and economic
arenas; this cannot be easily recovered. Thus, there is a need
to radically review family and marriage and develop common
guidelines aimed at democracy, freedom and gender equality.
Marriages or relationships that arise from individual, sexual
needs and traditional family concepts can cause some of the
most dangerous deviations on the way to a free life. Our need
is not for these associations but for attaining gender equality
and democracy throughout society and for the will to shape
a suitable and common life. This can only be done by analysing the mentality and political environment that breed such destructive associations.
The dynastic and family culture that remains so powerful in
today’s Middle Eastern society is one of the main sources of its
problems, because it has given rise to an excessive population,
with the power and ambitions to share in the state’s power.
The degradation of women, inequality, children not being educated, family brawls and problems of honour are all related to
the family issue. It is as if a small model of the problems integral to power and state are established within the family. Thus,
it is essential to analyse the family in order to analyse power,
state, class and society.
State and power centres gave the father-man within the family a copy of their own authority and had them play that role.
Thus, the family became the most important tool for legitimising monopolies. It became the fountainhead of slaves, serfs,
labourers, soldiers and providers of all other services required
by the ruling and capitalist rings. Tat is why they set such importance in family, why they sanctified it. Although woman’s
labour is the most important source of profit for the capitalist
rings, they concealed this by putting additional burdens on the
family. Family has been turned into the insurance of the system and thus it will inevitably be perpetuated.
Critique of family is vital. Remnants from past patriarchal
and state societies and patterns from modern Western civilisation have not created a synthesis but an impasse in the Middle
East. The bottleneck created within the family is even more
tangled than the one within the state. If the family continues
to maintain its strength in contrast to other, faster dissolving
social bonds, this is because it is the only available social shelter.
We should not discount family. If soundly analysed, family can
become the mainstay of democratic society. Not only the woman but the whole family should be analysed as the stem cell of
power; if not, we will leave the ideal and the implementation
of democratic civilisation without its most important element.
Family is not a social institution that should be overthrown.
But it should be transformed. The claim of ownership over
women and children, handed down from the hierarchy, should
be abandoned. Capital (in all its forms) and power relations
should have no part in the relationship of couples. The breeding of children as motivation for sustaining this institution
should be abolished. The ideal approach to male-female association is one that is based on the freedom philosophy, devoted to moral and political society. Within this framework,
the transformed family will be the most robust assurance of
democratic civilisation and one of the fundamental relationships within that order. Natural companionship is more important than official partnership. Partners should always accept the other’s right to live alone. One cannot act in a slavish
or reckless manner in relationships.
Clearly, the family will experience its most meaningful
transformation during democratic civilisation. If woman, who
has been stripped of much of her strength and respect, does
not regain this, meaningful family unions cannot be developed. There can be no respect for a family that is established
on ignorance. In the construction of democratic civilisation,
the role of the family is vital.
** 8. Women’s Situation in Kurdish Society
Thus far, I have described some general characteristics of sexist
society. Let me conclude this analysis with some remarks on
the specific conditions of Kurdish women.
The transition from the Sumerian to the Hittite civilisation (during the second millennium bc) pushed the proto-
Kurds to strengthen their tribal existence. Because a premature
statehood would have caused their elimination, they seemed
to have preferred a semi-nomadic, semi-guerrilla lifestyle. As
more and more states were established around them, they
felt an increasing need to strengthen their tribal structures.
Kurdish tribalism resembled the lifestyle of a guerrilla group.
When we take a closer look at the family within the tribal organisation, we see the prominence of matriarchy and freedom.
Women were quite influential and free. The alertness, strength
and courage of present-day Kurdish women originates from
this very old historical tradition. However, a negative aspect
of tribal life is that opportunities to make the transition to a
more advanced society are restricted.
It is not a coincidence that among the peoples of the Middle
East the Kurds have the best-developed sense of freedom. We
see this in their historical development. The prolonged absence
of the ruling and exploitative classes and their inability to generate any positive value for their community, plus the fact that
throughout their history Kurds have had to fight nature and
foreign incursions, have all contributed to the development of
this characteristic. The fact that women in Kurdish society are
more prominent than in other Middle Eastern societies is due
to this historical reality.
However, the present situation of women in Kurdish society needs to be analysed thoroughly. The situation of women
throughout the world is bad, but that of Kurdish women is
nothing but terrible slavery and is unique in many respects. In
fact, the situation of both women and children are appalling.
Although in Kurdistan family is considered sacred, it has
been crushed — especially as a result of a lack of freedom, economic inability, lack of education and health problems. The
phenomenon of so-called honour killings is the symbolic revenge for what has happened to society in general. Women are
made to pay for the obliteration of society’s honour. Loss of
masculinity is taken out on women. Except for women’s honour, the Kurdish male, who has lost both moral and political
strength, has no other area left to prove his power or powerlessness.
Under the present circumstances, it may be possible to resolve the family crisis if there is a general democratisation of
society. Education and broadcasting in the mother tongue can
partially eliminate identity impairment. Marriage, the relations between husband, wife and children, has not even surpassed that of the old feudal relationships when capitalism
mercilessly besieged them and turned their life into a complete
prison.
In its freedom struggle for the Kurdish people, the PKK
did not only fight against the crippling effects of colonialism;
above all, it struggled against internal feudalism in order to
change the status of women and end the enslavement of society in general. Women were attracted to the struggle in great
numbers — not only to resist colonialism, but also to end internal feudalism and to demand freedom. Since the 1980s, this
has caused Kurdish women, whether within or outside the organisation, to organise themselves as a movement and to take
and implement decisions that concern not only them as women but also society in general. I have tried to support them in any way I can, both theoretically and in practice.
** 9. Capitalism
A realistic definition of capitalism should not present it as a
constant, created and characterised by unicentral thought and
action. It is, in essence, the result of the actions of opportunist individuals and groups who established themselves into
openings and cracks within society as the potential for surplus
product developed; these actions became systematised as they
nibbled away at the social surplus.
These individuals and groups never number more than 1 or
2 per cent of society. Their strength is in their opportunism
and organisational skills. Their victory relies not only on their
organisational skills but also on their control of the required
objects and fluctuation of prices at the point where supply and
demand intersect. If official social forces do not suppress them
— if, instead, these forces borrow from their profiteering, giving
their continuous support in return — then these groups who
exist on the margins of all societies may legitimise themselves
as the new masters of society. Troughout the history of civilisation, especially in Middle Eastern societies, these marginal
groups of broker-profiteers have always existed. But because
of society’s hatred of them, they could never find the courage
to come into the daylight from the fissures they resided in.
Not even the most despotic administrators had the courage to
legitimise these groups. Tey were not just scorned, but seen
as the most dangerous corruptive power; their ethics were considered the root of all evil. And indeed, the unsurpassed wave
of wars, plunders, massacres and exploitation originating from
Western Europe over the last 400 years is largely a result of the
capitalist system’s hegemony. (But then, the biggest counter-
struggle also took place in Western Europe, hence it cannot be
considered a total loss for humanity.)
Capitalism and the nation-state represent the dominant
male in its most institutionalised form. Capitalist society is the
continuation and culmination of all the old exploitative societies. It is continuous warfare against society and woman. To
put it succinctly, capitalism and the nation-state are the monopolism of the tyrannical and exploitative male.
Breaking down this monopolism will perhaps be more
difficult than breaking down the atom. A main objective of
capitalist modernity’s ideological hegemony is to obliterate the
historic and social facts concerning its conception and its essence. This is because the capitalist economic and societal form
is not a social and historical necessity; it is a construct, forged
through a complex process. Religion and philosophy have
been transformed into nationalism, the divinity of the nation-
state. The ultimate goal of its ideological warfare is to ensure
its monopoly on thought. Its main weapons to accomplish
this are religionism, gender discrimination and scientism as a
positivist religion. Without ideological hegemony, with political and military oppression alone, maintaining modernity will
be impossible. While capitalism uses religionism to control
society’s cognisance, it uses nationalism to control classes and
citizenship, a phenomenon that has risen around capitalism.
The objective of gender discrimination is to deny women any
hope of change. The most effective way for sexist ideology to
function is by entrapping the male in power relations and by
rendering woman impotent through constant rape. Through
positivist scientism, capitalism neutralises the academic world
and the youth. It convinces them that they have no choice but
to integrate with the system, and in return for concessions this
integration is assured.
As with all oppressive and exploitative social systems, capitalism could not rise without establishing a state. Whereas the
dogmatism of the feudal system had a religious character, that
of the archaic slave-owning society had a mythological character. One god was embodied in the king and dynasty; but today God is presented as the invisible power in the state’s noble existence.
When capitalism saw the opportunity to become a system, it started off by eliminating all societies based on the
mother-woman culture. During early modernity, the strength
of female sociality that was still trying to maintain itself was
burnt on the stake of the witch-hunter. In order to establish
its hegemony over woman through her profound enslavement,
these burnings were very useful tools. Woman is at the service
of the system today partly because of the widespread burning
of women at the onset of capitalism. The embedded fear of
the stake has put women in Europe under the total servitude
of men.
After eliminating women, the system mercilessly demolished agrarian and village society. As long as the communal
democratic character of society stands, capitalism cannot attain maximum power and profits. Thus, this kind of sociality
was inevitably targeted. In this way, the complete entrapment
of the oldest slave, woman, became the model for all other
enslaved lives — that of children and men.
Political and military power play an important role in maintaining the capitalist system’s hegemony. But what is crucial is
to possess and subsequently to paralyse society via the culture
industry. The mentality of communities under the influence of
the system has weakened and its members have become gullible. Many philosophers claim that society has been turned
into a society of the spectacle, similar to a zoo. The sex, sports,
arts and culture industries, in combination and in sequence,
bombard emotional and analytic intelligence incessantly by
means of a diverse spread of advertisements. As a result, both
emotional and analytical intelligence have become completely
dysfunctional; the conquering of society’s mentality is thus
complete.
What is of grave concern is society’s voluntary acceptance
of its captivity by the combined cultural and sex industries,
and moreover, perceiving this as a burst of freedom! This is
the strongest base and tool of legitimisation the rulers have.
Capitalism can only reach the empire phase with the aid of
the culture industry. Therefore, the struggle against cultural
hegemony requires the most difficult struggle of all: mental
struggle. Until we can develop and organise the essence and
form of a counter-struggle against the cultural war waged by
the system through its invasions, assimilation and industrialisation, not a single struggle for freedom, equality and democracy has a chance of succeeding.
Capitalist modernity is a system based on the denial of
love. Its denial of society, unrestrained individualism, gender
discrimination in all areas, deification of money, substitution
of God with the nation-state and turning woman into an automaton that receives no or little wages, mean that there are no material grounds for love either.
** 10. Economy
Economy has been turned into subject matter that ordinary
people are not supposed to understand. It has intentionally been made complicated so that the plain reality can be
disguised. It is the third force, after ideology and violence,
through which women, and subsequently the entire society,
was entrapped and forced to accept dependence. Economy literally means ‘householding’, originally the women’s domain, along with other fundamental sections of society which I will discuss later.
In the woman’s order, there was accumulation too, but this was
not for the merchant or the market. It was for the family. This is
what humanitarian and real economy is. Accumulation was prevented from becoming a danger by widespread use of the gift culture. Gift culture is an important form of economic activity.
It is also compatible with the rhythm of human development.
As woman was ousted generally from the history of civilisation but specifically from capitalist modernity, big men had
the opportunity to distort the functioning of economy and
thus turning it into a mass of problems. This was done by
people with no organic link to the economy because of their
excessive lust for profit and power. They thus placed all economic forces, especially woman, under their own control. The
result is that the forces of power and state have grown excessively, like a tumour on society, to the extent where it can no
longer be sustained or maintained.
The economic problem actually begins as the woman is
ousted from the economy. In essence, economy is everything
that has to do with nourishment. It may seem peculiar, but I
believe that woman is still the real creator of economy, despite
all attempts to overrun and colonise her. A thorough analysis
of the economy will show that woman is the most fundamental force of economy. Indeed, this is clear when we consider
her role in the agricultural revolution, and how she gathered
plants for millions of years. Today, she not only works inside
the home but in many areas of economic life; she is the one
that keeps on turning the wheel. After woman, those who
can be classified as slaves, serfs and workers would be second
in line to the claim of being creators of economy. They have
been kept under control continuously and cruelly so that the
civilisational powers can seize their surplus product and value.
Third in line are all the artisans, small merchant-shopkeepers
and small landowner-farmers who are, admittedly, a little freer.
To this category we can add the artists, architects, engineers,
doctors and all other self-employed people. This just about
completes the picture of those who create and constitute the
economy.
The most brutal period for woman was when she was ousted
from the economy during the process of capitalist civilisation.
This leaves the woman destitute of economy, which has become the most striking and profound social paradox. The entire female population has been left ‘unemployed’. Although
housework can be the most arduous work, it is seen as valueless. Although childbirth and child rearing are the most exacting tasks of all, they are not always regarded as valuable but often as a mere nuisance. On top of being an unemployed
childbearing and child raising machine that is inexpensive
to purchase and can be run cost-free, woman can be used as
scapegoat, carrying the guilt for all that is wrong. Throughout
the history of civilisation, she has been placed on the ground
floor of society where she does her unpaid housework, raise
the children and keeps the family together; duties that form
the actual basis of capitalist accumulation. Indeed, no other
society has had the power to develop and systemise the exploitation of woman to the degree that capitalism has.
During the capitalist period woman has been a target of inequality, with no freedom and no democracy, not only at the
ground level but at all levels. Moreover, the power of the sexist society has been implemented with such intensity and so
deeply that woman has been turned into object and subject
of the sex industry. The male-dominant society has reached its
peak in capitalist civilisation.
Woman and economy are interwoven components. Because
she generates economy according to fundamental needs only, a
woman-driven economy never experiences depression; it never
causes environmental pollution; and it never poses a threat to
the climate. When we cease to produce for profit, we will have
achieved the liberation of the world. This in turn will be the
liberation of humanity and life itself.
** 11. Killing the Dominant Male: Instituting the Third Major Sexual Rupture against the Dominant Male
Although male dominance is well institutionalised, men too
are enslaved. The system is in fact reproducing itself in the in-
dividual male and female and their relationship. Therefore, if
we want to defeat the system, we need a radical, new approach
towards woman, man and their relationship.
History, in a sense, is the history of the dominant male who
gained power with the rise of classed society. The ruling class
character is formed concurrently with the dominant male character. Again, rule is validated through mythological lies and
divine punishment. Beneath these masks lies the reality of bare
force and coarse exploitation. In the name of honour, man
seized the position and rights of woman in the most insidious,
traitorous and despotic manner. The fact that, throughout history, woman was left bereft of her identity and character — the
eternal captive — at the hands of man, has caused considerably
more damage than class division has. The captivity of woman
is a measure of society’s general enslavement and decline; it
is also a measure of its lies, theft and tyranny. The dominant
male character of society has to date not even allowed for scientific analysis of the phenomenon of woman.
The fundamental question is why is man so jealous, dominant and villainous where woman is concerned; why does he
continue to play the rapist? Undoubtedly, rape and domination are phenomena related to social exploitation; they reflect
society’s rape by hierarchy, patriarchy and power. If we look a
little deeper, we will see that these acts also express a betrayal of life. Woman’s multifaceted devotion to life may clarify
man’s societal sexist stand. Societal sexism means the loss of
wealth of life under the blinding and exhausting influence of
sexism and the consequent rise of anger, rape and a dominating stance.
This is why it is important to place on the agenda the
problem of man, which is far more serious than the issue of
woman. It is probably more difficult to analyse the concepts
of domination and power, concepts related to man. It is not
woman but man that is not willing to transform. He fears that
abandoning the role of the dominant male figure would leave
him in the position of the monarch who has lost his state. He
should be made aware that this most hollow form of domination leaves him bereft of freedom as well and, even worse, it forecloses reform.
In order to lead a meaningful life, we need to define woman
and her role in societal life. This should not be a statement
about her biological attributes and social status but an analysis
of the all-important concept of woman as a being. If we can
define woman, it may be possible to define man. Using man
as point of departure when defining woman or life, will render interpretations invalid because woman’s natural existence
is more central than man’s. Woman’s status is demeaned and
made out to be insignificant by male-dominant society, but
this should not prevent us from forming a valid understanding
of her reality.
Thus, it is clear that woman’s physique is not deficient or
inferior; on the contrary, the female body is more central than
that of man. This is the root of man’s extreme and meaningless
jealousy.
The natural consequence of their differing physiques is that
woman’s emotional intelligence is much stronger than man’s.
Emotional intelligence is connected to life; it is the intelligence
that governs empathy and sympathy. Even when woman’s analytic intelligence develops, her emotional intelligence gives her
the talent to live a balanced life, to be devoted to life and not
to be destructive.
As can be seen even from this short discussion, man is a system. The male has become a state and turned this into the
dominant culture. Class and sexual oppression develop together; masculinity has generated ruling gender, ruling class and
ruling state. When man is analysed in this context, it is clear
that masculinity must be killed.
Indeed, to kill the dominant man is the fundamental principle of socialism. This is what killing power means: to kill
the one-sided domination, the inequality and intolerance.
Moreover, it is to kill fascism, dictatorship and despotism. We
should broaden this concept to include all these aspects.
Liberating life is impossible without a radical woman’s
revolution that would change man’s mentality and life. If we
are unable to make peace between man and life and life and
woman, happiness is but a vain hope. Gender revolution is not
just about woman. It is about the 5,000-year-old civilisation
of class-based society which has left man worse off than woman. Thus, this gender revolution would simultaneously mean man’s liberation.
I have often written about ‘total divorce’, i.e. the ability to
divorce from the 5,000-year-old culture of male domination.
The female and male gender identities that we know today are
constructs that were formed much later than the biological female and male. Woman has been exploited for thousands o
years according to this constructed identity; never acknowledged for her labour. Man has to overcome always seeing
woman as wife, sister or lover — stereotypes forged by tradition
and modernity.
Claiming that we first have to address the question of state
then the question of family, is not sound. No serious social
problem can be understood if addressed in isolation. A far
more effective method is to look at everything within the totality, to render meaning to each question within its relationship
to the other. This method also holds when we try to resolve
problems. Analysing the social mentality without analysing
the state, analysing the state without analysing the family, and
analysing the woman without analysing the man would render
insufficient results. We need to analyse these social phenomena
as an integrated whole; if not, the solutions we arrive at will be
inadequate.
The solutions to all social problems in the Middle East
should have woman’s position as their focus. The fundamental
objective for the period ahead of us must be to realise the third
major sexual rupture; this time against the male. Without
gender equality, no demand for freedom and equality can be
meaningful.
In fact, freedom and equality cannot be realised without
the achievement of gender equality. The most permanent and
comprehensive component of democratisation is woman’s freedom. The societal system is most vulnerable because of the
unresolved question of woman; woman who was first turned
into property and who today is a commodity; completely,
body and soul. The role the working class once played must
now be taken over by the sisterhood of women. So, before we
can analyse class, we must be able to analyse the sisterhood of
women — this will enable us to form a much clearer understanding of the issues of class and nationality. Woman’s true
freedom is only possible if the enslaving emotions, needs and
desires of husband, father, lover, brother, friend and son can all
be removed. The deepest love constitutes the most dangerous
bonds of ownership. We will not be able to discern the characteristics of a free woman if we cannot conduct a stringent
critique of the thought, religious and art patterns concerning
woman generated by the male-dominated world.
Woman’s freedom cannot just be assumed once a society
has obtained general freedom and equality. A separate and distinct organisation is essential, and woman’s freedom should be
of a magnitude equal to its definition as a phenomenon. Of
course, a general democratisation movement may also uncover opportunities for women. But it will not bring democracy
on its own. Women need to determine their own democratic
aim, and institute the organisation and effort to realise it. To
achieve this, a special definition of freedom is essential in order
for woman to break free from the slavery ingrained in her.
** 12. Jineolojî as the Science of Woman
The elimination of women from the ranks and the subjects of
science requires us to look for a radical alternative.
We first need to know how to win within the ideological
arena and to create a libertarian, natural mindset against the
domineering, power-hungry mentality of the male. We should
always keep in mind that the traditional female subjugation is not physical but social. It is due to ingrained slavery.
Therefore, the most urgent need is to conquer the thoughts
and emotions of subjugation within the ideological arena.
As the fight for woman’s freedom heads towards the political
arena, she should know that this is the most difficult aspect
of the struggle. If success is not attained politically, no other
achievement will be permanent. Being successful politically
does not entail starting a movement for woman’s statehood.
On the contrary, it entails struggling with statist and hierarchical structures; it entails creating political formations
aiming to achieve a society that is democratic, gender equal,
eco-friendly and where the state is not the pivotal element.
Because hierarchy and statism are not easily compatible with
woman’s nature, a movement for woman’s freedom should
strive for anti-hierarchical and non-statist political formations.
The collapse of slavery in the political arena is only possible if
organisational reform in this area can be successfully attained.
The political struggle requires a comprehensive, democratic organisation of woman and struggle. All components of civil society, human rights, local governance and democratic struggle
should be organised and advanced. As with socialism, woman’s
freedom and equality can only be achieved through a comprehensive and successful democratic struggle. If democracy is not
achieved, freedom and equality cannot be achieved either.
The issues related to economic and social equality can also
be successfully resolved through an analysis of political power
and through democratisation. A desiccated juridical equality
means nothing in the absence of democratic politics; it will
contribute nothing to the achievement of freedom. If the
ownership and power relations which dominate and subjugate
woman are not overthrown, then free relations between woman and man cannot be achieved either.
Although the feminist struggle has many important facets,
it still has a long way to go to break down the limitations on
democracy set by the West. Neither does it have a clear understanding of what the capitalist way of life entails. The situation
is reminiscent of Lenin’s understanding of socialist revolution.
Despite grand efforts and winning many positional battles,
Leninism ultimately could not escape making the most precious left-wing contribution to capitalism.
A similar outcome may befall feminism. Deficiencies weakening its contention are: not having a strong organisational
base; inability to develop its philosophy to the full; and difficulties relating to a militant woman’s movement. It may not
even be correct to call it ‘the real socialism of women’s front’,
but our analysis of this movement has to acknowledge that it
has been the most serious measure to date to draw attention
to the issue of woman’s freedom. It does highlight that she is
only the oppressed woman of the dominant man. However,
woman’s reality is much more comprehensive than just being a
separate sex; it has economic, social and political dimensions.
If we see colonialism not only in terms of nation and country
but also in terms of groups of people, we can define woman as
the oldest colonised group. Indeed, in both soul and body, no
other social being has experienced such complete colonialism.
It must be well understood that woman is kept in a colony
with no easily identifiable borders.
In light of the above, I believe that the key to the resolution of our social problems will be a movement for woman’s
freedom, equality and democracy; a movement based on the
science of woman, called jineolojî in Kurdish. The critique of
recent woman’s movements is not sufficient for analysing and
evaluating the history of civilisation and modernity that has
made woman all but disappear. If, within the social sciences,
there are almost no woman themes, questions and movements,
then that is because of civilisation and modernity’s hegemonic
mentality and structures of material culture.
Moreover woman, as the prime component of moral and
political society, has a critical role to play in forming an ethic
and aesthetic of life that reflects freedom, equality and democratisation. Ethical and aesthetic science is an integral part
of jineolojî. Because of her weighty responsibilities in life,
she will no doubt be both the intellectual and implementation power behind developments and opportunities. Woman’s
link with life is more comprehensive than man’s, and this
has ensured the development of her emotional intelligence.
Therefore aesthetics, in the sense of making life more beautiful, is an existential matter for woman. Ethically, woman is
far more responsible than man. Thus, woman’s behaviour with
regard to morality and political society will be more realistic
and responsible than man’s. She is thus well suited to analyse,
determine and decide on the good and bad aspects of education, the importance of life and peace, the malice and horror
of war, and measures of appropriateness and justice. It would
thus be appropriate to include economy in jineolojî as well.
** 13. Democratic Modernity: The Era of Woman’s Revolution
Woman’s freedom will play a stabilising and equalising role in
forming the new civilisation, and she will take her place under respectable, free and equal conditions. To achieve this, the
necessary theoretical, programmatic, organisational and implementation work must be done. The reality of woman is a more
concrete and analysable phenomenon than concepts such as
‘proletariat’ and ‘oppressed nation’. The extent to which society can be thoroughly transformed is determined by the extent
of the transformation attained by women. Similarly, the level
of woman’s freedom and equality determines the freedom and
equality of all sections of society. Thus, the democratisation of
woman is crucial for the permanent establishment of democracy and secularism. For a democratic nation, woman’s freedom
is of great importance too, as liberated woman constitutes liberated society. Liberated society in turn constitutes democratic
nation. Moreover, the need to reverse the role of man is of
revolutionary importance.
The dawn of the era of democratic civilisation represents
not only the rebirth of peoples but, perhaps more distinctively,
it represents the rise of woman. Woman, who was the creative goddess of Neolithic society, has encountered continuous
losses throughout the history of classed society. Inverting this
history will inevitably bring the most profound social results.
Woman, reborn to freedom, will amount to general liberation,
enlightenment and justice in all upper and lower institutions
of society. This will convince all that peace, not war, is more
valuable and is to be exalted. Woman’s success is the success of
society and the individual at all levels. The twenty-first century
must be the era of awakening; the era of the liberated, emancipated woman. This is more important than class or national
liberation. The era of democratic civilisation shall be the one
when woman rises and succeeds fully.
It is realistic to see our century as the century when the will
of the free woman will come to fruition. Therefore, permanent
institutions for women need to be established and maintained
for perhaps a century. There is a need for Woman’s Freedom
Parties. It is also vital that ideological, political and economic
communes, based on woman’s freedom, are formed.
Women in general, but more specifically Middle Eastern
women, are the most energetic and active force in democratic
society due to the characteristics described above. The ultimate
victory of democratic society is only possible with women.
Peoples and women have been devastated by classed society ever since the Neolithic age. They will now, as the pivotal
agents of the democratic breakthrough, not only take revenge
on history, but they will form the required anti-thesis by positioning themselves to the left of the rising democratic civilisation. Women are truly the most reliable social agents on the
road to an equal and libertarian society. In the Middle East,
it is up to the women and the youth to ensure the anti-thesis
needed for the democratisation of society. Woman’s awakening
and being the leading societal force in this historical scene, has
true antithetic value.
Due to the class characteristics of civilisations, their development has been based on male domination. This is what puts
woman in this position of anti-thesis. In fact, in terms of over-
coming the class divisions of society and male superiority, her
position acquires the value of a new synthesis. Therefore, the
leadership position of women’s movements in the democratisation of Middle Eastern society has historical characteristics
that make this both an anti-thesis (due to being in the Middle
East) and a synthesis (globally). This area of work is the most
crucial work that I have ever taken on. I believe it should have
priority over the liberation of homelands and labour. If I am to
be a freedom fighter, I cannot just ignore this: woman’s revolution is a revolution within a revolution.
It is the fundamental mission of the new leadership to provide the power of intellect and will needed to attain the three
aspects crucial for the realisation of a democratic modernity-
system: a society that is democratic as well as economically and
ecologically moral. To achieve this, we need to build a sufficient number of academic structures of appropriate quality. It
is not enough merely to criticise the academic world of modernity — we have to develop an alternative. These alternative academic units should be constructed according to the priorities
and the needs of all societal areas, such as economy and technology, ecology and agriculture, democratic politics, security
and defence, culture, history, science and philosophy, religion
and arts. Without a strong academic cadre, the elements of
democratic modernity cannot be built. Academic cadres and
elements of democratic modernity are equally important for
attaining success. Interrelationship is a must to attain meaning
and success.
The struggle for freedom (not only of women but of all
ethnicities and different sections of the community) is as
old as the enslavement and exploitation history of humanity.
Yearning for freedom is intrinsic to human nature. Much has
been learnt from these struggles, and from the battle we have
been waging for the past 40 years. Democratic society has existed alongside different systems of mainstream civilisation.
Democratic modernity, the alternative system to capitalist modernity, is possible through a radical change to our mentality
and the corresponding, radical and appropriate changes in our
material reality. These changes, we must build together.
Finally, I would like to point out that the struggle for women’s freedom must be waged through the establishment of
their own political parties, attaining a popular women’s movement, building their own non-governmental organisations and
structures of democratic politics. All these must be handled
together, simultaneously. The better women are able to escape
the grip of male domination and society, the better they will
be able to act and live according to their independence initiative. The more women empower themselves, the more they regain their free personality and identity.
Therefore, giving support to women’s ire, knowledge and
freedom of movement is the greatest display of comradeship
and a value of humanity. I have full confidence that women,
irrespective of their different cultures and ethnicities, all those
who have been excluded from the system, will succeed. The
twenty-first century shall be the century of women’s liberation.
I hope to make my own contributions — not only by writing
on these issues, but by helping to implement the changes.
** On the Author
Abdullah Öcalan, born in 1949, studied political sciences in
Ankara. He actively led the Kurdish liberation struggle as the
head of the PKK from its foundation in 1978 until his abduction on 15 February 1999. He is regarded as a leading strategist
and one of the most important political representatives of the
Kurdish people.
Under isolation conditions at İmralı Island Prison, Öcalan
has written more than ten books, which have revolutionised
Kurdish politics. Several times he initiated unilateral ceasefires
of the guerilla and presented constructive proposals for a political solution to the Kurdish issue. The so-called “peace process”
started in 2009 when the Turkish state responded to Öcalan’s
call to resolve the Kurdish issue politically. This process broke
down in April 2015, when the Turkish state unilaterally terminated the talks and returned to a policy of annihilation and denial.
Since 27 July 2011, Öcalan has been held again in almost
total isolation at Imrali Island Prison. Since 5 April 2015, the
whole prison has been completely cut off from the rest of the
world.
** On the International Initiative
On 15 February 1999, the President of the Kurdistan Workers‘ Party, Abdullah Öcalan, was handed over to the Republic
of Turkey following a clandestine operation backed by an alliance of secret services directed by their corresponding governments. Disgusted by this outrageous violation of international
law, several intellectuals and representatives of civil organisations launched an initiative calling for the release of Abdullah
Öcalan. With the opening of a central coordination office in
March 1999, the International Initiative “Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan — Peace in Kurdistan” started its work.
The International Initiative regards itself as a multinational
peace initiative working for a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish question. Even after long years of imprisonment, Abdullah Öcalan is still regarded as an undisputed
leader by the majority of the Kurdish people. Hence, the solution of the Kurdish question in Turkey will be closely linked
to his fate. As the main architect of the peace process, he is
viewed by all sides as key to its successful conclusion, which
puts Öcalan’s freedom increasingly firmly on the agenda.
The International Initiative is committed to play its part to
this end. It does this through disseminating objective information, lobbying and public relations work, including running
campaigns. By publishing translations of Öcalan’s prison writings it hopes to contribute to a better understanding of the
origins of the conflicts and the possible solutions.
|
#title My Solution for Turkey, Syria, and the Kurds
#author Abdullah Öcalan
#SORTauthors Abdullah Ocalan
#SORTtopics Turkey, Syria, kurds, modernity, capitalism
#date August 2020
#source Retrieved on 2020-08-07 from https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/ocalan-turkey-syria-kurds-op-ed
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-08-07T16:02:25
Capitalist modernity is history’s deadliest and most continuous crisis of civilization. In particular, the general destruction of the last two hundred years has disrupted thousands of evolutionary links in the natural environment. We are probably not yet fully aware of the devastation this has caused the plant and animal worlds. It is, however, clear that, like the atmosphere, both these worlds are steadily emitting SOS signals.
How long can humanity go on enduring this modernity, which has inflicted far-reaching environmental devastation and caused the disintegration of society? How will humanity soothe the pain and agony of war, unemployment, hunger, and poverty?
The claim that the nation-state protects society is a vast illusion. On the contrary, society has been increasingly militarized by the nation-state and fully submerged in a kind of war. I call this war a societycide, imposed in two ways.
First, power and the state apparatus control, oppress, and surveil society.
Second, the information technology (the media monopolies) of the past fifty years has replaced real society with a virtual one. Up against the canons of nationalism, religionism, sexism, scientism, the arts, and the entertainment industry (including sports, soap operas, etc.), with which society is being battered 24/7 by the media, how can society be defended?
It’s become quite clear that nation-statism in the Middle East is, in fact, one of capitalist modernity’s tools of domination. What the Treaty of Versailles was to Europe, the Sykes-Picot Agreement drawn up between the British and the French in 1916 is to the Middle East: “A Peace to End All Peace.”
Today’s nation-states have the same meaning in the region as the Roman Empire’s governors once had, but they are even more collaborationist with capitalist modernity — and stand even further from the region’s cultural traditions. They are at war with their own peoples internally, and with one another externally. The liquidation of traditional society means war against peoples — and maps drawn with a ruler are an invitation for wars between states. None of them are adequate to overcoming the deepening crisis; in fact, their existence further deepens this crisis.
In my view, a third world war is taking place globally, with the Middle East as its center of gravity. In terms of scope and duration, this war is both deeper and longer than the first two world wars. The result is decay and disintegration. And it can end only with the formation of a new regional or global equilibrium. I contend that the fate of capitalist modernity’s third world war will be determined by the developments in Kurdistan. This is manifest in what is happening in Iraq and Syria.
The existence of nation-states is an anomaly in Middle Eastern history — and the insistence on them leads to disasters. The Turkish nation-state believes that with a final genocide of the Kurds, it will make itself eternal — a nation-state now integrated with its own country and nation. Clearly, unless Turkey abandons this paradigm, it will be a mere gravedigger for the region’s peoples and social cultures — including the Turkish people itself. Iran’s future situation, similarly, remains uncertain both for itself and for the region.
But the situation of the Kurds — chopped up into pieces by nation-statism in the Middle East, imposing different forms of annihilation and assimilation upon each of these parts — is a complete catastrophe. Kurds are, as it were, condemned to a long-term, deadly agony.
*** Kurdish Struggle
However, the conditions have now matured — and the Kurds, through their struggle, can make their way out of the pincer movement of genocide. This is only possible through the project of a democratic nation — one based on free and equal citizens, existing together in solidarity, encompassing all cultural and religious realities. This is, then, a project designed to be forged together with the other peoples in the region. The methodology for achieving that goal is now developing, step-by-step.
Rojava and all of Northern and Eastern Syria — run by an autonomous multiethnic, multi-religion self-administration, based on the freedom of women — is rising like a beacon of freedom. This presents a model solution for both the peoples of the Middle East and the nation-states. The model proposes not the denial of nation-states, but proposes that they be bound to a democratic, constitutional solution. This will ensure the existence and autonomy of both the “state nation” — the nation constructed by the state — and the democratic nation.
The rich heritage of ethnic, religious, and denominational entities and their cultures, in this region can only be held together through this democratic nation mindset — one that fosters peace, equality, freedom, and democracy. Each culture, on the one hand, builds itself as a democratic national group. Then, they can live in a higher level of democratic national union with other cultures that they already live together with.
The democratic nation solution proposed by the Kurds has enabled them to eliminate ISIS — the result of religious monism — on behalf of all humanity. This is no doubt the result of our paradigm based on women’s freedom, making it a role model all over the world.
*** Fighting for the Future
At present, the developments in Northern and Eastern Syria have reached an important point. The recognition of the Administration of North and East Syria and the local democracy it represents for the Arab, Kurdish, Armenian, Assyrian, and other peoples will be a very important development both for Syria and the wider Middle East. Our call for people to return from Europe, Turkey, and elsewhere will be possible once a Democratic Constitution of Syria is declared.
Our view on the Kurdish-Turkish conflict that has gone on for nearly a century is clear. We’ve been developing a democratic solution of the Kurdish question since 1993. Our stance — as seen in the 2013 talks with the Turkish nation-state, held in İmralı — expressed in the Newroz Declaration, as we entered the dialogue process, is today more important than ever. We reinforced this stance in the seven-point declaration we put forth in 2019. We insist on the need for social reconciliation and a democratic negotiation, to replace the culture of polarization and conflict.
Nowadays, problems can be solved not with physical tools of violence but with soft power. Under favorable conditions, I could set up the moves to eliminate the conflict within a week. As for the Turkish state, it is at a crossroads. It can either continue on its path toward unravelling like other nation-states in the region, or enter into a dignified peace and a meaningful democratic solution.
Ultimately, everything will be determined by the struggle between the parties. The success of the struggle waged by the Kurds through the politics of peace and democratic politics shall determine the end result. And freedom shall prevail.
----
*** On the Author
Abdullah Öcalan is founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), regarded as one of the Kurds’ most important political representatives and a leading strategist. Ever since his abduction from Kenya in 1999 and subsequent trial and death sentence — commuted to life imprisonment without possibility of parole — he has been held in total isolation on İmralı island. For almost eleven years, he was the sole prisoner there.
Öcalan has written extensively on history, philosophy, and politics, and is regarded as a key figure for a political solution of the Kurdish issue. Since the author has been held totally incommunicado and not been able to consult his lawyers or receive regular visits for many years, this op-ed has been edited from his prison writings and recent statements. His recent works include <em>The Sociology of Freedom</em> (2020) and <em>The Political Thought of Abdullah Öcalan</em> (2017)
|
#title Re-evaluating Anarchism
#subtitle (Anarşizmi Yeniden Değerlendirmek)
#author Abdullah Öcalan
#LISTtitle Re-evaluating Anarchism
#SORTauthors Abdullah Ocalan
#SORTtopics Tekoşîna Anarşîst, democratic confederalism
#date 2002
#source Retrieved on 2020-04-13 from [[https://files.libcom.org/files/sociology_of_freedom_9781629637730.pdf][The Sociology of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization, Volume III, p.291]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-04-13T05:23:09
After the dissolution of real socialism, or rather integrating of it with the system, the
anarchist movements which are as old as real socialism and find their roots in French
Revolution deserve a re-evaluation. Today it is better understood that the famous
representatives of anarchism, Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin were not completely wrong
in their criticisms regarding the system and real socialism. They are salient (*catch attention*)
with being located at the most opposite pole to the system, as being a movement who
criticizes capitalism not only as private and state monopoly, but also as modernity.
The critiques they make towards the power, in both moralist (*ethical*) and political ways
carry important level of truth inside. The social structures they come from effects the
movement in obvious ways. The “class” reactions of aristocratic groups who lost power and
city artisans who got relatively worse situation due to capitalism, reflect this very reality.
The facts that they remain at an individual level, can not find grassroots and cannot develop
a counter-system are strongly connected to their social structures. They know well what
capitalism does, but they do not know well what they should do. If we summarize shortly
their view;
1. They criticize the capitalist system from the most left position. They comprehend better
that this system destroys the moral and political society. They do not attribute progressive
role to capitalism, as Marxists do. Their approach to the societies destroyed by capitalism is
more positive. They do not see those societies as backwards and obliged to decline, but find
the survival of those more moral and political.
2. They have a more comprehensive and realistic approach towards the power and the state
compared to Marxists. Bakunin is the one who said power is the absolute evil. However,
demanding removal of power and state immediately at any rate is utopian and an approach
which does not have so much chance to be realized in practice. They were able to foresee
that socialism cannot be built based on the state and power, and that might end up in more
dangerous and bureaucratic capitalism.
3. Their foresight, that centralist nation-state would be a disaster for all working class and
popular movements and would crush their hopes, is realistic. They also turned out to be
right in their critiques towards Marxists regarding the unification of Germany and Italy.
Their statement about history developing in favor of nation-states would mean big loss for
the utopia of freedom and equality, their criticizing Marxists for taking position at the side
of the nation-state and blaming them with betrayal are important aspects to emphasize. They
defended confederalism.
4. Their ideas and criticisms on bureaucratism, industrialism and urbanization are verified
up to a certain level. In their developing anti-fascist and ecologist stance at an early stage,
those ideas and critiques played an important role.
5. Their criticisms towards the real socialism is also verified by the dissolution of the
system. They are the fraction who diagnosed best that what was built was not socialism but
state capitalism.
Despite their all those important and verified ideas and criticisms, it is quite puzzling that
they could not massify themselves (*become a mass movement, original in turkish:
kitleselleşme*) and find the chance of practical implementation. I believe this comes from
serious deficiency and infirmity (*lack of firmness*) in their theory. The lack in their analysis
of civilization and inability to develop an applicable system played an important role in this.
Historical analysis of society and analysis of solutions were not developed.
Furthermore, they themselves carry the impact of positivist philosophy. It cannot be so
much said that they were able to diverge from Euro-centric social sciences. Their biggest
failure, according to me, is not being able to go into a systematic thought and structure
regarding the democratic politics and modernity. They did not put the detailed effort in
systematizing and practicing (implementation), which they put into correctness of their ideas
and critiques. Maybe their class position hindered this.
Another important obstacle is the reaction they show against every kind of authority, in their
theoretical views and in their practical lives. Projecting the rightful reaction they have
against the power and the state authority into every form of authority and order, had impact
on them not bringing democratic modernity into question in theory and in practice. I believe
for them the most important aspect of self-critique is not seeing the legitimacy of
democratic authority and necessity of democratic modernity.
In addition, not developing the option of democratic nation instead of nation-state is an
important missing point and subject of self-critique. Without doubt, anarchists had an
important impact in the dissolution of real socialism, development of feminist and ecologist
movements, and growing of “civil society-ism” (*original in turkish: sivil toplumculuk*) in
the left. However, repeating that they’ve been proven right does not mean a lot. The
question they have to answer is why they did not develop an assertive activity and
construction of a system. This brings our minds the deep gap between the theory and their
lives. Were they actually able to overcome the modern life they criticize a lot? Or, how
coherent are they in this? Are they able to leave the Euro-centric life and step into a real
global democratic modernity?
It is possible to multiply similar question and critiques. It is a movement which showed
great sacrifices in the history, which carried important thinkers within, took important space
in the intellectual arena with its important idea and criticisms. The important thing is to
gather this movement and the legacy of it inside of a coherent and growable counter-system.
Compared to the real socialists, it is more possible for anarchists to trend towards daily
praxis via self critique.
It is still important that they take the place they deserve in economic, social, political,
intellectual and ethical struggle. In the struggles which gained speed and came forward with
the cultural aspects in the ground of Middle East, it is possible for anarchists to both renew
themselves and make strong contributions. They are one of the important forces that is
needed to collaborate with in the works of re-construction of democratic modernity.
<right>
Abdullah Öcalan<br>
Imrali prision, 2002
</right>
|
#title The Revolution is Female
#author Abdullah Öcalan
#LISTtitle The Revolution is Female
#SORTauthors Abdullah Ocalan
#SORTtopics anarcha-feminism, decolonial feminism, feminism, Ocalan
#date March 9, 2010
#source [[https://internationalistcommune.com/the-revolution-is-female/][internationalistcommune.com]] [[http://www.freedom-for-ocalan.com/english/hintergrund/schriften/ilmanifesto.htm][www.freedom-for-ocalan.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2019-08-06T04:58:52
Thinking and writing about the issue of women, means calling into question all of history and society. The reason for this is the unprecedented scale of the systematic exploitation of women.
From this viewpoint, the history of civilisation can be defined as the history of women’s losses. During the course of this history – the history of God and his servants, of Lords and serfs, of Industry, Science and Art – man’s patriarchal personality established itself. This was a loss to society as a whole; the outcome was a sexist society.
Sexism is both an instrument of power and at the same time a weapon, that throughout history came to be employed permanently in all systems of civilisation. Actually no social group has ever been exploited physically and psychologically to the same extent as women. The variety of forms of the exploitation of women is conspicuous. A women produces descendants. She serves as free labour. The jobs nobody wants to do fall upon her. She is an obedient slave. She is the permanent object of sexual desire. She is an advertising device. She is valuable merchandise, indeed she is the queen of all wares. She builds the foundations upon which a man can produce and reproduce his power as a continuous instrument of violence. We can accurately describe the 5000-year history of civilisation as a “culture of rape”.
In the Age of Capitalism, sexism was employed particularly perfidiously as an ideological instrument. Capitalism, which took over from sexist society, wasn’t satisfied with using women simply as free labour in the home. It transformed her into a sex object, turned her into merchandise to be offered up for sale on the market. Whilst a man can only sell his labour, a woman is physically and psychologically entirely for sale. In this fashion the most dangerous form of slavery comes into being. The system assigns a strategic role to the dominance over women in connection with the spread of exploitation and power. As the traditional repression of women expands, every man becomes a partner in power. Thus society is overwhelmed by the syndrome of total power expansion. Women’s status bestows on patriarchal society both the feeling and the concept of boundless domination.
To consider woman as the biologically incomplete sex, is pure ideology and a product of the patriarchal mentality. This doctrine is an integral part of the whole scientific, ethical and political effort to present this status as normal. It is sad that women themselves have become used to taking this paradigm for granted. The naturalness and sacred inviolability of this supposed inferior status, which various peoples have subscribed to for millennia, is just as valid for women and moulds their thought and behaviour. Thus we must always bear in mind that no ethnic group, no class, no nation has ever been as systematically subjected to slavery as have women. The history of women’s slavery has yet to be written and the history of freedom is still awaiting its authoresses.
Through the fact that women grew used to slavery, a hierarchy was established and the way was opened for the enslavement of other sections of society. Slavery of men came subsequent to the slavery of women. The difference between slavery based on gender and the slavery of a class or a nation is that as well as far-reaching, subtle repression it is guaranteed through emotionally-loaded lies. It was slavery of women throughout society that paved the way for all other forms of hierarchy and state structures. This was disastrous not only for women but also for society as a whole, apart from a small group of hierarchical, statist powers.
That is why any path leading to a profound criticism of the patriarchal ideology and its dependent institutions was passed over. One of the most important building-blocks of this system is the family as an institution. The family is a small state conceived by men. The meaning of the family throughout the whole history of civilisation lies in the strength bestowed on it by the rulers and the state apparatus. The orientation of the family towards male dominance and, through that, its successfully-attained function as nucleus for statist society guarantee that women carry out limitless, unpaid work. At the same time they raise children, meeting the state requirement for a sufficient population and serve as role models for the spread of slavery right across society.
If we don’t recognize the fact that the family is a micro-model of the state, a competent analysis of middle-eastern society is impossible. Man in the middle east, having lost all along the line, takes it out on the woman. The more he is publicly humiliated, the more the resulting aggression will be focused against the woman. The man, helpless and enraged because he can’t defend himself from his society, behaves like a tyrant in the family and turns violently against wife and children. With the so-called “honour killing”, the man who allows his values to be trampled in society, tries to take out his rage on the woman.
Regarding middle-eastern society, I must add that the traditional influences of the patriarchal, statist society have in no way melded with the influences of more modern forms of western civilisation, but rather form a conglomeration that can be compared to a Gordian knot.
Analysing the concepts of power and domination with reference to man, turns out to be extremely difficult. It is less the woman who refuses any change, than the man. Abandoning the role of dominant male would leave the man feeling like a ruler who has lost his kingdom. So we must show him that it is precisely this hollow form of domination, that keeps him from freedom and makes him a reactionary.
Such analyses are more than just theoretical observations, because they possess existential meaning for the Kurdish struggle for liberation. The freedom of the Kurdish people can be viewed as inseparably bound to women’s freedom, which is why we organised ourselves accordingly. If our aspiration to freedom has not been defeated despite the attacks by imperial powers and local reactionary forces, a large, invaluable share of the credit is due to the Free Women’s Movement and the awareness that it brought about. In our opinion there can be no free Kurdistan without free women.
This philosophical and social viewpoint is by no means a tactical political manoeuvre to draw women into the struggle. Our aim is to construct a democratic society, during which process men will undergo a change. I believe that in the analysis of our experience of struggle to date we have come to comprehend spoiled, dominating, oppressive, exploitive man in the patriarchal society. This was the most adequate answer that I could find regarding woman’s striving for liberation: get hold of patriarchal man, analyse him and “kill” him. I would like to go a step further. I will dare to redesign man with a peace-loving personality. Classical man will be analysed and “killed” to smooth the way for love and peace. In this sense I consider myself to be a worker in the struggle for women’s liberation.
Contradiction between the sexes has a 5000-year history and constitutes the fundamental struggle of the 21<sup>st</sup> century. Women are putting up vehement resistance. It is thanks to this struggle that the problem is apparent today. There have been some outstanding female personalities in history who left a mark through their lives, their thoughts and their actions. This opposition by women shows us something: without the struggle against the patriarchal ideology and morals, against their influence on society and against patriarchal individuals, we cannot achieve freedom in our lives, nor construct a true democratic society – so socialism cannot be put into effect. People aren’t just longing for democracy, they want a democratic society without sexism. Without equality of the sexes, any call for freedom and equality is pointless and illusory. Just as peoples have the right to self-determination, women should determine their own destiny. This is not a matter that can be put aside or postponed. On the contrary, in the setting up of a new civilisation, women’s liberty will be essential in establishing equality. In contrast with the experiences with real socialism and in national struggles for freedom, I believe that women’s liberation is more significant than the liberation of classes or nations.
From the experience of our struggle I know that women’s fight for liberation has to face extremely strong opposition as soon as it enters the political sphere. However, without victory in the political arena, there can be no lasting achievement. A victory in the political arena doesn’t mean that women will seize power. Quite the opposite, the fight against statist and hierarchical structures means creating such structures that are not state-oriented but lead to a democratic and ecological society where the sexes will be free. Thus not only women but humanity as a whole will win.
|
#title War and Peace in Kurdistan
#subtitle Perspectives for a political solution of the Kurdish question
#author Abdullah Öcalan
#LISTtitle War and Peace in Kurdistan Perspectives for a political solution of the Kurdish question
#SORTauthors Abdullah Ocalan
#SORTtopics democratic confederalism, communalism, kurdistan, PKK, war, Turkey
#notes Published by: International Initiative Freedom for Abdullah Ocalan – Peace in Kurdistan
#source [[http://www.freedom-for-ocalan.com/english/download/Ocalan-War-and-Peace-in-Kurdistan.pdf][www.freedom-for-ocalan.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2018-12-16
** Foreword
Everyday life in the Middle East is dominated by numerous conflicts, which often appear strange to western eyes as they seem to elude the western understanding of ratio and logos. This is also true for the Kurdish question, one of the most complex and bloody fields of conflict in the Middle East still awaiting a solution. However, as long as we do not discuss all dimensions of this conflict equally, it will be continued and even further aggravated, thus creating new and far-reaching problems. The historical, economic and political dimensions of the Kurdish question exceed by far the Arab-Israeli conflict, which, in contrast with the Kurdish question, enjoys the attention of the international public. Knowledge about this conflict is limited, and because it is taking place in one of the most central regions of the Middle East both with respect to demography and geostrategic importance, this deficit often results in one-sided and superficial analysis of this complex problem.
Since the settlement area of the Kurds spans the present territories of Arabs, Persians and Turks the Kurdish question necessarily influences most of the region. A solution in one part of Kurdistan also affects other parts of Kurdistan and neighboring countries. Conversely, the destructive approach of actors in one country may have negative effects for the solution of the Kurdish question in one of the other countries. The rugged Kurdish landscape is practically made for armed struggle, and the Kurds have been fighting colonization or conquest by foreign powers since time immemorial. Resistance has become part of their life and culture.
At the beginning of every solution process the conflict needs to be recognized and defined. With a view to the Kurdish question a realistic definition of the Kurdish phenomenon is therefore important. However, it is here already, where much of the disagreement begins. While the Arabs call the Kurds “Arabs from Yemen”, the Turks call them “mountain Turks” and the Persians regard them as their ethnic counterparts. It is not astonishing, therefore, that their political stance in the Kurdish question is marked by arguments over definitions.
The Kurdish question has not been created out of the blue. It is the product of a long historical process and does not have much in common with similar issues in other parts of the world. In fact, there is a number of fundamental peculiarities and differences. Both of them need to be defined in a solution process. Any policy building merely on apparent common ground leads to irresolvable problems. A policy targeted on a solution needs to realistically analyze the phenomenon and include both the national, political and social background and also all parties involved in the conflict. It is indispensable, therefore, to recognize the existence of the Kurdish phenomenon. This, on the other hand, is not possible without information about the historical background.
** Etymology of the words Kurd and Kurdistan
The name Kurdistan goes back to the Sumerian word kur, which meant something like mountain more than 5,000 years ago. The suffix ti stood for affiliation. The word kurti then had the meaning of mountain tribe or mountain people. The Luwians, a people settling in western Anatolia about 3,000 years ago, called Kurdistan Gondwana, which meant land of the villages in their language. In Kurdish, gond is still the word for village. During the reign of Assure the Kurds were called Nairi, which meant as much as people by the river.
In the Middle Ages under the reign of the Arab sultanates the Kurdish areas were referred to as beled ekrad. The Seljuk Sultans who spoke Persian were the first who used the word Kurdistan, land of the Kurds, in their official communiqués. The Ottoman sultans also called the settlement area of the Kurds Kurdistan. Until the twenties of the last century this was a generally used name. After 1925 the existence of the Kurds was denied, particularly in Turkey.
** Kurdish settlement area and Kurdish language
They do exist, though. Kurdistan comprises an area of 450,000 square kilometers, which is surrounded by the settlement areas of the Persians, Azeris, Arabs, and Anatolian Turks. It is one of the most mountainous, forest and water rich areas in the Middle East and is pervaded by numerous fertile plains. Agriculture has been at home here for thousands of years. It was here that the Neolithic revolution began when the hunter-gatherers settled down and began farming the fields. The region is also called the cradle of civilization. Thanks to its geographical position the Kurds have been able to protect their existence as an ethnic community until today. On the other hand, it was the exposed position of the Kurdish settlement area which often wetted the appetite of external powers and invited them to raids and conquest. The Kurdish language reflects the influence of the Neolithic revolution, which is believed to have begun in the region of the Zagros and Taurus mountains. Kurdish belongs to the Indo-European family of languages.
** A short outline of Kurdish history
It is highly probable that Kurdish language and culture began to develop during the fourth ice age (20,000–15,000 BC). They are one of the oldest autochthon populations in the region. About 6,000 BC they formed more branches. Historiography first mentions the Kurds as an ethnic group in connection with the Hurrians (3,000– 2,000 BC). So it is assumed that the predecessors of the Kurds, the Hurrians, lived in tribal confederations and kingdoms together with the Mitanni, descendants of the Hurrians, the Nairi, the Urarteans, and the Medes. These political structures had already rudimentary state-like features. At that time patriarchal social structures were not very distinct. Both in the Neolithic agricultural societies as in the Kurdish social structures women had a prominent position, which showed also in the Neolithic revolution.
It was Zoroastrianism which lastingly changed the Kurdish way of thinking in the time between 700 and 550 BC. Zoroastrianism cultivated a way of life that was marked by work in the fields, where men and women were on par with each other. Love of animals had an important position and freedom was a high moral good. Zoroastrian culture equally influenced eastern and western civilization, since both Persians and Hellenes adopted many of these cultural influences. The Persian civilization, however, was founded by the Medes, which are believed to belong to the predecessors of the Kurds. In Herodotus’ histories there is much evidence for a division of power among both ethnic groups in the Persian Empire. This is also true for the subsequent Sassanid Empire.
During classic antiquity the Hellenic era left deep traces in the eastern hemisphere. The principalities Abgar in Urfa and Komagene, the center of which was near Adiyaman-Samsat, and the kingdom of Palmyra in Syria were deeply influenced by the Greeks. We may say that it is there that we can find the first synthesis of oriental and occidental cultural influences. This special cultural encounter lasted until Palmyra was conquered by the Roman Empire in 269 AD, which brought about long-term negative consequences for the development of the entire region. The appearance of the Sassanid Empire also did not end the Kurdish influence. We may assume that during this time (216 – 652 AD) the feudal structures were formed in Kurdistan. With the rise of feudalism the ethnic cohesion began to decay. The Kurdish society developed increasingly feudal structured bonds. This course of development towards a feudal civilization contributed sustainably to the Islamic revolution. Islam was directed against the slaveholder structures and changed the ethnical relations during the time of urbanization. At the same time it revolutionized the feudal societies mentally and gave them an ideological basis.
The decline of the Sassanid Empire (650 AD) helped Islam create a feudal Kurdish aristocracy, which was strongly influenced by Arabization. It became one of the strongest social and political formations of its time. The Kurdish dynasty of the Ayyubids (1175–1250 AD) evolved into one of the most potent dynasties of the Middle East, exercising great influence on the Kurds.
On the other hand, the Kurds maintained close relations to the Seljuk Sultanate, which took over the rule from the Abbasids in 1055. Dynasties of Kurdish descent like the Sheddadis, Buyidis, and Marwanides (990 – 1090) developed into feudal petty states. Other principalities followed. The ruling class of the Kurds enjoyed a large autonomy in the Ottoman Empire
The 19<sup>th</sup> century offered the Kurds deep incisions. In the course of deteriorating relations with the Ottomans several Kurdish uprisings occurred. English and French missionaries brought the idea of separatism into the Armenian and Aramaic churches and contributed so to a chaotic situation. Furthermore, the relations between Armenians (Assyrians) and Kurds became notably worse. This fatal process ended in 1918 after World War II with the almost complete physical and cultural annihilation of the Armenians and Aramaeans, bearers of a culture several thousand years old
Although the relations between Kurds and Turks had been seriously damaged, there was at the same time no breach in the relations between the Kurds on the one hand and the Armenians and Aramaeans on the other.
** Struggles for resources, war and state terror in Kurdistan
In the past, the geostrategic position of Kurdistan had wetted appetites, which had made the country a pawn in the struggles over the distribution of resources, wars and state terror. This is still true today and goes back far into early history as Kurdistan had been exposed to attacks and raids by external powers at all times. The terror regimes of the Assyrian and Scythian Empires between 1000 and 1300 BC and the campaign of conquest by Alexander the Great are the best known examples. The Arab conquest was followed by the Islamization of Kurdistan. Much as Islam understands itself as a religion of peace, at its heart it has always been an ideology of conquest of the Arab nation, which was able to spread quickly in Kurdistan. Islam proceeded into the foothills of the Taurus and Zagros mountains. Tribes that put up resistance were exterminated. In 1000 AD Islam had hit its peak. Then, in the 13<sup>th</sup> and 14<sup>th</sup> centuries the Mongols invaded Kurdistan. Flight and displacement followed. After the battle of Chaldiran in 1514, which saw the Ottomans come off as victors, the natural eastern border of the empire was shifted further eastward. The treaty of Qasr-e Shirin officially established the Iranian and Turkish borders and concluded the partition of Kurdistan, which has continued into the present. Mesopotamia and the Kurds found themselves for the most part within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Until 1800 a relative peace had prevailed between the Ottomans and the Kurdish principalities, which was based on the Sunni denomination of Islam that they had in common. Alevitic and Zoroastrian Kurds, however, were defiant and took to resistance in the mountains.
After 1800 until the decline of the Ottoman Empire, Kurdistan was shaken by numerous rebellions, which were usually bloodily crushed. After the end of the Ottomans the Kurdish partition was even further deepened, exacerbating the atmosphere of violence. The rising imperialist powers Britain and France redrew the boundaries in the Middle East and gave Kurdistan under the rule of the Turkish republic, the Iranian peacock throne, the Iraqi monarchy and the Syrian-French regime.
Under the impression of the loss of a large part of its former territories, Turkey switched over to a strict policy of assimilation In order to enforce the unity of the remaining parts of the former empire in this way. All indications of the existence of a culture other than the Turkish were to be exterminated. They even banned the use of the Kurdish language.
The aspiring Pahlavi dynasty in Iran proceeded in the same way. The rebellion of the Kurdish tribal leader Simko Shikak from Urmiye and the emancipation struggle of the Kurdish republic of Mahabad were crushed in blood. The Shah established a terror regime in the spirit of the nationalist-fascist epoch at the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. In the Iraqi and Syrian parts of Kurdistan Britain and France suppressed the Kurdish emancipation efforts with the help of their Arab proxies. Here, too, a bloody colonial regime was established.
** European colonialism and the Kurdish dilemma
Driven by ambitions for geostrategic supremacy and boundless greed, the European intervention policy in the Middle East became increasingly colonialist at the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. Its primary goal became the submission and control of the Middle East. This added a new form of colonialization to what the Kurds had already experienced over the course of history. This dilemma can be followed back into Sumerian times. However, western capitalism changed it in unimagined ways. For the Kurds, this meant that they were again confronted with new colonialist actors and that the solution of the Kurdish question had become even more difficult.
With a view to their interests, the new imperialist powers deemed it more advantageous to seek cooperation with the sultan and the administration of the empire in order to win them as allies, instead of breaking up the Ottoman Empire with unforeseeable consequences. This approach was meant to alleviate control over the region and the peoples living there. It was a method which was very popular in the British Empire. It found its way into the history books as the “divide and rule” strategy. In this way the Ottoman rule was extended for another hundred years. France and Germany had similar strategies. Their frictions did not influence the balance of powers in the Middle East.
Yet another focus of imperial preservation of power was put on the Christian ethnic groups. On the one hand, western colonialism pretended to protect the Anatolian Greeks, Armenians and Aramaeans; on the other hand it incited these to rebel against the central power, which responded with massive repressions. The subsequent annihilation campaign was watched inactively by the western powers. Eventually, this policy antagonized the nations of the Middle East. Again, the Kurds were only pawns in the game of foreign interests. In the past the Kurdish aristocracy had collaborated with the Arab and Turkish dynasties. Now they allowed foreign powers to use them for their colonialist intrigues. By winning the cooperation of the Kurds the British succeeded to tie the anxious Turkish and Arab rulers to their interests. Then again, they were able to further tie the Armenians and Aramaeans to the colonial powers, which in turn were hard-pressed by the Kurdish feudal collaborators. The Turkish sultan, the Persian shah and the Arab rulers were not only victims of this policy, though. They played a similar game in order to preserve their power and to curb the greediness of the western powers. It was the people who suffered.
** The ideological basis of colonial oppression and power politics in Kurdistan
Both the partition of Kurdistan and the forms of rule of the Arab, Persian, and Turkish regimes were a social setback for the Kurds in these parts of Kurdistan. Today’s societal backwardness of the Kurds, which still stick to their feudal structures, is a product of these power relationships. With the coming of capitalist structures, from which the Kurds were mostly excluded, the development related divide between them and the Arab, Turkish, and Persian hegemonic societies grew larger. The power structures of the feudal rule mingled with bourgeois-capitalist power structures, which helped to preserve the dominance of their corresponding nations. Although these structures depended on imperialism, they were able to build up their own national economies, further develop their own cultures and stabilize their own state structures. In the areas of science and technology a national elite was coming of age. They forced all other ethnic groups in their countries to speak their language. With the help of a nationalist domestic and foreign policy they created a national ruling class, which saw itself as a hegemonic power with a view to the other ethnic groups. Police and military were expanded and strengthened in order to break the resistance of the peoples. The Kurds were not able to respond to that. They still had to suffer from the impacts the imperialist intrigues had had on them. They were confronted with an aggressive national chauvinism of the states that had the power in Kurdistan, and the legitimacy of their power was explained with adventurous ideological constructions.
** Denial and self-denial
The hegemonic powers (i.e. Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria) denied the Kurds their existence as an ethnic group. In such surroundings the Kurds ran a great risk when they referred to their Kurdish roots. If people did so in spite of this, they could not even expect to be supported by their own ethnic group. For many Kurds open commitment to their origin and culture resulted in exclusion from all economic and social relations. Therefore, many Kurds denied their ethnic descent or kept quiet about it, and the respective regimes pushed this systematically. This denial strategy produced a lot of absurdities. For the Arab regime the Kurdish question did not exist. It had been resolved by enforced Islamization, they were sure. Islam was the only nation. And this nation was Arab.
The Persians even went a step farther and made the Kurds an ethnic subgroup of the Persians. In this way, the Kurds were granted all their rights in a natural way. Kurds who nonetheless demanded their rights and stuck to their ethnic identity were regarded as people who threw mud at their own nation and who therefore received the appropriate treatment.
The Turkish regime derived its claim for supremacy over the Kurds from alleged campaigns of conquest in Anatolia a thousand years ago. There had not been other peoples there. Therefore, Kurd and Kurdistan are non-words, non existent and not allowed to exist according to the official ideology. The use of these words equals an act of terrorism and is punished correspondingly.
However, in spite of all these ideological constructions: The Kurds are one of the oldest autochthon ethnic groups of the region
** Assimilation
Hegemonic powers often use assimilation as a tool when they are confronted with defiant ethnic groups. Language and culture are also carriers of potential resistance, which can be desiccated by assimilation. Banning the native language and enforcing the use of a foreign language are quite effective tools. People who are no longer able to speak their native language will no longer cherish its characteristics which are rooted in ethnic, geographic and cultural given factors. Without the unifying element of language the uniting quality of collective ideas also disappears. Without this common basis the collective ties within the ethnic group break up and become lost. Consequently, the hegemonic language and culture gain ground in the conquered ethnic and language environment. Forced use of the hegemonic language results in withering of the native language until it becomes irrelevant. This happens even faster when the native language is not a literary language, like Kurdish. Assimilation strategy is not restricted to the use of language. It is applied in all public and social areas controlled by the state.
Kurdistan has often been the stage of cultural assimilation attempts by foreign hegemonic powers. The last hundred years of its history, however, have been the most destructive. The creation of modern nation-state structures in the hegemonic countries and the creation of a colonial system of rule in Kurdistan aggravated the assimilation attempts directed at the Kurdish language and culture.
Like Persian and Arabic before, now Turkish, too, became a hegemonic language by force. While the Kurds of the old times before modernity had been able to preserve their culture and language, these were now pushed back by the three hegemonic languages and cultures, which also had all of the modern media and communication tools at their disposal. Kurdish traditional songs and literature were banned. Thus, the Kurdish language, which had produced many works of literature in the Middle Ages, was threatened in its existence. Kurdish culture and language were declared subversive elements. Native language education was banned. The hegemonic languages became the only languages that were allowed in the educational system, and thus the only languages used to teach the achievements of modernity.
The Turkish, Persian and Arab nation-states pursued a systematic assimilation policy using varying repressive means – both institutionally and socially – denying the Kurdish language and culture any legitimacy. Only the language and culture of the hegemony were supposed to survive.
** Religion and nationalism
The hegemonic powers also used religion and nationalism to preserve their supremacy. In all parts of Kurdistan Islam is a state religion and used as a tool for controlling the population by the hegemonic powers. Even if these regimes distinctly embrace secularism the entanglement of political and religious institutions is obvious. While in Iran there is an openly theocratic regime in power, in other countries the instrumentalization of religion for political interests is kept concealed. So the Turkish state religious authority employs several hundred thousand Imams. Even Iran does not possess such an army of religious leaders. The religious schools are under the direct control of the state.
Quran schools and theological institutes and faculties employ almost half a million people. This really makes the constitutional postulate of secularism look absurd and rather like a placebo.
Wherever these ideas meet active politics they produce chaotic situations. Under the DP (Democracy Party) and the AP (Justice Party) governments religion was politicized openly. The military coups in March 1971 and September 1980 modified the Turkish ideological framework and redefined the role of religion. This initiated a re-islamization of the Turkish republic, similar to what had happened in Iran after Khomeini had seized power in 1979, albeit not that radical. In 2003 the AKP (Justice and Development Party) came into power and with it, for the first time, Islamic ideologues. This election victory was no accident but the result of the long-term religious policy of the Turkish state.
** Bourgeois nationalism
Another ideological tool of the hegemonic powers is the nationalism of the bourgeoisie. This ideology was most important in the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> centuries when it became the dominant ideology of the nation-states. It formed the basis for the bourgeoisie to proceed against the interests of the workers and the real-socialist tendencies. Eventually, nationalism emerged as a logical result of the nation-state bearing almost religious features.
The Turkish form of nationalism that came into being after 1840 was an attempt to prevent the decay of the Ottoman Empire that had begun to show. The early Turkish nationalists were originally legalists. Later they turned against the sultanate of Abdulhamid II and became increasingly radical. The nationalism of the Young Turk movement expressed itself in the Committee for Unity and Progress, which worked for a constitutional reform of the state and aspired toward coming into power in the empire. Apart from that they had made it clear that they wanted to strengthen the empire again, which was externally weak and internally threatened by decay, by systematically modernizing it politically, militarily and economically. The opening of Germany’s foreign policy toward the Middle East and Central Asia then added a racist component to Turkish nationalism. The genocide of the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, Aramaeans and Kurds followed. The young Turkish republic was marked by aggressive nationalism and a very narrow understanding of the nation-state. The slogan “one language, one nation, one country” became a political dogma. Although this was in principle a classless and no privileges state approach, the instruments to actually implement it were lacking. Its abstractness bore the danger of ideological fanaticism. Nationalism degraded into a tool of the ruling circles and was mostly used to cover up their failures. Under the flag of the “superior Turkish identity” the entire society was sworn to an aggressive nationalism.
The war in Kurdistan and the state terrorism involved with it created a separate power block. As in other systems where certain power blocks derive their power from their military potential and base their existence on war, so they formed the Turkish society accordingly.
This is also why the political system lost its ability to solve conflicts. This is a system that has been formed by war and state terror, where it remains unclear which power centers serve which interests and goals – with equally disastrous effects for the Turkish and Kurdish communities
** Kurdish identity and Kurdish resistance
The identification process of the Kurds as a nation occurred comparatively late. Even if there was a commitment to being Kurdish in the Kurdish rebellions of the 19<sup>th</sup> century it did not go beyond opposition against the sultanate and the rule of the Shah. There were no ideas of alternative forms of life. A commitment to the Kurdish identity involved the creation of a Kurdish kingdom, in the sense of the traditional sultanates. The Kurds were very far from identifying themselves as a nation for a long time. It was only in the second half of the 20<sup>th</sup> century that the idea of a Kurdish identity began to develop in the course of intellectual debates mostly as a tendency of the Turkish left. However, this tendency lacked the intellectual potential to overcome more traditional ideas of Kurdish identity affiliated with tribal order and sheikdom. Both the real-socialist leaning communist parties and the liberal and feudal parties were far from understanding the idea of a Kurdish nation or the idea of the Kurds as an ethnic group. Only the left-leaning student movement of the 1970s was able to contribute substantially to the awareness that there was a Kurdish identity
The ethnic identification process developed in the conflict relationship of the Turkish chauvinist national understanding and the Kurdish feudal national understanding. On the one hand there was the confrontation with the ideological hegemony of the system, often enough in left-looking attire, on the other hand the confrontation with the Kurdish aristocracy, who traditionally cooperated with the system. Liberation from these societal, political and ideological forces did not come easy. It required both intellectual potential and practical organizational work. This led directly into resistance. Since the 1970s, when the Kurdish emancipation efforts had not yet come of age, thirty-five years have passed. This time did not only enlighten the Kurds over their own identity and offer approaches for a solution of the Kurdish question; it is also evidence that the Kurds and their emancipation cannot be suppressed by force in the long-term. No system can survive for a longer period, when it tries to transform its social contradictions forcibly. The Kurdish emancipation efforts also demonstrate that people cannot develop if they do not re-conquer their societal dignity.
** The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
*** Short outline of the history of origins of the PKK
In April 1973 a group of six people came together in order to form an independent Kurdish political organization. They acted on the assumption that Kurdistan was a classic colony, where the population was forcibly refused their right to self-determination. It was their prime goal to change this. This gathering may also be called the hour of birth of a new Kurdish movement.
Over the years, this group found new followers who helped them spread their conviction in the rural population of Kurdistan. More and more they clashed with Turkish security forces, armed tribesmen of the Kurdish aristocracy and rival political groups, which violently attacked the young movement. On November 27, 1978 the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was founded in a small village near Diyarbakir. Twenty-two leading members of the movement took part in the inaugural meeting in order to set up more professional structures for the movement. In an urban environment the movement would not have survived, so they focused their activities on the rural Kurdish regions.
The Turkish authorities reacted harshly to the propaganda efforts of the PKK. Detentions and armed clashes followed. Both sides experienced losses. The situation in Turkey, however, was also coming to a point. The first signs of the imminent military coup were already visible in 1979. The PKK responded by withdrawing from Turkey into the mountains or into other countries of the Middle East. Only a small number of activists remained in Turkey. This step helped the PKK to secure their survival. On September 12, 1980 the Turkish military overthrew the civil government and seized power. Many of the PKK cadres who had remained in Turkey were imprisoned by the military junta.
In this situation, the PKK had to determine whether they wanted to become an exile organization or a modern national liberation movement. After a short phase of re-organization a majority of members returned to Kurdistan and took up armed resistance against the fascist junta. The attacks on military facilities in Eruh and Semdili on August 15, 1984 proclaimed the official beginning of the armed resistance. Although there were deficits, the move towards becoming a national liberation movement had been made.
Originally the Turkish authorities – Turgut Ozal had just been elected prime minister – tried to play down the incident. The state propaganda called the guerrilla a “handful of bandits”, which shows the mindset of those in charge there. A political approach to the conflict was not perceptible. The clashes grew into a war, which demanded numerous victims from either side.
It was only in the 1990s that the situation became less gridlocked, when the state seemed to become ready for a political solution. There were statements by Turgut Ozal and Suleyman Demirel, then President, indicating that they might recognize the Kurdish identity, raised hopes for an early end of the conflict. The PKK tried to strengthen this process by declaring a ceasefire in 1993. The sudden death of Turgut Ozal deprived this process of one of its most important protagonists. There were other obstacles, too. Some hardliners among the PKK stuck to the armed struggle; the situation among the leadership of the Turkish state was difficult and marked by conflicting interests; the attitude of the Iraqi Kurdish leaders Talabani and Barzani was also not helpful in deepening the peace process. It was the biggest opportunity for a peaceful solution of the Kurdish question until then, and it was lost.
Subsequently the conflict escalated. Both parties experienced high losses. However, even this escalation did not lift the deadlock. The years of war between 1994 and 1998 were lost years. In spite of several unilateral ceasefires on the part of the PKK, the Turkish state insisted on a military solution. The ceasefire of 1998 remained without a response as well. Rather, it stirred up a military confrontation between Turkey and Syria, which brought both countries to the edge of a war. In 1998 I went to Europe as the chairman of the PKK in order to promote a political solution. The following odyssey is well known. I was abducted from Kenya and brought to Turkey in violation of international law. This abduction was backed by an alliance of secret services and the public expected the conflict to further escalate then. However, the trial on the Turkish prison island of Imrali marked a political U-turn in the conflict and offered new perspectives for a political solution. At the same time this turn caused the PKK to reorient ideologically and politically. I had been working on these points already before my abduction. This was truly an ideological and political cut. What, then, were the real motives?
*** Main criticism
Doubtlessly, my abduction was a heavy blow for the PKK. It was nonetheless not the reason for the ideological and political cut. The PKK had been conceived as a party with a state-like hierarchical structure similar to other parties. Such a structure, however, causes a dialectic contradiction to the principles of democracy, freedom and equality, a contradiction in principle concerning all parties whatsoever their philosophy. Although the PKK stood for freedom-oriented views we had not been able to free ourselves from thinking in hierarchical structures.
Another main contradiction lay in the PKK’s quest for institutional political power, which formed and aligned the party correspondingly. Structures aligned along the lines of institutional
power, however, are in conflict with societal democratization, which the PKK was declaredly espousing. Activists of any such party tend to orient themselves by superiors rather than by the society, or as the case may be aspire to such positions themselves. All of the three big ideological tendencies based on emancipative social conceptions have been confronted with this contradiction. Real-socialism and social democracy as well as national liberation movements when they tried to set up social conceptions beyond capitalism could not free themselves from the ideological constraints of the capitalist system. Quite early, they became pillars of the capitalist system while only seeking institutional political power instead of putting their focus on the democratization of the society.
Another main contradiction was the value of war in the ideological and political considerations of the PKK. War was understood as the continuation of politics by different means and romanticized as a strategic instrument.
This was a blatant contradiction to our self-perception as a movement struggling for the liberation of the society. According to this, the use of armed force can only be justified for the purpose of necessary self-defense. Anything going beyond that would be in violation of the socially emancipative approach that the PKK felt itself obliged to, since all repressive regimes in history had been based on war or had aligned their institutions according to the logic of warfare. The PKK believed that the armed struggle would be sufficient for winning the rights that the Kurds had been denied. Such a deterministic idea of war is neither socialist nor democratic, although the PKK saw itself as a democratic party. A really socialist party is neither oriented by state-like structures and hierarchies nor does it aspire to institutional political power, of which the basis is the protection of interests and power by war.
The supposed defeat of the PKK that the Turkish authorities believed they had accomplished by my abduction to Turkey was eventually reason enough to critically and openly look into the reasons that had prevented us from making better progress with our liberation movement. The ideological and political cut undergone by the PKK made the seeming defeat a gateway to new horizons.
** New strategic, philosophic and political approaches of the Kurdish liberation movement
A comprehensive treatment of the main strategic, ideological, philosophical, and political elements at the base of the process of change cannot be accomplished in this essay.
However, the cornerstones can be outlined as follows:
- The philosophical, political and value-related approaches that the newly-aligned PKK embraces find adequate expression in what is called “democratic socialism”.
- The PKK does not derive the creation of a Kurdish nationstate from the right of self-determination of the peoples. However, we regard this right as the basis for the establishment of grassroots democracies, without seeking new political borders. It is up to the PKK to convince the Kurdish society of their conviction. This is also true for the dialogue with the hegemonic countries exercising power in Kurdistan. It is to be the basis for a solution of the existing issues.
- The countries that presently exist here need democratic reforms going beyond mere lip service to democracy. It is not realistic, though, to go for the immediate abolition of the state. This does not mean that we have to take it as it is. The classic state structure with its despotic attitude of power is unacceptable. The institutional state needs to be subjected to democratic changes. At the end of this process, there should be a lean state as a political institution, which only observes functions in the fields of internal and external security and in the provision of social security. Such an idea of the state has nothing in common with the authoritarian character of the classic state, but would rather be regarded as a societal authority.
- The Kurdish liberation movement is working for a system of democratic self-organization in Kurdistan with the features of a confederation. Democratic confederalism understands itself as a coordination model for a democratic nation. It provides a framework, within which interalia minorities, religious communities, cultural groups, gender-specific groups and other societal groups can organize autonomously. This model may also be called a way of organization for democratic nations and cultures. The democratization process in Kurdistan is not limited to matters of form but, rather, poses a broad societal project aiming at the economic, social and political sovereignty of all parts of the society. It advances the building of necessary institutions and creates the instruments for democratic self-government and control. It is a continuous and long-term process. Elections are not the only means in this context. Rather, this is a dynamic political process which needs direct intervention by the sovereign, the people. The people are to be directly involved in the decision-finding processes of the society. This project builds on the self-government of the local communities and is organized in the form of open councils, town councils, local parliaments, and larger congresses. The citizens themselves are the agents of this kind of self-government, not state-based authorities. The principle of federal selfgovernment has no restrictions. It can even be continued across borders in order to create multinational democratic structures. Democratic confederalism prefers flat hierarchies so as to further decision finding and decision making at the level of the communities.
- The model outlined above may also be described as autonomous democratic self-government, where the state-related sovereign rights are only limited. Such a model allows a more adequate implementation of basic values like freedom and equality than traditional administrative models. This model need not be restricted to Turkey, but may also be applicable in the other parts of Kurdistan. Simultaneously, this model is suitable for the building of federal administrative structures in all Kurdish settlement areas in Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Thus, it is possible to build confederate structures across all parts of Kurdistan without the need to question the existing borders
- The decline of real-socialism was also a result of how the socialist countries used their power both internally and externally and of the fact that they misconceived the importance of the gender issue. Women and power seem to be quite contradictory things. In real-socialism, the question of women’s rights was a rather subordinate issue, which was believed to be resolved anyway once the economic and other societal problems would be solved. However, women may also be regarded as an oppressed class and nation or an oppressed gender. As long as we do not discuss freedom and equal treatment of women in a historical and societal context, as long as no adequate theory has been devised, there will not be an adequate practice either. Therefore, women’s liberation must assume a main strategic part in the democratic struggle for freedom in Kurdistan.
- Today, the democratization of politics is one of the most urgent challenges. However, democratic politics needs democratic parties. As long as there are no parties and party-affiliated institutions committed to the interests of the society instead of fulfilling state orders, a democratization of politics will be hardly possible. In Turkey, the parties are only propaganda tools of the state enjoying public alimentation. Their transformation into parties committed exclusively to the interests of the society, and the creation of the necessary legal basis in this context would be an important part of a political reform. The founding of parties bearing the word Kurdistan in their name is still a criminal act. Independent parties are still obstructed in many ways. Kurdistanrelated parties of coalitions serve the democratization as long as they do not advocate separatism or the use of violence.
- There is a widespread individual and institutional subservient spirit, which is one of the biggest obstacles in the way of democratization. It can only be overcome by creating an awareness of democracy in all parts of the society. The citizens must be invited to actively commit themselves for democracy. For the Kurds, this means building democratic structures in all parts of Kurdistan and wherever there are Kurdish communities, which advance the active participation in the political life of the community. The minorities living in Kurdistan must be invited to participate as well. The development of grassroots-level democratic structures and a corresponding practical approach must have top priority. Such grassroots structures must be regarded as obligatory even where basic democratic and legal principles are violated as in the Middle East.
- Politics needs independent media. Without them the state structures will not develop any sensitivity for questions of democracy. Nor will it be possible to bring democracy into politics. Freedom of information is not only a right of the individual. It also involves a societal dimension. Independent media have also always a societal mandate. Their communication with the public must be marked by democratic balance.
- Feudal institutions like tribes, sheikdom, aghas and sectarianism, which are essentially relics of the Middle Ages, are like the institutions of classic nation-states obstacles in the way of democratization. They must be urged appropriately to join the democratic change. These parasitic institutions must be overcome with top priority.
- The right to native language education must be warranted. Even if the authorities do not advance such education, they must not impede civic efforts for the creation of institutions offering Kurdish language and culture education. The health system must be warranted by both state and civil society.
- An ecological model of society is essentially socialist. The establishment of an ecological balance will only be accomplished during the transition phase from an alienated class society based on despotism to a socialist society. It would be an illusion to hope for the conservation of the environment in a capitalist system. These systems largely participate in the ecological devastation. Protection of the environment must be given broad consideration in the process of societal change.
- The solution of the Kurdish question will be realized within the framework of the democratization of the countries exercising hegemonic power over the different parts of Kurdistan. This process is not limited to these countries, though, but rather extends across the entire Middle East. The freedom of Kurdistan is tied to the democratization of the Middle East. A free Kurdistan is only conceivable as a democratic Kurdistan.
- The individual freedom of expression and decision is indefeasible. No country, no state, no society has the right to restrict these freedoms, whatever reasons they may cite. Without the freedom of the individual there will be no freedom for the society, just as freedom for the individual is impossible if the society is not free.
- A just redistribution of the economic resources presently in the possession of the state is eminently important for the liberation process of the society. Economic supply must not become a tool in the hands of the state for exercising pressure on the people. Economic resources are not the property of the state but of the society.
- An economy close to the people should be based on such redistribution and be use value-oriented instead of exclusively pursuing an economy based on commodification and profits. The profit-based economy has not only damaged the society but also the environment. One of the main reasons for the decline of the society lies in the level of expansion of the financial markets. The artificial production of needs, the more and more adventurous search for new sales markets and the boundless greed for ever growing profits lets the divide between rich and poor steadily grow and enlarges the army of those living below the poverty line or even dying of hunger. Humanity can no longer sustain itself with such an economic policy. This is therefore the biggest challenge for socialist politics: Progressive transition from a commodity oriented society to a society producing on the basis of use value; from a production based on profit to a production based on sharing.
- Although the Kurds assign the family a high value it is still a place where freedom does not abound. Lack of financial resources, lack of education, lack of health care do not allow for much development. The situation of women and children is disastrous. So-called honor-killings of female family members are a symbol of this disaster. They become the targets of an archaic notion of honor, which reflects the degeneration of the entire society. Male frustration over the existing conditions is directed against the supposedly weakest members of the society: women. The family as a social institution experiences a crisis. Here, too, a solution can only be found in the context of an overall democratization.
** The present situation and suggestions for a solution
The Kurdish-Turkish relations in Turkey play a key role with a view to a solution of the Kurdish question. In this respect, the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Syria have only a limited potential and can probably only support a possible overall solution. The Kurds in Iraq give a very good example. The semi-state Kurdish autonomy is indirectly the result of worldwide efforts on the part of Turkey, the U.S. and their allies to denounce the PKK as a terror organization. Without consent by Ankara this “solution” would not have been possible. The chaos caused by this solution is obvious, and the result unforeseeable. It is also unclear which direction the feudal-liberal Kurdish national authority in Iraq will take in the long run and how it will affect Iran, Syria, and Turkey. There is the danger of a regional escalation of the conflict similar in shape to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A flare-up of Kurdish nationalism might even radicalize the Persian, Arab and Turkish nationalists further, making a solution of the problem more difficult.
This prospect needs to be contrasted with a solution free of nationalist aspirations, which recognizes the existing territorial borders. In return, the status of the Kurds will be put down in the respective constitutions thus warranting their rights concerning culture, language, and political participation. Such a model would be largely in accordance with the historical and societal realities of the region.
In the light of this, making peace with the Kurds seems inevitable. It is highly improbable that the present war or any future war will yield anything else but a Pyrrhus’ victory. Therefore, this war must be put to an end. It has been lasting too long already. It is in the interest of all countries of the region to follow the example of other countries and take the necessary steps.
The Kurds only demand that their existence be respected; they demand freedom of culture and a fully democratic system. A more humane and modest solution is impossible. The examples of South Africa, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Corsica demonstrate the ways in which different modern countries have been able to solve similar problems in the course of their history. Furthermore, these comparisons help us to find a more objective approach to our own problems.
Turning our backs to violence as a means of solving the Kurdish question and overcoming the repressive policy of denial at least in part, are closely connected to the fact that we upheld the democratic option. The ban on Kurdish language and culture, education and broadcasting is in itself a terrorist act and practically invites counter violence. Violence, however, has been used by both sides to an extent that goes clearly beyond legitimate self defense.
Many movements today take to even more extreme methods. However, we have declared unilateral ceasefires several times, we have withdrawn large numbers of our fighters from Turkish territory, and thus refuted the accusation of terrorism. Our peace efforts, however, have been ignored over the years. Our initiatives never met a response. Rather, a group of Kurdish politicians sent out as ambassadors of peace was detained and handed long prison terms. Our efforts for peace have wrongly been interpreted as weakness. There is no other explanation for statements like “the PKK and Ocalan are practically finished” or, that our initiatives were only tactical. So they claimed they only needed to proceed a little bit tougher in order to smash the PKK. So they increased their attacks on the Kurdish liberation movement. Nobody asks, however, why they never succeeded? It is impossible to solve the Kurdish question by means of violence. The attitude described above also contributed to the failure of the ceasefire that began on October 1, 2006. I had called on the PKK to offer this ceasefire. Some Intellectuals and non-government organizations had demanded such a step. However, again it was not taken seriously. Instead, racism and chauvinism were stirred up creating an atmosphere of confrontation. Besides, we must not forget that the AKP also uses this issue to play down their own problems with the Kemalist elite by making compromises with the army and speculating on the escalation of the Kurdish problem. Presently, the government restricts itself to some half-hearted measures in order to wrench some concessions from the EU. They are trying to win time with the help of the harmonization laws enacted in the context of the EU accession process. In reality, these supposed reforms are just waste-paper.
The exacerbating conflict is cause for concern. Nevertheless, I will not give up my hopes for a just peace. It can become possible at any time.
I offer the Turkish society a simple solution. We demand a democratic nation. We are not opposed to the unitary state and republic. We accept the republic, its unitary structure and laicism. However, we believe that it must be redefined as a democratic state respecting peoples, cultures and rights. On this basis, the Kurds must be free to organize in a way that they can live their culture and language and can develop economically and ecologically. This would allow Kurds, Turks and other cultures to come together under the roof of a democratic nation in Turkey. This is only possible, though, with a democratic constitution and an advanced legal framework warranting respect for different cultures.
Our idea of a democratic nation is not defined by flags and borders. Our idea of a democratic nation embraces a model based on democracy instead of a model based on state structures and ethnic origins. Turkey needs to define itself as a country which includes all ethnic groups. This would be a model based on human rights instead of religion or race. Our idea of a democratic nation embraces all ethnic groups and cultures.
Against this background let me summarize the solution I propose:
- The Kurdish question is to be treated as a fundamental question of democratization. The Kurdish identity must be put down in the constitution and integrated in the legal system. The new constitution shall contain an article of the following wording: “The constitution of the Turkish republic recognizes the existence and the expression of all its cultures in a democratic way.” This would be sufficient.
- Cultural and language rights must be protected by law. There must not be any restrictions for radio, TV and press. Kurdish programs and programs in other languages must be treated by the same rules and regulations as Turkish programs. The same must be true for cultural activities.
- Kurdish should be taught in elementary schools. People who want their kids to get such an education must be able to send them to such a school. High schools should offer lessons on Kurdish culture, language and literature as elective courses. Universities must be permitted to establish institutes for Kurdish language, literature, culture and history.
- The freedom of expression and organization must not be restricted. Political activities must not be restricted or regulated by the state. This must also be true in the context of the Kurdish question without restriction.
- Party and election laws must be subjected to a democratic reform. The laws must warrant the participation of the Kurdish people and all other democratic groups in the process of democratic decision-making.
- The village-guard system and the illegal networks within the state-structures must be disbanded.
- People who have been evicted from their villages during the war must be allowed to return without impediments. All administrative, legal, economical or social measures necessary must be met. Furthermore, a developmental program must be initiated in order to help the Kurdish population to earn a living and improve the level of living.
- A law for peace and participation in the society shall be enacted. This law shall enable the members of the guerrilla, the imprisoned and those who are in exile to take part in the public life without any preconditions.
Additionally, immediate measures on the road to a solution need to be discussed. A democratic action plan must be formulated and put into practice. In order to reconcile the society, truth and justice commissions shall be set up. Both sides must find out what they have done wrong and discuss it openly. This is the only way to achieve the reconciliation of the society.
Whenever states or organizations cannot make progress anymore, intellectuals may serve as mediators. South Africa, Northern Ireland or Sierra Leone have made positive experiences with this model. They may take the role of arbitrators, with the help of whom both parties can be moved in the direction of a just peace. The commissions may include intellectuals, lawyers, physicians or scientists. When the day comes that we put down our arms, it will only be into the hands of such a commission, provided it is a commission determined to achieve justice.
Why would we surrender our arms without the prospect of justice? The beginning of such a process also depends on goodwill and dialogue. Should indeed a dialogue come about, we will be able to begin a process similar to the last unlimited ceasefire.
I am prepared to do all I can. The government, however, needs to show its will for peace. It needs to take the initiative. This is what they need to do, if they do not wish to be responsible for the consequences all on their own.
In case our efforts for a peaceful solution might fail or are sacrificed to day by day politics, power struggles or profit-seeking, the present conflict will exacerbate and its end will become unforeseeable. The chaos following will see no winners.
At last, Turkey needs to muster the strength to recognize its own reality, the reality of the Kurdish existence and global dynamics. A state which denies reality will eventually and inevitably find itself on the brink of existence. It is crucial, therefore, to take the steps that will lead this country to a lasting peace.
<right>
Abdullah Ocalan<br>
One-person-prison, Imrali Island
</right>
|
#title The Modern School Movement
#subtitle Historical and Personal Notes on the Ferrer Schools in Spain: Contributions by Pura Perez, Mario Jordana, Abel Paz, Martha Ackelsberg
#author Abe Bluestein
#SORTauthors Abe Bluestein, Pura Perez, Mario Jordana, Abel Paz, Martha Ackelsberg
#SORTtopics Spain,Libertarian Education,Anarchist culture
#date 1990
#source Friends of the Modern School, Croton-On-Hudson, NY, 1990, 37pp. (scanned from original)
#lang en
#pubdate 2016-08-02T03:18:34
*** The Modern School Movement
Historical and Personal Notes on the Ferrer Schools in Spain: Contributions by Pura Perez, Mario Jordana, Abel Paz, Martha Ackelsberg.
With a foreword by Abe Bluestein
Published by Friends of the Modern School
c/o Abe Bluestein, 55 Farrington Road, Croton-On-Hudson, NY 10520
*** Foreword
Abe Bluestein
May 1990
This pamphlet deals with a significant chapter in the history of education—the Modern School movement and the role it played in fostering freedom in education. We wish to highlight the intimate relationship of education and the spirit of freedom. Francisco Ferrer was the founder, the inspiration of the Modern School and his teachings are cherished in the Libertarian movement.
Francisco Ferrer y Guardia is remembered by lovers of liberty all over the world. He is remembered for his pioneering work in opening in 1901 a Modern School in Barcelona, Spain, which became the model for two hundred or more modern schools in that country. All the schools were supported by unions and Liberals and Libertarians who wanted to end the centuries-old church control of education by rote and memorization.
Ferrer also established a Libertarian educational publishing house to provide secular textbooks for the modern schools. This was the most effective educational work in Spain.
When Ferrer started his educational work, about two-thirds of the people of Spain were illiterate and the Church regarded its future as threatened if the Spanish people learned to read and to reason for themselves.
Between 1901, when Ferrer opened his first Modern School, and 1909, when he was executed, the Church and the Spanish State initiated three legal actions against Ferrer. The third trial condemned Ferrer to death under false accusations and he was executed October 13, 1909. There was a worldwide condemnation of the unjust trial and execution. Modern Schools were organized in many countries to honor his memory and his work.
More schools were established in the United States than any other country. The Modern School in the Ferrer Colony, Stelton, New Jersey, existed longer than any other Ferrer Modern School from 1911 to 1915 in New York City and then from 1915 to 1953 in Stelton, New Jersey. Most of those who went to the Modern School in Stelton remember their years at the school with warmth and love. Growing up in freedom, they enjoyed memories of the Modern School that are among the most treasured of their lives. Friendships formed while they were in the Modern School remained strong over the years.
In 1972 the first reunion of former pupils, teachers, parents and colonists was organized by Paul Avrich who tapped the unsuspected richness of memories of living in the free environment of the Ferrer Modern School. Nearly two hundred of us gathered. The years since leaving the school slipped away as we relived the experience of freedom in the school and the colony that had been established to honor the memory and work of Francisco Ferrer y Guardia—A man who had accomplished so much in pioneering the Modern School in Spain at the cost of his life.
The school offered a program for children of pre-high school age who left the Ferrer School for high school as they reached age 13 or 14 years. At any one time, the school had fewer than 100 children. Nevertheless, nearly two hundred former pupils, teachers, parents and colonists came to the first reunion which was held at Rutgers University. Our memories of the early years at the school and in the colony were so rich, our shared recollections of those early years were so warm and vivid, that there was a spontaneous decision to meet again the following year.
From 1972 to 1989 we have gotten together for what has become an annual reunion—for sixteen of the last seventeen years. Former pupils and teachers compete with one and another to share memories of life at the school. Nellie Dick, one of the earliest teachers at the school, was a lively ninety-six at the latest reunion in 1989. Paul Avrich, who wrote a book on the history of the Modern School movement, has contributed much to the interesting and stimulating program each year.
If we question whether the Modern School and a free education were important in the lives of those who went to the school in their childhood, the answer is found in the experience of the reunions. Although the school was closed in 1953 and the earliest pupils left the school before 1920, between one hundred and two hundred people have come to the reunion each year from all parts of the country. One hundred and forty came to the reunion in 1989.
This last reunion was especially interesting as three former pupils of the Modern School in Spain presented papers on their memories of the Free School in Spain. The three alumni of the Modern School in Spain, later renamed the Nature School, were enlisted in this project by a good friend and comrade, Federico Arcos. We deeply appreciate his assistance in helping us share this experience in free education. We also thank the three former pupils of the Modern School—or Nature School—in Spain for sharing their memories of free education with us as we had done earlier among ourselves. I have translated the three memoirs of Pura Perez, Diego Camacho and Mario Jordana from Spanish.
We are grateful to Martha Ackelsberg for her generous permission to include the essay on Education, Preparation and the Spanish Revolution.
*** Recollections
Pura Perez
July 1989
The last paragraph in the letter that Francisco Ferrer wrote in the "Model Prison" in Madrid on June 1, 1907, says
"The Rationalist and Scientific teaching of the Modern School embraces the study of everything that supports the freedom of the individual and the harmony of the collective, with the goal of a regime of peace, love and well-being for all without distinction of classes and sex."
When he faced execution, blindfolded, his spiritual vision gave him the courage to cry out to the world: "Long live the Modern School!" The echo of that cry reached all corners of the earth and assured the continuation of his work in education.
Everyone knows the response to his death. And everyone must come to understand that Francisco Ferrer's decision to open his Modern School in Spain came at the time when Spain was suffering its greatest social repression, with conflicts of work stoppages, exploitation and repression against the proletariat; when the Liberal progressive movement was practically crushed. Ferrer's work and determination can only be described as heroic. Francisco Ferrer was not unaware of the obstacles and difficulties that awaited him at every step, especially the reactionary forces whose attacks finally led to his death. After his death these reactionary forces fought to close down the Modern School and all Liberal and secular schools in Barcelona and other parts of the country.
By 1910, when the government was changed, the neglect of education had resulted in the illiteracy of two-thirds of the population. To overcome this, the Liberals strongly desired to create Ferrer schools and to open the closed schools and centers again. With Ferrer's school as a model, the Liberals launched a campaign to open the closed centers (Ateneos) again. In 1910 the Liberal institutions joined with Labor to open many unions (Sindicatos) and their Rational Schools. Anselmo Lorenzo was the leading promoter of these schools. He enjoyed the highest reputation among anarcho-syndicalist militants for his knowledge of education.
At the end of 1917, <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> published the following note, "We are informed as 1917 comes to an end that the Union 'La Constancia' of the Textile Industry, is opening its School on January 2, 1918. The School will be located at 12 Municipal Passage, in the Clot District."
This was the beginning of the Rationalist School called "Nature School". It soon came to be called the lovingly popular name, "La Farigola" (Catalan for a fragrant lovely flower). It is rumored that it got this name because the boys and girls in the school brought bunches of the beautiful flowers home after hikes or picnics in the mountains. Professor Juan Puig Elias was the directing figure in the Nature School from the beginning until July 1936. At that time, Puig Elias became President of the Popular Council in the New Unified School and the Nature School was transferred to a new tower and a better building.
When my sister and I began to attend night classes at "La Farigola" in September 1933, she was twelve years old and I had just turned fourteen years of age. We had gone to Barcelona in January 1933 from Jativa, a town in the province of Valencia, where we had lived our entire childhood. Luckily we had been able to go to public school. When the Second Republic was proclaimed in 1931, I had the opportunity to attend High School until the Railroad Company for which my father worked transferred him to the capital of Catalonia, Barcelona.
At first, we encountered many difficulties—great social conflicts, scarcity of housing. As a result, we had to find work immediately. After a few months, we found a less expensive place to live and moved to the Clot District where we became acquainted with the Nature School and registered right away. I remember that we were received very cordially. Professor Puig Elias asked us a few questions and directed us to our seats. He told us that they did not demand much study or set standards or have examinations. I was greatly surprised when asked what I wanted to study. At first I did not understand and took some time to answer—it was so unexpected for me. I was used to being told what I had to learn, what materials to read and study, what to memorize, and to be prepared to compete to win first place in the class. I was speechless when I learned that none of these practices existed in the Nature School.
The classes were stimulating. We found it very easy to establish a relationship with other students. There was no pressure for competition. And I did not observe any propaganda orientation. (My parents had been advised about this because the school was sponsored by the union but there never was propaganda of any kind.)
My preferences were to study science, anatomy and geography. If we needed books that they did not have at the school, we were told to go to the Ateneo Library. There they had every type of book that we could borrow. We also went to the Ateneo on holidays because there were always recreational and cultural activities. This continuous contact helped strengthen the good bonds of friendship and respect. We were able to carry on discussions and be with friends. Adolescence was fading away with all the things we were learning. Social questions were so pressing and absorbing that we were led to dream of a future of justice and freedom.
The schools were all based on the same principles and goals, whether they were called "Integral Education" as Paul Robin wished to call it, "Modern School" as Francisco Ferrer called it, or "Rationalist School" as Juan Puig Elias of the "Nature School" called it. The important emphasis was the instruction of the children without external authority. Pupils found their own truth. These were schools where the teachers were patient and pleasant guides indicating the roads that lead to the desired goal. In conventional traditional schools, individuals have little initiative, are passive and ready to follow others, because they spend so many years without expressing their own personality or their own energies.
After July 19, 1936, our customary lives changed and we left the school to take on other urgent, necessary tasks. We returned to Valencia once more in June 1937. In Valencia, I was asked to work as a teacher in a collective. Although I did not have the title, the fact that I had studied at "La Farigola" in Barcelona was a true credit. I accepted on condition that I would be the judge of my work since I was not sure if I would be satisfactory. I remained there until the end of the war.
The Director of the school was an Italian comrade, Vicente Consoli. He came to Spain to fight, but, because of his advanced years, they suggested that he work at his profession and he was sent there. His Spanish was very good and with the passing of time, he perfected his accent. The people in the collective regarded him with much affection and in addition to his work as a teacher, he advised them in matters of administration. It should be remembered that, because of the war, many men were away from their homes. Many young people were also away, working on other things. Agricultural workers predominated in the collective and many hands were needed for the work. Women filled the need and children were also asked to help at times with easier tasks. Many adolescents worked full time so that night classes were started for them. There was also a daily meeting for an hour where those who had something to say could discuss conflicts or problems that had arisen during the day.
The school, located in the town plaza, had two large floors. The lower floor was used for meetings and lectures. The upper floor was divided for two classes, with students grouped according to their development. I had a class of 30 of the youngest children. It was my idea that the children's tables be placed in a circle so everyone's face would be in view. This broke with traditional custom but the children loved it. We had various materials that the children worked with their hands. We also had a microscope that was used by the older children and a supply of scholarly materials. Everything went well and the pupils were happy. They suggested what they wanted to do or to learn. Every month we displayed what the classes did downstairs. The parents were satisfied. The days were peaceful. We went to see the vegetable gardens and the orange trees where pupils were able to see the fruit and plants grow. The following day they made drawings of what they had liked. If it had not been for the ghost of war, everyone would have been happy because they were living one of the most desired goals of the revolution. As part of our recreational and cultural activities we developed an artistic group to do important projects including stage scenery in other communities. What the collective produced was exchanged with other collectives although most of the supplies were sent to the fronts.
Little by little, more refugee children began to come to the school. We had to find another teacher and volunteers to help us. The number of refugees increased daily. We had to take care of children who were destroyed psychologically by the war. As tragedy followed us, our work took on a very different turn. In some cases it was necessary to leave a sister or mother with the children in the school for several days. Our pupils helped us to help these children like no one thought was possible. The activity was beyond the normal—but there it was and it had to be taken care of. The children of the village brought their own clothes and toys and accompanied the refugee children to their temporary housing. These were spontaneous acts of solidarity and brotherhood that moved everyone.
This was a part of my life, unique and unforgettable, a time that Albert Camus characterized as "The time of Hope." With all these experiences I understand most clearly the importance of the work of a conscientious teacher. I understand why feelings and sentiments of those who have gone to a free school are different from others who did not have such an education. Those who have had such an education are moved by a sense of solidarity and justice toward the oppressed of every class.
*** Memories
Mario Jordana
May 1989
Francisco Ferrer y Guardia (1859-1909) was born in Alella (Barna). He was an educator and Spanish revolutionist of anarchist ideas. As a young man he worked in business and as a railroad inspector. When he was twenty five years old, he joined the Masonic Lodge "Verdad" (Truth), took part in a republican uprising led by General Villacampa, migrated to Paris, worked as Ruiz Zorilla's secretary, and later became a teacher in Paris. In 1901 he inherited an estate from Ernestine Meunier, one of his pupils in Paris, and that same year founded the "Modern School" in Barcelona.
This move brought difficulties for him. In 1906 he was accused and acquitted of participating in the attempt on the life of King Alfonso XIII in Paris and in Madrid. In 1909, however, he was condemned to death on the (false) accusation of being responsible for the "Tragic Week" in Barcelona and he was shot at Montjuich.
In the year 1932-1933 when my whole family moved to the neighborhood of Clot in Barcelona, we immediately registered in the school—known as the "Nature" School. The "Nature" School was located on Municipal Street above the Textile Workers Union (CNT). The school was directed by Professor Juan Puig Elias together with his comrade, Senora Roca. His daughter Libertad was also a teacher in the school.
As a disciple of Ferrer y Guardia, Juan Puig Elias' method of teaching was that of the Modern School. The activities of the "Nature" School were, therefore, different from all the other schools in Clot and Barcelona. A child coming from another school immediately recognized the difference from other schools that he/she had attended.
It was an educational revolution to change everything in the schools as was done in the Modern School. For one thing, it was the only school in which boys and girls attended classes together, from the youngest to the oldest. Boys and girls shared the same classes, according to age. They went to school happy each day that they learned something new. They literally breathed their desire to learn at school.
They did not know of physical or moral punishments. In the Modern School, if something happened that required chastisement, it was done with an oral reprimand understood only by the transgressor (since no one was ever named). It was a lesson that no one forgot.
The Modern School taught children to be free, to love their fellow beings, not to harm nature or mistreat animals—in other words, to love life. They were taught to respect older people. We learned to ask an older person with more experience in life to teach us what we do not understand because we are so young. Out of respect for older people, we were taught that we should do what we can in the street and in public transportation by giving them a seat or our hand for support.
Teaching for whatever age grew gradually from year to year. No teacher had a class of more than 15 children. This assured that every student achieved understanding sooner or later of the subject matter. No one moved on to another subject until all members of the group mastered the subject being studied—the natural sciences, mathematics or whatever. All the children in the group read a paragraph. Then, one by one, they talked about what they had read, with the book closed. In this way, what they read became engraved in their minds. Each child also kept a diary which was treasured more each day, shaping it into a book to be read another day as a memoir of what had been learned or had happened. (What wouldn't I give to have that diary.) Like all games, the studies were suggestive. The children did not tire of participating. They loved to learn.
The teachers at the "Nature" School were advanced. At that time, no primary or secondary school had a human skeleton but the first thing that a visitor to a classroom saw was a human skeleton. Every child in the older group knew the name of all the bones in the body. Many visitors were surprised to find that the pupils had learned to read and understand the human skeleton. (It was a pleasure to be able to answer the teacher's questions for our visitors.) In addition, there were identical copies of our body, made in synthetic materials, separated from the body and in the proper colors that could be opened at the chest, for example, to look inside the body and locate vital organs, such as the heart, the lungs, or the liver. In turn, these opened up so they could be studied in greater detail showing the veins, the sections, and so forth. There was also physical and chemical equipment, as well as for astronomy. All of the apparatus was studied. A student of the oldest group was prepared to go to the university. Let us remember that many went on to be teachers.
Almost every Thursday, we had an excursion, sometimes to the mountains, sometimes visits to the museums. There was explanation and comment on what we saw as we walked along. In the mountains there might be discussion of a point a student might raise, or an explanation by the teacher of plants, flowers, insects, trees, and so on. Above all, the teacher would tell us things we should avoid doing, such as killing animals or bringing harm to the mountain by burning trash on the mountainside. The teaching was both visual and tactile.
Lunch or a picnic in the mountain was followed by children's games. The return to school was joyful—singing songs. The excursions were always hikes; it was our good luck that there were no cars then—invading everything, contaminating the roadways. Who does not remember the streams of pure crystalline water that satisfied our thirst? That will never come back any more!
Every year at the end of the school course, dramatic presentations and dances were performed in the theatres in Barcelona and neighboring towns for the benefit of the Colonies—communities in the country that provided for summertime vacations (I was a comic actor many times.) Going to the Colonies meant that a group of boys and girls would spend the month of August in the Pyrenees, staying in a country house located in the town of Ribas de Fresser, high on the mountain. The boys and girls lived there with some of the teachers. There was a large open space in front of the house where the children played without fear of hurting themselves. They could play all types of games in the fresh air. They also arranged entertainments, such as dances and poetry functions, when their parents came to visit them. Excursions were organized to look for mushrooms, strawberries, and wood or to bathe in the river. There was always something to do—long hikes, two-day trips, going up Puig-Mal (the highest mountain in Catalonia, El Tagamanen). We went to the Valley of Nuria, entered France. How marvelous when one stops to think of all we experienced in our childhood!
Public functions were organized in Ribas de Fresser, one of which was bound to be on the theme "Fight Against War." Programs were performed in Puigcerda, where the people received us with love in their homes, giving us their best desserts. How happy we were! The Modern School was doing well and it left its imprint on the people. What did they call the house where we stayed? They called it "Mon Nou," Catalan for "New World." The lettering at the entrance to the estate was painted and repainted each year by the children. Every letter had a special meaning—for example, the letter M was a boy or girl, the O was the World.
We would look at the clear brilliant sky after supper and have lessons in astronomy. The North Star, the Milky Way—how beautiful it all seemed to us little ones! We had many stories and memories from that period of our lives. And many were recorded in our diaries.
Let us not forget that before we started our vacation the end of the course was celebrated. This was a time of great joy for the students. The best work of the students was put on display in the great hall, their best writings, their best works of art, their best manual work, and so on. The school was visited by many hundreds of people, starting with parents and relatives and then friends and people curious to see what went on. Everyone left full of enthusiasm for the high quality of what they saw going on in that school.
To complete the program, the remaining members of the class were given parts to perform such as dancing and recitations of poetry. To end the program, finally, Juan Puig Elias was called upon for closing remarks and he was very popular with the pupils. After refreshments, everyone left happily because many were looking forward to starting for the Colonies the following morning.
At the beginning of the new class, everyone was a little older, some had changed their group and made new friends. New techniques were to be learned, more advanced knowledge for the juvenile mind. This was the Modern School and it was never static.
It shall be remembered: it was the only school that taught adolescents, starting at 12 years of age, lessons completely taboo even today about sex. For the most part, parents did not discuss the subject with their children. On their own young people developed distorted ideas about sex based upon what they heard in discussions among friends who had unclear ideas about sex. The classes taught them to think clearly. Sex is the union of two very small cells (feminine and masculine, egg and sperm)—the start of life in the world. In conclusion I say: There is no "Modern School" at this time and the way things are going there may not be again. The "Nature School" unfortunately ended its course on July 18, 1936. I saw the finale of a period of teaching that taught the world it was possible to live without wars or hatred, but instead culture and liberty were guillotined.
*** My Experience in the "Nature School"
A Living Memory of Rational Pedagogy
Diego Camacho (Abel Paz)
May 9, 1989, Barcelona
The anarchist movement was stable and strong throughout Spain, especially Barcelona. Digging into the roots and origins of the labor movement since 1870 was not new. The International Working Men's Association (I.W.M.A., the First International) was free of the Marxist dogmatic conception from the beginning and took on the federalism of Proudhon and the radical anti-authoritarianism of Bakunin. The synthesis of Bakuninist and Proudhonian thinking appealed to the Spanish people. Their roots were deep in the historic development of the Spanish State and nationality. They rejected state centralism, the Catholic religion and private property. The anarchist character of the labor movement in Spain placed a greater emphasis on human dignity than the class struggle. For the anarchists the class struggle was one of the ways to achieve the abolition of classes in a society of free human beings who are masters of their own destinies—Spanish working men and women fought constantly for autonomy and federalism. The anarchists knew that they must free themselves of all the prejudices of the dominant class if they wanted to achieve a Libertarian society, including their culture. This meant the creation of a counter-culture and an aesthetic of art inspired in freedom.
The hundreds of workers' associations organized during the period 1870-1900 and the tens of publications give ample testimony to the energetic anarchist activity designed to destroy bourgeois, state and religious influences among workers. Taking the first Modern Schools as a model, they were duplicated all over the country. They became identified as part of the workers' associations. Let us see how this was done.
In the second half of 1903, two years after the opening of the first Modern School in Barcelona, a group of people with advanced ideas, living in Murcia province, planned a rationalist school in that area similar to the one in Barcelona. They immediately wrote to Ferrer asking him for an explanation of some of the teaching methods used by his school. He sent a reply written by hand, saying:
Without rejecting the professional politicians, because their support can be helpful to you at times, and even welcoming them with a certain warmth, you should make every effort to neutralize those who try to obstruct our projects."
Don't lose sight of the character of our teaching; keep our schools free of all political or religious influence. We must maintain the integrity of our program of study, to prepare for the abolition of all superstition and all privilege.
Rationalist teaching cannot be similar to religious or state political teaching. First, because science has demonstrated that creation is a legend and that the gods are myths. They abuse the ignorance of the parents and the credulity of the children by perpetuating the belief that the creator of the world is a supernatural being to whom one must kneel in prayer in order to obtain all types of favors.
Neither can our teaching be similar to that of state political teaching. We want to raise individuals in full possession of all their faculties. Political instruction subordinates them to other people. Just as religions, recognizing a divine power, have created an abusive power that makes human emancipation more difficult, political systems hold men and women back in their striving for emancipation. Their supposedly superior energies are restrained by the tradition or routine of working for the government.
Even in infancy, while a person is dependent on another, abuses are committed and slavery and tyranny exist. It should be the purpose of free schools to study the reasons for such a lack of solidarity, to draw the attention of the pupils to what they actually see.
Let us not lose time asking an imaginary god for what only human effort can obtain for us.
Let us not lose time asking others to give us what we can obtain ourselves.
**** Humanitarian Rationality
Six years ago when we had the immense satisfaction of starting the Modern School of Barcelona, what stood out for us was that its system of teaching would be rational and scientific. I had to make a public declaration that since science and reason were the antithesis of all dogma, no religion would be taught at my school.
I expected that this declaration would provoke the hatred of the priestly caste. They would oppose me with all the weapons of deceit and hypocrisy that they employ, abusing the ignorance of their believers and the powers of government.
The general clamor raised by the religious press against the Modern School, for which I shall probably pay with a year in prison, shows me that our method of teaching is right. All of us rationalists should reinforce our efforts to continue the work we have begun with more energy than ever and to spread the word as far as our resources enable us.
In the meantime it must be stated that the mission of the Modern School is not limited to freeing our minds of religious prejudice. We know that such prejudice is one of the worst obstacles to the intellectual emancipation of individuals as we prepare humanity to be free.
If the workers free themselves from religious prejudice and maintain their feeling about property as it exists today; if they accept the Christian belief that there will always be the poor and the rich; if rationalist teaching is limited to knowledge about hygiene, about the natural sciences, and to prepare good apprentices, good employees and good workers in all trades, we could live among more or less healthy, strong atheists depending on reduced nutrition that they could obtain with their low salaries. We would be living with the slaves of capital.
The Modern School tries to destroy all the prejudices that obstruct the complete emancipation of the individual. That is why we choose humanitarian rationalism. It stresses the need to know the origin of all social injustices so that, knowing them, we can oppose them and destroy them.
Humanitarian rationalism is opposed to fratricidal wars, whether they be civil wars or foreign; it rejects the exploitation of man by man, and the position of inferiority of women. It fights against all enemies of human harmony: against ignorance, evil, pride and other vices and defects that divide men between tyrants and the tyrannized.
Rationalist, scientific teaching embraces everything that can help the liberty of the individual and the harmony of the collective as we work for a regime of peace, love and well-being for all without distinction of class or sex.
F. Ferrer Guardia
Model Prison, Madrid
January 5, 1907
The establishment of the Modern School had a powerful effect on a society grown stiff in its joints from the reactionary forces that led it. This is not just a demagogic argument on my part; it is a statement of historic reality. Queen Isabel II and the Vatican signed a concordat in 1854 that gave the Catholic Church in Spain the role of policeman of culture and public instruction in general. This law was promulgated by the Minister of Public Instruction, Moyano, and was in force until 1931, when it was annulled by the Republic.
The historian F.G. Bruguera in his Current History of Spain, referring to the effects of the Moyano Law, says: "the Prelates must report to the government the ideas that are taught in the Universities, Institutes and Schools by professors and teachers when they are prejudicial to the education of the young. Or, to put it another way: no freedom in the lecture hall and keep an inquisitorial vigilance. This law was welded into a disaster: there were 9,000,000 illiterates in Spain in 1898 out of a total population of 17,000,000 residents."
The Spanish working class had to invent its own framework but always under the systematic vigilance and repression of the Church and State. These structures were the Workers' Centers, opened during more or less liberal periods (1850-1865). They were centers for night classes, originators of the efforts for workers' culture. Beginning in 1870, when the First International (I.W.M.A.) was started in Spain, the workers' cultural circle grew with the night classes in local centers associated with the International or the federal republicanism of Pi y Margall.
It was, then, in the Spain that we have just described, that Francisco Ferrer came forth with his Modern School, whose teaching and pedagogic methods were prohibited by the official "status quo" state and religion. It was logical that the reaction would follow to hold back the growth of all Ferrer's movements and his school. He had to be crushed at the first opportunity which was not long in coming. In 1906, when King Alfonso XIII got married, an anarchist, Mateo Morral, made an attempt against the life of the king and his bride. The authorities used the relationship that Morral had with the Modern School, pointed to Ferrer as the one who had encouraged the attack and arrested him. A great international protest in support of Ferrer succeeded in destroying the monarchist plot and releasing the prisoner.
But in reaction, the Catholic Church did not yield its determination to destroy rationalist teaching. It used the great labor protest against the war in Morocco in 1909 to accuse Ferrer of being the leader of that protest. In spite of great international objection, the government of Prime Minister Antonio Maura and King Alfonso XIII refused to withdraw the order to execute Ferrer by a firing squad on October 13, 1909.
**** Juan Puig Elias, Rationalist Teacher
Among young workers who breathed the social atmosphere in the early days of the century and knew something of rationalist teaching was one by the name of Juan Puig Elias, a native of Gerona. I do not know, although I can imagine, what roads this young man took to become a teacher. There was a free school called "Nature School", (also known as "La Farigola"), in the San Martin-Clot District of Barcelona at Municipal Street. It made rationalist teaching known. This took place during the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923-1930). From the beginning, the school relied on support of anarchist groups in the San Martin-Clot District (Barcelona), particularly the "Sun and Life" group which had some of the outstanding figures in the labor movement and in Catalan anarchism among its members.
With the proclamation of the Second Republic on April 14, 1931, union organizations and political parties regained their legal status. The CNT and anarchism returned to the public light. The Rationalist Schools, which had survived quietly, also became public and achieved great importance. There were two hundred such schools in the country and the Balearic and Canary Islands. The "Nature" School was associated with the powerful Textile Workers Union of Barcelona, with seventy thousand members.
Many important militants in the union lived in the San Martin-Clot District. At the same time they formed part of the "Sun and Life" Group. It was entirely natural that the Textile Union should be the patron of the Nature School and should name a Pro-School Commission composed of comrades Costa, Rillo and Talon. This was the situation when I was able to get into the Nature School after a long wait because there were many more requests for admission than space to accommodate them.
**** My Experiences as a Student at Eleven Years of Age
I had two very brief experiences as a school boy. The first was when I was 5 years old. My mother started to take me to a school run by an old national teacher who opened a private school to earn a livelihood. The teacher belonged to the old school. He understood that the "letter dipped in blood enters." I ran away without looking back until I reached my house and told my mother what happened. That was in Almeria. But it was also in Almeria that an old retired woman school teacher took me in hand. She taught me to read and interested me in arithmetic. Thanks to her I learned how to spell and to write, poorly, but on my own. The second school was in Barcelona, also a private school in San Martin-Clot District, where my family lived. The method of teaching was the same as the national schools, archaic and full of religious teaching. During the week that I went to school, the sister started by declaring that I must go to the First Communion or I could not continue in the school. My parents refused and I was not able to go to school. Then I was enrolled in the waiting list of the Nature School. I must say that while I was outside the school, however, I continued to study on my own, reading, writing, and arithmetic, helped by an uncle of mine.
**** The Nature School (1933-1935)
The Nature School followed the model started by Francisco Ferrer y Guardia in 1901 under the name Modern School. With the passage of time the name was changed to Rationalist Schools. The Nature School was started by Juan Puig Elias during Primo de Rivera's dictatorship. Together with the school he published children's review, "Floreal." Puig Elias was married to "La Senora Roca" who was a teacher of piano and music and singing for the student body, with principle responsibility for beginners in a class next to the principal. The school became larger after the proclamation of the Republic. The big Textile Workers Union of Barcelona took the school under its protection and gave it economic support. This distinction transformed it into the main school of all the rationalist schools located around Barcelona. The most active militants of the CNT registered their children in this school. This included a child of the Ocana's-Natura, the son of Ricardo Sanz, of Climent, Antonio Sarrau's children, and others. The main room of the school was enormous, sunny, with white walls. The student body was mixed, boys and girls, seated at small individual tables. This was a great novelty. (Other schools had classic benches and desks such as I had in Almeria.) When my grandmother took me to the school, it was in full activity. We walked past tables until we reached the one where Puig Elias was seated—a beautiful man. He was tall with a dark black beard, well cared for. He had a friendly look that inspired immediate confidence. I don't know exactly what my grandmother said to him. I stood at this table for some moments and he told me to go play on the patio. There was a fountain on the patio and a turtle which distracted me when it came out of the water. I remained alone for a few minutes, but I was soon joined by a boy about 15 years old named Gracia. We sat down on a bench and he asked me what I could do, if I had gone to some other school—a sort of examination. I told him my history. He asked me to read from a book that he gave me. He dictated some words for me to write. He finished by giving me some arithmetic problems to do—addition, subtraction, multiplication. The examination lasted an hour. He left me on the patio for a short time and he went into the classroom to speak with Puig Elias. My examiner was in the third grade with Diez, a painter, rather than a teacher.
Gracia took me to my place, my table, beside a girl who was approximately my age, named Mir. Her brother was also a teacher at the school. Each class had a teacher and Puig Elais was a general coordinator of the school. Gracia gradually brought me a number of books. One of these, a general text, was called "Instructive Readings" prepared by the great internationalist, Celso Gomis (member of an early branch of the I.W.M.A. in Spain), a former teacher in the Modern School. Then there were various manuals, one on the human body, another on zoology, one on geography and geology, and an arithmetic book. In addition there was a notebook with a text on every page that had to be copied, a sketch book for drawing and a history book where we were to write stories every Monday—and, naturally, pens and pencils, erasers, and so on. I imagined that all this would cost quite a bit of money and I said so to Gracia, indicating that my uncle was not rich. The boy broke into laughter, slapped me on the shoulder and calmed me down, saying: "No one here comes from a rich family. The majority," he insisted, "have poor, unemployed parents. Some of the parents are in jail." He spoke to me as if I were an older person, who could understand that there are people in jail who are not murderers or thieves. In reality I was prepared to understand this because my uncle had also been in prison and he was not a murderer or thief.
When Gracia left me to myself, the teacher Diez approached me. He asked my name and told me that I would like the school a great deal. After all this, it was now twelve noon, when the class closes down until 2 p.m. La Senora Roca got into the middle of the class, all the pupils standing in a ring around her and we sang "El Picapedrero" under her direction. It was a gymnastic song, sung with exercising. I believe that she composed it.
We went out to the street where I soon met a friend, Jaime, who lived on my street. He knew me, but I had never noticed him. He was also in my class. We walked together and when we separated we agreed to meet again in the street to go to school. He told me it was better to leave early in order to play soccer at City Hall square before entering the school.
When I got home, my uncle had not yet arrived from work; but when he reached my house, my uncle stayed a while to ask me how things had gone at school. There was little to tell except to mention the cost I thought we faced for the quantity of books we had to buy. My uncle did not seem to be concerned about this but was interested in my impressions of the school. When I told him in detail what I had experienced and that I liked it, he was happy. He said the important thing for him was that I had liked what I had seen and experienced and that I observed how much was needed to get an education. He felt that I had learned quickly in view of my age and the fact that I had entered the school. He felt that I would be able to learn a trade in any industry I would enter. When I returned to school in the afternoon of my first day, I found that as it was Monday, the afternoon was devoted to literary composition. The pupils got up in turn to sit next to the teachers, each one reading his or her composition on some freely chosen subject. It could be a film, an excursion, a book just read or something that happened on the street that made an impression. The themes were varied. After each reading, the teacher (Diez in this instance) asked the reader questions and then he asked if anyone else wanted to ask questions of the reader. When the compositions had been read, they were given to the teacher to correct. Between the reading of the compositions and play on the terrace, the three school hours passed quickly.
During the recreation period Jaime introduced me to some of his friends who did not live far from our house. I made good friends with them immediately and at the end of the school day the whole group of us came out making a lot of noise, running around in the street wildly. When we got into the street I was surprised to see various groups of workers coming out of the same door, in discussion. Jaime explained that this was the time when the workers went to the union, after work. We greeted one of them whom he called Costa.
Costa was one of the comrades who was a member of the Commission concerned with the school. Later I found out that the Union named three comrades—Rillo, Costa, and Talon—to learn what the school needed by way of new teaching materials. With Puig Elias' help and agreement, they purchased the new materials with moneys given to the school by the Union. Their last purchase was a plastic man more than a meter high that could be taken apart into pieces—lessons were given about the human body, its parts, and functioning. Purchases were only part of their responsibility. They also had to get displays of archaeology and mineralogy for our small museum. They had the responsibility to be animators on Saturdays, the day set aside for motion picture films, conferences, or lectures. I remember the geologist Alberto Carsi and the astronomer Comas y Sola at the school giving lectures on their subjects. At other times, miners from the mining district of Sallent spoke to us about mining and the work done in the mines, or farmers spoke to us about planting and the decisive factor of the change of seasons. A book given to the pupil for general instruction was one of the texts selected by Francisco Ferrer y Guardia for the Modern School. The author, Celso Gamis, was part of the First Internationalist group established in Barcelona in 1869 together with Farga Pellicer, Antonio Pellicer and Sentinon. Until 1915, when he died, his name was on all the anarchist publications of that period. He was a member of the editorial board of "Acracia" (Anarchism) in 1887, among others. When Puig Elias started the "Nature School" in 1924, he was given the teaching material of "The Modern School" publishing house. He also brought out a new children's review, "Floreal," in 1929. The artist Ramon Acin was a diligent collaborator. My real adaptation as a student began the second half of January when everything had settled down. I had no difficulty continuing my rhythm of study. My school comrades were more or less at the same level of reading, writing and arithmetic. Diez wanted to push me quickly to the subject level of the others and assigned me to a boy from the sixth grade who took me in hand to work intensively. We made a general review of all the books and I was soon familiar with their contents. This kind of work lasted several months. I worked to the limit, as much at home as in the school, reviewing the lessons. There were things I had to commit to memory, such as the names of 200 bones of the human body. A skeleton that we had in the school helped a great deal because we worked with the same material. We had to memorize the organs of the body and we followed the same method with the disassembled plastic man. All this was new for me as was learning about the atmosphere, the change of seasons, the different ages of the earth, and the development of man. With all the limitations that science may have, the studies were based on the most advanced hypotheses available, which was reflected in our school books. It was evident why it was called rationalist education—the Sacred History, with its legends of Adam and Eve, the serpent, God, and Paradise, were all ignored.
When the teachers judged that I was ready, I joined the routine of the class although I confess that I did not feel as confident and secure as the rest of my companions. Actually, I moved slowly. It was not easy for me and I did not do better until much later, thanks to the pressure I put on myself and Jaime's help. He was the one who came to my house to study together and prepare our lessons for the following day. Many boys dream of dropping out of school, but I would never do so. On the contrary, I liked it. I would never miss a day of school without a justifiable reason. Sometimes I thought what good luck I had to have learned what I did and in the way I did it. Actually, I started going to school late and was therefore mature for that level of schooling, otherwise it would have been impossible for me to succeed in reaching the level of my companions in such a short time. I know it would have been impossible to achieve in another school because of their methods and their backwardness. I believe that ours was the most complete of all the nearly 200 rationalist schools in Spain at that time. I will explain.
I do not remember the exact number of pupils in the classes, but we might have had two hundred and fifty. The youngest were separated from us and in the care of Senora Roca and Dalia, another teacher. Let us say that there were two hundred older pupils and without counting Puig Elias there were 8 teachers. I remember the names of some of them—Call, Perez, Diez, Soriano, Mir. When I was there, Soriano was the only teacher with a license. The others were students in the Normal School of Teachers studying to get their license, but in the meantime they were performing as teachers in the school. This great richness of teachers permitted us to have smaller classes and receive more attention. This would have been impossible in any other school because of the wages that would have to be paid. This was not a problem in the Nature School because the majority of our teachers worked for no wages. They did not expect to be paid until they obtained their license. They went into towns where the local CNT Union had opened a school and needed a teacher. As far as I understand, the Nature School had become the source of rationalist teachers for the CNT. In the three years I attended the school I saw at least five or six teachers leave—like Diez to Mallorca and others to towns in Catalonia.
No one was compelled to do anything at the Nature School, yet compulsion was common practice in all other schools. I never saw anyone chastised, which does not mean that there were no sharp reproofs. I myself suffered a reproof from Puig Elias for whom a lot of us had great respect. The reproof happened by accident. He passed me seated at the table and picked up my storybook, surely because he wanted to see my list of subject. There were a number of blotches. Frankly, it was not in a presentable condition. With his eyes fixed upon me, he said, "Do you know that all your notebooks are on display for everyone to see at the fiesta at the end of this course? You have two options—present these as they are or buy another book and copy it from the beginning. You decide." I felt humiliated. If I had been simply criticized it would not have hurt so much. I criticized myself for sloppiness. I had to consider copying the entire book as well as buying another book. I knew that we were short of cash in my house. I thought about if for a long time and finally decided to buy another book. As I have said, at the Nature School, there was no sanction, no command, but observations such as Puig Elias made of me could be hard. Considering everything, however, Puig Elias' approach helped one to self-correct and improve.
The class came to an end in July. The room was decorated with drawings and paintings. The tables were lined up end to end displaying the materials we worked with all year. The families, naturally, were interested to see the work done during the year. As always, the celebration had a play, a dance, and singing, all of it produced by Senora Roca. Refreshments and pastries were enjoyed and a brief farewell by one of the teachers closed the festival until the new year.
The Nature School had a large house in a colony in Puigcerda. Many of my school friends had enrolled for the two months of vacation there. I neglected to inform my family about this opportunity and since places were limited it was clear that I would have to spend two months of vacation in Barcelona. Jaime had also forgotten to enroll himself, so it was not too bad as the two of us invented ways to pass the time until class opened again.
**** General Considerations
Although it is strange, it should be recognized that the anarchist movement was repressed as much, or more, during the Republic as under the monarchy. This repression had serious repercussions for the Rationalist Schools. Because of lack of funds, many of the schools functioned in union offices and workers' centers during the day. When these closed down, for whatever reason, the schools were also closed and caused great hardship. The Nature School did not have this problem because we had the support of the local, independent community. The autonomous Catalan government, however, placed difficulties in the way of the Nature School by such things as setting hours for examinations, although subjects were studied according to the Nature School's schedule. There were also pressures on Puig Elias to submit the school to the official framework fixed by the Cultural Council. In addition, in spite of the Republican Constitution of 1932 separating Church and State, the attacks against rationalist teaching were constant. Articles were published presenting the Rationalist Schools as the focus of moral corruption because the classes were mixed. And this was not all—it was reported in a paper such as "El Dia Grafico" (1933) that the rationalist schools taught how to make bombs and handle a pistol, and further that the school song was "Arroja la Bomba" (Throw the Bomb). This campaign to discredit the schools never reduced the support that the workers gave the rationalist schools; and so far as the effect on these schools goes, particularly during the period 1931 to 1936, they were positive in every way. I never heard anarchism spoken of in the school that I attended nor experienced any attempt to bring this movement into the school. The simple fact was that I was taught to be a person prepared to face my future.
*** Education, Preparation, and the Spanish Revolution
Martha Ackelsberg
The years from 1868 to 1936 served as preparation for the social revolution which broke out in response to the generals' rebellion against the Spanish Republic in July, 1936. In February of 1936, the CNT—Confederacion National Del Trabajo—boasted a membership of approximately 850,000 members, organized in non-hierarchically structured unions, federated both by industry and by region. The movement as a whole did not limit itself to union organizing in the narrow sense. During the same period, it was supporting and developing educational programs for both adults and young people, which included a network of storefront schools and cultural centers; a broad-based national youth organization; and journals and newspapers which made anarchist critical perspectives on culture, politics, and social issues available to large numbers of people throughout the country.
**** Education as Preparation
Spanish anarchists recognized the need for more "formal" education. The commitment to self-direction meant a focus on education. Given the high levels of illiteracy in Spain at the turn of the century, it was clear that a movement committed to working-class development through direct action and self-organization would have to devote at least some of its energies and resources to adult and child literacy. It was one of the great strengths of the anarchist movement—and one of the achievements of which members were most proud—that it developed a network of schools, journals, and cultural centers to address these issues.
To teach people to read and write was to empower them socially and culturally; it became, truly, a revolutionary act. At the end of the nineteenth century, traveling activists who attempted to teach rural landworkers to read were persecuted and jailed in southern Spain, Andalusia and Extremadura. It was with this perception of the importance of education that Spanish anarchists (and later Mujeres Libres, Free Women) embarked on a massive program to educate working people, both rural and urban. Although many of these programs were undertaken by unions, and initially directed toward union members, they served a population considerably larger.
Anarchist-supported educational institutions took a variety of forms during this period. Schools, cultural centers, journals, newspapers—all aimed to encourage people to "think for themselves, and to develop their sense of responsibility, commonality, and criticism."
**** Creating Institutions for Literacy and Culture
Levels of illiteracy varied markedly in Spain at the turn of the century. But everywhere, literacy rates for women lagged between 10 and 20 percentage points (and sometimes as much as 30 points) behind those of men. By 1930, with greater access to education, rates of illiteracy fell for both men and women, but still ranged from highs of approximately 50 percent of men and over 60 percent of women in the southern provinces to lows of 25 to 30 percent of women and 20 to 25 percent of men in the Basque provinces.
Official "state" education was of little help in meeting these deficits. Republicans, socialists, and anarchists had pressed for the establishment of secular, nonreligious schools as early as the mid-nineteenth century, but their efforts were largely unsuccessful until the educational reforms of the Republic in 1931. Church-run schools concentrated on discipline and rote memorization. Periodically—in 1873-74, during the 1880s, and again in the early 1890s—efforts had been made to change the relationship of church and state, so that the church no longer controlled the curriculum. But since the church provided most secondary education, even when schools were not officially run by the clergy, church-trained teachers tended to define their structure and function.
Clara Lida has argued that efforts to articulate and implement an alternative educational philosophy—of ensenanza integral (integral education)—can be traced back to republican and Fourierist schools in the 1840s and 1850s, and to anarchist and secularist schools in the 1870s and 1880s. Very few of these were financially accessible to the children of workers, however, and even if financial aid were available for the children, it was a rare family that could spare the income (however meager) that a working child could bring into the family. In addition, these lay schools fought a continual (and usually losing) battle with the state over their very right to exist.
One response of anarchists to the effective inaccessibility of lay-controlled education was the founding of "rationalist schools." Although these have been associated most notably with the name of Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, they were the direct descendents of efforts at ensenanza integral. Born in Barcelona in 1859, Ferrer spent sixteen years in exile in Paris, where he came in contact with the educational ideas of Paul Robin, Tolstoy, Jean Grave, and others. He returned to Spain in 1901 to found the Escuela Moderna (modern school) in Barcelona. His goal,
"to form a school of emancipation, which will be concerned with banning from the mind whatever divides men, the false concepts of property, country, and family, so as to attain the liberty and well-being which all desire and none completely realizes."
Consistent with both anarchist principles and advanced educational theory at the time, Ferrer was committed to establishing a school which reorganized education as a political act. If one hoped to enable children to live in a free society, the educational system itself had to be based in, and encourage, freedom to develop and explore. Science and reason were key concepts in the schools; and children were to be stimulated to direct their own education. Consistent, too, with his understanding of libertarian principles, Ferrer was firmly committed to coeducation (a practice virtually unheard of in Spain at the time), and to mixed-class education, which would provide a context for people to learn to live with diversity. Given the rigidity of the existing system in Spain and anarchist suspicion of both church and state, it should not be surprising that Spanish libertarians attempted to establish "alternative schools"—institutions which, true to the anarchist belief in direct action and propaganda by the deed, would not only educate students but also serve as models for a very different educational philosophy and practice. Ferrer's Escuela Moderna opened in Barcelona in September 1901, and lasted (though with frequent closings because of state censorship) through 1906, when it was closed definitively. Cristina Piera, who, at the age of nine, attended the school for about a year, described the confusion: "The police would come to close the school, and then... we couldn't go. I went to the Escuela Moderna, and learned a fair amount there; but, since they were always closing it, I ended up without much of an education." The school was supported by parental contributions—according to what each family was able to pay. The classes were mixed by socioeconomic background, and completely integrated by sex, as well. All students, regardless of background or sex, studied a "scientific" curriculum, which also included sex education, manual work, and the arts. Ferrer recognized the need for appropriate textbooks and began publishing them himself in 1902. The books were in great demand and came to be used in rationalist schools and ateneos throughout the country. In addition, the school building served as much more than a place for small children to go during the days—it was a library and community center for adolescents and adults, as well, offering classes, discussions, excursions, and the like for those of all ages who wished to learn.
While Ferrer's name has come to be the one most prominently associated with the rationalist school movement, rationalist schools certainly pre-existed the Escuela Moderna, and hundreds were established throughout Spain in the early years of the twentieth century. Igualdad Ocana, together with her father and four brothers and sisters, started and taught in such a school in Barcelona in 1934-35. Her description of what it meant to teach children in a free and open environment can, perhaps, provide some sense of the "modernity" of the "modern school movement."
"In our school, we tried to get a sense of each child's particular nature or character. We would tell them a story. And through this story, they would reflect themselves... they cried and they laughed... we never had to yell at them. People talk about exercising 'authority.' But what authority can they have if they don't know how to control them with feeling, with love?... You can help little creatures to become active, productive people, productive in ways that are true to themselves, because you have studied them, seen what they enjoy... We taught mechanics, music, arts... We had mechanical toys, for example, to see whether, when he was playing with them, a particular child would awaken to a desire, a positive inclination to activity of that sort..."
Not surprisingly, given the type of attention they devoted to their students, teachers in rationalist schools were often revered, both by students and by other members of the community. They functioned as powerful models, much as the "obreros conscientes" or traveling teacher/preachers had served for rural workers in 19th century Andalusia. Sara Berenguer (Guillen), who studied with Felix Carrasquer in the "Eliseo Reclus" school, Pura Perez, who studied with the noted Juan Puig Elias in the "Escuela Natura," and others I interviewed all vividly recalled their experiences with teachers they thought of with great respect. Igualdad Ocana reported that students she meets now, forty years later, still talk of their experiences in the school her family ran. And Ana Cases discovered, during the course of research she was doing in 1981, that many of those who had studied with Josep Torres (known as Sol de la Vida ) in Arbeca, a small village in Lerida, still had the notebooks and workbooks they had used in the 1920s.
Many young people who eventually became militants in the anarcho-syndicalist movement attended one or another of these schools; but attendance was clearly not limited to anarchists or anarchist-sympathizers alone. Since they offered an alternative to the highly rigid structures and rote-learning methods of the dominant school system, the schools attracted considerable numbers of children from the progressive middle and upper classes as well.
Aside from the somewhat formally structured rationalist schools, the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movement created and supported a large number of ateneos, or storefront cultural centers. Many neighborhood educational/cultural centers were started by CNT locals; almost every working-class barrio of Barcelona had one during the early years of the Republic. For those who had never been to school, the hundreds of ateneos which sprang up around the country offered a chance to learn to read and write. Most had classes during the day for young children, and in the evening (usually 7 to 9 pm) for older people, who would come after work. In the words of one participant,
"The education in the school was a totally different kind of education... Each person would talk about what he had read (which often varied a great deal, since sometimes we didn't understand what we were reading!); and then we would all talk about it, and think about what each had said... As far as I am concerned, the school and the books were probably the greatest factors shaping my development."
In addition to its importance as a place for learning basic skills and competencies, the ateneo had important social functions. Ateneos were popular "hangouts" for young people, particularly during times when they could not afford even the 10 centimos to go to a movie! Because they were at least formally separate from the unions, many were able to remain open during periods of political repressions, when unions were forced to close their doors and/or go underground. Consequently, they also served as important centers of communication.
Further, virtually all ateneos included theater, recreation, and—particularly for those in urban barrios—trips out of the city. In addition to offering opportunities for exercise and fresh air, these excursions were thought to provide moral and intellectual benefits—giving young people a chance to see, at first hand, the mountains, valleys, and rivers they might have learned about in classes; overcoming the narrowness of vision that comes from living in crowded urban environments; providing an occasion for them to experience "the influence of nature on the human spirit." Exposure to nature, one writer explained, will "allow young people to experience freedom, so that they will want to live it and defend it."
As community-based organizations, ateneos offered opportunities for preparation which were particularly important for working-class women, who had relatively fewer contexts than did men to gain such experiences. Those women who became activists in the CNT and/or in Mujeres Libres reported virtually unanimously that their experiences in ateneos, schools, and cultural activities were crucial to that process. They learned to read and, equally important, developed meaningful peer relationships with boys of their age—an experience that was otherwise closed to them in the highly sex-segregated Spanish society. Through the ateneos many young people experienced that "cambio de mentalidad" (consciousness-change) which was a crucial step in their becoming militants in the movement.
"The building belonged to the union (textiles). The Escuela Libre ("Escuela Natura" of El Clot) was upstairs, and the sindicato and our group, I think, were downstairs... My sisters and I went to school at night (we couldn't go during the day, because we had to work). And—remember this detail, because it's important—in order to save money, the union had the women do the cleaning... Afterwards, there would be meetings of Sol y Vida (the cultural group)... True, people went to union meetings, but relations within the group were more intimate, the explanations more extensive. That's where we were formed most deeply..."
In addition to the schools and cultural centers, the anarcho-syndicalist movement supported an enormous array of newspapers, magazines, and clubs which challenged conventional norms and provided channels for bringing alternative perspectives to a broader audience. Movement newspapers, <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>, <em>CNT</em>, <em>Tierra y Libertad</em>, combined political commentary with extensive cultural criticism. Almost every issue had an article dealing with some aspect of education; and, in the years before and during the war, many carried articles devoted specifically to women. Tierra y Libertad, for example, published a "women's page" each week, in which many of the women who were to be active in Mujeres Libres tested out ideas and had an opportunity to communicate with the larger anarcho-syndicalist community. Magazines such as La Revista Blanca (Barcelona), Natura (Barcelona), Estudios (Valencia), and Tiempos Nuevos carried both stories and informative articles on a range of issues from collectivist politics to birth control, nudism and vegetarianism.
Particularly for people who lived in places relatively isolated from organized anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist activity, the press provided important sources of information, and a "route in" to the anarchist community. Soledad Estorach, for example, who came to Barcelona at the age of 15, alone and isolated in her interest in what she termed "communism," read La Revista Blanca and, through it, made her way to the ateneo
"I was reading newspapers and magazines and trying to find "communists."... The first person I went to see, in fact, was Federica Montseny's mother, Soledad Gustavo, because she was a woman! I didn't know how to get in contact with these people. And I figured that those people who were writing about communism must, somehow... live differently. I had been reading La Revista Blanca, and I saw that this woman Soledad Gustavo wrote for them; so I went to the address given in the magazine and asked to see her. I was shown right in—I guess they thought I was a compañera. She received me without any understanding... I can't even remember just what I asked her: probably, 'How do I find people?' And she said, 'all you have to do is find an ateneo in your barrio,' and she more-or-less threw me out... Anyway, I went to the ateneo. The first man I met there was Saavedra—the grandfather of Enriqueta and the others. He was very old even then. But I fell in love with him immediately... He showed me the library... I was entranced by all those books. I thought that all the world's knowledge was now within my reach."
**** Education as Empowerment
For all that ateneos provided in the way of opportunities for young and old to learn to read and develop some "culture," probably their most important long-term effect was the creation of a community—a community of people who believed that they could effect change in the world. The network of friends and comrades established there provided participants important sources of both moral and material support through their years of struggle in the movement and during the Civil War. Men and women who had participated in these groups as boys and girls referred to their experience with words and expressions similar to those one might use to describe a lost love. Even those who had become most cynical, and/or isolated from the larger movement in the intervening years, spoke of those experiences with a near reverence. No doubt, their recollections have been romanticized over the years. But the experience of participating in these groups—groups in which people attempted to interact with one another as they hoped they would in the "anarchist paradise" they were struggling to create—had obviously marked them deeply.
For some of the girls, in particular, the experience of equality between men and women was especially energizing. It impelled considerable numbers of them to insist on their equality within the context of the larger movement. As Enriqueta Rovira noted, the ateneos provided both an incentive and a model for what was to be Mujeres Libres.
"I always felt strongly that women had to be emancipated. That our struggle was—and still is—more than just the struggle against capitalism... We used to talk about that a lot (in the ateneo), insisting that the struggle was not just in the factories, in the streets, or even in the ateneos. That it had to go into the house. The boys/men would sometimes laugh and make fun of us when we'd say those things. They said, it is the struggle of all of us, and we all should struggle together. But I would say, no, it's not just that. We want/need to express our own selves, to be who and what we are. We're not trying to take things away from you, but we need to develop ourselves, to demand our own rights."
Since the groups formed out of the ateneos were primarily young people's groups, they provided youth with opportunities to act at least somewhat independently of their parents—an almost unheard-of experience in Spain of that time. Even anarchist families had difficulty with the freedom their daughters asserted.
"We had to ask permission every week when we were going to go on these excursions. Don't think that just because our parents were libertarios that we were free to do as we pleased! No, none of that! Every week we had to ask. And if the answer to 'where are you going?' was something like 'camping,' then, whoa! None of that. No, there were lots of controls, even of our activities in the ateneo."
Azucena and Enriqueta, two sisters in a committed anarchist family, developed ways around their parents' efforts at control. Often, they put skirts on over their bermuda shorts, rode on their bikes until the edge of town where they would no longer be seen by adults, then removed the skirts and continued with the group to the mountains or the seashore!
In short, through both formal and informal institutions, Spanish libertarians created contexts for individual and communal empowerment, and facilitated the development of networks for people to learn and act together. As the memoirs and recollections of those who participated in these schools make clear, education was not simply preparation for revolution, it was a crucial aspect of the revolution itself.
*** Back cover text
The Modern School Movement
Inspired by the many reunions of former students and friends of the Ferrer Modern School of Stelton, New Jersey, this publication reflects the ideals and aims of libertarian education.
The idea for the Modern School Movement in America grew out of the Modern School Movement in Spain. Some two hundred modern schools were established in Spain. They provided a secular education in co-educational schools for the first time in centuries. These innovative schools helped break the log-jam of illiteracy that condemned more than fifty percent of the Spanish people to ignorance and a life of superstition and fear.
Francisco Ferrer y Guardia broke the shroud of fear and superstition by establishing the Modern School which, in a spirit of freedom, taught new generations of young people science, art, literature, and modern knowledge in many subjects. Juan Puig Elias made significant contributions to this movement.
These first-hand accounts of the memories of three children educated in the Modern Schools of Spain point to the similarity of spirit and goal between the Modern Schools of Spain and those in the United States.
Published by Friends of the Modern School
c/o Abe Bluestein, 55 Farrington Road, Croton-On-Hudson, NY 10520
|
#title Durruti in the Spanish Revolution
#author Abel Paz
#SORTtopics Buenaventura Durruti, Spanish Revolution, biography
#date 1996
#source Published by [[https://www.akpress.org/durrutiinthespanishrevolution.html][AK Press]] in 2006 (please support the publisher!). Retrieved on 19<sup>th</sup> September 2020 from https://libcom.org/library/durruti-spanish-revolution
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-09-19T17:05:57
#notes Translated to English by Chuck Morse
TO JENNY, WHOSE CONSTANT AND CONTINUED SUPPORT MADE THIS BOOK POSSIBLE.
** TRANSLATOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I translated this book in honor of Durruti’s revolutionary legacy and, to a lesser extent, Paz’s contributions as a partisan intellectual. Many people from the around world have helped me along the way. I must first thank AK Press for asking me to translate the work and for their consistent encouragement. I am particularly grateful to AK’s Charles Weigl. His expert and exhaustive editorial assistance enabled me to improve the manuscript dramatically. Eva García, Nadia Gil Velazquez, and Astrid Wessels all patiently helped me unravel countless obscure and idiomatic passages. Dieter Gebauer and Laia Canals both provided indispensable aid. Julie Herrada from the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan graciously and promptly mailed me various important documents. I am indebted to Paul Glavin for his unflagging support for my literary endeavors over the years. Annette Burkin and Rebecca DeWitt copy edited the entire text and enriched it significantly. Finally, I must express my deepest appreciation to Yvonne Liu. She offered helpful comments on several chapters, although more than anything I am grateful for her constant emotional support, companionship, and for bringing so many joys into my life.
While those listed above made this translation much better than it would have been without their help, I alone bear final responsibility for the text.
** <strong>Preface to the spanish edition</strong>
For a variety of reasons, we were initially unable to publish this biography in its original language and had to bring it into the world in translated form. However, readers curious enough to buy the Spanish and French editions should be aware that the Spanish version is distinct from the French in important ways. We should also inform readers that they may find material in this biography that they have seen elsewhere, in works by other authors. This is because many unscrupulous “historians” and “specialists” have extracted information from the French edition of this book without indicating—and sometimes even deliberately concealing—its origin. Anyone with concerns can be assured that we have used primary sources almost exclusively. This compels us to include abundant and sometimes cumbersome footnotes, but we believe that it is important to note our sources, especially when treating a person upon whom so many silences, shadows, and distortions weigh.
Having made these disclaimers, we should explain what prompted us to modify this work between the publication of the first French edition and this Spanish edition.
In 1962, when we began researching Buenaventura Durruti’s life, we knew that we would encounter substantial difficulties. We decided to persevere, despite the challenges, because he interested us so much. We reasoned that we could at least use the available sources to construct a coherent account of his person and trajectory, even if we would be unable to cover every dimension of his life (a large part of which transpired underground and in prison). It was with that idea that we patiently began collecting notes, speeches, letters, and commentaries on or by our subject. But we felt dissatisfied with the results of our work at first: the same facts and stories seemed to be repeated endlessly, with greater or lesser passion, but there was little substance once we passed our findings through the sieve of reflection.
Then we changed tactics and, where we thought we would run into a wall of silence, we found a broad and warm comprehension instead. Aurelio Fernández and Miguel García Vivancos were the first to share their memories with us. Thanks to their help, we were able to investigate the 1920s, which contain many obscure areas. We were struggling with some of these when we had the good fortune of receiving Manuel Buenacasa’s assistance.
He put us in contact with Clemente Mangado, who provided testimony of unique value and illuminated Durruti’s passage through Zaragoza as well as his encounter with Francisco Ascaso.
But what had Durruti done before 1920, during his early years? Testimony from Laureano Tejerina’s sons and Florentino Monroi, a childhood friend of Buenaventura’s, was invaluable here. Likewise, Durruti’s <em>compañera</em> Emilienne Morin gave us his sister Rosa’s address, who put important materials belonging to or related to her brother at our disposal. Her offerings were a true wellspring for us. However, we needed to speak with Durruti’s mother and yet, as exiles, we were unable to travel to León to do so. At ninety years old, we could lose her at any moment. Fortunately, a youngster from the family volunteered to do what we could not and conducted vital interviews with her about Durruti’s childhood and years as a young adult. Five years had passed by that time, but we had harvested good and plentiful material. We had enough to begin researching the so-called “Latin American excursion” that Durruti and his friends made. We spent nearly two years studying their passage through the New World before arriving on firm ground. Finally, once that was complete, we only needed to delve into the period of the Column, during the revolution. And here numerous former Column members assisted us greatly, particularly Francisco Subirats, Antonio Roda, Ricardo Rionda, José Mira, Nicolás Bernard, and L. R.. All of them, in addition Liberto Callejas, Marcos Alcón, and Diego Abad de Santillán, made significant contributions. We also received valuable information from persons who were intimate with or close to Durruti, like Teresa Margalef, Juan Manuel Molina, Dolores Iturbe, Emilienne Morin, Berthe Favert, Felipe Alaiz, José Peirats, Federica Montseny, and many more.
At last, we had enough information to begin drafting our biography, putting all our thought in Spain, its people, and its revolution. When we finished the work, it was clear that we would be unable to publish it in Spain. We had the opportunity to release a French edition but, since France is not Spain, that implied shortening the original text. That is what occurred and that is why abbreviated versions of this biography have circulated in French as well as Portuguese and English. Such was the book’s fate when Barcelona’s Editorial Bruguera opened up the possibility of finally printing the complete work in our own idiom and for our own people. When we agreed to issue a Spanish edition of Durruti: The Proletariat in Arms, we felt duty-bound to revise the text. Durruti had been living and growing in us since the appearance of the French version in 1972. We also felt obliged to incorporate corrections and clarifications sent to us by various people mentioned in the work. Correspondence with García Oliver was particularly useful; it threw light on important events and topics and, above all, helped place us in the atmosphere in which our subject lived.
All this new information enriched the work deeply. We felt a responsibility to make it public and could not limit ourselves to the framework of the first French edition. We were unwilling to deprive readers of the new insights we had garnered, especially when the book would now be published in our own language and could be a resource for a new generation eager to know its recent past. As a result, we decided to rewrite the text, without compromising the subject of the book, the historian’s trade, or the disinterested contributions obtained. Despite the grandiose stage upon which Durruti acted, we have tried to show his human qualities, which always expressed the passion that was so characteristic of him, or perhaps his era. Of course Durruti was a product of his times, which he struggled so ardently to transform. Men make history and are also made by it. Durruti, like the whole human type, cannot escape this general rule. Many people have helped us produce this expanded work, which we sincerely dedicate to the Spanish and world proletariat. Durruti’s daughter Colette and José Mira recently gave us new letters from Durruti. We also enjoyed the congenial help of Osvaldo Bayer, who provided us with information relating to Argentina. Estela and Alberto Belloni were equally important for the chapters on the Americas, especially the Río de la Plata region. Rudolf de Jong and the always patient and friendly staff at Amsterdam’s Institute for Social History gave us their full attention while we consulted their archives. Likewise, the Centre International de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme (CIRA) in Geneva afforded us every type of support. We are grateful to the staff at the Instituto de Historia Social, the Museo Social, the Archives des Affaires Etrangères, and the French Archives Nationales, all in Paris. We also obtained documents from Spanish Refugees Aid at New York City’s Hoover Institution. Our Canadian friend Donald Crowe translated the texts in English and Antonio Téllez produced the index of names. We are indebted to Julián Martín for his help with the photographs. We express our deepest appreciation to everyone who played a role in the production of this work. We close by saying that we have and assume complete responsibility for the present biography.
<em>Paris, February 1977</em>
*** Note to the second spanish edition
I want to thank the comrades at the Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo for publishing this new, revised, and corrected edition of Durruti and especially José Luis Gutiérrez for his introduction and notes.
<em>Barcelona, April 1996</em>
<em></em>
----
(The introduction by José Luis Gutiérrez appears as an Afterward in this English translation.)
* FIRST PART: The Rebel
** <strong>CHAPTER I.</strong> Between the cross and the hammer
At 4:00 pm on June 4, 1923, unknown assailants opened fire on a black car across from the St. Paul Home School in the outskirts of Zaragoza. They fired thirteen bullets, one of which penetrated the heart of one of the car’s occupants. The victim died instantly. He was Juan Soldevila Romero, the Archbishop Cardinal of Zaragoza.
News of the prelate’s death terrified local authorities and thrilled the humble classes. The police were paralyzed with shock at first, but went into action quickly, and tried their best to overcome the stubborn silence of the locals. <em>El Heraldo de Aragón</em>, the only newspaper in Zaragoza with an evening edition, had to completely re-do its front page. It printed a full-page photograph of the deceased with the headline “An unusual and abominable crime.”
There was tremendous anxiety in the Civil Government. The Superior Police Chief and the Civil Guard commander were discouraged, confused, and simply did not know how to proceed. [1] The Civil Governor said that they shouldn’t do anything until they got orders from Madrid. The wait wasn’t long: they received two telegrams around 8:00 that evening. In one, King Alfonso XIII sent his condolences and, in the other, the Minister of the Interior demanded that they resolve the matter immediately. [2]
The CNT’s Local Federation of Unions distributed a leaflet throughout the city threatening grave consequences as well as a general strike if even one innocent laborer was brought in on murder charges. It was a sleepless night for Zaragoza’s workers and authorities. The latter decided not to launch a crackdown, but those who feared it felt unsafe in their own homes.
The following morning’s newspapers described the incident according to their whim and fancy. <em>El Heraldo de Aragón</em> thought anarchists rather than militant workers had committed the crime. <em>La Acción</em> was more specific: a band of anarchist terrorists led by Durruti bore responsibility for the act. As if to verify the claim, it printed a long list of criminal deeds that it attributed to that “terrible assassin” and demanded that the government take whatever steps necessary to stop that “scourge of God.” Seventy-five years earlier, León, like other cities of the Spanish plateau, was little more than an anachronism; a picture of a stagnant, clerical, and monarchical Spain. But the metropolis slowly grew, evolving around its ancient church, the center of local life. Agriculture was nearly the only source of income for León’s ten thousand inhabitants, which was the case throughout all of Old Castile. The city was riveted to the land, although its residents always had an eye trained on heaven, from which they hoped to receive good fortune. Cattle grazing, like in the times of the Mesta, [3] and a rudimentary leather tanning and wool industry, completed the picture. Buenaventura Durruti entered the world in this austere environment. He was the second child of the youthful marriage of Anastasia Dumange and Santiago Durruti [4] and opened his eyes in building number nine in Santa Ana Square at 10:00 am on July 14, 1896. Surrounded by six brothers and a sister, José Buenaventura was a “robust child and full of life.” [5]
Spain was going through rough times and the country’s economy and political institutions were in deep crisis. The remains of the old colonial empire were rebelling against the “motherland.” The Cubans had revolted under the leadership of José Martí and Spain’s Regent María Cristina commanded Prime Minister Cánovas del Castillo to use whatever force necessary to crush the insurrection. [6]
The crown sent General Weyler to the island with orders to smash the uprising. His solution was to turn Cuba into an immense concentration camp.
At the same time as the insurrection in the Caribbean, the Filipinos rose against the metropolis, particularly the Dominican monks who controlled the economy of the islands. The repression was as merciless there as in Cuba. Even nationalist intellectual José Rizal fell to Spain’s executioners. [7]
There was pressure on the peninsula as well. In Andalusia, under the extortion of the landowners, peasants launched revolts that took on dimensions of social war. There was also a climate of violence and conflict in the coalfields of Asturias. In the industrial regions of the Basque country and Catalonia, there were nearly uninterrupted protests and strikes. The government’s reply was absolutely savage. It filled the prisons with workers and carried out frequent executions.
All these events culminated in 1898, when the last colonies (Cuba, Philippines, and Puerto Rico) were lost and the country sank into an economic quagmire due to the disappearance of colonial exploitation and trade.
Two years later, when the country’s financial problems were at their most severe, Buenaventura and his older brother Santiago began to attend a school run by Manuel Fernández on Misericordia Street. Buenaventura’s first educational experience lasted until he was eight years old. We have little information about this period, but do know that Manuel Fernández thought the subject of our biography was a “mischievous child, but with noble sentiments and quite affectionate.” Decades later, Durruti himself said a few words about his childhood in a letter to his sister Rosa: “Since my most tender age,” he wrote, “the first thing I saw around me was suffering, not only in our family but also among our neighbors. Intuitively, I had already become a rebel. I think my fate was determined then.” [8]
There is good reason to believe that while writing this letter Durruti was recalling an event that occurred when he six years old; an incident that would have a powerful impact upon him and that may explain his instinctive social awareness. We refer to the arrest of his father for his active participation in the 1903 tanners’ strike in León.
The strike lasted nine months and it was the first significant labor conflict in the city. The tanning workers were resolute and although hunger as well as oppression followed their resistance, their work stoppage was ultimately a victory for the working class, since it laid the foundations of proletariat organization in the region.
The first instances of labor mobilization in León had occurred four years earlier, when Buenaventura’s uncle Ignacio started a workers’ association on Badillo Street. We know little about this group, except that it spread a message of mutualism and fraternity among the tanners, who began meeting monthly in its office to discuss their problems. [9] Previously, a small group of Republican intellectuals had formed León’s most progressive strata, but they were so moderate and accommodating that they were hardly a concern for local authorities or the clergy. Things changed around the turn of the century, with the work being done on the Valladolid-León railway line; the first socialist and anarchist publications began to arrive in the city, thanks to the railroad workers as well as the laborers in the León-Asturias mining reserve. Surely these publications inspired Ignacio’s group of tanner friends and also informed them about the agitation sweeping through Spain at the time, particularly in Bilbao and Barcelona. The eight-hour workday, already secured by the tailors in Madrid, was the central demand. In any case, León’s tanners soon began to make salary and work schedule demands on the owners. At the time, wages went from 1.25 to 1.75 pesetas for a “sunrise to sunset” workday. The tanners wanted an increase of fifty céntimos and a ten-hour day. They entrusted Ignacio Durruti, Santiago Durruti (father), Antonio Quintín, and Melchor Antón with articulating their demands to the owners’ association. The employers rejected their requests outright and the workers went on strike. Given that tanning was nearly the only local industry, their work stoppage brought the entire city to a halt.
Authorities responded by arresting those they considered responsible for the revolt. Residents felt repulsed when they saw honest workers being treated like common criminals and declared their solidarity with the arrestees. This popular reaction caused some anxiety among the authorities and apparently the bishop himself—who was rumored to have instigated the crackdown—intervened to free the prisoners, although not before they had languished in the provincial jail for fifteen days. The strike dragged on for nine months. Local merchants extended credit to the strikers, Lorenzo Durruti’s canteen gave food away at unrealistic prices, and Ignacio Durruti sold his workshop and donated the proceeds to the workers. But none of this could stop hunger from invading the workers’ homes and breaking the rebel spirit. Little by little they gave in and the strike finally came to an end. The tanning bourgeoisie was duly contented with its victory, but some workers, like Buenaventura’s father, decided to change occupations before ceding to the employers. [10]
Prior to this conflict, the family had been somewhat less pinched economically than those of a similar social status. Although Durruti’s father earned a modest salary, they received help from Lorenzo, Pedro, and Ignacio, which made a big difference for them. But life began to vary for everyone after the strike: Lorenzo had to close his canteen; Ignacio mysteriously disappeared (everyone assumed that he had emigrated to the Americas) and Durruti’s maternal grandfather Pedro Dumange watched his business slowly collapse as a result of the boycott declared against it by the local bosses. This forced the family to change its plans for the children’s education. Grandfather Pedro wanted Buenaventura to study, so that he could have a career in the textile business, but the family’s scarce economic resources (Santiago earned two pesetas daily as a carpenter) made this impossible. There was simply no way to consider paying costly tuition fees. Santiago and Anastasia thus decided to send their children to Ricardo Fanjul’s school, which was more consistent with their means.
Buenaventura did not distinguish himself with his performance during this second educational period. Indeed, he was a rather mediocre student, although Fanjul seemed to think that he showed some potential. “A boy with a sharp intelligence for literature,” the teacher wrote in the student’s report at the end of the year. [11]
When Durruti turned fourteen, the family began to think about the boy’s future. Grandfather Pedro, who was especially fond of him, insisted that he should study in Valladolid and even promised to pay for the classes. But Durruti rejected the idea and disappointed his grandfather. He wanted to learn mechanics and be a worker like his father.
In 1910, he began an apprenticeship in the workshop of the master mechanic Melchor Martínez, who was famed for being a furious revolutionary because he provocatively read the <em>El Socialista</em> newspaper in local cafes, although the truth is that his socialism was not particularly well-formed. He was radicalized while working in Bilbao and later, old and full of admiration for Pablo Iglesias, returned to León. [12] He set up a ramshackle workshop there that made more noise than anything else and at which some workers with socialist leanings used to gather to argue and talk about the advances of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).
There had been some progress in León in the area of workers’ organization by the time. Two labor associations, the Railroad Workers’ Union and the Metalworkers’ Union, had affiliated with the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). For their part, the city’s young people began to distance themselves from the Church. Indeed, Buenaventura told his mother that he would no longer attend the religion classes that the parish priest of the Santa Ana church led every Thursday. He never again participated in religious activities and even declined to receive communion during the following year’s Easter celebration. This scandalous act earned him a reputation as a troublemaker among the city’s residents.
Melchor Martínez, who became an expert in the boy’s adventures, immediately took a liking to his apprentice. He told Durruti’s father: “I’ll make your son a good mechanic, but also a socialist.” [13] Once, when the master and the boy were alone together, Martínez brought the youth over to the furnace and, grasping the pliers, removed some reddened iron. He began to beat the anvil, while saying: “This is what you have to do. Hit the iron when it’s red hot until it takes on the form that you want.” At the end of the day, he told Durruti that he would make a good blacksmith because he hit hard but added: “You have to direct your blows carefully. Force alone isn’t enough. You need intelligence, so you know where to hit.” He later developed an interest in the youth’s intellectual growth and urged him to enroll in the night classes at the “Los Amigos del País” educational center. [14]
Buenaventura learned the basics of mechanics and the principles of socialism at this workshop. One day, after two years there, his teacher told him that he couldn’t teach him any more mechanics or more socialism and that it was time for Buenaventura to move on. He got a job in Antonio Mijé’s workshop, which specialized in assembling washing machines used to clean minerals in the mines. After a year there, the third practicing his trade, Mijé qualified him as a second-class lathe operator.
It was then—in April 1913—that he joined the Metalworkers’ Union and received membership card number twelve. [15] The lanky young man became a fixture at union meetings, although he rarely took part in the discussions. His work and union life were deeply intertwined thereafter.
Iglesias Munís was the most prominent socialist theoretician in León at the time and founded the city’s first socialist newspaper ( <em>El Socialista Leonés</em>) in 1916. [16] For the most part, he functioned as an educator and people listened to him as if he was an oracle. Durruti imitated the other workers at first, but quickly escaped his influence and began to think for himself about the working class’s problems.
In one of his talks, Iglesias spoke about the progress of socialism in Spain. He noted that the Socialist Party had scored significant electoral victories, despite the CNT’s opposition to the elections. Buenaventura asked him to explain why the CNT had abstained, although he only received an ambiguous reply from Iglesias. Durruti did not give more thought to the matter, but from then on began to participate in the discussions. He observed with some pleasure that he was able to agitate the union leaders, who criticized him for his revolutionary intransigence. They told him that he should be more patient, but Durruti responded by saying that “socialism is either active or isn’t socialism.” In other words, he asserted that “the emancipation of the working class requires the complete destruction of capitalism and we can’t stop our revolutionary efforts until that happens.” They told him that he should be sensitive to the political complexities of the moment, but Durruti rejected the idea that the vicissitudes of bourgeois politics should condition the workers’ movement. While there was a vast chasm between Buenaventura and the leaders, his words hit a cord among the union’s youth, who shared his revolutionary urgency and felt repelled by the endless advice of “moderation.” [17] Discussions of this nature continued until 1914, when economic conditions in Spain changed radically as a result of the First World War. Spain was a neutral party in the conflict and provided the belligerents with all types of vital products and raw materials. The Spanish bourgeoisie, trading with both the Germans and the Allies, conducted a substantial business.
Industry, trade, and maritime transport grew rapidly, which was particularly beneficial for the metallurgic and extraction industries. Old businesses were revived and the mines were worked intensively. This meant that the factories and mines had to hire more workers which in turn prompted laborers to emigrate from the countryside to the industrial areas. This heightened the importance and influence of the proletariat, particularly in Barcelona, which absorbed many of the migrants. There was a significant rise in worker mobilization in the Catalan capital.
The mines in León functioned at full capacity, just like those throughout the country, and Antonio Mijé’s mechanic workshop tripled its work. However, all the orders overwhelmed Mijé workshop and thus he decided to send teams of men to the mining centers in Matallana, Ponferrada, and La Robla to install mechanical washers on-site. Mijé made Buenaventura a leader of one of these teams and sent him to Matallana. For Durruti and his two workmates, this trip was a long-awaited opportunity to make contact with the celebrated miners of Asturias.
The first few days passed quickly, because the work was so demanding, but the mine was soon shut down by a strike called to protest the abusive treatment that one of the engineers inflicted on the workers. The miners wanted the engineer to be fired, but the management rejected this demand outright. Others mines in the area went on strike in solidarity, increasing the volatility of the conflict. Buenaventura observed that “mine managers need us to assemble our mineral washers as soon as possible because they’re unable to keep up if we don’t. But we’re not budging. They have to choose between meeting the strikers’ demands or disappointing their clients. It’s up to them.” The higher-ups assembled the mechanics and told them that they had a contract to fulfill, but Buenaventura declared that nothing would happen while the strike lasted. Some threats were made, but the mechanics held firm and the management had to cede. They removed the engineer. [18]
The León youths impressed the miners, particularly the “big one,” as they liked to call Buenaventura. They became friendly with him from then on and began to call him by his first name. About this period, Buenacasa wrote, “Durruti was a shout that rose in Asturias.” That was indeed the case. [19] Buenaventura received a surprise when he returned to León after the assembly was completed. Mijé called him into his office and took him to task for his conduct during the strike. He warned him that the Civil Guard had taken an interest in him and told him to restrain his militant impulses. “This is León, not Barcelona,” he said.
They had heard about the conflict in the Metalworkers’ Union too. The leaders admonished Durruti for his radicalism, whereas the young people were excited and envied his participation in the struggle.
Melchor Martínez, his teacher, didn’t beat around the bush. He told him to get out of León: neither José González Regueral, the Lieutenant Colonel of the Civil Guard and provincial Governor, nor Commander Arlegui would tolerate extremism in the region.
Buenaventura had another surprise at home. His father, who was very sick at the time, joyfully told his son that he had secured him a position as a mechanic fitter in the mobile workshops of the Railroad Company of the North. All of this went against his plans, but given the family’s situation, he decided to accept the job. It was under these circumstances that he was swept up by the celebrated strike of August 1917.
** CHAPTER II. August 1917
The proletariat, now strong and populous due to the industrial expansion, entered into open revolutionary struggle. The decisive moments of the battle occurred in the summer of 1917, as Spain teetered on the brink of revolution.
Since the beginning of the century, the Catalan and Basque industrial bourgeoisie understood that the principal obstacle to its growth lay in Spain’s economic and political structures and that the country would never develop as long as the clergy, aristocracy, and military monopolized political power. They thus initiated an offensive aimed at displacing the parties that had been taking turns running the state and linked their efforts, psychologically, to deeply rooted autonomist sentiments among the Catalan and Basque peoples. These passions were becoming increasingly separatist in character and represented a growing challenge to the power of the central government in Madrid.
The explosion of the First World War prompted the bourgeoisie to accumulate wealth at a frenzied rate, although it did not bother to modernize industry or prepare itself for the economic crisis that would occur when the doors of foreign trade closed. In 1916, in the midst of the European war, Spain had to confront a terrible reality: the country had a deficit of more than 1,000,000,000 pesetas and also had to bear new costs deriving from its unfortunate military campaign in Morocco.
The monopolistic oligarchies had been getting rich while the state spent its reserves. The government was desperate and appealed to Catalan and Basque industrialists, in the hopes that they would help it extract itself from its impasse. Conservative Treasury Minister Santiago Alba advocated placing a direct tax on the extraordinary profits made by companies and individuals, but his plan had a limitation that the industrial bourgeoisie noted immediately: the agricultural capitalists were exempt from the tax, which once again demonstrated the feudal influence on the state. Using this exception as a platform, Francesc Cambó, a leading representative of the Catalan bourgeoisie, attacked the project in the Cortes and not only stopped it in its tracks but also caused the government and the Count of Romanones to fall. However, the bourgeoisie faced its own emergency when foreign purchases were limited in 1917. Indeed, the consequent decline in profits marked the beginning of the difficult, irredeemable situation into which Spain would descend after the war. Despite all this, the bourgeoisie was incapable of drawing all the pertinent conclusions and, ideologically speaking, did little to differentiate itself little from the conservatives.
The working class, struggling under the high cost of living, organized a national protest in 1916 that shook the entire country and its dominant strata in particular. For the first time, the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) and the UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores) signed an accord that spoke openly of social revolution. [20] The industrial and agricultural elites forgot their differences after seeing this proletarian demonstration and both responded belligerently to the workers’ demands. A social war was brewing. Two events disturbed the fragile political situation even further. One was the Russian Revolution, which appeared to all as a transcendent event in which the working class and peasantry took control of their destinies for the first time. In Spain, news from Russia detonated popular uprisings in the cities and the countryside, where rebellions erupted to the shout of “Viva the Soviets!”
The second event was the rebellion of the infantry within the armed forces. Their revolt was not strictly political, but motivated by a reaction to the monarchy’s favoritism toward the African military lobby, which insisted that the government continue the war in Morocco at all costs. [21] By May 1917, the objective conditions necessary for a revolution seemed to have crystallized. The CNT and UGT—in keeping with the 1916 unity pact—had to confront the events and prepare their respective forces for action. The two groups framed the situation very differently. The matter was clear for the CNT: they had to take advantage of contradictions among the bourgeois and exploit the dissension between the army and the state in order to destroy the monarchy and proclaim an advanced social republic. For the UGT, which the Socialist Party controlled, the juncture was not so much social as political in character: it wanted to form a parliamentary block that would install a liberal government but not liquidate the monarchy. The two workers’ organizations were unable to find real common ground between these diametrically opposed approaches to the moment.
While the Socialists discouraged mass action—telling the CNT that it wasn’t the right time to rise up—two additional events helped undermine the revolutionary potential of the period. The first was Eduardo Dato’s entrance into the government, who rushed to meet the demands of the infantry and thus reestablished discipline in the army. The second was the resounding failure of the Parliamentary Assembly that had gathered in Barcelona with a pledge to appoint a provisional government. [22] That Assembly dissolved itself when it learned that Barcelona’s working class had built barricades in the streets and raised the red flag. It left the workers at the mercy of government persecution from then on (July 19, 1917).
With the Assembly dissolved and the Socialist Party’s political dream dispelled—it had pinned its hopes on the triumph of the Parliamentary Assembly—the UGT and the Socialist Party did not know what to do. Their leadership was frightened as it watched social discontent grow more virulent daily and found no solution but to restrain the working class. Pablo Iglesias declared that a peaceful general strike would suffice to calm the masses and, from then on, that was the UGT’s objective. It took control of the workers’ rebellion (in opposition to the CNT) and formed a National Strike Committee. Police arrested the Committee within hours of the declaration of the general strike on August 13, 1917.
A witness of the 1917 general strike summed it up in these terms: “The revolt was revolutionary, unanimous and complete throughout Spain; I don’t know if anything like it has occurred elsewhere in the world. Hundreds of workers fell throughout the Peninsula.... [but] it began without a concrete goal and lasted a week. The heroic workers of Asturias prolonged it for eight additional days.” [23]
Indeed, the repression was severe: “the troops were called out and used their machine-guns against the strikers.... The troops were thought to have behaved barbarously ... the army ... with the King [was] the only real power in the country.” [24]
To round things off, several months later, in response to those who reproached the Socialist Party for having tried to make a revolution in Spain, Socialist leader Indalecio Prieto declared the following in the Cortes: “It’s true that we gave arms to the people and that we could have won, but we didn’t give them ammunition. What are you complaining about?” [25] That was the fate of the workers rebellion nationally. How did it unfold in León?
The strike was as unanimous there as in the rest of Spain and the most rebellious youth were mobilized, including Buenaventura. This handful of youngsters participated actively in the revolt and, when the strike was over, tried to support the Asturian miners who, as just noted, extended it for eight more days. The youth as well as older workers inspired by them used sabotage to stop the trains from operating in the region. They set fire to locomotives, pulled up tracks, and burned down the railroad warehouse.
León’s Socialist leaders hurried to rescind the strike order when they saw the direction that it had taken and that the workers had escaped their control, although not without first publicly denouncing the sabotage (thus making it easier for police to capture its perpetrators). Clashes with the Civil Guard were frequent and, on several occasions, strikers greeted police with stones at the gates of the railway workshops.
Few could stomach the union’s order to return to work, knowing that their fellow comrades were being machine-gunned in the streets of Asturias. But little by little, the strike lost intensity and the workplaces began to operate again, although there was ongoing sabotage on the rail lines and life did not normalize completely until it was clear to all that the rebellion had ended in Asturias.
With normalization came the crackdown. The Railroad Company announced that it was collectively sacking its entire workforce and that each worker would have to reapply individually. This signified the loss of old union rights and that the Company could once again select the personnel. Naturally, the most rebellious, Buenaventura included, stayed away.
For its part, the Railroad Workers’ Union completed the abuse by expelling the youth, who had made up the core of the resistance. Buenaventura Durruti was at the top of their list. In the statement justifying their decision—made unilaterally by the leadership council—they said: “it is a question of a pacific strike in which the working class shows its strength to the bourgeoisie in a disciplined way. The actions undertaken by these young people go against union practices and they are consequently expelled for indiscipline.” [26]
The youth were unable to defend themselves and the Union even helped police by identifying them as the perpetrators of the sabotage. Under such circumstances, they had two choices: either go to prison or leave the city and hope for better times.
** CHAPTER III. From Exile to Anarchism
In early September, Buenaventura and his friend “El Toto” went to Gijón, which suggests that Durruti had formed lasting bonds with the Asturian miners during the events in Matallana.
He was there only briefly. By December, he was in Vals-les-Bains (Les Ardeches, France), where he mailed a reassuring postcard to his family: “I’m doing quite well, thanks to the help of a Spanish family named Martínez.” [27]
Several things occurred during Buenaventura’s short stopover in Gijón that may help explain his later activities in France. Durruti and his friend had different concerns. The police were after “El Toto” for acts of sabotage that occurred during the strike, whereas Buenaventura had his own preoccupation: he had deserted from the army.
Shortly before the strike, he had been called up in the second military draft of 1917. He was supposed to become a second gunner in the San Sebastián Artillery Regiment in late August. Commenting on the matter in a letter to his sister, he said: “I was hardly excited to serve the homeland, and what scarce enthusiasm I had was taken from me by a sergeant who commanded the conscripts like they were already in the barracks. When I left the enlistment office, I declared that Alfonso XIII would have one less soldier and one more revolutionary.” [28] It is safe to assume that the Asturian miners decided to hide him and facilitate his passage to France when they learned about his desertion.
Buenacasa was also fleeing the government at the time and it must have been around then that he met Buenaventura. “We didn’t get along very well at first,” he says. “I was studious, whereas he was more rebellious. He wasn’t friendly with me then, nor was I with him.” [29] Buenacasa did not hear of him again until they met in San Sebastián in 1920. But this time Buenacasa was impressed by “Buenaventura’s progress on the theoretical plane” and mentions that Durruti possessed a CNT membership card. When had he joined the CNT? How had he made such theoretical progress? The answer to these questions can be found in his first exile in France, which lasted from December 1917 until March 1919. [30]
When people from the Basque country and Asturias (like Durruti) crossed the Pyrenees to escape government repression, they found a large and dynamic group of exiled Catalan anarchists in the French Midi, particularly Marseilles. There was an anarchist Commission of Relations in that city that was in active contact with militants in Barcelona. The revolutionary syndicalism of the Confederation Generale du Travail also had a strong influence on the port workers there. [31]
Raising money among the Spanish immigrants was one of the group’s principle activities. They used these funds to produce propaganda and buy weapons, both of which were smuggled into Spain. All this required traveling and careful planning. Buenaventura probably took his first steps as a CNT militant moving between Marseilles and the conspiratorial center in Bordeaux.
We also know that Buenaventura maintained contact with his friends in León and that he and “El Toto,” who lived in Asturias until 1919, did not lose touch during this exile. [32]
With respect to Buenaventura’s ideological evolution—his “theoretical progress,” according to Buenacasa—Hans Erich Kaminski says that Durruti “burned through the stages, taking much less time than Bakunin to declare himself an anarchist.” [33] Kaminski wrote this in the summer of 1939, doubtlessly under the impact of Durruti’s powerful personality. However, the truth is that Buenaventura never passed from socialism to anarchism: he had always been an anarchist, at least implicitly.
Since Paul Lafargue [34] arrived in the country in 1872, Spanish Marxism was opportunistic and quickly descended into reformism. The Socialist Party forgot everything about the doctrine other than its focus on party politics and although SP leader Largo Caballero later called for the working class seizure of power, he did so with neither faith nor conviction. As a whole, in ideological terms, Spanish Marxists differed little from the German or French social democrats of the 1930s (with the exception of Andreu Nin’s group). [35]
Anarchism, by contrast, found a fertile land in Spain. Its rejection of the state resonated in a country with such deep-seated, decentralist tendencies and with a working class that felt intense disdain for all forms of parliamentary maneuvering.
When Buenaventura first encountered anarchism, he identified it with the active and revolutionary socialism that he had already articulated in León. That is why it is better to speak of his “theoretical progress,” as Buenacasa does, than a passage through “stages.”
Durruti was in the Burgos Military Hospital in March 1919. In a letter to his family, he says: “I was incorporated into my Regiment when I was getting ready to visit you. They brought me before a Court Martial, which assigned me to Morocco with penalties. However, the doctor found a hernia in me during the medical review and that’s why I’m in the hospital. In any case, I won’t be here long. And I don’t want to go to Morocco without seeing my friends. It’s very important that they visit me.” [36] This letter concealed his real intentions and his detention was related to activities that he had carried out in Spain in close contact with his friends from Bordeaux.
In early January 1919, he had crossed the border on a mission to inform the comrades in Gijón about the efforts in France. He completed the task and, after seeing the activist prospects in Asturias, decided to stay in Spain for a bit. “El Toto” told him about the progress in León. The young people expelled by the union had started an anarchist group and also a CNT Sindicato de Oficios Varios [union of various trades], which could already boast of a significant number of members. The CNT was also expanding throughout the country, particularly in Barcelona, where the movement frightened the bourgeoisie. One of every two workers was affiliated with the Confederation, giving the organization a total of 375,000 adherents at the time. Durruti got a job as a mechanic in La Felguera, a metalworkers’ center in which anarcho-syndicalism was very influential. He acquired his first CNT membership card there. He was only in La Felguera briefly: Durruti soon went to the mining coalfield in the León province, when a bitter conflict with the Anglo-Spanish mining company exploded in La Robla. During that period, the Asturian miners’ union was involved in numerous strikes and was thus unable to send militants to La Robla. “El Toto,” who had been handling the contacts with León, had already been in Valladolid for three months. He thought of Durruti, who was unknown in the area, while planning an act of sabotage in the mines. Durruti and two activists from La Coruña took off for La Robla. As expected, the mine’s management came to an agreement with the workers after the sabotage.
Buenaventura, now close to León, wanted to see his old friends. They planned a meeting in Santiago de Compostela, but the Civil Guard arrested him en route. Authorities sent Durruti to La Coruña, where they discovered his desertion from the Army. He was then brought to San Sebastián and went before a Court Martial. He cited his hernia during the hearing in order to gain time and plan an escape. Indeed, his friends from León had been informed about his travails, thanks to a letter he had sent his sister Rosa, and he managed to abscond with their help. He hid in the mountains for several days and was back in France by June.
This time he went to Paris and worked at the Renault Company. While he maintained little correspondence during this second exile, he did describe his circumstances in a postcard (surely aware that strangers would read it). He says that he is: “living alone, isolated from the world, and working as a mechanic.” But photographs from the period offer a different image, showing him surrounded by numerous friends. We do not know what he did during this interval, although he was in active contact with Tejerina, the secretary of the León anarchist group. [37]
In a short biography of Durruti, Alejandro Gilabert says that his “comrades assiduously kept him up-to-date on the Spanish social and political situation” and the “anarchist movement’s progress in the country.” They also informed him about the decision that anarchists made at a national conference to actively participate in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo.” [38] He adds that “they made this decision, above all, because the police were setting up an organization of <em>pistoleros</em> in order to kill militant labor activists.” [39] Thanks to his friends, Gilabert says, Durruti also knew the details of the “great CNT Congress held in Madrid in December 1919, at which nearly one million workers were represented. They also told him of the CNT’s decision to join the Third International and send Angel Pestaña as its representative to the Second Congress of the Communist International in Moscow (1920).” [40]
All these exciting developments, Gilabert claims, prompted Buenaventura to return to Spain in the spring of 1920.
News of the Russian people’s victory over Czarism in 1917 had a powerful impact in Spain and increased the combativity of the general strike in August that year. Its influence is also evident in the CNT’s decision to join the Third International. For the anarchists, the Russian Revolution was an authentic dictatorship of the proletariat that had fully destroyed the bourgeoisie and Czarism. [41]
Buenaventura responded to that influence as well and it is likely that his decision to return to Spain reflected the pervasive excitement in postwar Europe. Indeed, Russian events captivated many young people like Durruti, although they knew that the Spanish revolution would have to follow its own path and would not replicate the Bolshevik experience. In time—after the authoritarianism of the Russian dictatorship was unmasked—they would reproach the Bolsheviks for trying to impose the Bolshevik way on Spain and for not appreciating the Peninsula’s unique socio-historical circumstances. Nonetheless, all these ideas and emotions were confused at the time.
The Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta described the confusion well in a letter to his friend Luigi Fabbri: “With the expression <em>dictatorship of the proletariat</em>, our Bolshevizing friends intend to describe the revolutionary event in which the workers seize the land and the means of production and try to create a society in which there is no place for a class that exploits and oppresses the producers. In that case, the <em>dictatorship of the proletariat</em> would be a dictatorship of all and it would not be a dictatorship in the same sense that a government of all isn’t a government in the authoritarian, historical, and practical meaning of the word.” But the nature of the Bolshevik dictatorship was also clear to him: “In reality, it’s the dictatorship of a party, or rather, the leaders of a party. Lenin, Trotsky, and their comrades are doubtlessly sincere revolutionaries and won’t betray the revolution, given their understanding of it, but they are training government cadres that will serve those who later come to exploit and kill the revolution. This is a history that repeats itself; with the respective differences having been considered, it’s the dictatorship of Robespierre that brings it to the guillotine and prepares the way for Napoleon.” Even so, Malatesta—who was also swept up by the excitement of the era—retreats from his critique when he states: “It could also be that many things that seem bad to us are a product of the situation and that it wasn’t possible to operate differently, given Russia’s special circumstances. It’s better to wait, especially when what we say cannot have any influence on events there and would be poorly interpreted in Italy, making it seem like we’re echoing the reactionaries’ biased slanders.” Although Malatesta did not release this letter until 1922—for the reasons he indicated—his perspective does not lend itself to distortions. The anarchist posture was unambiguous: “We respect the Bolsheviks’ commitment and admire their energy, but we’ve never agreed with them in theory and never will in practice.” [42]
Nothing happening in Russia was known with precision in the spring of 1920. The only thing clear that was that the bourgeoisie was pouring a flood of aspersions on the Russian revolutionaries in the press. That is why their class brothers from all nations defended them. But of course the best way to help the Russians was to make other revolutions in other parts of the world. That was on Durruti’s mind when he decided to return to Spain.
** CHAPTER IV. Los justicieros
When Buenaventura arrived in San Sebastián, the CNT was making inroads into an area that the Socialist Party and its union body, the UGT, had dominated until then. Prior to the CNT’s Second Congress in 1919, anarchist activity in the Basque region was limited to printed propaganda put out by the small number of groups there. But anarchists in San Sebastián and also Bilbao began to go into action and lay down solid organizational roots after the 1917 general strike and the dramatic increase in anarcho-syndicalist activity throughout the country.
Around this time, workers began building the Gran Kursaal casino at the mouth of the Urumea River and labors from Aragón and Logroño came to participate in the undertaking. The anarchist group in San Sebastian set out to organize this mass of immigrant workers, under the guidance of veteran militant Moisés Ruiz. Activists from Zaragoza and Logroño also helped out, including Marcelino del Campo, Gregorio Suberviela, Víctor Elizondo, José Ruiz, Inocencio Pina, Clemente Mangado, and Albadetrecu. [43] They were highly enthusiastic, but not particularly strategic and Ruiz soon realized that some of their tactics would elicit resistance from the locals, who were accustomed to the softer practice of the Socialists. To counteract and defeat the Socialist Party on the intellectual terrain, he turned to his good friend Buenacasa, who traveled from Barcelona to San Sebastián at his request. Buenacasa was a talented agitator and his influence was soon felt, as much in the education of militants as the creation of the first Construction Workers’ Union. As a propagandist, he participated in lectures and challenged the Socialists to public debates on numerous occasions. The Socialists immediately understood that their supremacy in the area was at risk and they, in turn, called in Socialist militants from other regions. A bitter conflict between the Socialists and anarchists thus began in the Basque country. For its part, the Basque bourgeoisie saw this discord as an opportunity to weaken the proletariat and sided with the Socialists.
“One day,” writes Buenacasa, “a tall and brawny young man with cheerful eyes turned up at the union. He greeted us warmly, like he’d known us all his life. He showed his CNT card and said without preamble that he had just arrived and needed work. Of course we occupied ourselves with him, as was customary, and found him a job in a mechanics’ workshop in Rentería. From then on, he regularly came to the union after work. He would take <em>Los Justicieros</em> the newspapers piled up on a table and sit in a corner and read.
He barely participated in discussions and, when it was late in the evening, retired to the inn in which we had found him accommodation.”
Durruti’s face made an impact on Buenacasa and, after reflecting for a moment, he recalled their previous encounter. He was the unpleasant youth that he had met in Gijón three years before.
<quote>
I became curious about him and sought out his friendship. The only thing I could gather from our initial conversations was that he had been in France for a number of years, but he didn’t tell me why and didn’t say anything about Gijón. I felt certain that he recognized me and his silence about the episode intrigued me. Could it be that our first meeting left a bad taste with both of us? Whatever it was, neither of us ever referred to Gijón directly.
He enjoyed talking, but not arguing. He always avoided digressions and stuck to the heart of the matter. He was neither stubborn not fanatical, but open, always recognizing the possibility of his own error. He had the rare and uncommon virtue of knowing how to listen and to take into consideration the opposing argument, accepting it where he thought it was reasonable. His union work was quiet, but interesting. He and the other metalworkers that we had affiliated to our <em>Sindicato de Oficios Varios</em> [union of various trades] formed an opposition group within the UGT’s Metalworkers’ Union (in which they had also enrolled). He began to speak out at meetings of the Metalworkers’ Union and more than once a Socialist leader started to worry when Durruti took the floor. His speeches—just like at the rallies many years later—were short but incisive. He expressed himself with ease and when he called a spade a spade, he did it with such force and conviction that no one could contradict him.
His comrades nominated him for leadership positions in the Metalworkers’ Council, but he never accepted them. He told them that such positions were the least important thing and that what really mattered was rank and file vigilance, so the leaders don’t become bureaucratized and are forced to fulfill their responsibilities.
We became closer over the months and he told me about his life. For my part, I tried to put the best militants that we had in San Sebastián in his path (and always in such a way that he wouldn’t suspect it). They all quickly came to like that quiet fellow from León.[44]
</quote>
These militants were: Gregorio Suberviela, mine foreman; Marcelino del Campo, builder and school teacher’s son; Ruiz, son of a stationmaster; and Albadetrecu, who had separated from his bourgeoisie family in Bilbao because of his anarchist convictions. In addition to becoming friends, these young men also formed an anarchist group called <em>Los Justicieros</em>, which operated simultaneously in Zaragoza and San Sebastián.
When they created this group, there was intense discontent among the miners and metalworkers; there were endless strikes and grassroots pressure was overwhelming the union leadership. In response to the growing turbulence, the government installed soldiers in the provincial governments and made Lieutenant Colonel José Regueral the governor of Vizcaya, who would do nothing to differentiate himself from General Martínez Anido or Arlegui, lieutenant colonel of the Civil Guard. His first official act was to declare at a press conference that he intended to “get the workers to toe the line.” As if to corroborate the claim, he immediately ordered numerous governmental detentions and personally beat inmates. [45]
Things were even worse in Barcelona. The systematic government repression was transforming the labor struggle into a social war. Prominent workers were literately hunted in the streets by groups of <em>pistoleros</em> hired by the bourgeoisie and the police regularly applied the infamous “ <em>ley de fugas</em>.” [46] The best Catalan activists ended up behind bars. It was only the young militants—still unknown to the police and <em>pistoleros</em>—who could survive the bitter conflict. Buenacasa explains:
The CNT National Committee was underground and overwhelmed. It asked militants throughout Spain to help them fight the bourgeois and police offensive taking place in Barcelona, but its efforts were in vain. An authoritarian, vicious, and perpetual clampdown complemented the street assassinations. Our most talented militants had to make a harrowing choice: kill, run, or go to prison. The violent ones defended themselves and killed; the stoic and brave were shot down from behind; the cowards fled or hid; and the most active and imprudent went to prison.[47]
This government and employer terror was one of the weapons—the most extreme and desperate—that the dominant classes used against the rise of the workers’ movement in Barcelona and the proletariat’s growing maturity. The bourgeoisie had locked out 200,000 workers in late 1919 and yet ultimately had to give in. To avoid a repetition of such a defeat, they could think of nothing better than shameless aggression.
<em>Los Justicieros</em> wanted to respond to the National Committee’s call for help. They thought that the “best way to help the comrades was by turning all of Spain into an immense Barcelona;” but that “required a strategic plan that was impossible to carry to out at the moment.” Nevertheless, they considered going to Barcelona “to occupy posts left vacant in the struggle.”[48] Buenacasa had to intercede to “restrain their juvenile impulses with his moral authority, urging them to stay in San Sebastián, where the social struggle was just as important as in Barcelona, only less spectacular.”[49]
Something occurred in Valencia on August 4, 1920 that would have a powerful impact on the <em>Los Justicieros</em>. It was the anarchist assassination of Barcelona’s ex-governor José Maestre de Laborde, Count of Salvatierra. During his term in office, he permitted the application of the “<em>ley de fugas</em>” to thirty-three militant workers. In response, anarchists in Valencia decided to execute him. The act shook the highest levels of the government. Although it had tried to restrain Barcelona authorities, it had failed to so and watched impotently as their savagery increased daily. Now it was paying the price. For <em>Los Justicieros</em>, the assassination was exemplary and they soon began to plan one of their own. Their target was José Regueral, the Governor of Bilbao, who bore responsibility for vast acts of brutality against the working class. However, while they were busy making their preparations, they learned that Alfonso XIII was planning to attend the inauguration of the Gran Kursaal casino. They ruled out the Regueral action: “Killing Alfonso XIII would be most positive for the proletarian cause,” they thought.[50] “The best way to do it was by constructing an underground tunnel that would take them directly to the parlor where the guest reception was going to occur. Under Suberviela’s direction, they began digging the passageway in a nearby house. Durruti was entrusted with acquiring and storing the explosives.”[51]
The work was grueling and their progress slowed considerably when they reached the building’s foundations. The dwelling from which the tunnel began had been disguised as a coal yard, but the large number of bags of dirt being removed from it must have made the police suspicious. The police executed a search and the team working then escaped after a quick gun battle. Durruti, who was in Gijón at the time, received some unpleasant news when he returned: the news media and police had decided that he, Gregorio Suberviela, and Marcelino del Campo were responsible for the plot. “Under these conditions,” Buenacasa told them, “you can’t remain in San Sebastián. I’ve got everything arranged so that you can go to Barcelona.”[52] But getting out of San Sebastián would not be easy. The police were searching aggressively for the “three dangerous anarchists.”[53] Fortunately, some railroad workers with whom Buenacasa had been in contact helped the three fugitives escape on a freight train heading to Zaragoza.[54]
** CHAPTER V. Confronting government terror
Marcelino and Gregorio were well known in Zaragoza, but this was Buenaventura’s first time in the city. They arrived in the early morning and decided to go to the Centro de Estudios Sociales on Augustín Street, instead of to Inocencio Pina’s house (one of the local Justicieros). Durruti found himself in a different world when he crossed the building’s threshold. San Sebastián’s workers’ center was quite small and Gijón’s Centro de Estudios Sociales (led by Eleuterio Quintanilla) was unknown to him. [55] Now, for the first time, Buenaventura was in a workers’ center that was large enough to genuinely meet the movement’s needs. All the activities, even the intellectual ones, took place there. Various signs hung on the rooms: Food workers, Metalworkers, Electricity, Light and Gas, Waiters, etc. There was a well-stocked library and, nearby, the office of <em><em>El Comunista</em></em>, the “Publication of the Centro de Estudios Sociales, Voice of the Worker Unions of the Region and Defender of the International Proletariat.” Next to <em><em>El Comunista</em></em> was the office of <em>Cultura y Acción</em>, the magazine of the CNT unions in the region.
When the young men arrived, only three people were there: Santolaría, the Centro’s president; Zenón Canudo, the editor of <em>El Comunista</em>; and the caretaker. [56] After their initial surprise at the unexpected visit, Gregorio (who had met the first two before) introduced Marcelino and Buenaventura, whom he described as an Asturian comrade. Canudo and Santolaría filled the new arrivals in on the state of things in Zaragoza. [57] They spoke with particular concern about the young Francisco Ascaso, unknown to Durruti at the time, who had been locked up in the Predicadores prison since December 1920 on charges of killing Adolfo Gutiérrez, the editor in chief of the <em>Heraldo de Aragón</em>. Ascaso was looking at a probable a death sentence. [58] José Chueca, from <em>El Comunista</em>, then entered and anxiously shared some remarkable news: authorities had discovered a plot to assassinate Alfonso XIII in San Sebastián and everyone said three young anarchists were responsible. He then cited the names of the three visitors, which made everyone laugh. This irritated Chueca: he had never met them before and wouldn’t have imagined that they would be standing right there. Before Santolaría left, he told the three friends that “it would be better if you stayed away from the Centro, which could be or perhaps already is under surveillance.”
Buenaventura and his two friends found Inocencio Pina at nightfall and met Torres Escartín in Pina’s house on the outskirts of the city. [59] They received a detailed report on several comrades’ desperate circumstances. In addition to Francisco Ascaso, they found out that Manuel Sancho, Clemente Mangado, and Albadetrecu were also in prison. They were charged with trying to kill Hilario Bernal, who ran the Química, S.A. business and was essentially the leader of the Zaragoza bourgeoisie. [60] These four men later became members of <em>Los Justicieros</em>, after it fused with the <em>Voluntad</em> group.
<quote>
“To save ourselves from death sentences and more prison sentences,” Pina told them, “we have to confront the bourgeoisie and the authorities, and mobilize public sentiment, particularly that of the proletariat. At the moment there are only two of us [Pina and Escartín] ready to do this and two people are hardly enough for such an undertaking. You’ll have to decide, given the circumstances, if you’d rather continue the trip or remain in Zaragoza.”
In reality, Buenaventura and his friends had already made up their minds: one didn’t abandon comrades in a time of need. From that moment on, the “young Asturian” (as Durruti was known at the time) and his friends were incorporated into the advance guard of Zaragoza’s revolutionaries.[61]
</quote>
At the time, the bourgeoisie was retaliating for the concessions it had been forced to make after the previous year’s Light and Gas strike, as well the Waiters and Streetcar workers’ strike. [62] It fired workers for punitive reasons alone and often set the police on them, naturally with the full support of the Count of Coello, the provincial governor, and Cardinal Soldevila. It was difficult for the three outlaws to find work but Buenaventura, thanks to his skill in his trade, was able to get a job in the Escoriaza mechanic workshop. Pina had to help the other two, taking them into his modest fruit and vegetable business.
Despite everything, this was a period of relative social peace in Zaragoza. Notwithstanding the harassment suffered throughout 1920, the working class had rebuilt its ranks, and they were in good health. The unions functioned normally and had even grown. The workers’ press, although reduced by censors, was available on the street. Life, other than the torments caused by the increasing unemployment, seemed calm.
Zaragoza’s apparent tranquility stood in sharp contrast to the open struggle unfolding in Barcelona, where Martínez Anido, Barcelona’s civil governor, imposed his own form of terror. He conducted a vast operation of systematic assassinations, forced unions underground, and threw activists in jail (including Angel Pestaña, who had recently returned from the USSR). The youth, organized in anarchist groups and leading the underground unions and CNT groups, confronted the police. But the consistent loss of militants to the forces of repression meant that inexperienced or less reliable activists sometimes had to be prematurely promoted within the CNT. Indeed, police arrested the entire National Committee in March 1921 and the new committee formed to replace it was made up entirely of unsteady or last minute <em>CNTistas</em>, like Andreu Nin, who had only joined the CNT two years earlier.
When authorities arrested CNT General Secretary Eugenio Boal, he had the report that Angel Pestaña had sent from prison in his possession. In the document, Pestaña described his activities at and impressions of the Second Congress of the Communist International that had been held in Moscow in August 1920. He also argued that “the CNT, for various reasons but especially because of the imposition of the so-called twenty-one conditions, should ... reexamine its decision to join the Third International, which it made in the enthusiasm of 1919.” Boal did not have time to deliver this report to the unions and the new National Committee led by Nin received his text. However, the National Committee delayed its transmission on the basis of a strictly literal interpretation of the CNT’s statutes: they claimed that it was not the unions’ prerogative to reevaluate the 1919 Congress’s decision to join the Third International and, as long as another congress has not taken place, the 1919 decision remained valid. This new National Committee, with its pro-Bolshevik perspective, obstructed the CNT’s progress. [63]
At the time, militants in Zaragoza were focused on the need to set up a Peninsula-wide anarchist federation and, toward that end, the <em>Vía Libre</em>, <em>El Comunista</em>, <em>Los Justicieros</em>, <em>Voluntad</em>, and <em>Impulso</em> groups sponsored a conference. They decided at the event to send a group to the southern, central, and eastern parts of the country to meet with comrades and enlist them in the project. They delegated responsibility for this organizing trip to Buenaventura Durruti and Juliana López, who left Zaragoza for Andalusia in February 1921. This was the first time that Buenaventura assumed a responsibility of the type. He convinced the comrades in Andalusia to federate their diverse groups on a trial basis and allow a committee to coordinate their actions in the region. [64]
Durruti then went to Madrid, where he would receive an important surprise. On March 8, a day before his arrival, unknown assailants fired from a sidecar at the automobile carrying Eduardo Dato in the middle of the Paseo de la Independencia. Dato died instantly. The police put the capital under siege, cordoning off whole neighborhoods in their attempt to catch the perpetrators. [65] It was too risky to meet with Madrid’s anarchists under these circumstances, so Buenaventura and Juliana left the city immediately.
When they got to Barcelona, a rumor was circulating that Dato’s assassination had shaken the Madrid government deeply and that it had ordered Martínez Anido to stop persecuting the workers. [66] Buenaventura met with Domingo Ascaso for the first time in the small restaurant where he normally ate lunch. They spoke about Dato’s murder and its consequences, as well as Anido’s terror. Domingo and Durruti concluded that Anido was not likely to be restrained by the government’s demands. The two men continued talking in a home in the Pueblo Nuevo workers’ district. Durruti learned that the unions had been shut down and that many well-known activists as well as dozens of more obscure militants had been thrown in jail (Seguí, Pestaña, Boal, and Peiró were among the detained). The <em>pistoleros</em> were operating like a parallel police force and carried a green membership card to identify themselves. They stood at factory entrances to intimidate union leaders or simply shot them down if the management asked them to do so. There were also bands of informers. Some had been CNT members who decided to betray their comrades after the police threatened them with death. “Against these external and internal dangers, we anarchists have closed ranks,” said Domingo Ascaso. “We’ve distanced ourselves from those who are suspicious and devoted ourselves to dramatic actions, like the murder of Dato, who bore real responsibility for what Martínez Anido is doing. We’ve got other spectacular actions in the works.” [67] But, Ascaso told Durruti, his organizational idea was impossible for the time being, since they could not withdraw from the projects that were absorbing them. “Please tell all this to the comrades in Zaragoza,” he said, “and also that some well-known Barcelona <em>pistoleros</em> hide out there and surely intend to extend their activities to that city.” [68] Buenaventura made an assessment of his trip when he returned to Zaragoza. Although in some cases suspicions complicated matters, most of the comrades were ready to form lasting accords with one another and this would be the first step toward creating a peninsular anarchist federation. Indeed, Zaragoza militants got to work immediately: the <em>Via Libre</em> group began planning a national conference and, until it could take place, decided that its publication would serve as a forum for discussing the problem of anarchist organization. At Buenaventura’s behest, several members of <em>Los Justicieros</em> went to Bilbao to get pistols.
Buenaventura and Gregorio, who knew the Basque militants well, asked Zabarain to help them purchase arms. He was pessimistic at first, saying: “Since Regueral’s arrival in Bilbao, the CNT has been underground consistently. The unions’ tills are absolutely exhausted. The money has been used to help the families of arrestees or spent on trials. It’s impossible to consider this type of assistance.” [69] They tried to get some funds and weapons from local comrades, but only managed to acquire a little bit of cash and some small arms; the latter thanks to certain selfless Bilbao militants who handed over their pistols at “a time when a gun was the best membership card.” Gregorio, excited, declared that “for big problems, there are big remedies” and suggested that they rob some banks. After all, the state was taking what little the workers’ organizations had. Torres Escartín and Buenaventura expressed concern about their inexperience. They had participated in armed conflicts with the police and <em>pistoleros</em>, and carried out dynamite attacks, but had never held up a bank. Nonetheless, they accepted his proposal and Gregorio and Buenaventura began to plan a robbery of a Banco de Bilbao. But Buenaventura convinced his friend that the hold-up was impossible, given the meager resources at their disposal. Zabarain suggested another target, which seemed much more feasible. They would clean out the paymaster of one of Eibar’s metallurgic businesses, who transported a large sum of money from the Banco de Bilbao and only in the company of a driver. They would do the job in the middle of the Bilbao-Eibar road.
Thus, on the designated day, they feigned a car accident, gagged the driver and paymaster, put them in the back of their own car, and took off with the money.
The local press reported on the daring theft of 300,000 pesetas the next day. Police said that they suspected that the heist was the work of a band of Catalan bank robbers. <em>Los Justicieros</em> hid in a house in the “las siete calles” neighborhood, while Zabarain started making efforts to acquire one hundred Star pistols (known as the “syndicalist pistol” at the time). They divided the money not used for the guns into two parts; they sent one half to Bilbao and Juliana took the other half to Zaragoza. The three friends left for Logroño several days later. [70]
** CHAPTER VI. Zaragoza, 1922
Life was calm in Zaragoza in June 1921. Durruti was working in a locksmith’s shop and the <em>pistoleros</em> still hadn’t gone into action. The unions were functioning more or less normally, but their legal situation was ambiguous. The inmates waiting to be tried in the Predicadores prison were the only discordant factor. Francisco Ascaso had also become seriously ill, due to mistreatment by prison authorities and the poor conditions. In response, his comrades wrote the Prisoner Support Committee and asked them to intensify their work on his behalf. [71] Buenaventura felt some admiration for Ascaso, since Pina and the others spoke of him with genuine veneration. On several occasions, Durruti said that he wanted to visit him in prison, but his friends invariably objected to such a reckless idea.
Durruti stayed in Pina’s house and lived like a hermit there. Zaragoza police began to lose interest in him, which was a particularly good thing, given Police Chief Pedro Aparicio’s infamous hatred of the CNT. This seclusion enabled Durruti to build upon his limited education in Pina’s library, where he read Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. Durruti later stated that “their perspectives help balance one another: there is violence and radicalism in Bakunin, whereas one finds a practical element and the foundations of the free society in Kropotkin.” [72] Radical Spaniards, as a whole, had already synthesized both thinkers at the time and it is precisely that synthesis, linked to Spain’s regional tradition, which explains the uniqueness of Iberian anarchism. In any case, Durruti made the above statement many years afterwards and, given his activity during the period, it appears that it was Bakunin not Kropotkin who had the decisive influence at that moment. These readings were enriched by the constant discussions between Durruti and Pina, in which they shared their divergent conceptions of anarchist thought. Spain began to enter a new political crisis. Its unpopular military campaign in Morocco was truly disastrous. Abdel-Krim’s army crushed General Silvestre’s troops: fourteen thousand Spanish soldiers met their deaths in the battle of Annual. The Spanish people exploded in violent indignation after the defeat and demanded not only an end to the war but also punishment of the politicians and military men responsible for the massacre. The social discontent became widespread and large strikes occurred in all the major industrial areas. The Civil Guard couldn’t muzzle the protests and the Prime Minister Manuel Allendesalazar submitted his resignation to the King in terror. Alfonso XIII, with his habitual disdain for the “rabble,” was preparing to go on vacation at his palace in Deauville when he summoned Antonio Maura. The King told him to form a “strong government” to silence those demanding accountability for the Moroccan disaster. His task would be to win the war on the social terrain; not in Morocco against the Moors, but in Spain against the Spanish workers. [73]
Maura, an able and experienced politician, understood that Alfonso XIII was asking him to “make Spain toe the line.” [74] He put the Governor of Zaragoza, the Count of Coello, in charge of the Interior Ministry in his new government. His political program was: crush the working class and win over the bourgeoisie (particularly the Catalan bourgeoisie, whose brazen terrorism indicated its profound disdain for the Madrid government). Maura increased the use of public assassinations, made chain gangs run the roads of Spain, [75] and filled the prisons with workers. This is how he was able to “pacify” the nation, but his attempt to attract the Catalan bourgeoisie was a complete failure. The Catalans asked for the Treasury Ministry and when they did not receive it, Maura’s government’s days were numbered: it collapsed in March 1922.
Inspired by Mussolini and Víctor Manuel, Alfonso XIII thought he could solve the country’s problems by imposing a fascist general who would subdue the country and permit him to “reign” in peace. Alfonso XIII told Sánchez Guerra to do as much when he became the new Prime Minister but, instead, Sánchez Guerra formed a government of social truce and reestablished constitutional guarantees on April 22, 1922.
By this time, the CNT in Aragón had already begun to experience the tragedy of <em>pistolerismo</em>, which had been imported from Barcelona by the Count of Coello and Archbishop Soldevila. [76] Local authorities in Zaragoza went on the offensive when they heard that Sánchez Guerra would replace Maura. Their first move was to try to rapidly conclude any pending legal actions against radical workers. They announced the dates of the trials for the attack on Bernal as well as Gutiérrez. These trials—and others—could prove disastrous for the workers. <em>Los Justicieros</em> put themselves on war footing, with the support of radical lawyers from Madrid and Barcelona.
Eduardo Barriobero, the main defense lawyer, articulated his views to the Prisoner Support Committee: “Government policy will change when Sánchez Guerra takes over and constitutional guarantees are reestablished. The CNT and the rest of the opposition will no longer have to be underground. But, if the trial is finished and the defendants are sentenced before that occurs, the trial will never be revised and they’ll spend many years in prison. We’ve got to get the people of Zaragoza to proclaim their innocence in the street. Only popular pressure will make things turn in our favor.” [77] A representative from the local anarchist groups told the Prisoner Support Committee that they should organize a general strike and violent street demonstrations, but the CNT representative said that “with the unions closed, the workers won’t respond to a call for a general strike.” [78] Local anarchists decided that if the CNT didn’t declare the strike, they would do so and face the consequences themselves. The anarchists sent Buenaventura and other militants to discuss the issue with the local CNT, which then called a meeting to decide what to do. They faced a dilemma: if the working class responded to the call, it would be a victory for both the CNT and the defendants. But, if the workers didn’t support the strike, the CNT would be weakened and authorities would feel even freer to persecute it. Durruti pointed out at the meeting that, with the anarchist groups calling the general strike, the CNT could accuse them of adventurism if the strike failed but all would benefit if it succeeded. They accepted this argument and the anarchist and CNT groups began drafting their strategy.
They had to enter into action at once as the trial for the attack on Bernal was scheduled to take place on April 20. The day before, they circulated pamphlets about the trial, the need for a general strike, and told the workers to gather at the prison gates and the High Court. On April 20, authorities posted Civil Guardsmen in key sites throughout the city as well as near the prison and High Court. The streetcars began to go into the street at 6:00 am, under police guard. Police tried to clear the demonstrators with a volley of gunfire. Mangado says that “the prisoners awoke to explosions and deafening noise. The shooting lasted for two hours, until it was time for the prisoners to be taken to the High Court. When they entered the street, a large crowd received them with shouts of ‘Viva the honorable prisoners!’ and ‘Viva the CNT!’ The police’s shooting in the air had not broken the workers’ will. The protestors escorted the prisoners to the High Court, which was packed with people. The audience rose up as soon as the judge opened the session and shouted ‘Viva!’ to the prisoners. The same ‘Viva!’ and the sound of gunfire came from the street. Everyone immediately realized that the court wanted to conclude the trial as soon as possible, perhaps at the behest of the governor.
That was a very positive sign. During his speech for the defense, Eduardo Barriobero made the following statement: ‘Proof of my defendants’ innocence? I will not be the one who supplies it. When a whole people proclaim it in the public square, it is demonstrated.’” [79] Those in the room began to yell and made a chorus of his declaration. Bernal then confessed that he did not recognize any of the accused as perpetrators and the judge proclaimed their innocence an hour later. The people overwhelmed the police as they escorted the prisoners outside. Shouts of victory rang out everywhere. When Sánchez Guerra reestablished constitutional guarantees, the people of Zaragoza immediately reopened the closed union halls, without waiting for any type of government authorization. Indeed, there was a true social celebration around the country, particularly in Barcelona where unions were re-opened, prisoners were set free, and workers’ publications reappeared. Each Barcelona union called an assembly of its members, which were held in cinemas and theaters rented for the purpose. The Wood Workers’ Union organized one of the most important of these events in the Victoria Theater. Once the building was full, Liberto Callejas (Marco Floro) read a list of the 107 men that the Confederation had lost to the <em>pistoleros</em>. Then, “in view of the whole world, a new Union Committee was nominated; these were dangerous posts, given that Anido’s mercenaries continued to lay in wait. Gregorio Jover was made representative of the Local Federation of Sindicatos Unicos [industrial union groups] of Barcelona.” [80] The same thing occurred in assemblies held by the rest of the Catalan unions: members were publicly appointed to positions of union responsibility and thus the undemocratic vices accumulated during periods of underground activity were finally overcome. The CNT quickly recovered its old members and its ranks even increased.
But the CNT had to confront a thorny problem: its relationship to the Third International. [81] To address the prevailing confusion on the issue, the new National Committee decided to convene a CNT Congress and, prior to the event, a national conference of unions (in Zaragoza on June 11, 1922). Although the CNT was functioning normally throughout Spain, it was still underground in legal terms and thus the Zaragoza CNT had to request government permission to hold a “national workers’ meeting to discuss the Spanish social question.” Victoriano Gracia opened the ceremony in the name of the workers of Aragón and then Juan Peiró spoke, sending his greetings to the Spanish working class. The government representative at the event soon understood the nature of the gathering and tried to suspend its sessions. From the rostrum, Gracia told the government’s man that “the Zaragoza working class is not going to tolerate arbitrariness: we will declare a general strike.” Faced with this threat, the government operative backed down. The meeting concluded with a large rally in the bullring.
The question of Third International was discussed at length at this conference. [82] Hilario Arlandis asserted that his delegation had been legitimately appointed at the Lérida meeting. [83] Gastón Leval and Pestaña reported on their stay in Moscow. [84] After hearing these presentations, the conference declared that “Nin, Maurín, and Arlandis abused the CNT’s trust and took advantage of a period of government persecution, which prevented their machinations from being stopped. It reaffirms the decisions of the Logroño conference [85] and approves Angel Pestaña’s motion to de-authorize Andreu Nin as the CNT’s representative in the Red Labor International.” Given the “twenty-one conditions,” the conference declared that the CNT could no longer belong to the Third International [86] and proposed that it join the International Association of Workers, which had recently been reconstituted in Berlin. Lacking authority to decide on these matters, the conference referred the question to the unions, so that they would declare in a referendum whether or not to adhere to the Third International. [87] The conference’s deliberations were made public, as noted, in the Zaragoza bullring. There Salvador Seguí, who became the CNT’s General Secretary, denounced the government’s harassment in a vigorous speech: “I accuse the public powers of causing the terrorism between 1920 to 1922.” Victoriano Gracia then spoke to crowd, demanding freedom for Francisco Ascaso, who was a victim of Police Chief Pedro Aparicio’s intrigues.
The press affirmed the great political scope of the meeting. Barcelona’s <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> ran an editorial titled: “Those once thought dead now enjoy good health.” Under pressure from the workers, the government soon freed Francisco Ascaso. He denounced the police’s machinations in a rally held immediately after his release: Aparicio and his whole clique were publicly condemned once again. In reply, the bourgeoisie unleashed a new offensive and blacklisted Ascaso, a practice that workers called the “hunger pact.”
Francisco was preparing to reunite with this brother Domingo in Barcelona when Pina invited him to a meeting that <em>Los Justicieros</em> were going to hold to resolve the group’s pressing problems. It was there that Francisco met Torres Escartín and Buenaventura Durruti. They discussed the group’s first disagreement, which revolved around different tactical perspectives. Pina had a quasi-Bolshevik position on role of anarchists: anarchist groups would make up the revolutionary vanguard and it was their job to ignite the insurrection. [88] He thus believed that they should become “professional revolutionaries.” Durruti’s view of the anarchists’ role, and also professional revolutionaries, was the complete opposite. For him, the proletariat was the real leader of the revolution and, if the anarchists had a significant impact, it was only because of their radicalism. The great theorists, he argued, drew their ideas from the proletariat, which is rebellious by necessity, given its condition as an exploited class. Above all, the struggle should rest on solidarity and militants must recognize that the proletariat has already found the vehicle of its liberation by itself, through the federation of workshop and factory groups. For Buenaventura, they would only adulterate the proletariat’s maturation if they made themselves into “professional revolutionaries.”
What anarchists had to do was understand the natural process of rebellion and not separate themselves from the working class under the pretext of serving it better. That would only be a prelude to betrayal and bureaucratization, to a new form of domination. [89] Ascaso was drawn to Buenaventura and his outlook. Indeed, the former had already expressed similar views in an article in <em><em>La Voluntad</em></em> entitled “Party and Working Class.” [90] Ascaso and Durruti’s beliefs complemented one another and both represented, in their own way, a break on “bolshevization,” bureaucratism, and the many falsehoods emerging from the Russian revolution. When the meeting ended, everyone departed in pairs for security reasons and Buenaventura and Francisco left together.
This was the beginning of a vigorous friendship and activist collaboration. A whole set of circumstances would reinforce the bonds that emerged from the outset between these two men and their differences only reinforced their similarities. Ascaso was thin and high-strung; Durruti, athletic and calm. The former was suspicious and seemed unpleasant at first; the latter was extraordinarily friendly. Cold calculation, rationality, and skepticism were characteristic of Ascaso. Durruti was passionate and optimistic. Durruti gave himself over to friendships fully from the start, while Ascaso was reserved until he got to know the other better. These two revolutionaries forged a deep trust and great projects grew from the dialogue between them.
One day they received a letter from Francisco’s brother Domingo sketching out the situation in Barcelona: “The calm is a myth and there’s a bad omen on the horizon. The employers’ <em>pistolerismo</em> has now found a new refuge in a yellow syndicalism, whose members enjoy the same privileges as Bravo Portillo’s earlier <em>pistoleros</em>. While the CNT leaders may believe in this calm, I don’t think the anarchist groups are deceived. The latter are preparing for the new offensive that will be declared sooner or later. It will be a decisive conflict, and many of our comrades will fall, but the struggle is inevitable.” Domingo then urges his brother to stay in Zaragoza, despite all the difficulties. [91] But Barcelona drew both Ascaso and Durruti like a magnet and they informed the group that they were going there. This decision caused a rupture with the other <em>Justicieros</em>, although Torres Escartín, Gregorio Suberviela, and Marcelino del Campo decided to join them. United by the name <em>Crisol</em>, the five friends began a new life in early August 1922.
** CHAPTER VII. Los solidarios
There was enormous turmoil in Barcelona when Durruti and his friends arrived in August 1922. <em>Pistoleros</em> had just tried to kill the well-known anarchist Angel Pestaña [92] and there was a general strike throughout Catalonia. A group of Catalan intellectuals publicly denounced the authorities’ failure to stop the bourgeoisie’s intolerable aggressions and, in the Parliament, Socialist deputy Indalecio Prieto demanded that the government force Martínez Anido’s resignation. President Sánchez Guerra had to intervene. Although “Martínez Anido’s star began to pale,” [93] <em>pistolerismo</em> continued to operate through the so-called Free Unions [ <em>Sindicatos Libres</em>]. These were labor organizations created and manipulated by the bosses and protected by the church, which hoped to use them to implant a Catholic syndicalism. Ramón Sales, who founded these organizations as rivals to the CNT, was an old <em>pistolero</em> chieftain. The employers forcefully obliged the workers to join these unions and began to fire <em>CNTistas</em>, measures supported by <em>pistolero</em> terrorists in the streets and at the factory gates. It was a war without quarter. Furthermore, under the leadership of Francesc Macía, a significant part of the Catalan intelligentsia began again to demand independence. [94] Their agitation helped relieve some of the pressure on the cornered Confederación Nacional del Trabajo.
The CNT’s most active center was the Woodworkers’ Union on San Pablo Street, where the more radical militants gathered. It was here that Buenaventura and his comrades struck up a friendship with local activists, an association from which the famous <em>Los Solidarios</em> group would be born in October of that year. They organized around a tripartite plan: “Confront the <em>pistoleros</em>, support the CNT, and set up an anarchist Federation that would take all the anarchist groups scattered around the peninsula under its wing.” [95] Indeed, the problem of organization was a high priority for them: they saw it as an indispensable precondition of the revolution, perhaps even more important than the battle against the bourgeoisie and terrorism. They founded a weekly periodical named <em>Crisol</em>, which had the support of Barthe (a French exile), Felipe Alaiz, Liberto Callejas, Torres Tribo, and Francisco Ascaso (the magazine’s administrator).
The group had decided to kill the instigators of the anti-worker policy— Martínez Anido and Colonel José Arlegui—but halted preparations when they received some important news. They learned that both military men had been planning to stage a fake assassination attempt against themselves in order to justify their repressive practices to the Madrid government. An anonymous Catalan journalist spoiled their conspiracy when he telephoned the President and revealed their ploy. Sánchez Guerra, worried by the turn that things were taking in Barcelona, telephoned Martínez Anido in the early hours of October 24. He informed him that “Colonel Arlegui, after what occurred, cannot continue carrying out his duties,” and ordered Anido to remove him as Police Chief. Martínez Anido stated that he couldn’t fulfill those orders and thus Sánchez Guerra ordered him “to consider himself fired and hand over the provincial government to the President of the High Court.” [96] This change of authorities obliged Sánchez Guerra to make constitutional guarantees effective in Catalonia and, with it, normalize union and political life in the region.
<em>Los Solidarios</em> took advantage of this opening to call a conference of anarchist groups from the Catalan and Balearic Islands area. The event was well attended and showed that anarchists in the region were sympathetic to the organizational project that the <em>Solidarios</em> were advancing in <em>Crisol</em>. Conference participants formed a Regional Commission of Anarchist Relations, which was the embryo of what would later become the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (Iberian Anarchist Federation, FAI). They also discussed the new political situation and concluded that, “given the interests at play in Spain, especially in Catalonia, the calm cannot last for long. The persecution in Catalonia was not a mere caprice of Martínez Anido, but the natural consequence of class antagonisms. Martínez Anido was simply a tool of the bourgeoisie, and the fact that he has disappeared from the scene does not mean that the bourgeoisie will stop its abuse. Its figureheads may change, but the bourgeoisie—due its reactionary character—will continue using terrorist tactics.” [97]
They understood that the rightwing pressure groups accepted Sánchez Guerra’s policy of “social truce” only with reluctance. The army, supported by the landowners and the clergy, would try to seize state power and impose a military dictatorship if given the chance to do so. The monarchy would not be able to resist it, since its fate was indissolubly linked to the Armed Forces. Thus, faced with this imminent military coup, the anarchist groups decided to accelerate their revolutionary efforts and devote themselves to agitation campaigns in the industrial and rural areas, while the Commission of Anarchist Relations would coordinate action at the peninsular level. Libertarian publications in Catalonia— <em>Crisol</em>, <em>Fragua Social</em>, and <em>Tierra y Libertad</em>—would support all these initiatives.
The conference also revisited the anti-militaristic strategy pursued by anarchists until then, which had only produced a significant loss of militants, who were forced to go into exile once they rejected military service. They decided that it would be more effective for young people to join the army and form revolutionary action groups within it. These would be known as Anti-militarist Committees and they would link their actions to those of local anarchist groups. They created a special bulletin named <em>Hijos del Pueblo</em> to spread revolutionary ideas among the troops.
Three <em>Solidarios</em> were members of the Regional Commission of Anarchist Relations: Francisco Ascaso, Aurelio Fernández, and Buenaventura Durruti, all of whom took on important responsibilities. Francisco Ascaso was the Commission’s secretary, Aurelio Fernández was entrusted with putting the Anti-militarist Committees into operation, and Buenaventura Durruti’s task was to build an arsenal of guns and explosives.
Durruti and another metalworker by the name of Eusebio Brau set up an underground workshop for making hand grenades and also a foundry for the same purpose. They quickly amassed a stock of six thousand hand grenades and stored them in various parts of the city.
For his part, Aurelio Fernández infiltrated the army and won a number of corporals over to the revolution, as well as some sergeants and even several officers. Anti-militarist Committees began to proliferate in regiments outside the region.
Finally, Francisco Ascaso built alliances with comrades in other areas: specifically, with anarchist Regional Commissions that had been operating since Buenaventura’s trip the previous year.
All of these efforts demonstrated that conditions were ripe for undertakings of a greater magnitude, but great risks remained.
Salvador Seguí—one of the most well-balanced minds of the Spanish anarchist movement—was murdered on March 10, 1923. Angel Grauperá, president of the Employers’ Federation, paid a group of hit men a large sum to do the job. In the middle of the day on Cadena Street, in full view of residents terrorized by the gunman’s weapons, they coldly shot down the “Sugar Boy”—as Salvador Seguí was known—and his friend Padronas. This unleashed a wave of anger among workers, causing even the bourgeoisie to become frightened by its own deed, given the victim’s prestige in Barcelona’s proletarian and intellectual circles.
The CNT called a meeting of Catalan militants and they decided that they had to stop the repression definitively and finish off the pistoleros and their leaders once and for all. They also agreed to try to find the economic resources that they needed to confront their organizational problems: [98] union tills were empty thanks to the constant seizure of funds by authorities. For their part, <em>Los Solidarios</em> resolved to eliminate some of the leading reactionaries: Martínez Anido, Colonel Arlegui, ex-Minister Bagallal, ex-Minister Count of Coello, José Regueral (the governor of Bilbao), and Juan Soldevila, the Archbishop Cardinal of Zaragoza. These individuals bore direct responsibility for the terrorism exercised against the anarchists and workers. Several other anarchist groups decided to launch an attack on the Hunters’ Circle, a <em>pistolero</em> refuge and meeting place of the most vicious employers.
The raid had a devastating psychological effect. They never imagined that more than fifteen people would audaciously burst into their lounge and fire at them at point blank range. That is exactly what happened. The bourgeoisie asked for police protection and many <em>pistoleros</em> fled Barcelona.
There was tremendous confusion in the city. The poor supported the radical workers and greeted police invasions of their neighborhoods with gunfire. It was a bitter war, and Durruti and his friends were destined to live out one of the most dangerous and dramatic chapters of their lives. Years later a witness observed that “it had no precedent other than the period experienced by Russian revolutionaries between 1906 and 1913. These youths disregarded the adults’ prudent recommendations and became judges and avengers in Spain’s four corners. They were frequently persecuted by the state and had no support other than their own convictions and revolutionary faith.” [99]
** CHAPTER VIII. José Regueral and Cardinal Soldevila
Although Durruti rejected Pina’s idea that they should make themselves into “professional revolutionaries,” this is what he and the other <em>Solidarios</em> would become due to the course of events. The <em>Solidarios</em> had to adopt a lifestyle in keeping with the demands of their insurgent activities, but it should be noted that Durruti and his comrades were never “salaried revolutionaries,” something that clearly distinguished them from the bureaucrats and “permanents” of the socialist, communist, and syndicalist organizations. García Oliver commented on the issue many years later: “I joined the CNT in 1919 and lived through all the turbulent phases of its struggle for survival. With other good comrades, I organized Sections, Unions, Locals, and Counties; I took part in hundreds of assemblies, rallies, and conferences; I fought day and night, with more or less good results; I spent fourteen years of my youth in jails and prisons. But I never accepted remunerated posts: professional activism simply did not correspond to my approach. This may be why I was never Secretary of the Local Committees of Barcelona, Regional of Catalonia, or National of Spain. And it isn’t that I consider it degrading to live from the organization’s meager salaries or because one earns much more charging workers’ wages. It’s just that it would have attacked my <em>spirit of independence.</em>” [100]
One of the first problems the group had to face was economic. They had spent all their resources buying guns and explosives, and yet circumstances now demanded even more money, not only to sustain themselves but also for activities that they were about to undertake. They needed cash urgently and, having neither the means nor the time to hold up a bank, they decided to rob some Barcelona City Hall employees who transported money. The job was risky, because the employees traveled with a police escort, but <em>Los Solidarios</em> went through with it nonetheless. The holdup occurred at the intersection of Fernando Street and Ramblas, a stone’s throw from the bank. <em>Los Solidarios</em> disarmed the two police and made off with the money, which the press valued at 100,000 pesetas. [101]
Durruti left for Madrid immediately, where he intended to participate in a conference called by the Vía Libre group (April, 1923). He also had to deliver some money to help with the trial of Pedro Mateu and Luis Nicolau, who were charged with killing Prime Minister Eduardo Dato. Things progressed in Barcelona while Durruti traveled. <em>Los Solidarios</em> found out that Languía was hiding in Manresa: he was one of the most wellknown <em>pistoleros</em>, the right-hand man of Sales (leader of the Free Unions [Sindicatos Libres]), and widely thought to have played a role in the murder of Salvador Seguí. Ascaso and García Oliver took off for Manresa at once. They knew that three <em>pistoleros</em> always guarded Languía but managed to surprise the four thugs in the back of a bar where they were playing cards. The shootout was brief and they left the town quickly. The evening newspapers in Barcelona were already reporting on the murder of “Mr. Languía, citizen of order” by the time they got back to the Catalan capital. [102] The murder of this well-known assassin was a shock for the Barcelona <em>pistoleros</em>. Sales ordered his men to kill those thought to bear responsibility: García Oliver, Ascaso, and Durruti, names that had already begun to appear regularly in the press, accused of holdups, assassinations, etc. These militants and their friends had to rely on their sixth sense to escape alive. Although traps and surprises menaced them at every step, <em>Los Solidarios</em> were determined to carry their plan forward. As soon as they received good information about where Martínez Anido and José Regueral were hiding, Ascaso, Torres Escartín, and Aurelio Fernández set off to liquidate Martínez Anido while Gregorio Suberviela and Antonio “el Toto” left for León, Regueral’s refuge.
Martínez Anido had retreated to Ondarreta, an aristocratic area in San Sebastian. He lived in a cottage there and was guarded by two policemen around the clock. However, he was not a recluse: at noon every day he passed through tunnel separating Miraconcha from Ondarreta and took a long walk on the road wrapping around the Concha beach. He always ended the afternoon in the Military Club or the Gran Kursaal.
<em>Los Solidarios</em> had detailed information about his itinerary, but decided to confirm it by waiting for Anido in a café that looked out over the road. They would determine their course of action later.
Shortly after sitting in the café, Torres Escartín began to suspect that someone was looking through the window from the street and went out to surprise him. He would be the one surprised when he found himself face-toface with General Martínez Anido and his two police escorts. The General had casually taken a glance in the café.
Concealing his shock, Torres Escartín disguised the delicate situation as well as he could and went back into the café, while Martínez Anido disappeared along the street. He told his friends what had happened and all lamented that they had left their weapons in the hotel.
Francisco Ascaso, suspicious by nature, assumed that Martínez Anido must be aware of their presence in San Sebastián as well as their reason for being there. He suggested that they grab their guns and shoot him down wherever they find him.
They went to the Military Club, the Gran Kursaal, and anywhere else Anido was likely to visit. All of this was in vain: Martínez Anido was nowhere to be found. Apparently he had left for La Coruña in a hurry. Without wasting time, the three <em>Solidarios</em> bought tickets, this time separately, for La Coruña. When they arrived, Ascaso and Aurelio went to the port to talk with some dockworkers about arms that were going to be shipped from Galicia to Barcelona. Torres Escartín made contact with the local CNT. They all agreed to meet around midday in a centrally located café.
The police detained Ascaso and his friend while they were walking through the port and brought them to the police station to be searched. They had received confidential information suggesting that the two men were drug traffickers. However, the detainees managed to convince the captain that they were simply there to file some papers necessary to emigrate to Latin America. They were released and left La Coruña immediately, convinced that it was they—not Anido—in jeopardy.
When Anido turned up at the police station to question the men being held, he was dismayed to discover that his pursuers had been set free after their identities were verified. This event cost the police captain his career: Anido told him that “they were two dangerous anarchists following in his footsteps to kill him” and that he was fired as a result of the mistake. The police raided hotels and arrested various suspects, but <em>Los Solidarios</em> had had the presence of mind to leave the Galician city quickly. [103] They were discouraged when they returned to Barcelona, and particularly when they found out that authorities had arrested Durruti in Madrid.
Durruti had a dynamic temperament and there was nothing more contrary to his nature than idleness. Inactivity was a torture for him and, when circumstances forced it upon him, he tried to release his energy in a thousand different ways. [104] When Durruti arrived in Madrid, he discovered that the conference that he intended to attend had been postponed for a week. This disrupted his plans, but he took advantage of his free time to accomplish part of his mission by visiting Buenacasa, with whom he had to sort out the matter of the trial noted above.
Buenacasa didn’t recognize him at first, since “he was going around dressed like an Englishman, disfiguring his face with some thick-framed glasses.” Durruti asked him about the status of the trial and delivered some money for legal costs. He then said that he wanted to see the inmates. Buenacasa did everything he could to dissuade him—saying that was way too risky and a good way to get himself locked up—but Durruti would not be deterred. A visit, he said, would “raise the prisoners’ morale.” Buenacasa finally acceded, hoping that the “jailers would take him for some strange tourist, given his foreigner’s outfit.” [105]
Durruti was not satisfied with his trip to the prison. He could only see one of the defendants—journalist Mauro Bajatierra [106] —whose deafness made it impossible to talk with him in the visiting room. He and Buenacasa later said goodbye near the prison and he headed toward the city center. The police surprised him from behind while he was walking on Alcalá Street. He considered resisting, but realized that he was completely surrounded. They promptly threw him in a car and shot off toward the Police Headquarters.
They confirmed his identity in Police Headquarters and charged him with three crimes: armed robbery of a trader named Mendizábal from San Sebastián; the conspiracy to kill Alfonso XIII, and desertion from the army. They sent him to San Sebastián under these three accusations.
The newspapers in Madrid and Barcelona raved about his detention; declaring that one of Spain’s leading terrorists had finally been captured. Indeed, the crime reporters made him into an extraordinary figure. They described him as a consummate bank robber, a train bandit, a dangerous terrorist, and, above all, an unbalanced mind with signs of a born criminal who perfectly illustrated the theories that the “criminologist” Lombroso advanced in his outrageous study of anarchists. [107]
When they read the accounts in the press and learned that Arlegui was in Madrid’s General Office of Security, many of the <em>Solidarios</em> thought Durruti was doomed. They could apply the “ <em>ley de fugas</em>” to him at any time. Ascaso, however, was not going to give in and he and a lawyer named Rusiñol organized a plan to seize Durruti from the “justice” system’s clutches. Rusiñol thought the armed robbery charge was the worst of the three accusations. The charge of conspiring against the King was nothing more than a simple supposition and the claim that Durruti had deserted the army could actually help them organize his escape. He told Ascaso that they should visit Mr. Mendizábal and try to convince him of his error, if he continued to claim that Durruti was one of the perpetrators of the crime.
Francisco Ascaso, Torres Escartín, and the lawyer went to San Sebastián, bringing the group’s meager funds with them. The meeting with Mendizábal went extremely well: he said that he had not made a report against anyone named Durruti and was prepared to state as much to the judge. “Mendizábal declared him innocent and his participation in the plot against the King was now in doubt. With a good sowing of money, the lawyer requested his client’s freedom. The judge agreed, although Durruti nevertheless remained incarcerated for the last crime.” [108]
Rusiñol told Durruti about all these developments during a visit, which Buenaventura later explained to his sister in a letter: “I should have been released two days ago, but apparently someone has fallen in love with the name Durruti and they’re holding me for I don’t know what reason.... I write at night by candlelight, since the noise of the waves crashing against the prison wall stops me from sleeping.... I trust that you’ll be judicious enough to stop mother from making another trip to San Sebastián. It’s a very difficult trip for her and painful for me to have to see her through bars. I’m sure she’s very tired. Convince her that I’m fine and that my release is only a matter of days or perhaps even hours.” [109]
While Durruti languished in jail, the Fiesta Mayor occurred in his native city, an annual event in which the rich and poor celebrated the Patron Saint, each in their own way. The former flaunted their power and wealth, while the later liquidated their savings on new clothes and copious amounts of food. They could at least eat well once a year. There were fireworks in the workers’ neighborhoods, whereas the wealthy gathered in the city center at the Casino’s annual dance or went to the theater. A theater company from Madrid had been invited to stage The Rabid King that year. [110] .
The play’s first performance occurred on May 17, 1923 and, as expected, the city’s rich and powerful were in attendance. Ex-Governor José Regueral was also there, accompanied by his personal bodyguards. No one will ever know why Regueral left the theater that night before the piece had finished, but the fact that he did so was a big help to Gregorio and “El Toto,” who were wandering around the plaza, hidden among the throng.
Regueral stood for a few moments at the top of the staircase, with his two police escorts just behind him. The plaza was in the midst of the celebration and nobody, other the two <em>Solidarios</em>, paid any attention to that braggart. He took a few steps down the stairs and then a pair of shots suddenly rang out, muffled by the sounds of the fireworks. Regueral lost his balance and began to roll forward. He died instantly, and his police custodians had no idea where the bullets had come from. They stood there; surprised and immobilized before the lifeless body of this man who was so “distinguished” by his hatred of the working class.
Protected by the clamor that erupted once the crowd learned what had occurred, Gregorio and his friend disappeared into the warm and star-filled night.
The next day the press related the event with typical sensationalist fantasy. Some claimed that the murder was the work of an anarchist group from León, whose principal boss, Buenaventura Durruti, was incarcerated in San Sebastián. Others erroneously asserted that León police had already captured one of the perpetrators. The reality was that the police didn’t know who was responsible and lashed out blindly, arresting endless suspects. Durruti’s brother Santiago was among those detained and they would have taken his old and sick father, prostrate in bed, if Anastasia and the neighbors had not resisted. All of Buenaventura’s friends were brought in, including Vicente Tejerina, secretary of the local CNT.
The arrestees gave statements, but were released within twenty-four hours due to lack of evidence. That was the extent of the investigation and no one was ever be punished for the crime. What the police never knew was that the perpetrators were hiding in a house near the cathedral and that a week later, “like good León peasants, they left one morning for the countryside to find a new refuge in Valladolid.” [111] León authorities started to develop an interest in Durruti’s case and new investigations prompted further delays in his release. Torres Escartín and Ascaso were waiting in San Sebastián for their friend to get out of prison but, given the circumstances, they decided that it would be unwise to remain there. They spoke with the lawyer about the case and then went to Zaragoza, to wait for Durruti in that city. Zaragoza was not particularly secure either, given that both Escartín and Ascaso had been mentioned in the local press as bandits. However, they were committed to staying in the area and told their comrades that they were going to hole up in a small house outside the city that had been rented by a Catalan anarchist named Dalmau. At the time it was occupied by an old anarchist militant named Teresa Claramunt, who was resting there after a grueling speaking tour of Andalusia.
Claramunt knew Ascaso and Escartín only by name and received them in an antagonistic spirit. She associated them with violent actions being executed in the capital of Aragón, which she opposed emphatically. Without preamble, she mentioned “the recent death of a strike-breaker and security guard, both with children. ‘That was detrimental to the working class’s ideal,’ she told them. ‘We have to reject those types of action. If we must use violence,’ she said, ‘we should use it against those who beget it: heads of state, ministers, bishops, whoever they might be, but not wretches like this strike-breaker and guard.” [112] The admonished comrades listened speechlessly, unaware that she might consider them culpable. Ascaso thought it best to let her vent and try to avoid arguments. That was a good tactic; after speaking her mind, Teresa began to recover her natural calm and, with a much softer tone, expressed concern for Ascaso’s health. The two men then defended themselves and articulated their view of revolutionary violence, which they saw as a form of propaganda. Now, on better footing, they continued the conversation and spoke about the situation that the <em>pistoleros</em> had created in Zaragoza.
There was a climate of desperate violence in Zaragoza, much like in Barcelona. The <em>pistoleros</em> who fled Catalonia and hid out in the capital of Aragón committed numerous assaults, robberies, and murders. Of course local bourgeois newspapers held the workers responsible for all these incidents and managed to influence not only public opinion in general but also people like Teresa.
Both Ascaso and Escartín knew that militants would make some mistakes. It was bound to happen in such a risky and passionate struggle, although they felt that these occasional errors did not invalidate their tactics as such. In fact, they were determined to confront that state of affairs in Zaragoza head on and decided to organize an action that would ultimately shake the local ruling class and even the very foundations of the state. That was the only way to stop that wave of violence that was enveloping Zaragoza and threatening to confound even balanced individuals like Teresa. The <em>vox populi</em> accused the Archbishop Cardinal Soldevila of patronizing gambling houses and being responsible for and protecting the <em>pistoleros</em>. There were even rumors of his weekly orgies in a certain nun’s convent. He was truly the most hated person in the capital of Aragón. [113] Ascaso and Escartín felt that eliminating this individual would put some order in the bourgeois disorder sweeping the city. At three in the afternoon on June 4, 1923, a black automobile with license plate Z-135 left through the garage door of the archbishop’s palace in Zaragoza. There were two men in the backseat behind a lattice window. Both were clergymen; one was around forty years old and the other eighty. They were talking about a woman who happened to be the mother of the former and the sister of the latter, a wealthy lady who apparently showed signs of derangement. After passing through the center of the city, the car traversed the Las Delicias workers’ district as it headed toward a location outside the metropolis known as “El Terminillo,” where there was a beautiful country estate surrounded by lush vegetation. It was the St. Paul Home School. [114] The passengers were none other than “His Eminence” Cardinal Soldevila and his nephew and chief majordomo, Mr. Luis Latre Jorro. The chauffeur slowed down when they reached the property’s entrance and waited for attendants to open its wrought-iron gate. “At that moment, from three or four meters away, two men fired their pistols at the car’s occupants, shooting what seemed to be thirteen shots, one of which penetrated the heart of His Eminence the Cardinal. He died instantly, while his nephew and chauffeur were badly injured. The assailants disappeared as if by magic. No one could provide exact descriptions or accurate details of the event.” [115]
The killing was the talk of the town and news of the event reached the Royal Palace an hour later. King Alfonso XIII held Cardinal Soldevila in great esteem. He immediately dispatched a telegram to the Archbishopric of Zaragoza and sent one of his secretaries to the scene of the crime. He ordered them to resolve the matter at once.
All the newspapers ran lengthy articles on the attack. <em>El Heraldo de Aragón</em> printed the following full-page headline: “Yesterday’s unusual and abominable attack. The assassination of the Cardinal-archbishop of Zaragoza, Mr. Juan Soldevila Romero.” A photograph of the victim sat squarely in the middle of the page. The paper devoted three pages to the story. With respect to the police investigations, it said: “The police chief and his companions followed the assassins’ presumed escape route. At one point they found an Alkar pistol thrown alongside a path. It had the word ‘Alkarto’ inscribed on its barrel, which is an arms factory in Guernica. It was a nine-caliber weapon and did not have one single cap in its clip.
“They continued onward, cutting across fields until they got to the Las Delicias workers’ neighborhood. No one that they encountered en route could provide any information about the assailants.” <em>El Heraldo de Aragón</em> also reprinted comments on the matter from other Spanish newspapers. The Madrid daily <em>Acción</em> opined: “This crime is the best reflection, more than any other, of the state of things in Spain.” The <em>Heraldo de Madrid</em> asserted: “The crime was not the work of the union men, but anarchists.”
All the police’s efforts that night to identify the assailants were fruitless. Nevertheless, under pressure from the Interior Minister—who was in turn pressured by De la Cierva, leader of the Conservative Party— Zaragoza Civil Governor Fernández Cobos ordered Police Chief Mr. Fernández to conduct a thorough investigation and rapidly arrest the perpetrators. Police focused on Zaragoza’s anarchist and workers’ movement circles and tried to build a trial on the basis of entirely arbitrary arrests.
Victoriano Gracia, general secretary of Zaragoza’s Federation of CNT Unions, warned: “If even one innocent worker is arrested, the authorities and no one else who will bear responsibility for what might happen.” [116] The governor, frightened by the CNT’s statements as well as the audaciousness of murder, went against his orders and commanded the police not to make arrests unless there was material evidence implicating a suspect and to limit their raids to sites related to the incident. They released detainees one by one. That was the case for Santiago Alonso García and José Martínez Magorda, eighteen and sixteen years old respectively, who were arrested on the road from Madrid as they returned from searching for work in Vitoria. Two days later Silvino Acitores and Daniel Mendoza were freed as well.
Barcelona’s <em>La Vanguardia</em> published an article on June 14 stating that the Zaragoza’s civil governor had informed the Interior Ministry that they would prosecute an individual seized a few days earlier on suspicions of links to the Soldevila murder. However, a week later, the newspaper declared that there would be no trial due to a lack of evidence. It was only in late June that Madrid authorities decided to find a scapegoat. They ordered a raid on June 28 and brought in Pestaña and other anarcho-syndicalist leaders on terrorism charges. The allegation rested on a flier secretly distributed in the barracks that warned soldiers that their superiors were planning a coup and urged them to make common cause with the people. [117]
The Zaragoza police also arrested Francisco Ascaso, who they held responsible for Cardinal Soldevila’s death. Although he could demonstrate that he was visiting inmates in the Predicadores prison at the time of the attack (and several witnesses substantiated his alibi), he was still charged with the crime. The next day the national press reported the dramatic news of the arrest of one of the Cardinal’s assassins, who had been executed by the infamous gang led by the terrorist Durruti. [118] The papers also published the following statement from the Conservative politician Mr. De la Cierva: “Attacks are committed every day in Barcelona that go unpunished, as well as holdups whose culprits are never found, such as in the case of the armed robbery of the Tax Collection Offices or the assault on the lawyer from Blast Furnaces. As the country’s representatives, we have to wonder if the government has the means to stop these terrorist acts.” [119]
The Church pressed the federal government and Zaragoza authorities to apprehend the well-known anarchists Esteban Euterio Salamero Bernard and Juliana López Maimar as accomplices in the crime. Unable to find the former, the police seized his mother in his stead, an elderly woman in her seventies. Authorities declared that they would hold her hostage until her son turned himself in. They had yanked her out of bed, sick with tuberculosis. Twelve hours after news of this outrageous detention broke, Esteban Salamero turned himself over to Zaragoza police. He said that he had “nothing to fear” from the law and demanded his mother’s release. [120]
Police tried to coerce Salamero into confessing his complicity in the murder by beating his mother in front of him. He was unable to endure this sight and signed a confession, although the police’s tactics later became public knowledge.
While he awaited trial, the justice system built its case against Francisco Ascaso, Rafael Torres Escartín, Salamero, and Juliana López. [121]
** CHAPTER IX. Toward the Primo de Rivera dictatorship
While Zaragoza police used the most odious tactics to find the men who killed Cardinal Soldevila, the person that the press depicted as the central figure in the matter—the “terrible Durruti”—was released from the San Sebastián Provincial Prison. The incongruities of the law! The last time that Durruti’s mother had visited him in prison, he promised her that he would go to León the minute that he was freed and spend some time with the family. But when he found out about the arrest of Ascaso and the other comrades in Zaragoza, he decided against the León trip and went to Barcelona without delay.
Durruti could see that there was serious confusion among anarchists and <em>CNTistas</em> as soon as he arrived. Three tendencies struggled to impose their control on the Confederation. One was a misguided revolutionary position that wanted to institutionalize holdups as a CNT strategy. The second, advanced by Angel Pestaña was a more moderate view and denounced the illegalist approach as alien to the CNT and anarchism. Finally, there were the Bolshevik-Confederals (principally Nin, Maurín, and Arlandis), who persevered in their attempt to take control of the CNT, putting forward their Syndicalist Revolutionary Committees.
The situation was even more confusing in the national political realm. The parties, including the Socialist Party, were in the midst of a deep crisis. In some cases this was due to their inability to grasp the challenges of the times and, in others, to divisions introduced by the Communist International. The army was the only solid and structured institution, and its influence increased thanks to the bourgeoisie’s backing and the Church’s support. The latter’s links to it had grown dramatically since the death of Cardinal Soldevila.
Prime Minister García Prieto was a mediocre, faint-hearted politician who had been unable to sleep since he received the explosive dossier about Morocco. That document—the result of investigations made by General Picasso—demonstrated that various leading figures, even Alfonso XIII himself, bore responsibility for the massacre of Annual. A scandal was approaching and it absolutely terrified García Prieto, who knew that he couldn’t keep the report from the Chamber of Deputies. He desperately hoped that something would occur that would force him to resign. This politician was so servile that he would rather fall off the face of the earth before confronting the King.
Fortunately for García Prieto, his wishes coincided with those of Alfonso XIII, who had dreams of installing a Mussolini in Spain, as Víctor Manuel had done in Italy. After considering various generals who seemed like bright stars, he found that the brightest was General Primo de Rivera, perhaps because he shared the King’s contempt for the rabble (i.e., the people). Indeed, one of the main reasons that Alfonso XIII facilitated this coup, in addition to his disdain for the constitution, was his desire to silence those demanding accountability for the disastrous war in Morocco. But he needed a pretext to justify his maneuver and what could be better than squashing the “worker banditry” (i.e., anarcho-syndicalism)? Even the Catalan bourgeoisie would applaud such an idea, despite their longstanding hostility to the central government in Madrid.
An intra-governmental dispute between the “Africanists” and those wanting to end the Moroccan campaign made it much easier for the King to pursue his aims. One of those calling for a retreat from Morocco was Navy Minister Luis Silvela. He had ordered General Castro Gerona to negotiate an end to the armed conflict with Abd el-Krim (through Dris Ben Said, the latter’s representative in Melilla). Alcalá Zamora, Minister of War and spokesperson for the Count of Romanones, was the main proponent for continuing the war and vetoed Silvela’s efforts. Alcalá Zamora’s veto also required that Silvela resign, which he did. His replacement made General Martínez Anido military commander in Melilla and, a few days after he assumed his post, Dris Ben Said was riddled with bullets. Clearly this conflict would not be resolved peacefully.
The national political scene and CNT’s internal conflicts were the main topics of discussion at the <em>Solidarios</em> meeting held when Durruti arrived in Barcelona. Captain Alejandro Sancho, who advised the group on military matters, attended the gathering. He reported on developments within the Armed Forces, where there was open talk of an imminent military coup and where General Primo de Rivera’s name was being put forward as a future dictator. He said that the military leaders would do little to oppose the coup and that it was unclear how the soldiers would respond. As for the Anti-militarist Committees, they were too new to undertake any spectacular actions and proselytizing work had become nearly impossible in the barracks after the recent increase in surveillance following the discovery of subversive propaganda in them. The only hopeful possibility that Captain Sancho could identify was the chance that the soldiers might fraternize with the workers if an uprising occurred. That, at least, had happened on other occasions.
Men without the courage of <em>Los Solidarios</em> would have given up in the face of such dreadful circumstances, but that was simply not in their character. Instead of resigning themselves and retreating, they decided to respond to the anticipated coup by organizing a revolutionary general strike. For the strike to succeed, they first had to get the wrecked workers’ unions operating again, which the constant waves of repression had crushed. And to carry out the insurrection, they needed arms. Money, once again, became a central problem. They decided to rob a state bank to resolve the issue and, for reasons of ease, selected the Gijón branch of the Bank of Spain. Durruti and Torres Escartín took charge of the operation and set off for the Asturian city at once.
On their way, they stopped off in Zaragoza to get an update on Ascaso and his prison comrades, [122] but stayed only briefly, since Durruti and Torres Escartín were well-known there and charges relating to the Soldevila matter still hung over Torres Escartín. A local comrade updated them about new developments in the case and also their plans to fight back. If everything went as anticipated, the Zaragoza bourgeoisie and Church would not have the pleasure of garroting Ascaso. [123] Indeed, they were organizing a jailbreak that would free the most committed prisoners in Predicadores. In addition to Ascaso and others, Inocencio Pina was there as well, who had been arrested on June 13 after a shootout. Police also captured the young comrades Luis Muñoz and Antonio Mur on the same day that they seized Inocencio. Their case was particularly serious, since they had killed one of the arresting officers, López Solorzano, who was the right arm of Inspector Santiago Martí Baguenas, leader of the Social Brigade. [124]
Durruti and Torres Escartín continued on to Bilbao that day. An engineer in contact with an anarchist group there pledged to get them the arms that they needed if they provided him with the money to make the purchase. He could get several thousand rifles if they could produce the damned cash. Our <em>Solidarios</em> felt very carefree when they arrived in Gijón, since they were unknown to the local police. They patiently planned their robbery of the Gijón bank.
While they did so, General Primo de Rivera and his regal accomplice charted their assault on power. They were also carefree, since the major political forces seemed unconcerned with their maneuvers. It was only the anarchists and the CNT who gave their undivided attention to their dictatorial plans, and with good reason: they knew that the principal justification for the military coup was to destroy anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism. Barcelona anarchist groups commissioned García Oliver to meet with the CNT National Committee in order to coordinate their forces for the general revolutionary strike, although the results of the meeting were discouraging. The successive government crackdowns had compromised the workers’ organization: they had bled the CNT of its cadre and many unions maintained only a token existence. Angel Pestaña told García Oliver the following: “The revolution demands organization. The energies liberated in a revolution are those expressing the phenomenon of creative spontaneity. For a revolution to succeed, a minimum of 90 percent of organization is required and we find ourselves under the sum of fifty. Our deficiencies are the result of employer terrorism, in addition to our own internal conflicts and the disastrous impact that Bolshevism has had on our ranks, which has disoriented the working class in places like Sabadell. Today the only way to confront the coup is an alliance of all the forces opposed to the dictatorship. But what are those forces?
The UGT doesn’t show any interest in resisting the coup. It is the CNT that will stand alone before the approaching dictatorship. But the dictatorship is an attack on the country’s authentic forces, which are organized under the acronym CNT. Our response will honor our revolutionary tradition, as we have always done.” [125] Angel Pestaña hadn’t said anything that García Oliver didn’t already know, but it was important that such things be explicit in that encounter between the CNT and the militant anarchists during those grave moments. The anarchist groups redoubled their efforts during the month of August 1923.
Durruti and Torres Escartín sent an urgent message to the <em>Solidarios</em> in Barcelona, saying that everything was ready and they had to come quickly to prevent everything from going to waste. One thousand rifles were waiting in Eibar that someone named Zulueta had ordered on their behalf from the Gárate y Anitua manufacturer.
We will let another author describe the dramatic robbery carried out in Gijón on September 1. His account appeared on the front page of <em>El Imparcial</em> under the following headline: “Brazen robbery of the Gijón branch of the Bank of Spain. Thieves seriously wound the bank manager and take more than a half million pesetas.”
<quote>
Gijón, September 1—At 9:00 in the morning, shortly after this branch of the Bank of Spain opened, the most audacious robbery of all the most audacious in Spain occurred in the first lending establishment of this city. The event took place in the following way:
Six youths brandishing pistols entered through the main door, dressed in workers’ clothes and wearing berets and caps. Their eruption into the main room caused tremendous panic among the employees and customers. One of the robbers stood at the door, with the entrance to his back, while holding a pistol in each hand. The others quickly went to the vault. With a hoarse and imperious voice, the one at the door shouted: 50 Toward the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship“Hands up! Everyone be quiet!” With fantastic speed the thieves entered the vault, where they shot two or three times and seized all the money the collectors had in the drawers and on the counter. When he heard the gunfire, branch manager Luis Azcárate Alvarez, fifty-nine years old, emerged from his office on the upper floor. He shouted from the top of the stairs: “What’s happening?” The gunman apparently leading the gang responded: “Don’t move! We’ll kill you!” Mr. Azcárate ignored the threat and continued down the stairs. The thieves shot at him several times. One of the bullets seriously injured him in the neck. Mr. Azcárate fell face down onto the floor, spilling out an enormous amount of blood.
The bandits put the money in their pockets and went toward the door, pointing their pistols at the employees and customers. Once in the street, they got into an automobile that had been waiting with its motor running and got away.
But first they shot several times at a municipal policeman who tried to stop them. He attempted to fire back, but his weapon malfunctioned. The bandits shot at passers-by to force their way through, and also at the many residents who had come out onto the balconies of nearby houses after hearing the shouting and gunfire.
Policeman Félix Alonso, who had tried to confront the criminals, was able to see the car’s license plate when it slowed down while crossing another vehicle’s path. It was registered in Oviedo, with plate number 434. The car’s skilled driver got around the other car and, making clean and certain maneuvers, raced down Begoña Street, crossing Covadonga and then taking the road from Oviedo.
By pure chance, the thieves had not stolen several million pesetas held in the big reserve vault. It had been open just moments before they entered. Apparently their goal was to rob money destined for the Duro-Felguera Society payroll.
The bank robbers stole 573,000 pesetas, according to an estimate calculated immediately afterwards.
The Civil Guard took off in pursuit of the outlaws on the road from Oviedo. A couple, accompanied by a police agent, found the driver three kilometers from Gijón. They arrested him and brought him to Gijón, where he gave the following statement:
Six individuals turned up in Oviedo on Thursday and hired him to make an excursion to Gijón on Friday, but yesterday came to tell him that the trip was had been postponed until today.
The six individuals who had contracted his service appeared this morning and ordered him to set off on the road to Gijón. When they reached Pintsueles Mountain, two men appeared on the road and the passengers ordered the driver to stop. When he did so, the driver found himself with two pistols pointing at his chest. The two men on the road commanded him to get out and follow them.
The driver obeyed and saw one of the car’s six occupants get behind the steering wheel and start the motor. It was clear that he knew the car’s make perfectly.
The driver and the two bank robbers stopped in an elevated area, from which he could clearly watch the car drive toward Gijón. When he lost sight of it, the two gunmen told him not to be afraid, not to follow them, and that nothing would happen if he didn’t resist. He would get the car back later, which will pick him up right there.
They led him deeper into the woods at Pintsueles Mountain, some two hundred meters from the road. He did not have to wait for long: shortly afterwards, the gunmen scanning the mountains made out the automobile. They all went back to the road, only to see the car pass by without stopping.
One of those watching the driver told him:
“Evidently they forgot that we’re waiting here. You should just follow the road forward. You’ll find the car soon enough.” The terrified driver fled, but the thieves, who also disappeared, hadn’t deceived him. He came across the abandoned car some fifteen kilometers from Gijón, in the area known as Alto de Prubia.
Several women in the vicinity told him that six individuals got out of the car fifteen minutes earlier. They asked for directions to the Llanera train station and then slipped off in the direction indicated to them. The Civil Guard has cordoned off the whole province and is conducting raids in the mountains near the road.
A couple detained an individual named José Pueyo who was heading toward Felguera, his hometown. He pulled out a pistol when he saw the guards. They took him to Gijón.
</quote>
We will comment on the account of the event printed in <em>El Imparcial</em> below, but we first want to record the official story that Duke Almodóvar del Valle, Minister of the interior, gave to journalists. His description is more accurate than the <em>El Imparcial</em> version: he mentions four bank robbers, which is correct, since the driver stayed at the wheel of the car and another waited at the bank’s door. He and the journalist from <em>El Imparcial</em> also differ on the amount of money taken. The minister said that “it is calculated that the quantity stolen exceeds 700,000 pesetas,” although the real figure was 650,000 pesetas. Typically, during event of this nature, the robbery victims also try to take a cut: we can assume that the discrepancy reflects that fact. With respect to the bank manager, the press said that he had to give his statement to police in a first aid post because his injury was so serious. This is also untrue (his wound was little more than a scratch). It is worth describing the circumstances in which Mr. Azcárate, the only semi-victim of the event, was hurt. A participant in the action said the following:
<quote>
Durruti was the one with the hoarse voice: it was he who kept the bank customers at a distance. The manager came down the stairs, hastily and suicidally, and went towards Durruti and tried to disarm him. Durruti struggled a little with this crazy man who—apparently thinking that Durruti was weak and scared—slapped him. It was at that moment that Durruti threw the individual off him and, while doing so, fired his gun. The bullet merely scraped the man’s neck. Durruti didn’t intend to injure or kill anyone. The shots let off inside the bank and during the exit were in the air and simply to scare people away. Durruti commented on the situation once he was in the car: “That lunatic wanted to die and tried to bite my finger” he said, showing his bloody little finger. “What a mess I had to make, like a terrible <em>pistolero</em>, trying to convince that maniac that he should stay still. And, as if to prove his insanity, he slapped me while I had a pistol in each hand!”[126]
</quote>
When the group abandoned the vehicle, their plan was to go to Llanera and take the train. Instead of this—considering that police would be watching the roads and train stations closely—they decided that two of them would head to Bilbao through the mountain and purchase the arms. These two were García Vivancos (the driver) and Aurelio Fernández. Durruti, Suberviela, Torres Escartín, and Eusebio Brau stayed together and hid out in a secluded cabin in the mountainside. Several days later Fernández and Vivancos had an encounter with the Civil Guard, who were searching the area intensively, but managed to slip through the security cordon with the money. Not long afterwards, on the morning of September 3, Durruti was shaving while Torres Escartín and Eusebio Brau ate lunch. Gregorio Suberviela was on look out duty. They heard voices in the distance and suddenly a group of Civil Guards appeared. Gregorio began shooting. Torres Escartín and Eusebio Brau took off together, while Durruti and Gregorio each went their own way.
There was intense gunfire between the Civil Guards and Torres Escartín and Brau, who had been trapped and had to resist. The battle lasted for several hours and their ammunition began to run out. Eusebio Brau tried to seize a nearby guard’s Mauser while Escartín covered him, but he was not fast enough and died instantly after being shot. A Guard then knocked Torres Escartín unconscious with a vicious riffle butt blow to the back. The Guards took the dead and injured to their barracks and later dragged Torres Escartín off to the Oviedo prison, who was nearly destroyed after enduring several hours of torture. [127]
<em>El Imparcial</em> had published a fairly dispassionate account of the robbery, but the press changed its tone with the arrest of Torres Escartín. He was marked as one of Cardinal Soldevila’s murderers, and the association of Torres Escartín and Ascaso naturally brought Durruti’s name into the fray, although for the moment it was Torres Escartín who mattered most to the reporters. The judge overseeing the proceedings against Ascaso hurried to request Torres Escartín’s transfer to compete the trial preparations. When news of his pending transfer reached the Oviedo prison, Torres Escartín’s prison comrades began to organize a prison break. He told them that the plan was premature, given his precarious physical state, but he ultimately decided to give it a try after considering his dismal prospects. Unfortunately, he twisted his ankle while jumping from the prison wall to the street and was nearly immobilized as a result. His comrades tried to carry him, but Torres Escartín told them not to be sentimental and to run. Holding himself upright by leaning on the walls, he managed to evade the security forces for a time but started to grow increasingly weak and finally fainted in front of a church. A parish priest leaving the “house of God” found him shortly afterwards and, thinking the man suspicious, called the Civil Guard, who confined him to the prison once again.
The León press occupied itself with Durruti. It published his photograph and, below it, a list of his many “crimes.” They used every type of fantasy and refinement to describe Buenaventura’s escape from his persecutors. One journalist even wrote that Durruti had fled by disguising himself as a priest, whose robes he obtained by stripping a clergyman at gunpoint in the middle of a church. [128]
In the Santa Ana neighborhood, Durruti’s mother Anastasia became León’s most famous woman. To anyone who asked her about her son “the thief,” she replied: “I don’t know if my son has millions. All I know is that every time he comes to León, I have to dress him from head to toe and pay for the return trip.” [129]
While people discussed these robberies and killings in salons across the country, no one seemed to notice what was being planned from above. <em>Los Solidarios</em> despaired and were convinced that time was working against them. The weapons bought in Eibar were still there and likely to remain there for a while. In fact, Alfonso XIII was so surprised at the ease of his game that he even considered making himself a Mussolini, although Antonio Maura, that old and shrewd politician, dissuaded him.
On September 7, Primo de Rivera and Alfonso XIII held a meeting and set September 15 as the date for their coup, although they later moved it forward to September 13. This was due to pressures from General Sanjurjo and also because the government had decided to present the conclusions of Picasso’s investigation of the Moroccan military disasters to the parliament on September 19.
General Primo de Rivera called the press to his office at 2:00 in the afternoon on September 13. He gave them his “Manifesto to the Country.”
<quote>
This movement is of men: anyone without a completely distinguished masculinity should stand aside.... In virtue of the trust and mandate that they have deposited in me, a provisional military Junta will be formed in Madrid and entrusted with maintaining public order. We do not want to be ministers nor do we have any goal other than to serve Spain. The country doesn’t want more talk of accountability, but to know it, to demand it, promptly and justly. We sanction the political parties by removing them completely.
</quote>
His manifesto contained endless declarations about ending terrorism, communist propaganda, separatist agitation, inflation, solving the Moroccan problem, putting the country’s financial chaos in order, etc.
A journalist asked if the coup was inspired by Italy’s “March on Rome.”
<quote>
We don’t need to imitate the fascists or the great figure of Mussolini, although their acts have been a useful example for everyone. In Spain we have the Somatén and have had Prim,[130] an admirable soldier and great political figure.[131]
</quote>
When the working class found out about the coup, it absorbed its defeat passively, doing little more than mount sporadic and symbolic demonstrations. It was simply too disorganized and battered to really resist. For their part, the political parties did nothing, despite the fact that the manifesto announced their elimination. The government crossed its arms while it waited for Alfonso XIII to return from San Sebastián, where he had been spending his summer vacation. Meanwhile, troops occupied public buildings and even the Congress of Deputies, where Picasso’s famous dossier vanished into thin air. The CNT National Committee released the following statement on September 14: “At present, when generalized cowardice is manifest and civil authorities hand power over to the military without a fight, it is incumbent upon the working class to make its presence felt and not let itself be kicked by men who break every law and plan to eliminate all the workers’ victories achieved through long and costly struggles.” They concluded by calling for a general strike, but did so without optimism: indeed, what should have been a popular rebellion was reduced to isolated and spontaneous actions that did not inspire the populous, despite their heroism.
The UGT and Socialist Party also released a statement that day, which urged their members “not to consider an uprising.” They published another document on September 15 that implicitly recognized the dictatorship and cautioned “against futile rebellions that could provoke a crackdown,” adding that “all groups that might take independent actions are de-authorized.” [132] The royal train entered Madrid’s Estación del Norte station around midday. The entire government was on the platform. García Prieto urged the King to discharge the seditious general; the King, in reply, discharged García Prieto and his government. When the King reached the Palace, he sent a telegram to Primo de Rivera saying that he was handing power over to him.
With the dictatorship institutionalized by the King, the constitution that Alfonso XIII had sworn to defend was now abolished; capriciousness began to rein and no one knew how long this new period would last. It was clear was that the political parties would passively accommodate themselves to the new situation, including the Socialist Party, which was not going to feel great pangs of socialist conscience when it did so. But the situation was dire for the working class. The CNT and the anarchists, the genuine representatives of the working class, could not make a deal with the government—like the UGT was going to do—without renouncing their principles. The CNT would have to go underground. What did it mean for the CNT to be underground? Hadn’t the CNT been forced underground constantly since its birth? What did the CNT pursue? The economic and political emancipation of the working class through revolutionary expropriation and self-management in all spheres of life. Could they achieve that legally? No, and “the sermon that workers can obtain their emancipation within the law is a deception, because the law orders us not to tear the wealth from the rich’s hands, which they have robbed from us. Expropriating the wealth for the benefit of all is a precondition of human freedom.” [133] It was this perspective that would frame the CNT’s theory and practice: it was <em>illegalist</em> through and through. The <em>Solidarios</em> intensified their security precautions for the group’s members and guarded over collective belongings (like arms) as if the revolution depended on it.
One of their short-term actions would be helping Francisco Ascaso and Torres Escartín escape. For the long term, Durruti and Ascaso were entrusted with organizing a revolutionary center in France. From abroad, this center would support the Revolutionary Committee that would be set up in Barcelona to continue the struggle against capitalism, the state, and religion.
** CHAPTER X. The Revolutionary Center of Paris
García Vivancos arrived in Barcelona in late November 1923 feeling discouraged about his trip to the Asturian capital. At first things had looked promising when he landed in Oviedo: a soldier in the regiment guarding the Oviedo prison promised to mobilize his comrades to help break Torres Escartín out. The plan’s pieces slowly fell into place and, when it was nearly time to execute it, everything was ruined: soldiers from another regiment took over prison security. García Vivancos now had to work to secure the collaboration of a whole new squad of guards. He immediately began to sound things out, but began to worry when the police questioned him about his activities in Oviedo. While he had a good alibi—documents indicating that he was a traveling knitwear salesman—and the interrogation went well, it seemed clear that the guards had not been transferred by accident. He left Oviedo at once. [134]
Although García Vivancos failed to organize Torres Escartín’s escape, the Zaragoza comrades were successful and the jailbreak from Predicadores was a complete triumph. The majority of the escapees left for France immediately. “El Negro” was among them—a native of Aragón with a long police record due to his revolutionary activities in Madrid—who had concealed his identity by using a false name when authorities arrested him and Inocencio Pina in Zaragoza. Francisco Ascaso was the most compromised of all. Buenacasa tried to convince him to go to France right away, but he was determined to visit Barcelona first. [135]
<em>Los Solidarios</em> held an important meeting when García Vivancos returned to the Catalan capital. It emerged that General Martínez Anido, Interior Minister and member of Primo de Rivera’s military junta, had a special interest in crushing what he called the “Durruti gang” and had sent several of his best men to Barcelona to accomplish the task. Martínez Anido’s antipathy toward the group only increased with Ascaso’s escape. Under such circumstances, Ascaso and Durruti’s lives were in great danger. The group decided that the two should go to Paris, where they would set up a revolutionary center to help a similar one established in Barcelona. They would also start a press in collaboration with the French Anarcho-Communist Union (ACU) to produce international anarchist propaganda. The group gave them a significant portion of what remained from the Gijón robbery to carry out these missions.
At the time, the ACU office occupied the ground floor of a building at 14 Petit Street in Paris’s district nineteen. Books on sale and the front page of the anarchist weekly <em>Le Libertaire</em> were displayed behind its storefront window. A narrow hallway led into a room lined with shelves, weighted down with French language anarchist books and pamphlets. In the back, there was a room used for everything: storage, editing, running the newspaper, and ACU administration. The administrator, Severino Ferrandel, was there daily and attended to tasks such as book and newspaper sales and also received the visitors from Paris or the provinces that came in search of literature or news. The bookstore became more crowded in the evening, after work hours. Louis Lecoin was one of the usual hosts. He was busy with the campaign to stop the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists who would ultimately die in the electric chair in the United States.
Ascaso and Durruti went to the Petit Street building as soon as they arrived in Paris. They spoke with Ferrandel and his young <em>compañera</em>, Berthe Favert, explaining that they wanted to talk with the comrades responsible for ACU organizational matters. Ferrandel brought them to the back room, where Durruti and Ascaso met several of these militants. They outlined their plan after the brief introductions. The ACU men responded with interest but also some skepticism. <em>Plans</em>? Anarchists have plenty of plans, what they lack is the money to carry them out. When the Spaniards announced that they were able to contribute a large sum of cash so that they could take the first steps, the discussion took a new turn and they agreed to hold another meeting to lay the foundations of the publishing project. They met again several days later. Sebastián Faure, Valeriano Orobón Fernández, and Virgilio Gozzoli were in attendance. Durruti and Ascaso handed over 500,000 francs. [136] They decided to publish an international, tri-lingual magazine (French, Spanish, and Italian), which would mark the inauguration of the International Anarchist Press. The Anarchist Encyclopedia planned by Sebastián Faure would be the press’s first book. Once the meeting was over and they left the building, Francisco Ascaso and Buenaventura Durruti reflected on the future. If they were very frugal, they had enough money to support themselves for a month, but a month goes by quickly and so they had to find work right away.
Although it was easy to justify expending money stolen in Gijón on the “historic rifles of Eibar” and the International Press, Spanish newspapers ran articles implying that these two spent extravagantly and wastefully. These stories were repeated time and again, including in the book that Police Captain Eduardo Comín Colomer wrote years later about police “killed in action.” The captain claimed that: “After all the crimes carried out, the members of the <em>Crisol</em> group distributed fifteen thousand pesetas per head. Luis Muñoz, a native of Iniesta (Cuenca), sent his ‘take’ to his family, in addition to another two thousand that he had ‘saved.’ This enabled them to buy land.” [137] Comín Colomer then states that Luis Muñoz was one of the perpetrators of the holdup in Gijón, identifies him as a member of the <em>Crisol</em> group (not the right name), and asserts that he killed policeman López Solorzano, a death for which he was arrested on June 13, 1923. This is an enormous blunder, given that it is public knowledge that the robbery in Gijón took place more than two months later. Here error and slander make good company, especially when inspired by a desire to discredit anarchism in the eyes of “responsible public opinion.”
In early January 1924, Francisco Ascaso and Buenaventura Durruti settled in Paris, not in Marseilles, as <em>La Voz de Guipúzcoa</em> incorrectly stated. They went there not to carry out holdups, as that newspaper claimed, but to support themselves through their work; Durruti was a mechanic with the Renault Company and Ascaso, despite his noted pulmonary ailment, worked as a laborer in a plumbing tube factory (a job that aggravated his illness).
Most of the émigrés in France at the time were Spanish, as a result of the dictatorship and Martínez Anido’s persecution, and most concentrated in the French Midi: Toulouse, Marseilles, Béziers, etc. The Spanish anarchists soon felt a need for organization, although in reality there had always been a degree of organization among Spanish political exiles in the country. In his memoirs, Anselmo Lorenzo notes that when he fled to Marseilles in the previous century he met a group of Spaniards as soon as he arrived and that they helped him find work as a typesetter. We have also seen that Durruti secured employment thanks to help provided by anarchist groups on French soil when he was a refugee in 1918. [138] After 1920, the number of exiles rose with the intensification of Martínez Anido’s terrorism and especially following Primo de Rivera’s coup. The existing organizational bases made it easy to accommodate newcomers, but naturally their arrival generated greater needs, particularly for propaganda. New publications appeared, such as <em>Liberación</em>, which later became <em>Iberión</em> after police suspended the former, and <em>Tiempos Nuevos</em>, which became <em>Voz Libertaria</em> for the same reason.
Over time, all these subversive activities—propaganda and various actions—culminated in the foundation of a strong Anarchist Federation of Spanish-speaking Groups in Exile, which anticipated what would later be the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI).
Durruti and Ascaso relied on these exiled anarchists as they established themselves in the Parisian workers’ district known as Belleville, where many other Spaniards lived.
Despite the pervasive repression in Spain, spirits were high among Spanish anarchist exiles and many hoped to return to the country in the near future. Of course the idea was not to go back in resignation, but as a force that would overthrow the dictatorship. On December 30, 1923, the CNT held a meeting in Spain at which they prepared to put the CNT’s underground apparatus into operation. At this meeting, it looked like the conflict had been settled with the Bolshevik sympathizers (who still tried to obstruct the CNT’s new scheme of emergency organization). This further increased the optimism among exiles as well as their desire to help the organization. But if the Spaniards were upbeat, the same cannot be said of the other groups of anarchist exiles, such as the Italians and Russians, who passed their own problems onto the French. The Russian Revolution had created a divide among anarchists and was the primary source of the difficulties. Some Russian anarchists found extenuating circumstances to justify the Bolshevik’s terrorist methods and their oppression of Kronstandt and Makhno. Others, as if to confirm the defeat, wanted to transform the anarchist movement into a party and infuse it with a Bolshevik spirit in the name of efficiency.
Some of the Italians had drawn the same conclusion as the Russians, although in their case it was the apparent need for a united front against Italian fascists that pushed them in that direction. However, they were not split quite as sharply as the Russians, thanks to the influence of Enrique Malatesta, who denounced the Bolshevik dictatorship and its authoritarianism. Camilo Berneri, who arrived in Paris after escaping from Italy, reinforced Malatesta’s position.
The problem was most serious among the French. Anarchists had virtually lost their influence on the workers’ movement. The Socialists dominated the CGT and the Communists, enthusiastically using anarchist methods, entrenched themselves in the CGTU. [139] Bolshevism had dazzled activists of great value, like Pierre Monatte, who influenced a large number of anarchists or anarcho-syndicalists. Although they didn’t join the French Communist Party, they adopted an ambiguous and intermediate posture that weakened the anarchist movement, which slowly shrank and surrendered itself to empty debates over means and ends, theory and practice. These abstract disputes removed them even further from the proletariat’s daily concerns, which is a path that leads to death not life.
Durruti and Ascaso reflected on the course of the Russian Revolution and thought that it could be an example to revolutionaries worldwide about what should and should not be done. To argue that the revolution necessarily had to descend into the dictatorship of the few was to renounce revolution itself. That would imply that radicals would have to trust only in the slow evolution of society, in the hope that it would follow a straight and progressive path. History had already revealed that as a falsehood. It made more sense—they thought—to appreciate the particular circumstances of the Russian Revolution, which made its results quite logical. The revolution emerged during a war and the war itself had denatured it, crushing the most conscious part of the revolutionary vanguard, which also unfortunately lacked a strong libertarian perspective.
It was only the Bolshevik Party that had emerged from the disaster of the First World War with solid structures and really knew where it was going and what it wanted. It wanted power and subordinated all its actions to that goal, while disingenuously calling for “all power to the Soviets”. After seizing power, the Bolsheviks did what they had to do: use every trick, coercion, and terrorist measure to hold on to it. When a few have power, the rest are subordinate. With the Bolsheviks triumphant, Kronstandt and later the Ukraine were to be the swan songs of the real Russian Revolution. Perhaps it could have been otherwise, but anarchism would have needed to have penetrated the Russia soul, as it had that of the Ukrainians and those of Kronstandt. Could that have happened? Answering such a question required a deeper analysis of Russia and its problems and neither Durruti nor Ascaso—who were primarily men of action—wanted to lose themselves in labyrinths of conjecture.
They knew that when anarchists have a greater influence on a revolution, that revolution is more libertarian. This is why they were consumed with the idea that what they had to do was to develop the revolutionary capacity of the classes exploited by capital and the state to the utmost, not cross their arms and enclose themselves in endless debates. It was the exploited classes who were called upon to subvert the dominant economic, political, and social structures. They alone would be the source of the new forms of social and political life that would arise from the revolution. The anarchists had to detonate situations that had become explosive and only needed to be ignited. Through continuous action, theory would become practical and practice theoretical. Revolutionary practice was the best school of revolutionary theory.
The subject of revolution was the principal topic of discussion when Durruti and Ascaso spoke with their anarchist comrades of any nationality. Optimism ran high whenever they were present, and theory stopped being a dogma and took on forms of practice, of life. “Walking, we make the road,” Ascaso used to say, paraphrasing Malatesta’s statement that “of things, things are born.” What was important was to be active and, with so many issues prodding them into action, Durruti and Ascaso were in a perpetual state of ferment. While Paris went through a period of clarification, Spain, especially Barcelona, suffered bloody, often fatal repression. The liberal Catalan bourgeoisie stopped accepting Primo de Rivera’s promises that he would give Catalonia administrative autonomy and soon felt the full force of the dictatorship. The government dismissed the president of the Mancomunidad, Puig I Cadafalch, put the monarchist Alfonso Sala in his place, and then suppressed the institution altogether. [140] The coup de grace came in May 1924 when state outlawed the use of the Catalan flag and language.
Although the dictator concentrated his brutality against Catalonia, he hardly limited it to its liberal class. What really bothered him was Catalonia’s proletariat and especially the CNT. Of course Martínez Anido, Primo de Rivera’s executive arm, had old accounts to settle with <em>Los Solidarios</em> and worked tirelessly to destroy the group from the moment he took over the Interior Ministry. And, indeed, he achieved a measure of success, thanks to his network of informers. The <em>Solidarios</em>’ first warning came when the police discovered one of their armories in the Pueblo Nuevo workers’ district. Although they took new precautions thereafter and distanced themselves from people who seemed questionable, it was already too late. The police went into action on March 24, 1924.
They surprised Gregorio Suberviela at home, but he managed to shoot his way out. He descended the stairs of his flat and crossed the street but the police, who were taking cover in the doorways of neighboring houses, had him surrounded. An escape would have been a miracle. Thus, in the middle of street, in full view of the neighbors, one of the most complete revolutionaries that Pamplona had ever produced was shot down. Police never knew that they killed a participant in the Gijón bank robbery and José Regueral’s executioner.
Marcelino del Campo, Tomás Arrate, and other militants also fell, although in different ways. Two undercover police introduced themselves to Marcelino as “persecuted comrades.” He feigned to believe them and said that he would take them to a safe house in the country, where they would find “trusted comrades.” His goal was to get them out of Barcelona and then shoot them. His ploy failed. In hopes of capturing him alive, police pounced upon him as he went into the street. He drew his pistol and killed two of them, but quickly became the third casualty. Police raided Aurelio Fernández’s house at almost the same time that Gregorio and Marcelino fell. His brothers Ceferino and Adolfo Ballano were with him. The three descended the stairs in handcuffs after they were arrested. However, the police became careless once they reached the street, perhaps because it has been so easy to detain them and also because they didn’t know that they had seized another one of the Gijón bank robbers. Aurelio took advantage of this to push his brother into the police’s path and, with both Ceferino and Adolfo in their way, he escaped through the twisting and turning streets that made up Barcelona’s so-called “Chinatown.” Francisco Ascaso’s brother Domingo, a true escape artist and suspicious by nature, heard the police enter the stairway of his building and lowered himself from his fourth floor apartment with a rope that he kept precisely for such a purpose.
Police surely thought that Gregorio Jover, who had recently joined the group, was a simple collaborator and were not particularly vigilant after arresting him. Gregorio took advantage of this to jump through a police station window and flee.
If Martínez Anido thought this raid had crushed <em>Los Solidarios</em>, he was completely mistaken. Ricardo Sanz, García Oliver, Aurelio Fernández, Domingo Ascaso, Alfonso Miguel, and Gregorio Jover were still in action. Alfonso Miguel and Ricardo Sanz covered Gregorio Suberviela and Marcelino del Campo’s responsibilities in the Revolutionary Committee. No one could find Domingo Ascaso. García Oliver spent several days searching for him when, to García’s surprise, it was Domingo who found him. Domingo told him that he needed to go to Paris, so that he, Francisco, and Durruti could accelerate the revolutionary preparations in Spain. When they parted, García asked where he had hid and Domingo told him in the Pueblo Nuevo cemetery. Indeed, a close friend of Domingo’s, an old man from Aragón, worked there as a gravedigger and had harbored him in one of the mausoleums. Domingo told Oliver: “The best hiding place is among the dead. They don’t speak!” [141]
By picking on the Catalanists, Primo de Rivera, only created new allies for the anarchists. When the government outlawed the Catalan flag and language, the Catalanists from the Estat Català group—created by Colonel Francesc Macià in 1922—sought out contact with anarchist groups. Ricardo Sanz claims that they were even members of the Revolutionary Committee operating in Barcelona during the period. [142] In May, shortly after the Estat Català joined the struggle and the raid that we described above, the CNT called a national meeting in Sabadell. The meeting transpired normally until the end, when police invaded the building. They had fortunately prepared an escape route in advance and the majority of the participants got away. García Oliver had also fled, but police arrested him at the train station. Tried and sentenced, they sent him to the Burgos penitentiary, where he would remain for six long years.
Domingo Ascaso’s mission was to accelerate the revolutionary process by launching a guerrilla strike from the Catalan Pyrenees that would facilitate the liberation of the hundreds of anarchist prisoners incarcerated in the Figueras penitentiary. Parallel to the Pyrenees action, they would unleash an insurgency in Barcelona with the support of soldiers from the Atarazanas barracks. For the success of the Barcelona operation, they counted on taking possession of the arms bought in Eibar that were being stored in the Barcelona port. [143]
Domingo Ascaso communicated this plan to Durruti and Francisco, who were already beginning to tire of the Parisian environment—which seemed to consist of nothing but endless meetings. They wanted desperately to go into action and were excited by the plan, despite its risks. According to Domingo, the first thing they had to do was size up the comrades—without informing anyone about the matter—in order to be sure that they could carry out the action with solid people. Barcelona would send someone to tell the militants in France when they were ready.
Their delegate turned out to be Gregorio Jover, who arrived in July 1925, when the project was already well underway. All the Barcelona groups had expressed their support and the committed soldiers even reaffirmed their desire to participate in a move against the dictatorship. They assembled various comrades in Paris for an “important meeting.” Once everyone had gathered, Gregorio Jover explained the undertaking. Everyone declared their willingness to partake in the guerrilla operation. They appointed a commission at the meeting to organize the expedition and acquire weapons. The Ascaso brothers, Durruti, and García Vivancos took on the task. The latter turned out to be particularly well suited for the job. He quickly made contact with a Belgian arms dealer who sold rifles with one hundred cartridges at thirty francs each. [144]
They had fully sketched out the Pyrenean offensive by late September. The weapons purchased—each participant chipped in money to buy them— were not rifles, but pistols of various calibers.
While things advanced in Paris, problems arose in Barcelona: the soldiers started to cool off, <em>Los Solidarios</em> were unable to get the arms stored in the port, and now there was the risk that the weapons might be returned to the so-called Zulueta. Likewise, some militants began to voice skepticism about the likelihood of the revolutionary spirit erupting among Barcelona’s workers, the driving force of Spanish social struggles.
When they learned about the situation in Barcelona, some of the comrades in Paris also began to vacillate. This became apparent at a meeting called precisely to discuss the insurgency. Those who were committed to it did their best to convince the skeptics. Durruti and Ascaso were the most dedicated to the undertaking, perhaps because their optimism demanded such continued and dramatic activity. However, in this case, in which participants were risking their lives, it was difficult to compel the unwilling to partake. Nonetheless, Durruti spoke to the group, not to persuade anyone, but simply to make some points that he considered elemental for understanding revolutionary action:
<quote>
When, how, and in what way can we know that “things” are ready? Yes, it’s true that the news from Barcelona is not very encouraging, but it’s no less true that the basic preconditions necessary for a revolutionary action exist and are emerging, at least in Catalonia, and especially in Barcelona. The dictator has picked a fight with the Catalanists, but has only made new friends for us by doing so. He exiles intellectuals like Unamuno and Soriano, sows discontent among the middle class, and practices the most shameless favoritism. The war in Morocco is dragging on, and the soldiers don’t want to go there and die. Don’t you see positive elements in all this, especially when linked to the conditions of the peasantry and the working class in certain regions? Of course there are negatives, but it’s the clash between the positive and the negative that produces the spark. We have the right and the obligation to force the negative to clash with the positive and cause the spark. Is that <em>adventurism</em>? Then I say that all revolutions have been triggered by adventurists. Yes, it’s possible that we’re wrong and that we’ll pay with our lives or end up in prison. That’s conceivable. But I’m certain sure that rebellions like this are not in vain and that they bring us a closer to the generalized revolt.
I’m not trying to convince anyone. An act like this has to be done by people committed to the basic ideas that I’ve outlined tonight.
</quote>
Durruti’s speech was not meant to set alight fleeting enthusiasms. It was not a leader’s harangue, but simply clear speech among revolutionaries. How were his words understood? We don’t know, but none of the committed comrades were absent on the day of the action. [145] Shortly after this meeting several things occurred that were going to enhance the likelihood of the guerrilla action’s success. Unamuno and Soriano arrived in Paris after escaping from the Canary Islands and the editor of <em>Le Quotidien</em> put the pages of his newspaper at their disposal so that they could voice their criticisms of the dictatorship and Spain’s socio-political conditions.
Likewise, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, the celebrated novelist from Valencia, perhaps embarrassed by his retiring life in Menton, plucked up the courage to join the fray and signed his name to a French-language pamphlet denouncing Alfonso XIII and the militarist terror in Spain.
There were good reasons to be upbeat about the guerrilla operation. Orobón Fernández, one of the participants, describes it as follows:
<quote>
Comrades impatiently awaited the telegram in Paris, Lyon, Perpignan, Marseilles, and in every French city where anarchist groups existed. Those of us who lived through those moments of combative fever will never forget them. We all knew that we would have to assemble on the border when the telegram came and cross it fighting tooth and nail against the border police. Everyone was aware that we were going to battle large, well-organized, and better armed forces than ours. Many would pay with their lives, although the revolutionary action would ultimately succeed. We didn’t care about the risks. Liberty is well worth many lives!
The telegram arrived and we quickly set off for the border in groups of ten or twelve, taking a pistol as the only weapon, acquired at the cost of who knows how many hardships. In the Quai d’Orsay train station, the departure point for those in Paris, we could see [Domingo] Ascaso handing out tickets to the comrades before he boarded with the final contingent, carrying heavy suitcases loaded with twenty-five Winchesters, the longest arms of the expedition.
As agreed, the comrades in Barcelona set out to take the Atarazanas artillery barracks. To avoid attracting attention, they approached in very small groups. They intended to attack with grenades at 6:00 am.
Atarazanas is in Barcelona’s fifth district, which has always been a well-watched neighborhood. Barricades always appear first there and it is also the home to the <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> printing press, the editorial offices of <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> and <em>Crisol</em>, the Wood Worker and Construction worker unions, and the many comrades who like to live close to their centers and newspapers. Due to the pervasive surveillance, and despite all the precautions taken, the police must have noticed something. One of the groups heading toward the barracks found itself blocked by a guard patrol, which tried to arrest them. This caused a heavy shootout, which left one guard dead and another injured. The panic spread and the police—executioners armed with machineguns—surrounded the barracks. It was impossible to carry out the planned attack.
Police arrested Comrades Montejo and Llácer nearby. They were summarily judged and executed. They faced death with great fortitude.
Given the failure of the Barcelona action, those of us going to the border didn’t have the slightest chance of success.
The comrades who left for Vera and Hendaya, which were the points closest to Paris, arrived eighteen hours before those who went to the other sites along the border. They took care of the first detachment that they encountered, but were later surprised by superior forces after an exhausting march through the mountains. They had to retreat while fighting. Two comrades were killed, one seriously injured, and the others were arrested two days later, some of whom were executed in Pamplona. The rest will be tried and their hearings will likely be taking place when this correspondence is published.
When those who were going to attack the border near Figueras and Gerona reached Perpignan, they read about the Vera events in the newspapers. They had arrived eighteen hours too late! Of the nearly one thousand comrades that met in Perpignan, many had to disperse, others were captured, and only some fifty could escape the security forces and take the suitcases of Winchesters and bullets up to the slopes of the Pyrenees. A comrade from a small Spanish village met them there, who was to guide them through the mountains to Figueras, where they would attack the prison holding a large number of comrades, including Elías García, Pedro Mateu, Sancho Alegre, Clascu, and the accused of Cullera. Our guide told us the bad news: several regiments were waiting along the border, with machine-guns and artillery. The authorities had taken significant defensive measures and thus we were unable to attack by surprise, which was one of the principal factors of success.
Our undertaking was impossible.
Crying with rage and anger, and a little ashamed at having been defeated without a fight, we had to return to our points of departure. That day, in the middle of the mountain, a thousand meters above the sea, I saw many of those fifty men cry, lamenting that they had been unable to give their lives to the revolution.
Ascaso was among them. Durruti among those of Vera. Jover with those who attacked the Atarazanas barracks in Barcelona.
It was a naïve attempt, clumsy, whatever you want; but those men possessed a great revolutionary passion and for this they deserve everyone’s respect. They failed, that is all. We have failed so many times, but one day we will triumph![146]
</quote>
What does it mean to fail? Failing in relation to what? Those in Barcelona and the Pyrenees who rose up in November 1924 were not trying to seize power and didn’t believe that they alone would bring down the dictatorship. They only wanted to demonstrate that it was time to stop being afraid. And they didn’t achieve it because those who had to defeat fear were defeated by it. That is all.
But it soon became clear that Alfonso XIII and his dictator were truly frightened. Martínez Anido sent operatives to France to discredit the action’s organizers by spreading rumors designed to make it seem that the whole thing had been a police conspiracy. Parallel to this disinformation campaign, Alfonso XIII’s government undertook another, more efficient action: it pressed the French government to move against Spanish anarchists living in France.
This had immediate results: homes were searched, arrests were made, and people expelled. Many of the participants in the uprising went to Belgium and others set off for South America.
Despite the fact that the police were searching for them actively, Ascaso and Durruti did not want to leave France before finding out more about the situation in Barcelona and the new activities planned by the Revolutionary Committee. While waiting for this information, they holed up in the outskirts of Paris in a house provided by some Parisian anarchists.
They did not have to wait for long. The Revolutionary Committee in Barcelona sent Ricardo Sanz to tell Ascaso and Durruti about the organization’s dreadful circumstances and how it urgently needed money. They thought that an excursion to Latin America might be a solution, enabling them to arouse emigrants’ interest in developments in Spain as well as collect the much-needed funds.
Thus, using false passports, Durruti and Ascaso set off for the Americas from the port of Le Havre in late December 1924.
** CHAPTER XI. Guerrillas in Latin America
The stopover in New York was brief; only long enough to stock up for the trip to Cuba. Although Ascaso and Durruti were heading to Argentina, they decided to spend some time in the Caribbean island once they set foot in Havana. They went to the home of a young man by the name of J.A., a Spanish émigré who supported libertarian ideas and whose address they had received from Ricardo Sanz. J.A. was as young as his two visitors, but didn’t share their faith in revolutionary violence. He could be described as an evolutionary anarchist.
J.A. received Durruti and Ascaso fraternally and opened his home to them, but they soon quarreled over the question of strategy. J.A., like the other Spanish anarchists living in Cuba, thought that the anarchist’s task was educational and that it was futile to try to cut short the journey to a libertarian society, particularly given the lack of education among the country’s poor strata. While the misery and desperation reigning among them might provoke explosions of rage, such irruptions could not go further due to the proletariat’s lack of theoretical maturity. Propaganda, J.A. told Durruti and Ascaso, was what mattered most: spreading anarchist theory to make anarchist ideas penetrate the workers’ minds.
“Your undertaking is doomed to failure,” he said. “The Spanish and Cuban workers will give you some pesos but nothing more, despite the terrible conditions in which they live. Don’t expect anything else. And if you do try to stir things up, you’ll either be expelled from the country or thrown in prison, from which it’s very difficult to leave in Cuba unless it’s feet first.” [147]
At the time, Gerardo Machado governed Cuba—a tyrant who kept himself in power through fear, like all those of his ilk. Superficially, the country seemed somewhat prosperous, but this only concealed the domination of Yankee capital in the country and the city. It was enough to visit the taverns and workers’ neighborhoods to be see the moral and physical misery of the populace. Prostitution was ubiquitous and even encouraged by the government.
Propaganda is necessary—Ascaso and Durruti said—but theory is a dead letter if not accompanied by action. This is especially true when there are so many illiterates, who are precisely those that propaganda is supposed to influence. And, furthermore, if propaganda is not backed up by an organization, then the movement’s press and magazines are at the mercy of the authorities: they’re shut down and destroyed, their editors imprisoned. The pessimism among anarchists in Cuba, or at least those with whom Durruti and Ascaso interacted, did not deter them. Why should Cuba be different from Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, or other countries with large and dynamic anarchist movements? And, besides, the Cuban people had victoriously fought against Spain for national independence: did they do so simply to be dominated by the dollar? The fact that the United States had sunk its talons into the country didn’t diminish the merit of the Cuban anti-colonial struggle, but anarchists had to show that political independence needed to be complemented by economic independence, which is impossible to achieve with bourgeois politics. Political independence hadn’t resolved anything: the same economic structures and the same ruling class from the colonial period remained. No theory was more relevant than anarchism for denouncing the bourgeoisie’s false solutions, while also pointing toward the most direct path to real human liberation. But anarchism’s critical message—said Durruti and Ascaso—must not be enclosed in a small circle of true believers. Anarchists have to take to the street, actively promote their ideas, and mix with the urban and rural workers. The written word must become practical action.
Durruti and Ascaso became port workers. They loaded and unloaded the ships, socialized in the taverns, and lived alongside their workmates in the hovels that served as homes. Their fellow workers soon appreciated the two Spaniards; particularly Durruti, thanks to his brawn and readiness to lend a hand to the weakest. Sharing these work and life experiences exposed them to the proletarians’ miseries and humiliations and also to their disappointments in all the so-called leaders that urged them to act but left them in the lurch when it counted most. Fatalistically, the workers expected nothing but endless toil and then death, the only remedy for their misery. Indeed, superstition and fatalism were the two primary obstacles to any discussion about abolishing their physical and moral suffering. Talk of organization, of unionization, of forming groups, only invoked the memory of a leader that had deceived them or the image of being dragged off to prison in handcuffs; to one of those prisons from which you only leave “feet first.”
But neither Ascaso nor Durruti let themselves be overcome by the prevailing discouragement and felt duty bound to convince their fellow workers that they were right to respond in such a way to the leaders and prison and, precisely to avoid being tricked or incarcerated, they should neither entrust themselves to politicians nor rebel individually. When a “professional” leads the union, he’ll inevitably betray the rank and file. Likewise, when a worker responds in isolation he is imprisoned or beaten to a pulp. It is the workers alone who should make up the union and they must not admit anyone unfamiliar with the direct effects of exploitation. And it is pointless to rebel individually: the revolt has to be collective. If the union is you—Ascaso and Durruti argued—and you are all perpetually vigilant and expel those who try to impose themselves upon you, then you will prevent the emergence of new leaders. If you stay united and insist on your demands, Machado won’t have enough police to beat you or enough cells in which to jail you. Little by little, with simple language, a clear stance, and ideas like “you have to lead your struggles yourselves, without bosses or leaders,” the idea of organization took hold among the port workers. It was concretized in an organization that federated with other associations already operating among tobacco and food industry workers.
Durruti revealed himself to be a talented mass agitator at the meetings and assemblies. He used simple but devastating language and his speeches were more like ax blows than oratory. He had a unique ability to immediately arouse the interest of his listeners and sustain a strong bond with them throughout his talk.
Durruti started to make a name for himself, not only among workers but also the police. He was soon at risk of being arrested and thus he and Ascaso decided to disappear from Havana. They left the city in the company of a young Cuban who would guide through the island’s interior. They arrived in the Santa Clara district and started working as cane cutters on an estate between Cruce and Palmira. A sit-down strike erupted there a few days later, when the plantation owner reduced the cane cutters’ salary under the pretext of a drop in the price of sugar. Foremen quickly reported the work stoppage to the owner, who ordered everyone to gather in an open area in front of the estate house. The foremen circled around the assembled workers on horseback. The owner reproached the cutters for letting themselves be carried away by certain individuals, whose identities he knew very well. He then named the three men that, according to him, had instigated and organized the revolt. The foremen seized the three supposed ringleaders and dragged them off to the closest rural police post. The police appeared an hour later with the three laborers, who had been beaten so viciously that they fell lifelessly at their comrades’ feet. “Does anyone else wants to complain?” the employer bellowed. “The time you’ve wasted will be deducted from your pay. Hurry up, get to work!” His orders rang out like the crack of a whip. With lowered heads, the workers returned to the sugarcane fields, followed closely by the rural police.
Durruti and Ascaso were among those bowed laborers. While cutting cane and more cane, they spoke with their Cuban comrade and the three decided that they should teach the employer a lesson, one that would serve as an example to his colleagues.
The employer was found stabbed to death the next morning with a note reading: “The justice of <em>Los Errantes</em> [trans.: The Wanderers].” The police, who were waiting for such an incident, took off in pursuit of the “executioners.” But, early-risers that they were, they were already in the Camagüey province by then.
News of the murder spread like wildfire and inflated as it circulated. Ultimately the rumor was that “a gang of Spaniards called <em>Los Errantes</em> had executed a half dozen employers because they mistreated their employees.” Giving chase to the “assassins” was a matter of pride for the “rurales.” By executing this raid in a very public fashion, they hoped to scare off anyone who might consider imitating them. They struck out blindly in their search and beat some peasants and burned down their shacks under the pretense that they had hid <em>Los Errantes</em>.
It drove the rural police crazy that they couldn’t find on the perpetrators. Their frustration only increased when they learned that the corpse of a bullying foreman in the Jolquín district had just been found with a communiqué indicating that <em>Los Errantes</em> were responsible for his death. This new attack ended up confusing the “rurales” about the location of their culprits and filled the employers with such fear that they fortified themselves in their palaces with excessive distrust and suspicion. [148]
While the authorities sought <em><em>Los Errantes</em></em> in the island’s interior, they had already reached Havana, with the intention of escaping the dangerous situation right away. We know how they were able to disappoint Machado’s police thanks to a witness’s account:
<quote>
Seeing that it was impossible stay in Cuba any longer, they decided to go to Mexico. They rented a small cutter to ferry them outside the port and, once they were cleaving the bay, demanded that the boatmen take them onboard any of the ships rigged to set sail.
The frightened boatmen took them to one of the fishing ships. They boarded and then forced the skipper to raise the anchor, while taking the two skippers of the cutter with them.
Once they were at high sea, with pistols in hand, they demanded that the fishing boat’s skipper head to Mexico.
They sailed to the Yucatan coast, where they disembarked after lavishly rewarding the Cuban sailors.
Disembarking was not easy. Two or three detectives from the Mexican Treasury noticed their arrival and, thinking that they were smugglers, decided to take them to the Progresso port and hand them over to police.
While walking, Durruti offered a certain sum in exchange for freedom....
The Treasury agents were more interested in the money than delivering their suspects. With directions provided by the government agents themselves, our friends arrived in Mérida and from there went to Progreso, where they set off for Veracruz.[149]
</quote>
A Mexican anarchist named Miño was waiting for them in the port of Veracruz, which indicates that Durruti or Ascaso had written Mexican comrades and told them that they were coming. Miño brought them to Rafael Quintero’s house in the Mexican capital. He was a leader of the Mexican Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT) [150] and had fought in the Mexican revolution alongside Emiliano Zapata. He also had a print shop at 13 Miralle Plaza, where he put them up at first. [151]
A few days later, Quintero took them to the CGT’s office at 3 Vizcaínas Plaza. Economic problems hampering the CGT’s publication were the topic of discussion at the meeting held on the night of their visit. Without saying a word, <em>Los Errantes</em> donated forty pesos to the newspaper. [152]
The meeting was depressing for the two Errantes, not only because of the financial hardships suffered by the anarcho-syndicalist organization but also because of its lack of dynamism. It was clearly living off the legacy of the Mexican revolution, which was little more than a memory by then. The best had died and the survivors had accommodated themselves to the new situation. Some even joined the new “revolutionary power,” which rewarded them with governmental appointments. This is how, for example, some ex-anarcho-syndicalists became governors. It was only the old comrades of Flores Magón, who died in a Yankee prison three years earlier, who really kept the spirit of anarchism alive. They hadn’t forgotten the principle that “revolution and law can’t cohabitate; the true revolution is always illegal,” to cite a posthumously published essay by Flores Magón. [153] The militants who carried on Magón’s work were those persecuted by all governments, and it was among them that Durruti and Ascaso found housing and support.
They stayed in Rafael Quintero’s print shop for several weeks, while they waited for Alejandro Ascaso and Gregorio Jover’s arrival in Mexico City in late March 1925. When the four reunited, they decided that it would be best to leave the city. Quintero suggested that they take up residence in a small farm in Ticomán. Román Delgado, who owned the property, welcomed the four Spaniards and introduced them to the local anarchist group, which included Nicolás Bernal, the aforementioned Delgado, Herminia Cortés, and others. [154]
In April 1925, there was a robbery at the office of a thread and fabric factory called “La Carolina.” Not long after this occurred, all the witnesses that we have consulted affirm that a large sum of money was delivered to the CGT. The donation was made in support of its publication and also its efforts to start a Rationalist School like those that Francisco Ferrer y Guardia created in Spain in 1901.
<quote>
Several weeks had passed and we hadn’t heard anything from them. Then suddenly they showed up out of nowhere, elegantly dressed and driving an older Buick. Durruti asked: “Has the newspaper come out?” When he was told yes, he wanted to read the published issues. “Are there still financial problems?” “Of course there are!” Durruti responded by handing over a considerable amount of cash. When he did so, Durruti noted that he was looked upon with some suspicion and, to dispel any doubts among the Mexican comrades, he showed a letter from Sebastián Faure that he was carrying in his pocket acknowledging the receipt of large quantity destined for the social library.[155]
</quote>
Another witness writes the following about this period of Durruti’s hazardous life:
<quote>
It was a surprise. He invited me to lunch, but not without first asking me to dress in my finest suit, since we were going to one of the best restaurants in the port. I refused initially, not because I had qualms, but simply out of an aversion to anything that went against my life and thought as a militant. He insisted, saying that it was imperative that I join him. He had to talk with me and couldn’t invite me to a modest restaurant because he had come to Tampico disguised as a wealthy man. I was intrigued and finally accepted. Why not? I was curious and also eager to savor dishes that I hadn’t tasted for a long time. When we finished eating, Durruti told me: “What would you think if we had thousands of pesos to start a hundred schools like the one founded by the Petroleum Union?”
“That’s a dream, Miguel,” I said. (Miguel was the name that Durruti used at the time.)
“Well, it’s not a fantasy. I might be able to handover 100,000 pesos to your confederation.”
Durruti was very fond of children, which is why he risked his life robbing banks to support their education. When we said goodbye, he told me:
“Look, I know that you’re men and that you’re everything for your ideals. But we <em>Errantes</em> work in silence and wager all to serve our convictions.
You do things differently: you fight against the state legally, we challenge it illegally.”[156]
</quote>
And we take this statement from Venezuela’s Ruta magazine:
<quote>
Old Mexican comrades still remember Durruti’s passage through the Aztec capital. He was one of the most fervent promoters of the Mexican CGT, led by Jacinto Huitrón, Rafael Quintero, and an additional handful of libertarians at that time. He was also naturally modest and had a pure love of the ideology.
</quote>
After describing the serious financial obstacles faced by the CGT as it tried to set up a rationalist school, columnist Víctor García wrote:
<quote>
Durruti had the virtue of grasping problems quickly, often intuitively, and understood the mindset of these well-meaning comrades. In a confidential conversation with the CGT Council, he requested that they permit him to solve their economic problem. When asked what he had in mind, he said that he would explain that later. Two days afterwards, Durruti handed over a large sum of money to the School Committee and told them: “I took this money from the bourgeoisie... Of course they wouldn’t have given it to me if I’d just asked!” The following day newspapers in the Mexican capital published a long article on the robbery of the “La Carolina” factory and reported the exact sum stolen. That was the amount, without a centavo less, that Buenaventura Durruti had handed over to the militants putting together the Rationalist School.[157]
</quote>
Of course things don’t always go smoothly when money is raised in such a way. In the case of “La Carolina,” the cashier grabbed the telephone to call the police during the holdup, there was a struggle, and a shot was fired that killed the employee. This, and the fact that several other robberies and attempted robberies had already occurred, made life very risky for <em>Los Errantes</em>. They decided that it would be best to leave Mexico at once. It was not for fear of police raids; these focused on poor neighborhoods, whereas Durruti and Ascaso were staying in a luxury hotel (under the name of “Mendoza”—an “owner of mines in Peru”—and his companion). Nonetheless, “one day, with only a few bags, false passports, and not too many pesos in their pockets, they left the hotel and began the journey back to Cuba. They left ‘Mendoza’ the responsibility of settling the bill.” [158]
It was May 1925 and the four Spaniards were evidently in desperate straits since, according to Atanasia Rojas, “they had been forced to sell various things, including the car, to finance the trip to Cuba.” Naturally, given their previous activities there, Cuba was not even remotely secure for Durruti and Ascaso, and so they stayed on the island only long enough to hold up Havana’s Banco de Comercio. Immediately afterwards, they took off for Valparaíso, Chile on the Oriana steamer. They planned to meet Victor Recoba and Antonio Rodrìguez in Chile, but could not, because the latter two were not in the country.
A French jockey was also onboard the ship that took them from Havana to Valparaíso, who thought the Spaniards were heading to Chile on business. We note the presence of this individual because he will be the Chilean police’s primary source of information, after the events that we are going to relate. The Oriana arrived in Valparaíso on June 9, 1925 and on July 16 the Mataderos branch of the Bank of Chile was held up. We can see traces of Ascaso and Durruti in a Chilean police report: “They worked at odd jobs until the bank robbery and continued working afterwards, from July 16 to early August. The owner of the rooming house where they stayed described them as five, well-mannered men who spoke continuously about social struggles, calling themselves revolutionary Spaniards and saying that they were traveling the Americas in search of money to finance the movement against the Spanish monarchy.” [159]
According to Chilean police, 46,923 Chilean pesos were stolen from the Bank of Chile during the July robbery. They report: “After seizing the money, the unknown assailants fled in an automobile at a high speed, shooting in the air and creating immense confusion in that densely populated area.
A bank employee grabbed onto the car while it was tearing out. One of the thieves shouted at him, telling him to let go, but the employee didn’t give up.
He got him off with a shot.”
Durruti, Francisco and Alejandro Ascaso, and Gregorio Jover stayed in Chile. The fifth man immediately left for Spain after the holdup. Who was the fifth man? Antonio Rodríguez. Indeed, it was none other than “El Toto,” also known as Gregorio Martínez. They used the entirety of the 46,923 pesos to support the underground struggle against Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship.
<em>Los Errantes</em> left for Buenos Aires in early August 1925. Before continuing with our biography, we must make a brief detour into Argentina’s workers’ movement in general and its anarchist movement in particular.
** CHAPTER XII. From Simón Radowitzky to Boris Wladimirovich
Due to circumstances beyond their control, Durruti and Ascaso’s “Latin American excursion” would end in the country where it should have begun. And, even worse, police from three countries were chasing the Errantes for “crimes” of a character that had divided the Argentine anarchist movement in 1925. Specifically, some anarchists advocated expropriation and attacks on individuals, while others vigorously opposed such tactics and believed that they were destructive to the movement. The tendency toward violence was a natural consequence of the Argentine state’s vicious oppression of the workers’ movement. Indeed, government harassment and the high number of anarchists among the waves of immigrants and exiles arriving in the country meant that there would be an abundance of combative anarchists in Argentina.
Argentina’s militant labor federation, the FORA (Federación Obrera Regional Argentina), was founded in 1901. The emergence of this organization must be placed in the context of the long history of attempts to build a unified the workers’ movement in the country, whose first precedent was the appearance of a section of the International Association of Workers (or First International) in 1872. The First International and similar efforts later ended in failure in Argentina due to the interminable conflicts between social-democrats, marxists, “syndicalists,” and anarchists, much like to those that occurred in Europe. Anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists predominated in the labor movement, particularly in the artisanal trades. Their prevalence was evident at the FORA’s so-called Fifth Congress in August 1905, where participants decided by a large margin to embrace “anarchist communism” as the federation’s ideological identity. For their part, the social democrats had organized the Socialist Party in 1896, which belonged to the reformist and parliamentarian Second International.
A workers’ organization will not exist without class conflict and the class conflict will not exist without the bourgeoisie. Workers’ organizations began to appear in Argentina in the 1880s because the country had evolved, economically and industrially, to such an extent that the bases of bourgeois society, and consequently the class struggle, had taken shape. This struggle was going to unfold in its purest form there.
“There was a tremendous fear of the workers,” wrote Diego Abad de Santillán, “and every effort was made to weaken the movement triggered by the Buenos Aires bakers’ strike in August 1902. During this strike, Judge Navarro ordered police to raid the FORA—the headquarters of eighteen unions in the capital—and they caused tremendous damage to furniture and books.... The result of the attack was the opposite of what the judge had hoped: workers became infuriated and protested energetically. Socialist orators joined the anarchists to condemn the outrage and they held a joint rally on August 17 that 20,000 workers attended.” [160] Proletarian radicalism grew and subsequent strikes were settled violently; with police brutality on the one hand and worker sabotage and boycotts on the other.
The government did not want a May Day celebration to occur that year, but the FORA called a rally in Buenos Aires for May 1, 1904 anyway. Participants departed from the Lorea Plaza and congregated around the Mazzini statue on Julio Avenue. More than 100,000 people came to the event, according to estimates published in the bourgeois press. This was an enormous number, considering that the Argentine capital had only one million residents at the time. The police suddenly began to fire at the demonstrators and, when armed workers responded, an intense shootout began. A sailor named Juan Ocampo was shot and killed. Approximately three hundred protesters surrounded his body and several men hoisted it onto their shoulders. The enraged workers marched to the office of the anarchist weekly <em>La Protesta</em> on Córdoba Street. Police tried to stop them several times but realized that these armed men were prepared to fight back and thus contented themselves with following from afar. Militants later took Ocampo’s body from the office of the anarchist newspaper to the FORA building on Chile Street, where they left it in the care of the working people of Buenos Aires. The workers inside the building saw police mobilizing outside in a battle deployment. The militants recognized that another confrontation would be futile and left willingly. The guardians of law and order took advantage of this to seize Ocampo’s body and bury it secretly. In addition to killing the sailor, the gunfire wounded more than thirty workers. These events are known as the Mazzini massacre.
This bloody crackdown didn’t subdue the working class; on the contrary, worker militancy increased throughout the country. In June 1905, the Longshoreman or Port Workers’ Union called a South American congress to form a Federation of Maritime and Land Transport Workers that would unify all the transport unions in South America. The circular laying the foundations of the initiative said:
<quote>
This Committee resolves to hold ... the First Congress of the South American Maritime and Land Transport Workers. The Maritime Transport associations in the following Republics will take part: Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Mexico. We will create a South American alliance and discuss the best way to counteract the advances of insatiable capitalism and also begin dialogue with the International Federation of Transport Workers based in Hamburg [Germany].
</quote>
This initiative was very significant, both socially and politically. For the labor movement, it meant strengthening international ties among workers in a continent formed by a mosaic of states created according to the interests of the ruling classes. Spain first dominated the area and then came the neocolonial powers of Great Britain and the United States. For the ruling classes, the rise of independent proletarian organizations was a threat to the partnership between the local bourgeoisie and imperialist powers. They were particularly worried about the possibility of unity among the Latin American workers’ movements and any attempt to redefine the integration of the diverse Spanish speaking countries in liberatory terms. For this reason, the state persistently and brutally attacked the workers’ rebellions, their unions, and their federation (the FORA).
The May Day rallies after the one narrated above were equally intense. The reason lay in the terrible conditions to which the working class was subjected. The workers’ responded by declaring their commitment to anarchist communism at the FORA’s Fifth Congress in 1905 and, afterwards, the workers’ movement became increasingly aggressive. In 1906 alone, there were thirty-nine strikes in Buenos Aires, in which a total of 137,000 workers participated, and an average of six hundred laborers were on strike at any given time. This pervasive social antagonism put the rulers on edge. Indeed, the increasing pressure from the workers and the spread of anarchist propaganda was especially irritating for Buenos Aires Police Chief Colonel Falcón. He swore that he would crush the libertarians and, in his effort to do so, continuously violated individual liberties, abolished the freedom of association, instituted restrictive laws, and wantonly applied martial law. A war was brewing between the workers and the Argentine state.
The government applied the so-called “State of Siege” for the first time in 1902, which swept away the most venerated constitutional rights, and it was imposed thereafter for long periods of time by almost all elected or de facto governments. It was the exception rather than the rule to live under constitutional law. Furthermore, that same year the government also passed one of the most hated laws in Argentine history: the Ley de Residencia (number 4,144), which remained in force for more than half a century. This law enabled the government to deport all foreigners that it deemed undesirable. It was a direct attack on the working class, which is obvious when one considers the very high number of immigrant workers—especially Italians and Spaniards—that began to arrive in Argentina in 1875 and continued to do so until 1914. The law was an excellent weapon for the government, which it used to free itself of forward thinking men who struggled for democracy and liberty.
The FORA reacted to the regime’s arrogance by calling on the workers to rebel and fight class exploitation. The year 1909 would be decisive in this bitter war between the high-bourgeoisie (a satellite and accomplice of international capitalists) and Argentines condemned to the worst working conditions, which they shared with the masses of immigrants brought into the country as cheap labor.
The high-bourgeoisie and Argentine statesmen were preparing to commemorate the anniversary of the country’s first government on May 25, 1910. One hundred years earlier the area known as the United Provinces of the River Plate separated from Spain and became Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. However, heirs of these nineteenth century national liberation struggles saw the working class’s growing militancy with disdain and believed that class conflict was something “alien to the lands of the River Plate.” The dominant class simply could not understand that the country’s economic development and incorporation into the capitalist world market as a semi-colony required the emergence of the class struggle. It was inevitable that a revolutionary movement would emerge. The bourgeoisie and its government representatives responded with outrage; trying to silence every voice of protest and human dignity with the police, shutting down unions, banning the workers’ newspapers, breaking into and destroying proletarian centers and libraries, and imprisoning and deporting activists who rose up in defense of the rights of man.
Nevertheless, the workers did not retreat and began 1909 by calling general strikes, rallies, and gatherings. There was deep outrage at the execution of Francisco Ferrer in Spain, whose death was among the issues prompting the anger and protests.
“Like almost always, two demonstrations occurred on May 1 that year: one organized by the Socialists and one called by the anarchists. The anarchists gathered in Lorea Plaza (today Congreso), whereas the Socialists assembled in Constitution Plaza. Around 30,000 people participated in the former. After they began marching, the police charged and fired at the people. It was impossible to stop this unanticipated attack and a massacre took place. President Figueroa Alcorta’s government draped itself in glory. There were eight deaths and 105 injured among the demonstrators. A including a young Russian named Simón Radowitzky was among the aggrieved workers.” [161]
In response to this brutality, the Socialists in the Unión General de Trabajadores and the anarchists in the FORA called a general strike and declared that their members would not resume working “until the imprisoned comrades are freed and the unions reopened.” The strike lasted for a week, and it was both spirited and unanimous, despite government violence during those seven days. Authorities ultimately had to cede; they released eight hundred prisoners, repealed the municipal code of penalties, and permitted unions to be reopened. But Colonel Falcón, the instigator and ringleader of the oppression, was still at the head of the police. This was a mockery and a provocation to the working class.
The May Day assault deeply shook Simón Radowitzky, who was only eighteen years old and a recent arrival in the country. Working completely alone, he decided to free the people of the bloodthirsty animal that tormented them: he killed Colonel Falcón with a bomb on November 14, 1909. One month had passed since Alfonso XIII had executed Francisco Ferrer. As expected, a violent crackdown followed the murder. Although the government banned <em>La Protesta</em>, its editors still managed to release a clandestine bulletin applauding the young Russian. Likewise, the FORA also used an illegal publication ( <em>Nuestra Defensa</em>) to praise Simon Radowitzky’s act of vengeance.
It was in the midst of this climate of violence that the patriotic and bourgeois commemoration of the centenary of Argentine independence was being planned. The FORA wanted to transform the event into a revolutionary and internationalist celebration and called a South American workers’ congress for April 30 of that year. All the labor associations sympathetic to the FORA’s ideas said that they would attend.
From their respective countries, the Latin American bourgeoisie decried the gathering and pushed Argentina to finally get the unruly anarchists in line. The heavy repression began on May 13: the government declared a state of emergency and imposed police terror everywhere. The first to be arrested were the editors of the <em>La Protesta,</em> <em>La Batalla</em>, and the members of the Federal Councils of the FORA and CORA (Confederación Obrera Regional Argentina, which emerged from a 1909 split in the FORA and was “syndicalist” and “economicist” in orientation). Authorities then detained many prominent militants, including a large number of foreigners. Gangs of thugs organized demonstrations and took to the streets, all with the support of the bourgeoisie, the government, and the police. They ransacked and burned down centers of proletarian agitation, including the offices of <em>La Protesta</em> and the Socialist paper <em>La Vanguardia</em>.
The government packed Ushuaia with prisoners. This infamous penitentiary in southern Argentina was commonly known as the “cemetery of living men.” Many foreigners were also deported. And yet, despite all this, the Buenos Aires workers still had the courage to declare a general strike to protest the centenary and the bourgeois-police terror.
After the events in 1910, the FORA spent three years underground. It began to re-organize its unions after authorities relaxed some legal restrictions in 1913. Older militants were shocked to see a new, younger generation in their ranks that had joined the struggle during the difficult, underground period.
Although there were still class conflicts after the First World War, they were less bloody than before. One reason for this may be the split that occurred at the FORA’s ninth congress in April 1915. One faction, which called itself the “FORA of the Ninth Congress,” adopted a syndicalist line, while the other—the “FORA of the Fifth Congress”—held fast to organization’s anarchist stance. A bitter dispute erupted between the two groups and energies that they should used to fight the bourgeoisie were wasted in intra-movement battles.
In early 1917, the bourgeoisie launched another offensive against the workers. Police killed twenty-six proletarians that year alone. There was also a new rise in workers’ militancy in response to the Russian Revolution and the agitation that erupted in 1919 and 1920: the factory occupations in Turín, the workers’ councils in Bavaria, the revolution in Hungry, and the multiple forms of subversion throughout Spain. All these events had a powerful impact in Argentina and created a highly politicized youth, who joined the FORA (of the “Fifth Congress,” which we will call the FORA hereafter) and other radical groups. Then something extraordinary took place: the spontaneous emergence of revolutionary consciousness, which was ultimately unable to lead to a revolution (because it was spontaneous). All these passions resulted in the “Tragic Week” of January 1919. A situation emerged that seemed revolutionary but, in reality, needed more solid foundations to be so. The anarchists could not work miracles or simply seize the state like the Bolsheviks. The revolutionary spontaneity gave everything it could and then collapsed after the first onslaught. The lesson of the “Tragic Week” was the pressing need to organize the revolution. Although the proletariat was going to pay dearly for its lack of preparation, its impulses filled the ruling classes with terror. That is why the bourgeoisie unleashed the tremendous wave of persecution after the 1919 insurrectionary strike. Authorities dragged 55,000 into police stations across the country and turned the Martín García Island into a prison. Amazingly, the FORA and its unions, the workers’ groups and their newspapers, continued to survive and publish (although underground). In fact, a new workers’ daily called the Tribuna Proletaria began to appear.
During this rebirth of the workers’ movement, which we locate in 1920, the Russian Revolution had a strong impact in Argentina, as it had in countries around the world. The question of whether or not to support the Soviet Union became a source of conflict within the FORA: enthusiasm for Russia and its “dictatorship of the proletariat” swept up some FORA militants, much as it had captivated activists at the CNT’s Congress in 1919. “This dissension,” writes Abad de Santillán, “weakened the FORA precisely when it was on the verge of absorbing the country’s entire labor movement into its heart.”
The FORA of the Ninth Congress supported the “anarcho-Bolshevik” current within the FORA (of the Fifth Congress) and even financed their pro-Bolshevik newspapers. Ultimately, the Bolshevik supporters in the FORA and the FORA of the Ninth Congress fused to create a new workers’ organization in March 1922: the Unión Sindical Argentina. Lamentable acts of proletarian abandonment occurred between 1920 and 1922. During these difficult years, Moscow’s agents came to Buenos Aires to divide the workers’ movement, partially achieving what the Maurín-Nin group had attempted unsuccessfully in Spain.
“The agitation in Patagonia,” wrote Santillán “began to be a public concern around this time [August 1921]. At first it was a simple rebellion with modest demands, but police persecution and landowner hatred transformed it into a historic event. It enveloped thousands of ranch workers and lasted almost a year, until the National Army savagely annihilated it. Dead and injured workers numbered in the thousands. The hero of those brilliant days was the Lieutenant Colonel Varela, ‘the pacifier.’”
Divisions in the workers’ movement bore responsibility for this and other sad events during the period. FORA activists tried to end the internal debates and dedicate themselves to rebuilding the labor movement, but the damage had already been done. And, as expected, in the midst of these intramovement conflicts, a united front emerged against the anarchist movement. How were the militant anarchists going to respond? The most immediate reply came from a German worker named Kurt Wilkens who was active in Buenos Aires’s anarchist groups. With a bomb and some bullets, he killed the “pacifier” of Patagonia on January 23, 1923.
Men like Simón Radowitzky and Kurt Wilkens naturally made a powerful impression upon the youth, who had been educated as militants in the heat of defeats, massacres, and that united front against the anarchist movement. And, since one drop of water resembles another, the same thing that occurred in Spain in the early 1920s happened in Argentina: the organization of revolutionary defense against government terror. Expropriation would be one of the strategies of a movement that the bourgeoisie and state had cornered and hoped to crush.
The first anarchist to use expropriation as a revolutionary strategy in Argentina was a Russian. He name was Germán Boris Wladimirovich and he was a doctor, biologist, writer, and painter. [162] At age twenty he was active in Lenin’s party but separated from the Russian Social Democrats—later called Bolsheviks—after their congress in 1906. Boris then began to turn toward anarchism until he finally devoted himself to the movement fully. He traveled through Germany, Switzerland, France, and ultimately settled in Argentina on his friends’ advice (after contracting a respiratory illness), where he spoke and wrote for the cause. Like Bakunin, Boris was a dedicated anarchist but never stopped being and feeling Russian. Indeed, his acts after the “Tragic Week” reflect his Russian roots.
Before the “Tragic Week,” a fascist organization began operating that was first known as the “Civil Guard” and later the “Patriotic League.” It was made up by sons of the Argentine bourgeoisie and led by Manuel Carlés, a doctor who was influential in governmental circles. Carlés put the League at the police’s service and its members actively participated in the crackdown on the workers both during and after the “Tragic Week.” The Patriotic League’s motto was: “Be a patriot, kill a Jew.” In Buenos Aires, the vast majority of Jews were Russian, but for Carlés and his supporters Jews and Russians were the same thing, especially when it was a question of fighting the Russian Revolution. These right-wingers called for a “slaughter of Russians!” in their muddled, nationalist tracts. Could this anti-Russian and anti-Semitic propaganda take root among Argentines? Unfortunately history offers many examples of collective psychosis...
Boris Wladimirovich was Russian, possibly Jewish, and knew from experience how dangerous these campaigns against “Russians” and “Jews” can be. Doubtlessly he thought of the constant pogroms in his homeland. How, then, could he explain the Russian Revolution to the Argentine people? Boris Wladimirovich and his compatriot Juan Konovezuk, both active in the FORA’s pro-Bolshevik wing, decided to start a newspaper to inform Argentines about the revolution in their country and undermine the influence of the Patriot League’s anti-Russian propaganda. But they had no money, so Boris—who probably had experience with expropriation in Russia—planed to holdup a jeweler. He and Juan Konovezuk carried out the unsuccessful heist on May 19, 1919. During the robbery, Konovezuk—who turned out to Andrés Babby, a thirty year old white Russian who had been in Buenos Aires for six years—shot a policeman to death. Both were arrested and the country’s press devoted a great deal of attention to the matter. At their trial, Boris declared: “A propagandist like me has to face these contingencies.... I already know that I won’t see the triumph of my ideas, but others will follow in my footsteps sooner or later.” Boris and Babby received life sentences and were incarcerated in Ushuaia.
The action carried out by these two Russians caused a debate to erupt among Argentine anarchists about the legitimacy of expropriation as a revolutionary strategy. <em>La Protesta</em> opposed the use of violence and attacks on individuals. It wanted to preserve an untainted anarchism, although it was difficult to do so while also calling for “class vengeance,” which was the maxim it used to defend Simón Radowitzky, Boris Wladimirovich, Kurt Wilkens, and Sacco and Vanzetti. In contrast to <em>La Protesta</em>’s contradictory and temperate position, the <em>La Antorcha</em> magazine argued that revolution and therefore revolutionaries are beyond the law by definition. Rodolfo González Pacheco, a strong personality reminiscent of Flores Magón, was this publication’s most outstanding figure. He was an incisive and steely writer, as demonstrated in the short pieces he published under the title “Posters” and other works. The divide between <em>La Protesta</em> and La Antorcha over revolutionary methods was absolute in 1923.
There were two additional figures of great significance among the “Antorchists:” Miguel Arcángel Roscigna and Severino di Giovanni. The former was a celebrated leader of the Buenos Aires metalworkers and secretary of the Prisoner and Persecuted Support Committee. The latter, a schoolteacher and secretary of the Italian Anti-Fascist Committee, had a sentimental and idealistic disposition. The brutal force of the state will soon transform him into “the idealist of violence.” [163] Boris Wladimirovich had put a mechanism into motion that only needed to be oiled. Hipólito Irigoyen, following the example of previous Argentine presidents, provided much of the “oil” with his methodological persecution and continued imprisonments. This was the situation in Argentina when <em>Los Errantes</em> arrived in August 1925.
** CHAPTER XIII. <em>Los Errantes</em> in Buenos Aires in 1925
We will say more about Severino di Giovanni. The child of a wealthy family, he was born in Italy on March 17, 1901 in the Abruzos region, 180 kilometers east of Rome. He studied to be a schoolteacher and, in his free time, typography. He began to explore anarchism as a youth through readings of Bakunin, Malatesta, Proudhon, and Kropotkin. He was orphaned at nineteen and, a year later, devoted himself completely himself to the anarchist movement.
The “March on Rome” occurred in 1922, and Mussolini took power shortly thereafter. Severino fled the country, along with his two brothers and many other radical workers. Some settled in France and others went to Argentina. Severino was among the latter group and arrived in Buenos Aries in May 1923. He promptly got a job as a typographic worker and joined the FORA.
The Radical Party governed the country then. This party represented the new middle classes, who were in conflict with the old landowner, rancher, and commercial oligarchy and wanted a greater opening for a democracy and liberalism that would favor their interests. Hipólito Irigoyen was the Radical Party’s main leader and became its first president: he ruled between 1916 and 1922, was reelected in 1928, and finally lost power after a military coup in 1930. Despite Irigoyen’s democratic populism, two waves of repression against the workers occurred during his first term in office: the first was during the January 1919 “Tragic Week” in Buenos Aires and the second was in 1921–1922, against the workers of Patagonia. Between 1922 and 1928, Doctor Marcelo Teodoro de Alvear occupied the presidency. He was also from the Radical Party, had strong links to the old regime, and was once Argentina’s ambassador to France. His spouse, Regina Pacini, was a “high society” Italian with sympathies for Mussolini. She doubtlessly encouraged her husband to fight the anti-fascist Italian exiles living in Argentina.
As an activist, di Giovanni immediately began working with the antifascist groups on Argentine soil; as a writer, he served as the Buenos Aires correspondent for <em>L’Adunata dei Refrattari</em>, the Italian-language anarchist magazine published in the United States. However, he was soon convinced that the anti-fascist groups in Argentina were little more than a harmless pastime for social-democratic, communist, and some liberal politicians. “For di Giovanni, multi-tendency anti-fascist organizing was a deception for the masses. That is why he started publishing the anarchist newspaper Cúlmine, which he wrote, laid out, and printed during his free time, in hours robbed from sleep.” This was the person who would scandalize the “crème de la crème” of the local ruling class at a cultural event organized by the Italian Embassy at the Colón Theater on June 6, 1925.
Italian ambassador Luigi Aldrovandi Marescotti was an aristocrat who wanted to exploit the twenty-fifth anniversary of Víctor Manuel III’s accession to the throne for political purposes. He decided to organize a celebration “in a big way,” that would both affirm his confidence in Mussolini and show the diplomatic corps that Italy’s political regime enjoyed good health and prestige. Indeed, Argentina was a very important stage upon which the dramas of Italian politics played out, due to the hundreds of thousands of Italian immigrants who had settled in the country over the previous decades. Many of them and their children, having “made it in America,” were now bourgeois to the bone and supported Mussolini’s fascism.
The Italian ambassador secured the attendance of the Argentine President and his spouse at the celebration at the Colón Theater. Of course the President was accompanied by all his ministers, with the minister of Foreign Relations at the head of the group. Numerous other ambassadors, consuls, and political personalities were present, as well as the high society “ladies and gentlemen” and representatives of the international monopolies. The bourgeois youth active in the Patriotic League were also there, working with the Italian embassy’s “black shirts.” In sum: this event in Buenos Aires—the so-called “Queen of the River Plata”—would be just as grand as any Fascist celebration in Rome.
The evening began with the Argentine national anthem, which the Municipal Band of Buenos Aires performed. After the customary applause, the musicians then began to play Italy’s Royal March. The bourgeoisie and Fascists stood up, while the ambassador sang the praises of Fascist Italy at the top of his lungs.
Suddenly, there was some commotion in the theater’s upper gallery, where the bourgeoisie had set aside seats so that the plebs could attend the event. The murmurs quickly became shouts and cries of “Assassins!” “Thieves!” “Matteotti!” rang out in theater. [164] Suddenly hundreds of leaflets protesting oppression in Italy rained down on the seats below, even falling onto the ambassador’s feet.
The “black shirts” had been strategically distributed throughout the theater precisely to stop an incident like this from occurring, but the disruption had caught them completely unawares. They immediately raced toward the unexpected outburst. A struggle erupted between the anti-fascists and the “black shirts,” who had not forgotten to bring along their truncheons. One of those shouting the loudest was a tall, young man with blond hair who was dressed in black. A “black shirt” took him by the neck and dragged him over the seats, but the youth fought back with the strength of a beast. After suffering numerous strikes, he dropped to the ground and audience members tried to punch and kick him. He finally stopped in the first row, where he continued denouncing Mussolini and his Fascist government. The dozen troublemakers dominated the theater for ten minutes—shouting and then trading blows with those trying to silence them—but were cornered and captured one-by-one. The youth dressed in black was the last to fall. They were dragged out of the theater, while the “crème de la crème” of Buenos Aires attempted to retaliate. They tried to spit on and kick the dissidents, who had insulted what many there regarded as their motherland, their king, and the king’s favorite, Mussolini.
Escorted to the street by high-ranking Italian soldiers, the rebels were handed over to the police and loaded into a paddy wagon. The last to enter was the young man in black, who spat a “Viva anarchy!” into the face of a stiff Italian soldier. [165] This youth was the only one among the arrestees to respond without evasion to police questioning. He declared that he was an anarchist and signed his statement with a firm hand: Severino di Giovanni. <em>Los Errantes</em> visited the editorial office of La Antorcha when they arrived in Buenos Aires. Donato Antonio Rizo, who ran the anarchist weekly, greeted them. He spoke to them about the political situation in Argentina, the conflicting views among anarchists about how to respond to government terror, and some of the comrades that he and other members of the La Antorcha group considered exemplary. One of those was Severino di Giovanni, an impassioned militant who thought “it was time for deeds, not words.” [166] Another was Roscigna, a distinguished activist from the metalworkers’ union who shouldered the weight of the Prisoner and Persecuted Support Committee. He was cerebral and strategic but when it was time to act, he always jumped in headfirst (unlike the party bureaucrats who hid behind their “operatives”).
Durruti and Ascaso knew of Diego Abad de Santillán and López Arango through mutual acquaintances, their writings, and their work with <em>La Protesta</em>. They also knew other comrades who had passed through Spain and now lived in Argentina, such as Gastón Leval, Rodolfo González Pacheco, and Teodoro Antilli (the latter two through their writings). Buenos Aires was home to some of the most talented men in the anarchist movement, but the vicissitudes of the struggle had left them bitterly divided. There was a clear split between the men of action and the theorists—which Spanish libertarians had managed to avoid—and the schism threatened to undermine the anarchists’ influence on the Argentine working class. In response to this, Los Errantes decided to refrain from any actions that could further aggravate the already heated debate over the legitimacy of revolutionary violence and expropriation. They resolved to search for common ground and calm dialogue with militants from either faction. However, given Argentina’s contradictory conditions and the problems faced by militant anarchists, Durruti and Ascaso’s position would ultimately prove untenable.
If anarchists lack solidarity among themselves, then they lack their fundamental strength. Indeed, <em>La Protesta</em>, despite its purism, could not stop itself from defending Radowitzky, Wilkens, Sacco and Vanzetti, and others. The first two had used personal direct action and the bomb for the purposes of social justice, whereas the charge of “robbery” (expropriation) hung over the second two. <em>La Protesta</em> defended Sacco and Vanzetti in typically bourgeois terms by professing their innocence. However, Yankee capitalism would never concede such a thing: as anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty by definition. How to break out of that game of deceits and double meanings? Flores Magón resolved the problem by recognizing that it was impossible to fight the state within the law: they had to fight it illegally, on the revolutionary’s natural terrain. If the editors of <em>La Protesta</em> wanted to be consistent, they would have to embrace Magón’s stance; if not, their purism would drive them to evolutionism or reformism. There was no middle ground in Argentina during those years, above all because government violence largely determined the contours of the struggle.
The <em>Los Errantes</em> quickly exhausted the few pesos that they had brought with them and used their network of friends to find jobs (they had never asked the movement to subsidize them and this period of their lives would be no different). Durruti became a port worker, Francisco labored as a cook, and Jover made his living as a cabinet-maker. Alejandro Ascaso disappeared from Buenos Aires shortly after arriving for reasons that are unknown to us.
<em>Los Errantes</em> were working and living unassuming lives when an armed robbery occurred on October 18, 1925. According to Buenos Aires’ <em>La Prensa</em> newspaper, this is what happened: “Like a movie, three individuals enter the Las Heras streetcar station, of the Anglo, in the middle of the Palermo neighborhood. One of them is masked. They pull out black pistols and threaten the collectors, who had just made the nightly recount of ticket sales. They shout ‘hands up’ in a marked Spanish accent and demand the money. The employees babble that it’s already in the safe. They demand the keys. No, the boss has them, and he’s already left. The assailants talk among themselves. They withdraw. While leaving, they take a small bag that a guard had just left on the counter: it contains thirty-eight pesos in ten-cent coins. There is a ‘lookout’ outside and, further away, an automobile waiting for them. They disappear without being pursued.” [167]
Osvaldo Bayer, from whom we take the previous quote, writes: “Buenos Aires police are confused. Gunmen with a Spanish accent? They are unaware of anyone with those characteristics. They question underworld figures, but don’t learn anything useful. Nobody knows them. The booty was laughable and thus the police are sure that they’ll pull off another job soon.” And that is exactly what happened “on November 17, 1925, barely a month after the holdup of the Las Heras station. Minutes after midnight, the ticket-seller Durand has finished counting the day’s collection in the Primera Junta subway station in Caballito. He’s still waiting for the last subway service from the center of the city. When it arrives, he’ll be able to finish his work and go home. A stranger suddenly appears and pulls out a pistol. In a Spanish accent, he says: ‘Shut your mouth!’ Meanwhile, another robber bursts into the ticket office and grabs the wooden box that normally holds the collection. Everything hardly lasts an instant. The two men turn around and head toward the exit onto Centenera Street. The ticket-seller begins to shout: ‘Help! Thieves!’ That’s when one of the assailants turns around and shoots into the air to scare him and stop him from giving chase. A policeman stopped on Rivadavia and Centenera must have heard the shouting and gunfire. He runs to see what is going, while drawing his weapon. They beat him to it: there are two more assailants serving as ‘lookouts’ in the two subway entrances and, when one of them sees that the policeman has his gun out and is going to run into the two robbers, who are leaving through the stairs, he fires two bullets that hit their mark.
“The agent drops like lead. The four bandits run to a taxi that is waiting for them on Rosario and Centenera. For some reason, the driver can’t start the car and, after losing precious minutes, the thieves get out and run eastward on Rosario Street and then disappear. The robbery was in vain; a failure identical to the one at the Las Heras station. The collection money had not been put in the wooden box, as usual, but rather in an iron box under the window. There wasn’t even a ten-cent coin in the wooden box.” The Argentine police assume that the two events are connected and put special emphasis on the “matter of the Spaniards.” They concluded that the assailants in both cases must be the same people. But who are they? It was then that Argentine police received the “dossier” from Chilean police that established, with the help of the Spanish police, that the criminals were Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover.
“With their photos in hand, Argentine authorities identify the men who robbed the Las Heras and Primera Junta stations. Yes, they had no doubt. It was them. They begin an exhaustive investigation and raid boarding houses and hotels in search of the foreigners. They find nothing. Social Order intervenes and detains anarchists of action, in hopes of getting some clues, but they don’t turn up anything useful either. “They hang posters in the subways and streetcars bearing photographs of the four foreigners.” [168] These posters prompted poet Raúl González Tuñón to write some magnificent verses about Durruti:
<quote>
I see his face in the mug shot
Straight ahead, from the side, with a number,
His turbulent hair, disheveled.
The only thing missing is a dove above
Raging and delicate[169]
</quote>
At this point in our biography, we should review some facts before proceeding. Thus far, bank robberies were only types of expropriation practiced by Durruti and he had demonstrated some skill in each instance. When <em>Los Errantes</em> arrived in Argentina, they decided not to undertake actions that might exacerbate existing debates about expropriation and revolutionary violence. How, then, could it be that they suddenly carry out two poorly planned and chaotic robberies of train stations? What proof demonstrates that <em>Los Errantes</em> were the culprits? Did a robbery victim recognize one of them? Were the perpetrators Spaniards because they had a Spanish accent? The truth is that there was no proof and police only decided that it was them after the intervention of their Chilean and especially Spanish colleagues (the latter supplied their photos). By hanging posters in the streetcars and subways, by using the press, and by vigorously pursuing <em>Los Errantes</em>, it seemed like police were challenging the robbers to defy them. They did just that on January 19, 1926 at the San Martín branch of the Banco Argentino.
“While residents of the tranquil city of San Martín were eating lunch or taking refuge from the sun and the heat in their homes,” <em>La Prensa</em> reported, “a group of outlaws armed with carbines placed itself at the entrance of the Banco Argentino branch across from the principal plaza.” We continue with Osvaldo Bayer: “Seven individuals (four with masks) get out of a double touring car on the corner of Buenos Aires and Belgrano, two blocks from the police station. Four enter the bank and the other three, armed with rifles, take up positions at the bank’s main door. It is a very strange robbery, with a nuance of professional bandits. When the three outside see some unsuspecting pedestrians approach, they point their rifles at them silently. The pedestrians think it is a joke at first, but leave in a hurry when they realize that the men are serious. Meanwhile, the four who entered work quickly. They go for the counters, go through the paymasters’ drawers, and collect all the money they find. They don’t bother going to the safe. Altogether they take in 64,085 pesos. The bank employees obey when they hear a hoarse Spanish voice shout:
“‘Anyone who moves will be shot!’”
“They escape in a car with the money. The police chase them, but they cover their getaway with gunfire.”
** CHAPTER XIV. Toward Paris: 1926
After the holdup of the bank in San Martín, police were now sure of the thieves’ identities. They increased surveillance of the city’s anarchist circles and tightened control over the borders and ports. It would seem impossible for Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover to pass through the net that police had thrown over the region and yet that is exactly what they did. They set off for Europe in Montevideo at the end of February 1926.
<em>Los Errantes</em> experienced some of the most difficult moments of their lives between January 19 and their departure. It was very hard for them to find a safe place to hide and some veteran militants who knew Durruti and Ascaso from Spain even turned their backs on them; not because of police pressure, but simply to avoid getting involved. Had it not been for members of the Unión Sindical Argentina and the <em>La Antorcha</em> and <em>El Libertario</em> groups, it is very likely that authorities would have captured them. But this never happened, as we have said, and the principle organizer of their escape was a Spanish anarchist named J.C. Este. He had recently arrived in Buenos Aires and, when he learned about the difficulties that <em>Los Errantes</em> were facing, he rushed to arrange their trip to Montevideo and put them onboard the steamer that would bring them to France.
While they were busy acquiring passports and preparing their escape to Uruguay, Argentine police were searching for them relentlessly. Their hunt became even more complicated thanks to mistakes made by the police and also the press in Spain. A very confusing article appeared in a Spanish paper on February 23, 1926: “The Spanish Gunmen: Has Durruti Been Arrested In Bordeaux? Nothing is known about the event in Gironde, but in Gijón they guarantee that it happened. Some details of a terrorist’s eventful life.” That was the headline that <em>La Voz de Guipúzcoa</em> printed above its coverage of the news from ABC in Madrid, which had published the following telegram from its Gijón correspondent: “Gijón, 23, 11:00 pm. We just learned that Francisco Durruti has been arrested in Bordeaux for robbing a furniture factory in that city, a crime for which two Spaniards were recently guillotined. Durruti is the leader of the gang of gunmen who held up a branch of the Bank of Spain in Gijón on September 1, 1923. The bank manager, Mr. Luis Ascárate, was shot to death during the act.” “Durruti,” the correspondent from Gijón concludes, “had also been also in Havana, where he committed another bank heist.”
“We were surprised,” <em>La Voz de Guipúzcoa</em> wrote, “that our correspondent in Bordeaux, M. Melsy Cathulin, had not said anything about the matter and so we asked him about the issue during our daily meeting yesterday. He told us that officials had not reported Durruti’s detention and that none of the local newspapers had mentioned the event. This was strange, given the importance of the arrest and the stir caused by the robbery throughout Gironde. Furthermore, no one had previously implicated Durruti in the robbery of the Harribley furniture factory. Police had arrested three anarchists for that crime, in which two people died and three were injured. Two of the arrested anarchists, Recasens and Castro, were guillotined last December, but the leader of their group got away. Recasens and Castro said that their ringleader was from Aragón and used the nickname “El Mano” or “El Negro.” The fugitive in the photographs [which <em>La Voz</em> published] does not resemble Durruti in this slightest and his first name is also not Francisco. José Buenaventura Durruti, also known as “El Gorila,” is indeed one of the most prolific Spanish terrorists. He is a native of León and is fifty years old.
In 1922, Durruti lived in San Sebastián and worked as a mechanic adjuster in the Mújica Brothers factory and then later at another factory. He was vicepresident of the CNT’s Sindicato Unico [trans.: industrial union group] in the Eguía neighborhood and, until August that year, did not stand out as a man of action. He was an excellent worker but it was clear that his extremist ideas were deeply rooted. In August 1922, Durruti and two other syndicalists carried out a bold robbery of the Mendizábal brothers’ office. The three bandits entered with pistols drawn and, pointing them at Mr. Ramón Mendizábal, forced him to open the safe and hand over whatever money was in it, in addition to what he was carrying in his wallet. The crime went unpunished, since Durruti and his accomplices left San Sebastián before police found out about their participation in the event. Durruti was later arrested and transferred to San Sebastián, but it was impossible to prove his culpability.” <em>La Voz de Guipúzcoa</em> continued with Durruti’s biography, but their account contained numerous errors about his trip to the Americas.
<quote>
Durruti, a man gifted with a rare intelligence, disappeared from Havana and set sail on a steamship with a false passport. In autumn 1924, he showed up in Paris. He had abundant money at his disposal—the booty from robberies in the Americas—and used part of it to support the anarchist weekly <em>Liberation</em>.
According to Spanish police, Durruti was traveling with another anarchist named Juan Riego Sanz, one of the ringleaders of the irruption at Vera del Bidasoa.
</quote>
Despite the glaring errors in this article, it does contain two pieces of information that contradict those who tried to dismiss Durruti as a <em>“pistolero</em>:” he was a skilled technical worker and used the money stolen from banks to support the cause. But we return to essential matters: it was this article that shaped the actions of the Argentine police. Specifically, considering the official character of the Madrid daily, and also that the Argentines had failed to apprehend any of <em>Los Errantes</em>, it makes perfect sense that this article led them to think that Durruti had escaped and was in Paris. However, the Buenos Aires authorities were mistaken: Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover sailed to France in the very end February, 1926.
Before embarking, the comrades in charge of arranging their flight learned from reliable sources that the ship was not going to stop in any Spanish port. With that reassuring news, <em>Los Errantes</em> occupied their cabins. Several of the vessel’s sailors were sympathetic to anarchism and Durruti and his friends immediately made contact with them. These sailors’ reports were extremely useful and helped avert a tragedy.
While the ship approached the Canaries Islands, its captain announced that they needed to stop in Spain’s Santa Cruz de Tenerife for reasons beyond their control. <em>Los Errantes</em> became extremely worried. Had they been discovered? Were they going to be delivered to Spanish authorities? They were not going to let themselves be surprised and decided to take control of the ship and prevent it from making that stop at any cost. Who could help them? The anarchist sailors. They immediately spoke with one of them and asked him why the ship was making an unexpected stopover. The sailor put them at ease when he explained that it was fully justified by damage that the steamship had suffered at sea.
The passengers disembarked in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and stayed in a hotel at the shipping company’s expense. They would have to remain there until the company could send another ship, which would pick them up and take them to La Havre.
Although there was apparently no reason to fear, <em>Los Errantes</em> decided to take passage onboard an English ship scheduled to stop in the French port of Cherburgo. They arrived on April 30, 1926 and within two days were living in a hotel on Legendre Street in the Paris’s Clichy neighborhood. Using passports acquired in Buenos Aires, they registered under the names Roberto Cotelo (Durruti), Salvador Arévalo (Ascaso), and Luis Victorio Rejetto (Jover).
<em>Los Errantes</em> found a different Paris in May 1926 than the one they had known two years earlier. Most of the Spanish anarchists had moved to Belgium or scattered to the eastern and southern parts of the country. Lyon and Marseilles were the main centers of exiled anarchist activity. There was a Spanish Commission of Anarchist Relations in Lyon. There was also a group in Béziers called <em>Prisma</em> that would publish a magazine by the same name a year later that would be the voice of Spanish anarchist exiles in France. Nonetheless, Paris was still an important city for the exiled Spanish anarchists, thanks to the International Press, which worked under the auspices of the French anarchist periodical, <em>Le Libertaire</em>, the publication of the French Anarcho-Communist Union.
The following Spanish anarchist groups were among the most active: <em>Germen, Sin Pan, Proa, Afinidades,</em> and <em>Espartaco</em>. Among the most distinguished Spanish militants, we should note Valeriano Orobón Fernández, who published the Spanish language magazine <em>Tiempos Nuevos</em>; <em>Liberto Callejas</em>, who edited <em>Iberón</em>; and Juan Manuel Molina, better known as “Juanel,” who was the Spanish representative on the Administrative Council of the International Press.
The month and a half that Durruti and his friends spent in Paris is largely an informational vacuum for us. What we do know relates to their activities as men of action.
When had they learned that Alfonso XIII intended to pass through Paris on a trip to London? We don’t know. But after Durruti and his friends arrived in the French capital they met three old acquaintances who had fled Spain: Teodoro Peña, Pedro Boadas Rivas, and Agustín García Capdevila. These youths were implicated in bomb attacks on Spanish soldiers and it would be disastrous if they fell into the French police’s hands. <em>Los Errantes</em> thus decided to send them to Argentina, recommending them as good comrades to Roscigna. According to Osvaldo Bayer, those youths “carried a special invitation from Durruti for Roscigna, asking him to come to Europe, because he was needed as a strategic man of action. Roscigna did not accept the request: he apologized, but said that he was too engaged in the struggle in Argentina to leave.” [170] They had also asked Boadas to tell a comrade-driver in Buenos Aires that they urgently needed him in Paris. If we link Roscigna and the driver with the plan to kidnap Alfonso XIII—for which Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover were arrested on June 25—it is easy to deduce that their main concern from May until their detention was preparing the action against the King of Spain.
With the exception of comments by Italian anarchist Nino Napolitano, who was close with Durruti and Ascaso, very little information is available about this mysterious conspiracy.
<quote>
I met Ascaso and Durruti at the home of a Parisian comrade named Bertha. One day they lost a suitcase and naturally I offered them mine. Ascaso took it in hand and said, laughing: “It isn’t strong enough!” I objected and said that the suitcase was perfectly good, of excellent treated material. I seemed like a shopkeeper anxious to sell his wares, but my efforts were in vain. Ascaso didn’t want it. Some time later I found out why: they needed a very strong suitcase to carry dismantled rifles and other weapons.
Around that time [1926], Paris was preparing for a visit from King Alfonso XIII.... The Third Republic planned to receive the man who had killed Francisco Ferrer with the melodies of <em>La Marseillaise</em>. Durruti and Ascaso planned to receive him with a pair of shots. They organized everything with absolute serenity.
This is the idiosyncrasy of Spaniards: they behave like great men, which is not to say patriots, even when they are proletarians. Our two comrades possessed this talent and made great use of it in the days preceding the official visit. To elude the web of police agents, they went to places in the French capital frequented by members of high society. They played tennis in a club and even bought a fancy automobile so as not to seem suspicious when they pulled up next to the statesmen participating in the welcome ceremony. They planned every detail meticulously.
We had dinner in Bertha’s house on the eve of the King’s arrival. I remember that she served us a sago soup that neither Ascaso nor I liked very much. We made fun of her culinary skills. When Durruti and Ascaso laughed, she began to cry.
“Where two conspire, my man is the third,” Maniscalao, the known agent provocateur of the Bourbons once said smugly. This time the third man was sitting at the wheel of the car that would take Ascaso and Durruti to the scene of the action. He had sold out to the French police. The two conspirators were arrested and Paris received Alfonso XIII to the sounds of <em>La Marseillaise</em> without missing a beat.[171]
</quote>
Nino Napolitano’s testimony is first hand, but he wrote it in 1948. Too many things had happened in the intervening twenty-two years for him to be able to recall all the facts properly and, as a result, there are contradictions in his account of the period.
Bertha lived with Ferrandel, who ran <em>Le Libertaire</em>, and surely both were aware of Ascaso and Durruti’s plans. The visit mentioned in the quote must have occurred while they were preparing the action and, since the visits were infrequent, Bertha was quick to break into tears when teased. Ascaso and Durruti were arrested on June 25 and Alfonso XIII arrived two days later. The important thing in Nino’s comments is his reference to the provocateur; to the “driver” recruited by <em>Los Errantes</em> in circumstances that are unknown to us.
We noted that they had asked Boadas to tell the Argentine driver-comrade to come to Paris quickly. The Argentine did not come. García Vivancos also disappointed them (he was a member of <em>Los Solidarios</em> and had demonstrated his excellent driving skills during the Gijón bank robbery). Presumably, it was shortly before the King’s arrival, as time pressed upon them, that someone introduced them to the “driver” who would betray them. They were arrested in the morning while leaving their hotel on Legendre Street. A search of the premises revealed the weapons that they had hidden in the room.
The press first published news of their arrest on July 2, although it did not mention the date of their detention. Durruti clarifies this in a letter that he sent to his family while incarcerated: “I was arrested on June 25, on the occasion of the King of Spain’s trip to Paris, and implicated in a plot against him.... After my arrest, they took me to La Santé.”
** CHAPTER XV. The plot against Alfonso XIII
Alfonso XIII couldn’t take a step without inspiring some Spaniard to try to kill him. He was the target of at least a dozen alleged assassination attempts and yet somehow always emerged unharmed. The attempt on May 17, 1902, on the day of the coronation, failed. What was being prepared for him in Paris on May 31, 1905 was discovered in time. Exactly one year later Mateo Morral killed twenty-six people and injured 107 with a bomb on the King’s Wedding day and still couldn’t get to his target. Other men who tried to take out Alfonso XIII also had their hopes dispelled. It seemed written that this monarch would die of old age in bed.
Mindful of such threats against the King, the Spanish embassy in Paris took stringent security precautions and also asked French police to imprison any Spanish exile who might be tempted to execute the monarch. The French police consented to this request and launched a raid on the morning of June 25, 1926. Some two hundred Spaniards were taken in, including Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover, from whom an appreciable quantity of arms were seized.
The French government wanted to receive Alfonso XIII and his Prime Minister-dictator, Primo de Rivera, without any conflicts. It ordered the police to protect the Spanish King and the press to behave respectably with the guest. One newspaper that did not agree to this was <em>Le Libertaire</em>. Judge Villette deemed an editorial that it ran insulting and ordered authorities to shut it down. They charged its manager, Giradin, with being an “instigator to assassination.”
The public didn’t know anything about the government crackdown until July 2, by the time Alfonso XIII was already in London. That day the press published a short comment from the police declaring that they had discovered a plot to assassinate the King of Spain and had arrested three Spanish exiles in connection with the case.
On the same date, <em>Le Libertaire</em> reproduced the substance of the article for which it had been suspended on June 25. The full-page headline was: “The Republic At The Orders Of Alfonso Xiii. More Than Two Hundred Arrests. <em>Le Libertaire</em> Seized And Persecuted.”
<quote>
Last week, <em>Le Libertaire</em> ran a piece from the Anarcho-Communist Union calling militants from the Paris area to demonstrate their disgust with the regal assassin in the Orsay station. It was nothing monstrous; barely ten lines remembering Ferrer, the assassins of Vera, and the torture inflicted on Spanish militants.... <em>Le Libertaire</em> was seized by judicial order on the pretext that the tract was an “instigation to assassination.” ... But things didn’t end there: all the Spanish and even French militants found themselves endowed with a police escort. No well-known comrade could do anything without being followed by a pair of police.... Later, on Monday, we learned that authorities had foiled a conspiracy against the Spanish King. It seems that someone had decided to give the monarch the punishment he deserves.... Not only did the French police, and even the <em>Spanish police</em>, arrest hundreds of comrades known for their revolutionary ideas and send them to the Dépôt, but <em>they also plan to take them to the Spanish border.</em> ... You must immediately raise your voices in protest and make it clear to the leftwing government [Socialists and Radicals-Socialists) that we will never allow the French police to deliver the political refugees to their executioners.
</quote>
The Spanish Embassy released a statement to the press on the same day:
<quote>
Now that the royal couple is in London, it can be made public in Spain.... that an attack against them had been planned in France. This plot was discovered very much in time and its presumed perpetrators were arrested, thanks to the diligence of the French police and <em>excellent information</em> from our embassy [the emphasis is ours].
A gang of expatriates with clear criminal tendencies, some of whom were awaiting trials for crimes committed in Spain, had acquired precious resources with which they purchased an expensive automobile, automatic weapons, and abundant ammunition. They intended to machine-gun the car carrying the royal couple at one of the stops on its itinerary. French police discovered the conspiracy hours before Their Majesties were to leave. Thanks to their good work, the bandits were already imprisoned and their car and arms confiscated by the time the royal couple departed for France. The King thus left Madrid without the burden of this danger and even unaware of it, since the French government had wisely decided not to publicize the matter until he reached London. The Spanish government had maintained equal reserve.
.... Some of the criminals detained in Paris had committed scandalous crimes here. The government quickly expressed its gratitude to French authorities and trusts that the regal trip will have a happy conclusion. These events will not cause a loss of serenity: they have precedents in all times, and fortunately the effective organization of the security services ensured that they were discovered and thwarted in the present instance.
</quote>
The Spanish embassy in Paris was aware of Durruti and his friends’ time in South America when it released this communiqué. When it denounced them (without naming them) as the alleged perpetrators of the supposed assassination attempt, it was trying to lay the foundation for the extradition demand that it would soon make for the four defendants. The government planned to ask France to return them to Spain as culprits in a common law criminal offense. But Spain’s ambassador, Quiñones de León, had some concerns about the viability of the extradition demand. The Spanish regime enjoyed scarce popular support in France and although authorities had consented to Spain’s request to raid the refugees, it did so with hesitation. The Spanish ambassador must have held talks with Argentine ambassador Alvarez de Toledo to convince him that his country should also initiate extradition proceedings against the four anarchists, given that Argentina would have a greater chance of success. Thus, as soon as the Argentine government learned that Francisco Ascaso, Buenaventura Durruti, and Gregorio Jover had been arrested—and, for what reason we do not know, José Alamarcha was connected to them—it solicited information about their case from Paris. This is how the Argentines learned that Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover had arrived in France on April 30 with Uruguayan passports issued in Buenos Aires in the names of Roberto Cotelo for Durruti, Salvador Arévalo for Ascaso, and Luis Victorio Rejetto for Jover.
Roberto Cotelo was a well-known anarchist in both Argentina and Uruguay. He was active in the Argentine Libertarian Alliance and one of the best writers of El Libertario. The other names also belonged to prominent anarchists. Of the three, Roberto Cotelo was the only one that the Buenos Aires police could find. When questioned about his passport, he stated that he had indeed obtained a Uruguayan passport in his name on April 1 in the Uruguayan consulate in Buenos Aires, but that he had lost it a few hours later, perhaps because it fell from his pocket. This glib explanation angered the police. They threatened Cotelo—telling him that he was going to take the rap for Durruti and his friends in Argentina if he didn’t say what really happened—but he stuck to his statement. After many interrogations and two months in jail, a judge released him due to the absence of proof. The country’s press took note of the judge’s decision; pointing to contradictory statements from the police, it concluded that the Durruti-Cotelo issue was nothing more than a police conspiracy designed to damage the Argentine anarchist movement.
Nevertheless, and in spite of public sentiment, Argentine police held firm to their attempt to secure the extradition of Durruti and his friends. High-level police functionaries pressured Argentina’s president, Doctor Alvear, to pull string among his old connections in Paris. The President consented and the police, thinking that the matter would be resolved shortly, sent three of its best men to Paris to speed up the process. The policemen were Fernando Baza, Romero, and Carrasco.
We mentioned that the Argentine press condemned the police’s anti-anarchist schemes. This was not only the anarchist press but also the so-called “sensationalist” papers. For example, <em>Crítica</em> printed the following on July 7, 1926, while Cotelo was locked up in the Brigada Social: “We can’t believe the rumors spread by the police. This is nothing but a ploy; the result of the mysterious meetings they have held in recent days.... This is where we find the thread of the actions that necessarily had to lead to the detention of men known for their advanced ideas.”
“The police chief,” the Argentine newspaper continued, “told the press: ‘Given the absence of proof, it’s possible that the French government will not authorize the extradition. However, we feel confident, considering its strong ties with our government, that it will agree to our request. They can be sure that we’ll be ready to reciprocate when the time comes.’” The matter couldn’t have been clearer: the police had no proof demonstrating that Durruti and his friends robbed the bank in San Martín, but that was just a minor detail. The state’s needs alone were enough to justify shipping the three anarchists off to Buenos Aires.
The <em>Crítica</em> and <em>La República</em> newspapers raised the topic again, in more or less the same terms, on July 8. The first wrote: “Police comments led one to think that they had evidence against Robert Cotelo, Jaime Rotger [who ran <em>El Libertario]</em>, and the well-known libertarian Dadivorich that demonstrated their complicity in the armed robberies. But the strange activity of the police proves that they neither had evidence against them nor even knew who the perpetrators were.... Their machinations were so transparent that Rotger and Cotelo had to be released.” Indeed, they were freed, but detained again, and then freed once more, only to be detained another time. The judge, under pressure from the public, had to intervene to put an end to Cotelo and Rotger’s comings and goings.
In Paris, the legal process continued to follow its course. Durruti and Jover named their respective lawyers and their trial took place in the Palace of Justice. <em>Le Libertaire</em> reported on the affair in its October 15 issue:
<quote>
On Thursday, October 7, 1926, our Spanish comrades Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover appeared in court in Correctional Courtroom number eleven under the following charges: Ascaso, possession of prohibited weapons, use of a false passport, and rebellion; Durruti, possession of prohibited weapons and use of a false passport; and Jover, use of a false passport. Many comrades wanted to attend the trial to show their support for the accused, but a band of informers were already occupying the part of the courtroom reserved for the public when the trial began. Our comrades had to stand in the hallway due to the lack of space inside. The defendants were dignified, calm, and energetic. Thanks to his good French, Durruti spoke for the group. He stated that they had planned to follow the King on his trip, adduct him on the border, and hold him for a time. This would make rumors of his death circulate in Spain and thereby provoke a revolution.
The accused frankly admitted that they purchased a number of weapons (carbines and automatic pistols) and used false passports. “We are Spanish revolutionaries,” Durruti declared, “and we’ve gone into exile because of the odious regime that Alfonso XIII and Primo de Rivera have imposed on our country. We are political exiles, but we intend to return to Spain.
“Our comrades in Spain, our brothers in ideas,” he continued, “endure the hardest and most persistent repression that any government has ever inflicted on the working class. They passionately want to free themselves from that oppressive regime and of course we share their desire. That is why we declare, conscious of the responsibility that we incur, that we will not stop until we smash the dictatorship. We are also convinced that we’re close to achieving our goal: other than the clique that supports the government, the vast majority of the country is against Primo de Rivera. The discontent is widespread and an armed insurrection could erupt at any moment. The weapons that we bought were for sustaining and defending our country’s revolutionary movement. With respect to the false passports, how else could we have evaded the Spanish government’s thick web of informers in France? Obviously we used false names for that reason.”
The French police who arrested our comrades also made a statement at the trial. They tried to present the accused as extremely dangerous figures, but didn’t convince anyone. Under pressure from the defense lawyers, they had to admit that the Spanish Embassy had given them the names of the accused, whom they described as “dangerous anarchists and recalcitrant bandits.” They also stated that all their information about the detainees had come from the same source, the Spanish Embassy. Lawyers Henry Torres and Berthon, with the assistance of their secretaries, Mr. Joly and Mr. Garçon, took on the responsibility of defending our comrades.
</quote>
The defense lawyer’s speech was restrained, but precise and moving: “Gentlemen of the Tribunal, my colleagues and I have the honor of defending men who represent the most advanced sector of the Spanish opposition” Berthon said. His exposition made it seem like something solemn and grandiose was occurring. That sentiment was only reinforced by the presence of numerous marshals and armed guards in the courtroom (who looked like they were ready for war, although that didn’t frighten Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover at all). [172]
Ascaso was sentenced to six months in prison, Durruti to three, and Gregorio Jover to two. Of the three, only Francisco Ascaso would have to remain in jail (his sentence would end on December 25). For their part, Durruti and Jover had already exceeded their sentences with the time that they had spent in “preventive detention.”
What was going to happen? The French government considered the extradition demands from Argentina and Spain and finally awarded it to the first of the two countries. Given the ambiguity of French legislation on extraditions at the time, this meant that the lawyers and defendants had to work quickly to ensure that the police did not hand them over to Argentina or Spain whenever they wanted (which they could do, legally). The defense’s strategy was to appeal their convictions in the Supreme Court, which would be a way of gaining time and would also prevent the police from acting on their own. They sent the appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the government moved Durruti and Jover to the Conciergerie in the Palace of Justice. Ascaso continued serving his sentence in La Santé. <em>Le Libertaire</em> wrote: “We must protest energetically! The public has to know about the warped machinations of the Argentine and Spanish police and stop the French State magistrate from granting the extradition.” [173] In other words, it didn’t matter if Durruti and his comrades were innocent or guilty of the charges against them: their actions were not common crimes, but rather political acts committed in the course of their revolutionary efforts (as they themselves had declared). According to French law, this meant that they could not be extradited.
Durruti gives an account of his travails in a letter sent to his family on December 17, 1926:
<quote>
I was sentenced to three months. I signed for my freedom in La Santé on October 8 but since the Spanish government wants me, French police moved me to the Palace of Justice. That’s where I am now, not as a French prisoner, but in the custody of the international police.
I didn’t work in La Santé. Hard labor is only for those sentenced to more than six months and for more matters more serious than mine. Here, in the Palace of Justice, they don’t make anyone work, certainly not those of us requested by a foreign country, since French law has nothing to do with us. You can see that those gentlemen from the <em>Diario de León</em> and <em>La Democracia</em> don’t know what they’re talking about.
They didn’t allow me write in Spanish when I was in La Santé because they said that the judge hadn’t authorized it. Now, as you can see, I’m able to write in Spanish. This is the most palpable proof that I’m not doing hard labor, despite what those stupid journalists say.
Everything they write is designed to make it look like the French government gave me one of the harshest sentences. But you should laugh in their faces. They don’t deserve anything but contempt.
Don’t worry about the confirmation of the three months in prison. All of this is simply a ploy between the lawyer and I to prevent the police from sending me to Spain (which they can’t do while I finish the sentence in France). I’ve also appealed to the Supreme Court about the sentence and I’ll have to go to court for this once again. All these things are ways to gain time and fight the extradition demands lodged by foreign governments. I tell you this to calm mother and so that she ignores everything those idiotic journalists write.
The newspaper clipping that you sent just affirms what I already suspected: clearly our trial was a real scandal.
All the speeches and charges in the trial revolved around the King of Spain, but you already have an idea of what it was like. There’s no need to say more.
Regarding father’s question about my remaining prison time, he should know that I’ve already finished with the French. There’s still the question of the Americas (but I hope it will be resolved soon).
Our comrades are working hard, and so are the lawyers and the League of the Rights of Man. They held a rally demanding our release on Tuesday, December 14 and promise that many more will follow if we’re not freed. Militants in Buenos Aires are also doing everything they can to stop us from being taken there.
I don’t want to say anything about Spain, since you’re better informed than I. There’s not much that I can tell you about my life here. I spend my time reading, painting, or writing. They come to see me twice every week and, on Sundays, bring clean clothes and money so that I can eat in the restaurant.
You can see that everything happening here is the opposite of what the papers say there. I’m also not short on reading material, since there’s a library and they give me the books that I ask for. There are some books in Spanish, but I’ve read all of them by now.
The warden authorized me to buy illustrated magazines, which a woman responsible for the detainees’ requests brings me. Illustrated magazines are the only ones allowed. Newspapers are prohibited. Rosa says that Benedicto doesn’t write me because it makes him ashamed, but that he thinks of me. I don’t distinguish between my brothers, since I remember all of them, whether or not they write me.
Perico sends a few words to console my sorrows. Thanks, Perico! I’m grateful for your consolations, but you should know something: I endure my sorrows with my convictions, which are stronger than all of this human vileness.
My convictions are deep. They were born in the bosom of this unjust society and represent love and liberty. They’re as solid as steel. They’re what console me, because I’m convinced that they’re good. My dear Perico, don’t pity me; I’m not unhappy at all. These chains that stop me from being free are rotten and won’t hold me for long.
I’m waiting for your letter in French. Tell me how you’re doing with your mechanics. I suggest that you to apply yourself to studying it, since it’ll be useful to you when you’re older. Clateo tells me that she’s sad that I couldn’t be with you over Christmas. I’m sorry too, Clateo, but don’t worry about that. I’m not the only one who will spend it behind bars. There are countless others. And how many poor will have nothing to eat that day or a place to sleep! That is how this society works: a lot for the few and nothing for the rest.
Christmas is only for the rich, who celebrate it with the workers’ sweat, turning it into champagne, and who make laughter from the cries in the homes of the dispossessed. The parties of the rich are daughters of the miseries of the poor. But this will end soon. The revolution will put an end to this social disorder.[174]
</quote>
** CHAPTER XVI. The International Anarchist Defense Committee
Parisian Anarchists first campaigned to save Sacco and Vanzetti through the International Anarchist Defense Committee (IADC) and latter through the Freedom for Sacco and Vanzetti Committee. This permitted the IADC to retain a broader focus. There was an unmistakable need for the IADC, given the oppression of anarchists in Russia under the Bolsheviks, in Italy under Mussolini, and in Spain under Primo de Rivera.
They defended Sacco and Vanzetti as victims of North American capitalism imprisoned because of their revolutionary activism among Italian exiles in the United States. Of course the American legal system tried to conceal its function as a tool of the ruling class and thus obscured the social and political content of the trial; it charged the Italian anarchists with armed robbery as a way to deceive American and world opinion. The goal of Paris’s Freedom for Sacco and Vanzetti Committee was to expose that deceit. The AnarchoCommunist Union (ACU) sponsored the group and two of ACU militants, Louis Lecoin and Severino Ferrandel, led it.
The Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover affair required a new initiative from the ACU and thus it created the Durruti-Ascaso-Jover Asylum Support Committee. Like Sacco and Vanzetti, the three Spaniards were charged with a common crime. Should the ACU defend the “illegalist” anarchists? They debated the question and ultimately took a much clearer stance than Argentina’s <em>La Protesta</em>. On April 2, 1926, the ACU publicized its views on “illegalism”:
Meeting on March 28, 1926, the International Anarchist Defense Committee, which is an extension of the ACU, declares its position on the core issue in the articles on “illegalism” recently published in <em>Le Libertaire</em>. We declare that “illegalism” is not synonymous with anarchism. Anarchism and illegalism represent two completely distinct systems of ideas and action. Only anarchism’s detractors would try to confuse the two, although their insidious purposes are easy to discern.
An illegalist act is not an anarchist act in itself: someone who is totally ignorant of and even antagonistic to our ideas can carry it out. Even if an anarchist or someone with anarchist sympathies commits it, the “illegalist” act does not immediately become an anarchist act because of the circumstances that provoke it, the spirit that animates it, or even how its proceeds are expended.
The International Anarchist Defense Committee states that the practice of “illegalism” has not materially contributed to the spread of anarchist ideas in France, except in a very weak measure. It has been exceedingly detrimental to our idea and, as a whole, more damaging than beneficial to the expansion and diffusion of anarchism.
Far from encouraging our comrades to become “illegalists,” the IADC calls their attention, particularly the youth’s attention, to the material and moral consequences implied by “illegalism:”
<quote>
1. Those who refuse to work for a boss and try to support themselves through “illegalism” almost always pay with prison, deportation, or violent death as a result. Indeed, from an individual point of view, instead of enabling the individual to “live his life,” “illegalism” almost always leads him to sacrifice it.
2. Also, the “illegalist,” even the so-called anarchist “illegalist,” almost always slips down the slippery slope toward the adoption of bourgeois ways and slowly becomes an exploiter and parasite.
3. The comrade who supports himself through “illegalism” is forced to give up active propaganda and separate himself from all productive work, depreciating it and being disgusted by it, in such a way that he lives—because he doesn’t produce anything himself—by exploiting the work of others. Of course this is the “classical” form of capitalism.
We have clearly explained our position on “illegalism” in this statement, but also feel the need, and thus the obligation, to add that we do not condemn “illegalism” absolutely and without exception:
1. On the one hand, we are sympathetic to workers who, being reduced to the insufficient salaries they receive, break the law (there is no point in getting into details, since this is a matter for each individual, but this is caused by the need to survive, to feed one’s family, and perhaps also to support anarchist propaganda).
2. On the other hand, we approve of the “illegalism” practiced by certain individuals who selflessly carry out their acts for the purposes of propaganda. These men rob banks, transport companies, large industrial and commercial firms, and the very rich (for example, Pini, Duval, Ravachol, and many of our foreign comrades, particularly Spaniards, Italians, and Russians.) After committing what we call individual expropriation (a prelude to collective expropriation) they dedicate the benefits of their acts to propaganda, instead of keeping it for themselves and becoming parasites.
In conclusion, as members of ACU’s International Anarchist Defense Committee, and always faithful to the precedents set by other comrades, we declare that when <em>Le Libertaire</em> speaks of “honesty” and “work,” it does not invest those terms with the significance attributed to them by the bourgeois spirit and official morality.
We will not exalt those that the official morality and bourgeois mentality deem “honest workers;” those filled with the respect for property and who submissively and passively accept the conditions imposed upon them. Those workers are not anarchists, but totally the opposite, given their obedience to the rules of conduct that bourgeois morality assigns to the world of work. Anarchists oppose that type of “honesty,” which represents nothing but submission to the social iniquity forced upon the productive class. Anarchists advocate, encourage, and dutifully practice a different type of honesty. It is one that inspires the revolutionary passion among the workers, who will explode one day and usher in the Social Revolution. The working man will be liberated and, on the basis of free accord, will create a society made up of free individuals, equal and fraternal, in which “illegalism” will no longer exist because, with the state and capital abolished, there will be no more laws.[175]
</quote>
The following individuals signed this resolution: Sebastián Faure, Duquelzar (Northern Federation), Le Meillour, Pedro Odeon, Louis Lecoin, L. Oreal, Marchal, Champrenoft, Jeanne Gavard, J. Giradin, Even, G. Bastien, Chazoff, Bouche, Broussel, F. Maldes, Darras, Lacroix, Delecourt, and Lily Ferré.
The above statement makes it clear what French anarchists meant when they said that Sacco and Vanzetti were “innocent,” just as Lecoin’s insistence on Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover’s “innocence” will also be clear. Unlike La Protesta, <em>Le Libertaire</em> did not appeal to bourgeois concepts of “honesty” but rather insisted on the right and obligation to revolt.
Lecoin commented on the origin of the campaign for the Spaniards:
<quote>
I came home one evening in October 1926 and found a telegram urgently requesting my presence at the office of the Anarcho-Communist Union. A number of militants were already there when I arrived: Sebastián Faure, Ferrandel, and others. All were visibly shaken. Sacco and Vanzetti were in danger of being electrocuted. A telegram came from America asking us to go into action immediately.
What were we going to do? What could we try that we hadn’t tried already? A comrade proposed that we prepare to bury them honorably and avenge them.
“What I know,” I replied, “is that they still aren’t dead. And, since they’re alive, we should focus on practical measures that might save them. Until now, and for the last five years, we’ve only convinced those who could be convinced that they’re innocent. We’ve built a revolutionary campaign around those two names, instead of fighting to rescue them. Why don’t the liberal bourgeoisie, the CGT, and the Socialist Party join us in demanding freedom for Sacco and Vanzetti?
“What stops that from happening?” they asked me.
“Nothing, of course, except for our own clumsiness. We must reach out to the stragglers, knocking on their doors. It’s not about organizing an anarchist campaign, but about getting these two anarchists out of the electric chair.... That’s it and nothing more. And our role is to convince absolutely everyone that they have to take a stand.”
If nothing else, at least I convinced my comrades, who entrusted me with making all the necessary contacts, and gave me carte blanche to start a broad campaign in the name of the Sacco-Vanzetti Committee. Ferrandel, a big fellow, with a delicious southern accent, took me aside and said:
“It’s also essential that you take charge of Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover’s defense.”[176]
</quote>
** CHAPTER XVII. The Anarcho-Communist Union and the Poincaré government
Louis Lecoin set out to do nothing less than crush French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré’s foreign policy. Louis Barthou—a faithful servant of the bourgeoisie—was the Minister of Justice—and the veteran socialist Aristides Briand occupied the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The government called itself the “leftwing block” and had won the elections on May 4, 1924 under that name (against the “rightwing block”). The Socialists were well represented in the National Assembly, which had the Radical-Socialist Édouard Herriot as president. However, this leftwing government executed the policies of the right, both internationally as well as domestically. We can find proof of this in its conduct in Morocco, where it helped Alfonso XIII exterminate Abdel-Krim’s guerrillas. The culmination of the government’s friendly policy toward Spain was of course its reception of Alfonso XIII and Miguel Primo de Rivera in June and, as a final touch, its consent to Argentina’s extradition demand for Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover on October 26, 1926. Extraordinary reasons of state must have been at work for the French leftwing government to risk its electorate’s rage by satisfying Alfonso XIII via Buenos Aires. Where to open fire first? Lecoin decided that the best strategy would be to involve the League of the Rights of Man in the campaign and, toward that end, met with an elderly lady named Mrs. Severine, who had publicly defended the Spaniards and denounced Alfonso XIII and his regime on various occasions. As expected, Mrs. Severine reaffirmed her support for Spain’s radical workers and promised Lecoin that she would help him gain access to the League of the Rights of Man. While she did so, the Durruti-Ascaso-Jover Asylum Support Committee began its campaign with a rally on October 25 in “Les Societés Savantes de Paris.” The speakers at the event were: Cané, for the Social Defense Committee; Louis Huart, for the Union fédérative des syndicats autonomes (trans.: Federation of Autonomous Unions); Henry Berthon, one of the Spanish trio’s defense lawyers; Georges Pioch, a writer; Sebastián Faure, for the IADC; and a Spanish member of the League of the Rights of Man.
The rally was a success and Parisian newspapers commented upon it at length. Articles published in papers such as <em>Le Populaire</em>, <em>L’Oeuvre</em>, <em>Era Nouvelle</em>, <em>Le Quotidien</em>, and <em>L’Humanité</em> all suggested that this would be a dynamic campaign.
Meanwhile, bearing a recommendation from Mrs. Severine, Lecoin paid a visit to Mrs. Dorian Mesnard. Dorian then introduced him to the President of the League, Mr. Victor Basch. The meeting between Basch and Louis Lecoin was a disaster. Justice Minister Barthou had already warned Basch against getting mixed up in a common law criminal case and, as a result, Basch told Lecoin that all his efforts were in vain: the defendants were guilty and the League would not take part in campaigns of that nature. Lecoin undiplomatically spoke his mind to the president of the League and stormed out of the premises. He concluded that his attempt to enlist the League was a failure.
To his surprise, Lecoin received a telephone call later that afternoon from Mr. Guernut, the League’s secretary, who asked him for a complete file on the detained Spaniards. What caused Victor Basch to change his mind? It must have been Mrs. Severine or perhaps even Mrs. Dorian Mesnard. However it occurred, the important thing was that the League was going to take on the case. Lecoin realized that it wasn’t going to be easy to force Poincaré to capitulate, but new possibilities were emerging. [177]
On November 5, 1926, <em>Le Libertaire</em> commented on the French government’s willingness to deliver Durruti and his friends to Argentine police. “Will it dare send them to their deaths?” it asked. The following week <em>Le Libertaire</em> announced that there would be another protest rally in “Les Societés Savantes” on November 15 and that Sebastián Faure and writer Han Ryner would address the audience. It added: “Jover, Alamarcha, Durruti, and Ascaso could be handed over to the Argentine government at any moment. Workers of Paris, we will stop the extradition!” The same issue also contained a statement from the League of the Rights of Man protesting the extradition and a letter from Ascaso and Durruti to the Anarcho-Communist Union, which they had sent eight days earlier from the Conciergerie. They wrote:
<quote>
Dear comrades: Even if the courts prove that we were going to kill Alfonso XIII, in hopes that his death would lead to a positive change in Spain, would that be enough reason for Republican France to take the side of our enemies and deliver us to their class vengeance?
And yet that is what is happening: we have been officially notified that we will be handed over to Argentine police.
While that news may surprise us, it doesn’t weaken our spirit. It was long ago that we offered our lives to our beautiful and just cause.
It is unfortunate that there is such a nasty campaign against us, and that we’re accused of acts for which we bear no responsibility, but we won’t flinch before the vengefulness of the Argentine and Spanish governments.
However, our comrade Jover has two children; one is three years old and the other only eighteen months. He loves both deeply and it’s imperative that he isn’t separated from them, either through execution or because he is sent to prison for life.
We hope that the French Republican government—which offers us so willingly to the Spanish tyrants—will think before it turns Jover’s children into orphans.
If we are extradited, so be it! But we ask for a new investigation of Jover’s case and that justice be declared without regard for diplomatic considerations.
Fraternally yours: F. Ascaso and B. Durruti.[178]
</quote>
<em>Le Libertaire</em> commented on the letter:
<quote>
We don’t know if this letter had any impact in governmental circles, but presumably it didn’t mitigate the “reasons of state.” However, large numbers of French proletarians that belong to the CGT pressured its general secretary Jouhaux, who was obliged to intervene directly in the government. If Ministers Briand and Barthou’s responses to Jouhaux were unsatisfactory, they did leave open the possibility that the trial might be reviewed.... Clearly the ministers in question are sensitive to the protests that have come to them from all quarters.... But police department superiors can change the situation: simply to please their Argentine colleagues, they could hand over Durruti and his friends without waiting for the French government’s decision. With respect to that possibility, defense lawyer Henry Torres just reminded the courts that his clients have made an appeal and that they expect French law to follow its normal course.[179]
</quote>
The same day that he spoke with French legal authorities, Torres wrote the Argentine ambassador and set up a meeting with him, various lawyers, and several French deputies. The later group was on a list that Louis Lecoin was drawing up: he had set out to gather the support of more than fifty percent of National Assembly representatives and then to present the list of supporters to the Prime Minister with a statement demanding freedom for Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover. If Lecoin managed to collect these signatures, Poincaré would be obliged to release the Spaniards or resign. In either case, the antiparliamentarian Lecoin would defeat Prime Minister Poincaré.
The situation was desperate for the French government. On the one hand, it was under serious pressure from Spain, which passionately wanted Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover to be extradited, whether to Spain or Argentina. The result would be the same in either case, because the Spaniards would ultimately obtain their prisoners from Argentina if they were sent there. But, on the other hand, if the French government extradited them, it would be making a mockery of the Rights of Man—the foundation of the French Republic itself—and could outrage the French proletariat, which was well informed about the case. How could it extract itself from the impasse? Its solution was to secretly deliver one of the four defendants to the Spanish government: José Alamarcha. His delivery might have a remained a secret had it not been reported by <em>Le Libertaire</em>. The newspaper wrote:
<quote>
When we learned that the French government had refused to hand over Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover, we assumed that José Alamarcha would also be safe. There were no serious charges against him and he was the least “guilty” of the four. At the most, he might have faced expulsion.
But, then, eight days ago, Alamarcha’s jailors took him from his cell, saying that they were going to bring him to the Belgian border. And now we have found out that they delivered Alamarcha to the Spanish police. Shame on the French government, which kneels before the Spanish dictator! Shame on Poincaré’s false Republicans, who send an innocent man to the garrote just to please that bloodthirsty rascal Alfonso XIII! Now we fear for Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover. We cannot trust anything the authorities say.... Revolutionary comrades, we must save our comrades! Go to the rally on November 30, 1926![180]
</quote>
Days later, on December 3, 1926, <em>Le Libertaire</em> printed the following note:
<quote>
The French Government just informed the secretary of the League of the Rights of Man that Argentine police now acknowledge that the fingerprints that they gave French authorities were not taken at the scene of the robbery in San Martín. The Argentines admit that they received the fingerprints from a foreign government.
Why hasn’t the French Government released its three hostages? Will it continue to detain these men who rise above our poor humanity with their courage and moral energy? Will it do this for reasons of pride, when there is no legal justification whatsoever?
</quote>
Despite everything, France stuck to its October 26 decision to extradite the anarchists, although it did not dare deliver the three men languishing in the Conciergerie to the Argentine policemen waiting for them in Paris. In the street, the Anarcho-Communist Union continued organizing rallies to galvanize public sentiment, adding the protests for the three Spaniards to those organized against the scheduled execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. The campaigns were vigorous. The leftwing press played a role, but it was militants from the International Anarchist Defense Committee who bore most of the weight of the mobilization and who were the only ones who genuinely wanted to extract the five anarchists from the hands of the respective governments.
On December 10, <em>Le Libertaire</em> announced that another rally would be held four days later and printed a letter from Argentine comrades about the case. It said: “Our Argentine friends tell us that they are carrying out the same campaign in their country as the one that we’re carrying out in France. And they warn that if Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover are handed over to the Argentine police, that they will try to make them pay for all the terrorist acts attributed to Argentine anarchists in recent years. They haven’t forgiven the anarchists for the death of Police Chief Colonel Falcón.”
On November 21, 1926, Buenos Aires’s <em>Crítica</em> newspaper noted the contradictions in the French government’s position and also that Argentine police never really thought that France would agree to extradite them. It wrote:
<quote>
But the unthinkable occurred: France accepted the extradition request, although it really should have rejected it, since there were only suppositions against the defendants. Indeed, there was nothing more than a vague statement from a witness who said he recognized them after seeing their photograph.
Furthermore, anarchists are not bandits. Indeed, Argentine and French police have acknowledged on several occasions that Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover are militant anarchists. If they really are anarchists, as a leader of our country’s Security forces has also declared, they could not have committed common law offenses.
Revolutionaries do not carry out such crimes. Had Ascaso, Durruti, or Jover done so, their comrades would have been the first to eject them from their ranks.
</quote>
These comments in <em>Crítica</em> reflected views expressed in a survey organized by the newspaper, in which numerous workers defended Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover as authentic revolutionaries with the right to struggle for freedom in Spain.
But public opinion and the press mattered little to Argentine police: for them the issue had become a matter of pride. The police defiantly continued to push Argentina’s President to secure the delivery of the three Spaniards. However, as the police were ready to seize their prey, Argentine anarchists were prepared to snatch them away from them. The Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover issue was the order of the day at workers’ meetings and rallies, which police did their best to stop. Osvaldo Bayer describes the spirited perseverance of the Argentine anarchists:
<quote>
<em>La Antorcha</em>, the Social Prisoner Support Committee, and the autonomous unions of bakers, plasterers, painters, drivers, carpenters, shoe makers, car washers, bronze polishers, the Committee of Relations between the Italian Groups (which Severino di Giovanni and Aldo Aguzzi lead) and the Bulgarian Group, are not daunted by police threats and organize “lightning” rallies. In this respect, the anarchists are quite eccentric and use truly unusual methods. For example, they plan a meeting in Once Plaza and then announce it publicly. Authorities order the mounted police to surround the site and disperse the small group there. Then an anarchist comes out of the subway and leans on the railing of the tunnel exit that opens into the plaza, while another two, from the staircase, immediately chain him to the railing.[181] They bind their comrade to the rails and then he begins to speak with one of those booming voices that has been exercised at hundreds of assemblies and meetings where neither amplifiers nor electric systems are used:
“Here, come listen! Here we are! The anarchists! Shouting the truth about comrades Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover!”
The police run toward his voice and discover the incredible spectacle of a man crucified with chains and speaking rapid-fire. While they react, asking for orders and talking among themselves, the anarchist delivers a lengthy sermon to pedestrians, whose responses range from fear to stupefaction.
At first the police try to shut him up with a club blow, but the anarchist continues speechifying and the event becomes even more of a spectacle. Clearly that strategy would not work: hitting a tied up, defenseless man turns anyone’s stomach. Then they try to cover his mouth, but that doesn’t work either, because the anarchist pushes the gag aside and chokes out more words, which only heightens the grotesqueness of the scene. More curious bystanders gather around. Ultimately, the police have to hold back and wait for a locksmith from the Central Department, who takes about an hour to cut the chains. Of course, in the meantime, the orator gives three or four additional speeches that touch on every topic: Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover, Sacco and Vanzetti, Radowitzky, the prisoners of Viedma, Alvear (whom the anarchist calls “the petty thief ” or “one hundred kilos of fat”), the police (“donkey kickers” and “savage soldiers”), Carlés (“the honorable swine”), members of the Patriotic League (“rich kids,” “homosexual reprobates”) ... communism (“authoritarian cretinism”), soldiers (“idiot orangutans”), etc. No one was spared![182]
</quote>
While authorities continued wrestling with whether to give Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover to Buenos Aires, the issue, as well as Alamarcha’s delivery to Spain, created a deep strain in the French Parliament. Several Socialists began to reconsider the thorny matter.
“At the time, police had complete control over the destiny of any foreigner demanded by another government. They decided without hearing or appeal. Only the government could stop an extradition. The situation was particularly bleak with Poincaré as Prime Minister and Barthou in the Ministry of Justice. They simply had no heart.” [183]
France’s confusing stance on extradition demands became an issue in the Parliament and several parliamentarians proposed legislation on the topic that would end the police’s arbitrary control. The Senate approved the new legislation on December 9, 1926. Senator Vallier described it in these terms: “Previously we did not have clear laws on extraditions in France. This is surprising in a country that has made great efforts to secure individual liberty for more than a century.”
There was a clear need to prevent the police’s arbitrariness and abuse. From then on, the Supreme Court had to authorize extraditions and in each case would conduct an in-depth investigation of the matter, with the participation of the accused, their interpreters, and their lawyers. Furthermore, article 5, section 2 of the law specified that “extradition will not be granted when the crime is political in nature or results from political circumstances of the state soliciting the extradition.” [184]
This law’s only shortcoming for the case that concerns us was that it wasn’t retroactive and therefore would not apply to Durruti and his comrades. Nevertheless, the existence of this legislation was positive and their lawyers could lodge an appeal to make it retroactive.
** CHAPTER XVIII. The anti-parliamentarianism of Louis Lecoin
The French Justice Minister was committed to sending the Spaniards to Argentina. In the National Assembly, a deputy asked Barthou if the government would give them to Spain. The minister replied categorically: “To Spain, no.” The contradiction was glaring: Alfonso XIII said that they had killed the Cardinal Archbishop of Zaragoza and robbed the Gijón bank, which French law recognized as political acts. Then why did France recognize crimes of the same nature supposedly committed in Argentina as common law offenses? Why two weights and two measures? As an Argentine worker said in the Crítica newspaper’s survey, France and Argentina were “playing a diplomatic game that will ultimately lead to Argentina shipping Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover to Spain.” But the battle wasn’t over and both Argentine and French workers were determined to do everything in their power to stop Alfonso XIII from garroting the three anarchists.
On January 7, 1927, the Durruti-Ascaso-Jover Asylum Support Committee held an important rally in Paris’s Wagram Hall. When the building opened at 8:00 pm, it was clear that it would be too small to accommodate the large crowd that wanted to enter, despite its capacity for ten thousand people. Many attendees had to stay outside on Wagram Avenue, under the watchful eye of the police assigned to the meeting by the Prefecture of Paris. This rally was the most significant of those organized thus far. The speakers were Victor Basch, for the League of the Rights of Man; Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish exile; Frossard, editor of the <em>Soir</em> evening newspaper; Savoie, for the CGT; Henri Sellier, a Paris city councilman; Sebastián Faure, representing the Anarcho-Communist Union; and defense lawyers Henry Torres and Henry Berthon.
This rally unanimously endorsed a statement demanding the immediate release of the three Spanish anarchists. All the Parisian papers noted and commented upon the event.
By that time, one hundred deputies had declared their support for Lecoin’s motion insisting that the government free Jover, Ascaso, and Durruti. Additional adhesions had been gathered in the National Assembly by deputies René Richard (Radical-Socialist); Moro-de-Giaferri (Republican-Socialist); Pierre Renaudel (Socialist); Ernest Laffont (Social-Communist), and André Berthon (Communist).
How did the French government respond to the growing movement to liberate these men? Amazingly, Poincaré and his ministers remained firmly committed to handing them over to Argentina. Heavy political pressure must have weighed on Poincaré, who knew that his stance jeopardized his position as Prime Minister.
However, <em>Le Libertaire</em> sensed that something was beginning to break the government’s will and, since you have to strike while the iron is hot, it promptly organized another rally. This one occurred on February 11 in Bullier Hall. The paper wrote: “This impressive demonstration should eliminate the need for a hunger strike, which could have fatal consequences for our three comrades.” [185] Indeed, they also printed a letter from Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover in which they reported their decision to declare such a hunger strike. They said: We’re grateful to all of you, to the organizations, to the newspapers, and those who have supported our defense even if you don’t embrace our ideas. However, we think you’re wasting your time and that the energy you use to support us could be expended more efficiently on other causes. No one except those who take their class hatred to the extreme doubts our right to life. But, for reasons of state, they want to hand us over to Argentina. Although those who made the President of the Republic sign our extradition decree could be disavowed, everything done on our behalf will be in vain when faced with an irresponsible but powerful bureaucracy. We once began a hunger strike and then ended it at your insistence. Now we are going to begin it again and ask that you don’t do anything to break our resolve.
We embrace our fate. Should we be afraid to die? Signed: Ascaso, Durruti, Jover.
Several newspapers reproduced and commented on this letter. They started their hunger strike on February 13.
Three days later the Council of Ministers published a note declaring that it had annulled the decision to extradite the Spaniards and imparted instructions for the law on extraditions approved by the Senate to be submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for a vote as soon as possible. It added that the law would be retroactive.
The French public also began to learn about some of the behind-thescenes, diplomatic maneuvering. Apparently something had not gone well between the Argentine and French governments. Parisian newspapers published a diplomatic communiqué from a French source saying that “the French government had ordered its representative in Buenos Aires to explain to the Argentine government why France might delay the extradition of the anarchists. Argentine authorities expressed some displeasure at the delay in settling a matter that they thought had been resolved. Argentina instructed its man in Paris, Mr. Alvarez de Toledo, to put pressure on the French Foreign Affairs Ministry.” The French government published the following statement in response to the Argentine ambassador’s efforts: “Argentina claims three Spanish anarchists residing in France as perpetrators of common law offenses, such as robbery, murder, and bank robbery. The Argentine government promises to discount all political concerns and not send the anarchists to Spain. The French government, respectful of its obligations, prefers to wait for the vote on the law on extraditions. The goal of that law is to make extradition pass from administrative to judicial control, which will make the Supreme Court the only body capable of authorizing an extradition.” [186]
On February 28, the Chamber of Deputies ratified the law on extraditions without debate. The law was retroactive and thus Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover were ipso facto its beneficiaries. Their case had to be brought before the Supreme Court immediately. This was to occur on March 27, 1927. A few days before the hearing, newspapers reported that police had discovered a plot to free the three Spanish anarchists on March 9. This was clearly a Spanish conspiracy to confuse the public. Jover, Ascaso, and Durruti had requested a revision of the trial and now they were apparently planning an escape, just when their case was going to be reopened with full judicial guarantees. Wasn’t this exactly the type of thing that made the anarchists deserve extradition? <em>Le Libertaire</em> printed an immediate response to the ploy:
<quote>
Last Friday, the French press announced that police had discovered a plot in which friends of Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover were planning to help them escape.
We can declare without hesitation that no friend of these Spanish anarchists was even remotely mixed up in this supposed conspiracy, which appears to be an attempt to influence the Supreme Court on the eve of Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover’s appearance before it.
Indeed, these three men will appear in that jurisdiction on Tuesday. Their lawyers, Henry Torres, Henry Berthon, and Henry Guernut will defend them.
With this note, we publicly protest against these despicable tactics used at the last moment to impose on the Supreme Court what the “dossier” held by the Argentine government does not support. Signing the communiqué: Durruti-Ascaso-Jover Asylum Support Committee.[187]
</quote>
Durruti sent a long letter to his family on April 25. He first excused himself for his long silence, which was due to the fact that he still did not know what fate awaited him. His life, he said, was in the hands of the French Minister of Justice. In no way does this letter show his spirit flagging. On the contrary, he was optimistic and tried to reassure his family. His love for his mother was also very clear. To his sister, he said: “Rosa, you not only have to be her daughter, but also her comrade.... I ask all of you to be as supportive as possible, to counteract the pain that I’m causing her against my will.” [188] Two days after Durruti wrote this letter, the French government informed the Argentine ambassador in Paris that Argentina could now take the detainees. Alvarez de Toledo told French authorities that his government had sent a ship, the Bahía Blanca, which would arrive in Le Havre to pick up the prisoners.
According to law, Argentina had four weeks to take possession of the three anarchists, but the extradition would be revoked if it did not do so within the allotted time. That legal period ended on May 27. Would Argentina, its police, and its ruling class deprive themselves of the pleasure of judging and condemning these three men? Impossible. Buenos Aires’s La Antorcha wrote the following, after divulging the news that they would soon be shipped to South America: “Meat to the beasts, those gentlemen leaders of the stultifying French who traffic in human lives.” It described Argentina as “a barbaric country, uncivil, without individual or collective security, exposed to all the abuses and violence from above, which have an easy and immediate hold on it, that is Argentina.... It is an immensely stupid country, without moral conscience, without even the most basic attribute or sense of justice. Here there is only a despicable fear that governs and, even worse, a despicable fear that obeys. We are only assured that there is a cowardly environment, a lying environment, a dissolute environment.”
But the anarchists were not going to give up. “Bring them!” they challenged Alvear’s government. “The Social Prisoner Support Committee is ready to defend the three Spaniards as soon as they set foot on Argentine soil.” [189]
In Paris, Louis Lecoin went from deputy to deputy as he labored to gather the support of a simple majority of the National Assembly in order to make his interpellation, which could not only make the government totter but also fall. He tirelessly collected signatures and even installed himself in the National Assembly so as to do his work more efficiently.
Meanwhile, the days continued passing and the Argentine ship still hadn’t reached French shores. But article 18 of the March 10, 1927 law was categorical: if a month passed and the plaintiff government had not taken custody of its defendants, they had to be freed. And the unimaginable occurred: May 27 came and the promised Argentine steamship was nowhere to be found. According to law, the government had to release Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover, which is exactly what they asserted in a letter to the Justice Minister. Despite this, Barthou continued to hold them in prison and wait for the Argentine vessel.
Why hadn’t the ship from Buenos Aires arrived? According to Osvaldo Bayer, President Alvear took a step back at the last moment. “Agitation for Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover grows continually more intense and joins the campaign for Sacco and Vanzetti. Alvear realizes that when the three Spaniards are lowered onto land it will be another disruptive factor in the already strained environment of 1927. Would it be useful to bring them? Toward what end? Simply to satisfy the police? Alvear is smarter than those Americans who let themselves get stuck in the Sacco and Vanzetti mire and earned the rage of the whole civilized world. Is it worth bringing the three “Galicians” to try them here? No, obviously not. There are already enough problems with Radowitzky in Ushaia. Why give the anarchists a new excuse to throw bombs, hold demonstrations, and declare strikes?” [190]
This analysis makes some of the related events comprehensible, such as the supposed accident that the Bahía Blanca suffered, which prevented it from continuing the trip, and also that Alvear later demanded that French police bring the three anarchists to Buenos Aires. All of these things were too much not to ruin the good intentions of Poincaré and his ministers.
While the Argentine government retreated, Louis Lecoin acquired enough signatures to make his interpellation to the government on July 7, 1927 at 2:00 pm. Poincaré suddenly recovered his political sense and sent his right-hand man, Louis Malvy, to deal with Lecoin two hours before the public debate in the National Assembly was scheduled to begin: “Do you know,” Malvy asked, “that your interpellation could cause Poincaré’s government to collapse? Do you hate him that much?” No, Lecoin didn’t hate Poincaré personally, but politics in general and those who make a profession of it. Why should he care if Poincaré’s government falls? What he wanted—and this is what he told Poincaré’s “terranova”—was freedom for Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover. “So be it!” Malvy said. “Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover will be freed tomorrow.” [191]
The crisis was averted. There was no interpellation that afternoon and the next morning the three Spaniards were released to their comrades and a sizable handful of journalists. The combined action of the Argentine and French workers had made two governments give way and sent a resounding No! to Alfonso XIII and his dictator, Miguel Primo de Rivera.
La Antorcha celebrated the victory in an article that it titled “The Rescue”: “It’s the joy of recovery, the return to action, and the defeat of the reactionaries.”
At 6:00 pm that day Francisco Ascaso had the pleasure of embracing his mother and sister María, who had entered France secretly. Gregorio Jover’s compañera and their two children were also there. They had an improvised dinner that night in a modest third floor apartment on Du Repos Street, next to the Père Lachaise cemetery. Nothing was lacking except Durruti’s mother. Perhaps it was because of her absence that Durruti replied, when a journalist asked him about his next steps: “Now? Now we’re going to continue the struggle with even greater intensity than before.” [192]
** CHAPTER XIX. Emilienne, Berthe, and Nestor Makhno
Although the French government freed the three anarchists, it also ruled that they had to leave the country within fifteen days. Where should they go? The Asylum Support Committee frantically began trying to get them an entrance visa for any European country. None of the embassies refused their request outright, but none replied affirmatively either. During the trying wait for a positive response, Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover talked about the possibility of living in some corner of the earth, beyond the law, as they were accustomed. But Gregorio Jover had a family to think about and needed to find a solution that would keep his <em>compañera</em> and two children at his side. He resolved the problem with some false documents, which enabled him to settle in Béziers, where he supported himself as a cabinetmaker. Unemployed, Durruti and Ascaso spent their afternoons in the Anarchist Bookstore, located on Prairies Street in the Menilmontant neighborhood of Paris’s district XX. They became close with two French anarchists there, with whom they later formed free unions. These young women were Emilienne Morin, who became Durruti’s <em>compañera</em>, and Berthe Favert, who began a relationship with Ascaso.
They also met Nestor Makhno during this time. Makhno was a prominent militant among Russian anarchists and a figure of the first order in the revolution that occurred in his country in 1917. His activity in the Ukraine up to August 1921 is deeply troubling for both left and rightwing historians, who typically share a desire to conceal any information relevant to this taboo topic.
In the history of proletarian struggles, Nestor Makhno is perhaps the only anarchist to trigger a revolutionary movement that realized the anarchist vision of a society without political authority. He fought a life and death struggle against the “whites” and the “reds” for four years, while the Ukraine, although immersed in war, lived out a dramatic experiment in libertarian social development.
Beginning with only a handful of men, Makhno built a powerful peasant army that resisted the German invaders who entered the Ukraine after Trotsky signed a peace agreement with Germany. Makhno’s twenty-five thousand man army was the only force fighting for the Russian Revolution in the region from then until the Germans’ defeat in November 1918. After the German invaders were crushed, the Bolsheviks sent the Red Army into the Ukraine and feigned a deal with Makhno agreeing to respect the anti-authoritarian structure of the soviets in the area. But in reality neither Trotsky, the Commissioner of War, nor Lenin, leader of the new Soviet state, would tolerate this anarchist experiment, especially when its successes sharply accentuated the arbitrariness and despotism of Bolshevik rule in Russia. The movement in the Ukraine, and also the one among the Kronstandt sailors, was destined to be the swan song of the Russian Revolution. The Ukrainian denouement began in the final months of 1920 when the Bolshevik government set a trap for a group of leaders from the “makhnovichina.” Using an invitation to participate in a Military Council as a pretext, they were summoned to a specific location and then arrested and executed by the Cheka (Soviet secret police). The Bolsheviks used a similar ploy against the detachments fighting the “Whites” in Crimea. Parallel to these two attacks on the “makhnovichina,” Trotsky sent an army of 150,000 men to crush Makhno’s army in the Ukraine. Makhno’s dual struggle against the Red Army and the “Whites” lasted for nine months. Ultimately, in August 1921, Makhno and a handful of his comrades had to abandon the struggle and fled to Romania, where they were imprisoned. After escaping from Romania, Makhno went to Poland, where he was tried but absolved. Thanks to the efforts of Rudolf Rocker, Voline, and Emma Goldman, he was able to enter Germany in 1924. He finally settled in Paris in 1925.
Exile for a man of action like Makhno was death. He was only thirty-five, but already exhausted by war and the multiple injuries he had suffered. His most painful wound was the defeat of the movement that he led and also the endless torrent of lies poured upon him and the Ukraine by the Bolsheviks. This, as well as his authentically Russian character, made it difficult for him to adapt to France and its customs.
Makhno had heard talk of Durruti and Ascaso and their adventures and had followed their trial in Paris. When he learned that they wanted to meet him, he agreed to receive them in the modest hotel room he shared with his daughter and <em>compañera</em>. As soon as the three men were face-to-face, Durruti said:
<quote>
“In your person, we come to greet all the Russian revolutionaries who fought to realize our libertarian ideas and to pay homage to your struggle in the Ukraine, which has meant so much to all of us.” Durruti’s words [Ascaso wrote later] had a profound effect on the despondent warrior. The small but burly man seemed to feel revived. The penetrating stare of his oblique eyes demonstrated there was still a vigorous spirit hidden in his sick body. “Conditions are better in Spain than in Russia,” Makhno said, “for carrying out a revolution with a strong anarchist content, given that there is a peasantry and proletariat with a great revolutionary tradition. Perhaps your revolution will arrive early enough for me to have the pleasure of seeing a living anarchism inspired by the Russian Revolution! You have a sense of organization in Spain that our movement lacked; organization is the foundation of the revolution. That’s why I not only admire the Iberian anarchist movement but also think that it’s the only one presently capable of making a deeper revolution than the Bolsheviks’ while also avoiding the bureaucratism that threatened theirs from the outset. But you have to work hard to preserve that sense of organization and don’t let those who think that anarchism is a theory closed to life destroy it. Anarchism is neither sectarian nor dogmatic. It’s theory in action. It doesn’t have a pre-determined worldview. It’s a fact that anarchism is manifest historically in all of man’s attitudes, individually or collectively. It’s a force in the march of history itself: the force that pushes it forward.”
</quote>
The conversation was tiring for Makhno, particularly because of the language difficulties. His friend Dowinsky provided a simultaneous translation, but he still lost the thread of his thoughts. He did his best to follow the exchange and scrutinized the Spaniards’ faces to see how they responded to his comments.
Over the course of several hours, Makhno shared details of the struggle in the Ukraine with Durruti and Ascaso. He spoke about the nuances of their communal experiences and the nature of the soviets in that libertarian region during his years of activity. He said:
<quote>
Our agrarian commune in the Ukraine was active, in the economic as much as political terrain, and within the federal and mutually supportive system that we’d created. There was no personal egoism in the communes; they relied on solidarity, at the local as well as regional level. Our successes made it clear that there were different solutions to the peasant problem than those imposed by the Bolsheviks. There wouldn’t have been the tragic divide between the countryside and city if the rest of the country had practiced our methods. We would have saved the Russian people years of hunger and prevented the pointless conflicts between workers and peasants. And, most importantly, the revolution would have taken a different route. Critics say that our system was unsustainable and couldn’t grow because of its peasant and artisanal base. That’s not true. Our communes were mixed—agricultural and industrial—and some were even specifically industrial. But it was something else that made our system strong: the revolutionary participation and enthusiasm of everyone, which made sure that a new bureaucracy didn’t emerge. We were all fighters and workers at the same time. In the communes, the assembly was the body that resolved problems and, in military affairs, it was the war committee, in which all the units were represented. What was most important to us was that everyone shared in the collective work: that was a way to stop a ruling caste from monopolizing power. That’s how we united theory and practice. And it’s because we showed that the Bolsheviks’ tactics were unnecessary that Trotsky and Lenin sent the Red Army to fight us. Bolshevism triumphed in the Ukraine and Kronstandt militarily, but history will vindicate us one day and condemn the gravediggers of the Russian Revolution.
</quote>
Makhno seemed particularly fatigued when discussing events that were painful for him. At one point, he sighed and exclaimed: “I hope that you’ll do better than us when the time comes.” When he said goodbye to the two Spaniards, he said: “Makhno has never refused a fight; if I’m still alive when your revolution begins, I’ll be one fighter among many.” [193]
The time allocated by French authorities was now exhausted and police took Durruti and Ascaso to the Belgian border on July 23, 1927. This was the beginning of a legal comedy that the two men had to endure in all its tiresome development.
When the French police brought the Spaniards to the border, the Belgians refused to admit the “dangerous anarchists” to their country. The police then took Ascaso and Durruti to a French border post and patiently waited for night to fall. Under the cover of darkness, they smuggled the undesirables into Belgium. This is how they ended up in Brussels. A Belgian anarchist named Hem Day received them and put them up in a painting workshop. He had hopes that the government would grant them political asylum. The last week of July passed slowly, while they anxiously waited for their uncertain legal situation to end. It was in late August when Durruti and Ascaso learned of the sad conclusion to the Sacco and Vanzetti affair.
Nothing had deterred the authorities in the United States. The international proletariat rose up in acts of solidarity with the Italian anarchists during the three days preceding their execution, but everything was in vain. They were killed by electric chair in the first minutes of the first hour of August 23, 1927. Nicola Sacco was killed at nineteen minutes and Bartolomé Vanzetti at the twenty-sixth minute. These two men had captured world attention for six years and now remain in history as examples of revolutionary defiance and rectitude.
Ascaso and Durruti were not the type of militants to curtail their radicalism and ask for clemency from a victor after losing a battle. They had never denied their intention to free the Spanish people of Alfonso XIII nor had they asked the French government for mercy or otherwise repented their goals. All they demanded was that the government applies its own laws. Nothing more. And matters were clear, extremely clear, in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti: the dominant class was causing a social war by killing the two men. As far as they were concerned, it would be “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Severino di Giovanni certainly felt this way: he launched dynamite attacks against Yankee capitalist interests in Argentina.
While Durruti and Ascaso reflected on the turn that their lives had taken, in hopes of extracting something positive, the Belgian police surprised them one day in late August. The police didn’t bother to arrest them for entering the country illegally. Instead, imitating their French colleagues, they brought them to the closest border and forced them back into France. French police were soon alerted to their presence, surely by the Belgians. They immediately searched the homes of all French or Spanish anarchists likely to give them shelter.
Durruti and Ascaso considered living in Paris clandestinely, but the constant risk of arrest made life unbearable there. And if the police detained them again, they could ship them directly and secretly to Spain. What to do? The provisional solution came from someone who found them refuge in Joigny, a small town in the department of Yonne, where a militant pacifist named Emile Bouchet lived. She took them in without hesitation. Bouchet later commented:
<quote>
I accepted the duty of saving these two Spanish militants who were cornered by the French police. I hid them in my house, where they lived for two months, sharing in our labors and joys.
We were warned on numerous occasions and the gendarmes investigated. They had information about the presence of the two Spaniards in my home. I was able to confuse them several times, but they weren’t convinced. The situation was starting to become dangerous for all of us.
One day I was driving them in a car, with Ascaso and Durruti in back and me at the wheel, and had to stop to attend to an urgent matter at my notary’s office. While leaving his office I had the unpleasant surprise of seeing the captain of the gendarmes standing next to the car. Controlling my concern, I walked toward him and greeted him. He returned my greeting and asked me if I had seen the individuals about whom he had inquired the previous day. I told him that they had returned to my house shortly after he had left and that I’d advised them to go to the Gendarmerie to regularize their work permits. Then I asked:
“Have they come by?”
“No,” he responded, staring at me.
“That’s strange,” I said. “They assured me that they’d do so, but I haven’t seen them since.”
“Yes, it is strange. We’re going to investigate this more thoroughly,” he replied. He shook my hand and walked away looking pensive.
I jumped in the car, took the wheel, and pulled out quickly. We drove past the captain, who was still walking along, perplexed. I looked back and saw my two friends smiling. Ascaso, shaking his right hand, made me understand that they had escaped a close one.
They had tried to stay calm during the conversation that took place two meters from them, but were ready to attack the captain or escape if it occurred to him that the two individuals that he was looking for were the two sitting in the car.
This last incident obliged them to leave my house. At night I took them to a secure location and from there they went Paris.[194]
</quote>
Paris was no better this time around: life was simply untenable for them there. (The recently formed Revolutionary Alliance Committee [195] advised them to go to Lyon. The <em>Solidarios</em> had joined this Committee to participate in an insurrectional project that was going to extend across Spain and Italy.) The Committee said they would be more useful to the revolutionary efforts there.
** CHAPTER XX. Lyon, and in prison again
Even though Lyon was a large city, police control was so lax there that it was hardly evident when Durruti and Ascaso arrived in early November 1927. Using false identity papers, it wouldn’t be hard for Durruti and his friend to find work and live tranquilly while waiting for the right moment to return to Spain. They would simply have to avoid hotels and be cautious. They found housing, work, a discreet daily routine, but not tranquility. These men of action, restless by temperament, could not sit on the sidelines and passively watch the days go by. They began to inform themselves about the state of the exiled anarchist movement in France and also about the movement’s development in Spain. During the fifteen days they spent in Paris after their release from prison, they found out about the underground conference held in Valencia on July 24 and 25. They also learned that participants at the event had forged the statutes of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), thereby uniting all the activities of anarchist groups throughout the peninsula. Spanish speaking anarchist groups in France played an important role in the creation of the FAI. A first step in that direction occurred when a national anarchist conference held in April 1925 in Barcelona entrusted activists in France with the difficult mission of coordinating anarchist activities inside Spain from abroad.
The militants who created the FAI also formed its Peninsular Committee—which was made up by Spanish and Portuguese anarchists—and decided that the organization’s base would be in Sevilla. The FAI simply built upon and revitalized the patterns of anarchist organization that had existed in Spain since organized anarchism first made its presence felt in the country: the affinity group was the basic unit, which linked with other groups for the purposes of collective action. What was new was the formation of Regional Commissions of Anarchist Relations; entities that coordinated the activities of all the groups in a geographic area. These Regional Commissions appointed members to the Peninsular Committee, which in turn selected the FAI’s secretary. The secretary’s role was to maintain contact with anarchist groups throughout the peninsula and the world between the organizational meetings.
Why had the Iberian anarchists created a specifically anarchist organization? There were several reasons for this, but ultimately it reflected the original sin of the Spanish anarchist movement, which was a product of the Alliance for Social Democracy. The Alliance had been formed in Spain under the inspiration of Michael Bakunin. Its purpose was to protect the First International against state harassment and also ensure that it did not descend into a species of corporate syndicalism that simply fought to improve the workers’ material circumstances. It advocated an unambiguously revolutionary struggle against capitalism and the state. This has always been the stance of the anarchists within the workers’ movement, who were direct heirs of the International.
In the early period from 1869 to 1872, the Alliance for Social Democracy and the International’s Spanish Regional Federation were interpenetrated with one another, but they were two distinct bodies. Although Bakunin had warned Spanish Alliance members about the problems that this could cause, the pattern had already been established. Thus, the existence of a separate anarchist group undermined Bakunin’s hopes of making the International in Spain fully anarchist, even though anarchists would always have a powerful influence on workers’ groups.
This is how the labor movement unfolded, with the CNT inspired by the anarchists, who maintained independent groups and carried out specifically anarchist activities on the theoretical and practical realms. And they would have continued in this way, if not for the phenomenal development of the CNT and all the unique problems that such growth presented to the workers’ movement.
It wasn’t possible to clarify the complicated relationship between the anarchist and workers’ movements during the period of violent strikes and bourgeois pistolerismo (from 1919 to 1923), but this changed when the movements entered a period of relative calm after the establishment of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship in September 1923. The CNT then had to face a new problem: should it submit to the new government’s labor legislation (which presumed that the CNT would stop using direct action)? Or should it go underground (which entailed the loss of broad contact with the workers)? In addition to this issue, which was difficult enough on its own, there was another one that was no less significant: exactly how should they fight the dictatorship? The government could crush the CNT and the anarchists if they stood aloof from the other oppositional forces and of course that they could not overthrow the dictatorship alone.
Everything suggested that the CNT form an alliance with the other groups fighting the dictatorship. Those forces were democratic-bourgeois and reformist—even the Socialists and the UGT had officially adapted to Primo de Rivera’s regime—and collaborating with them implied a common political platform. In other words, it implied a political compromise. The CNT could potentially extract some practical benefits for the workers with such a strategy, but it would also mean the integration of the CNT into the government that would emerge after the dictatorship fell or, more likely, the CNT helping to destroy the dictatorship and put the reformists in power. Either alternative would disfigure the CNT and tie it directly the state. What really limited the CNT’s room to maneuver was its commitment to libertarian communism, its opposition to government mediation of labor struggles, and its rejection of the state. If the CNT abandoned its anarchism, then it would be free to form alliances with political parties and could push the government to approve laws that might offer material benefits to the proletariat. It was a stark dilemma; so much so that two different attempts to respond to these questions emerged after the military coup. Angel Pestaña and later Juan Peiró inspired one of the responses (their arguments differed, but their goals were the same). They asserted that the CNT should discard its anarchism, since that was the obstacle. That position took the name “professionalization of the unions” which meant, concretely, making them neutral in the class struggle. Pestaña hoped to resolve political issues with the socalled “associations of militants,” embryos or cells of the Anarchist Party. This is would be his response to the anarchist-labor movement duality. Peiró’s reply was less clear, but he essentially sought the same thing as Pestaña. Peiró began from an analysis of the class struggle and took the economic evolution of capitalism as a premise. Capitalists concentrated themselves and established the foundations of what we now call multinational capitalism through their monopolistic trusts and cartels. To fight capitalism effectively, the CNT should use this process as a model and organize itself in the same way, which is to say, by federations of industry at the local, regional, and national levels. It would create two governing bodies at the national level: one would be the National Committee of the National Committees of industries and, the other, a National Council of the Economy, with its respective sections, including the important one of statistics. In addition to the usual bureaucracy, this structure implied CNT’s acceptance of state legislation. Peiró did not speculate about the political representation of the CNT, because he assumed that it would have a political impact derived from its growing strength in the economic realm. Thus, while Pestaña and Peiró disagreed on some details, they coincided in their attempt to erase the anarchist content from the CNT.
How did the anarchists respond? There were also differences in the anarchist replies, although they too agreed in the final analysis. Some favored ending the anarchist-labor movement divide by making anarchism dominant, using the Argentina’s FORA (of the Fifth Congress) as a paradigm. Others focused on what was called the “link” (as it was universally known at the time) between the CNT and the anarchists. They believed that the division of activist tasks that it reflected—between union activists on the one hand and proselytizers on the other—was the best alternative. In any case, both tendencies wanted to maintain the anarchist influence in the workers’ movement.
There was also a third position, which <em>Los Solidarios</em> supported (although, for the time being, it is better that we speak only of Durruti and Ascaso). They began from the historical reality that Spain had only experienced a relative and unequal industrialization and that, as a result, the proletariat and peasantry had equal importance in its class struggle. The country had a population of twenty-five million, an active labor force of nine million, and a total of five million peasants. But the Spanish peasantry was different from the peasantry in other European countries, where agrarian reform had created a peasant middle class. There had been no agrarian reform in Spain. Latifundismo still existed in large parts of Andalusia and Castilla and there was a mini-latifundismo in other regions. As a consequence, there was a proletarianized peasantry with deep connections to the social struggles of the urban proletariat and that had expressed its adherence to libertarian communism or “instinctive socialism,” as Díaz del Moral termed it in his study of Andalusian peasant unrest.
If there was endless conflict between the peasantry and the aristocraticlandowner class in the countryside, in the industrial and mining zones the proletariat had to fight an anachronistic bourgeoisie—that was wedded to the dominant monarchical caste—or against the world capitalists who had asserted themselves in the country’s key industries. The class struggle appeared everywhere, in its most brutal and revolutionary form. The peasantry and the proletariat were equally desperate, in a country where the boundaries between the poor and rich were clear and precise.
And the state? What was its political foundation? The historical formation of the Spanish state rendered it into an unstable institution that could not rely on any type of national consensus. In fact, such a unified nation did not exist: instead, there were multiple regions that pushed toward federalist decentralism if not outright independence.
Ascaso and Durruti felt that it was their task, as anarchist revolutionaries, to exasperate the regime’s contradictions while simultaneously cultivating the revolutionary potential of the proletariat. That was their goal in their daily efforts to trigger the revolution. Regarding the anarchist’s role, they believed that their mission was to work among the masses and encourage their revolutionary consciousness. The CNT, inspired by the anarchists, was a propitious field for such an undertaking, as were the Socialist workers’ circles. But Ascaso and Durruti also knew that anarchists could not limit themselves to fighting for the material betterment of the workers and had to remain perpetually focused on their long-term revolutionary goals. Some of the more orthodox anarchists charged Durruti and Ascaso with anarcho-Bolshevism, but the accusation was unmerited, given their soundly anti-bureaucratic conception of the revolution and also their daily practice.
All of these questions were the order of the day in the activist meetings when our friends arrived in Lyon. It seemed as though the future of the revolution depended on the relations between the CNT and the anarchists. Discussions of these problems were particularly heated, in part, because of the inactivity imposed upon these exiles—who were so far from the scene of the action—and also due to the repression against exiled Spanish anarchists after the failed attack on Alfonso XIII.
To encourage activity among the exiled Spaniards, a group of anarchists advanced the idea of creating CNT sections in France in April 1928. But, since these CNT sections could not undertake public action in the country, they would work through the anarcho-syndicalist Confédération générale du travail-syndicaliste révolutionnaire (CGT-SR). Ascaso and Durruti believed that this distorted the subversive potential of the exiled Spanish anarchists and argued, first in Lyon and later at a meeting in Paris, that it was a way of dodging the anarchist movement’s fundamental problems. They asserted that there was no justification for creating CNT sections in exile, particularly because they couldn’t make demands for salary increases or undertake other activities that might improve workers’ circumstances. What was important, they said, was to continue revolutionary efforts oriented toward Spain, while also working with other exiled anarchists, particularly the Italians. While Durruti and Ascaso articulated this position in Lyon, Joaquín Cortés arrived in Paris after being expelled from Argentina for seditious activities. Ascaso and Durruti were close to Cortés, and had been active in the workers’ movement with him when they were in Buenos Aires. Ricardo Sanz and García Vivancos had also recently come to Paris (from Spain). After exchanging letters with all of them, Ascaso and Durruti decided that they should talk collectively and traveled to Paris in January 1928 for that purpose.
Ricardo Sanz’s reports from Spain were not very encouraging. Pestaña and Peiró had started a debate about the CNT’s future and the anarchist press ( <em>Acción Social Obrera</em> in Sant Feliú de Guíxols [Gerona] and <em>El Despertar</em> in Vigo) oozed with the effects of the polemic. Every meeting seemed to revolve exclusively around the topic, as two conflicted tendencies took shape and partisans forgot that such disputes had already divided the Valencia comrades. To top it off, various political figures were also launching idiosyncratic and futile conspiracies against the regime.
Cortés told them that the campaign for Radowitzky was the priority in Argentina. The FORA was recovering from its old splits and hoped to become the principle workers’ organization in the country. It had around 100,000 members, an extraordinary number given that the FORA focused more on spreading anarchist ideas than recruiting. But Cortés also pointed out that the comrades there seemed unaware of the growing threat of a fascist coup d’etat, which could lead to a bloody crackdown on the movement. Unfortunately Cortés was prescient: on September 6, 1930, General Uriburu carried out the augured coup and violently suppressed the workers’ movement and its leading cadres. He was especially merciless with the combative anarchists.
To all this, Cortés said, one can add the cycle of open violence that erupted in Argentina after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. The vicious conflicts between the anarchists of action and those more inclined toward theory did not presage anything good. The figures that polarized this debate were di Giovanni, that blond youth who published Culmine, and Diego Abad de Santillán, who thought all insurrectionalists were nothing more than “anarcho-bandits.”
There was also another matter that brought Durruti and Ascaso to Paris: a meeting called by the Spanish speaking Anarchist Groups in France. Bruno Carreras had represented those exiled in France at the CNT’s national meeting in Barcelona that month and was scheduled to report on the situation in Spain.
Carreras spoke about how difficult it was for the CNT to hold itself together while underground. He also discussed the “link” between the CNT and the anarchists, which ensured the CNT’s independence from the state and the anarchist’s continued influence in the labor movement. “In France,” Carreras said, “we really don’t have that problem, but we should create CNT sections. To study this question, the National Federation of Spanish speaking Anarchist Groups in France has called a meeting in Lyon on February 19.” Carreras asked those present (approximately thirty) for a written statement pledging that they would attend the gathering. There was strong opposition to this proposal; many did not think that the CNT had any role to play in France. Carreras’s principal argument was that many Spaniards exiled in France did not want to be active in the anarchist groups but did want to work with CNT; that sizable group could ultimately be recruited into the anarchist movement. Cortés in a lively way and then Ascaso more calmly refuted Carreras and lined up on the side of the opponents. [196]
The meeting of anarchist groups took place in Lyon as announced and, according to the summary published by Prisma magazine, there was a hearty debate about the role of the CNT in France. We can be quite certain that neither Durruti nor Ascaso participated in the meeting, given the position that they articulated in Paris (and none of the groups listed in the report of the meeting had any connection with them).
Police arrested Ascaso and Durruti shortly afterwards. This time there was no scandal. They were sentenced to six months in prison for infractions of the laws on foreigners. They entered prison in April 1928 and left in early October with the same problem as always; exiled from both Spain and France and without any country willing to give them an entrance visa. [197]
** CHAPTER XXI. Clandestine in Europe
While Durruti and Ascaso were imprisoned in Lyon, the Asylum Support Committee inquired at various embassies and consulates in Paris about the possibility of getting them an entrance visa. “Our country cannot give asylum to dangerous anarchists,” was the most common response. There was some hope in the fact that the Soviet Union had replied positively to their query the previous year,[198] but neither Ascaso nor Durruti were very enthusiastic about the idea of going to the USSR and all their comrades, including Makhno, warned them against such a move. Thus, the two didn’t know where to go when they were released, although they did need to leave France immediately. They concluded that perhaps they could hide out in some Central European country once they possessed of Soviet passports.
They went to the Soviet Consulate as soon as they arrived in Brussels to pursue the matter of the Russian entrance visa. The consulate staff told them that they had indeed received a visa but needed fill out the necessary paperwork in Paris, since that was where they had made the application. Once they did that, they would receive the passports. Ascaso and Durruti explained that they were barred from entering France and faced months in prison if they were arrested there again. The Soviet functionaries were unmoved. What could they do? They decided to secretly go to the Soviet Consulate in Paris, although when they arrived, they were told that they had to go to the embassy, not the consulate, to carry out the requisite procedures. At the embassy they had to answer a series of questions in which they were pressed to explain why they wanted to go to Russia and what they intended to do there. Then they had to fill out forms asking them to pledge their commitment to defending the Soviet Union, that they would not participate in any activities that might damage it, and to acknowledge that the Soviet state was the authentic expression of the popular will. They decided that these requests were intolerable and, as a result, their last chance to live legally in a country disappeared.[199]
Germany was the only nation in Europe where the anarchist movement possessed a certain organized strength at the time and thus to Germany they went. They arrived in Berlin at the end of October 1928.
Orobón Fernández had provided them with Agustín Souchy’s address. Forewarned, Souchy took the two anarchists into his home and set out to regularize their situation as foreigners. He spoke with Rudolf Rocker, a distinguished German anarchist who enjoyed great prestige in some intellectual and political circles thanks his prominence in the workers’ movement and his theoretical accomplishments. In order to prevent a disaster—since Germany was not France—they agreed to keep the two Spaniards’ presence a secret and lodge them in a comrade’s home in the suburbs of Berlin.
Rudolf Rocker discussed the two Spaniards’ situation with the libertarian poet Erich Muhsam and both decided that they should to speak with an old comrade by the name of Paul Kampfmeyer. Although Kampfmeyer had grown distant from the anarchist movement over the years and joined the Social Democratic Party, he continued to be good friends with some of the most renowned anarchists. Thanks to the fact that he held a position in the government, he had also been able to help them resolve several tricky bureaucratic problems in the past. For example, Kampfmeyer provided invaluable aid when Nestor Makhno and Emma Goldman were leaving Russia.
They explained Durruti and Ascaso’s case to him and asked if he could help them get residency permits for the two men. “He promised to do his best,” Rocker wrote, “but said that we had to give him some time.” Meanwhile, they planned some activities and tried to make the stressful wait as bearable as possible for the Spaniards. Rocker elaborates:
<quote>
We often took the exiles to the city at nightfall and spent the evening with them in our home, or perhaps Agustín Souchy’s or Erich Muhsam’s. The police weren’t too worried about foreigners in Berlin then, so we could risk activities that would have been impossible under the Empire. Foreigners were generally left in peace, if there wasn’t a direct complaint against them or pressures from foreign governments. That might have been the case with Durruti and Ascaso, but their situation was particularly dangerous and so we thought it best to try to authorize their residency legally. After a period of fifteen days, Kampfmeyer told me that he could not take another step in the matter. The Prussian Government was then in the hands of a coalition of Social Democrats, Democrats, and the Center Catholic Party, and although the Social Democrats were the strongest party and held the most important ministerial positions, they had to demonstrate their flexibility in order to avoid a governmental crisis and not endanger their position in the Reich. With respect to Durruti and Ascaso, the central problem was that they had killed the arch-reactionary Cardinal Soldevila in Zaragoza. Soldevila was one of the most rabid enemies of the Spanish workers’ movement and had funded the pistoleros, who were responsible for killing many of our best comrades.
“I could have done something for them if they’d murdered the King of Spain,” Kampfmeyer told me, “but the Center Catholic Party will never forgive the death of one of the Church’s highest dignitaries. There’s no way that the government will give them asylum.”
</quote>
The situation was desperate. If Ascaso and Durruti somehow fell into the police’s hands, they would be shipped to Spain immediately. Rudolf Rocker didn’t want them to have false hopes, so he updated them on the matter:
<quote>
When Souchy and I explained the situation and asked them what they thought we should do, they reflected for a moment and then said that perhaps they should go to Mexico. Of course they couldn’t live there under their own names, but it would be easier to pass unnoticed and find work in a country where they spoke the language. We decided that this was the best option. They would first have to enter Belgium secretly, where trusted comrades would get them the necessary documents, and then they would set sail for Mexico in Antwerp.
For our part, we had to raise the money to cover the costs of the trip, which were by no means insignificant. We didn’t tell them anything about this, given that they would not have accepted such a sacrifice. The movement (FSA-German Anarchist Unions) demanded huge outlays from each of us then, as we were in the midst of constant industrial struggles and also in a period of latent economic crisis.
But we had to get the money as soon as possible. I spoke with Muhsam about the issue and he suggested that we visit the well-known actor Alexander Granach, who might be able to help out. I explained the object of our visit [to Granach], without giving him any real details.
“You’ve come at a good time,” he said, almost shouting. “Here’s what I earned this morning!” And he took three or four hundred marks out of his pocket and threw them on the table. We really hadn’t expected so much and were extremely pleased. This was an auspicious beginning! The good Granach never knew who he helped with his money. All he needed to know was that we required his help for a good cause. The rest wasn’t his concern. They finally raised the money necessary to finance the trip and the two Spaniards took off for Belgium. Rocker writes: After a long time without hearing anything from Durruti and Ascaso, we suddenly received a letter from them out of the blue. They returned the greater part of the money that we’d given them and told us that they had decided against going to Mexico. They had resolved to return to Spain as soon as possible. As for the money, they held onto only what they needed to cover the costs of the trip to their country.[200]
The Belgium that Ascaso and Durruti found in early 1929 had more relaxed policies on foreigners, which made Hem Day think that it might be possible to regularize the residency status of these two “fearsome Spaniards.” It turned out that the Belgian police agreed to their request, but only if Ascaso and Durruti changed their names. This astounded our perennial “illegalists.” Ascaso later exclaimed: “What happened in Belgium was the strangest thing that happened to me in my entire life!”[201]
Durruti and Ascaso had countless friends there. That, plus the ease of gaining residency and the encouraging news from Spain, made them completely rule out moving to Mexico.
Liberto Callejas describes the environment in Brussels at the time:
<quote>
The <em>Casa del Pueblo</em> was near the end of Route Haute Street. This was home for the political refugees and the socialist workers of the country. Vandervelde, after finishing his ministerial chores, would occupy a table in the large parlor-restaurant and leisurely have coffee with cake.[202] All the comrades gathered there to conspire, write, and struggle against Spain’s dictatorial regime, symbolized by the hated figure of General Primo de Rivera. The first outlines of the “conspiracy of Garraf ” were drawn up in a corner of the <em>Casa del Pueblo</em>. The anarchist weekly <em>Tiempos Nuevos</em> was produced there. Francisco Ascaso and two other exiles painted the building’s exterior. His brother Domingo sold handkerchiefs and stationary. Durruti found a job as a metalworker. I was a sawyer in a cork and dishwasher factory in the hotel where Francesc Macià stayed. Salvador Ocaña built tables and wardrobes. Each one did what he could in that almost provincial environment.[203]
</quote>
For his part, Leo Campion wrote the following:
<quote>
I got know Ascaso before Durruti. We worked in the same automobile parts workshop. When we first met we spoke about social issues and, within a few minutes, he told me: “No man has the right to govern another man.” With that declaration, we discovered that we had friends in common. Those who lived in Brussels in 1930 will remember the large number of Spanish and Italian refugees, especially the Spaniards. They will also recall the refuge they found at Hem Day’s “Mont des Arts” bookstore, which was a center of permanent conspiracy against all established orders. There were two residents of the first floor: the Barasco firm and Leo Campion. The Barasco firm made articles for “hawkers” and sold them without intermediaries. The factory occupied one room, which also functioned as a living room, smoking room, dinning room, kitchen, and bedroom or, more accurately, bedrooms, considering the endless number of lodgers. At least a half dozen leaseholders responded to the name Barasco, including Ascaso and Durruti.[204]
</quote>
Ida Mett completes the picture for us:
<quote>
When Durruti and Ascaso arrived, Belgium, like the rest of Europe, was suffering the effects of the world economic crisis. But conditions were worse there than in France. It was extraordinarily difficult for a Belgian to find work and, needless to say, nearly impossible for a foreigner, especially Ascaso, who didn’t have a trade. Like so many other foreign political refugees at the time, Ascaso got a job as a painter in construction. As always, the professionals initiated the new ones and when someone found work he told the others.
Despite the difficulty getting a job—something worth holding onto once you had it—Ascaso didn’t make concessions to the foremen or bosses, which meant that he immediately lost the hard-to-find positions. I later worked in a factory in which Ascaso had been employed for a short time. It was a subsidiary of a French small mechanics firm.... The customs were so archaic—paternalism, non-unionized workers, and tremendous fear of the management and owners—that comrades could barely work there for more than a few days. That was the case with Ascaso and an anti-fascist doctor comrade. After the manager fired me, the first thing he did was mention Ascaso and the doctor. He acknowledged that our demands were just but said that agreeing to them would only encourage the other employees to rebel.
One of Ascaso’s qualities was an absolute inability to yield to authority. Although police were constantly watching him, he came to all our meetings and rallies and, without speaking to the group, always participated actively in the work.
Ascaso belonged to that advanced sector of the proletariat of the time (the Spanish proletariat, in particular) that actively cultivated its hatred for the bourgeoisie. Destroying the bourgeoisie was the essence of their very lives. They didn’t know what would emerge after the revolution, but that was the least of their concerns; the important thing was the character of the struggle, because that was what gave meaning to their existences. During that period, I met other political refugees who, like Ascaso, endured the material and legal difficulties of their lives without complaint. Such hardships seemed inherent in being a revolutionary to them. Even death in the struggle felt “natural,” something in keeping with the style of life that they had freely chosen.
To speak of Ascaso is also to speak of Durruti. The two names were always pronounced together. And yet what a difference between the two! Not only in their physical aspects, but also in their temperaments. While Ascaso looked typically Spanish, that was not the case with Durruti. He was big, strong, and had green eyes. He was also an excellent mechanic and even found work in a Belgium shaken by the economic crisis. I remember that he once saw a strange “help wanted” ad in a newspaper after he had been out of work for a while. He and several unemployed Belgian mechanics went to the factory together. The manager subjected them to a professional test and it turned out that Durruti scored the best marks. The manager then asked his nationality. Durruti told him that he was a mechanic. The manager, thinking that he was a foreigner and probably hadn’t understood the question, stated it once more. Durruti’s reply was the same. This time the manager asked it more slowly. Durruti’s response was: “I believe you’re looking for a mechanic. I’m a mechanic.” The manager realized that Durruti was mocking him and, with that, the possibility of getting this job came to an end.[205]
</quote>
These statements offer an image of daily life in Brussels at the time, but the atmosphere was not quite as peaceful as Liberto Callejas suggests. The police followed all the prominent refugees step by step and were always ready to intervene (just slightly less brutally than the French). On December 26, 1929, Madrid’s <em>Informaciones</em> reprinted information from <em>L’Indépendance Belge</em> that made it clear that police were stilling watching the anarchists closely:
<quote>
<strong>The Rumored Plot Against Belgium’s Royal Couple</strong>
<em>L’Indépendance Belge</em> reports that police knew that the militant anarchist Camilo Berneri had been in Belgium for some time. It also says that they had carried out surveillance of anarchists thought to be in contact with him, principally of an anarchist from Douai, whose name still hasn’t been released.
This matter has been kept in the greatest confidence, but it has been revealed that Prime Minister Jaspar, Justice Minister Janson, and Defense Minister Broqueville have received letters threatening violence against the Royal Family if they consent to the marriage of Princess María José and Italian Prince Umberto of Piedmont. Authorities assert that these letters came from Berneri and gave strict orders to arrest the Italian anarchist at all cost. Italian police are also aware of this planned attack against the Belgian Royal couple.
<em>L’Indépendance Belge</em> says that the regicides intended to take the train leaving Brussels immediately after the Italian royal train left at 10:00 pm on January 3. The royal train was going to follow a special schedule, so as to not arrive in Rome until the morning of Sunday, January 5. The train on which the anarchists intended to travel would catch up to it en route and their plan was to throw several bombs at it while they passed it in Milan. Ascaso and Durruti, two Spanish anarchists who allegedly killed the Archbishop of Zaragoza, have been implicated in the conspiracy.
</quote>
And later, under the headline “Berneri Was Carrying Four Portraits In His Pocket When Arrested,” it says:
<quote>
When he was arrested he was carrying four portraits of the Italian Minister of Justice in his pocket, whom they were attempting to assassinate. These portraits were doubtlessly destined for his accomplices, who are thought to be Ascaso and Durruti and the Dutch anarchist Maurice Stevens. Police state that Berneri paid 428 franks to purchase a high caliber pistol from a well-known gun manufacturer in Brussels.
The second arrest, about which great reserve has been maintained, was carried out at the same time as Berneri’s. The detainee’s name is Pascuale Rusconi and he lives in Lacken, under the protection of a Socialist politician from Brussels who is a strong supporter of the theory of violence. The politician had intervened to prevent the government from expelling him once before. Police also found a pistol in Rusconi’s residence.
<em>L’Indépendance Belge</em> adds that Mr. Rocco, the Italian minister of Justice, canceled his trip to Brussels due to the discovery of this plot.
</quote>
The same newspaper printed other news related to the plot:
<quote>
On the basis of official reports, the Belgian news agency says that there was not a plan to attack their majesties. Police arrested the two Italians for carrying false passports.
</quote>
And:
<quote>
Berneri Has Been Released . Officials deny that the two Italians participated in a plot against the Belgian Royal family.
Berneri has been freed. He told police that a member of the anti-fascist group in Paris had come to Belgium to organize plots that were to be executed in Italy. He carried a false passport.
</quote>
The above makes it clear that Mussolini’s agents—who worked closely with Primo de Rivera’s government—were trying to undermine the anti-fascist movement. Camilo Berneri played an important role in that movement and, to justify persecuting him (while also implicating Durruti and Ascaso), they invented the “plot against Belgian’s royal couple.” On the other hand, the press also noted the unsuccessful attempt to kill the Italian Minister of Justice, which probably wasn’t a fabrication. It would not be strange to find Berneri, Ascaso, and Durruti working together, given that the three had previously attempted to organize a rebellion that would reach across Spain, Italy, and Portugal.
While Spanish refugees in Belgium had their sights set on Spain, it was becoming increasingly clear that the monarchy would soon collapse. Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship sank into discredit, financial scandals proliferated, and international capitalists brazenly exploited the national wealth. Everyone—except Alfonso XIII—knew that when Primo de Rivera fell, the monarchy would be swept away with him.
</quote>
** CHAPTER XXII. The fall of Primo de Rivera
The only thing revealed by Ascaso and Durruti’s interrogation and Camilo Berneri’s arrest was Mussolini’s obsession with inventing conspiracies and assassination plots. Perhaps the Italian dictator was yearning for those that he couldn’t carry out when he was active in Socialist ranks and tried to pass for a “professional revolutionary” in Switzerland.
Authorities verified the links between Durruti, Ascaso, and Berneri and then deported the latter for entering the country with a false passport. However, they did not expel Ascaso or Durruti, which suggests that members of the Belgian Socialist Party had made efforts on their behalf or that the government simply dismissed the matter as an Italian concern. Both things were probably true, although what is important is that police didn’t bother Ascaso or Durruti any further and that our friends were able to continue their activities in Brussels.
Ascaso and Durruti were always at the center of subversive campaigns. For example, in Brussels, they and exiled Catalanist Colonel Francesc Macià participated in some of the preparations for the plot organized by the Spanish politician José Sánchez Guerra in January 1929. That conspiracy, like all those organized against Primo de Rivera, ended in failure.
The Sánchez Guerra affair was important for the mobilization of CNT and anarchist forces. On February 6, 1929, shortly after the failed uprising, there was an important meeting of anarchist groups in Paris. The central topic of discussion was “The role of the anarchists in light of present events in Spain.” Participants decided that Spanish anarchists living in France should be prepared to cross the border and intervene directly in any rebellion that might break out. They would have to be armed to do so and they entrusted anarchist Erguido Blanco with getting them weapons. We know that Blanco contacted Nestor Makhno, among others, to discuss military questions. While no sources indicate that Blanco went to Brussels, the comrades there must have been informed about the matter. The connections between the militants in the two cities were simply too strong for that not to happen. For example, anarchists in Paris had turned <em>La Voz Libertaria</em> over to their comrades in Brussels due to police harassment in France. Those comrades—Liberto Callejas, Ascaso, and others—published a single issue, the magazine’s third, on September 30, 1929.
Hem Day’s “Mont des Arts” bookstore received anarchist publications from around the world. Ascaso and Durruti visited the shop regularly and of course they paid special attention to literature from Spain. One can imagine how startled they must have been to read the following in Vigo’s <em>Despertar</em> in December 1929: “The Death Certificate Of The CNT.” This was the name of a report from the CNT National Committee, signed by Angel Pestaña and Juan López. It was a pessimistic statement that raised the following question: Why should a National Committee exist if the CNT’s regional committees are so inactive? Militants in Spain immediately sent letters condemning the newspaper for publishing that “vile document.” The debate, which ultimately served to revive the militants, had no source other than Pestaña’s tendency to start debilitating controversies. Ascaso and Durruti probably wrote Ricardo Sanz in Barcelona, asking him for information about the matter and to mobilize the Andalusian immigrants living there. Most of these were working on the construction of the subway and the fact that the Construction Union made Sanz its president suggests that <em>Los Solidarios</em> continued to have an impact in Catalonia’s labor and activist circles, even if many were in exile or imprisoned.
By the end of 1929, it was clear that the dictatorship’s fall was imminent. It would fall not because of popular pressure, but due to internal disintegration and because it had been abandoned by organizations and individuals that once supported it. Indeed, the monarchy itself entered into terminal crisis and the remedies prescribed by the wisest “doctors in politics” only accelerated its demise. Miguel Primo de Rivera’s ridiculous activities, his contradictory policies, and especially his belief in his own popularity precipitated his fall. On January 28, 1930, the dictator gambled his future and lost. The King replaced him with another officer, General Berenguer, and Primo de Rivera fled to Paris.
Everyone thought that this personnel shakeup was extremely significant, but little had changed: the dictatorship still existed, the state’s repressive apparatus continued to operate, and all the suffocating laws remained in force. Spain is a paradoxical country and its complex history has confused more than a few historians, who are often unable to appreciate the deeper context of its political transformations. It is impossible to understand Spanish developments by applying the rules that govern other countries; they are inapplicable because the lower class’s eruption into history always pushes events in unanticipated directions. That constant particular to Spain repeated itself when Miguel Primo de Rivera’s powers were transferred to Dámaso Berenguer. What did Alfonso XIII tell his new Prime Minister? Of course he ordered him to save the monarchy and, when necessary, apply the heavy hand of the state. Anything else, particularly an orientation that suggested tolerance, would contradict the dominant regime. And yet that is exactly what happened. All the passions that the monarchy had suppressed for decades suddenly poured out onto the Hispanic homeland.
Alfonso XIII suspended the 1876 constitution when he handed power to Miguel Primo de Rivera. During the seven years of the dictatorship, the government crushed the freedom of association, the freedom of the press, and numerous individual rights. Could Dámaso Berenguer abruptly reconstruct Spanish society on liberal and democratic bases? Surprisingly, that is what he attempted to do: General Berenguer wanted the country to slowly return to the constitutional norms that had governed it before 1923. But, while pushing the country in that direction, he lost control of events and the reins of power were rung from his hands. The fear previously felt by the working masses now began to haunt government leaders.
We will analyze the effect that the movement of fear on the social scale had on the CNT in order to examine its consequences for Durruti’s life. The Barcelona CNT’s first step after Primo de Rivera fell from power was to publish a newspaper to establish direct contact with the working class. The first issue of the weekly <em>Acción</em> appeared on February 15, 1930. The CNT also held a national meeting, which groups from Asturias, León, Palencia, Aragón, Rioja, Navarre, Catalonia, and Levante attended. There was only one important issue on the agenda: “The reorganization of the CNT and reopening its unions.” Participants knew that it was urgent to rebuild the CNT, although they would have been well-advised to address some of the Confederation’s important internal differences before throwing themselves blindly into the task. Indeed, parallel to the reorganization efforts, there was a conflict between the CNT’s base and its leadership. The National Committee prompted this clash when it established the CNT’s position in that highly politicized moment. It declared:
<quote>
The CNT will support:
1. All efforts tending toward the convocation of a constituent assembly.
2. The reestablishment of constitutional guarantees and all citizens’ rights.
3. Absolute and rigorous union freedom.
4. Respect for the eight-hour workday and all prior labor victories.
5. Freedom for all social political prisoners and review of their trials.[206]
</quote>
The CNT, as an organization, had not determined its position on these five issues and yet the National Committee was already defining the body’s stance. Pestaña’s hand was present there.
Activists promptly criticized the National Committee for abusing its power. Although the National Committee tried to explain itself, it was unable to erase the impression of bad-faith maneuvering. This led to yet another series of written debates, which naturally weakened the CNT at a time when it needed all its strength for the enormous tasks of reorganization. The politicians also went into action and Republicans with truly monarchical souls rose to the surface. Miguel Maura and Niceto Alcalá Zamora were the two principle monarchists who passed seamlessly to the Republican camp. Likewise, the celebrated politician José Sánchez Guerra declared his opposition to Alfonso XIII. The liberal Republicans and Socialist Republicans then proclaimed their support for a Republic.
It was a chaotic political moment. Politicians addressed the world and made promises as if they really represented a popular force. The political and ideological madness even infected some of the CNT’s leading men, like Juan Peiró and Pere Foix (Delaville). They signed the “Manifesto of the Catalan Intelligentsia,” a document in which leaders of almost all the Catalan political parties stated that they wanted Spain to become a Republic.
The second issue of the anarchist weekly <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> appeared on April 19, 1930. It depicted the political scene with a satire titled “There are thirty-six parties in Spain.” After listing them, it said: “Thirty-six parties and not one less. We have made a list and see that we presently have thirty- six programs, drafted by figures from the Left, Right, and Center. One needs approximately four and a half hours daily to read the manifestos and proclamations from these political groupings, with the aggravating circumstance that we hardly learn anything. All the appeals and harangues neglect to mention the principal issue: that their authors want to rule us.” [207] Eight days after this article appeared, the CNT held a rally in Barcelona’s Teatro Nuevo on the Paralelo in which two of the orators—Juan Peiró and Angel Pestaña—had been stripped of their right to speak in the CNT’s name. Peiró responded to the sanction quickly. He sent an open letter to <em>Acción</em> resigning from all CNT positions and, shortly thereafter, withdrew his signature from the manifesto. Pestaña’s case was more complex, given his habit of saying one thing and doing another. Nevertheless, he decided to come to the rally. The audience was very large, capable of filling the theater two times over, and attendees affirmed their commitment to completing the reconstruction of the CNT begun in February. Sebastián Clará and Pedro Massoni spoke. The crowd heard Clará and Massoni enthusiastically, Pestaña with less enthusiasm, and there were murmurs of opposition to Juan Peiró’s address. The latter professed his faith in anarcho-syndicalism from the podium and announced that he had retracted his signature from the manifesto. Swept up by the excitement of the moment, the audience cheered Peiró, as if wanting to forgive his blunder in order to focus wholeheartedly on rebuilding the Confederation.
** CHAPTER XXIII. The Murder of Fermín Galán
The CNT would soon become the country’s most important proletarian organization, thanks to the dramatic reorganization of its unions, the impact of its rallies on the workers, and the widespread distribution of publications. The renewal of the anarcho-syndicalist movement began not only to fill the monarchy’s ruling classes with fear, but also the politicians conspiring against it. For their part, the exiles in France and Belgium were brimming with excitement, thinking that the hardships of the past were justified by the new turn of events. It was harvest time and the harvest looked good. Indeed, many of these refugees were so excited by the developments in Spain that they did not wait for the declaration of the Republic—and, with it, political amnesty—but decided to return to Spain secretly. Juan Manuel Molina, head of <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> and its press Etyl, was among those who made such a determination in Paris. He later became famous under the pseudonym “Juanel” after enduing multiple trials for “crimes of the press.”
The CNT and anarchist resurgence in Spain was also tantalizing for the exiles in Brussels and they too were tempted to rush back into the country. The more prudent comrades, like Liberto Callejas or Emeterio de la Orden, had to curb Ascaso and Durruti’s immediate impulses. Indeed, their hour still had not arrived. The old order still stood and its judicial apparatus could still go after them, if Martínez Anido’s assassins didn’t riddle them with bullets first. They had to wait. And the wait was not only long, but also laden with doubts and worries. The CNT’s reorganization was going well and the anarchist movement was recovering, but there were also contradictory tendencies at work. The two antagonistic forces that were pestañaism and anarchism each pulled in their own direction, hindering the CNT’s progress.
But the news from Spain was quite good: the CNT rebuilt itself quickly in Valencia, was gaining ground in Aragón, and opened way (with difficulty) in Madrid. It was only faltering in Sevilla, thanks to the Stalinist schemes of ex-CNT members José Díaz and Manuel Adame, who wanted to make the local CNT an appendix of the Communist Party. The CNT reached its greatest level of growth in Catalonia, especially Barcelona. The Construction Union, with its forty-two thousand members, made Ricardo Sanz president and the Metalworkers’ Union, which had also recovered, declared its opposition to Pestaña as CNT secretary. Barcelona’s powerful Industrial Art and Textile workers joined the CNT in a decision made in a general assembly held on April 29, 1930 in the Meridiana Cinema in the El Clot district. Two thousand workers representing the diverse sides of the textile industry approved their entrance into the CNT with acclaim.
The other Catalan provinces were not lagging behind the capital. A CNT regional meeting took place on May 17 and participants discussed the need to publish a Confederal newspaper. Representatives from twenty-two localities participated in another regional meeting on July 6 and set August 1 as the date that they would release of the first issue of <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>. The CNT National Committee was named on June 27 without Pestaña. Progreso Alfarache became the organization’s secretary and another National Committee member, Manuel Sirvent, also belonged to the Peninsular Committee of the FAI. [208]
While the CNT reorganized, anarchist groups were busy planning an uprising with Captain Alejandro Sancho, a close ally of the FAI. The plan was to instigate riots and strikes in several large cities and then provoke rebellions in Bilbao, Logroño, Zaragoza, Calatayud, Teruel, Sagunto, Valencia, and throughout Andalusia. The government would have to respond to many areas simultaneously and, with Catalonia isolated from the rest of Spain, the revolutionaries would only have to arm the people. They would do so by storming the Barcelona Armory and Artillery Park, where there were abundant rifles, ammunition, and other instruments of war. [209] They formed a Revolutionary Committee in Catalonia to lead the rebellion, which would operate in conjunction with the CNT’s Catalan Regional Committee. Its members were Captain Alejandro Sancho, Ricardo Escrig for the students linked to the FAI, Manuel Hernández, for the FAI Peninsular Committee, and Bernardo Pou and J. R. Magriñá for the CNT’s Regional Committee.
The resurgence of the anarcho-syndicalist movement was an aspect of the social process that began when Dámaso Berenguer took the reigns of government. But, at the same time, there were also very troubling tendencies; specifically, counterrevolutionary forces that disguised themselves as revolutionary.
The counterrevolution found its ideal man, who managed to make both the Republican opposition and the monarchy revolve around him. His name was Miguel Maura, son of Antonio Maura. As they say, “like father, like son.”
A monarchist to the bone, Miguel Maura saw from the outset that the best way to defend the interests of the privileged classes, and even the Monarchy, was by going over to the opposition and declaring himself a Republican. He told the King as much before proclaiming his “modestly liberal, Republican right-wing faith.” “If the others in our party follow my path,” he said, “we will not only create a ‘cushion’ that will protect the Monarchy when it falls,
The Murder of Fermín Galánbut also effect a political change that will be little more than make-up on the royal shield.” [210] However, the other members of Miguel Maura’s party, lazy to the bone, thought that everything would simply fall into place if they gave him a free hand. Only one of Maura’s friends, the assistant to the Count of Romanones, declared himself Republican. That was Niceto Alcalá Zamora, Alfonso XIII’s ex-minister of War, who made his own proclamation—even more modestly than Maura—in April 1930.
The CNT’s resurgence horrified Miguel Maura and Niceto Alcalá Zamora. Its increasing ability to impose its will on Catalan employers was an outrage to the two politicians. For Maura, the revolutionary process was like a wild horse that Dámaso Berenguer had freed but could no longer control. “If we let this process unfold without direction or restraint,” said Maura, “then there will be a deep revolution and nothing of the old monarchical state will remain: the popular wave will sweep everything away and Spain will become an immense ‘soviet’ and anarchist, no less.”
How could he guide the course of events and with what forces? How could he impose a direction on the popular movement against the Monarchy and compel it to obey his commands? It was no longer enough for Maura to be a Republican; he had to become a “revolutionary.” But relying on whom and on what?
Only the Socialist Party and its union, the UGT, could help Maura. During the last days of the Monarchy, these two forces had control over their members and nearly intact organizational structures, thanks to the fact that their subservience to the dictatorship had saved them from government persecution. Maura’s position would be particularly good if he could secure the support of Socialist Leader Indalecio Prieto: he had opposed the PSOE’s capitulation to Primo de Rivera and was thus more popular than Largo Caballero, who had been an advisor to the state.
Time was of the essence. He held talks with Prieto, the two came to an agreement, and together they crossed the Rubicon by calling the meeting of political “leaders” held on August 17, 1930 in San Sebastián. It was here that they would “cook up” the so-called Pact of San Sebastián.
The following individuals were in attendance: Alejandro Lerroux, Marcelino Domingo, Alvaro de Albornoz, Angel Galarza, Manuel Azaña, Santiago Casares Quiroga, Manuel Carrasco i Formiguera, Matías Mallol, Jaume Aiguader, Niceto Alcalá Zamora, Miguel Maura, Indalecio Prieto, and Fernando de los Ríos. This handful of men claimed to represent the following political abominations: Alianza Republicana, Partido Radical Socialista, Izquierda Republicana, Federación Republicana Gallega, Acció Catalana, Acció Republicana de Catalunya, Estat Català, and Derecha Liberal Republicana. Indalecio Prieto and de los Ríos represented themselves. Also present, as guests of honor, were Felipe Sánchez Román (jurist), Eduardo Ortega y Gasset (jurist), and Gregorio Marañón (doctor). These political representatives professions were: undefined (2), School teacher (1), Historian (1), Departmental head in Literature (1), Lawyer-writer, with a fondness for war themes in times of peace (1), Lawyers (3), Economists (2), Doctor (1), Undefined, but with journalistic pretensions and some education as an economist (1).
What did they discuss? “The preparation of a revolutionary uprising,” Miguel Maura explains, “in which few, very few, had any faith, but which we thought was necessary as a challenge to the dominant regime. We created an Executive Revolutionary Committee to define Republican policy and lead the rebellion. Alcalá Zamora presided over the Committee and Indalecio Prieto, Manuel Azaña, Fernando de los Ríos, Marcelino Domingo, Alvaro de Albornoz, and myself were members.” [211]
The committee’s first step was to make a deal with the Socialist Party, which endorsed the “pact” on the condition that they would receive four Ministries in the new Republican government. The Socialists pledged to declare a general strike (through the UGT) if the rebellion exploded, but only after troops sympathetic to the Executive Revolutionary Committee were in the street and taking up arms against the monarchists.
Miguel Maura had planned out the defeat the Monarchy like a good lawyer, but there were still two groups with which he had neither dealt nor implicated in anything: the CNT and FAI. Furthermore, there were soldiers sympathetic to these organizations, like Captain Alejandro Sancho and Captain Fermín Galán, who were planning rebellions that had to be taken seriously. How to stop the anarchist plots and prevent the CNT from disrupting the transfer of power to the “Republicans”? Miguel Maura was at a loss. Perhaps they could have tried to control the CNT through the Pestaña faction, but the FAI’s influence in the Confederation rendered any attempt of the sort illusory. Given the circumstances, the best solution was the truncheon, which was in the hands of a very monarchical general and good friend of Maura by the name of Emilio Mola, the General Director of Security. With Mola’s skillful use of the club, and a dose of diplomacy from the Executive Revolutionary Committee, they could ruin the anarchist captains’ subversive plans, imprison the most rebellious workers, and disorganize the CNT. That was exactly what Maura and Mola set out to do. As a first step, Mola sent a circular to all the governors asking them to raid CNT and FAI circles on October 22. Police arrested Alejandro Sancho, who died in a military prison, as well as Ramón Franco, Ricardo Escrig, Angel Pestaña, Manuel Sirvent, Pere Foix, Sebastián Clará, and many members of union committees. These committees lost their organizational coherence after they were forced underground.
This raid on the anarchists and insurrectional soldiers helped the San Sebastián conspirators. It cleared the field for their political maneuvers and also attracted many of the troops under Mola’s orders to their camp. Miguel Maura was behind all of this, directing the action. Even Mola was among of his puppets.
History is often made and unmade by chance and on November 12 a fortuitous event occurred that would have an important impact on the course of events. There was a terrible accident that day in a poorly built house on Madrid’s Alonso Cano Street and four men working there died in the collapse. The entire country—already hypersensitive due to the recent politically instability—shuddered. Madrid’s construction workers declared a strike and held a massive public funeral for their comrades. Police tried to disperse them and shot two men to death in the process. Madrid’s proletariat declared a general strike and Barcelona expressed its solidarity by declaring one as well. The police repression in Madrid was tepid, but it was fierce in Barcelona: authorities shut down all the CNT’s unions and filled the prisons with militants once again. This harsh persecution practically shattered the CNT and dealt a heavy blow to Barcelona’s proletariat, the driving force of the Spanish workers’ movement.
General Mola struggled to contain all the discontent and disruptions, including the escape of air force Commander Ramón Franco [212] on November 25, who had been arrested the previous month for conspiring with the anarchists. Would Ramón Franco join Fermín Galán, [213] who was zealously carrying out preparations for the rebellion against the Monarchy? Mola felt a deep bond with Fermín Galán, dating from when they both served in Morocco. General Mola knew that the conspiracy plotted by Niceto Alcalá Zamora and the Executive Revolutionary Committee was a tall tale and that Fermín Galán would launch an uprising alone. How to stop him? Mola’s only recourse was the pen. He wrote Fermín Galán a letter on November 27, 1930. He said:
<quote>
The government and I know that you intend to revolt with the garrison troops. The matter is serious and could cause irreparable damage.... I beg you to think about what I’m saying and let your conscience guide you, not fleeting passions, when you make your decision.
</quote>
Was Fermín Galán simply looking to die? We will never know. The fact was that Galán had resolved himself in conscience and gave himself the right to think—at the cost of his life—that there were genuine revolutionaries among the members of the Executive Revolutionary Committee in Madrid. “Galán, as he expressly stated during those feverish days, was fed up with the failures of 1926 and doesn’t want to rely on pseudo-revolutionary generals in the style of Blázquez, or on the opportunistic politicians that, for him, make up practically all the “telephoners” [i.e., the members of the Executive Revolutionary Committee]. The majority of the Jaca soldiers adored him and would follow him wherever he led. He had the support of enough officers, and even conservative and Catholic men like machine-gun Captain Angel García Hernández. Others opposed his quixotic actions, but at least sixty officers and sub-officers in Jaca were with him.” [214]
Galán lost his most important source of support when authorities arrested Alejandro Sancho and the anarchist’s Revolutionary Committee, but he was still determined to go forward. That was the most open and frank way to put all the conspirators to the test. If they abandoned him, the working class would have to draw its own conclusions about the traitors from Madrid’s Executive Revolutionary Committee. Galán knew that his life hung in the balance.
The general strike declared by the Barcelona CNT in solidarity with Madrid lasted from November 16 to November 22. The repression came later. And it was in the middle of this clampdown that Madrid’s Executive Revolutionary Committee first made contact with the CNT. Miguel Maura and Angel Galarza went to Barcelona and met with Peiró. They asked him: “if there is a revolutionary uprising, will the CNT support it by declaring a general strike?” [215] Peiró said that he would relay the matter to the National Committee. The National Committee did not have the authority to decide on the issue and thus called a national meeting. Participants at the meeting decided that the CNT should “come to an agreement with the political elements in order to make a revolutionary movement.” [216] This was a clear step backwards. Until then the CNT’s position had been to conspire without forming alliances with political figures. What had happened? We believe that recent bitter strikes and also the government’s October 11 raid, which crushed the anarchist’s Revolutionary Committee, had weakened the CNT and also the FAI’s influence within it. With the more radical elements incapacitated, a more accommodating position rose to the surface. Both Peiró and Pestaña supported an entente with the politicos as a way of deflecting the persecution bearing down upon the CNT, but that was unrealistic: it was totally out of the question for General Mola, who thought Spain had no worse enemy than the CNT, whether Pestaña or Alfarache was at its head. Miguel Maura shared his view, which he did not hesitate to repeat in the work he wrote years later about the events. [217]
The Executive Revolutionary Committee set an ambiguous date for its rebellion: “toward the middle” of December, although it had previously set December 12. Clearly Niceto Alcalá Zamora and the Executive Revolutionary Committee hoped that no one would rise up. After all, with vague instructions like theirs, individual conspirators could select the date that seemed best to them or simply not select one at all and do nothing. Fermín Galán opted for the first date—December 12—and prepared to launch the uprising at dawn that day.
Galán began to worry as the moment drew closer because his liaison with Madrid, the journalist Graco Marsá, had not come to Jaca. He sent a telegram to Madrid in the early hours of December 11 saying: “Friday, December 12, send books.” In the agreed upon code, that meant: “I’m going to revolt on December 12.” The Executive Revolutionary Committee received the telegram on the morning of December 11, although by that time it had set December 15 as the date of the rising. What did the Executive Revolutionary Committee do with Galán’s telegram? The “telephoners” simply ignored it and, instead of telling him that they had changed the date to December 15, sent Graco Marsá and Casares Quiroga to Jaca to “dissuade that lunatic from doing anything crazy.” They left Madrid at 11:00 am on December 11 and reached Zaragoza seven hours later. What did they do in Zaragoza? A mystery! All we know is that they finally got to Jaca at 1:00 am on December 12 and immediately sought out a hotel. Galán was staying in the Mur hotel, but the emissaries from Madrid decided to take a room in the La Palma hotel on Mayor Street, just a stone’s throw away from the Jaca “lunatic.” “Marsá suggested contacting Galán, but Casares Quiroga dissuaded him: they were exhausted and the best thing was to go to sleep.” [218]
While Graco Marsá and Casares Quiroga slept soundly, several of the officers committed to the rebellion assembled in Galán’s room in the Mur hotel. They put the final touches on their battle plan, finishing around four in the morning. Galán then took off for the Victoria barracks and woke the soldiers up with a shout of “Viva the Republic!” The soldiers applauded him and the revolt began. The “Republicans” from Madrid slept for several hours more, dead to the world.
Bernardo Pou and J. R. Magriñá contacted the engaged soldiers in Barcelona on behalf of the CNT’s Catalan Regional Committee and urged them not to abandon the Jaca rebels. They shrugged their shoulders and did nothing. Pou and Magriñá reached out to the Lérida garrison as well, and the men there replied in the same way. [219] At dawn on December 13, the rebels began the fight in Cillas against the soldiers from the Huesca garrison and were soundly defeated. Fermín Galán told some of his comrades to flee while they had the chance. He could have done so himself, but choose to surrender instead. He and seven of his companions went before a court-martial several hours after the fighting had ended. Two of the eight defendants were condemned to death: Fermín Galán and his good friend Captain García Hernández. The sentences were carried out at 2:00 in the afternoon on December 14, 1930.
García Hernández asked for spiritual aid, whereas Fermín Galán respectfully rebuffed the chaplain. “You’ll understand,” he said, “that I’m not going to suddenly abandon views that I’ve held for a lifetime, especially now.” The two captains asked to die while facing the firing squad and without blindfolds. Just before they shot him down, Galán waved to his executioners and said “Until Never!” [220] García Hernández died moments later. On December 15, 1930, as expected, Niceto Alcalá Zamora’s uprising did not occur. The members of the Executive Revolutionary Committee, authors of the celebrated “Why We Rebel” manifesto, slept peacefully in their homes on the night of December 14. Police arrested them while they showered or ate breakfast on December 15. Authorities, with great consideration, brought them to Madrid’s Modelo prison, where the prison warden had prepared to incarcerate them in luxury.
While the members of the Executive Revolutionary Committee meekly entered prison, there were general strikes in Madrid and Barcelona, but they were pacific and barely evident. The workers’ movement was too depleted, and too confused about what had happened in Jaca, for it to do otherwise. There was an attempt to attack the Prat de Llobregat airfield, but it failed because the officers involved pulled back at the last moment. It was only in Asturias, particularly in Gijón, where the proletarian presence made itself felt through hard conflicts with the police.
The conclusion that the working class had to draw was the same one it drew after the August 1917 general strike, when it severed its ties opposition political parties. Presumably it would do the same on this occasion, after a period of reflection, and try to determine its own fate in independently. Antonio Elorza wrote the following about the consequences of the December rebellion for the CNT: “The unions, which had just begun functioning normally in Barcelona after the November strike, were closed on December 30 during the general political strike. And this time the Confederation gave Mola the pretext that he needed to crush the revolutionary syndicalists. He stated as much in a December 7 governor’s conference: ‘we used the CNT’s revolutionary posture to dissolve its unions, which was a great necessity.’” [221] Those who supported forming an alliance with the political parties at the CNT’s national meeting in December would now suffer for their decision: several of them, including Angel Pestaña and members of the National Committee, were among the hundred militants locked in the Modelo prison from December 1930 to March 24, 1931.
“In the first three months of 1931,” writes Elorza, “the primary concern in Confederal circles was once again reopening the closed unions. Except for the diminished efficiency of the oppressive apparatus, everything reminded one of the dictatorship, even the government’s orders to persecute those who collected dues.” [222]
”In the trimester before the proclamation of the Republic there were three prominent Monarchists who, consciously or unconsciously, worked for it: the Count of Romanones, Emilio Mola, and José Sánchez Guerra. The tripartite action of these figures was perfectly complimentary: Mola silenced the CNT through repression; the Count of Romanones provoked the February crisis and, with it, General Dámaso Berenguer’s fall and the entrance of Admiral Aznar; and, finally, Sánchez Guerra’s refusal to form a government on February 17 without the members of the Executive Revolutionary Committee, who were still incarcerated. With a Monarchy lacking real power, only two things were possible: either a popular revolt, whose consequences were unforeseeable, or the proclamation of a Republic, in which power was delivered to a team of men who had “sworn to remain united in order to proclaim a Republic that would in no way alter the social and economic foundations of Spain.” It was the latter that took place on April 13, 1931.
We can justly describe the political events between January and April 12, 1931 as a “comic opera.” The cowardice among monarchists is particularly notable (with the Count of Romanones leading the pack). This became manifest in February when he provoked the crisis that caused Berenguer’s collapse.
Berenguer and Alfonso XIII concluded that the only way to save the Monarchy was by calling general elections. It was a smart move, despite the Socialist Party’s announcement that it would abstain. What happened in the electoral campaigns? How did the “radical” politicians behave? What did they seek and what means did they use? Of course, we can take it for granted that the means were not revolutionary: opposition politicians always try to present themselves as “good brothers,” winking at the whole world to get the greatest number of votes. The only ones who could have upset the electoral campaign were the anarchists and Mola had pushed them to the margins. The results of the April 12 municipal elections were: 22,150 monarchist councilmen and 5,875 Republican councilmen. [223]
The Count of Romanones freed the men that would compose the future Republican provisional government and thus made possible the advent of the Republic. Miguel Maura himself makes it clear in his book that the opposition did not want a social or even political revolution and didn’t think that the proclamation of the Republic was imminent. He wrote:
<quote>
Near dawn [on April 13], around five in the morning, Largo Caballero, Fernando de los Ríos, and I left the Casa del Pueblo. [224]
</quote>
Fatigued and silent, we went out on foot, walking slowly toward Recoletos Avenue. Suddenly, Fernando said:
<quote>
“Today’s victory permits us to go to the general elections in October. Our success there will bring us the Republic.” I looked at Largo and was astonished to see that he agreed with that strange argument. Apparently, neither of them had considered the inevitable consequences of what had taken place during the day.
</quote>
Miguel Maura told them that they “would be governing within forty-eight hours.”
<quote>
They called me naïve, and we said goodbye, arranging to meet a few hours later in my house, which had been the headquarters of the Committee since the beginning.[225]
</quote>
** CHAPTER XXIV. “Viva Macià! Death to Cambó!”
Everything started around 1:00 pm on April 14, 1931 to a backdrop of the tricolored flag flying in the street. It was spontaneous, sincere, and enthusiastic.
Workers made flags out of scraps of fabric in the textile factories. “To Barcelona!” was the shout in the factories. One by one the looms and other machines shut down; the stores, businesses, and restaurants closed. With the factories at a standstill and workers flooding the streets, it seemed like an enormous festival was taking place in the city. The joyous and contagious racket reminded some older workers of July 1909 or 1917, but of course without the violence or barricades. The youngsters chanted the same slogans as the older ones: “Viva the Republic! Viva Macià! Death to Cambó!” [226]
It also seemed to be the day of the woman. Women stood out, frenzied and passionate, in all the groups. At first it was the factory workers who made up these groups, then the store employees joined them after they left their shops, next it was waiters who poured out of the restaurants... The crowds steadily grew in size and diversity.
From Barcelona’s workers’ districts, such as Sant Martí, Poble Nou, Sant Andreu, Gracia, Horta, Sants, Santa Eulàlia, and from places near Barcelona, like Badalona and La Torrass, everyone went towards the center of the Catalan capital. They converged on the Plaza de Catalunya or in the Plaza de la Generalitat, cheering the Republic and Macià and denouncing the King and Cambó. Few knew what was happening in Madrid at the moment or even elsewhere in Barcelona.
Lluís Companys entered City Hall at 1:35 to raise the Republican flag on the balcony. It was flying by 1:42. The workers who left their jobs at 1:00 inundated the Plaza de la Generalitat and adjacent streets by 2:00 pm. Lluís Companys hoisted the flag at 1:42, but the people had proclaimed the Republic at 1:00 pm exactly. Given that politicians always take the moving train, we will see a little of what was happening in Barcelona shortly before Companys hopped aboard.
<quote>
The CNT men were in the street. It was they who took the initiative, particularly in Barcelona. The prisons, the Civil Government, the General Captaincy, City Hall, the Palace of Justice: they swept everything away. A political thug had been comfortably installed in the Civil Government: Alejandro Lerroux’s “second in command,” Emiliano Iglesias.
The CNT forced him out and put Lluís Companys in his place. Jaume Aiguader was put in City Hall and General López Ochoa in the Captaincy General. No official center of importance was left untouched. The CNT was everywhere. Everywhere it cleared the path of those who no longer mattered.[227]
</quote>
The people of Eibar were the first to proclaim the Republic, which they did at six in the morning on April 14. Other proclamations followed Eibar’s: Valencia, Sevilla, Oviedo, Gijón, Zaragoza, Huesca, and later Barcelona. The workers were also demonstrating in the streets of Madrid. Republican flags flew above the crowd. But no official announcements were forthcoming, as those in the two centers of power—Miguel Maura’s house and the Royal Palace—watched the events unfold. There was news of desertions from the latter and adhesions to the former. General Sanjurjo, the leader of the Civil Guard, declared himself for the Republic and put himself at Miguel Maura’s orders, who would become the interior minister in a matter of hours. Sanjurjo’s adhesion cleared away the last unknown. The King began packing his bags. The Count of Romanones had been going around in circles since nine in the morning trying to decide how to carry out the transfer of power. In agreement with the King, he arranged for the transfer to take place in Dr. Marañón’s house. There, on neutral ground, the Count of Romanones would deliver the abdication of Alfonso XIII to his assistant, Niceto Alcalá Zamora.
The Provisional Government decided to meet in its entirety shortly after the Civil Guard went over to the Republic. All the future leaders were assembled in Miguel Maura’s house, except for the future Minister of War, Manuel Azaña, who was the only one among them who had avoided going to the Modelo prison (he was tried for rebellion in absentia on March 24, 1931). None of Azaña’s colleagues had had a clue about his whereabouts since the police raid on December 15, when he had hid “somewhere in Madrid.” But now, on the afternoon of April 14, they urgently needed to find him so that the government could present itself fully. Miguel Maura set out to locate him:
<quote>
It wasn’t easy to find him, since his intimates jealously guarded the secret of his hiding place. They finally directed me to the home of his brother-in-law, Cipriano Rivas Cherif. I went there to find him. After more than a few formalities, and having to give my name and wait a good while, I was led into back room. There was Manuel Azaña, pallid, pale as marble, doubtlessly because he had been shut in there for more than four months.
I explained the purpose of my visit and ordered him to immediately come with me to my house. He refused categorically, claiming that we had already been convicted and practically absolved, but that he continued in rebellion and that anyone, even a simple guard, could arrest and imprison him. I was absolutely astonished! I told him about the people’s euphoria, Sanjurjo’s visit and offer, and how much he could stimulate the more spineless spirits, but all without managing to change his decision to remain in hiding. I was getting ready to leave him there when his brother-in-law Rivas Cherif appeared, returning from the street in a state of excitement and enthusiasm shared all Republicans at the time. He confirmed everything that I had been saying and Azaña finally reluctantly decided to follow me. He was muttering I don’t know what as we drove in my car to my house. He was clearly in a foul mood. We entered the library and he greeted the comrades one by one. I was then shocked to realize that he hadn’t seen any of them since December 13, four months ago. Nobody had had any contact with him or even known where he was. This confirmed what I already suspected: Azaña, a man of extraordinary intelligence and lofty qualities, was suffering from an insurmountable physical fear.... It was stronger than he, although he was doing his best to conceal it.[228]
</quote>
Such was the man who would run the Ministry of War in the first government of the Second Republic.
The meeting between the Count of Romanones and Niceto Alcalá Zamora took place at 2:00 in the afternoon in Dr. Marañón’s house. The Count relates the events as follows:
<quote>
Alcalá Zamora: “There is no solution other than the King’s immediate departure and renunciation of the throne.... He has to leave this very afternoon, before sunset.”
Alcalá Zamora made use of a supreme argument: “Shortly before coming here, we received the adhesion of General Sanjurjo, leader of the Civil Guard.” [The Count of Romanones said:] I turned pale when I heard him and didn’t say any more. The battle was hopelessly lost.[229]
</quote>
The Count of Romanones spent two hours in discussions and held talks with the King at 5:00 pm. Alfonso XIII signed a proclamation to the country drafted by the Duke of Maura:
<quote>
I do not renounce any of my rights, because more than mine they are a deposit accumulated by history, of whose custody I will have to give a rigorous account one day.
I hope to understand the authentic expression of the collective conscience, and while the nation speaks, I deliberately suspend the exercise of Royal Power and withdraw from Spain, thus recognizing it as the only master of its destiny.[230]
</quote>
Power <em>truly</em> did not exist between 5:00 and 10:30 pm. This vacuum of authority made Miguel Maura impatient and he convinced the rest of his colleagues that they had to occupy the Interior Ministry at once and put the machinery of the new Republican government into motion. Miguel Maura had conceived of this government as the “cushion” born of the Pact of San Sebastián. It would save many, very many, things on that April 14, 1931. [231]
** CHAPTER XXV. The new government and its political program
The April 15 issue of the <em>Gaceta Oficial</em> reported on the composition of the new government, as well as all the appointments and administrative orders. A new group now controlled the state. The ministries were distributed among those who had cooked up the Pact of San Sebastián and in accordance with their commitment to unity. There were three ministries for the Socialists:
<quote>
Fernando de los Ríos, in the Ministry of Justice.
Francisco Largo Caballero, in the Ministry of Labor.
Indalecio Prieto, in the Treasury Ministry
</quote>
The Radical Socialists followed the Socialists in importance, with two ministries:
<quote>
Alvaro de Albornoz, in the Ministry of Public Works.
Marcelino Domingo, in the Ministry of Public Education.
</quote>
Then, with the same number of ministries, the Radicals:
<quote>
Alejandro Lerroux, in the Ministry of the State.
Martínez Barrio, in the Ministry of Communication.
</quote>
For Manuel Azaña’s Republican Action, one: Manuel Azaña, in the Ministry of War. For Casares Quiroga’s Galician Republicans, one: Santiago Casares Quiroga, in the Ministry of the Navy.
The Ministry of the Economy was reserved for a Catalan: Nicolau d’Olwer.
Miguel Maura, the ex-monarchist who wanted a law and order Republic, ran the Interior Ministry. His support for the Republic rested on the following observation: “The monarchy committed suicide and, therefore, either we joined the nascent revolution and defended legitimate conservative principles within it or we left the field open for the Leftists and workers’ associations.” [232] The Presidency went to Niceto Alcalá Zamora, an ex-monarchist who also ruminated on the demands of the moment: “A viable Republic, governmental, conservative, with the mesocracy and Spanish intelligentsia’s consequent deference toward it; I serve it, I govern it, I propose it, and I defend it.
A convulsive Republic, epileptic, full of enthusiasm, idealism, but lacking in reason; I will not play the role of a Kerensky to implant it in my homeland.” [233]
What was the government’s political program? For all the twists and turns that we give to the texts that formed the foundation of the state, we do not find anything resembling a program. The only thing we come across is the commitment to unity in confronting the popular explosion and “cushioning” the Monarchy during its crisis and collapse.
What were the central ideas around which these men formed their pact in San Sebastián? To defend “legitimate conservative principles.” With what forces? With the “mesocracy and the Spanish intelligentsia.” What are these “legitimate conservative principles”? The right to private property. What was the right to property? The abuse of that right with anachronistic economic structures imposed by Fernando de Aragón and Isabel de Castilla through conquest and pillage; a war booty distributed among their captains in the form of countships, dukedoms, and marquisates that established the land-ownership system based on large estates in Andalusia and part of New Castile.
Rural caciquism was part of the “legitimate conservative principles” of the aristocracy and its appendages. The Church, despite all the attempts at reform, continued to be an economic power and to monopolize education and the country’s cultural and intellectual life. The army, with almost as many officers as soldiers, and a statist bureaucracy that suffocated the country’s economy, formed part of the “legitimate conservative principles” and functioned like a parasitic caste that gobbled up taxes.
With whom did they intend to defend those conservative and legitimate principles? With the “Spanish intelligentsia and the mesocracy;” that is, with the bourgeoisie. The “intelligentsia” smelled of vestry and was chained to the Church. State bureaucrats made up the “mesocracy” and the bourgeoisie was inexistent as a political force, given that the Monarchy had impeded its development and fostered the supremacy of rural oligarchs over industrialists.
With that political program, if we can call it a program, the new government intended to leave everything just as it found it and to ignore the social and political problems that had, at base, caused the Monarchy to crumble. They would maintain the social relations of the Monarchy under the cloak of a Republic. Was that program viable? Could such a Republic survive while they completely disregarded the working class and the peasantry who, in reality, had proclaimed it? Like it or not, Alcalá Zamora was going to be the Spanish Kerensky.
<quote>
<sup>Front page article in the <em>Heraldo de Aragón</em> on the murder of Cardinal Soldevila (June 5, 1923).</sup>
</quote>
<quote>
<sup>Front page of <em>Tiempos Nuevos</em>; Paris, April 2, 1925. The article discusses the life and death of Cardinal Soldevila as well as the various investigation into his murder.</sup>
</quote>
<sup>Above: in 1900, Buenaventura Durruti and his older brother Santiago began to attend the school on Misericordia Street run by Manuel Fernández. Buenaventura is the third from the right and his older brother Santiago is sixth from the right.</sup>
<sup>Top: the murder of anarchists in Barcelona after the Tragic Week. Although educator Francisco Ferrer y Guardia did not participate in the popular revolt, authorities accused him of being its instigator. He was sentenced to death and executed.</sup>
<sup>Middle (left and right): Durruti’s membership card in the Metalworkers’ Society of León.</sup>
<sup>Bottom: the building in which Durruti was born.</sup>
<sup>León, 1915. Durruti, standing and in the center, surrounded by coworkers in Antonio Mijé’s metal shop, which specialized in machinery used to wash minerals in mines.</sup>
<sup>Above: Durruti, during his first exile in France (1917 -1920).</sup>
<sup>Above and following page: in Paris, accompanied by a group of French anarchists.</sup>
<sup>Below: in Vals-les-Bains (Ardeche) on September 1, 1918.</sup>
<sup>Right: Durruti comments satirically on his situation in Belgium in a postcard to his family.</sup>
<sup>Above, left: the Barcelona press reports on the assassination of Salvador Seguí (alias “sugar boy”), Secretary of the CNT National Committee. Languía, the right-hand man of Sales, perpetrated the crime on March 10, 1923 on Cadena Street. Graupera, the president of the Employers’ Federation, paid Languía and other gunmen a large sum of money to carry out the killing.</sup>
<sup>Right: Severiano Martínez Anido became the civil governor of Barcelona on November 8, 1920. He was infamous for his tireless oppression of the proletariat and created the “ley de fugas,” whose purpose was to sow terror among radical workers.</sup>
<sup>Below: the body of Salvador Seguí spread out on the operating table in the Hospital Clínico after doctors conducted the autopsy.</sup>
<sup>Above: Durruti in a mug shot taken after his detention in March 1923.</sup>
<sup>Below, left: a photo from <em>Heraldo de Aragón</em> showing the car in which the Cardinal Soldevila was traveling when he was killed. The bullet holes are visible in the picture.</sup>
<sup>Below, right: Cardinal Soldevila in the <em>Heraldo de Aragón</em> on June 5, 1923.</sup>
<quote>
<sup>Barcelona. November 12, 1930. Standing, left: Acrato Lluly. Seated: De Souza, father of Germinal of Souza (Portuguese) is on the left; Sebastián Clara is on the right. There are reasons to believe that they were members of the Peninsular Committee of the FAI at this moment.</sup>
</quote>
<sup><em>Le Libertaire</em>, Friday, December 31, 1926. The anarcho-communist periodical rallies to the defense of Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover against the imminent danger of their extradition to Spain. Miguel de Unamuno was among the orators that participated in the rally demanding political asylum that is announced in the paper. There is also news of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial in the United States.</sup>
<sup>While waiting for the Supreme Court to decide on the Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover case, <em>Le Libertaire</em> calls for support for Sacco and Vanzetti (April 8, 1927)</sup>
<sup>Violating article 18 of the law on extradition, the French government decided that it would hand over Ascaso, Durruti, and Jove to the Argentine police. Meanwhile, to stop this from happening, they threaten to go on a hunger strike. <em>Le Libertaire</em> publishes that news and comments on the “martyrdom” of Sacco and Vanzetti (July 8, 1927)</sup>
<sup></sup>
<sup><em>Le Libertaire</em> announces the liberation of Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover. It also prints a desperate call on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti (July 15, 1927).</sup>
<quote>
<sup>Marking the death of Nestor Makhno, the July 31, 1934 issue of <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> published a brief biography of this great fighter for human freedom, who was constantly defamed and vilified in the bourgeois press.</sup>
</quote>
* <strong>Second Part:</strong> The Militant
** CHAPTER I. April 14, 1931
Durruti, Ascaso, Liberto Callejas, Joaquín Cortés, and other exiles in Brussels were among the first militants to arrive in Barcelona. García Oliver, Aurelio Fernández, Torres Escartín, and other <em>Solidarios</em> who had been in prison or exiled elsewhere followed closely on their heels.
Echoes of the previous day’s popular celebration were still in the air when Ascaso and Durruti met with Ricardo Sanz on April 15, who had experienced the Monarchy’s last moments and the proclamation of the Second Republic.
Ricardo Sanz enthusiastically told them about the heroic deeds of the CNT, which had expelled the Lerrouxist Emiliano Iglesias from the Civil Government and put Lluís Companys in his place. Durruti and Ascaso were not impressed and must have lamented the contradiction between the CNT’s activity and its public stance. Indeed, the perspective that should have guided its action had been stated clearly in the April 1 issue of <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>:
<quote>
Elections, elections, and more elections; this seems to be the supreme solution to all the country’s problems.
We aren’t surprised in the least by this political comedy. We take it for granted that the people’s revolutionary spirit will soften somewhat when they are permitted to play at being councilors and deputies.... The CNT will have to draw useful lessons for the present and not too distant future about the bankruptcy of our supposedly revolutionary politicians.
</quote>
There is nothing in the events of April 14 that would lead one to conclude that Companys was more revolutionary than Iglesias; both were little more than efficient instruments of the counterrevolution. The fact that some CNT men supported Companys and others of his ilk made it clear there were still contradictory tendencies within the CNT and also an imperious need for political clarification within the organization. It was urgent for the CNT to return to its core mission and, in that context, mark out a clear response to the country’s political and social problems, while ensuring that the new government could not steady itself. This is the framework that will guide a new, decisive stage in Durruti’s life as a revolutionary. From this moment on, his activity will be of a much larger scope and more directly linked to the radicalization of the working class and peasantry.
It was a unique juncture for the anarchist movement. The Republic emerged from a profound crisis that could not be resolved with merely formal solutions. The men who took power were ignorant of the dialectic of history and confused superficial phenomena with the essence of popular sentiment; this is why they erroneously supposed that they could shape the country’s future with simple demagoguery. They thought: “after six years of dictatorship, the working people and peasants now give us this proof of ‘civic-mindedness’ by peacefully accepting the regime change. This shows that they trust us and have forsaken their violent methods from the past. To guarantee stability, all the government has to do is control a half dozen anarchist agitators.” This argument was convincing for Miguel Maura and Niceto Alcalá Zamora; as far as they were concerned, the country’s economic and political structures were fundamentally sound. These men were lawyers, not sociologists or historians, and thus assumed that the solution lay in making the state’s laws and the Civil Guard’s rifles effective. Surprisingly, among the members of the new government, there was a Socialist worker leader, two historians, and Marcelino Domingo may have had a rudimentary knowledge of sociology, whereas Nicolau d’Olwer’s had been educated as an economist. Nonetheless, all of these men willingly accepted Maura and Alcalá Zamora’s “logic.”
Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver immediately understood the Republican government’s great error and also what role the anarchists should play. There was no chance that the state would greet the explosion of popular enthusiasm that accompanied the Republic’s birth with measures designed to encourage that excitement and confront the country’s problems radically. On the contrary, the state would allow Spain’s deep economic and social problems to discourage the people and strip them of hope. And gradually they would become enraged at the demagogues who had assumed power. The anarchist’s responsibility, then, was to channel this discontent, make it conscious, and give an ideal to the most desperate. Then the revolution would be a real possibility.
The Left, even the Marxists, regarded their extreme anarchist position as a form of revolutionary infantilism. And, likewise, some members of the CNT derisively described them as anarcho-Bolsheviks. The dialectic of history would formulate its verdict on the validity of their stance. To understand what inspired the <em>Solidarios</em> and the FAI to embrace such a radical position, and also to contextualize the dramatic mistakes made by the Republican government, it is necessary to examine the socio-economic state in which the Monarchy left Spain.
According to statistics from 1930, 26 percent of the country’s twenty-four million inhabitants did not know how to read or write. Women suffered this blight most acutely: 32 percent were totally illiterate, although the 19.5 percent illiteracy rate among men was also not very encouraging. Illiteracy was more common in the countryside than the city: 70 percent of the country’s six million agricultural workers could not read or write. [234] We will now see how the agricultural sector broke down, how agricultural workers lived, and the distribution of the land. Lacking more specific data, we will use the averages from the 1930–1935 period, [235] which put the Republic’s meager efforts to remedy the situation inherited from the Monarchy into stark relief. Our point of departure is the population of eleven million active workers among the country’s twenty-seven million inhabitants at the time. With respect to the agricultural sector, we can define that active working population in the following way: 2,300,000 salaried workers (that is, without any land), two million small or medium seized property owners, and one million well-off property owners. These figures reveal that the peasant proletariat was as numerous as the mining-industrial proletariat (2,300,000). Spain remained a predominantly agricultural country, although this observation alone means little without considering the distribution of land.
<quote>
Steppes of limited agricultural productivity presently cover half the country; 10 percent of the surface is infertile. Rain is rare in thirty-two of the forty-eight provinces; the dry lands (drained) cover seventeen million hectares, and they barely produce 9.3 quintals of durum wheat per hectare, which is half of what the irrigated fields produce. Seven million hectares are not cultivated regularly and the absence of livestock prevents the arable land from being renewed. In some regions the soil is so poor that peasants have to bring humus from afar to the river’s vicinity. It is estimated that 40 percent of the surface is not sufficiently cultivated. Only the provinces bordering on the Atlantic and Portugal are irrigated well enough to support cattle.
As one can see, irrigation is the most urgent problem. The four great river systems of the territory contribute enough water to irrigate approximately three or four million hectares, but less than half of the government’s development projects are complete. In hopes of serving agriculture and the unemployed but without clashing with the capitalists, Primo de Rivera launched great public works. However, monopolist societies and the landowners control water distribution and sell it at prices that are inaccessible to the peasants. The land remains infertile, and only enriches speculators, who rent it out without granting the right to the precious liquid. Peasants are obliged to buy <em>water bills</em> at any price that they demand. It is only in Valencia where farmers have retained the old institutions of water use and where the <em>Water Judges</em>, peasants themselves, gather in the cathedral’s atrium every Friday to distribute it among the region’s inhabitants and hear complaints from those concerned.[236]
</quote>
Rabasseire describes land distribution in the following way:
<quote>
In 1932–33, the Agrarian Reform Institute conducted an investigation in seven provinces: Badajoz, Cáceres, Sevilla, Ciudad Real, Huelva, Jaén, and Toledo. (It excluded Cádiz, the land of the large estates.) Of 2,434,268 agricultural operations, 1,460,160 occupied less than a hectare; 785,810 farms had one to five hectares; 98,794 had an area of six to ten hectares; and 61,971 encompassed fifty hectares. When the land is not irrigated, fifty hectares is very little, especially because the lack of modern equipment imposes a three-year regime of rotating cultivation (many peasants still used the Roman plow). But if we count the farms of less than fifty hectares, we will see that they make up nine tenths of the total rural establishments in these regions. Only 19,400 farms run from fifty to one hundred hectares and only this twelfth of the total has enough land to support those who work it. Of the rest, 7,508 establishments are large domains, among which fifty-five occupy 5,000 hectares each. The area held by these rural properties of more than 250 hectares adds up to 6,500,000 hectares, as the total extension of the 2,426,000 farms of less than 250 hectares does not amount to 4,256,000 hectares.... In the north, in Galicia and Asturias, small farms of less than one hectare are most common.... Many northerners have to emigrate, because the south has enough space to receive the thousands and even hundreds of thousands of <em>colonos</em>[237] ... if the landowners allow it. The property regime in the agricultural sector can be calculated at: some 50,000 landowners own 50 percent of the land; 700,000 well-off peasants possess 35 percent; one million middling peasants own 11 percent; 1,250,000 small peasants 2 percent, and 2,000,000 workers—40 percent of the rural population—have nothing.[238]
</quote>
How did people in this rural world live? Eduardo Aunós, a government minister during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, states: “While they live in misery, the majority of the agricultural workers will not be able to participate in politics; this misery is the foundation of <em>caciquismo</em>.” [239] Altamira, the celebrated historian of the Spanish economy, points out that “in many small valleys, the limited productivity of the land has forced the peasants to preserve a rural communism up to the present. It has proven efficient and is deeply rooted in the people’s psychology.” [240] Costa thinks that almost all of Spain’s problems have their origin in the iniquitous distribution of wealth, especially the land. [241] Flores Estrada, the great early nineteenth century economist and reformer, shows that the seizure of the land by certain individuals prevents the majority of humankind from working. “In provinces where there’s a land registry, it has been tallied that 84 percent of the small property owners earn less than one peseta daily,” writes Rabasseire. Likewise, Gonzalo de Reparaz bemoans the misery in Andalusia: “From Cartagena to Almería, we are witnessing one of the most appalling European tragedies. Hundreds of thousands of human beings are dying in slow agony.” [242] “Others declared that it was impossible to build housing unless salaries were increased; in the countryside, and even in the small villages, people use huts, caves, and caverns for shelter. In a word: almost the entire rural population is forced to live in conditions unworthy of a human being.” [243] Just as we see the Monarchy’s hand in the origin and maintenance of feudal structures in the rural world, we also see its presence in the government’s orientation toward industry. Carlos I, after crushing the nascent bourgeoisie in the <em>Comunidades de Castilla</em> (1522), concluded that he needed to stop the emergence of an industrial and commercial bourgeoisie at all cost in order to sustain monarchical absolutism. The alliance between the Monarchy and the rural and military aristocracy dates from that period, as does Spain’s resultant impoverishment and decline. Rather than encourage the development of a strong and cultured bourgeoisie, Carlos I preferred to buy the products needed to support the colonization of the Americas and Spain itself in France, Belgium, or wherever else he could find them. This policy necessarily produced a disregard for manual labor and an increased taste for military, ecclesiastic, and literary careers. Scientific and mechanical studies were erased from the curriculums of Spanish universities. The Bourbons rigorously observed this political line drawn by the Hapsburgs, with the brief exception of Carlos III. [244] The political course that Spain followed since the sixteenth century could have only one result for its economic-industrial structure: it yielded an unequal and capricious industrial development, structured around the interests of the Kings and their favorites, and ensured that foreign capitalists would have the exclusive right to exploit mines, industry, electricity, railways, and telephone lines. The state gave to foreign capitalists what it denied Spanish capitalists, whose industrial initiative was asphyxiated by the iron corset of state monopolies.
“The Bank of Spain is organized in such a way that all the country’s profits end up in the pockets of those holding power. The big firms, banks, large industry, and transportation serve the state as an instrument of its plunder. The big firms hold the state captive and the state has imprisoned the nation. The economy is atrophied and the state hyper-atrophied; these are the factors that determine the country’s situation. The state absorbs a third of the national income, 60 percent of which—that is to say, two-ninths of the national revenue—is used to maintain the state’s repressive apparatus.” [245] With small and medium-sized industry controlled by the monopolies and strangled by excessive customs taxes and transport fares (true shackles of all development), the Spanish population’s standard of living could not improve, especially when more than half—its agrarian and peasant sector—fell outside the circuit of consumption. As a result, “Spain is disastrously backward in relation to other countries. Of the four thousand lead mines, only three hundred operate, and only a quarter of the rainfall is utilized. In Spain, 5,000 or 6,000 million tons of coal lay under thin layers of sand and yet not more than six to nine million are extracted each year. And the mineral riches do not stay in the country. Of the 2,700,000 tons of iron mineral extracted, England buys a million and other foreign countries an equal quantity. “Altogether, mining production reaches levels on the order of 1,000 million gold pesetas; industrial production approaches 7,000 million, of which 2,000 million come from the textile industry; and agrarian production reaches 9,000 million. This indicates that more than half of national production is agricultural. The same proportions are also evident in the workforce: there are four to five million people working in industry and the mines, and five to six million (three million peasants and two million salaried workers) in agriculture.” [246] We must now ask: who were arrayed against those eleven million laborers who consumed so little and lived so poorly in the countryside as well as the city? The ten thousand landowners who owned half of Spain’s agricultural property; the financial-political oligarchy; the speculators (commercial intermediaries); the large industrialists, with their retinue of <em>caciques</em>; a military and ecclesiastical caste; and other parasites who lived in idleness thanks to interest and monopolies.
Between these classes—one quite small and the other enormous—there was an abyss. No common project could unite them. Alcalá Zamora had been mistaken: there was no mesocracy to soften the contrast between the few who made hunger exist and the majority who suffered it. “The middle term between what?” asked Miguel de Unamuno. “Spain has never known the middle class.” [247]
In this mosaic of so-called social classes, there was also the intellectual.
The clergy was by far the most numerous of the group, with its approximately 100,000 people who lived at the country’s expense in one way or another and constituted its most reactionary sector. After the church intellectuals, there was the teaching corps, with its bosses and subordinates. The bosses (the mandarins) were the <em>ardent</em> Catholics, as Menéndez Pelayo described them. The “subordinates” came from that petty bourgeois population of store keepers, pharmacists, and small manufacturers who partially filled the ranks of the leftwing Esquerra Catalana and Manuel Azaña’s Republican Left. We must finally add the students, the promise of the future, whose prospects were ambiguous and who could as easily opt for socialism as fascism. The latter movement began to make its appearance in Spain through the theorists Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, and Onésimo Redondo, who were articulating their views in early 1931 in the periodical <em>La Conquista del Estado</em>. [248] The only part of the population that really enjoyed life was made up by one million people, between the bureaucrats, priests, soldiers, intellectuals, large bourgeoisie, and landowners. The rest was the “rabble.” When Miguel Maura spoke of defending “legitimate conservative principles,” he meant the preservation of those feudal structures that impeded the country’s economic development. To maintain and defend them was to subject the peasant to a slow death, with salaries that went from 1.5 to three pesetas for a workday lasting from sunrise to sunset, which is to say, for twelve to fourteen hours of labor (and only for a quarter of the year). The anarchists were prepared to respond to these contradictions and use them to their advantage. They were not idealists. They had a realistic view of the situation and had many reasons to believe that they could trigger a revolution and guide it with a libertarian communist program adapted to the radical spirit of the working class and peasantry.
But naturally they could not unleash the revolution overnight. They had to organize it and make the workers and peasants conscious of its necessity. Written propaganda would play a very important role in this, because it enabled anarchists to elucidate how a libertarian communist society could function. The masses needed to be able to envision a new economy, new work relationships, and a federation of internally autonomous neighborhoods. The high rates of illiteracy made such propaganda very difficult and so they set out to end that social blight. They intended to do so with “rationalist” day schools for the youngsters—which practiced what today is called “anti-authoritarian pedagogy”—and night schools for the adults, which were installed in the unions and libertarian <em>ateneos</em> and actively encouraged. As a result of this, the CNT’s unions and the libertarian <em>ateneos</em> became not only instruments of struggle, but also centers of proletarian education and cultural development.
Opponents both inside and outside the CNT criticized the FAI anarchists. Some called them “impatient revolutionaries.” Others, the Marxists, accused them of being ignorant of history and told them that it was impossible to skip stages of historical development. “Spain’s revolution,” they said, “has to be political not social; that is, it has to be democratic-bourgeois.” Anarchists replied to this outlandish argument by saying that the Spanish bourgeoisie had already had its chance to make a democratic-bourgeois revolution and it failed. It was now the proletariat’s turn to make its revolution. [249]
** CHAPTER II. Before May 1: the Forces in Play
Durruti mailed his first letter to his family since returning to Spain on May 6, 1931. He wrote:
<quote>
Please excuse me for not writing earlier, but I’ve had a lot of work to do. And, on top of everything, I’ve had to look after two French comrades who have come to Barcelona to report on our movement. I have a double responsibility, as their friend and comrade [he is referring to Louis Lecoin and Odeón, representatives from the French Anarchist Federation].
I spoke at a rally that we organized on May 1. When I got off the platform, a fellow from León introduced himself to me and told me that he’s thinking of heading there. I pleaded with him to go see you and tell you the details of my life here.
With regard to your trip to Barcelona, I have to tell you something: my life is completely abnormal and it would be impossible for me to attend to you in the way that you deserve. It’s better that you wait. On Monday Mimi [Emilienne] will arrive from Paris and when she’s here and we get a house, we’ll tell you to come and spend some time with us.[250]
</quote>
As we will see, the change in the political regime created problems that the CNT had to confront immediately, as early as April 15. One dilemma was the issue of the prisoners. They were freed quickly in places like Barcelona, where the workers themselves opened the jail doors, but it was much more complicated with the convicts in the penitentiaries. The provisional Republican government gave amnesty to political and social prisoners and, in that category, had included political party militants and radical workers imprisoned for crimes deriving from their activism. But the situation was different for the CNT and FAI. Many of their men had been locked up under the discriminatory policies of the dictatorship, which classified their offenses as common crimes (they were imprisoned for things like killing authorities, setting off bombs, shoot-outs with the police, attacks on employers, sabotage, etc.) What policy would the new government adopt toward these prisoners? Would it treat them as social prisoners and give them amnesty? The new government began to send signals indicating that it wanted to review each trial, which would amount to leaving a large numbers of anarchist militants in prison. <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> quickly denounced the new government’s position on the prisoners and demanded their immediate release. It also drew the government’s attention to the peasant question: “We are unaware of the provisional government’s intentions relative to this distressing problem, but we are sure that it will continue if the Republic keeps employing the Monarchy’s methods. That is something that our peasant comrades will not tolerate.” [251]
The CNT and FAI were very preoccupied by the matter of the prisoners. This was also an important concern for the freed <em>Solidarios</em>, who had a number of comrades wasting away in the penitentiaries: Aurelio Fernández was in Cartagena, García Oliver was in Burgos, and Rafael Torres Escartín, Esteban Euterio Salamero, and Juliana López were in the Dueso penitentiary. Durruti and Ascaso began working assiduously to arrange the immediate release of these militants as well as many others. But, in addition to this, there was also the complete reorganization of the CNT in Catalonia and throughout Spain. Rallies and public lectures took place almost without interruption in union halls or other rented sites. Durruti soon showed himself to be a popular orator and excellent agitator. He was asked to speak with such frequency that sometimes he had to participate in two different events on the same day.
When Durruti arrived in Barcelona, he stayed with Luis Riera (María Ascaso’s compañero) at his home at 12 Pasaje Montal in the Sant Martí de Provençals district. Durruti remained with Riera until the Ascaso brothers found him housing at 117 Taulat Street in Poble Nou. This house was rented in the name of Emilia Abadía, which suggests that Ascaso’s mother was in Barcelona at the time.
Times were hard for everyone. Neither the Ascaso brothers nor Durruti had found work: “I can’t go to León right now,” Durruti wrote. “The economic situation is not very bright.... I also have a lot of responsibilities in Barcelona and, since the political situation isn’t very clear, I can’t afford to waste any time.” [252]
He sent another letter to his family on May 11, in which he said that Mimi had just come from Paris. He also told them not to write again until he sent them a new address, because “I’m thinking of going to live in another house.” He also added: “I started working today and hope that I can live comfortably in Barcelona.... Political life here is somewhat complicated. We [the CNT] are fighting hard and hope that our efforts will be crowned with good success.” [253]
Durruti’s allusions to the political situation make sense in the context of the activities undertaken by the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya [Catalan Republican Left]. Hours before the proclamation of the Republic, Francesc Macià decided that the time had come to proclaim the Free Catalan Republic. He did exactly that, without waiting for the provisional government to call elections or approve a constitution conceding such autonomy to the region. This upset the new leaders in Madrid and Alcalá Zamora came to Barcelona to convince “Avi” (grandfather) that he should wait. However, the real source of the CNT’s difficulties lay in the Esquerra’s desperate effort to get CNT militants to abandon anarcho-syndicalism and join their party. Their propaganda did influence some CNT members.
There were additional problems as well. For example, Socialist Labor Minister Largo Caballero used his ministerial position to privilege the UGT (his organization) over the CNT (its rival). As a whole, his labor policies simply mirrored those advanced by social democrats in countries where they had some degree of governmental power: their goal was to improve workers’ conditions through legislation, which naturally led to class collaboration not class struggle. However, this social reformism was inapplicable in Spain, because a bourgeoisie did not exist as a political force, industry was not sufficiently developed, and the state lacked the necessary institutional coherence to apply the reforms. The class struggle had to take place in its purest state in Spain, although that did not stop Largo Caballero from persevering with his reformist tactics which, in turn, prompted the radicalization of CNT strategies.
We will examine all of this below and only mention it here for the sake of background. But we should add that the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) was not an entirely homogeneous body and that rivalries among its leading cadre had grown more acute since the Pact of San Sebastián. These divisions revealed deeply rooted differences within the SP. Julián Besteiro, Trifón Gómez, Andrés Saborit, and others thought the party should not join the provisional government and, instead, to wait to compete in the forthcoming elections. Largo Caballero and Indalecio Prieto believed that it should join the government. The opportunistic stance of the latter two prevailed within the SP. Joining the government, they argued, would be the best way to consolidate the party. The easiest way to win elections is from power.
We should also note the presence of Joaquín Maurín’s Bloc Obrer i Camperol (Peasant Worker Block), which was always in conflict with the CNT. There was the Communist Party as well, an alien force whose life support came from Communist International representative Humbert Droz, who controlled the finances used to publish Mundo Obrero and also crafted the political slogans steering the “Spanish cadre.”
Centrist parties usually have some ideological convictions in other countries, but that wasn’t the case in Spain. The Radical Party occupied the center and its leader, Alejandro Lerroux, was the prototype of the professional politician. His disciples, who frequently exceeded their master in the arts of opportunism, made up his general staff. Speaking of his youthful activity in the anarchist movement, Lerrouxist Diego Martínez Barrio [254] once said that he had decided that he felt more comfortable in parliament than prison. This party’s electorate was a mishmash of those nostalgic for the anti-clericalism of early Lerrouxism, to bureaucrats, to those living off investments and looking for the best place to invest their capital.
The left, including Manuel Azaña and his Republican Party, lined up along the Socialist Party. It drew its members from the small population of liberal bourgeoisie with intellectual inclinations, but did little more than pontificate about the earthly and divine in café discussion circles, often with deep ignorance of both.
We will end this list by mentioning Marcelino Domingo’s Radical Socialists, who navigated the events without radicalism in the socialist sense of the word.
The Right, which took refuge under Maura and Niceto Alcalá Zamora’s flag, was largely inactive, except when its members were shipping their capital abroad or stopping the cultivation of the land on their large estates.
<em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> continued warning the working class about the country’s unresolved problems and the need to address them as soon as possible, since it’s best to “strike the iron when it’s hot.” For their part, the workers poured into CNT unions en masse and participated in the nightly meetings organized throughout Barcelona. Orators at all these events urged the workers not to trust the new leaders: of course they were not revolutionaries and if they did institute some reforms, it was only because of proletarian pressure. Massive activist gatherings followed one another almost without interruption. There was a lot of work and little discussion, as propagandists were sent throughout Catalonia to support the CNT’s reorganization. News from the rest of Spain was positive: the CNT was being reborn from its ashes. Militants believed that the CNT could play a role of the first magnitude in the country’s political and social life and that its influence could exceed that of the UGT, which would naturally accept the social truce that the Socialist ministers were asking from the workers. The CNT needed to go beyond the Socialist’s reformism and draw the UGT workers into their ranks, so that together they could impose grassroots solutions to the country’s problems. The CNT’s Catalan Regional Committee called a meeting on Saturday, April 18 to draw up plans for an agitation campaign in Catalonia that would lay the foundation for the complete re-organization of the region.
The following day there were scores of workers’ rallies in Barcelona and other major Catalan cities and towns. The central topics were: freedom for the prisoners; worker and peasant demands, including an immediate increase in salaries, improvements in working conditions, and a forty hour workweek without a decrease in salaries; the dissolution of the Civil Guard; cleansing the army and eliminating the statist bureaucracy; real educational reform, with separation of the church and state; and numerous other closely related issues.
The halls were so packed that Sunday morning that they were unable to hold all those who came to hear the voice of the CNT and FAI. Teatro Proyecciones in the Montjuich Park was overflowing with people, who poured out onto the street and milled around outside. The same thing occurred in the Teatro Romea in the Sants district, in Gracia, in El Clot’s Cine Meridiana, where Federica Montseny spoke for the first time, in Poble Nou, and in the Teatro Triunfo.
Durruti spoke on the rostrum of the Teatro Proyecciones for the first time that day. He told the crowd: “If we were Republicans, we would say that the government is incapable of recognizing the victory that the people gave it. But we aren’t Republicans; we are authentic workers and in their name we call the government’s attention to the dangerous route that it has embarked upon and which, if unchanged, will bring the country to the brink of civil war. The Republic doesn’t interest us as a political regime. If we’ve accepted it for now, it’s merely as a starting point for a process of social democratization. But, naturally, this happens only on the condition that it ensures that liberty and justice are not reduced to empty words. If the Republic forgets all this and disregards the workers and peasants’ demands, then it will not satisfy the hopes that the workers invested in it on April 14 and what little interest we have in it will be lost.” [255]
The subject was the same in the rest of the rallies and the workers’ reply made it clear that if the government didn’t rapidly institute social and political reforms, the people would solve their problems on their own. “As anarchists,” a speaker said at another assembly, “our activities have not been and will never be subordinated to the political line of any cabinet, political party, or state. We anarchists and militant CNT workers—revolutionaries, all of us—have to apply pressure from the street to force the men in the provisional government to carry out their promises.” [256]
For <em>Los Solidarios</em>, this contact with the working masses was decisively important for the development of their revolutionary practice. From a personal point of view, Francisco Ascaso revealed himself to be an excellent speaker, simultaneously serene and dynamic. García Oliver (recently freed from the Burgos prison) also showed a notable mastery of the rostrum and would become one of the fiercest tribunes of the revolution. As for Durruti, a listener of his offered the following account: “He improvised short sentences, which were more like ax blows than words. From the very beginning he established a connection with the audience that remained unbroken throughout the duration of his talk. It seemed as if he and his listeners formed one body.
His powerful voice and physical presence—gesturing roughly with a closed fist—made him a devastating speaker. These qualities were complemented by his personal modesty. He occupied the stage only while speaking and, as soon as he finished, left to mix with those present. While standing outside after the ceremony, he continued talking with the groups of comrades on the sidewalks or in the plaza. He treated the workers like he had known them for his entire life.” [257]
The next week was also very intense. The CNT planned to celebrate May 1 with a large workers’ rally. It wanted to mobilize the country’s proletariat and warn the government that it couldn’t do as it pleased without taking the working class’s needs into account. That gesture was extremely opportune, given important political developments that were unfolding at the time. Indeed, three momentous events had just occurred. Francesc Macià had proclaimed the Free Catalan Republic, without waiting for the approval of the central government. He thus resolved the problem of Catalan nationalism in radical terms, to the great satisfaction of most Catalans. From a theoretical point of view, the CNT could stand aloof from this matter but, tactically speaking, Catalonia’s independence benefited the CNT because it weakened the central government.
Another development pertained to Manuel Azaña’s new military policy. Azaña had studied how to reform the Spanish army for years and concluded that it was necessary to readjust it in such a way that would allow modernization through specialization and significantly reduce the military high command. This would end the disproportions in the Army, which had almost as many officers as soldiers. Azaña was correct, technically speaking, but would fail while attempting to institute his policy. His reform immediately put him at odds with his own government comrades, particularly Miguel Maura and Alcalá Zamora. How would Manuel Azaña apply his plan without rupturing the government’s unity? Through “wishy-washy” politics, as we will see. Spain now had a new regime and military leaders ought to swear their fidelity to it, thought Azaña. However, the Republic shouldn’t ask for a declaration of loyalty from those who do not support it and thus army higher-ups who do not embrace the new government should leave the army. In compensation, they would receive their full salaries for life. This second part of the measure did not resolve anything and, in a certain way, contradicted the primary purpose of the reform. The policy’s immediate consequences were the opposite of what Azaña had wanted: genuinely Republican officers left the Armed Forces and dedicated themselves to political activities, whereas those who were still monarchists (more than 10,000 among the officers and high command) rejected the Republican oath, refused to leave the army, and immediately formed the National Action party. Spain’s most reactionary civilians—large property owners, industrialists, financiers, aristocrats, and retired soldiers—also joined the party. Angel Herrera, the editor of the catholic newspaper <em>El Debate</em>, directed it politically.
Interior Minister Miguel Maura carried out the third important act of the period by legally recognizing the National Action party. Now officially sanctioned, the party began a slander campaign against the Republic and ordered its supporters to withdraw their capital from the country in order to cripple industry and stop the land from being cultivated. They also organized public demonstrations demanding “Death to the Republic” and “Viva Christ the King.” There were no casualties at their rallies in Madrid, but there were deaths at those held in the provinces. The deeply monarchist Civil Guard shot at the proletarian counter-demonstrators and the number of victims began to grow. The Republic was now firing on Republicans and protecting monarchists: the unity pact sealed in San Sebastián began to bear fruit. These are, succinctly, the events that occurred on the eve of May Day 1931, just fifteen days after the proclamation of the Second Republic. In addition to multiple organizational and propaganda tasks, Durruti and Ascaso also had to accompany the groups of foreign anarchists sent to Barcelona for the May 1 celebration. The following foreign militants attended: Agustín Souchy, for the German Anarchist Federation; Voline and Ida Mett, for the exiled Russian anarchists; Camilo Berneri, for the exiled Italian anarchists; Rudiger, for the SAC (Swedish anarcho-syndicalists); Alberto de Jong, for the Dutch anarcho-syndicalists; Hem Day, for the Belgian anarchists; and Louis Lecoin and Pierret (Odeón) for the French Anarcho-Communist Union.
An important meeting of CNT militants and anarchist groups occurred on Monday, April 27 in the Construction Workers Union at 25 Mercaders Street. Its purpose was to plan the May Day events. One issue that they had to address was under what flag to march. This was not merely a symbolic question: it also had theoretical roots in a 1919 debate between the “Red Flag” and “Black Flag” anarchist groups. The former were anarchists—the idea of forming an Iberian Anarchist Communist Federation was first advanced in their newspaper in 1919—but put greater emphasis on labor issues; the second group, in which García Oliver was active, was purely anarchist and therefore more distant (at the time) from economic questions. There was a strenuous debate between the two groups, which lasted almost until 1930. The issue was meaningless now, with the proclamation of the Republic and the tremendous opportunities for mass mobilization. Nonetheless, it was necessary to put a mutual agreement on record. García Oliver proposed that they give material expression to the accord by making the two flags into one: the black and red flag. For the first time in history the red and black flag flew over a CNT-FAI rally. [258]
** CHAPTER III. May 1, 1931
April 14 and May 1 were dates with deep social meaning and their proximity only highlighted the difference between the two: one had a political content and the other was for the workers. In fact, this May Day was going to be the Spanish proletariat’s April 14. The fate of the Second Republic hung on the confrontation between these dates.
The UGT and the Socialist Party organized the May Day workers’ parade in Madrid. Three Socialist ministers presided over the event, making it an almost governmental ceremony. A small number of Communists joined in for propagandistic purposes. They photographed strategically placed militants as they posed with CP banners. The party then distributed copies of the photos abroad and printed them in <em>La Correspondencia Comunista</em> in order to demonstrate the party’s influence on the Spanish working class. [259] Other than this, the rally unfolded like a day of popular revelry.
Things were very different in Barcelona and events there would evoke the tragic 1886 day in Chicago when the working class was once again aggrieved for demanding the right to life. [260]
The CNT wanted to make the May Day celebration a massive expression of proletarian militancy. Although they had planned a rally, the city’s walls did not look like those in other countries on similar occasions, where large posters attract the attention of pedestrians and invite them to demonstrate or attend an event.
Louis Lecoin complained bitterly about the CNT’s lack of organization and for neglecting what he called “advertising.” Indeed, the CNT was always very impoverished, although perhaps its economic poverty was actually a strength; with more money, it might have tried to be the “perfect” organization, with the “perfect” union apparatus.” Lecoin writes:
<quote>
After the fall of the Monarchy, I paid a visit to my friends Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover in Barcelona. On the eve of May Day, the Communists announced an assembly and covered the walls with large posters. From the CNT and FAI: nothing. Had these organizations dismissed the opportunity to demonstrate in that festival? I was worried and communicated my concern to Durruti. He reassured me:
“Contrary to what you think, the CNT and the FAI are not going to pass this proletarian celebration in silence. Quite the opposite: we’ve organized a large demonstration for tomorrow and expect more than 100,000 to attend. “But the advertising?” I asked.
“A few lines in <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> will suffice.”
.... This time the confidence of the “three musketeers” was vindicated. More than 100,000 people came to the rally.[261]
</quote>
<em>Tierra y Libertad</em> printed an extensive account of the sorrowful day that transpired. On its front page it ran a five column article under the following headline: “ <strong>A Tragic May 1. Police Attack The FAI And CNT Demonstration.</strong>”
<quote>
Given the incidents that occurred on the morning of Friday, May 1, we cannot shirk the duty of reflecting the whole truth of the events in our pages. Those responsible must be held accountable for the cowardly aggression that we, the demonstrators in the Plaza de la República, were victims of. We will try to order our memories and record them impartially but firmly. We will not permit anyone to accuse us of having ungainly political motives.
The Rally. The Palacio de Bellas Artes was totally full and thus many thousand comrades hoping to hear the orators were unable to enter. Another rostrum was set up on a truck in the Salón de Galán, so that the comrades who spoke inside could do so again there.[262]
All the speeches were enthusiastic, energetic, and filled with the greatest serenity of spirit. The speeches were delivered by comrades Castillo, Bilbao, Martínez, Cortés, Lecoin, Parera, and a Portuguese émigré in the name of his exiled comrades. Comrade Sanmartín presided over the event. Here, below, are summaries of the speeches from the local press. “We have to expropriate the businesses closed by the bourgeoisie. The workers can run them on their own.”
“We can’t forget the intellectual formation of the youth. It’s imperative to stop the state from controlling education. The state always tends to create soldiers and slaves.”
“When Minister Alvaro de Albornoz was in the opposition, he said that the 1873 Republic failed because it lacked courage and didn’t guillotine the large landowners. Clearly the government’s current policy doesn’t correspond to that sentiment.”
“All new conquests are impossible once the people abandon revolutionary action and try to intervene in social affairs by means of universal suffrage. We can’t wait for the Parliament to resolve the social problem. The ‘representatives of the people’ don’t have any creative power; they’re nothing but demagogues.”
“There can be no revolution but the working class’s revolution. The workers with the CNT are fully capable of making a deep social revolution.” “It’s not only the workers here who desperately need a revolution in Spain. We also have to make it so it can be an example for proletarians around the world who are subject to the yoke of capitalism, the reaction, and the fascist dictatorships.”
“The CNT has to advance a practical and concrete program.”
“It isn’t time to entertain yourself by reading history. It’s time to make it.”
“Workers and peasants, beyond the Parliament, our duty is to march energetically toward the future.”[263]
</quote>
The immense workers’ gathering voted unanimously to support the following demands and nominated a group to deliver them to the Catalan government:
<quote>
- Dissolve the police and the Civil Guard. The defense of the people must be carried out by the people themselves.
- Expropriate the large landowners, without compensation and immediate delivery of their belongings to the peasants for their collective use. Immediately expropriate factories and businesses closed by capitalists to protest the Republic.
- Expropriate foreign companies, which exploit our country’s mines, telephones, railroads, etc., without compensation and immediately deliver their possessions to the workers for their collective use.
- Dissolve the army and immediately withdraw from Morocco.[264]
</quote>
When the delegation left the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the area was so crowded that it was impossible to take a step in some places. Workers filled Triunfo Avenue and adjacent streets. Black and red, Republican, and black flags were flying over the tumult. Huge white canvas banners read: “We demand the dissolution of the Civil Guard”; “Down with the exploitation of man by man”; and “The factory to the workers, the land to the peasants.” [265] <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> continues:
<quote>
<em>The rally.</em> The rally in the Salón de Galán was organized immediately. Three trucks were at its head. They were full of youths waiving black and red and black flags.
The audience became an impressive, formidable mass: there were approximately 150,000 people there [in a city of one million]. The march set off in perfect order toward the Arco del Triunfo, passing the Ronda de San Pedro, Plaza de Cataluña, Ramblas, and Fernando Street.
The tip of the demonstration arrived at the Plaza de la República just after 12:30. The three trucks entered and the delegation stopped some ten meters from the Generalitat’s door.[266] The commission that was to deliver the rally’s demands to authorities stood in the middle of the crowd. The palace door had been closed, but it was opened to allow the delegation to enter. <em>At this moment there was no one at the door except some members of the Generalitat’s autonomous police.</em> We did not see <em>any agent provocateur</em>, despite all the biased statements of the authorities and the bourgeoisie press of every hue.
Comrade Louis Lecoin followed the delegation as it entered. This comrade was carrying the black and red flag, since it is customary that commissions bear their flags when they address authorities....
The Generalitat’s brutal police, the terrible Catalan Civil Guard, committed the first outrage. When Lecoin was about to enter the Generalitat with the delegation, various henchmen pounced on him and fought with him and tried to snatch the flag from his hands. They failed, because our brave comrade heroically defended the flag. Police broke the flagpole during the struggle, but the flag remained in his hands.
No one can disprove the events that we will relate, because we were among the hundreds that witnessed them, despite everything said by the perpetrators of this shameful incident and all the statements issued by the Generalitat. Neither Macià nor Governor Companys saw what we saw. They weren’t there. We were at the scene of the event, first mistreated by the Generalitat’s police and later fired upon.
<em>Shots</em>. Before continuing we should correct the statement made by the comrades from the delegation. They were already inside the Generalitat when the episode with the flag began and thus <em>could not see what took place outside</em>, although before entering they had verified that there was no agent provocateur at the door; only the Generalitat’s police.
But we’ll get to the central matter. At almost exactly the same time as the Generalitat’s police assaulted our flag, <em>a shot rang out from the entrance of the Generalitat</em>. We do not know if one of their policemen fired the shot or if it was someone entrenched behind them, but we guarantee and repeat that the <em>shot rang out from the Generalitat’s entrance</em>.
We were more shocked than frightened. The police who had knocked over Lecoin fled into the Generalitat when they heard the gunfire. They closed the doors behind them, while our flag flew triumphantly in the air. If the police didn’t fire the shot, they probably know who did, since it came from within the building.
As if the shot was an order, shooting immediately rang out from the corner of San Severo Street, directed at the flags and at the trucks, which were then occupied by women.
There was enormous confusion. The frightened crowd fled in all directions. Some brave comrades got ready to confront the attackers. Durruti was still on top of the truck and averted a disaster. With a strong, booming voice, he called upon those running wildly to be calm, so that they wouldn’t crush the others while fleeing. He also stopped the armed comrades from responding without thinking. However he did it, he was able to control the panic and prevent something terrible from occurring.[267]
When calm was restored, the plaza once again filled with people. But five minutes did not pass before there was more gunfire from side streets near the Generalitat. There was also the roar of shotguns, fired before the people could leave the plaza and take shelter somewhere safe.
<em>Those with helmets fire</em>. It was “those of the helmet,” the terrible security guards, who came from the Regomir Delegation. Posted on the corners of City Hall, they were preparing to shoot at the crowd and cut them down at close range. The decisiveness and bravery of our comrades stopped a great tragedy, because they made the guards retreat by going toward the side streets where they were about to machine-gun the unarmed demonstrators and, taking the corners, held them back so that they couldn’t enter the plaza. Shots also rang out from other side streets. Someone was shooting at the demonstrators with a rifle from a building in the Plaza. Various well-dressed youths were seen on San Severo Street, carrying pistols and slipping through doorways. They later fled through the alleys surrounding the Generalitat Palace. The same thing occurred on Obispo Street.
If the agent provocateurs were old “libreños,” there were doubtlessly those from other organizations as well. It is incumbent upon authorities to find out who they were and punish them.
<em>The shootout continues.</em> The shooting was now widespread. Our comrades had taken the street corners, but some were injured. There was enormous panic throughout the area. All the doors were closed and anguished cries mixed with the crackle of gunfire.
The battle lasted about three quarters of an hour. When it reached its most deadly pitch, a group of comrades in streets surrounding the Plaza de la República went to the Artillery barracks on Comercio Street to ask them to help stop those still in the plaza from being massacred.
Here we have to say more. Despite all the official and unofficial statements, this was not a Communist provocation. Perhaps some old “libreños” were mixed up in it, but if one of them initiated the incident, he was certainly protected by the Generalitat. Furthermore, it was not accidental that the dreadful helmeted riflemen intervened. They didn’t come from City Hall, since had they been there they could have easily machine-gunned the people from the windows that open onto the Plaza de la República. They came from the Regomir Delegation. And they had to have come from there with concrete orders. It isn’t our concern whether or not they received these orders from Governor Companys or Lieutenant Cabezas, who says he solicited help. The fact is that the Security Guards were called to machine-gun the people and the cowards carried out their orders, assaulting without being assaulted.
<em>Brother Soldiers.</em> There is no need to state that the Capitan General ordered the troops to go to the Plaza de la República and end the battle. We don’t doubt it. And we also know that the soldiers, our brother soldiers, with their officers at the head, didn’t hesitate to grab their weapons and rush to defend the oppressed in the Plaza after our comrades asked for their help.
Our soldier brothers, sons of the people like ourselves, generous and valiant like anonymous heroes, elicited vigorous applause and deafening cheers in their wake. There were happy smiles on their faces because they were being useful to their brothers, because they were flying to their aid and stopping them from being murdered.
A detachment of troops commanded by an officer [Captain Miranda] raced to subdue the guards that were attacking the people. Other detachments arrived, and they cordoned off the Plaza and calm was restored. Resounding cheers and applause replaced the clamor of gunfire.
Our soldier brothers deserve our most sincere gratitude and our most cordial embrace. They are the people in arms, disposed to avoid crimes not commit them. They, our soldier brothers, haven’t made the rifle a trade. They don’t bear arms to kill their fathers and brothers, to machine-gun the people. Soldier brothers, Salud!
<em>The Civil Guard.</em> When the savior troops took their position in the Plaza de la República, a section of the Civil Guard cavalry arrived at a gallop. Doubtlessly someone had ordered them to come to the Plaza. And we know that the Civil Guard came to charge and shoot, not to protect the assaulted citizens. We want to know who sent them. The act of sending them is very significant. They planned to attack those who were defending their lives and honor in the Plaza.
The people received the Civil Guard with catcalls louder than we have ever heard before. Immediately upon arriving, they drew their sabers and got ready to charge against the people voicing their displeasure at seeing them there.
The leader of the troops, of our brother soldiers, who is a soldier and brother as well, gave an order to the Commander of the Civil Guard. We know that he did not obey that order, because we saw the soldiers load their rifles. This convinced the Civil Guard that it would be better to withdraw....
Now, without the fear of being machine-gunned, the people poured into the Plaza once again. Flags flew and enthusiastic cheers sounded out. The tragedy was over and the balance was painful: there were many injured comrades and one guard had been killed and two injured.... The dead guard had been shot numerous times. According to official statements, which we deny categorically, ‘the rebels finished him off.’ That’s a lie! A loathsome and rotten lie! A scoundrel’s lie! He fell during the shootout, his comrades left him there, and then he was riddled with ricocheting and poorly aimed bullets. No human being could have entered the area to finish off the guard, because he would have been annihilated immediately by the shotgun fire. The official statements are full of shameful, cowardly, and despicable lies. There were no murderers in the Plaza de la República. The real assassins were posted behind the corners; they were the aggressors and would have slaughtered many of us if our brother soldiers had not intervened. We left the Plaza de la República. Macià came later and lamented the events from the Generalitat’s balcony. We lament it much more, because we were the victims. And we have no use for emotional apologies. We want justice. We demand it. And, to begin, we demand that no one defame us with villainous accusations.
<em>What fanaticism can do.</em> In an attempt to justify the disgraceful conduct of the Generalitat’s police and the gunman with pistols and rifles, some circulated the story that there was an attempt to assault the Generalitat Palace. Only fanatics could devise such nonsense.
To be clear, we believe this stupid fable came from young Macià supporters who worried that such events in front of the Generalitat could harm the cause of Catalan independence. To play it safe, they invented the excuse before the accusation was made. We do not charge Macià’s people with the aggression nor do we hold him directly or indirectly responsible for now. <em>We limit ourselves to affirming that the first shot came from the Generalitat.</em> The interested parties will have to clarify things, but they must stop making up ridiculous fabrications.
<em>As an example.</em> The events on Friday immediately aroused the rage of all the zealots against us; against the anarchists and militant workers and anyone with advanced social views. Thus, when a small group of Communist demonstrators passed the Plaza de Cataluña, the Civil Guard charged and dispersed them. The public—the Catalanist middle class—thought these were demonstrators coming from the Plaza de la República and applauded the guards when they tried to lynch two of the Communists.
It is repugnant enough to cheer those who trample the people—the Communists are people too, even though we are anti-communist—but to try to lynch defenseless men is an act of cowardice only conceivable in rogues, asexuals, and eunuchs.
The politicians who profess their concern for the suffering masses will not earn our sympathy with such attitudes. On the contrary, they will provoke a deep rupture, whose distressing consequences will not be our responsibility.[268]
</quote>
** CHAPTER IV. The <em>Nosotros</em> group faces the CNT and the Republic
The CNT and FAI both called meetings to decide how to respond to the restrictive policy that the new Catalanist leaders would surely try to impose on them.
Speeches and statements that Macià made after the May Day tragedy indicated that he was afraid of falling out with the CNT workers and hoped that they would help him pass the Catalan Autonomy Statute in the referendum due to be held shortly. Also, some militants supported a “truce” and thought that the CNT should give the Catalan politicians an opportunity to exercise their new power in peace: in other words, they wanted the CNT to strike a deal with the governing Catalanists. Others countered that authorities would see any expression of good will as a sign of CNT weakness and a disavowal of the anarchist groups who fought with the police. It would suggest a rupture between the CNT and the FAI, which the politicians would take as a “green light” to act against the anarchists. Furthermore, such an entente implied compromises and those compromises would empty the Catalan CNT of its anarcho-syndicalism and make it an appendix of the Generalitat.
In essence, there were forces within the CNT that framed events in diametrically opposed ways. This became clear at the CNT’s meeting. In fact, the problems were so deeply rooted that everyone thought the organization might have to split. It would be disastrous for such a schism to occur while the CNT was trying to rebuild itself. Also, this would stop it from responding clearly to the transparent aims of the new Minister of labor, Francisco Largo Caballero. His goal was to undermine the CNT by promulgating laws designated to mediate and regulate class conflict (for example, using Mixed Juries to prevent strikes and requiring eight days notice before they could occur). The CNT could not back down against the reformists; that would mean renouncing its anarcho-syndicalist content and allowing its integration into the state. The CNT needed to advance a concrete, coherent, and decisive position against the new government. The militants knew that they were facing a crucial juncture, and the looming threat of division made their discussions particularly tense. The CNT’s internal unity was clearly very fragile. Those present at the CNT meeting did their best to reconcile the contradictory perspectives and reduce the dangers of a split. Ultimately they decided to refer matters to a CNT Congress, where they could define a response to the new political conditions created by the establishment of the Republic.
The anarchist groups also met and had similar concerns as well. Barcelona’s Local Federation of Groups had called the meeting and delegates from more than thirty groups attended. Many militants had joined the movement during the difficult years of dictatorship; some had entered through the unions and others through the cultural centers, ateneos, and literary associations.
The CNT’s reappearance in 1930, and the new discussions within it, was a call to action for some and a renewal of commitment for others. The FAI was younger and more dynamic, and had greater theoretical coherence than during the underground years.
There were many new faces for <em>Los Solidarios</em> at the meeting. Indeed, when the groups announced their presence by stating their names (as was customary), the <em>Solidarios</em> were surprised to learn that “one of the recently created groups had selected ‘ <em>Los Solidarios</em>’ as its appellation. The men from the old group didn’t say anything about the issue; there was no patent on the name and, besides, that wasn’t what mattered.” [269]
As a whole, those present believed that if the FAI let the CNT give in to the Catalan politicians’ blackmail—the provocation was clear—then the CNT’s moderate faction would succeed in erasing the anarchist influence in the CNT and, accordingly, isolate the anarchists from the workers. This would prompt the CNT to accommodate itself to Largo Caballero’s labor legislation and integrate itself into the state. The social revolution would be deferred indefinitely. The ex- <em>Solidarios</em>—who were now the <em>Nosotros</em> group—articulated an important response to the dilemma. They argued that Largo Caballero would be unable to prevent the radicalization of the class struggle, because neither the bourgeoisie nor the state was capable of instituting his reforms, due to the bourgeoisie’s backwardness and Spain’s lack of industrial development. But, while the reformists had no chance of success, the Republican government could try to suppress worker discontent, if the state to grew stronger. Here the experience of Primo de Rivera’s tyranny was instructive: such a strengthening of the Republican state would be an unmistakable setback for the revolution. In such conditions—they said—it is imperative to prevent the Republican state from fortifying itself and, to do so, they must maintain a state of constant pre-revolutionary ferment by practicing what the <em>Nosotros</em> group called “revolutionary gymnastics.” The CNT would be the revolutionary vanguard of the political and social struggle in this process. Through perpetual “revolutionary gymnastics,” workers and peasants will make contact with revolutionary theory and their practice will shape their theory. It will be a dialectical give and take in which theory and practice inform one another. Obstacles will disappear, the sacred “truths” of bourgeoisie ideology will shatter, and taboos will dissipate. Workers will start to envision the future society and assimilate that vision into their beings as a tangible, accessible reality.
The anarchist groups were not indifferent to the possibility of a split within the CNT, but they had a different response to the threat than the CNT activists. They believed that an organization has to have a coherent perspective for its practice to be coherent. If there are divisions within the organization, and tendencies pulling in contradictory directions, then those tendencies will counteract one another and render the organization inert. If there is no other solution—if a split has to occur for the sake of the revolutionary process—then at least it should take place in a way that causes minimal disruption. [270]
Responding to rank and file pressure, the CNT National Committee called a Congress—the CNT’s third—which it schedule for June 1931. The FAI called an anarchist conference for the same dates and both events took place in Madrid. During the time, CNT and FAI militants were so intensely active that every spare moment seemed to be occupied by meetings. This was particularly true for Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver, who not only had to attend to normal activist responsibilities but also spoke frequently at rallies and meetings. Indeed, the presence of these three comrades on a rostrum was enough to guarantee a rally’s success, which is why they were asked to speak all over Spain and traveled constantly. If we also recall that each one had to work in a factory to earn his bread and support his family, it is easy to imagine what their lives were like. Emilienne Morin states that “I didn’t see Durruti for entire weeks, as he went from meetings directly to work.” [271] While the CNT was trying to resolve its internal disagreements and prepare for its Third Congress, the provisional government anxiously watched over it, hoping that the Confederation would admit its legitimacy. The government also had to resolve the Catalan question raised by Macià. The new leaders in Madrid, particularly Miguel Maura, could not accept the assault on the central government’s power represented by Macià’s abrupt declaration of Catalan autonomy. Although they knew that they would inevitably have to accept some degree of Catalan independence, they wanted to do so through established legal and constitutional processes and not be forced to accept it in Francesc Macià’s “guerrilla” style. The government dispatched several ministers to Barcelona to try to convince Macià to utilize the sanctioned mechanisms. He didn’t agree, and so they tried to find a <em>modus vivendi</em> that could endure until Catalonia’s autonomy was formally instituted in the 1932 referendum.
In addition to the Macià dilemma, the government also had to address problems created by a very different man: Mr. Pedro Segura, the Cardinal Primate of Spain, whom Miguel Maura described as a “guerrilla of Christ the King.” [272] On May 1, Cardinal Segura released a pastoral letter to the clergy and faithful of the Toledo archbishopric that discussed “the country’s serious problems.” The letter was extensive and what interests us is its political part, toward the end, in which he reminded the devotees of their obligations in the next Parliamentary elections (which the provisional government had scheduled for June and which would be a decisive step in the configuration of the new Republic). “In the present circumstances,” Segura wrote, “it is imperative that Catholics ... come together in a serious and effective way to secure the election of candidates to the Parliament that will defend the rights of the Church and the social order.” [273] This amounted to a declaration of war on the new regime. Cardinal Segura became a true boss of party politics and constantly called for resistance to any government measure that might “undermine the historic foundations of the nation.” Among his suggestions, he urged his followers to withdraw all economic support from the regime. National Action was seen as Cardinal Segura’s party and its first public act on May 10 incited people to set fire to 150 churches and convents throughout Spain. According to Maura, the events in Madrid occurred like this:
<quote>
The crowd gathered on Alcalá Street, between la Cibeles and Independencia Plaza, in front of the Bailén Palace, hurling insults and threats. A police truck waited for I don’t know what in front of one of the building’s tightly sealed doors. Some infantry security guards and others on horseback surrounded the demonstrators, without making the slightest attempt to use their weapons, or even their bodies and horses, to clear the streets.
I approached on foot and asked the leader of the force about the cause of the disturbance.
I found out that in the morning some monarchist youths had assembled on the building’s third floor, which was apparently the party’s new center. When the public was returning from a concert in the Retiro—and when there was the most people passing by—the ill-advised young men placed a gramophone in the window and played the Royal March through an amplifier.
The public had continued to stop in front of the building and soon there was a sizable, hostile crowd there. They repeatedly tried to force open the building’s door, but it had been shut from inside. They shouted, demanding that those inside open the door, so that they could teach them a lesson. The guards, called by telephone from within the building, came to prevent an attack on the premises.[274]
</quote>
Maura says that he didn’t know what to do and thus returned to the Interior Ministry and spoke with the General Director of Security, General Carlos Blanco, who had been appointed to his post at Alcalá Zamora’s request. This officer “neither supported the Republic nor had the slightest spiritual or ideological contact with us” says Maura. Indeed, Carlos Blanco continued to be 100 percent monarchist. Meanwhile, the workers remained concentrated on Alcalá Street. They knew that Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena, editor and owner of the <em>ABC</em> newspaper, was the perpetrator of the monarchist provocation and so they went to attack the newspaper’s office on Serrano Street. Another group of demonstrators went to the Puerta del Sol to rally in front of the Interior Ministry.
The demonstrators shouted for the Interior Minister’s head and also for the dissolution of the Civil Guard, whom they called assassins. Given the situation, and with the government gathered in the Interior Ministry building, Maura asked for authorization to clear the demonstrators with the Civil Guard, after “the requisite formal warnings.” [275] Manuel Azaña objected, saying that he would do anything but “put the Civil Guard on the street against the people.” The rest of the ministers agreed with Azaña, except for Socialists Largo Caballero and Indalecio Prieto, who were on Maura’s side. [276] At six in the afternoon, a group of demonstrators asked to speak with Manuel Azaña, who met with them in the Interior Ministry. They told him that he should go to the balcony and assure the demonstrators that will be justice had. Azaña did so, but immediately after he addressed the crowd, one of the demonstrators meeting with him also spoke. He “demanded the resignation of the Interior Minister, punishment of the monarchists responsible for the morning’s incidents, and the dissolution of the Civil Guard. And that,” writes Maura, “from the very balcony of the Interior Ministry, without my knowledge and with the Civil Guard troops in the courtyard, hearing everything that he said and shouted.” [277]
In his account, Maura relates his discussion with Azaña in detail, as well as Azaña’s apologies, who said that everything he promised to the crowd was “nothing more than a ruse” to get them to leave. Then the already delicate situation became volatile. The demonstrators on Serrano Street tried to attack the ABC building and the Civil Guard, sent by Maura to protect the monarchist newspaper, fired on the assailants, killing two and injuring several others. News of this reached those in the Puerta del Sol and a standoff began between the government and the infuriated protesters. The impasse dragged on until Maura ordered Security Guards to clear the Plaza around six in the morning. Maura had no choice but to use Security Guards, given that the government had denied him the right to use the Civil Guard for the purpose.
The arson of churches began at 10:00 am on May 11. It started with the burning of the Jesuits’ Residence on Flor Street, with ten more acts of arson following, between schools, churches, and convents. The government still hadn’t called out the Civil Guard and decided to use the army to pacify Madrid. General Captain Gonzalo Queipo de Llano declared a state of emergency, ordered the troops to patrol the streets, and put an end to the arsons.
Miguel Maura was depressed by the “government’s lack of decisiveness” and retired to his home with the intention of drawing up his resignation (which he later did). Panic spread among government ministers when they learned that he was going to quit and they reconsidered their attitude toward public order. They all agreed that it would be best to accede and give Miguel Maura the powers that he wanted. They granted him such vast authority that he was even entitled to declare a state of emergency if he wished. Maura, in other words, would exercise a dictatorial power. He soon began to use his “rights” at whim.
It was in the midst of this social and political turmoil that the CNT prepared its Third National Congress, with workers’ assemblies and rallies following one after the other. The activity was particularly frenetic in Barcelona.
This was a supremely important moment for the anarchists, with respect to their presence on the Peninsula and also their potential impact on the worldwide anarchist movement. Earlier we noted the anarchist’s international crisis after the defeats in Russia, Italy, and France. Indeed, organized anarchism seemed to withdraw into itself after these blows and succumb to a sort of inferiority complex in relation to the more dominant bolshevism. One of the first issues anarchists had to confront was the efficacy or non-efficacy of organization. The debate on this topic paralyzed anarchists, from a combative point of view, and the Communist parties grew stronger in their absence. The Spaniards were conscious of this phenomenon and thought that they could have a positive impact on kindred anarchist movements around the world if they built a mass organization that was inspired by anarchism. The secretariat of the AIT (International Association of Workers) shared this view and, accordingly, decided that the organization’s International Congress would occur in Spain shortly after the CNT Congress. For several days, Madrid was going to be the global capital of anarcho-syndicalism. Rudolf Rocker was the secretary of the AIT. Below is his account of his arrival in Spain:
<quote>
Our large group began the trip in the beginning of the last week of May. Augustín Souchy and I went as representatives of the AIT International Secretariat. Orobón Fernández and two Swedish comrades who had come to Berlin also traveled with us. As for the FAUD[278] delegates, Helmut Rudiger had already been in Spain for some time and Carlo Windhoff, who lived in Dusseldorf, made the trip to Madrid from there. Delegates from Holland and France awaited us in Paris. After meeting with them at nighttime, we immediately continued on to Barcelona.
We reached the city at 8:00 in the morning and went directly from the train station to the CNT’s administrative office. We found Juan Peiró there, the editor of our newspaper <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>, and approximately a dozen additional Spanish comrades, all of whom greeted us warmly. The comrades were in excellent spirits; the monarchy’s collapse had excited them all. They told us about the movement’s astonishing growth over recent months. The CNT had more than one million members and its influence extended beyond its membership and made itself felt in other circles.[279]
</quote>
The foreign delegates were hosted at the CNT’s expense. Rocker recounts his favorable impression of his time in Barcelona:
<quote>
There were large posters everywhere in which three letters stood out powerfully: CNT. They were calls to popular meetings, announced for the following Sunday. This, and the presence of <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> on all the magazine stands, made it clear that we were in the center of Spain’s libertarian movement.
Durruti and Ascaso were waiting for us when we returned to the hotel that evening. Durruti asked about a pair of comrades he had known in Berlin and especially about Erich Mühsam and the good comrades of Obersee- Honeweide, in whose house he had to hide at the time.
We talked about the new situation in Spain and the perspectives for the movement’s future. Both had great hopes, although they knew that it still had to overcome many obstacles before it could victoriously impose new patterns of social development. That was totally understandable; the Monarchy left Spain in tremendous chaos and it couldn’t be repaired overnight. They would have to confront the challenges with constructive and tenacious work, on new foundations. Ascaso believed that the terrible pains preceding the birth of the Republic were worse than the birth itself. He saw a certain disadvantage in this, because decisive changes in social and economic life, such as the resolution of agrarian problem, which was so important in Spain, had to be carried out over a long revolutionary period, which would need to create new conditions and couldn’t be delegated to any government. Nevertheless, he thought the situation would become clearer after the June elections and that the CNT was destined to play a great role.[280]
</quote>
The CNT had organized a welcome rally for the foreign delegates on the day following this conversation. It occurred in the Exposición’s Palace of Communications. Rocker and the other internationals were quite shocked to see such a massive assembly, which was not the norm in their respective countries. More than fifteen thousand people attended the rally according to the bourgeois press. The Palace was incapable of accommodating that many and so organizers placed amplifiers at the building’s entrance so that people could follow the rally from its terrace.
Rocker noted that the audience did not emphatically applaud the speakers. He communicated his surprise to Durruti when Durruti had finished his speech and sat down at his side. Rocker’s question took Durruti aback. In reply, he said: “But Rocker, you know perfectly well that we, the anarchists, don’t worship personalities. Applause and ovations are simply tacky music that encourages vanity and leaderism. A comrade’s capacity should be recognized and nothing more. The audience shows its interest by following the speech.”
Rocker concludes his discussion of the rally in the following way: “That memorable event was surely one of the most vigorous ceremonies that I have ever attended. At mass meetings called by socialist parties in Germany, the orators generally didn’t do more than hurl endless insults at their political opponents, completely unaware, in their blindness, of the danger hovering over all of them. By contrast, that spirited rally of Barcelona’s working class was deeply gratifying. There were men there with a clear objective in mind, looking optimistically toward a new future and feeling confident in their own strength.... If many lost heart in Germany during the grave internal struggles, and some of the strongest comrades bordered on depression when faced with the proletariat’s disintegration, a gigantic ceremony such as this one was a regenerator. One felt renewed and inspired to look boldly into the future.”
** CHAPTER V. The FAI and the CNT meet
There was no doubt that the FAI had a significant influence on the CNT, but the relationship between the two organizations was unclear. That is why the FAI’s <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> emphasized disagreements in the brief article that it ran about the international rally that we discussed in the previous chapter.
“The voice of the FAI was not heard there, which would have been the voice of Iberian anarchism. It was absent, and quite absent. In Spain, the anarchist voice has more right than any to be heard at these meetings of the CNT and AIT.” [281]
On June 10, one day before the CNT Congress was due to begin, the FAI held its first Peninsular Conference in Madrid. One hundred twenty county representatives were present. The Conference resolved to do the following:
1. Conduct a propaganda tour throughout the Peninsula, beginning on August 1.
2. Make the weekly <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> into the daily newspaper of the FAI, coming out of Madrid.
3. Affirm anarchism within the CNT. [282]
Conference participants also discussed the prior behavior of the Peninsular Committee. Their declaration on the matter stated:
<quote>
After a discussion of the flawed conduct of the FAI’s Peninsular Committee between October 1930 and January 1931, we have drawn the following conclusions:
That comrades Elizalde, Hernández, and Sirvent assumed powers exceeding those assigned to them as members of the commission for revolutionary preparation and did not respect the resolution adopted at the Valencia meeting against collaboration with politicians from any camp. We recognize that it would be excessive to enumerate all the details that make up the matter; it is enough to extract the real essence of the event.
Here we announce the applicable sanctions, which will be the beginning of the solution that we will try to give to this irritating incident: We resolve that we will not tolerate another divergence from the paths agreed to by the FAI at the whim of any of its members, whatever his situation within the organization may be. Likewise, anyone who dares to repeat this offense will be removed from their posts and will have to wait, in accordance with their future behavior, for the collective to return the trust in them that they violated.
Regarding the comrades that have created this circumstance, whom we have named, we believe it fitting that they cease to occupy posts in the anarchist organization for some time.
The additional details of the intimate contact that they had with the political elements, while censurable, are a part of the collaboration that we reject. We also cannot accept any attempt to justify their error by pointing to aggravating circumstances. They acted against a decision of the organization that they represent. Furthermore, a prior consultation with the anarchist bodies would have prevented the unfavorable national and international sensation that the collectivity has had to suffer.[283]
</quote>
By purifying its organization in this way, the FAI put closure on the confusing period of political conspiracies that took place during the Monarchy’s last moments and renewed the possibility of a broad affirmation of anarchism. The matter that the FAI discussed and resolved would also be central to the debates at the CNT’s Third Congress, which occurred between June 11 and June 16 in Madrid’s Conservatorio.
The last time that the CNT had been able to hold a Congress was in 1919. During the intervening years, meetings or national conferences governed the Confederation’s organizational life, which could in no way substitute for a Congress. By 1931, the CNT was suffering greatly from the lack of regular Congresses. The need to make decisions while underground had created undemocratic and destructive vices within the organization. Indeed, the greenhouse of the underground had incubated the CNT’s internal crisis.
While clarifying the organization’s political stance was already a very complex task for the Congress, additional factors made its work still more difficult and even jeopardized the Confederation itself. We have seen how the CNT grew to have one million members after only two months of public activity. Among these members, there were workers who were sincerely impressed by the CNT’s heroic legend. But there were also some who were highly politicized and intended to mine the organization for recruits for their own political groups. Given that, and the debate between the anarchists and union activists that had unfolded for more than four years, it was easy to anticipate a negative and divided Congress. The fact that it was neither of these things, but rather a constructive workers’ event, affirmed the strength of the working class and rebuffed the political parties who hoped to lead it. The Congress had to consider a lengthy agenda that included many important points: the National Committee’s Report, which would review a long period of activities; the Reorganization Plan, based on the Federations of Industries counter-posed to the Sindicatos Unicos [industrial union groups]; national propaganda campaigns and attracting the working class and peasantry to the unions; salary demands, shortening the workday, rejection of income taxes, and ways to fight forced unemployment; CNT publications and how to improve their coordination with other efforts and make them more effective propaganda tools; formulation of reports for the AIT’s Fourth Congress; and the CNT’s position on the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and the politico-legal-economic demands to present to it. A total of 511 delegates representing unions from 219 localities discussed the agenda. Although it is difficult to calculate the total number represented, given irregularities in the payment of dues and the inexperience of many of the recently organized unions, it is not an exaggeration to say that 800,000 workers and peasants were represented there. One important characteristic was that delegates carried a mandate from their unions, which recorded the number of members represented and topics to advance for consideration at the Congress. Angel Pestaña opened the ceremony in the name of the National Committee. He gave a short speech on the importance of the Congress and the CNT’s trajectory since its Second Congress in 1919. As AIT secretary, Rudolf Rocker greeted the Congress in the name of the anarcho-syndicalist workers of the world:
<quote>
The greatest danger facing the CNT today is the democratic danger. The Republic offers workers the promise of improvements that are impossible to obtain within the capitalist regime. And there is the risk that the masses will accept its promises. But you already know that democracies only sustain the old capitalist apparatus, not destroy it. They plan to improve capitalism and, when the workers accept their pledges, they are diverted from their real path. Therefore, the danger for Spanish anarcho-syndicalists is the likely diversion of workers toward Republican democracy.
Possibilities unsuspected until now are opening up daily before the global proletariat. But we have to work quickly, energetically, and courageously to seize them. The workers have to fight for the realization of their aspirations, which are nothing other than establishing libertarian communism through social revolution.
</quote>
Francesc Isgleas as well as Juan Ramón and Gabriel González (the latter two were secretaries of the Sevilla Unions) presided over the Congress Committee. Once the agenda was passed, the Asturian delegates asked the body to send a group to the Ministry of Labor in support of their effort to secure a seven-hour workday in the mines as well as a salary increase. “The goal,” they stated, “is to put pressure on Largo Caballero, who is the enemy of the CNT’s mining union in Asturias and the protector of the armed Socialist scabs. If the meeting is a failure, the CNT will take radical measures.
The striking miners must not be defeated.” The conference voted to make Miguel Abos, Ramón Acín, José López, José G. Trabal, and Angel Pestaña members of the commission.
There was a debate in the third session about whether or not to accept the FAI as an optional entity at the Congress. FAI members in the Catalan Regional Committee preferred to withdraw their motion before having the FAI accepted with limited rights. [284] There were strong differences of opinions about the matter and participants failed to come to a conclusion.
The National Committee’s report was extensive and took up part of the third and fourth sessions. Speaking for the National Committee, Francisco Arin stated that “the National Committee was appointed in June 1930 and that all its actions prior to April 12, 1931 with respect to parties or political figures were authorized by national conferences or meetings. Furthermore, let it be understood that the National Committee never surpassed its authority with regard to CNT decisions and was always faithful to the Confederation’s revolutionary and anti-political stance in its relations with political elements.”
“Delegates criticized the National Committee harshly [after its report]. They accused it of political collaboration, although it was evident that the Confederals and <em>FAIistas</em> had had good revolutionary intentions in their dealings with political figures. The National Committee roundly denied any participation in the Pact of San Sebastián [285] and asserted that certain contacts were maintained only because they had been established by the previous National Committee.”
The discussion continued in the fourth session. There was a debate about whether the CNT had collaborated with the political sector and what agreements had been made with Lluís Companys. Juan Peiró responded to insinuations made regarding the latter issue by saying that “Companys did not ask for three months of peace from the Confederation [during which it would not strike], but a half year. We made no compromises with him. On the contrary, we explicitly rejected his request.” Several Catalans asserted that their unions had held protest strikes in the early days of the new Republic, “without any CNT committee or any of the new rulers—such as Companys—claiming that they were breaking a deal.” Arin, Peiró, and Pestaña also spoke. Delegates ultimately concluded that the National Committee had not abused its power, and they ratified that later, but they also appointed a new National Committee, which “Pestaña interpreted as a rebuke.”
Angel Pestaña inopportunely presented an important proposal during the fourth session, whose significance escaped the Congress due to the prevailing excitement. His proposed that the CNT “ask the Republic (when it becomes federal) to declare Spanish Morocco a region with the same rights as the peninsular regions.” The Congress rejected this, although the issue was a source of contention. The anarchists at the Congress saw Pestaña’s initiative as a clear attempt to negotiate a sort of truce with the Republican government. To even suggest contact with the government was like mentioning “rope in the house of a hanged man” and only increased suspicions about Pestaña’s collaborationism. For the anarchists, it was inconceivable to accept asking the federal Republican government to consider Spanish Morocco another region. To ask for was to negotiate and Spanish was to accept the government’s colonialist policies. The anarchists who replied to Pestaña (including García Oliver, who was representing the Reus unions) rejected both of these things. The oppression suffered by Rifis [286] was identical to that of other peoples subject to capitalism and colonialism: the Spanish working class was colonized and exploited by the same forces that dominate the Rifis.
What was important was uniting the workers of the world in a joint struggle against the state and capitalism. The CNT would take this struggle to the Rif not to insert the Rifi into Spain’s authoritarian structures but to work with them to make a social revolution. [287]
The agrarian question was another important issue at the Congress. In fact, representatives from many peasant unions attended and the Andalusians had even come in their work clothes in order to illustrate the miserable conditions that they had to endure. The CNT’s Peasant Federation would advance the following program:
<quote>
1. Expropriate all large estates, reserves, and arable lands without compensation and declare them social property.
1. Confiscate reserve livestock, seeds, implements, and machinery, which is the wrongful property of the landowners.
1. Proportional and free delivery in usufruct of these lands and effects to the peasant unions, for their use and direct administration.
1. Abolish contributions, taxes, debts, and mortgage charges that burden small landowners who do not exploit manual labor beyond the family unit.
1. Suppression of income in money or kind that small tenant farmers, colonos, leased tenants, etc. must pay to owner parasites or their intermediaries.
The Congress is committed to and emphasizes the revolutionary preparation of the peasant masses as well as their capacity to manage agricultural production themselves.
</quote>
The presentation on the CNT’s Reorganization Plan was read during the eighth session. The reorganization would take place on the basis of Federations of Industry. The plan’s author was Juan Peiró and, as noted earlier, he premised his argument on the national and international evolution capitalism.
Trades would federate at local, county, provincial, regional, and national levels and there would be a National Federation of each respective industry. The national committees of the trades would form a National Committee of the Economy and the CNT National Committee would operate above all of them. We have already mentioned this plan’s bureaucratic character. We now enter the debate more fully.
The most important speeches in this debate were made by: García Oliver (Reus), against; Peiró (Mataró), in favor; Alberola (Gironella), against; San Agustín (Zaragoza), in favor; Santander, against; and Emilio Mira (Alcoy’s <em>Oficios Varios</em>), in favor.
Here are their arguments:
Santander: “If Spain is more agricultural than industrial, why should there be Federations of Industry? We are undeveloped, industrially speaking. With the exception of the Public Service monopolies, there is no industrial development in Spain.... And, even if that type of capitalist concentration does exists, should we, who have followed a different trajectory than the Marxists, different because we apply our philosophy to all things; should we now abandon our principles and give in so easily simply because the bourgeoisie economy develops in that way?”
Juan Peiró: “If the bourgeoisie of a particular industry unites to defend itself, not as industrialists but as a class, shouldn’t the workers also concentrate themselves and form a united front against the bourgeoisie? My reply is categorical, and perhaps that’s my sin.”
José Alberola: “The supporters of the Federations of Industry embrace it because they’ve lost confidence in our ultimate goals and only have faith in the gears of the machinery. That machine doesn’t cultivate strength but consumes it, and in that sense we’ll create a mentality opposed to everything implied by individual initiative.... We defend the Confederation; we work in accordance with its basic principles. We have an ideal, which will sooner or later overwhelm the capitalist system. We do not accept anything resembling statism, because all forms of statism invariably become acts of coercion.” Emilio Mira: “Capitalism has political-economic as well as militaristic institutions. It can say to us: ‘So, you want to abolish the state, private property, and the exploitation of man; what body, what organization, what ideal of social life do you counter-pose to our system that would be so much better?’ Against the supposed economic harmony of capitalist production, we have to assert the economic harmony of workers’ production through Industrial Federations and, for their defense in the political and social terrains, the Confederation.”
García Oliver: “... we cannot accept the Federations of Industry because they carry the germ of disintegration within themselves. They kill the spirit of the masses, who we have ready to go into action against the state. CNT hasn’t failed at all or, if it has, it is only because of the lack of revolutionary intelligence among its most distinguished militants.... The Confederation has an extremely important role to play right now. The revolution has been strangled and the Confederation would have to be prepared... [the speaker was interrupted for exceeding his allocated time to comment].” Participants voted on the matter and the CNT accepted the National Federations of Industry by 302,000 in favor against 90,671 against.
During the twelfth session, attendees approved a protest against the state of emergency in Andalusia and also unanimously ratified the CNT’s principles and aims (which had been approved at 1919 Congress). They also had to consider “The position of the CNT toward the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.” The Congress resolved “... the CNT must always practice direct action, push the people on a clearly revolutionary path toward libertarian communism, and convert the political event that has occurred in Spain into a revolutionary event that is fundamentally transformative of all political and economic values.... To do so, the CNT will immediately and energetically devote itself to organizing its revolutionary forces and to imminent, anti-electoral action.” [288]
** CHAPTER VI. The republic’s social policy and the CNT
The Congress’s decision to embrace the Federations of Industry would seem to indicate that the CNT’s moderate tendency had seized control of the organization. However, the exact opposite would occur: ultimately, it will be the more radial wing that will impose its revolutionary line on the anarcho- syndicalist confederation.
Shortly after Congress attendees had returned home, the most important labor conflict during the Republic’s five years erupted: the telephone workers’ strike.
After the proclamation of the Republic, the majority of telephone workers unionized with the CNT and formed the National Telephone Workers’ Union. Previously they had not been unionized and thus at the management’s mercy, but after unionizing they began to make demands on the company. The company was intransigent and the workers went on strike. Only CNT workers supported the strike at first, but that changed after there was violence against the strikers and Miguel Maura ordered police to shoot without warning. The rest of the workers then declared their solidarity and joined the CNT men. The Socialists were drawn into the dispute against their will: SP member Fernando de los Ríos was the Communications Minister and it was decided that he would arbitrate the conflict on the government’s behalf. After numerous meetings, he announced a ruling that was quite beneficial to the company but that did recognize the workers’ right to a labor contract. However, the company did not abide by his ruling and the strike dragged on for several more months. Finally, the Prime Minister signed a decree on March 15, 1932 undermining the Communications Minister’s ruling and, with it, the workers’ right to a contract. No one could explain Manuel Azaña’s strange intervention in this matter. [289] Of course the CNT did not accept his arbitration and the strike continued. There were more shootings and acts of sabotage in this strike than any other in Spain’s history.
A reader unfamiliar with Spain’s recent past will wonder why a Prime Minister would annul the ruling of one of his own ministers, particularly in a conflict between Spanish workers and a foreign company. However, the Telephone Company of Spain was Spanish in name alone: it was actually a “branch” of the North American International Telephone and Telegraph Company (IT&T). The English may have occupied Gibraltar but the Yankees had their own Rock of Gibraltar in the heart of Madrid.
Spain’s contract with IT&T dated back to the dictatorship. Gumersindo Rico, Melquíades Alvarez, Primo de Rivera, and Alfonso XIII all played a role in drafting it and of course each one had extracted his “take” from the deal. [290] When this contract mortgaging Spanish telephone communications to IT&T was signed, two types of shares were put into circulation: some were “preferential” and others were “ordinary.” Spanish capitalist owned the first—represented by the Urquijo Bank, which did nothing but take a percentage of the profits—and foreign shareholders held the second. The latter were the only ones with “a voice and a vote” in shareholder meetings. Furthermore, the contract exempted the telephone company from the obligation to pay any taxes or tributes to the state.
The Socialist leader Indalecio Prieto condemned this contract in a talk at the Ateneo de Madrid: [291] “If the Spanish State wants to rescue ... telephone services valued at around 600,000,000 pesetas in 1928 by handing over something slightly smaller than a Spanish province to North America, it should know that we will continue being shackled to this company. That’s because the telephones installed in Spain use apparatuses and systems patented by IT&T member groups, and we will continue paying for them until the patent expires [in fifty years]. Communications are the most delicate and sensitive part of the state’s nervous system; indeed, the security of the state itself can depend on them at times. And yet they’ve been handed over to a foreign business.” [292]
Spaniards were well-informed about this travesty (and others like it). The workers had hoped that the government would annul the contract once the Republic was proclaimed, particularly since one of its strongest critics was a government minister. No one understood why the government did the opposite and used its repressive forces in the interests of a foreign company and against the Spanish working class. However, the reality was that the men of the new regime not only supported the contract, but also replaced its beneficiaries under the dictatorship with Republicans. The deception and theft continued, only now with different people. This was so clear that IT&T’s best known representative in Spain, Captain Roe, publicly stated: “Deals made in the Republic have been much better for my company than under the Monarchy.... You don’t know the power of a blank check in this type of Republic!” [293]
The fishermen of Puerto Pasajes (in San Sebastián) declared a strike in late May 1931. The employers were intractable and the workers organized a demonstration to pressure San Sebastián’s Republican authorities, taking their wives and children with them. The governor of San Sebastián asked Madrid what to do and Maura called in the Civil Guard. “Sixteen Civil Guards were to be positioned at the access point to San Sebastián, the Mira Cruz Bridge, which is a narrow but necessary passage for anyone entering the city on the road from Pasajes. All things considered, it was an ideal place to stop the demonstrators,” said Miguel Maura. He continues:
<quote>
The mob reached the Civil Guards. I was told that there were more than a thousand of them, including women, and they were armed with sticks, shotguns, and other improvised weapons. They were irate, and their shouting and angry gestures showed that they had been stirred up by outside agitators. These people had never been prone to violence before.
The Guards blocked the road and spread out across it in two lines. The cornet player gave the first call to attention as the throng drew closer. The masses kept advancing. He sounded a second call, which also had no effect on the crowd. And then he finally made the third call, which sparked the demonstrators’ furious assault on the Guards. The Guards were kneeling on the ground now and got ready to fire.
They had to do it—fire the volley—to stop the avalanche of people falling upon them. There were eight deaths and more than a few injuries.... Hours later police arrested the four Galician CNT leaders who had provoked these sad events.[294]
</quote>
Miguel Maura was not any Minister but a senior minister with nearly absolute power to apply his own brand of “justice.” That is what he told the journalists who gathered in his office to hear about the deaths among the Pasajes fishermen: “I reminded them that as far as the press was concerned, they were in the presence of a minister who had full powers over public order.... I didn’t tell them to conceal the news, but rather pleaded with them to do so meticulously and truthfully. I wanted Spain to know that it had a government that was not to be played with.” [295] None of the newspapers except La Voz commented on the events. The other ministers, seeing that Maura had frightened the press into silence, applauded the good work of Antonio Maura’s son.
Maura accomplished another feat in Sevilla. We previously noted that the government had declared a state of emergency in Andalusia. Of course it wasn’t the landowners who let the harvest rot or refused to plant that worried the Republican government, but rather the hungry peasants. It was against them that it declared the state of emergency.
Elections had been called for June 28. In Sevilla and throughout Andalusia, Ramón Franco’s electoral campaign had strong socialist hues. He was clearly popular, like another candidate, Dr. Cayetano Bolívar, who leaned toward communism but didn’t declare himself a member of the Communist Party. Both later became deputies, and their popularity indicates that many workers believed that the country’s continued problems were due to the government’s novelty and that things would improve once national elections were held. The results of the elections seemed to justify that hope.
The Socialists elected 116 deputies and the rest of the seats in the Parliament went to the Left. The right-wing was eclipsed; the Monarchists only elected one deputy; la Lliga Catalana, three; and the more moderate “Al Servicio de la República,” fourteen. The Left, including the Socialists, was victorious across the board. With 116 Socialist deputies, the peasants thought the government would institute agrarian reform and urban workers thought it would confront the work stoppage that was spreading across the country like an oil stain.
Although it looked like the Socialists had achieved a lot, that was not the case and Interior Minister Maura was there to prove it. Miguel Maura’s black beasts were the CNT and the anarchists, who had been rebuilding themselves throughout Spain. In Andalusia, the CNT was displacing the UGT as the predominant labor organization, which must have felt like a sharp blow to the UGT’s General Secretary, who was also the Minister of Labor. We don’t believe that there was a deal between Maura and Largo Caballero, but simply that Maura hoped that his relentless persecution of the CNT (in Andalusia and elsewhere) would strengthen the UGT. This was why this he devised the “Tablada conspiracy,” for which he hoped Ramón Franco would take the fall and lose his deputy’s certificate. [296]When that conspiracy unraveled, Maura plotted another, more notorious one: “the bloody week of Sevilla” (July 18 to the July 25).
According to Maura, an anarchist doctor by the name of Pedro Vallina was organizing an insurrection in Andalusia that would be centered in Sevilla but break out into a general revolutionary strike throughout the region. Just like with the Pasajes fishermen, Maura needed to crush the rebellion and teach its organizers a lesson. We will see how he did so, drawing on Maura’s previously cited work as well as Pedro Vallina’s memoirs, written forty years after the events.
“When I arrived in Sevilla,” Vallina writes, “I received a confidential letter from some completely trustworthy comrades in Madrid. They told me that Interior Minister Miguel Maura had called the Governor of Sevilla, Antonio Montaner, to his office to propose something despicable to him. Montaner behaved himself well: he immediately rejected Maura’s overture and resigned from his Governor position. Maura’s plan was to provoke a general revolutionary strike in Sevilla, arrest the leading militants, dissolve the workers’ organizations, and blame all this on me; trying to destroy me forever. What a dignified man like Montaner did not accept, a vile man accepted fully: Mr. Bastos. He was appointed Governor and went to Sevilla to occupy his post and carry out his mission.” [297]
Here is Maura’s version: “When the Republic was proclaimed, the UGT—that is, the Socialist Party—was preponderant in Sevilla. That labor federation and party were so strong that they were considered the only ones really organized there....” Later, while discussing Ramón Franco, he states:
<quote>
“I watched his adventures closely and learned that in the Andalusian countryside a doctor named Vallina, an anarchist who was very popular among the region’s peasants, had made a deal with Franco and other soldier friends of his to assault the city of Sevilla on the eve of the elections, that is, on Saturday, June 27.”
Maura continues: “Mr. Montaner began his efforts to destroy the UGT and Socialist Party as soon as he arrived in Sevilla, giving the CNT every chance to surpass its rival.... In reality, when Bastos occupied his post, the UGT had practically disappeared from the scene and the CNT had enlisted almost all the province’s worker and peasant masses, who were armed and ready not only for a general strike in the capital but also for the assault on it that Dr. Vallina would lead.”[298]
Vallina writes: “The new Governor Bastos arrived a few days later and the most reactionary and dangerous figures in the area came to see him. My Madrid friends told me to sound the alarm to the militant workers in Sevilla, so that the agent provocateurs wouldn’t dupe them. I told them what was happening, but my meeting with them gave me with such a bad impression that I was upset when I went to the city. It wasn’t that there was any complicity with the enemy, but simply a state of great excitement prompted by the ungainly conduct of the Republican leaders.”
Vallina went to Alcalá de Guadaira, where he lived, and the next day received a militant from Sevilla who, he says, “told him that it looked probable that the revolutionary general strike would occur.” Vallina immediately informed local workers about Maura’s ploys: “After listening to me attentively, they said that they were also worried about strange things happening in relation to a strike that they had called. The employer himself had told them that he would have settled it already, but was being pressured from above to prolong it.”[299]
Nonetheless, the provocation was stronger than Vallina’s warning and the workers went on strike: “I was sleeping peacefully at home, unaware that the strike had been declared that day, when a mob of Civil Guards showed up, under the command of an officer. They smashed into my house and arrested me. They later arrested four workers, whom they described as my ‘general staff.’”[300] Authorities took them to Sevilla by car and from there to Cádiz, where they were held incommunicado in the Santa Catalina Castle. Several days later Rodrigo Soriano, a Republican deputy and friend of Vallina’s, used the prerogatives of his position to find Vallina and tell him what had occurred: 234 The republic’s social policy and the CNT“The general strike had exploded, as Maura had hoped, with the collaboration of unthinking and provocative elements. The Civil Guard was ordered to shoot without warning, which is what happened in the province’s towns and capital. There were many deaths: thirty-nine in Sevilla and one hundred in the rest of the province.” “The most repugnant act was the murder of four defenseless workers in María Luisa Park, on the edge of the Guadalquivir, and the most stupid was the bombing of the ‘Casa Cornelio’ in La Macarena, because the café had been a meeting place for revolutionary workers.”[301] Vallina spent three months in prison. Authorities finally freed him after being unable to find any evidence against him. This is Maura’s account of the events:
<quote>
The revolt became more intense between July 19 and 21. Three Civil Guardsmen died in the street on July 20 after being fired at from the balconies and four workers fell after the police shot them.... Bastos and I had decided that we wouldn’t relinquish military command except in the last instance ... their offensive became even more severe on the morning of July 22, thanks to reinforcements that the rebels had apparently called in. This occurred despite the fact that Dr. Vallina had been arrested and imprisoned when the march on the city began, led by a caravan of trucks that were full of rebels [so ferocious that they let authorities peacefully arrest their leader!].... It was necessary for the military authorities to take control. General Ruiz Trillo led the Division of Andalusia. He took over the command and proclaimed the state of emergency.... The struggle continued throughout July 22. In the early morning, when the prisoners were being transferred from Sevilla to the port, where they were going to be taken to the prison in Cádiz, they were changing vans in the middle of María Luisa Park and several of the detainees tried to escape. The soldiers fired on them and killed four. [As always, the <em>Ley de Fugas</em>!][302]
</quote>
The Parliament’s sessions had begun on July 14 and news from Sevilla made them contentious. The government formed a commission to investigate the events and one of its members, Antonio Jaén, a deputy from Málaga, declared: “The Andalusian peasants voted against the Monarchy on April 12; on May 12, with the events in Madrid and Málaga, they affirmed their radical sense, and on July 22, they showed their social disposition. There is no civil war in Andalusia but rather a social war whose roots can be traced to the beginnings of the Reconquest; a social war whose echo can be heard in all the rebellions and is even perceptible in ballads and popular folk songs. I’ll cite a folksong from Andalusia that perfectly indicates the feeling in our land:
<quote>
God in heaven wants
Justice to return
And the poor to eat bread
And rich to eat ... grass *
</quote>
A vote of confidence in the provisional government, which would ratify the government and confirm the ministers in their posts, was scheduled to occur on July 29. Lluís Companys, who gave up his position as Barcelona governor to be a deputy (he was replaced by Anguera de Sojo) suggested that the government should only be made up by Republicans. Miguel Maura felt like Companys had plunged a spear into him. Maura swore his republican faith and then audaciously declared the following in front of four Socialist ministers and 116 Socialist deputies:
<quote>
“Is the CNT somehow exempt from legal obligations and duties and yet entitled to all the rights conceded to Spanish citizens?” This was the real question and, to concretize it, I took a stand in the government: “My duty is to say to the CNT and FAI, and also to the SS.SS, that Spanish law forms a whole. If they are exempt from duties within the law—given that they do not accept the laws that regulate work, do not recognize the parity committees, mixed tribunals, and, above all, governmental authority—then they will also be exempt from their rights, and the laws of assembly, association, or any of the others that protect them won’t exist for them. If they honor the laws of work and those regulating commerce, then they’ll have the right to a normal relation with the government. The Chamber ratified my position with a prolonged round of applause and the dispute [with Companys] was over.[303]
</quote>
—————————
(* The final word of this popular folksong is “shit” [<em>mierda</em>], but the deputy used the euphemism “grass” [<em>hierba</em>] out of respect for the Chamber.[304])
</quote>
** CHAPTER VII. In the middle of a storm without a compass
Miguel Maura’s boasting was a challenge to the CNT. To take the blow without reacting would only encourage his authoritarianism, yet there was no point in protesting benignly with a long document in the workers’ press. What to do? The only solution was to continue the struggle in the street. The <em>Nosotros</em> group was destined to play an important role in the new period that the CNT was entering at this time. As we will see later, CNT “moderates” will derisively label them “Blanquists” and say that they had a “simplistic” analysis of the country’s social conditions. [305] History would determine the value of the respective theses in play.
Shortly after the proclamation of the Republic, the <em>Nosotros</em> group met to define its strategy: “They studied the political and social problem from every angle. A Republic based on individuals like Alcalá Zamora, Queipo de Llano (head of the President’s military staff), General Sanjurjo (leader of the Civil Guard), and Miguel Maura could not effect any important reform in the political—much less in the social—sphere, given that the Republic was held hostage by a team of men intimately linked to the Monarchy, who had been members of the dominant class before April 13 and still retained all their privileges.” [306] It was that perspective that framed the <em>Nosotros</em> group’s confrontation with the circumstances at hand.
Conditions were increasingly turbulent in the rural as well as urban areas. Indeed, the preconditions of a revolution seemed to be emerging quickly. There was practically no divide between the UGT workers and the CNT men, as Maura himself recognized. He wrote:
<quote>
There was a series of attacks on large landowners’ estates and farms in the Córdoba mountain range, and they were beginning to become dangerous. With their mayors leading the way, the residents of eighteen towns burst in on the region’s large country estates and grabbed everything they found. They took the plunder to the town and the mayors divided it among the citizens in the respective City Halls.
I had to concentrate all the Civil Guardsmen at my disposal in the area... to put an end to that dangerous peasant orgy. I also urged Largo Caballero to restrain the revolutionism of his colleagues, given that fourteen of the eighteen towns in question had Socialist mayors, as well as a Socialist majority in the City Halls. My comrade in government was unable to accomplish this task and the attacks on the country estates became more frequent and more intense. It was necessary to intervene decisively.
I first suspended all the mayors and city councilmen in those towns and formed administrative committees made up by the largest local taxpayers. I also put as many Civil Guardsmen in them as I could and, after publishing and distributing a severe warning, imprisoned the first who committed any excess. The problem was cut at its root and peace returned to the Córdoba mountain range.[307]
</quote>
Put bluntly, Maura’s solution was to imprison the Socialist mayors and the most well-known militants, put the large landowners and caciques in charge of local governments, and protect them with the Civil Guard.
<quote>
The <em>Nosotros</em> group was well aware of the revolutionary workers’ agitation sweeping Spain. Its members were extraordinarily active; some traveled to speak at rallies, conferences, or informational meetings, and others on missions to organize groups and accumulate means of combat for the immediate future.
It was imperative to use time well, since the situation tended to get worse daily. On one occasion Francisco Ascaso and Ricardo Sanz had to go to Bilbao, where they took part in a rally with José María Martínez, a militant anarchist miner from Gijón. The event occurred in the Frontón Euskalduna. It was an unprecedented success in every sense and left the impression that the CNT was serious and responsible, which greatly benefited the organization, particularly in Vizcaya, where the Confederation was beginning to establish itself. The comrades also went to Eibar, where they visited the Gárate and Anitua manufacturer. They discussed delivering the arms—the thousand rifles—still being held by the company.[308]
The gunsmith knew the men and received them well. He also allowed them to inspect the rifles and see that they were in good condition, but he said that he could not supply the weapons without authorization from the governor.
The following day, Ascaso and Sanz went to the Civil Government to meet with Mr. Aldasoro, the provincial governor. They explained the matter to him and he responded by saying that he could not allow the weapons to be released without the express and written consent of Mr. Maura, the Minister of the Interior.
Ascaso left for Madrid and met with Maura, whom he asked to authorize the shipment of the arms to the unions. Maura responded that he could not do so, but would allow the rifles to be sent to the Catalan government once the Generalitat’s power was formalized in Catalonia.
The <em>Nosotros</em> group met to discuss the issue and decided that their only option was to cede the arms to the Generalitat. At least the rifles might someday get to the workers. The Generalitat created an un-uniformed, armed militia called the “Escamots,” which was an assault force that replaced the Somatén.[309] It armed the Escamots with rifles that the <em>Nosotros</em> group had purchased with money expropriated from the bank in Gijón. Ultimately, the workers—their rightful owners—did get control of those weapons.[310] The labor movement absorbed the <em>Nosotros</em> group. Its members were frequently asked to participate in public events throughout Spain. The majority of them were locked-out from their trades and obliged to concentrate themselves in the “Ramo del Agua”[311] of Barcelona’s Manufacturing and Textile Union, which had a job listing service recognized by employers. In other words, when an owner in that sector needed workers, he had to request them from the union through factory representatives. Under no circumstance were non-unionized workers admitted to the job.[312]
</quote>
The long quote helps us grasp the <em>Nosotros</em> group’s strategy. The succession of events since the Republic was proclaimed had only confirmed their judgment about the essence of the new regime.
The unrest in those eighteen Cordobian towns described by Maura extended throughout Andalusia and even to the bordering provinces in New Castile, where latifundismo was also the norm. Driven by hunger and despair, the peasants launched consistent revolts, but desperation can only lead to rebellion, never revolution. The hopeless had to have an ideal, possess a program, and make their instinctive revolt a conscious, reflective undertaking. That is the only way that an insurrection can become a revolution. The <em>Nosotros</em> group patiently devoted itself to making that happen. It was not only a question of fomenting uprisings, but also of provoking uprisings that would lead to a collective expropriation of the means of production and the creation of new forms of human sociability. It was thus necessary to elaborate the general contours of the libertarian communist society. The <em>Nosotros</em> group articulated this idea within the FAI and at workers’ meetings and rallies. It was accepted broadly and Isaac Puente wrote a simple but comprehensible outline of libertarian communism.
The situation in Barcelona had deteriorated since Josep Oriol Anguera de Sojo became the governor. He and Barcelona’s Police Chief Arturo Menéndez faithfully carried out the orders of his boss Miguel Maura who, as noted, was fighting a bitter war against the CNT. His instructions were categorical: make the CNT “toe the line.” The Modelo prison began to fill with “governmental” prisoners. The authorities shut down unions and declared workers’ gatherings “clandestine meetings” at will. The proletariat replied by calling a general strike in August. However, this general strike, called specifically to demand the release of prisoners, was not genuinely supported by <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>, whose editor was Juan Peiró, and was even ignored by the CNT National Committee, which was then under the control of men from the moderate faction. Upset with the results of the general strike, Barcelona’s 20,000 metalworkers continued striking independently. The 42,000 members of the Construction Workers’ Union (in which Ricardo Sanz was active) joined the metalworkers. These events put the CNT’s internal crisis into sharp relief. The situation seemed to grow more confused and desperate daily, thanks to pressures from the Esquerra Republicana and also the Catalan bourgeoisie, which was closing factories and cutting staff punitively. The work stoppage was spreading and circumstances in the city threatened to become explosive, as they had among the peasants. The FAI met in Barcelona to try to orient the discontent and transform it into a conscious force. They created an Economic Defense Commission to organize a rent and electricity strike and also called large popular meetings to mobilize the population. One of these occurred on August 2 in Barcelona’s Bellas Artes Hall. Durruti, García Oliver, Tomás Cano Ruiz, Vicente Corbi and Arturo Parera spoke at the event, all of whom were FAI activists.
Durruti sent the following note to his family around this time: “I’ll have to respond quickly to the letter that I received from you today. I understand your eagerness to embrace me; that’s something I want deeply too, but it’s impossible for me to leave Barcelona at the moment. I have a lot of work. I participate in rallies and meetings daily and must also attend to my union responsibilities. Unfortunately I’m not going to be able to visit León any time soon, but you can send me the railroad passes and I’ll use them the first chance that I get.” [313] These comments indicate the intensity of Durruti’s life in Barcelona. Indeed, he had returned to Spain on April 15 and still hadn’t been able to hug his mother.
The metalworkers went back to work, but the construction workers continued their strike, and there was a good deal of sabotage. Anguera de Sojo ordered to the Police Chief to seize the Construction Workers Union at 25 Mercaders Street, not far from Police Headquarters. This occurred on September 4, 1931. The brand-new Assault Guard[314] cordoned off the premises and a captain ordered his troops to attack the building. However, when he yelled “Forward,” a shot “rang out from within the union ... while a half dozen guards threw themselves against the building’s door. There was a shootout that lasted for several hours, although the intrepid libertarians finally exhausted their limited ammunition and had to surrender. Ninety- four comrades were arrested and many others risked their lives to escape the siege of the union hall. The champions of liberty wrote a heroic chapter in the annals of Spain’s revolutionary history that day.” There was a proud and arrogant young man among the detainees, who was convinced that he had done his duty. It was Marianet. [315] “Menaced by bayonets and machine-guns, authorities took our comrades to the holds of the Antonio López steamship, which in days bygone had been the site of innumerable crimes against black slaves brought from Africa to the New Continent.” [316]
The workers had been in the midst of a meeting when authorities attacked the union and the topic of discussion was the construction workers’ strike. The mood was impassioned: authorities had attacked other unions and dragged militants out of their homes and to prison in the middle of the night. The construction workers defended themselves with arms because they didn’t want to go to jail simply to satisfy one of Maura’s whims. In any case, when the entrenched construction workers finally agreed to surrender, they said that they would only turn themselves over to army soldiers. Authorities accepted this condition and sent a squad of troops under the command by Captain Medrano. As promised, the workers surrendered. However, the Assault Guards were not happy to see their prey escape them and used the pretext that they had to interview some of those involved at Police Headquarters to justify bringing a dozen detainees there. The Assault Guards machine-gunned the workers once they reached the building’s door.
In late August, in that climate of bloody class war, a manifesto appeared in the bourgeois press that was said to speak for the “sensible” side of the CNT. The document, signed by thirty well-known CNT activists, will always be known as the “Manifesto of the Thirty.” While it acknowledged that the situation in Spain was genuinely revolutionary, it argued that it was “necessary to consider that revolution scientifically” and therefore enjoy a period of social peace during which the working class could attract technicians and intellectuals to its cause, who would help it devise an economic structure (the Federations of Industry) capable of replacing the capitalist order. They also denounced—without mentioning it—the FAI’s strategy, which they said was “inspired by the Blanquist theory of the daring minority.” They accused the FAI of wanting to “bolshevize the CNT” and impose its dictatorship on the Confederation. Juan Peiró and Angel Pestaña were among the signers. [317] The bourgeois press took this document as a sign of division within the CNT and went on the attack against the “horrific FAI” led by the “three bandits” named Ascaso, Durruti, and García Oliver.
In the midst of this storm, when bourgeois newspapers spoke of Durruti in the same terms used by the press under the dictatorship, Durruti’s mother prompted his sister to visit him in Barcelona (given that he was unable to go to León). She noted her impressions of the trip in a letter to a friend: “My brother and sister-in-law live in conditions that make me ashamed. His house on Freser Street has been bereft of belongings since they moved in.
They barely have the basics: a couple of chairs, a table, and a bed without a mattress, on whose box springs my pregnant sister-in-law Mimi sleeps.... I shouted at him for not having told us about his situation, so that we could send him money and he could at least buy a mattress for Mimi. What do you think he did? He shrugged his shoulders. Treating me like a little girl, he said: ‘Look, Rosita, Mimi gets by very well and the pregnancy is going fine. You’ll see that she’ll have a beautiful child.’ What could I do? My brother will always be an incurable optimist.” [318]
The CNT had lost its direction in the storm. The National Committee actually restrained CNT militants instead of encouraging their spontaneous action. For its part, <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> took a partisan stance and published an editorial defending the “sensible men” grouped around “the thirty.” Only the anarchist weekly <em>El Luchador</em> was willing to defend the “terrible FAI.” It published the following article by Federica Montseny titled “The Confederation’s Internal and External Crisis:”
<quote>
A series of events have occurred between the publication of my article “A Circular and its Consequences” and the present. In the first place, a group of militants—which the bourgeois press, Macià, and Companys describe as the “sensible part” of the Confederation—published a manifesto. Second, there was the strike in Barcelona, which Governor Anguera de Sojo, a creature of Maura, caused with his unspeakable attitude toward the prisoners. Third, there is the editorial in <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>, which is a historic document that will make its author blush some day, if he still has any virility and shame. These events have unfolded in the modest space of ten or twelve days, dizzying events that indicate the intensity our times. All of this has resulted in the beginning of a violent campaign against all well-known FAI members and the start of the disarticulation of the Confederation, a process that some hope will make the anarchists—those terrible “extremists”—into “responsibles,” when it is actually the “responsibles” who have caused the political actions of the Barcelona leaders and their attitude toward anarchist opinion in the CNT.
We must now speak of these same events in relation to the authorities, the bourgeoisie, and public opinion in general, all of whom gaze at and applaud the struggle between the CNT’s left and rightwing, between those inclined to make the Confederation an appendage of the Generalitat and the Esquerra Republicana, and those who represent the Confederation’s libertarian spirit, who aren’t the FAI, the gentlemen politicians, or union functionaries, but the “real Confederation.” It is the spirit that spoke at the Madrid Congress, articulated by all the delegates from the counties, towns, and unions. It is the authentic Confederation, that of the workers who labor, that of the men who believe, who feel, who struggle, who sacrifice, who die when necessary, who have never lived nor will live from liberalism or union professionalism.
This internal crisis occurs at a time when we need unity most, during these grave and dangerous moments. This divisionist crisis has undermined the Barcelona proletariat twice already and renders us defenseless against the public powers and the fishers in the rough seas of communism. It is an internal crisis, a process of decomposition, in which some have succumbed to the political disease, in a workers’ movement so strong and dynamic that it has intoxicated those put in the lead by circumstance.
We saw it coming long ago, as we now see the series of consequences that the National Committee circular, as well as its poor response to the Barcelona strike, will trigger. The events in Barcelona, the killings at the doorstep of Police Headquarters, the Governor’s intransigence and insanity, when he didn’t find the entire proletariat on combat footing in an unanimous protest (a protest that could have been made, responding to the masses); all of this gives ample space to the oppressive acts of the Republican authorities, who defend capitalist interests and are embodied in Maura, that despot and future dictator. This, after the tragedy of Andalusia, the repression that the Andalusian peasants are suffering, who did not hear an echo of protest or solidarity from the rest of Spain; all this eliminates any opposition to and hesitation in the government, which self-confidently believes that it isn’t facing a worthy opponent. Finally, the compromises that labor leaders have made with Maura, hoping to facilitate the approval of the famous Catalan Autonomy Statute; all of this ends the outline of our panorama. When Catalonia is self-governing, the government will have a tolerant policy towards the CNT’s “good boys,” but it will “tighten the screws”—Companys’ phrase—on the FAI, on the famous “extremists,” on those qualified as extremists because they are not ready to let the Confederation be in Barcelona what the UGT is in Madrid. And in relation to the Republican and Catalan governments, the Catalanized CNT, with its National Committee installed for life here, will feign ignorance of the rest of Spain, as it feigned ignorance of the strikes in Sevilla and Zaragoza, which were fought out with more honor and intelligence than one finds around here. The Spanish proletariat will be easy to control, as the persecution of anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists divides it, breaks it up, reduces it to sporadic rebellions, undermines its capacity for collective action, and bleeds it of its most active elements, bravery, and spiritual dynamism. It will be easy for the dog trainer that is the Interior Ministry to manage. Each meeting will be a scandal, each strike an embarrassing display of cowardice and incoherence; each day the consummation of a new shame for us and the imposition of a new governmental iniquity. The Republic, consolidated and organized; the Republic, shamelessly at the service of the bourgeoisie; the Republic, managed by the bullying hand imposed on all the ministers and the entire sheep-like Parliament; the Republic, the social-democracy, the owner and master of Spain, obstructing, as I said in my first article written after April 14, the social and political evolution of Iberia!
And here, in the oasis of the Catalan autonomy, in the paradise that Macià’s good faith promises—assuming he’s capable of good faith—there is a Confederation that has been converted into the “fourth hand” on the new Consell de Cent de Catalunya;[319] a domesticated Confederation, governmentalized, with a olive branch policy of “harmony” between capital and labor; a labor confederation in the English style. It will be a worker-democracy, manufactured in Barcelona but for export everywhere, to be used by the humanitarian governments underpinning totally worm-eaten, bourgeois orders. With respect to the FAI, to the frightening, terrible FAI; which that herd of ambitious idiots see personified in two men that, if nothing else, at least aren’t cowards; with respect to the FAI as envisioned by the donkeys of Mirador... Oh, people, citizens, brothers of the Iberian people! They will tighten the screws on everyone, even the last volunteer at <em>Soli</em>! There will be a harsh turn from Maura and Companys, not to mention the ineffable Lluhí i Vallescá and poor Mr. Macià!... They have turned the FAI into a mythological monster—a minotaur or dragon—against which neither Theseus nor Saint George are useful....[320]
</quote>
** CHAPTER VIII. Durruti and García Oliver respond to “The Thirty”
Durruti was never very fond of the press. In his view, paid journalists wrote simply to please their employers and although they received a salary, they lacked a “workers’ conscience.” Most workers, despite being paid, could refuse to produce something that they considered detrimental to their class. “For example, Barcelona’s bricklayers and forgers,” he said, “refused to build the Modelo Prison because they knew that they were constructing their own tombs. I can’t think of any journalist who has done something similar.” [321] With opinions like these, Durruti was unlikely to seek out journalists to comment publicly on the manifesto released by “The Thirty.” The fact that he did make a statement in the press was due to the efforts of Eduardo de Guzmán, editor of <em>La Tierra</em> (an independent newspaper that was objective enough on CNT and FAI matters). De Guzmán asked him for his thoughts on the document published by the “reformist syndicalists.” His comments were unequivocal:
<quote>
We anarchists will respond in an energetic but noble way to the attack made upon us by some members of the Confederation. I hope it’s clear that this is a direct attack on García Oliver and me. That’s natural; I clashed with these figures when I arrived in Barcelona and, after we spoke for several hours, it became obvious that we had two different positions, which are only becoming more and more distinct.
We, the men of the FAI, are nothing like what many people think. Indeed, there’s an aura around us that’s unmerited and that we need to dispel as soon as possible. Anarchism isn’t what many pusillanimous spirits suppose. To be fair, our ideas are much more widespread than the privileged classes believe and they are a serious danger to capital and even for the proletariat’s pseudo-defenders in high positions. Of course the manifesto that Pestaña, Peiró, Arin, Alfarache, Clarà, and others recently published pleases many of the bourgeois leaders and labor activists in Catalonia, but the FAI has no solidarity at all with these men’s mea culpa and will continue along its path, which we believe is the best.
How can they expect us to support the present government, which allowed four workers to be killed in the streets of Sevilla four days ago, which revived Martínez Anido’s shameful practices, after they were updated by Mr. Maura, the Interior Minister? How can they expect us to embrace a government that fails to sanction the parties from the dictatorship and allows them to conspire openly in Lasarte? How can they think that we’d support a government formed in part by men who worked with the dictatorship? We are absolutely apolitical. We are convinced that politics is a system of artificial government and completely against nature. Many men succumb to it so that they can continue occupying their positions, sacrificing whatever they think might help them, particularly the humble classes. What’s happening now is simply what had to happen, because a revolution wasn’t carried out on April 14. The changes needed to be much more far-reaching than they were and now the workers are paying the price. We, the anarchists, are the only ones defending the principles of the Confederation; libertarian principles which the others seem to have forgotten. Proof of this can be found in the fact that they abandoned the struggle precisely when it should have been waged more strongly. Clearly Pestaña and Peiró have made moral compromises that hamper their libertarian action.
The Republic, as presently constituted, is a real danger for libertarians. We will descend into social democracy if the anarchists don’t act energetically. We have to make the revolution and to make it as soon as possible, since the Republic offers the people no security, either political or economic. We can’t wait for the Republic to finish consolidating itself. Right now, General Sanjurjo is asking for eight thousand more Civil Guard. Naturally, the Republicans have the Russian experience in mind. They see what happened to Kerensky’s government, which was nothing more than a preparatory stage for the real revolution. That’s exactly what they want to avoid.
The Republic can’t resolve the religious question. The bourgeoisie also doesn’t dare do battle against the workers, although they have taken positions. They have a dilemma: either support social democracy, like in Germany or Belgium, or the organized working masses will expropriate them. They aren’t fools and have chosen the path that’s most comfortable for them: social democracy.
Macià, a man of infinite goodness, so pure and upright, is one of those responsible for the anguishing situation of the workers [in Catalonia] today. Instead of positioning himself between capital and labor, as he has done, if he had leaned definitively towards the workers’ side, the libertarian movement in Catalonia would have spread throughout all Spain and Europe, and would have even found adepts in Latin America. Macià has tried to make a little Catalonia, while we would have made Barcelona the spiritual capital of the world.
Spanish industry can’t compete with foreign industry and yet the workers are much more advanced here. If Spain’s industry is going to modernize and compete with that in other countries, we the workers will have to take a step back. We’re not going to do that.
It’s necessary, indispensable, to resolve the problem of the unemployed, whose numbers grow daily. We workers have to provide the solution. How? With social revolution. It’s time to make way for the workers. Although it seems paradoxical, the workers and only the workers have to defend Spain’s wealth.
Getting back to the manifesto, I should mention that during one of our meetings I suggested to Pestaña and Peiró that they be theorists and that we, the youth, be the dynamic part of the organization. That is, that they come after us, reconstructing. As members of the Confederation, those of us in the FAI have only 2000 members, but we have a total of some 400,000 workers [in Catalonia], considering that at the last meeting we obtained sixty-three votes against twenty-two. It’s a question of whether or not to give a revolutionary response to the first provocation of the present government.
The first meeting of the Local Federation will be held on Sunday and we’ll articulate our protest against the published document there.... We know that our organization [the FAI] causes great fear in the Catalan bourgeoisie, but we’ll never take a step backward as far as the workers’ demands are concerned.[322]
</quote>
The same day that <em>La Tierra</em> published Durruti’s comments, <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> ran an editorial by Juan Peiró defending the views of “the thirty.” “It’s very easy,” wrote Peiró, “to summon the workers to protest, so that they can be mocked and shot at.... But those who do so aren’t revolutionaries; they are moral assassins. The difficult thing—and perhaps this is why it concerns so few—is to ignite the masses with a coherent plan that concretely determines the three phases of any revolutionary movement.”
Peiró expounded on the question that obsessed him: the Federations of Industry, which he thought would attract technicians and petty bourgeoisie to the CNT. For him, not having a plan for economic reconstruction meant being unprepared for the revolution: “The proletariat has to understand completely that the organization of the economy is the base upon which the whole revolutionary movement—at root, essentially socialist—rests and upon which political liberty and social and economic equality have to be built. To argue anything else, however you dress it up, is to be messianic and Bolshevik, which is always tyrannical in form and content and therefore completely incompatible with anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism.” [323] García Oliver also made some comments about “the Thirty” and the problem of revolution while speaking to the same journalist from <em>La Tierra</em>.
De Guzmán began his article with a few words about the circumstances of his meeting with García Oliver and an appreciation of the latter’s personality:
García Oliver gave a lecture at a union hall in the El Clot district to an exclusively worker audience on the parallels between Socrates and Christ’s lives. He was extremely eloquent and expounded original ideas as he shared his knowledge of the Socratic philosophy with the workers. And if the speaker is admirable—this young man who gave himself an exceptional education in hours robbed from sleep and during long years spent in prison—the same can be said of the audience. Silently, thoughtfully, the listeners strained to grasp the full depth of the orator’s words, whose meaning was complex despite their apparent simplicity.
We talked after he finished his lecture. García Oliver is one of the most outstanding men of the FAI and the fiercest opponent—conscious, serene, and revolutionary—of the men who signed the infamous August manifesto. García speaks logically, dispassionately, and advances his ideas after a moment of reflection.
The differences between the manifesto’s signers and the FAI “It’s difficult for those who don’t live in our circles to understand why they’re attacking the FAI. The manifesto’s signers are angry at us because the anarchist groups have shaken off their tutelage. But the battle isn’t really from today. It began in 1923 when the anarchists saw that Pestaña, Peiró, and the majority of the men who signed the document were unable to confront the difficult times that Spain was going through, in which there was a tangible possibility of a military coup. We even argued at a Congress that there would be a coup within three months and, regrettably, our fears were confirmed. “That, the poor leadership of the transportation strike, and their clear inability to deal with the problem of terrorism prompted the anarchists to rebel. We didn’t do so to divide the CNT, but to get the organization to give a revolutionary solution to Spain’s problems. “The anarchists didn’t distance themselves from the Confederation at the time—we’ve always been its most active element—but from men like Pestaña, Peiró, etc., who had a disproportionate influence over the organization.
“The same thing is happening today. Two months ago, Pestaña and Peiró looked at the Republican reality in Spain and concluded that Parliament is an effective tool for social change; the anarchists, on the other hand, knew that the dictatorship fell not because of pressure from political parties, but because the Spanish economy had stretched to its limit. We disagreed with them and asserted that social problems can only be resolved by a revolutionary movement that transforms the economy while also destroying bourgeois political institutions.”
Revolution is not a question of preparation, but of will “Without setting a date, we advocate revolution and don’t worry about whether or not we’re prepared to make it. We know that revolution is not a matter of preparation but of will; of wanting it.
“We don’t disregard revolutionary preparation, but simply consign it to secondary importance. After the experience of Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany, it’s clear that preparing for and advocating the revolution also propels the fascists into action.
“Revolutionaries previously assumed that the revolution would triumph by necessity when it’s time for the people to make it, whether or not the opposing elements in the dominant regime want it. We could accept that theory before the fascist victory in Italy, because until then the bourgeoisie believed that the democratic state was its last refuge. But after Mussolini’s coup, capitalists are now convinced that when the democratic state fails they can still find the necessary forces to overthrow liberalism and crush the revolutionary movement.”
The FAI, revolutionary ferment “The signers of the manifesto say that the FAI wants to make a Marxist revolution, but unfortunately they’re confusing the revolutionary technique—which is the same for all those who intend to rebel—with anarchism and Marxism’s very different principles. At present, the FAI represents the revolutionary ferment; the element of social decomposition that our country needs in order to make the revolution.
“Ideologically, the FAI embraces anarchism and aspires to the realization of libertarian communism. As such, if a new regime is installed in Spain after the revolution that is similar to the one in Russia or the dictatorial syndicalism advocated by Peiró, Arin, and Piñón, then the FAI would immediately begin fighting against that order, not to destroy it in a reactionary sense but to push it to go further in order to implant libertarian communism.” The dictatorship of the proletariat sterilizes the revolution He is quiet for a moment. I ask a question. García reflects, and then replies calmly but firmly: “We don’t like to make judgments about what may or may not be possible in the future. Indeed, those who use hypotheses to establish dictatorial theories only reveal their own ideological confusion.”
“All revolutions are violent. But the dictatorship of the proletariat, as understood by the Communists and the syndicalist signers of the manifesto, has nothing to do with the violence of the revolution as such. In essence, they want to make violence into a practical form of government. Their dictatorship naturally and necessarily creates classes and privileges. And, given that the revolution has been made to destroy those privileges and classes, the effort would be in vain and it would be necessary to begin again. The dictatorship of the proletariat sterilizes the revolution. It’s a waste of time and energy.
“The FAI does not want to imitate the Russian Revolution. We want to make a real revolution; the violent event that frees people from their burdens and sets authentic social values aloft. That’s why we don’t prejudge Spain’s revolutionary future. But if we were to do so, we would have to affirm that libertarian communism is possible here. Certainly our people are at least potentially anarchist, in the cases when they lack the ideology. “Furthermore, we can’t forget that Spain and Russia are located at Europe’s two extremes. And not only are there geographic differences between the two countries; there are psychological differences as well. We want to prove this by making a revolution that doesn’t resemble Russia’s in the slightest.”
The signers of the manifesto do not believe in the revolution García Oliver becomes pensive again and, after reflecting briefly, says: “Those who put their names on the manifesto never believed in the Spanish revolution. They participated in revolutionary propaganda in the distant past but their fictions have been shattered today, now that the hour of truth has arrived.
“The signers of the manifesto see that they’ve been overwhelmed by events and declare their faith in the revolution, but they absurdly postpone the event to two or more years in the future, as if that were possible with the current crisis of the economy. Furthermore, in two years the revolution would be unnecessary for the workers: between Maura, Galarza, and hunger not a single worker will still be alive. Or, if there is one, he will be oppressed by a military dictatorship—whether it’s monarchical or Republican—that will necessarily arise, given the failure of the Spanish Parliament.” The CNT does not need to waste time preparing anything Then what course of action should the Confederation take?
“The CNT doesn’t need to waste time and prepare the two aspects of the revolution: destructive first and later constructive. The CNT is the only solid thing in Spain, a country in which everything is pulverized. It is a national reality that all the politicians combined can’t overcome. The CNT should not postpone the social revolution for any reason, because everything that can be prepared is already prepared. No one would suppose that the factories will function completely immediately after the revolution, just as no one would imagine that the peasants will work the plows with their feet. “Workers will have to do the same thing after the revolution as they did before it. In essence, a revolution implies a new concept of morality, or making morality itself effective. After the revolution, the workers must have the freedom to live according to their needs and society will satisfy those needs according to its economic capacities. “No preparation is necessary for this. The only thing required is that today’s revolutionaries defend the working class sincerely and don’t try to become little tyrants under the pretense of a more or less proletarian dictatorship.”
García Oliver becomes quiet. An unwavering faith in victory shines in his eyes, and also the belief that it is already near. [324]
** CHAPTER IX. Two paradoxical processes: Alfonso XIII and the Gijón bank
Given these statements from Durruti and García Oliver, and the opposing comments from Juan Peiró and his friends, it was inevitable that the manifesto would become a subject of debate within CNT unions, particularly those in Catalonia. The fact that “the Thirty” had used the bourgeois press as a vehicle to voice their disagreements was one of the things that most upset militants. That, and the timing of their statement, made it harder for the CNT and anarchists to effectively confront the government’s persecution as well as the criticisms that Socialists and Communists were lodging against them. In this context, it is worth quoting a letter that Durruti sent to his brother Manolín, who was active among the Socialists in León:
<quote>
I’m just sending a few lines to tell you that the Sevilla comrades haven’t gone along with anyone, neither the bourgeoisie nor the Communists. The CNT doesn’t accept anyone’s tutelage and we refuse to take part in rebellions that aren’t inspired by the workers or sponsored by their unions. Political movements, especially those of the Communists, respond only to the party’s needs, without taking into account the workers’ general interest. But the Communists go further: the imperatives of the Soviet state shape all their activities. Moscow directs the Communist parties like pawns, who advance or retreat according to its political strategy and international goals, which are always determined by the needs of the state.
So don’t pay attention to what the Communists say in Frente Rojo.... The CNT will respond in due time to all the slanders being spread against it. Right now the CNT needs all its energy to clarify its own positions and confront the repression constantly bearing down upon its militants.[325]
</quote>
The CNT’s Catalan Regional Committee called a regional meeting for October 11, 1931 to clarify the internal conflicts. Between the call for the meeting and the meeting itself, there were endless union gatherings, strikes, acts of sabotage, and clashes—which were almost always bloody—between the workers and the police (whether it was those answering to Madrid or the Generalitat).
On September 30, Barcelona’s Local Federation met to talk about the bankagenda of the regional gathering. Instituting the Federations of Industry was the contentious point and the antagonisms between the two tendencies in the organization came to a head. The moderates accused the radicals of wanting to control the CNT (the infamous “dictatorship of the FAI”), who in turn objected to the moderates’ attempt to integrate the revolutionary workers’ movement into the state by means of the CNT’s “industrial” bureaucratization. They resolved the matter with a vote: sixteen unions declared themselves in favor of the Federations of Industry and three against (Woodworkers, Construction Workers, and Liberal Professions). Nonetheless, as if to underscore how conflicted they were about the issue, two of the three men nominated to represent Barcelona’s unions at the regional meeting—Francisco Ascaso and José Canela—were FAI members. Their appointment produced its first consequence the following day when Juan Peiró resigned as the editor of <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>, before the regional meeting had even occurred.
The seats of the Teatro Proyecciones in Barcelona’s Exposición were full of delegates on October 11. Assault Guards watched the surrounding areas closely and, as if hoping to provoke a confrontation, constantly demanded identification from anyone heading toward the meeting. The harassment, and the thorny matters to discuss, created an extremely tense environment: activists entered the theater as friends but feared that they would leave it as enemies. The debate about Federations of Industry consumed a total of sixteen hours of passionate discussion spread out over four sessions. Although meeting participants ultimately accepted the CNT’s national decision on the Federations of Industry, they asserted their right to apply or not apply the decision, in accordance with the autonomy enjoyed by the CNT’s regional confederations (and the unions within them). This was a blow to the moderate faction. Likewise, meeting participants also decided not to reaffirm the <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> team (Sebastián Clarà, Ricardo Fornells, and Agustín Gibanel, all of whom signed the manifesto). This tore the powerful informational weapon from the moderate’s hands. Meeting attendees voted to put it under the control of Felipe Alaiz, who was a well-known supporter of “anarchism’s advanced extreme,” as he liked to say. Alaiz describes how Francisco Ascaso told him about his nomination:
<quote>
One morning, he came to my home in Sants:
“You have to be the editor of Soli, starting right now, as a professional and a comrade.
Ascaso seemed to be a militant in a rush.
“The Catalan unions have elected you. You have more votes than Macià.”
García Oliver came by after Ascaso had left. García and I went to the meeting in the Teatro Proyecciones, where the matter had been decided. It turned out that I was something like a half millionaire in votes.
That day I had coffee with Ascaso in La Tranquilidad, which was the most un-tranquil café on the Paralelo and in Catalonia.[326]
</quote>
La Tranquilidad was a café located in the middle of the Brecha de San Pablo on the Paralelo and its owner, Martí, was sympathetic to the militant anarchists. [327] FAI members and supporters liked to gather there. In opposition to the La Tranquilidad, there was the Pay-Pay café on San Pablo Street, almost at the Brecha, where militant syndicalists met. They led what were called “confederal groups,” which were syndicalist action groups that formed the CNT’s underground, defensive shield. The police occasionally arrested everyone inside these cafés on the pretext that they needed to verify their identities. Of course authorities always prolonged the detentions of those they had been watching by charging them with sabotage or some other “criminal” infraction of bourgeois law. Nonetheless, despite the constant police raids, these cafés were always full of people.
It was in La Tranquilidad where Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg first met Durruti, shortly after the proclamation of the Republic. There, surrounded by many well-known militants, Ehrenburg tried to convince Durruti that bolshevism was superior to anarchism. Durruti ending up “cutting up” the Russian writer with his brutal responses. Among other things, he reminded Ehrenburg that the Soviet Union, the “homeland of the proletariat,” had slammed the door in his face when he found himself in a Europe with nowhere to go.
Alaiz and García Oliver found Durruti and Ascaso at La Tranquilidad, who had been passing the time talking about the news from León. Durruti’s sister Rosa had just informed him that León police had come to her house looking for him. This was a response, she said, to a “search and capture” order for Durruti and “el Toto” [328] printed in the <em>Boletín Oficial</em>. When the new arrivals told them that the CNT meeting had voted to make Alaiz editor of <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>, Durruti replied:
<quote>
“Your news isn’t new, but mine is. Apparently the police are trying to find Toto and me, so that they can charge us with the holdup of the bank in Gijón.” “And you can consider yourself lucky if it’s only for that, but I don’t think things will end there,” Alaiz responded. “I imagine that they’ll also try to lock you up for the action against Alfonso XIII.”
“And why not for the attack on Cardinal Soldevila as well?” Ascaso asked.[329]
</quote>
While the CNT’s radical faction continued to win ground and weaken the moderates, the bourgeois press inveighed against the Republic’s three greatest enemies—Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver—whom they described as “public enemies” as well bank robbers and bandits. Catalanist papers also tried to depict the FAI militants as “murcianos.” [330] They were trying to incite public opinion against the “horrific FAI,” but instead of diminishing the FAI’s impact on the CNT, this propaganda actually increased it. The fact that Francisco Ascaso’s fellow workers went on strike to demand his release immediately after he was arrested made this clear.
When Felipe Alaiz took over Soli on October 13, he also had to immediately begin organizing a campaign to free Ascaso. Police accused Ascaso of having “killed Alexander the Great” and also gave him a serious beating. [331] The CNT’s Catalan Regional Committee organized rallies throughout the region to protest Ascaso’s arrest. Durruti spoke frequently on the topic and the content of his speeches was always the same: “We’re living just like we lived under the dictatorship. Nothing has changed: the same bureaucracy, the same military bosses, the same police and, therefore, the same oppression, now exercised by a police force made up by Socialists. I’m referring to the Assault Guard.... Complaints aren’t useful; we have to react, and soon, to demonstrate our opposition to the rulers and the death of Republican hopes. The working class has the obligation—if it doesn’t want to deny itself—to seek its well-being beyond all these political tricks and political parties, which are nothing more than bureaucratic schools of power. The working class has no parliament but the street, the factory, and the workplace, and no path other than social revolution, which it can only make through constant revolutionary struggle.” [332]
Authorities charged Durruti with “insults against authority” after a speech he gave at a rally held on Ascaso’s behalf in which he denounced the Republican government’s repressive policy against the workers. The press reported on his arrest although, in reality, it was no more than a bureaucratic matter in which he was “informed.” But it worried Durruti to think of the concern that his mother would feel when she learned the news. He hastened to send some calming words, and he also replied to a letter from his family in which they urged him to leave the movement and return to León. It was not the first time that Durruti had received letters of this nature (we have already noted the comments he made to his brother Pedro about the same issue while imprisoned in Paris). Although Durruti’s response on this occasion was similar to those that he gave at other times, his letter merits reproduction because it contains valuable biographical information:
<quote>
I suspect you’ve read about my arrest in Madrid’s <em>La Tierra</em>. I don’t know who communicated the news, but the fact is that that no one has bothered me. I go about my life as always. I haven’t stopped working for a moment and continue to go to the unions...
It’s Ascaso who has been arrested, but we hope that he’ll get out soon... The police detained him because they found him in the company of people they were looking for and decided to arrest everyone. But the situation isn’t serious.
Now, to address the letter from Perico and in which, he says, he expresses all of your views.
Perico tells me to give up the life that I‘m living and return to León, to work in the Machinery Warehouse. One of his reasons is the severity of the approaching economic crisis, whose consequences I’ll be the first to suffer. Likewise, I should abandon the life of the fighter because everyone, he says, should “get themselves out of trouble.”
I don’t take your suggestions in a bad way, because I know they reflect your concern for me and desire to have me at your side. But you’ll never understand what makes me different from the other brothers. When I lived at home, I don’t think it would have taken you much to see that there’s an enormous distance between us in our ways of thinking and acting.
From my earliest years, the first thing that I saw was suffering. And if I couldn’t rebel when I was a child, it was only because I was an unaware being then. But the sorrows of my grandparents and parents were recorded in my memory during those years of unawareness. How many times did I see our mother cry because she couldn’t give us the bread that we asked for! And yet our father worked without resting for a minute. Why couldn’t we eat the bread that we needed if our father worked so hard? That was the first question whose answer I found in social injustice. And, since that same injustice still exists today, thirty years later, I don’t see why, now that I’m conscious of this, that I should stop fighting to abolish it.
I don’t want to remind you of the hardships suffered by our parents until we got older and could help out the family. But then we had to serve the so-called fatherland. The first was Santiago. I still remember mother weeping. But even more strongly etched in my memory are the words of our sick grandfather, who sat there, disabled and next to the heater, punching his legs in anger as he watched his grandson go off to Morocco, while the rich bought workers’ sons to take their children’s place in Africa...
Don’t you see why I’ll continue fighting as long as these social injustices exist?[333]
</quote>
Durruti, consumed as he was by the revolution, barely noticed that Emilienne was a stone’s throw from becoming a mother. She entered the hospital maternity ward in early December 1931 and a child, whose eyes would always invoke Durruti, came into the world on the fourth day of that month.
They named the girl Colette, surely by Mimi’s express desire. Her birth had a powerful impact on Durruti. He could barely conceal his delight to his sister Rosa:
<quote>
Mimi is absolutely enchanted with her girl and is in good health. We’ve enclosed a bit of her hair. She’s dark, like you, and all our friends say she’s very pretty. I suggest that you come to Barcelona for a few days, which you’ll enjoy a lot. I have many friends here, some are in prison, but they’ll get out sooner or later. I also have a lot of work, since we’re organizing large rallies in support of the prisoners....
I want you to know that yesterday I charged 2,600 pesetas as an indemnity against my dismissal by the Railroad Company during the general strike in August 1917. That money has served us well. Yesterday Mimi went out for the first time [since the birth] with some friends and bought countless needed items, including all the essentials for Colette.
Regarding the hundred pesetas that you said you’re going to send, don’t send them now, if you haven’t already done so. I’m not short on money at the moment. [334]
</quote>
Durruti sent this letter on December 8, 1931. The Republic had been proclaimed on April 14 and it had been necessary to wait eight months for them to begin to apply the amnesty decree. That is how slowly things went!
Six days later Durruti sent his family another letter in which he acknowledged that he had received the one hundred pesetas and spoke of Colette:
<quote>
She’s begun to laugh and is a delight to all our friends. Mimi is quite well and treats Colette like a princess. She has a lot of milk and a good appetite.... We bought endless things: a closet, buffet, mattress, blankets, sheets, crib, shoes.... Many things.... I didn’t go to work today because all my friends were released from prison, including Ascaso. I’ve been very busy organizing on their behalf recently. I’ve caused quite a scandal in Barcelona and it looks like I won’t escape going to jail.
You shouldn’t worry about the <em>Boletín</em> from Asturias, since I have a letter from Oviedo and they tell me that it’s nothing.... Rosita, get yourself to come to Barcelona.... I’ll even prepare a bed for you, since we now have a mattress.
[Mimi included some lines:]
My dear Colette is sleeping in my arms. I never tire of looking at her. [335]
</quote>
Durruti’s premonition about going to prison was partially confirmed a few days later. He was scheduled to speak at a rally in Gerona and the police, who were waiting for him at the railroad station, arrested him when he got off the train. They took him to the police station, where an inspector accused him of “having organized an attack against Alfonso XIII in Paris.” Durruti knew that the purpose of the charade was simply to hold him for several hours in order to prevent him from addressing the rally. He warned the inspector that his game could cost him dearly, since the workers wouldn’t accept an arrest made under the pretext of an attack on a King deposed and condemned by the Republic. Meanwhile, as Durruti argued with the inspector, a call came in from the Civil Governor ordering them to release the detainee. The inspector apologized and Durruti left the police station. Of course the Governor didn’t free Durruti out of the goodness of his heart; he was acting under pressure from a group of workers who went to the Civil Government and demanded an explanation when they learned about Durruti’s detention. The Governor didn’t want to make the ridiculous announcement that they were holding Durruti because of a conspiracy against the dethroned King and told them that they were simply verifying his identity, but that he would be freed immediately and the rally could go on.
Durruti’s speeches were never short of attacks on the Republic and this police harassment simply gave him another reason to go on the offensive at the Gerona rally: “If I needed one more example to convince you that we’re still living under the Monarchy, our Civil Governor has given me a good one by trying to arrest me for revolutionary activity designed to eliminate Spain’s most disastrous King.” The government agent assigned to the meeting had to endure the defiant ovations and cheers from the Gerona workers.
Durruti couldn’t resist telling his sister about the machinations of Gerona’s Civil Governor when he got back to Barcelona: “See, Rosita, how my instinct didn’t deceive me! The Republican authorities tried to imprison me for plotting against the Monarchy. I can’t imagine anything more outrageous! But, moving on to more serious matters: this time it’s true that Mimi, Colette, and your ingrate brother are coming to León.” [336]
Durruti hadn’t set foot in León since August 1917. By December 1931, it had been more than fourteen years since he had seen his family or conversed with his friends, youthful playmates who were now militant anarchists or <em>CNTistas</em>.
This was not to be a pleasure trip for Durruti, but one full of sadness. His sister had informed him that “your father is extremely sick, and you should do anything you can to be at his side and give him the satisfaction of seeing you before it’s too late.” His sister’s urgency was not misplaced: their father died while Durruti was on his way to León. Old Santiago Durruti’s funeral was an important event for the workers of León. The local UGT and the CNT hoped that it would not only celebrate the old Socialist but also express support for his son, who was “cursed by León’s Church and bourgeoisie.”
After the funeral ended, the León CNT asked Durruti to prolong his stay for a few days so that he could speak at a rally scheduled to be held in the city’s bullring.
We possess a photo of the event that shows a particularly well-dressed Durruti, which was doubtlessly the result of his family’s efforts. As Anastasia liked to say: “Every time he comes to León, I have to dress him from head to toe and pay for the return trip.”
The CNT wanted this to be a large rally and invited workers from all the province’s coalfields. For their part, local caciques and Church leaders pressed the Civil Guard commander to find an excuse to stop the ceremony. The pretext he found was charging Durruti with the robbing the bank in Gijón and, under the accusation, prepared to send Durruti to Oviedo with an armed escort.
Durruti was accustomed to being charged with crimes and nothing could surprise him in this respect after his experience in Gerona. When the Commander explained the accusation, Durruti stared at him and indignantly replied: “Do you know what that money was spent on? On bringing you the Republic on a platter! Commander, don’t you think that it would be better if we left things as they are and that I speak in the bullring tomorrow? Would you rather have an outburst in León?” [337]
As expected, León’s bullring was packed the following day. Workers had come not only from the province of León but also from surrounding areas, such as Galicia, Gijón, and even Valladolid. Laureano Tejerina, the local secretary of the CNT, presided over the event. Durruti, the only orator, was speaking in his native León, to people that he knew. That rally was not just any rally, but rather a broad conversation in a familiar environment. Durruti did his best to avoid grandiloquent phrases and maintained a serene, thoughtful tone. “In simple terms, but reinforcing each of his statements with an energetic gesture, he discussed the Republic’s failures and explained why it had been unable to solve the country’s social and political problems. After this reasoned examination, he pointed out that Spain was living in a pre-revolutionary period; that the revolution was growing in the proletarian world, and that when the revolution explodes it will not be a riot or a brawl, but an authentic and profound revolution that will cause the whole bourgeois, religious, statist, and capitalist order to fall. After its liquidation and total destruction, the working class and peasantry will make a new world rise, without privileged classes or parasites, that will guarantee bread and liberty for all, because bread without liberty is tyranny and liberty without bread is a deceit. But for the revolution to occur, he argued that absolutely all the workers must fight for unity in the true class sense of the word and that their activities must lead toward a single goal, the only one permitted for the working class: to break the chains of their slavery and be dignified in liberty. And don’t forget that no revolution can be made in slavery, but only in and with liberty. Forward, then, to the liberating revolution! Forward to the permanent and never ending social revolution!”[338]
Durruti’s revolutionary enthusiasm overwhelmed him and spread to the people of León. However, this was not a new thing for him. He had always been an optimist and had an almost religious faith in the revolution. For him, the revolution was inevitable, although it was necessary to prepare for it through a daily struggle that would give rise to the new man. While reflecting on the difficulties that the CNT faced after the insurrection of December 8, 1933, a friend of his, Pablo Portas, offers a depiction of Durruti’s hopefulness. During those harsh days, when the government was filling the prisons with workers and persecuting the CNT and anarchists, Durruti told Portas that “the revolution has to be thought of as a long process, marked by advances and retreats. Militants shouldn’t let themselves be demoralized.... In times like these, we have to be courageous, learn from the past, and prepare ourselves to attack more forcefully in the future. You’ll see, as things continue to deteriorate, the working class will shake off its fear and occupy its rightful place in history. For now, we have to maintain ourselves in the breach and not let pessimism dominate us. I know that our best comrades are falling one by one, but those losses are logical and necessary; without them there is no harvest, they are to the revolution what the sun and the water are to plants.”
“Many of us thought Durruti was a fanatic of the revolution,” Portas says. “It’s just that wherever we looked we only saw comrades cornered like animals by the state, while the workers who filled the soccer fields or bullrings didn’t concern themselves in the least with that anarchist bloodletting.”[339]
** CHAPTER X. The insurrection in Alto Llobregat
While social conditions continued to deteriorate, deputies and ministers were busy drafting the constitution of the Second Republic. The discussion of article 26, which treated the separation of the church and state and limited the church’s activity in public life, shattered the political unity in the government. This article was approved on October 13 by 178 votes against fifty-nine, with the abstention of the Radical-Socialists (who supported an even stronger text). Miguel Maura and Alcalá Zamora saw this as a betrayal of the Pact of San Sebastián and resigned from the government. The Socialists and Republicans overcame the crisis by forming a new government without the Rightwing. Manuel Azaña continued to hold the purse strings of the Ministry of War and stood in for Alcalá Zamora as Prime Minister. Santiago Casares Quiroga replaced Maura in the Interior Ministry and José Giral (also from Azaña’s party) took on the Ministry of the Navy. This ministerial readjustment produced a Republican-Socialist government that could govern without the obstacle of the high bourgeoisie and the Church’s representatives. There was nothing to stop it from instituting sweeping reforms and addressing urgent problems such as unemployment and the agrarian crisis. That was what the people hoped it would do, but the Republican leaders disappointed them once again. Instead of tackling those issues, they simply aggravated things by approving the Law for the Defense of the Republic on October 20. They heavily strengthened the powers of the Interior Ministry, so much so that Miguel Maura couldn’t help by exclaim: “That would make being Interior Minister a pleasure!”
On December 9, 1931 the Parliament reached its maximum incongruence when 362 members voted to make Alcalá Zamora President of the Republic. Alcalá Zamora, who had resigned because he disagreed with article 26, only heightened the contradiction by agreeing to be the faithful guardian of the Constitution.
The President swore his fidelity to his post two days later and, to render the act more solemn, the government made the day a national holiday. This ostentation stood in frank contradiction to the situation on the street: there was a general strike in Zaragoza and workers had occupied factories in the Asturian mining region, only to be dislodged by the Civil Guard. It was not a peaceful affair; one was killed and eleven injured by gunfire that day in Gijón.
Significant events occurred on December 31 in Castilblanco, a small town in the Badajoz province. Peasants there had been on strike for several weeks and Casares Quiroga ordered the Civil Guard to impose order. The Civil Guard’s entrance into Castilblanco shook the locals and they, in reply, surrounded the Civil Guard’s post and killed those inside. The Civil Guard responded by unleashing a wave of terror in numerous villages, including Almarcha, Jeresa, Calzada de Calatrava, Puertollano, and Arnedo. There were six deaths and more than thirty injured in the last site alone, where authorities fired upon a peasant demonstration demanding bread and work. The FAI’s <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> published a lengthy article about the incident under the following headline: “Spain is kidnapped by the Civil Guard.” It printed a number of graphics depicting what had happened.
Circumstances were even worse in Catalonia. In the coalfields of Alto Llobregat and Cardoner, conditions for the potash miners had deteriorated sharply since June 1931. The mining company was English and treated the miners like they were colonial subjects. The Civil Guard was at the company’s beck and call and arrested those it considered disobedient. Unions were attacked, it was illegal to sell workers’ publications, and police constantly frisked laborers in the street. The workers, most of whom had migrated from the Cartagena mining region, began to reach the limits of their patience: some wanted to return to their home towns and others looked toward violence. Militant <em>CNTistas</em> and anarchists met to devise a plan that would to channel the popular discontent into positive acts of proletarian affirmation, raise the workers’ combative spirit, and encourage their confidence in their strength and revolutionary potential.
The idea of launching an insurrection and proclaiming libertarian communism took root. They decided to lay the foundation for the rebellion with a propagandistic speaking tour. Vicente Pérez, “Combina,” Arturo Parera, and Durruti began the tour in early 1932. Durruti was truly explosive at the rally in Sallent: “He told the workers that it was time to renew the revolution left hanging by the Republicans and Socialists, that bourgeois democracy had failed, and that the emancipation of the working class could only be achieved by expropriating the bourgeoisie and abolishing the state. He urged the Fígols miners to prepare themselves for the final struggle and showed them how to make bombs with tin cans and dynamite.” [340]
Durruti’s aggressive tone reflected the spirit of the moment. Felipe Alaiz urged the people to revolt in articles that he sent to <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> from prison in Barcelona:
<quote>
It isn’t time to brandish pens in this country that shudders meekly before the big landowners and lacks the strength to truly react against the public affront.
No, it isn’t time for rhetorical protests or to call for vigorous demonstrations. We’ve done that more than enough already. Some are even saying that those who tolerate the abuse deserve it.
Conventional wisdom reaches tragic extremes when it states that a dictatorship is brewing in Spain, even though dictatorial forces have already been acting in full uncontested vigor for several weeks thanks to the Socialists and Republicans. What can you expect from the Socialists, who have justly been treated as traitors for fifteen or twenty years? And what do you expect from the Republicans, a group of halfwits who now raise arms and announce that democracy is bankrupt? Democracy has always been a poison, a whip, and a gag.
The Spanish people have never been as docile as now and never massacred as frequently as now. We don’t need to spell out the moral of the story; but it must be said that if there isn’t a real response to the ignominious absence of even the most elemental liberties and right to life; if the docility continues disguising itself with words, which are simply pages to the wind; if we fail to energetically attack the origin of these problems; then we will continue to build warehouses of smoke and perhaps write a page in the martyrology, but we won’t be anarchists.[341]
</quote>
Several days after the Sallent rally, a rebellion erupted throughout the coalfields of Alto Llobregat and Cardoner and the villagers proclaimed libertarian communism (January 18, 1932). The rebellion spread to Manresa, where armed workers took over and abolished money, private property, and state authority. Fígols was the last town to surrender to the army. The revolutionaries held it for five days, during which they lived out a profound experiment in libertarian communism. The correspondent sent there by <em>La Tierra</em> wrote the following:
<quote>
Men of all types work the coalfield where the rebellion triumphed. They are men who have always felt the weight of exploitation and it was against their demands—just as they were—that the regime was erected that always denies the workers the right to live. Revolutionaries, and union activists in their majority, these fighting workers were wholly rebels; eternally persecuted by all injustices, they are all too familiar with the mine and the prison, the ship, and the Civil Guard.
It seemed logical that these men, once victorious and thinking that they had overthrown the bourgeoisie, would avenge the years of oppression that they had suffered, that driven by hate they would throw themselves on the state’s representatives—guards, judges, and priests, etc.—and mercilessly tear them to shreds.
But after proclaiming the social revolution, these men—idealistic and generous beings—did not think of retaliation: they did not want to spill blood and didn’t even consider humiliating those who had humiliated them so many times before. They seized the weapons to prevent their adversaries from attacking. They secured the area to protect themselves against surprises.
And—leaving the whole world in absolute liberty—they continued working just like the day before, without imagining for an instant that their revolutionary victory freed them from the grueling task of tearing coal from the bowels of the earth.
And that is exactly what the anarchists did; men who are beyond all laws and who are constantly treated like murderers, thieves, and professional criminals. At their head, teaching by example, were the leaders of the rebellion, the revolutionaries who—according to the Muñoz Seca brothers, the Piesa, the Parliament, and even the government—had unspeakable motives and rebelled merely to fulfill their most turbid appetites. The revolutionaries controlled the situation for several days in Sallent, Súria, Berga, Fígols, and Cardona. There were no robberies, murders, or rapes anywhere. There was not even one death to suggest cruelty in those eternally persecuted men; not one robbery to demonstrate the desire for profit; not one rape to mark the urge to satisfy craven desires.
It was the same in all the towns. The workers greeted the victory of the social revolution with enthusiasm. They seized the town halls, flew red or black flags, abolished money, and made purchases with vouchers. But there was no looting or barbarities. Nowhere, not even in one small village, did the workers think that their victory liberated them from their hard daily labors...
That is how the revolutionaries of Cardoner and Llobregat thought and acted....
And that is why the rebellion is so significant. For the first time libertarian communism was a broad and lived reality. And utopian anarchism’s generous and noble ideas shined brightly in all those places, above all hatred, resentment, and conflict.
The events in those towns have such capital importance that they will surely have a decisive influence on the progress of the Spanish revolution and merit thorough study as a sociological phenomenon by our intellectuals, leaders, and politicians. For the workers there is no doubt, and they will know how to extract positive lessons from their brothers, the miners of Sallent and Fígols.[342]
</quote>
How did the government respond to that bloodless worker uprising? In the Chamber of Deputies, Prime Minister Manuel Azaña spoke about a revolutionary movement that was led from abroad and said that it was imperative to crush it immediately. He requested and received a vote confidence from the chamber. Azaña ordered Catalonia’s General Captain to suppress the movement at once. Troops first occupied Manresa and later, after three days of struggle, the coalfields were pacified when Fígols finally surrendered. The libertarian communist dream had barely lasted a week. The dreamers, or those who did not pay with their lives, were imprisoned or deported to Spanish Guinea.
Counterrevolutionary forces seized the day and the government rigorously applied the Law for the Defense of the Republic. Authorities in Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla and Cádiz received orders to launch a raid on anarchist circles that would ensnare leading CNT and FAI members.
The manhunt began at dawn on January 20 with assaults on the homes of pre-identified individuals in Barcelona. The libertarian professor Tomás Cano Ruiz was one of the first to be captured: “I was arrested and held incommunicado in the basements of Police Headquarters. I quickly came to appreciate the meaning of a raid in the style of Martínez Anido.” [343]
Authorities filled the prison cells with suspects, and then selected them either for deportation or incarceration.
Police arrested Durruti in the morning of January 21 and seized the Ascaso brothers (Francisco and Domingo) around noon that day. In the afternoon of January 22, those destined to be deported were transferred to the port and loaded onto the <em>Buenos Aires</em>, a steamship that the Transatlantic Company had freely put at the government’s disposal.
The <em>Cánovas</em> gunboat maneuvered its canons while the men were hauled onboard. The sailors on the Buenos Aires watched with their fingers on the trigger as the detainees were sent to the ship’s hold, where there was neither straw nor blankets nor anything even remotely resembling shelter or bedding. The men were constantly watched and had no freedom other than airing themselves under the ship’s skylights. There was very little water or food. This human cargo evoked the slave trade: the Republic had become a slaver. In addition to these already difficult conditions, there was a prohibition on receiving visitors, food packages, and correspondence. The detainees would have to live like this until February 11 when the government ordered the <em>Buenos Aires</em> to set sail.
** CHAPTER XI. The steamship Buenos Aires
The militants who hadn’t been captured during the January 20 raid—such as Ortiz, Sanz, and García Oliver—met and decided that they would pressure their respective unions to push the CNT National Committee to declare a general strike throughout the country. They believed that this was the only way to stop the government from deporting their comrades.
The Manufacturing and Textile Workers’ Union held an emergency meeting and voted to support the general strike. It sent García Oliver, as its representative, to a meeting of the National Committee, which was based in Barcelona and led by Angel Pestaña at the time. García Oliver drafted the following report for his union:
<quote>
The National Committee met on the evening of February 9. García Oliver, the secretary, and other delegates were present. He [Pestaña] read the notes sent by the various regions in response to the circular distributed to them which, at the behest of the regional of Aragón, Rioja, and Navarre, asked if they supported the declaration of a general strike throughout Spain or carrying out similar activities designed to prevent the announced deportations.
Levante answered affirmatively, declaring itself for the general strike; Galicia, despite the fact that government repression had weakened it considerably, also supported the strike and promised to do everything it could to make it general in its region; Asturias accepted as well and suggested immediately beginning a propaganda campaign to make the strike as complete as it could be; Aragón, Rioja, and Navarre say they have met with the counties and are prepared for the general strike; the Center regional, due to its limited influence, will organize protests when the National Committee delegation meets with the government to stop the deportations.
Pestaña claimed that Catalonia, Andalusia, the Balearics, and Norte had not responded. He added that “the day before yesterday, Sunday, I wrote all the regionals saying that, from the consultation about whether or not to declare a general strike against the deportations, it turns out that the majority of the regional organizations agree on the need for a massive propaganda campaign, without detriment to other activities that may be deemed appropriate later. I sent the letter in question without the National Committee, because it wasn’t a matter of importance and also to speed things up.”
García Oliver told Pestaña that he had made several important mistakes: First: behind the back of the National Committee, Pestaña has abused his authority and the trust invested in him, due to his possession of the National Committee stamp.
Second: he altered the regionals’ responses, given that the Center regional was the only one that suggested a propaganda campaign. All the others supported the general strike.
Third: Pestaña implied that the majority of regionals rejected the general strike, when in fact the opposite was the case. This is a deliberate and premeditated deception of the Confederal proletariat, which prevented us from stopping the deportations. From all of this, one can deduce that the government’s hurry to order the departure of the <em>Buenos Aires</em> results from the fact that it knew that Pestaña’s actions prevented any effective protest by the CNT. One can also deduce that the deportees would not have departed without his actions and also understand why, despite the considerable time between now and the Fígols rebellion, authorities suddenly ordered the ship to set sail.
</quote>
García Oliver was unable to do more than submit his report to his union in writing because police arrested him and threw him in the Modelo prison a few days after he wrote it. He told the other prison inmates about the matter and, after hearing his comments, one hundred of them sent a statement to the anarchist press. It asked for “Angel Pestaña’s expulsion from the CNT, in the event that what is said by García Oliver is true. Or, if García Oliver is lying, that he be expelled.” [344]
While all this was happening, the detainees in the <em>Buenos Aires</em> were held incommunicado and impatiently waited to find out what destination the government had in store for them.
The <em>Buenos Aires</em> steamship left the port of Barcelona at 4:45 am on February 10. No one knew where it was going, but most presumed that it was heading for Guinea in Africa. That day Emilienne sent a very expressive letter to the French Anarchist Federation, informing them about the deportation of Durruti and the others:
<quote>
There is despair at home. The <em>Buenos Aires</em> left Barcelona at four this morning in the direction of Guinea, probably Bata. There are 110 detainees on the ship now and it will stop in Valencia and Cádiz to pick up other militants awaiting exile on those shores. They haven’t allowed us to go onboard and say goodbye to them. Only some children, escorted by the sailors, have been able to bid their parents farewell. Our little Colette, two and half months old, was brought onboard in this way and Durruti could at least give her a kiss. We haven’t been able to see or speak with any of them since they were arrested approximately three weeks ago.
Durruti and some comrades started a hunger strike while the ship was anchored in the port. That’s why Durruti, Ascaso, Pérez Feliu, and Masana were separated from the rest.
The country’s press—with the exception of <em>La Tierra</em>—has slavishly endorsed the actions of the Interior Minister. It bases itself on the most absurd lies and despicable slanders to justify this abominable deportation. <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> is banned.
Here is the paradox of the Spanish Republic: while it deports 110 prisoners without trial (and most didn’t participate in the Fígols events), the monarchists conspire openly, large rural landowners leave their lands barren, and the peasants die of hunger. It won’t apply the infamous “Law for the Defense of the Republic” against its enemies, but rather against the workers, whose only crime is being conscious of and faithful to their class.
How could it be that the Socialists, who collaborated with Primo de Rivera, are now suddenly concerned with the workers’ demands? An eye for eye, a tooth for tooth; that should be our maxim. Despite the fact that our loved ones are leaving and we don’t know if we’ll ever see them again, we are not declaring defeat and won’t bow our heads. We will continue in the breach.[345]
</quote>
The deportees used Ascaso’s pen and little Colette’s diapers to send their own message:
<quote>
Dear friends: it looks like they’ve begun to dust off the compass. We are leaving. That is a word that says many things: to leave—according to the poet—is to die a little. But we aren’t poets, and for us this parting has always been a sign of life. We are in constant movement, on a perennial journey like Jews without a homeland; we are outside of a society in which we find nowhere to live; we are members of an exploited class, still without a place in the world. The departure was always a symbol of vitality. What does it matter if we leave, if we also stay here in our exploited brothers’ ideas and action? It isn’t us that they want to exile but our ideas and there’s no doubt that they will remain. And it’s those ideas that give us strength to live and that will make it possible for us return one day.
What a pathetic bourgeoisie that needs to resort to such things to survive! But we aren’t surprised. It’s in struggle against us and of course it defends itself. It torments, exiles, and murders. After all, nothing dies without at least throwing a punch. Beasts and men are similar in this. It’s unfortunate that its blows cause victims, especially when it is our brothers who fall, but it’s unavoidable and we have to accept the burden. Let us hope that the bourgeoisie’s death throes will be brief! Steel plates are not enough to contain our joy when we realize that our suffering marks the beginning of its end. It collapses and dies, but its death is our life, our liberation. To suffer like this is not to suffer. On the contrary, it is to live a dream cherished for millennia; it is to be present in the actualization and development of an idea that nourishes our thought and fills the vacuum of our lives. To leave is to live! That is our salutation when we say not goodbye but see you soon![346]
</quote>
The January 18 revolutionary uprising in Alto Llobregat was the detonator needed to set off the revolutionary process that had been incubating in Spain. The miners had had the audacity to turn theory into practice and that theory expressed in practice was going to inspire social struggles across the country. The government hoped that deporting these men would put a break on this, but it only stirred the revolutionary cauldron. Indeed, four days after the ship set sail anarchist groups in Tarrasa occupied Town Hall, flew the black and red flag, and proclaimed libertarian communism. The state crushed this rebellion brutally, just like in Alto Llobregat, but such defeats are really victories in the history of the proletarian struggle because they help the workers free themselves from fear and, when that occurs, the revolution spreads its wings. This important psychological phenomenon generally escapes the myopic historians and salaried journalists.
Emilienne Morin was right to demand an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Francisco Ascaso shared her views when he accepted exile as the bourgeoisie’s inevitable and logical response to its own desperation. The struggle was clearly becoming self-conscious. García Oliver protested from prison when, in the name of the inmates, some tried to justify collaboration with political figures:
<quote>
Those of us in prison are on the frontlines of this great struggle for the social revolution on the Iberian Peninsula and we are shocked, saddened, and depressed to read so frequently about meetings between anarchist orators and politicians from the parliamentarian minority....
Of course the political minority will try to improve its position with pretenses of revolutionism, but it’s unacceptable for anarchists to justify these politician’s deceitful promises with their presence and support. Anarchists must refuse all collaboration with politicians and have the duty to resist them tirelessly and warn the masses about the hidden dangers that politics hold for them.
We can’t allow such things, even when they occur under the pretext of our imprisonment and deportation. Our duty as anarchists should be enough for our defense.... All paths are closed except the path of proletarian revolution. Parliamentary action, for our post-World War generation, is something old and useless, like Christianity was for the children of the French Revolution.
For our part, we have never had more faith in the realization of our anarchist ideals than now. Our hearts are flooded with enthusiasm after the libertarian communist experiment in Alto Llobregat. Indeed, we are far from those times when being an anarchist meant sacrificing one’s freedom for a society that only future generations could bring into existence. Anything is possible today. Now we fight for ourselves. And, since we’re at war, we’re prepared to defend ourselves. We won’t complain if the enemy wounds us. We’ll simply think of the best way to hit back and bring it down.[347]
</quote>
** CHAPTER XII. Guinea — Fernando Poo – The Canaries
The government gathered the Andalusian detainees in Cádiz and loaded them onto the <em>Buenos Aires</em> as soon as it anchored outside the port. The ship then set off into the Atlantic toward the Canaries, leaving behind a Spain in chaos. The militants from Valencia went on the Sánchez Barcáiztegui destroyer and met the others in Las Palmas.
As previously noted, anarchists in Tarrasa took over Town Hall and proclaimed libertarian communism on February 14 as a protest against the deportations. There were more clashes with the Civil Guard and more deaths. There were general or partial strikes in large cities. Bombs tore down telephone poles and demolished electrical installations.
The government did everything it could to make matters worse by provoking the Rightwing with demagoguery. Although the government really had no intention of attacking, the Right took the bravado as a real threat and conspired against the Republic.
The working class didn’t understand the parliamentarian’s rhetoric and, having received nothing but bullets from the government, also declared war on the regime.
The government didn’t really govern but wanted to stay in power. What could it do? Put a wall of lead between the ruled and the rulers. That is exactly what Azaña’s team did, while also turning the Spanish government into a gigantic discussion circle.
In one of the tranquil sessions of the Parliament, the Interior Minister told its honorable members that the government knew quite well where to send the “dreamers of libertarian communism.” “We choose Guinea,” he said, “because its climate is more healthy and attractive than Fuerteventura. In fact, I’m even thinking of making a trip there myself to spend a few days in the company of the deportees.” No one protested, but did anyone know what Guinea was really like? If they did, so much the worse, given what the reader will appreciate after digesting the following:
<quote>
Spain’s possessions in the Gulf of Guinea have been justly regarded as unhealthy for some time now. The funeral legend of the deported politician still floats over its hot beaches. Any exile lucky enough to return often came back consumed by cachexia and bearing germs of death in his blood.
And this is quite natural. In an absolutely sweltering region, covered by leafy vegetation and bathed by the misty and humid atmosphere, the environment is a dense microbial nursery. It is a promised land for every pathogen, particularly the group of protozoa that provoke sleep sickness, nagana in cattle, amoebic dysentery, and the most severe and rebellious varieties of malaria.
Guinea’s gentle beauty is obscured by the threatening presence of these germs of death and bearers of disease, which are true obstacles to the development of European culture.
This tropical environment overwhelms, exhausts, and destroys organic and spiritual life.[348]
</quote>
That was the “gentle paradise” that the government had reserved for those sailing the through the Atlantic. While the <em>Buenos Aires</em> traveled to an “unknown” destination, there was widespread turmoil on the peninsula. In addition to the tumultuous wake left by that phantom boat, the rebellion in Alto Llobregat had made libertarian communism an increasingly pressing concern for bourgeois intellectuals. Salvador de Madariaga tried to elevate the debate: “In January 1932, the Fígols miners rose up against the state and proclaimed libertarian communism, which they celebrated with a general strike in the industrious Llobregat valley. How, the reader will ask, does one eat in the world of libertarian communism? Exactly: how does one eat? Here those most distinguished by their ignorance of the Spanish working class normally insert a stilted disclaimer about Spanish illiteracy and working class ignorance. Those libertarians, those Quixotes of social emancipation, who, like the Man from La Mancha, tried to impose the dream that inspires them onto a hard reality, are not illiterate at all and are just as capable of reading as those who accuse them of such things. It is just that they have a much more developed creative faculty than the journalists who criticize them. Instead of reading books, they prefer to create their own categories and hopes, and live their lives with a serenity and an attachment to a mode of thought that many in the erudite world would envy from the comfortable shelter of their libraries. More education is needed, they tell us. Indeed, it will take a tremendous amount of education to extinguish the faith of these visionaries.” [349] That quote was really worthwhile. The <em>Buenos Aires</em> stopped in the Canary Islands only long enough to pick up more coal and the detainees from Valencia. It then continued toward the Gulf of Guinea. It stocked up on bananas in Dakar, the sole source of nourishment for the deportees piled up in the ship’s hold. The inadequate food, unhygienic conditions, and poor ventilation caused several cases of blood poisoning. The sickest had to be taken to the hospital when the ship anchored in Santa Isabel in Fernando Poo. The captain of the <em>Buenos Aires</em>, a cousin of General Franco, then telegraphed Madrid and asked where they should go. Navy Minister José Giral directed him to Bata. The sick were immediately reloaded onto the ship and the <em>Buenos Aires</em> took off for Bata. Its perpetual escort, the <em>Cánovas</em> gunboat, followed.
The orders, counter-orders, bad food, and everything that “pleasure trip” entailed put the deportees on edge. They ended up declaring a mutiny and took over the bridge. The captain was as disoriented as the mutineers and quickly realized that it would be best to make some concessions and negotiate an end to the rebellion. Thanks to their action, bunks were distributed, the food improved, and deck access permitted for fresh air. All this could have been practiced from the outset, but they had to revolt, to show their teeth, to secure it. Direct action is not an empty term.
Since they decided that they should not to leave the sick in Bata, the ship retraced its path toward the Canaries, where they were interned in the hospital in Fuerteventura. Then they set off for Río de Oro. The military commander there was the son of José Regueral and he refused to accept the detainees because Durruti was among them, whom he held responsible for his father’s murder. What to do? There was another consultation with Giral and another trip to Fuerteventura to drop off Durruti and six additional men there. The ship then sailed toward Africa once again. After coming and going across the Atlantic for months, the <em>Buenos Aires</em> finally reached Villa Cisneros, which seemed to be its final destination. The government had thought of everything when it planned the “Atlantic excursion” and even sent along a journalist to chronicle the odyssey for the Spanish public. Of course his articles were picturesque tales of a carefree jaunt and it was surely their influence that led Tuñón de Lara to describe the expedition as a “round trip voyage, without a stop in Guinea.” [350] And his articles must have entertained very few, given the commotion sweeping Spain at the time. There were things of much greater interest, such as the general strike in Orense, where armed workers rose against the governor in late March and told his compatriot Casares Quiroga to go to hell with his Civil Guard. They promised to “tear him to shreds” [351] if he set foot in Galicia. While Spain drifted inexorably toward civil war, Durruti and his friends counted the days in Fuerteventura, just as the deportees in Villa Cisneros counted them with clocks of sand. The tireless conspirator Ramón Franco visited the deportees in Villa Cisneros and urged them to try to escape on a sailboat that he had prepared for the purpose. Francisco Ascaso told him that it would be better if he focused on counteracting the stories of the “government chronicler” with a real account of their lives there. [352]
For his part, Durruti left a vivid statement about the experience in a letter that he sent to his family as soon as their comings and goings had stopped: Cabras Port, April 18, 1932.
My pilgrimage on these seas has finally come to an end and now, as a resident of this lost island, I’m able to send you a note.
Yesterday was the first time that I received any mail since leaving Barcelona. It’s letters from Mimi, Perico, and other friends. I was cut off from the world until then, not knowing anything about you all. The Republican government isn’t content with this criminal deportation and has to vent itself on us by subjecting us to the most extreme isolation. Those gentlemen are so small-minded that they think we lack the feeling of love simply because we are revolutionaries and that those dear to us are insensitive beings who are unconcerned about our welfare.
I’m sure you’ve read about our trek in the press. I would need a lot of paper and even more calm to fully explain the tragedy of our deportation. We’ve suffered greatly and experienced several tragic moments. We were nearly executed by some poor sailors, who almost gunned us down after a drunk officers’ corps incited them.
I later spoke with one of those sailors, who was extremely ashamed of his conduct. The young fellow told me that “we pointed our rifles at you because the officers said that you wanted to kill us. I was on the war ship and they told me that you wanted to murder my comrades, the sailors. It would have been an act of cowardice on our part to let them be assassinated. It was under that intoxication of words and alcohol that we left the <em>Cánovas</em> and boarded the <em>Buenos Aires</em>... You know the rest.”
I’ll be certain to explain that “rest” to the Spanish workers when I set foot on the Peninsula again.
My health is good. My separation from the other deportees is a government matter. It turns out that the military man in charge of Río de Oro is Regueral’s son and, once he found out that I was onboard the <em>Buenos Aires</em>, he threatened to resign if I disembarked there. That’s why I am in Fuerteventura. There are six other comrades with me, who were sick when we got off the ship but are now better or getting better.
This island is a miserable place and quite neglected by all the governments that have non-governed Spain. We live in a barracks and they give us 1.75 pesetas to cover our daily costs. The government men think that we have thousands with which to buy our food. Surely they are confusing us with Unamuno and Rodrigo Soriano. We’ve complained to Madrid and are waiting for a reply. We can’t live in the barracks and much less on 1.75 pesetas a day.
The island’s residents were afraid of us at first. They had been led to believe that we eat children raw, but calmed down after interacting with us.
They even let their kids play with us now...
Yesterday, Sunday, a man who was previously very aloof came by with his wife. She wanted to meet me, since she’s from León as well (the province, not the capital). They’re good people. They brought me books and, perhaps as a mere courtesy, also offered me their home.
I don’t know how long this exile will last and they haven’t told me its reason. They arrested me under the pretext of fining me for making some scandalous comments at the International Rally. They put me in a cell at Police Headquarters and then on the <em>Buenos Aires</em>. I hope the Interior Minister will explain the matter of the fine to me and also how long he intends to keep me on this island.
I’m thinking of going to León as soon as I leave here and asking Deputy Nistal why he supported my deportation. I’m also thinking of asking him if the Republic is at war with geography and has burned all the maps. It turns out that they sent us to Bata, without knowing where Bata was. From Bata to Fernando Poo, also unaware of where it was. From Fernando Poo to Villa Cisneros to load coal, when there’s nothing but sand there....
When I get back to the Peninsula, those Socialist gentlemen who have forgotten socialism will have to tell the working class why they approved our banishment. And, to me, they’ll have to clarify their collaboration with the monarchists and where those millions are that they say I’ve received.... The Republicans and Socialists are mistaken if they think they’ll save the Republic like this. One day, we, the agitators who have to get up every morning and enter the factory like slaves will embrace the working class’s true identity: the sole producer of social wealth. [353] We also possess a statement from a witness about Durruti’s time in Fuerteventura. He writes:
<quote>
It’s true that we knew each other and that I loaned him books, which he was very fond of, although I never heard from him again after he left. Durruti had the deep makings of an anarchist and I was his antagonist in all our discussions about our respective ideologies. But, when my brother arrived in Barcelona on the <em>Villa de Madrid</em> on July 20, 1936 and one of the ship stewards accused him of being a fascist, he remembered that he had seen us speak and went to Durruti, telling him that he was my brother. That was enough for Durruti to put him in a secure place and thus prevent his execution....
I remember that this daring anarchist of action was also very sentimental. Once he read me a paragraph from a letter sent by his <em>compañera</em>, in which she told him that their little daughter was very sick. He was overwhelmed with emotion and could barely finish reading it.
Durruti lived an orderly and contemplative life here. He asked me for books and spent hours on the breakwater of the pier. He was quite fond of the women, with whom he had certain successes... He was always squabbling with his exiled comrades. He told them that they were a bunch of idiots, didn’t understand things, and hardly knew how to read. “How do you expect to succeed in life?” he’d say.[354]
</quote>
The situation on the Peninsula was deteriorating daily. During the early days of the Republic, politicians had been able to accuse prominent FAI men like Ascaso, Durruti, and García Oliver of being “provocateurs.” But who was provoking the disturbances now, a year later, when two of them were banished and another imprisoned? It was the Republican government itself that was causing the disruptions, as it carried on without knowing what to do in a Spain in revolt. If the workers weren’t rising up in arms in Barcelona, the peasants were invading the estates and seizing food warehouses in Andalusia, or the masses in Orense, Zaragoza, or Logroño were rebelling against their unbearable conditions. The government’s remedy for those ills was always the Civil Guard, which savagely machine-gunned the people, including women and children. But for the rulers, the “FAIistas” were the instigators of the conflicts. They made these claims, in part, because they still hoped to incorporate the CNT into the state. Indeed a handful of CNT men continued to be sympathetic to that goal. Progreso Fernández denounced this in a May 12, 1932 article in <em>El Desierto del Sahara</em>:
<quote>
I must protest—now as a deportee, just like when I was free—against these activities and repudiate any politician who tries to speak in my name. I also reject the support of “the Thirty,” the “moderates,” and the “responsibles” of the Confederation, which would injure my dignity. In the last analysis, it is they who bear the greatest responsibility for the incarcerations, deportations, and persecution.
Today, more than ever, we have to stop the spread of confusion among the workers. Instead of being more tolerant, which the rascals always exploit, we must discredit the politicians and everything that they represent. We can’t stand aloof from political parties: we have to fight them all. Today, more than ever, we have to be openly and constantly at war with them.
The Confederation, anarchism, and the revolution are much more than the deportees and the prisoners. The principles that shape our struggles are bigger than all of us and all the victims of the battle against the authoritarian system. If that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t find our ideas affirmed in social life and the comprehensive revolution that we anarchists advocate would be impossible.
Our liberation—the liberation of all the deportees and prisoners—has to be accomplished without whimpers or capitulations, with dignity, and without help from political factions that are hostile to our ideas. Only the forceful action of the CNT, Iberian Anarchist Federation, and revolutionary workers can achieve our freedom: and it must be achieved because it is a duty. Any departure from that principle would not only be inconsistent with the tactics of direct action and our anarchist doctrines, but also an unpardonable error that would undermine the possibilities for social transformation offered by the present historical moment.[355]
</quote>
This article, and García Oliver’s report to his union, point to the confusion in libertarian circles. The FAI tried to radicalize the CNT but the “moderate” faction was still ensconced in its committees and not only opposed the FAI’s efforts but also continued to advance an ambiguous, collaborationist position. This prevented the movement from offering a coherent, revolutionary strategy that would enable the workers to reach their objectives. And the government exasperated internal conflicts by protecting certain CNT leaders from persecution while acting harshly against the FAI and, indirectly, all workers’ protests. Clearly the CNT would be unable to play its true historical role as long as it was trapped in that paralyzing confusion, even if the number of its members happened to increase. Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver all understood that, despite the geographic distances that separated them.
The repression had to stop for the movement to address its difficulties, yet it was growing increasingly more severe. It is enough to take a look at the anarchist press to be convinced of this. After each article there is a name and then: Prison of Sevilla, Modelo Prison of Barcelona, Puerto of Santa María, Zaragoza Prison, Sahara Desert, etc. Almost all the well-known “FAIistas” were incarcerated. So, who was placing the bombs? Who “ordered” the workers to rebel? Who led the strikes, like the Public Services strike that had turned Barcelona into an immense garbage dump? It was nothing more and nothing less than the working class, which was becoming conscious of its historical mission.
The rank and file pressured the CNT National Committee to offer a radical reply to the hellish conditions. Ultimately it had to consent and called a general strike for May 29. The May 27 editorial in <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> explained the FAI’s view of the strike:
<quote>
We have reached an extreme in which there are two possibilities: either the repression stops or the CNT collapses. Since it is impossible to exterminate the CNT, which lives in all proletarian hearts, the repression must end, even if that means that the very regime that supports and encourages it has to crumble.
For the last time, the CNT will give the government a chance to respond to popular sentiment and rectify itself. It will put its forces in motion, not in a revolutionary sense, but as a last-ditch protest against the authorities’ terrorist methods. The government’s behavior on May 29 will determine whether or not more serious and transcendent events will follow. The workers, if necessary, will answer violence with violence.
And if the government does not grant what the people demand after this date, on which the whole Spanish proletariat must demonstrate, the people will know how to take it themselves through revolutionary action. [The demands included freedom for the prisoners, opening the closed unions, and the free circulation of the CNT’s publications, etc.]
Now the workers know it: if the government does not yield after May 29, we will forcibly seize what it denies us against all reason. There must be an immediate attack on all the government’s coercive practices. The people must destroy the prisons and free the inmates. They must re-open the unions. The slogan is: either Fascism or the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo! Either Republican oppression or libertarian communism!
</quote>
As expected, the government did not cede. On the contrary, it mobilized the Assault Guard and Civil Guard and deliberately provoked the workers, sending new detainees to prison and new corpses to the cemeteries. The balance of the day of protest was tragic. Did the government think this would pacify, discourage, or intimidate the workers? If so, it was completely mistaken. That very night the anarchist groups of Barcelona pledged their defiance. In a manifesto titled “We demand the right to defend ourselves against government violence,” they wrote:
<quote>
How can we describe our rulers, who prop themselves up with cannons and militias loaded with arms? Why don’t they tell it to the people? Why don’t they tell the people that they can’t sustain themselves without dynamite and are thus the worst dynamiters of all? Why can’t they live without being armed to the teeth? Why don’t they tell all this to the people? Well, we are saying it now, we who are by nature always ready to speak the truth. And we say more. We say that such tyranny and abuse should frighten no one. We say that the people not only have the right but also the duty to arm themselves and defend themselves like lions. We say that instead of dying of hunger, we should follow history’s lessons. Since everyone else is armed, in order to make the people’s lives impossible, we declare that the people shouldn’t hesitate to use force to achieve their goals. We will preach by example.[356]
</quote>
In Emilienne Morin’s February letter to the French anarchists, she complained that the Republican government let monarchists conspire openly while it persecuted the workers. At the time, her comment could have been seen as a mere expression of bitterness, but events that occurred on August 10, 1932 confirmed it as prescient. In fact, the Right had been conspiring against the Republic since its proclamation. Without exception, the conspirators held high military and civil posts in the Republican state. The plotters selected a man-guide to lead them: General Sanjurjo, the General Director of the <em>Carabineros</em> [border police]. And they gave the conspiracy an identity, reflecting the forces constituting it: military-aristocratic-landowner.
The basic contours of this conspiracy will reappear later, when General Franco revolts in 1936. Manuel Azaña, the Prime Minister and Minister of War, was aware of everything and let it explode in Madrid on August 10. The attempt to take over the Palace of Communications and the Ministry of War failed because of cowardice among the rebels. The uprising ended in Spain’s capital after a small clash in which two people lost their lives. But the situation was different in Sevilla, where Sanjurjo was serious about the revolt. The conspirators would have been victorious if not for CNT and Communist workers, who defeated them by declaring a general strike and calling the working population to arms. Why did the CNT risk its militants’ lives to save a regime that had imprisoned hundreds of CNT members and closed its unions? The only coherent response points to lessons extracted from Primo de Rivera’s coup; that the Republic, despite its antagonism to the workers, was a weak state and thus easier to fight. Whatever the case, it was the CNT that saved the Republic in Sevilla. Did the Republican-Socialist leaders understand this? The events that followed demonstrate that they clearly did not.
The rebels were judged quickly by a military tribunal on August 24. The ringleader, General Sanjurjo, received a death sentence, although that was simply a matter of decorum: he was immediately pardoned and incarcerated only briefly. The other generals and leaders received light sentences and one hundred were sent to Villa Cisneros, which they escaped from shortly after arriving. All the August conspirators were freely walking the streets of Spain before the year was over.
When the Republican government decided to send the plotters to Villa Cisneros, it first had to remove the anarchists. It sent them to Fuerteventura Island.
In September, the government finally decided that the deported anarchists could return to the Peninsula. The first to make the trip were the “terrible” miners of Llobregat. From Las Palmas to Barcelona, large workers’ rallies greeted their liberation everywhere that the steamship carrying them had to stop. Durruti, Ascaso, Cano Ruiz, Progreso Fernández, Canela, and others made up the last group to leave the Canaries. After seeing the workers’ demonstrations organized in support of the deportees, the government ordered the steamship that picked them up (the Villa de Madrid) to go directly to Barcelona without pausing at any port en route. While authorities managed to prevent mobilizations in Càdiz and Valencia in this way, they could not prevent the immense ceremony held to receive them in Barcelona. In his farewell statement, Ascaso had said that what the government wanted to deport were the ideas, but that they would remain. That was undoubtedly true: in slightly more than a year, the CNT had grown from 800,000 to 1,200,000 members.
** CHAPTER XIII. Split in the CNT
The Spanish socio-political situation evolved during the six months that Durruti and his comrades spent in exile. Under pressure from the uprising launched by Sanjurjo and his friends, the Parliament ended up approving the Agrarian Reform Law and as well as the Catalan Autonomy Statute. The latter went into effect in mid-September 1932: from then on Catalonia would have an autonomous government called the Generalitat. It could approve its own laws, institute social reforms, modify educational statutes, and exercise control over public order. Although Madrid was still in change of military matters, there was an understanding between the Catalan and Madrid governments with respect to the appointment of the principle military leaders. When Madrid conferred responsibility for public order to the Generalitat, it also handed over the famous one thousand rifles bought by <em>Los Solidarios</em> in Eibar in 1923.
The situation within the CNT was still as confused as it had been when Durruti was arrested. In response to prodding from some unions, particularly those in Barcelona, a regional meeting of unions was called in April of that year. It took place in Sabadell and 188 unions participated, representing a total of 224,822 members. The CNT’s moderate and radical tendencies fought it out violently at the meeting and participants criticized the Catalan Regional Committee for failing to support the February general strike, which could have prevented the deportations. Attendees also denounced the Committee’s relations with politicians (of the Esquerra Catalana, in particular) and individual Committee members’ participation in rallies alongside parliamentarians. The harsh criticisms of the Regional Committee extended to the National Committee, especially to Pestaña and Francisco Arin, whom they accused of abusing their power in an effort to avoid a conflict with the Madrid government. Faced with these reproaches, Emiliano Mira, the secretary of the Catalan Regional Committee, resigned. Alejandro Gilabert, a noted FAI militant, replaced him. The Sabadell unions withdrew from the meeting to protest Gilabert’s nomination, a move that indicated their intention to leave the CNT.
There was a national CNT meeting in May and attendees decided to make May 29 a day of intense public protest. They also sanctioned Pestaña for abusing his powers and he, knowing perfectly well what such a rebuke meant within Confederal circles, resigned. Francisco Arin left the National Committee in solidarity with Pestaña. Manuel Rivas General, a delegate from the Andalusian region, provisionally became the CNT’s General Secretary. His nomination and a proposal about Confederal cadre, or groups of Confederal action, went to the unions for approval, modification, or rejection.
This meeting had both negative and positive consequences for the CNT. We will first consider the positive results. Pestaña and Arin’s resignations gave the National Committee a greater degree of internal coherence and the proposal on “Confederal defense cadre” created a defensive shield for the CNT. The “Confederal groups” idea was nothing new; they had more or less always existed within the Confederation, parallel to the anarchist groups. During the infamous years of terrorism, they were known as “syndicalist revolutionary action groups” and protected the Confederation with arms. Some militants had suggested creating “Confederal defense cadre” at a national CNT meeting held shortly after the proclamation of the Republic, but confusion caused by the battles between the “FAIistas” and “moderates” prevented the proposal from becoming a reality. The May meeting marked a positive step toward their creation. There was also talk of federating these groups nationally.
The downside of the meeting was that there was no way to avoid a split. It was concretized by Pestaña’s departure and Cultura Libertaria, the moderate faction’s newspaper, immediately heightened its attacks on the FAI, which they claimed wanted to “impose its dictatorship on the CNT.”
When Durruti and Ascaso arrived in Barcelona in September, the dispute between the two tendencies had already begun to transcend the limits of debate and devolve into slanderous propaganda. The actions of the “moderates” only encouraged the bourgeois press’s campaign against the FAI. Barcelona’s <em>L’Opinió</em> newspaper was particularly virulent in this respect.
After spending six months separated from his family, and with a little girl whose birth he had barely been able to witness, there was every reason for Durruti take a rest and dedicate himself to his child and <em>compañera</em>. It was not only a good idea, but also necessary for both he and Mimi. When the government deported Durruti, his <em>compañera</em> was penniless and had a two month old girl in her arms. The union had been unable to help out: everybody had a family member in prison or in hiding. There was pervasive suffering and simply no way that the CNT could attend to all its imprisoned or persecuted activists. The Union of Public Spectacles [trans.: entertainment workers] tried to lighten the burden of various female comrades, including Durruti’s compañera, by getting them jobs as box office employees in the cinemas. But that job was difficult for Mimi. She and her daughter lived alone: who would look after Colette from 2:00 pm until midnight? Teresa Margalef, an activist in the Industrial and Textile Workers’ Union, offered to take care of the girl, but she lived in Horta and thus Colette would have to sleep there. There was no other choice, so Mimi had to accept the solution, although it meant that she only saw her child once a week, on her day off. Durruti and Mimi talked a lot about all these familial challenges, although without being able to resolve them satisfactorily.
There was a rally at 9:00 pm on September 15 in Barcelona’s Palace of Decorative Arts, a building inserted in the circuit that makes up the Exposición.
The announced orators were: Victoriano Gracia, from the Aragón, La Rioja, and Navarre Regional; Félix Valero, from the Levante Regional; Benito Pabón, from the Andalusian Regional; and Durruti and García Oliver. Alejandro Gilabert presided over the event in the name of the CNT’s Catalan Regional Confederation.
We take a description of the rally from the press:
<quote>
A motley crowd invaded the gardens of the Exposición. An audience of more than 80,000 demonstrated the CNT’s strength and showed that it represented the greater part of the Spanish working class, notwithstanding the oppressive actions of the social-fascist government.
The rally was extremely exciting and an unprecedented success. Thousands of workers were unable to hear the anarchist words of the CNT militants because the magnificent Palace of Decorative Arts was completely full. They waited outside in the Plaza de España, the gardens of the Exposición, and along the Paralelo.
A menacing army of Assault Guards, Civil Guards, and police occupied the area surrounding the Exposición and other strategic places. There was absolute order on the part of the workers, but the same cannot be said for the police, who constantly provoked conflicts with their rudeness and searches. They charged at groups of youths singing revolutionary hymns, etc.[357]
</quote>
We extract a summary of García Oliver’s speech from the same newspaper:
<quote>
For the CNT, for the anarchists, for all the militants, the Law of April 8 is like having gold offered by one hand while the other threatens violence. If someone benefits from that law, it won’t be the workers but the labor activists. The government wants to impose mixed commissions and, since there are 1,000 unions in Spain, there would be 5,000 men who—as members of these unions—would charge 150 pesetas or more per week, while the workers would continue receiving their miserable daily wages. The labor activists would forget their duty, betray their brothers, and the possibility of revolution would be lost.
</quote>
Durruti spoke just before García Oliver. These were his words:
<quote>
Your presence at this rally, like my presence on this platform, should enable the bourgeoisie to realize that the CNT and FAI are forces that grow when attacked and that adversity only enhances their cohesion.
Despite all the abuse heaped upon the CNT and FAI, these organizations haven’t budged an inch from their revolutionary goals. Tonight’s demonstration will be a warning to the bourgeoisie, to the government, and to the Socialists. They can see that the anarchists aren’t broken when they get out of prison or return from exile. On the contrary, we are firmer in our aims and more secure in our objectives.
The Republican and Socialist leaders thought that the men and women of the CNT and FAI were like a herd, like those that they govern and lead in their parties. And they thought that everything would be taken care of if they only imprisoned some “bosses” and deported some others. The CNT would stop functioning and they could continue calmly living off the trough of the state. But of course they were completely wrong and have once again revealed their ignorance of social reality and anarchism’s raison d’être.
The bourgeoisie and their journalists have tried to discredit us in the most absurd ways. Their accusations have been so outlandish—that we’ve been bought off by the monarchists, that we’re thieves and criminals—that the working class is going to be our best defender. The workers know perfectly well that thieves don’t get up at six in the morning to work their butts off in a factory. And your attendance at this rally dispels the myth of the “FAI bosses” and “anarchist thieves.” Real thieves don’t get up at dawn and their women don’t crawl around on the floors, taking out the rich’s shit just to support their own families, as our <em>compañeras</em> have to do when the bourgeoisie deports, imprisons, or forces us into hiding...
The real thieves are the bourgeoisie, who live by stealing the products of our labor; they are the traffickers of commerce, who speculate with our hunger; they are the great banking financiers who manipulate rates sprinkled with proletarian blood and sweat; they are the politicians who make promises and gorge themselves once they become deputies, accumulating salaries and forgetting everything they pledged as soon as they are in the stable of the state. But you, the workers who hear me, you already know them very well, just as I know them. Need I say more?
When our colleagues, the gentlemen Socialist deputies, voted to deport us they only confirmed what we’ve been saying about them all along; that they suffocate the working class with their parliamentarian socialism... However, they actually helped us by deporting us. For once the money that the state robs from the workers has been worth something; by paying for our trip to the Canaries, they enabled us to carry out anarchist propaganda on those islands...
If any workers believed the Socialists and government men when they said that we’d sold out to the monarchists, our Sevillian comrades’ response to Sanjurjo would have dispelled their doubts. But the Republican and Socialist leaders should pay attention to what happened in Sevilla. Sanjurjo said: “the anarchists will not pass,” and the anarchists, making him choke on his own words, have passed. The CNT said no to Sanjurjo, but it also says no to a Republic like the one that rules us.
The Republican-Socialists need to understand this and so we’ll say it very clearly: either the Republic resolves the peasants and industrial workers’ problems or the people will do so on their own. But can the Republic resolve those and other pressing problems? We don’t want to deceive anyone and will reply firmly, so that the entire working class hears us: neither the Republic nor any political regime of the sort—with or without the Socialists—will ever resolve the workers’ problems. A system based on private property and the authority of power cannot live without slaves. And if the workers want to be dignified, to live freely and control their own destinies, then they shouldn’t wait for the government to give them their liberty. Economic and political freedom is not something given; it has to be taken. It depends on you, the workers listening to me, whether you’ll continue being modern slaves or free men! You must decide![358]
</quote>
A few days after this rally, the press published the news of Durruti’s arrest: “Terror brews in Barcelona’s Police Headquarters. Eighteen comrades from Tarrasa are still locked in cells. Ascaso and Durruti are being held incommunicado in Police dungeons.” These were the headlines that <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> printed above its report on the September 23 arrests. It also stated:
<quote>
In the early morning hours on Saturday, police and Assault Guards burst into our editorial office. There were looking for comrade Ascaso. Afterwards, we read in the newspapers that police had arrested comrades Domingo Ascaso and Durruti and that they are being held incommunicado in the foul and humid dungeons on Vía Layetana. The terror is reborn. The offensive against the anarchists has intensified and savagery is on the agenda among the “gold-plated” riffraff. What do they hope to accomplish by detaining Ascaso and Durruti?[359]
</quote>
Durruti’s new incarceration, justified simply by “motives of governmental order,” lasted for two months, which he spent in Barcelona’s Modelo prison. Mimi had been mistaken if she had thought that her life was going to get easier when Durruti returned to the Peninsula. Now, with him in prison once again, her time and their limited family savings became even more scarce. Coinciding with this new wave of repression, the Sabadell unions published a statement announcing that they were splitting from the CNT and forming an independent organization. While their public declaration created a serious problem for the CNT, particularly during a time of government crackdown, it was also somewhat of a relief: at least militants now knew where things stood and no longer had to watch every meeting descend into a bitter argument.
<em>Tierra y Libertdad</em> drew some conclusions from the statement, which it shared with its readers: “The manifesto from the Sabadell militants shows that anarchists should not be on the margin of the workers’ movement. On the contrary, they should be its vanguard. That is the only way to stop the servants of the bourgeoisie from taking over the workers’ organizations.” The newspaper also saw the “syndicalism” of the Sabadell activists as a creation of the bourgeoisie: “Considering the bankruptcy of Spanish socialism, the capitalist class needed a new syndical monster, not like the Sindicatos Libres [Free Unions] or Sindicatos Unicos [industrial union groups], but one that would restrain the Spanish proletariat’s pressing revolutionary demands. The politicians leading the Sabadell organization have now hatched such an ignominious monster. The Catalan bourgeoisie should be pleased with their new defenders. The right and left Republicans should also be pleased, just like Republican-police newspapers like <em>L’Opinió</em> surely welcome this species of syndicalism that expels anarchists from its heart and calls those who do not yield to injustice “extremists and disruptors.” [360] As a precaution against the now inevitable split, the FAI released an orienting statement to the anarchists, signed by the Peninsular Committee, the Commission of Anarchist Relations of the Groups of Catalonia, and the Local Federation of Groups of Barcelona. The <em>Nosotros</em> group’s perspective is clearly visible in the document, particularly in the paragraphs on the situation created by the Republic and the presence of certain individuals in prominent CNT positions who have obstructed the revolutionary process. This is not surprising, given that García Oliver was a member of the FAI’s Peninsular Committee. The document expresses the desire to limit the schism’s damage:
<quote>
The CNT, which is the fruit of the creative spirit of the Spanish anarchists, is heading toward a painful and unprecedented split. Our valiant Confederación Nacional del Trabajo had experienced every type of difficulty, without its unity ever being compromised. But now the destructive action of a handful—very few fortunately—of its members means that a rupture will almost certainly occur. When the moment comes ... everyone—anarchists, revolutionary labor activists, and simple workers—must be aware of the hidden intentions inspiring those who plan to divide the organization. This will make the split as painless as possible when it happens. We are firmly convinced that many of those who still haven’t decided between the “extremists” and the “moderates” will remain faithful to the CNT’s revolutionary principles.[361]
</quote>
The split will be consummated in March 1933 at a union conference held in the Meridiana Cinema. From November 1932 until then, the only thing that Cultura Libertaria criticized was the “FAI’s dictatorship over the CNT.” This reproach was entirely unjust: the FAI didn’t exercise a dictatorship, but simply had an influence within the unions. Didn’t anarchists have the right, as workers, to belong to the CNT? And if they belonged to it, should they conceal their views within it? Francisco Ascaso wrote an article addressing these two questions that he published in <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> under the title “Union Independence?” He said the following on the topic:
<quote>
One of the most pressing questions in our organization at the moment pertains to the anarchist’s influence in the unions. I remember past times when anarchists, who shunned rather than sought organizational posts, were seen as the best guarantee of revolutionary success, thanks to their moral solvency and especially their revolutionary intransigence. But apparently things have changed and now it is that very intransigence that is attacked most harshly. “We defend the CNT’s independence,” they tell us, but then carry on about the so-called dictatorship of the FAI. The debates in the last meeting on this topic show how foolish the idea is. A speech was made, there was talk, all in the most purely demagogic terms, but nothing was proved. While this demagogy may make an impression on those uninformed about these matters, when it is examined calmly, it does nothing more than incriminate those who employ it.
In the first place, no militant would participate in union meetings as a representative of the FAI. For example, I work in the textile industry and belong to the Manufacturing Union: I take part in union assemblies as someone exploited by the industry in question and as a member of the union. The same is true for the other militants, whether or not they belong to the FAI. If we acknowledge that the CNT was inspired and built by anarchists and that anarchists act inside it, with the rights accorded to any exploited worker, then the so-called campaign for “union independence” cannot be accepted without renouncing the anarchic origins of our organization, denying its ideological goals, and reducing its efforts to simple struggles for economic defense. But if one agrees with the CNT’s libertarian communist aims, then it is absurd to resist the presence of anarchism within our unions.
If we want to be consistent with our own aspirations and ideas, we should support and encourage any degree of anarchism that manifests itself in the Confederation.
“We accept,” they’ll tell us, “that anarchists belong to the organization, but we can’t permit the Iberian Anarchist Federation to shape the CNT from the outside.” Here the problem is proving that the FAI has ever attempted to influence the CNT from outside, although it would be easy to prove the damage done by the “independents.”
All organizations tow a great deal of dead weight behind them, and that is something that the CNT cannot avoid. That dead weight, due to its natural character, does not have the courage to express itself openly but simply lurks, waiting for the right moment to act.
That is why some CNT members have slipped towards those who raise the flag of independence. They are obstacles to and interfere with the organization’s revolutionary work. Indeed, they are reformist by nature and meekly hope to avoid the dangerous struggle implied by the anarchist influence in the unions. And those raising the flag of CNT independence do not really want independence, but to fight against anarchism inside and outside the CNT. This is undeniably a direct attack on the organization’s principles, which ironically even they claim to embrace at times. Union independence? Yes, but respecting the Confederation’s principles, tactics, and aims. The FAI’s field of action and propaganda is well defined and delimited. The anarchists’ activity within the unions is also well defined. But how can we accept organizations like the Libertarian Syndicalist Federation, which says that its goals are identical to the CNT’s goals and yet exists outside the Confederation, apart from it, and tries to exercise an external influence on it?[362] Clearly anyone who accepts the CNT’s principles and goals would insist on its independence, but it must be from within it, in the respective unions. It is totally unacceptable that those who protest against the so-called dictatorship of the FAI set themselves up as guides to the CNT or that they try, by creating another organization, to impose their dictatorship on it. We have to be logical and consistent, comrades. Otherwise, we will have to assume that anyone demanding union independence is only launching a concealed attack on anarchism and thus the CNT’s ideology. Neither the organization nor its militants will tolerate such affronts.[363]
</quote>
** CHAPTER XIV. The insurrectional cycle
Durruti was released in early December 1932 after nearly three months of governmental detention and would never know why he had been incarcerated. He was again on the street and again with the same problems as always, although it was not difficult for him to get his job back at the textile factory that had employed him on May 11, 1931 (his first work since returning from France).
Mimi immediately worried about how long his freedom would last when, three days after his release, Durruti told her that the whole group would gather that night.
The meeting took place in García Oliver’s house in the Sants district.
The following were present at the designated hour: Antonio Ortiz, Gregorio Jover, Francisco Ascaso and his brother Domingo (who did not belong to the group but everyone trusted), Aurelio Fernández, María Luisa Tejedor (Aurelio’s <em>compañera</em> and a group member), Durruti, Ricardo Sanz, and García Vivancos. The last three arrived together, followed shortly afterwards by Pepita Not and Julia López Maimar.
The goal of the meeting? A CNT regional gathering had asked the Regional Committee to entrust García Oliver with devising an insurrectionary plan that could be put into motion at the right time. He had drafted the plan and the moment to act seemed to have arrived.
<quote>
Social conditions have become more complicated since the establishment of the autonomous Catalan government (September 1932). An exaggerated nationalism characterizes the Catalan government. The former comrades Francesc Layret, Salvador Seguí, Companys (onetime lawyer for the CNT), Martí Barrera (once the administrator of <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>), and Jaume Aiguader (ex-workers’ doctor)[364] lead the young party that dominates the regional government. This party cannot accept the existence of two powers in the region: that of the Esquerra Republicana and that of the CNT. Josep Dencàs, Miguel Badia, and Josep Oriol Anguera de Sojo, instruments of Catalan politics and puppets of Maura (of the “108 dead”[365]), hope to crush the CNT by systemically closing its unions, shutting down its press, using governmental detentions, and wielding the terrorism of the police and “escamots.” The Esquerra’s “Casals” [trans.: neighborhood houses] are used as underground dungeons in which kidnapped Confederal workers are held and beaten. These are the origins of the revolutionary movement of January 8, 1933.[366]
</quote>
When García Oliver explained his revolutionary project, he linked it to the situation created by the Republican government:
<quote>
As soon as the Republican state put itself at the service of national and foreign capitalists, it was no longer relevant to have partial strikes in the factories, workshops, and businesses. The power of the state can only be defeated by the power of revolution. This explains the revolutionary movements that we have just experienced. It also explains the revolutionary movements that we will doubtlessly see in the future, in which, bourgeois journalists say, Spanish anarchists will play the last card. Naturally bourgeois journalists must refer to the final card of a never-ending game of baraja.[367]
</quote>
Everyone in the <em>Nosotros</em> group shared García Oliver’s views. But it was lamentable, said Durruti, that so much time had been wasted in internal debates, during which the Republican state had been able to strengthen itself and even create an auxiliary police body (the Assault Guard), which was highly trained and well-armed with modern combat equipment. The principle damage caused by “the Thirty” was precisely that: to delay the workers’ victory. They all agreed that it would have been exceedingly easy to trigger the social revolution during the Republic’s first nine months: the Assault Guard did not exist, the army was undisciplined and even leaned toward the people, and the Civil Guard was disdained by the public and in the midst of a morale crisis. The state’s coercive forces had been nearly annulled and it lacked the ligament of the authority necessary to give them coherence. It was now important for the anarchists to create a pre-revolutionary state that would prevent the government from affirming its authority still further. The miners of Fígols had done more than several tons of propaganda to make the revolution seem feasible to the workers. Psychologically, insurrections like the one in Fígols made the impossible appear possible. What was important was not victory per se, but more long-term gains. Rebellions like the one in Fígols had a profound impact on the working class: it drew strength and inspiration from them, and an increase in the working class’s strength meant a weakening of the power of the bourgeoisie and the state. [368]
It was in the context of this perspective that the <em>Nosotros</em> group accepted García Oliver’s insurrectional plan, although the Catalan CNT would have to adopt it as well.
In mid-December the CNT’s Catalan Regional Committee called a meeting and Garcia Oliver explained the project in detail there. Those assembled divided into two currents on the issue. Their positions were not completely contradictory, but there were differences, and these indicated the continued influence of “the Thirty.”
Some felt the CNT should not precipitate things. Given the turmoil caused in the organization by “the Thirty,” they should first clarify internal matters and then attack later, when conditions are better. Others thought that time was of the essence and that the CNT had to make a show of force in order to get the Catalan and Madrid authorities to understand that they could not govern against the CNT. Furthermore, an insurrection like the one planned could have a strong impact on the working class, including those in the UGT.
The CNT was in a difficult position. Nonetheless, meeting participants ultimately accepted the insurrectional plan. [369] They formed a Revolutionary Committee, which included Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver as members, and the CNT National Committee appointed a representative, which also happened to be Durruti. Durruti went to Cádiz, where the CNT’s Andalusian Regional Confederation had called a meeting to discuss how to carry out the revolt.
The meeting took place secretly in Jerez de la Frontera. Informers had told police about the gathering and they mobilized to arrest attendees, but fortunately police did not know the gathering’s exact location. While police patrolled Cádiz’s entrances and exists, the meeting occurred in Jerez de la Frontera without disruption.
Participants decided that Andalusia would go into action as soon as Radio Barcelona announced that revolutionaries had seized the radio station. If the rebellion failed in Barcelona, Andalusia and the rest of the country would not participate.
They formed an Andalusian Revolutionary Committee to lead the rebellion movement there. It consisted of Vicente Ballester (CNT), Rafael Peña (FAI) and Miguel Arcas (Libertarian Youth). The Committee’s principle mission was to orchestrate the revolt from Sevilla, where they would take over the radio transmitter and, with an agreed upon code, use it to maintain contact with the local and provincial committees formed by representatives of the same organizations elsewhere. [370] Barcelona would be the center of the insurrection and all the regions committed to the rebellion would join the struggle once revolutionaries seized the radio transmitter. The operational plan was the following: They divided Barcelona into three areas.
a) Terrassa-Hospitalet, Sants, Hostafrancs, and the Fifth District. Main targets: the Assault Guard barracks, the Plaza de España, the Prat de Llobregat airfield, the Pedralbes Infantry barracks, the Cavalry barracks on Tarragona Street, the Modelo prison, the Atarazanas barracks, and the border police barracks on San Pablo Street. The groups in Poble Sec would take over the main Gas and Electricity offices as well as those of Campsa (petroleum and gasoline warehouses). This sector was García Oliver’s responsibility.
b) Militants in the districts of Poble Nou, Sant Martí, and Sant Andreu were to prevent the departure of military forces from the Artillery Station and Infantry barracks in Sant Andreu and also the Artillery barracks on Icaria Avenue. They would also lay siege to the Infantry barracks of the Parque de la Ciudadela. Francisco Ascaso was in charge of this area.
c) Horta-Carmelo-Gracia sector. Here militants were to attack the Civil Guard barracks on Travessera de Gracia and Navas de Tolosa and the Cavalry barracks on Lepanto Street. This was Durruti’s zone of operation.[371]
The primary goal in these three sectors was to stop the Civil Guard from leaving its barracks and thus support the work of the guerrilla groups operating in the center of the city. Their mission was to occupy the Telephone building, radio transmitters, and official government offices (specifically, the Generalitat, Captaincy, and Police Headquarters).
At first there was no agreed upon date—the rebellion would break out at the moment deemed most opportune—but some undesirable developments changed that. There was an explosion in one of the workshops used to manufacture hand grenades in the El Clot district, which had been under the care of comrades Hilario Esteban and Meler. Alarmed residents called the police, who promptly discovered the armory. This made authorities suspect that the CNT must be preparing <em>something</em> and, as a preventative measure, ordered the arrest of several militants and an investigation into various suspicious places. What to do? Should they wait and let the police destroy their painstakingly developed plan? They opted instead for the most radical solution and set January 8 as the date of the insurrection.
<quote>
The plan of attack included incapacitating the repressive forces concentrated in Police Headquarters on Vía Layetana and the Civil Guard in the Palacio Plaza (that is, the Civil Government).
The two official buildings would be blown up with dynamite between 9:00 and 10:00 pm. This would be a signal for the strategically placed groups, indicating that they should launch the attack on the previously designated sites.
A revolutionary patrol deployed in taxis. Its task was to confirm that each group was in its place. The arms used would be hand grenades and pistols.
The bombs that were going to explode in the mentioned buildings were made of two tubes of autogenous solder, each 1.20 meters in height and seventy centimeters in diameter.
</quote>
On January 8, at exactly 8:00 am on Mercaders Street, “two bricklayers and one laborer stopped pulling a small handcart, which was loaded with bricks, cement, and plaster. This camouflaged the devices. They set out to complete the operation.”
Their mission was to slip the two tubes into the sewer, haul them through it, and install them where they would serve their final purpose.
<quote>
It was difficult to carry the tubes through the sewer, because each one weighed ninety kilos. It was relative easy to place the first one under Police Headquarters, because the sewer vault was two meters high there; but the one that had to be put under the Civil Government was much more challenging. The sewer was only a meter and a half in height between Antonio López Plaza and the Palacio Plaza and the water was nearly sixty centimeters deep. It was very hard for the bomb carriers to cover the distance, and there were only two of them there, due to the limited space for movement. It took some eight hours to place the bombs. Once they did so, they split up to set off the devices at the appropriate time.
A serious problem occurred while the devices were being put in place: police arrested García Oliver and Gregorio Jover while they were driving in a car. They were armed and could have resisted, but decided against it, in order not to jeopardize the operation. They were taken to Police Headquarters, where there were other detainees.
García Oliver and Gregorio Jover must have been astounded by their bad luck, knowing that Police Headquarters was due to blow up at any moment... They accepted their fate, thinking that if they didn’t die in the blast, perhaps it would be useful to be at the center of the occupation of the building. The bomb exploded at 10:00 pm that evening under Police Headquarters, although the one under the Civil Government failed for technical reasons.
The Police building did not collapse, as hoped. The building was set back more than six meters from the others on the street. Although the men placing the bomb took that anomaly into consideration and tried to push the tube as much as possible into the drain’s turn-off, the explosion did not reach the structure’s foundations and the building remained standing. All the witnesses agreed that the eruption was absolutely terrifying. It felt like an earthquake to the detainees. Police raced into the street in pajamas or underwear, thinking that the building was under attack...[372]
</quote>
As planned, the rebellion began after that blast, with greater or lesser intensity, in Barcelona and its province. However, the revolutionaries were soon convinced that police had taken measures that prevented them from carrying out their operation.
One person who collaborated with Durruti in the attempted assault on the Civil Guard barracks on Travessera de Gracia claimed that the police had mobilized not because they had been informed, but because such mobilization was almost permanent in Barcelona at the time, particularly after their discovery of the armory in El Clot.
Another participant, the student Benjamín Cano Ruiz, says that he went to the site where Durruti was distributing weapons and, swept up by enthusiasm, asked for one so that he could “die for the great cause of the proletariat.” Durruti refused and told him: “It isn’t the time to die but to live. Our struggle is long and we’ll have to do much more than just shoot. The active rearguard is equally or more important than the combatant vanguard. You place isn’t here, but in school.” [373]
The insurrection began at nightfall and was over by the early hours of January 9.
“The immediate arrest of the rebellion’s main leaders reduced it—as far as Barcelona was concerned—to isolated fighting on the Ramblas (Joaquín Blanco was killed in the Gastronomy Union), against some barracks, and in the workers’ districts. There was an attempt to assault the ‘La Panera’ barracks in Lérida. The Confederals Burillo, Gou, Oncinas, and Gesio died in that action. There were also shootouts in Tarrasa. Libertarian communism was proclaimed in Cerdanyola and Ripollet.” [374]
Given the insurrection’s failure in Barcelona, there was nothing to do but try to avoid arrest and save people and weapons (the few pistols and rudimentary hand grenades that some still possessed).
Barcelona residents, particularly those living in the workers’ districts, saw the results of the struggle when they left their homes on Monday. There were two dead Security Guard horses in El Clot and a half barricade raised in the Mercado Plaza. [375] There were similar scenes elsewhere and the city had been subject to police control since the government’s declaration of a state of emergency.
The police stations overflowed with detainees and those in Police Headquarters suffered savage beatings. García Oliver was marked as the ringleader of the revolt and took the worst of it.
José Peirats was both a protagonist and historian of the events. He offers the following assessment: “The January 8 rebellion was organized by the Defense Cadres, a shock group formed by CNT and FAI action groups. These poorly armed groups pinned their hopes on the possibility that some sympathetic troops would go into action and also on popular contagion. The railroad workers’ strike that was commended to the National Federation of railroad workers, a minority compared to the UGT’s National Railroad Workers’ Union, did not happen or even begin.” [376]
In Levante, the insurrection had an impact in rural areas such as Ribarroja, Bétera, Pedralba, and Bugarra. The rebels attacked the Town Halls, disarmed the Civil Guard, burned property registries, and proclaimed libertarian communism.
In Andalusia, the rebellion affected Arcos de la Frontera, Utrera, Málaga, La Rinconada, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, Alcalá de los Gazules, Medina Sidonia, and other villages. The conflict took on horrifying dimensions in Casas Viejas, where Assault Guards set fire to peasants’ huts and burned their inhabitants alive on the orders of Captain Rojas. [377] When Captain Rojas was later asked why his forces had been so savage, he replied that Prime Minister Manuel Azaña had ordered him to “take no prisoners.” Francisco Ascaso, who was in hiding with Durruti, responded in an article titled “Not even if they order it, Captain!”
<quote>
Captain, I’ve seen my comrades fall in slow death throes and then collapse on the ground, blood pouring out of their mouths, while life flees through small holes in their foreheads. These holes of death crush the skulls of their victims and comprehension in those who reflect upon them. Anido and Arlegui ordered it.
I’ve seen kicks destroy teeth, eyebrows, and lips; men fall unconscious only to be revived with pails of water so that the beating can begin again and then drop, shattered, once more. I’ve heard—this is worst—those being tortured shout out in pain. I remember a story that an old friend told me when I was in Chile. “We Spaniards,” he said, “who boast so much about bringing civilization to the Americas deserve the hate that these Latin Americans feel for us.”
Captain, I saw a painting in a museum when I was in Mexico. It was a representation of Hernán Cortés and his followers’ historic achievement: Montezuma and one of his chiefs were being tortured with fire so that they would reveal the location of the Aztec treasure. While Cortés’s bearded men burned those Indians’ feet, the latter smiled contemptuously, knowing that the Spaniards would discover nothing. Captain, in Tacuba [Mexico] I saw the giant and millennial “tree of the sad night,” where Hernán Cortés went to weep in impotence after his inquisitorial achievement. And I also saw in Villa Cisneros—this wasn’t long ago—how a poor black man, a friend of comrade Arcas, was tied to four stakes driven into the ground and given fifty whip lashings for stealing a plate of food from the local air force sergeant. I’ve seen so many things, Captain, that the wickedness of men no longer frightens me. I have suffered terrible things as well, but we don’t need to speak of that. I have seen many things, I repeat, but I never imagined that someone could embody them all. I always thought that each instance belonged to a time, to particular circumstances and latitudes. Never did I dream that you could incarnate them all, Captain!
Casas Viejas! Casas Viejas! You’ve shared out kicks, whippings that tear men’s limbs and elicit horrendous screams of pain and rage. You’ve burned human beings alive, even an eight year old girl.
You shackled them, since it wasn’t enough to rip them from their mothers’ arms, and later crowned them with macabre holes from which life flees, leaving little red flowers, a crown of torment. And all of this, you say, because ‘they were orders.’ Do you have no dignity, sensitivity, or manliness? Do you belong to race that isn’t human? Is that why the pain of others has no echo in you? Have you seen men slowly fall on the ground in death throes, as blood gushes from their mouths? You had the sadism to ask for, to order: “More! More!” Don’t you feel any of the cold steel that pierces the hearts of the tormented?
Because they ordered it... Because that is what they ordered... Not even if they order it, Captain!! Not even if they order it!!
Hernán Cortés found a tree to hear his cries in Tacuba. You, if some day you feel the need to cry, won’t even find a tree that will listen to you.[378]
</quote>
At first, government pressure ensured that the public did not learn about its crimes in Casas Viejas. All the libertarian newspapers were banned and nothing but the bourgeoisie’s hacks and their Socialist choruses were free to publish. The government drew a veil of silence over that small village of anarchists. But public criticism of the FAI’s attempted <em>putsch</em> grew increasingly strident. Durruti replied to those critiques in the CNT’s underground newspaper, <em>La Voz Confederal</em>:
<quote>
Our revolutionary attempt was necessary and we won’t cease in our efforts. It is the only way to stop the government from strengthening itself and for the working class to carry out the revolutionary struggle that will lead to its liberation.
Those who say that we wanted to take power and impose a dictatorship are liars. Our revolutionary convictions repudiate such a goal. We want a revolution for the people and by the people, because proletarian liberation is impossible otherwise.... We are neither Blanquists nor Trotskyists, but understand that the journey is long and that it has to be made <em>by moving, by going forward</em>.
Durruti drew his comrades’ attention to the peasantry’s situation in the article:
We must accord primary importance to the countryside, because the peasantry is ripe for revolution: they lacked nothing but an ideal to channel their desperation and now they have found it in libertarian communism. Our revolution will be a deeply human and peasant revolution.
García Oliver advanced the same argument from Barcelona’s Modelo prison. The January 8 rebellion had not been in vain. Had there been victims? Yes, but a Socialist-Republican government that commits atrocities like the one in Casas Viejas inevitably kills bourgeois democracy, even in the hearts of its most generous defenders.
In the street, “the Thirty” and their supporters took the January revolt as an example of the FAI’s dictatorship in the CNT and became even more virulent in their criticisms. The CNT Regional Committee had to confront the avalanche of complaints and called a regional meeting for March 5, 1933. The dispute finally came to an end there: “the Thirty” and their backers were either expelled or voluntarily withdrew from the CNT and formed separate so-called “Opposition Unions.”
What remained of the CNT in Catalonia were twenty counties and three provinces federated among themselves, with 278 unions totaling more than 300,000 members. The only defections from the CNT were in Sabadell and Levante, where the “reformists” had made an impact on the metalworker, woodworker, and transport worker unions. In Andalusia, they had an enclave in Huelva, but that was all. A total of some sixty thousand members had left, with whom Angel Pestaña would try to form the Syndicalist Party several months later.
The conflict with “the Thirty” was now over. In early April, the press broke the news that Ascaso and Durruti had been arrested in Sevilla.
</quote>
** CHAPTER XV. Prisoner in El Puerto de Santa María
Like many of those who participated in the January 8 rebellion, Durruti and Ascaso were able to elude the police and disappear for a time while they waited for the storm to pass.
The Police Chief was then the ex-conspirator Miguel Badía. In 1925, he had planted a bomb on the Garraf coast in an attempt to blow up the train carrying Alfonso XIII to Barcelona. He asked <em>Los Solidarios</em> to help him carry out the attack and they provided him with the dynamite that he needed. Miguel Badía thus had extensive and longstanding knowledge of the anarchists, although that did not stop him from being a much more violent Police Chief with the Confederals than Colonel José Arlegui. Induced by a hatred of anarchism, he took the repression to the extreme, particularly against García Oliver, who escaped death by a pure miracle. With respect to Durruti and Ascaso, he swore that he would beat them to a pulp as soon as he laid a hand on them.
The days passed slowly for the two men hunted by Badía, who were hiding in a house in Horta. Durruti probably saw his daughter and <em>compañera</em> more frequently during the two months that he spent concealed there than at any other time, since he was in the home of the person who cared for Colette when Mimi began working in the cinema box office.
In March 1933, some unions and libertarian ateneos were closed and Soli was banned, but the CNT officially carried on its activity. As previously noted, the CNT’s Regional Committee called a meeting around the time that settled the conflict with “the Thirty.” They and their supporters formally split from the CNT and soon formed “Opposition Unions,” which continued to identify as revolutionary syndicalist and anarcho-syndicalist. While the CNT was breaking in two, there was also a deep crisis in the government as a result of Azaña’s violent campaign in January, which reached new heights of barbarism in Casas Viejas. When the Parliament met in February, Eduardo Ortega y Gasset, a member of the Radical Socialist Left at the time, questioned the government about what had happened in Casas Viejas. Azaña consulted briefly with Carlos Esplà, the sub-secretary of the Interior, and then cynically replied: “Nothing happened in Casas Viejas but what had to happen.” In general, the public was still unaware of the full horror of events there. It also didn’t know that the Civil Guard had seized the town and that a section of Assault Guards arrived later and began a house-to-house raid. In one of these, an old peasant nicknamed “six fingers” had dug himself in with his children, grandchildren, and two neighbors. They refused to surrender. More Assault Guards arrived with machine-guns, who were under the command of Captain Rojas. The siege lasted throughout the night. At dawn, the Assault Guards set fire to the hovel (more of a hut than a home), which collapsed in flames. “Six fingers” was incinerated in the blaze, and Guards machine-gunned those attempting to flee. There was something else that the public didn’t know at the time, but that a judicial summary and parliamentary investigation revealed later: two hours after burning down the hut that “six fingers” lived in, Captain Rojas ordered an attack on the town and executed eleven people in it for no reason whatsoever. Did Azaña know the magnitude of the savagery? If not, he was obliged to find out about it and not reply, as he did, as if the peasants were animals.
The crimes in Casas Viejas were very useful for the Rightwing and its war against the Republican Socialist government. The government was so stupid that it persevered in its repressive conduct, thereby exasperating the CNT and giving more weapons to its political enemies. Azaña and his cabinet lost all their credibility—what little they still had—in the two-month parliamentary debate that followed. The government’s situation became even worse when it came to light that Azaña had told Captain Rojas to “take no prisoners.”
When the parliamentary debate was at its most bitter, the Regional Committee of Andalusia and Extremadura called an Extraordinary Congress of Unions in Sevilla on March 27. Avelino González Mallada represented the CNT National Committee. Local CNT members asked the National Committee to send several orators to speak at the Congress’s closing rally as well as other events that they had planned in Andalusia. It gave this mission to Durruti, Ascaso, and Vicente Pérez Combina, who left Barcelona for Sevilla in late March.
Numerous localities in Andalusia and Extremadura organized rallies and conferences in their respective areas when they learned that Durruti and Ascaso would be passing through. The CNT’s Propaganda Secretary in the region collected seventy-five requests for public events, which he hurried to present to the Civil Government in order to obtain the necessary authorization to hold them. This was a formality: the Governor could only deny such petitions in exceptional cases, such as when declared martial law had been declared, which was not the case in Andalusia at the time.
The April 7 closing rally was a success. The theater where it took place was too small to accommodate all the attendees and organizers had to place amplifiers on the street so that those outside could listen to the speeches.
Durruti, Ascaso, Combina, and several other militants planned to start their propaganda tour through the province of Sevilla on April 8. The night of the rally they met with Avelino González Mallada and Paulino Díez and unsuccessfully tried to convince them to participate in some of the events planned in the 106 villages. Avelino said that he had too many obligations in Madrid and left for the capital in the early morning of the following day. The police showed up at the boarding house where they were all staying shortly after Mallada’s departure. They told them to come to the Police Station, without explaining why. Durruti, Ascaso, and Combina went and the inspector informed them that they were under arrest for “insults to authority and incitation to rebellion,” crimes that they had committed during the previous day’s rally. Authorities sent them to the Sevilla prison under this charge. Paulino Díez joined them shortly afterwards, as a “governmental prisoner.”
The Sevilla prison was packed with men that the police had arrested that day. No one knew why they were being detained.
Vicente Ballester, secretary of the CNT’s Andalusia and Extremadura Regional Committee, met with the Governor, Mr. Labella, and asked him why Durruti, Ascaso, and Combina had been seized. The Governor responded that he “arrested them to expel them from Andalusia [as permitted by the “Law for Defense of the Republic”] because he wasn’t going to tolerate anarchist propaganda in the area.” The governor’s attitude precluded any other attempt to secure their freedom and they had no choice but to try to settle the “insults” charge as soon as possible. As expected, the judge visited them in prison and communicated the charges to Durruti and Combina (Ascaso hadn’t spoken at the rally). He acknowledged that the crime was minor and said that they would be released once they paid one thousand pesetas in bail each. Four days after the visit, Vicente Ballester gave the bail to the judge and signed for the detainees’ freedom. But, just as they were about to be let out, authorities told them that their incarceration would continue: at the Governor’s request they would remain as governmental prisoners. The Madrid papers reported on Durruti’s arrest. The <em>La Voz</em> newspaper stated that “it was because Durruti was organizing an uprising in Andalusia similar to the one that took place in Barcelona on January 8.”
Pío Baroja was in Madrid at that time and decided that he wanted to meet with Durruti when he learned about his detention. He traveled to Sevilla for the purpose and saw him behind bars. About their meeting, Durruti wrote: “When Pío Baroja came to see me in the Sevilla prison he told me: ‘It’s terrible what they do to you all!’ And I asked him: ‘What position, Mr. Pío, do you think we should take toward these arbitrary measures?’ He didn’t know what to say. I later read an article that he published in Ahora which contained the response that he didn’t dare give me through bars.” [379]
We have been unable to locate the article mentioned by Durruti and therefore do not know what Pío Baroja asserted in it. But we do know that Durruti had exercised a strong attraction on the writer since their meeting in Barcelona after the proclamation of the Republic. Baroja compared Durruti to Pablo Iglesias in his memoirs: “Buenaventura Durruti was diametrically opposed to Pablo Iglesias. He was not doctrinaire; he was a <em>condottiero</em>, restless, bold, and valiant. One could see him as the incarnation of the Spanish guerrilla. He had all the traits of the type: courage, shrewdness, generosity, cruelty, barbarity, and a depth of spiritual heart. In another epoch, he would have done very well as a Captain with El Empecinado, with Zurbano, or Prim.... Durruti appeared in the reception room of the hotel on the Rambla, where two or three of his friends and I were. His presence alarmed many of those there, so I suggested that we go to a café on a nearby side street. We sat and chatted in this small café.” Pío Baroja recorded a conversation about Durruti’s adventures—which the reader already knows and we will not repeat—and clearly took pleasure in this literary personage. “Durruti is the type to have a romantic biography, on a sheet of string literature [ <em>literatura de cordel</em>] with a blurry engraving on the front.” [380] Baroja escaped the temptation to make him into a literary character, perhaps because the flesh and blood Durruti was simply <em>too real</em>. The same is true of Ilya Ehrenburg, who also spoke with him around that time.
The qualities that attracted intellectuals to Durruti terrified the politicians that governed Spain. After his arrest, Casares Quiroga hurled the most abject epithets at him; calling him an “idler and delinquent” and other insults of the nature. He was preparing to apply the law on vagrancy approved by the Republican-Socialist government. Naturally, he would not use it for “parasites and idlers” <em>by trade</em>, but for the militant workers of the CNT and FAI.
This time Durruti and his comrades will be imprisoned in terrible conditions from April 2 to October 10, without knowing why.
The Governor of Sevilla ordered the transfer of his four famous detainees—Ascaso, Combina, Durruti, and Díez—to the El Puerto de Santa María penitentiary. In mid-April, they entered what was known as the “Andalusian Montjuich,” which was used for preventative detentions. The prison had two wings: one for those who had been sentenced and the other for those awaiting sentencing, although the prison regime was identical for both types of inmates. It was like this during the Republic and also under General Franco. The climate is bad, the food abysmal, and the unsanitary conditions caused a high rate of tuberculosis among the prisoners.
When the four anarchists entered the penitentiary, they were immediately placed in cells and held incommunicado. Prison regulations indicated that inmates could write family members once weekly and that letters or cards had to be delivered open, so that the censor could read them. Durruti and his comrades protested these restrictions, alleging that they had not been charged with anything and didn’t even know why they were there. Durruti decried these circumstances in letters that he smuggled out and that <em>El Luchador</em> and Madrid’s <em>CNT</em> published. Paulino Díez also denounced (in a letter snuck out) their conditions: “The treatment is repugnant and the food terrible. A man subjected to this is bound to go crazy. This is a factory for making lunatics, as Torhyo said of the insane asylum! The regime of “bread and water” is so common that it’s normal. They forced it on one comrade for ninety-four days.... I asked to see the doctor four days ago and still haven’t seen him. Everyday I tell the clerk that I need medical attention, but nothing happens. My stomach problems are getting worse, and now I produce blood while having bowel movements. But you can’t complain, because they’ll punish you if you do. The threat of “bread and water” forces you to gnaw on your entrails and eat fists of anger.”
In June, Durruti sent his <em>compañera</em> a letter (always by the same route: “the submarine”). He wrote:
<quote>
Comrades from Sevilla came here on Sunday, but weren’t able to speak with us. When we found out about this, Ascaso and I went to see the warden, so that he would tell us if we’re being held incommunicado. He told us that it’s not his fault, but the police’s doing, since the “Cádiz police come on visiting days to see who asks to speak with you and demand ID from anyone wanting to see Combina, Díez, or you two.” That prevents many comrades from visiting us... We’ve protested against these irregularities, but they don’t do any good, since we’re doing so from inside. It’s the comrades on the street who have to clarify the situation.
</quote>
Deprived of communication and from reading the newspapers, the prisoners could only follow outside events through the “prison mail;” that is, from what other prisoners heard from family members or friends. That also wasn’t easy for our militants, since they were being held incommunicado (and in “disgusting cells,” according to Durruti).
The situation on the street continued to be extremely onerous for the CNT. Police raided union halls and arrested those inside on the pretext that they were holding “secret meetings.” Such harassment was pervasive in early June in both Madrid and Barcelona. In the first of the two cities, Assault Guards surrounded the Local Federation of Unions building on Flor Street at nightfall, just when union members were coming there to deliver their contributions or take care of other matters. They loaded everyone they found—some 250—onto trucks and took them to the General Office of Security. The local press described the caravan in the following terms:
<quote>
A truck full of Assault Guards led the way. Two others followed, which were filled with detainees, and another took up the rear, whose occupants pointed their guns at the prisoners.
Their trip through the city streets aroused great curiosity among pedestrians. The Assault Guard occupied the CNT building and had arrested 250 by 10:00 in the evening. The cells were packed and, despite the guard’s requests, the prisoners wouldn’t stop insulting the Director of Security or the government. They later sang <em>The International</em>.
</quote>
The same thing occurred simultaneously in Barcelona, although there every detainee received a beating and police tore up their CNT membership cards. In Sevilla, the governor ordered police to shut down all the CNT unions and filled the provincial prison with new inmates. There was a generalized offensive against the CNT, and the government didn’t even bother to justify it.
The ship of state was going adrift. The Parliament approved laws and more laws, but the state slowed down any that it considered detrimental to the privileged classes or Church. Although the Parliament had approved the Law on Agrarian Reform, it was stalled in practice. Driven by caciquism, the results of the municipal elections were unfavorable for the government. These results encouraged the Rightwing—now led by José María Gil Robles—to heighten its attacks on the Azaña government. Alejandro Lerroux, who had simply been watching from the sidelines as Azaña and his team made their mistakes, began to feel strong enough to rip into the government in May. Azaña staggered, particularly after the storm of Casas Viejas, but stubbornly continued to maintain the government’s repressive policy against the CNT. The political scenario was extremely complicated and there was a growing threat of fascism, which had set roots in Germany and begun to insinuate itself in Spain through José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The latter founded the Spanish Falange, while Gil Robles created the Confederación Española de las Derechas Autónomas (Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right, CEDA).
There was a minor governmental crisis at the time, which was resolved with various ministerial changes on June 14. The new government approved another oppressive law called Public Order on July 26. It seemed like the Socialists and Republicans were in a rush to give the Right all the legal tools necessary to establish fascism.
While these diverse and contradictory events threw the world into confusion, nothing had been sorted out for our four detainees or the rest of the state’s captives in the Puerto de Santa María.
In late May, the CNT’s National Prisoner Support Committee sent Eduardo Barriobero, its most prestigious lawyer, to meet with Casares Quiroga. Barriobero would try to make him listen to reason and end his system of “governmental prisoners,” which had resulted in the incarceration of more than six thousand people. The Minister gave Barriobero his “word of honor”: all governmental prisoners would be released in a few days. When the lawyer mentioned the case of the four most famous inmates in El Puerto de Santa María, Casares Quiroga replied that “they will be the first to get out.” The Minister was so convincing that the Prisoner Support Committee sent a telegram to El Puerto telling the men the good news. A few days later Durruti sent a letter in reply:
“We received your telegram. The comrades hope that the governor of Cádiz will release them soon. I say hope, because it appears that Combina and I will remain in prison. Apparently they don’t feel like letting us out.” Durruti states the reason:
“Moments before receiving your telegram, the local court came to the prison to notify Combina and me that the Court of Sevilla had voided our bail and, as a result, we are still in its custody and will have to respond to that damned charge of “insults and incitation to rebellion.”
Despite the fact that the minister gave his “word of <em>honor</em>,” no one was released and circumstances became even more desperate. A letter that Durruti sent to his family on July 14, 1933 described the situation:
<quote>
I’m sure you’ve read in the press about the misfortune that haunts this vile prison.... The soldiers, those sons of the people who forget their own mothers once they put on a uniform, murdered a comrade on Monday morning. If you read the article in <em>CNT</em> that I sent, you’ll see the miserable way that they killed this peasant. The man wasn’t approaching the window as they claimed, but was hunted down like a rabbit. I wonder what induced the soldier to shoot that man.... A great uproar broke out when his comrades saw him killed, and it’s not true that they were in the cells, but rather in a crowd of two hundred.... I didn’t realize the monstrosity that had been committed when I first heard the comrades cry out for help. They stared at us with closed fists, as if to say: “What should we do?”... I knew that the Assault Guard would enter the prison at some point and use any pretense to blow us away with rifle fire. It was a horrible moment, and the only thing we could do was stop exactly what the guards were going to provoke; a massacre. I decided to go down to the courtyard, where there were about five hundred men waiting for someone to take the initiative and say: “Forward!” The first thing I saw were the well placed machine-guns. I got up on a bench and yelled out to my comrades. I felt an overwhelming desire to say precisely that: Forward! But that would have been a tragic mistake, something for which I would have never forgiven myself if I had emerged alive, which would have been unlikely. I told them exactly the opposite: to calm down, to recover their serenity, that it still wasn’t time. Some may have cursed me inwardly, thinking that I had “gone soft,” but it doesn’t matter. Everyone withdrew into their groups or cells. They removed the corpse and a heavy silence fell over the prison, terribly heavy, without any of us being able to face one another. That was the first time that Ascaso and I didn’t look one another in the eye.... Assault Guards marched through the prison, and we, after having lost a comrade, are held incommunicado.[381]
</quote>
On July 1, <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> published a photograph of five individuals behind bars: Díez, Ascaso, Durruti, Combina, and Lorda. A statement signed by Francisco Ascaso and Paulino Díez framed the photo. It was addressed to “citizen Santiago Casares Quiroga, Minister of the Interior.” The text informed the minister that, with “our patience exhausted, we must resort to the sad weapon of the hunger strike. Seeing that his honor didn’t manage to open the prison doors, we believe that this method will be successful. Santa María Prison, June 28, 1933”
Things were going from bad to worse in the Cabinet presided over by Manuel Azaña. The Rightwing was attacking furiously. Lerroux advanced his candidacy for President of Government and the Socialist Party entered into a deep crisis. Araquistáin, prompted by the experience of the social democrats in Germany, embraced Marxism and the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Francisco Largo Caballero watched and worried as the UGT’s unity shattered and its rank and file rebelled against policies made by the Socialists in government. He started to look sympathetically on Araquistáin’s extremist stance. Other Socialist leaders began to recognize the catastrophic effects of the political line that they had followed, as their youth began to turn to the Communist Party. The CP, always led by Moscow, began to reap certain successes at the expense of the Socialists. All of this compromised Indalecio Prieto’s influence, who stubbornly continued working with Manuel Azaña. Alcalá Zamora dissolved Azaña’s Cabinet and on September 12 entrusted Lerroux with forming a new government. But, before resigning and withdrawing from the scene, the Republican-Socialist government took a final swipe at the CNT by applying the “Vagrants Law” to the governmental prisoners, including Durruti and Ascaso. On September 25, <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> published the following article under the headline “The anarchist’s dignified attitude toward the Vagrants Law”:
<quote>
Durruti, Ascaso, Combina, Joaquín Valiente, Paulino Díez, and Trabajano are inmates in El Puerto de Santa María penitentiary and the government intends to apply the disgraceful label of “vagrants” to them. Their “special” case has received the natural and dignified response that it merits. These comrades have refused to testify in the prosecution’s inquiry initiated against them for “vagrancy.”
We Confederation members must defend ourselves against these legal machinations—the work of “left” Republicans and especially Socialists!—by saying: “we aren’t vagrants and, as workers, we will not testify in such a wicked, shameful trial!”
The comrades incarcerated in the Andalusian Montjuich sent two letters to the present Minister of Justice, Botella Asensi, which we have published in our newspapers. They told him categorically that they reject the outrageous “vagrants” label and if the malignant matter is not resolved by September 25—today—that they will declare a hunger strike and hold the nation’s top judicial authority responsible for what could occur.
The last Cabinet meeting decided not to apply that shameful law to the fighting workers. Now the Minister of Justice must act.
</quote>
Durruti sent some words to his family on October 5, 1933:
<quote>
I hope you’ve read in the press that we decided to end our hunger strike, after eight days without eating, under the promise of our release. According to the most recent information telegraphed to us by the lawyers in Sevilla, we will get out today. One already left last night. I have the impression that all of us will be out by the time you receive this letter.
</quote>
Durruti, Ascaso, and Combina arrived at the <em>CNT</em> editorial office in Madrid on October 7, after spending six months trapped in the terrible Puerto de Santa María.
They set off for Barcelona the following day, leaving behind a Madrid in turmoil. Indeed, the government that Lerroux presented to the Parliament on October 2 did not gather the votes necessary to assume power. Alcalá Zamora ordered several people to form a new government, but all failed in their attempts. This led to the dissolution of the Parliament and a new electoral referendum, to the Rightwing’s great satisfaction. The President entrusted Diego Martínez Barrio (from Lerroux’s party) with liquidating the Parliament and preparing the elections.
There are two additional matters to include in this summary of the first Republican-Socialist biennium, both of which will weigh heavily on Spain’s immediate future: the first is the great opportunity that the Republic had to do away with the cancer of the Moroccan Protectorate. Instead of seizing the chance, it advanced a policy that was even more destructive than the Monarchy’s Africanist policy. It only deepened the divide between Spain and Morocco and, like the French, made the relationship still more feudal. The second was the trip to Spain that French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot made in the spring of 1932. The government used his visit as a pretext to repress worker and peasant agitation in Andalusia, so that “peace reigns more fully in Casablanca.” [382] Herriot also managed to get Spain to sign a treaty requiring that it purchase arms solely from the French.
** CHAPTER XVI. From electoral strike to insurrection
The three “vagrants” released from El Puerto de Santa María arrived in Barcelona just as Alcalá Zamora threw the country into turmoil with the dissolution of the Parliament and call for legislative elections. This was a straightforward political opportunity for the parties, but the elections were a difficult issue for the CNT. Its position on the elections had to be consistent with its absentionist convictions, but also consonant with the new political situation created by the rise of the Rightwing after the failure of the leftwing government. In November 1933, for the first time in its history, the CNT would be the central force determining the political fate of the country. We will explore the CNT’s internal life, but must first place our protagonists in the onerous social conditions existing in Barcelona at the time. The bourgeoisie fired workers readily and often abusively. Although the middle class was struggling economically, in many cases it could have avoided or reduced the scope of such sackings. They were an attempt to create chaos and demoralize the workers, which the bourgeoisie hoped would predispose them to accept any political solution that might end their suffering. Specifically, it was a way to prepare the ground for Gil Robles, who, imitating Hitler, intended to impose a dictatorship through legal means and with worker support. The Barcelona CNT did not lose sight of either the bourgeoisie’s intentions or Gil Robles’s political game, although its militants also had to focus their attentions on short-term survival needs while not forgetting their long-term revolutionary goals.
Unemployed workers did not receive or ask for state subsidies (even if the state had been able to provide them—it was not—activists knew that such subsidies would have diminished the proletariat’s revolutionary militancy). The workers’ first response to the economic crises was the rent, gas, and electricity strike in mid-1933, which the CNT and FAI’s Economic Defense Commission had been laying the foundations for since 1931. Likewise, house, street, and neighborhood committees began to turn out en masse to stop evictions and other coercive acts ordered by the landlords (always with police support). The people were constantly mobilized. Women and youngsters were particularly active; it was they who challenged the police and stopped the endless evictions.
Groups of women and children made purchases on credit in the grocery stores. They bought only the basics, such as potatoes, pastas, oil, rice, and chickpeas. Their debt was recorded, which they would pay back once they began working again. The unions had listing services where workers could sign up for potential jobs, but since the employers were not hiring, the unemployed went to workplaces and occupied them. At first the bourgeoisie responded by saying that they hadn’t asked for workers and tossed them out. But, undeterred, the unemployed sat at the establishments’ entrances and remained there for the entire week, doing their eight hours of sitting daily. On Saturday, payday, they lined up with the firm’s employees and, under their protection, insisted that the company pay them their “weekly sitting wage.” The bourgeoisie ended up compensating them for the week, while telling them not to come back. If the same ones didn’t come back, it was others.
In addition to these actions, a “union of unemployed workers” urged the proletariat to go to restaurants in groups and eat at noon. This practice was quite extensive and always produced positive results.
The point of these actions was to encourage the generalized mobilization of the working class. Linked by solidarity, they were ways to confront the bourgeoisie while building a revolutionary consciousness among the workers (and among youngsters too, which is one of the reasons why so many adolescents played such an important role in the 1936 revolution).
There was a significant conflict with the Streetcar and Bus Company at the time. The company had created the dispute by refusing to recognize union representatives and firing workers known for their activism. The Transport Workers’ Union took on the strike and, when the Streetcar Company refused to meet its demands, it had no choice but to use sabotage. Streetcars and buses were set alight in the late night hours after they had gone to lock- up. There were also acts of sabotage in the central telephone offices, which the telephone workers union had been using defensively since their strike in June 1931.
All of this created an explosive climate in Barcelona. The practice of holdups, in which CNT or FAI workers were often implicated, made it even more volatile.
The arrest of a CNT worker on robbery charges was enough to prompt the bourgeois press to go on the offensive and accuse the FAI of encouraging “banditry.” Instigated by the Generalitat, Catalanist newspapers in Barcelona disseminated Manuel Azaña’s fiction that “anarchists are criminals with an ID card.”
Ascaso and Durruti had to confront the economic situation like the rest of the unemployed workers. They were turned away from the factory where they had worked before being locked up. Ascaso, drawing on his first experiences in the work world, found a waiter’s job in a Barcelona restaurant through García Oliver, who plied the same trade in a café popularly called “La Pansa” in the Plaza de España.
Durruti went to the Metalworkers’ Union and signed up in its job pool. A rare thing happened one day: one of the larger workshops in Barcelona requested three mechanic adjustors through a union representative. The union sent Durruti and two other men. The head of personnel showed some discomfort when they turned up and, after consulting with management, told Durruti that he was very sorry, but that there had been a misunderstanding: the company needed only two—not three—workers. Durruti knew perfectly well that he was being blacklisted. This infuriated his comrades, who were prepared to reject the job themselves and report the incident to the union. Once they left the premises, Durruti convinced them that doing so would be a serious mistake, since it would cause a strike in the workshop and, by extension, the whole industry.
“Don’t tell the union anything about what happened here,” he said. “Strikes are declared when the workers want them, not when the bourgeoisie provokes them. This strike wouldn’t benefit us and would actually be very detrimental. Come to work tomorrow as if nothing happened and wait for better times. The iron still isn’t hot, my friends.” [383]
Durruti met with Ascaso that evening and told him about the incident. His friend approved of his behavior; the truth was that the bourgeoisie was desperately trying to antagonize the workers. It was enough to consult the press—which was daily more venomous on the subject of the “holdups”—to convince oneself of this. One of the newspapers that most abused the topic was <em>La Vanguardia</em>, which was particularly inflammatory because it published graphic photographs of crime scenes. Sometimes it was a “blond” who had carried out the robbery and other times it was simply the “FAI.” Durruti and Ascaso talked about whether or not it might be a good idea to visit the editor of <em>La Vanguardia</em> in the name of the FAI and convince him to end its mistreatment of the acronym. The following day they showed up at the newspaper’s office and, after announcing themselves by their own names, told the editor that they were qualified representatives of the FAI and that the organization had selected his paper to make a public statement. The text of the statement was the following:
<quote>
The FAI intends to organize a collective expropriation through social revolution in order to establish what we call libertarian communism. Our strategy is mass action and the revolutionary general strike. The FAI rejects and does not practice any other method, like robbing individuals (that is, “banditry”). Such things are in frank opposition to anarchism’s revolutionary approach and, consequently, the FAI denounces them as ineffective. This is the FAI’s statement. And we ask that you, the editor of this newspaper, limit <em>La Vanguardia</em> to presenting the news, without mixing up or mentioning the CNT or FAI when you have to publish an account of a robbery, holdup, or something similar in your “crime report” section. These organizations have nothing to do with acts of that sort. We hope that you will be good enough to censor your frivolous reporters if they introduce the letters in question into their “news.” We wouldn’t want to resurrect the “red censorship” of the Graphic Arts Union.[384]
</quote>
<em>La Vanguardia</em> didn’t publish the FAI’s statement, but it no longer implicated the CNT and FAI in its reports on “diverse events,” as it had done daily until then. Clearly the “meeting” had been a success.
The CNT National Committee called a national meeting of regionals to establish the organization’s position on the elections. All the participants agreed that the political situation was dire. Led by Gil Robles, the Rightwing had entered the elections as a homogenous group under the CEDA banner. This bloc collected all the reaction into one bundle: aristocrats, soldiers, landowners, bankers, the high and low bourgeoisie, and the Church, with its Popular Action party. The Monarchists also supported this bloc, but without losing their independence, since they were busy conspiring with Mussolini to carry out a military coup in Spain.
The opposition, the left, was divided, thanks to the crisis in the Socialist Party. Azaña’s party was completely disarticulated. The Radical-Socialists had also split into two factions. The Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya was the only party that had a measure of internal unity at the time. It supported the petty bourgeoisie and liberal middle class of Catalonia, including the peasant faction of small and mid-sized landowners.
With a fractured Left standing in the elections, one would imagine that the results would benefit the CEDA. Even if the CNT urged its members to vote, their votes could only go to the Socialist Party and, if that happened, the left would still be a minority, given the diversity of Left candidates. There was something new in the November 19 elections: women voted for the first time. The influence of the Church on women suggested that they might support the Right, but they might just as well go for the Leftwing, particularly the Socialists.
The CNT discussed the situation at its meeting and, after considering the matter from many different perspectives, had to face two unavoidable realities: the division in the Left and Gil Robles’s fascist danger. Whether or not the CNT advised its members to vote, the ultimate political results would not change. Furthermore, the leftists had behaved so badly in power, and the CNT had criticized them so intensely, that even if they tried to tell the workers that a Leftwing government was better than a Rightwing one, the masses would not understand that tangled parliamentary argument in the face of the harsh reality of lived experience.
The CNT’s reply to the impasse that the Socialist-Republican government had forced on Spain and the threat of a “gilroblista” dictatorship was to tell the working class frankly that there was no solution but proletarian revolution. Yet it was not enough to simply announce this: they had to go into action immediately after the anticipated victory of the rightwing. This meant that the CNT had to prepare itself for revolutionary action. The experience in January of that year made it clear that the CNT and FAI could not be victorious alone and that they had to partner with the Socialist workers. It would be impractical to propose a revolutionary alliance to the UGT “from above”—given the extent to which their leaders had degenerated during their two years in government—but it was not utopian to think that the Socialist rank and file could be inspired to enter into action if CNT workers rose up. Socialist and anarchist militants had already carried out joint efforts in Andalusia. Why couldn’t this happen in the rest of Spain, particularly Asturias?
Those attending the meeting decided to carry out an intense agitation campaign that would ruthlessly criticize the parliamentary system and say clearly that revolution is the only reply to fascism.
They made significant plans for this proof of strength: the cadre or Confederal groups would federate at the national level through a secretariat of Defense (led by Antonio Ortiz) linked to the National Committee. They also created a National Revolutionary Committee that would immediately begin to organize the insurrection. Cipriano Mera, Buenaventura Durruti, Antonio Ejarque, and Isaac Puente formed the Committee.
The confederation’s publication, <em>CNT</em>, printed an editorial that summarized the decisions of the national meeting. It emphasized the practical foundations of Libertarian Communism:
<quote>
The commune is the basic unit of libertarian communism. Four centuries of statist centralism have been unable to destroy the commune, which has deep historical roots in Spain. Our people’s revolutionary aspirations find their expression in the commune and, federated, it provides the basic structure of the new society in all its aspects: administrative, economic, and political. The first step in the social revolution is to take control of Town Hall and proclaim the free commune. Once this occurs, self-management spreads to all areas of life and the people exercise their sovereign executive power through the popular assembly.[385]
The <em>Nosotros</em> group met to discuss the national CNT meeting and the political challenges of the moment. It became clear at the gathering that there were serious differences within the group. García Oliver, drawing on the experience of the January rebellion, thought they should create a paramilitary organization. The FAI’s anarchist groups and the CNT’s Confederal Defense groups would make up the organization and a body dedicated to revolutionary defense would coordinate its actions nationally. However, since they didn’t have enough time or resources to immediately construct an organization of that type, he concluded that it wasn’t the right moment to rise up. The rest of the group, except for Ascaso and Durruti, shared his views.
Ascaso and Durruti weren’t utopians. They recognized the merit of García Oliver’s observations and were well aware of the CNT and FAI’s desperate state since the January rebellion. But they had to confront the situation in one way or another. Durruti believed that a defeat—which wouldn’t really be a defeat when seen as part of the movement’s “revolutionary gymnastics”—was better than being inactive or absent from the country’s political life during the electoral campaign. He also argued that this time they “wouldn’t be working in such cold” as in January and that the Socialist masses “could be inspired to act, given their frustration with their parliamentary leaders.” At the very least, he said, “the insurrection will be a warning to the incoming government and show it that the Spanish working class is not going to bow before a dictator.” There are times, he said, when “revolutionaries aren’t permitted to hesitate and this is one of them.”[386] The electoral campaign opened in an environment of tension and violence. CEDA propaganda had a distinctly fascist slant: “All power to the Chief,” was the slogan attached to the portrait of Gil Robles. The ecclesiastic bodies functioned at full speed and organized the purchase of votes. Rural caciques leaned heavily on the peasantry, promising jobs and distributing clothes and mattresses to the poorest.
The rightwing held its last rally before the election on November 18 in Madrid. They broadcast a speech that Calvo Sotelo had recorded in Paris, where he had lived in exile since the failed rightwing uprising on August 10 of the previous year.
The Socialists tried their best to incite their supporters with impassioned oratory, but the results were less than stellar. Those who spoke in revolutionary tones didn’t believe their own speeches and those who listened had little faith in that last-minute revolutionism.
The Republicans watched with sadness as half of their electorate went over to the ranks of Lerroux’s radicals, when not directly to the CEDA. The CNT organized large rallies in all the major Spanish cities, where it articulated its critique of parliamentarianism and stated that the people had to choose between fascism and revolution.
The CNT held a large rally in Barcelona on Sunday, November 12 in the Plaza de Toros Monumental. Approximately one hundred thousand people attended the event. The orators were Benito Pabón, Durruti, Francisco Isgleas, and Valeriano Orobón Fernández. This rally had the same focus as those held elsewhere, but there were two novelties. First, Francisco Isgleas spoke in Catalan, to demonstrate that not all CNT militants were “Murcianos” (as Esquerra politicians said so often). Second, Orobón Fernández offered a detailed account of Hitler’s rise in Germany and argued that the German Communist Party and Social Democrats were both causes of his victory. He urged the Spanish Socialists to take note and learn from the mistakes of the German colleagues.
The FAI held a rally under the auspices of <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> on the evening of Thursday, November 16. It took place in Barcelona’s Palace of Decorative Arts, which could hold an audience of forty-five thousand. According to the press, an immense crowd had gathered in the gardens and around the premises an hour before the event was to begin. The number of people grew by the minute and began to spill into Lérida Street. Less than half of the audience was able to enter when the building’s doors opened and the rest had to listen to the speeches through amplifiers placed on the street. We will reproduce the entirety of press’s account of the event, given the rally’s importance, and also Durruti and Ascaso’s participation in it.
Comrade Gilabert presided over and opened the event. He said that while <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> had called the meeting, it is the FAI that is appearing before the people and that will speak through the orators. He then read a list of the many adhesions and delegations from throughout Spain, which we have published in another part of the paper. <em>The Orators</em>:
Vicente Pérez (Combina): “Your presence at this event is an emphatic refutation of the politician’s insidious campaign and expresses clear support for the ideals of the Iberian Anarchist Federation.
“Our enemies say that this disinterested and dignified anti-electoral campaign is supported by money from the Monarchists.
“That’s a disgraceful lie that no one believes. We anarchists are as staunchly against the Rightwing as the Left. We won’t betray our principles or the revolution, like “the Thirty” and their supporters did on and before April 14. The only thing that political parties do, whether they’re from the Right or the Left, is make laws against the workers, like the law of April 8, Public Order, and Vagrants.
“We’re the only ones confronting Cambó. The scar tissue still hasn’t formed on the wound caused by that bird of prey in 1919, when he created mercenary bands to kill the most militant anarchists.
“To the Catalan people, we anarchists say that the Lliga and Esquerra’s claim that they’ll make the revolution if they’re defeated is nothing more than impotent bravado. The CNT and FAI will rise above them all. “Workers of all classes! If you want to destroy fascism, join to the ranks of the CNT and FAI, where real revolutionaries fight to create libertarian communism.”
Francisco Ascaso: “I reflected for a long time before taking part in this event. I feared that we would be confused with those shameless politicians who shout from the rooftops these days, asking for the people’s vote so that they can rise to power.
“And I figured that we’d already had enough rallies and that the time to act had arrived.
“But, in these circumstances, it’s imperative that the voice of the anarchists is heard. That’s what made up my mind.
“If one looks at the Republic’s work, one can immediately see that it has failed in every sense. “It passed three laws that are anti-democratic in the most fundamental way. They are a disgrace: the law of April 8, Public Order, and Vagrants. “The first was made exclusively against the CNT, to chain it to the cart of the State and encroach on the workers’ rights; the second, to suppress civil guarantees and legalize arbitrariness; and finally, the Vagrants law was passed specifically to attack the anarchists in an individual, cunning way. These are the Republic’s most outstanding accomplishments.
“The government tells to us about economic crises around the world. They’re simply trying to make excuses for Spain’s problems.
“But we already know all that, which is why we’re anarchists. The state has failed everywhere, and no party can resolve the social problem. The parties are nothing more than diverse forms of capitalism.
“How could the party called “Esquerra” resolve any problem, if before taking power it prostrated itself at the feet of capitalism?
“Some say that the CNT and the anarchists are making things easy for the Rightwing by advocating abstention. That’s not true. We’ve simply discovered the falsehood of all parties, and they, in their impotence, can only defend themselves with slander.
“We’ve made all the political experiments fail and capitalism withdraw into its last refuge, which is fascism.
“While Spain’s unique characteristics may prevent fascism from emerging here in the same way that it emerged in Italy and Germany, we have other dangers known as ‘<em>pronunciamientos</em>.’[387] “While the Right and Left fail, the military is lying in wait to replace them all.
“That’s the real danger. None of the parties are ready to confront the problems of the hour and yet the people, organized in the CNT, are capable F of everything. The military is on guard against the anarchist’s resolve and ‘<em>pronunciamientos</em>’ are a real threat.
“Militarism could be the axe blow that destroys all rights and liberties, but it could also arrive late. The CNT and FAI are prepared and will defeat them all.
“The Republic hasn’t provided a solution to the economic or social problem. It couldn’t and won’t. The choice is either fascism or revolution. Since fascism is impossible, revolution will prevail.
“Everything turns on the economy, and the economy is entirely in our hands. If capitalism has denied its support to the Republic, it won’t be able to deny it to us.
“Everyone threatens that they’re going to rise up. We don’t threaten. If they take to the street, they’ll find us there, fighting back.
“It’s necessary to accept the responsibility of the moment. We are a hope for the world proletariat, which anxiously watches us to see what we’ll do. We are liberty’s final redoubt. Everyone tells us the same thing: you can’t let yourself be crushed.
“Just as Spain carried the cross through the world in the past, today it must carry anarchy, saving the world by saving itself. That’s our mission, and we have to carry it out at any price, even at the cost of life itself. If we have to fall, then we’ll fall”.
Dolores Iturbe. We will extract some paragraphs from the pages read by comrade Dolores Iturbe: “Here is a magnificent and exciting event and, in its splendor and enthusiasm, the voice of anarchist working women had to be present.
“Their voice is one of fervent adherence to the ideals of the Iberian Anarchist Federation and one of energetic protest against all the outrages and crimes committed by the Republican government against our comrades and brothers.
“Comrades: we are living in extremely turbulent times. The bourgeois state is shattered and lost and wonders how it will recover its strength. It looks for the greatest threat to its existence among the various forces that surround it and discovers that threat in the FAI. That is its most powerful enemy and that’s why it puts so much effort into defaming it.
“When the bourgeoisie and the choir of hacks that grovel at their feet speak of the FAI, they do so as if it were an organization made up of wild- eyed murderers.
“Women: the FAI and the CNT are the only organizations fighting for your true and total emancipation. Amidst the waves of authoritarian ideas extolled by the statist communists and fascists, who are competing for the right to dominate the people, the FAI represents the placid and crystalline stream of libertarian communism, in which liberty and mutual aid will prevail. In a libertarian communist society, there will be widespread and generous solidarity in all acts of human association.
“Fortunately, the workers already know what matters. Experience has taught them to listen disdainfully to the political charlatans, who always speculate with their miseries and hunger, those men who have never taken a step to end the working class’s suffering.
“Women of the Anarchist Youth: the ultra-reactionary parties put forward their women cadre, who are ready to support their terrible work. In response, we have to organize ourselves and defend our ideas gallantly. Above all, we must never forget the workers killed by the mercenary bullets of the social-azañists. We must also remember our thousands of imprisoned comrades and the hundreds who are beaten and martyred in the police’s dungeons. And we will always remember that a woman, almost a girl, died in that small village named Casas Viejas, burned to a cinder in that criminal blaze. The memory of Manuela Lago, the martyr of Andalusia, as well as that of the mother and boy killed in Arnedo, will inspire us and incite our avenging wrath on the day of revolutionary justice.”
Domingo Germinal: “Comrades, greetings. This immense rally is the death sentence and coffin of the state.
“I remember working in Bilbao thirty-five years ago for the same ideas that I embrace today. Then, when you’d go to a public event, people shouted: “Kill him!” And yet now, at the end of an anarchist rally in Alicante a few days ago, the children kissed me and called me ‘Father.’ The men and women hugged me.
“I remember the blacks of Cuba, who told me every time I exposed them to my ideas: ‘Don’t put forward so much science. We don’t understand you. Tell us where the rifles are and we’ll go get them!’
“We’re going to get straight to the point, if it’s possible to stick to a topic in a rally.” (He discusses the state, making a devastating critique of it). “Have you thought about what the state is? The state is the anti-thesis of the human; it puts itself before the individual; it’s a repugnant institution; it’s a monster that needs to sacrifice man to live; it stops the beacon of progress from enlightening the people and to exist, like King David, needs to go to bed with two maidens: capitalism and ignorance.
“The state is the vilest of institutions; it can neither teach, nor create, nor enlighten anyone.
“A friend of mine, a hero of the Mexican Revolution, said: ‘no one will obey anyone until we end with all the altars and idols.’ That’s what we have to do if we want to turn our ideals into reality.”
“Work is the only recognized value in the world and the producers are the true artisans and gods of life.
“All ideas that triumph need to be great and anarchism is the most perfect ideal existing today.
“Without right, there can be no liberty; without liberty, man is unhappy. Without liberty, thought stagnates and dies. That’s why the echo of the arts, the desire of the multitudes, tends to break down the chains of slavery. “The cult of the state is a lie, false, and deceitful.
“It’s election time now and they’ll promise you everything, even the moon.”
(With humorous detail, he describes a deputy that offered a bridge to the people. When they told him that there was no river, he promised them a river. Remember the propaganda that Companys made with Aiguader, when he told him that he had everything pawned and, despite that, began promising everything to the city of Rues. Remember Ibsen, who said that politicians promise people plenty of light but began by asking for oil.) “There are only two types of people in politics: the idiot and the rascal. “Man, to live in society, has to be whole to be a man,” he says, while explaining a drama by Grove. “If you want to be men, you have to make the revolution or else you’ll continue in slavery.”
(He sings a political song celebrating anarchist ideas. This elicits great enthusiasm in the audience and cheers for the FAI).
“The FAI is the hope of the world’s dispossessed and is always ready to confront all difficulties. It has cleaned out the degenerates and sanitized the confederal organization, which now doesn’t cower when the government attacks.”
(He says that the FAI isn’t vengeful and will call for universal fraternity when the revolution triumphs, because a drop of blood on the workers’ hands is a terrible stain. He sings a song celebrating the people. It has beautiful lyrics, which prompt the crowd to applaud and cheer.) Buenaventura Durruti. He begins by lamenting that the old master Sebastián Faure couldn’t be with us. Perhaps that comrade’s moral authority would have helped us refute the politicians who accuse us of being unfaithful to anarchist doctrines and shown how those doctrines are really conceived and realized:
“I don’t hope for the dialectic of a Castelar or the persuasiveness of a Kropotkin. I’m a man of the twentieth century. I live among the people and I’ve studied the masters. I know how to act.
“There has been talk of anarchy for many years now. We’ve created a chaotic situation and made life impossible for all the governments and caused all the political parties to fail. We’re going to make the social revolution. The rulers trust only in brute force and lack the people’s support. We saw how Azaña was unable to speak in Alicante, Sagunto, and other cities. We, by contrast, draw crowds that receive us enthusiastically. These audiences tell us that they’ll go with us to the revolution.
“We’ve talked enough already. Now it’s time for action. Lerroux says that we aren’t good for anything except votes, but we won’t cast any vote on November 19. No party represents the Spanish people. To Lerroux we say: forget the threats. The people have the right not to believe. How can one believe in politicians, after the bloody Republican experience?
“We won’t vote. The Catalan Confederation will not vote. More than 50 percent will abstain in the next elections. What good are threats? What good is it to say that we’ll be straightened out? Make all the threats you like, it’s useless: we won’t vote and we’re ready to confront any rash actions from the reactionaries.
“Workers: the socio-political moment in Spain is very dangerous. The whole world is at the ready, with weapons in hand. Many talk about the FAI and all the political parties try to use it as a scapegoat. The FAI that they libel so consistently says, in these decisive hours, that it’s present in the streets, factories, fields, and mines.
“They talk about the FAI; using the slander about the holdups to discredit and undermine it. The slanderers should try to prove that the FAI is responsible for the holdups! They should all take note of the following, especially any bourgeois journalists in the premises: the FAI supports the collective holdup, the expropriating revolution. To go for what belongs to us, to take the mines, the fields, the means of transport, and the factory. All that is ours. It’s the basis of life: our happiness comes from there, not parliament. Say in your papers, bourgeois journalists, that the FAI only supports collective expropriation.
“There’s talk of a dictatorship of the FAI in the Confederation. That is a complete myth: it’s the assemblies that rule in our labor movement. The syndicalists accuse us of such things to justify their own behavior. They say that they can’t accept this dictatorship, but what they don’t say is that they’ve lost faith in libertarian communism and don’t believe in anarchy. Why not have the courage to say so outright, if you don’t believe in anarchist ideas? They’d rather chatter about dictatorship and use slander.
“We tell the workers to stay calm. Each one should take his place in the productive system. The eyes of the world are upon us. The Spanish anarchist movement is the only anarchist movement that’s strong and capable of constructive transformations. The world expects the leveling revolution from us. If we don’t rise to the occasion, the reactionaries will break through the dams and extend across the world.
“Since the CNT controls the factories and the workplaces, the FAI tells the CNT workers not to abandon your posts; stay at the foot of the machines; respond as one, energetically, if there is an attempt at dictatorship or a military <em>pronunciamiento</em>. The technical and factory committees must be on the alert too. A piece of advice to the <em>FAIists</em>: your position is beyond the factory gates. Remember Italy. A complementary action is essential. In response to Gil Robles’s fascism, against any attempted military coup, the workers should immediately seize the factories. The FAI men will go to other sites and complete the revolution initiated with the seizure of the means of production. “Everyone at the ready, like one man. The moment has arrived. We have a concept of responsibility and we apply it in the daily struggle. This isn’t Bolshevik. This isn’t centralist. This is anarchy.
“Thus, as you come today like one man, if the revolution demands you at a given moment, you will respond as one man. Everyone united, if the fascists rise up. Everyone together in the struggle. We will carry out our duty, and no one will say that Spain is repeating the shameful events in Germany and Italy.”
Comrade Gilabert concluded the rally: “Workers: in the name of the Iberian Anarchist Federation, the Peninsular Committee submits the following resolutions to the audience:
“1) In the event of a fascist victory, unleash the social revolution throughout the Peninsula and implant libertarian communism.
“2) Everyone fights until we achieve the definitive disappearance of the state in all its authoritarian ramifications.” (Those present accepted these resolutions with acclaim. The event ended with thunderous shouts of “Viva Anarchy!”)[388]
</quote>
** CHAPTER XVII. Socialism, absent in december 1933
The Right’s electoral victory on November 19, 1933 was a surprise to no one. A divided left, a working class disappointed in the Republicans and Socialists, and the CNT’s abstention campaign made the results easy to anticipate.
The Left won ninety-nine seats (including sixty for the Socialists and one for the Communist Party); the Center, 156 (including 102 for the Radicals); and the Right, 217 (115 went to the CEDA). Comparing this with the outcome of the elections in June 1931 shows a significant defeat: the Left, 263 deputies (including 116 Socialists); the Center, 110 (twenty- two belonging to Maura and Alcalá Zamora), and the Right; forty-four (including twenty-six agrarians). The Socialist Party lost fifty-six seats between 1931 and 1933.
Was Spain turning right? To suggest that would be a sharp misreading of the situation. There were high levels of abstention in areas where the CNT was strong: Sevilla and its province, 50.16 percent; Malaga, 48.37 percent; Cadiz, 62.73 percent; and Barcelona, 40 percent. A deeper study would make the CNT’s role stand out even more, although we insist that the origins of the Left’s defeat lay in popular frustration with the anti- worker policies that it instituted while in power and also in the fact that it entered the election campaign as a divided force.
On November 23, 1933, the CNT and FAI’s National Revolutionary Committee set up base in Zaragoza, which would soon be the city most engaged in the insurrection. Its headquarters were on the second floor of a building on Convertidos Street and it was there that its three principle members—Durruti, Mera, and Isaac Puente—got to work. Aragón delegated Joaquín Ascaso, Ejarque, and the Alcrudo brothers (all from Zaragoza) to the group.
They divided a map of Spain into colored zones, with each color indicating a region’s potential. In the red zones (Aragón, Rioja, and Navarre) the insurrection would be the most aggressive; in the blue zones (Catalonia, in particular) it would begin with a general strike and then become revolutionary; in the green zones (Center and North), where the Socialists dominated, there would be a general strike and an attempt to draw Socialist workers into the struggle. Valencia and Andalusia were marked in red-blue.
The National Revolutionary Committee (NRC) printed pamphlets urging the workers to take immediate control of the means of production by occupying the factories, mines, and workshops. They were to set up Workers Committees in the workplaces, which would federate locally and form the Local Workers’ Council. People in rural areas were to form Free Communes and federate by county. They would seize the large food depots and distribute food products through cooperatives. They would also create an armed workers’ militia that would provide revolutionary security. It would be organized in small and highly mobile guerrilla detachments, using trucks and other vehicles to get around. [389] They sent these pamphlets to the CNT Defense Committees and FAI groups, who reproduced them in large numbers and distributed them in all the villages.
A problem came up at the last moment, just when it seemed like they only had to wait for the revolutionary spark: at a meeting of militants in Zaragoza, some raised doubts about whether their organization should start the rebellion. It had been decided that Zaragoza would rise up first and then the rest of Low and High Aragón would follow immediately after. Their hesitation created an unpleasant situation. Isaac Puente and Joaquín Ascaso made an unsuccessful attempt to get them to commit. Then it was Durruti’s turn to speak to the group. Durruti knew most of them personally and was fully aware of their commitment and courage. Why, then, were these difficulties coming up now? As usual, he spoke frankly: he said that if Aragón backed out then all the CNT’s creditability would go to pieces. No other region in Spain was capable of leading the rebellion that they intended to unleash. Barcelona was exhausted after the January 8 insurrection and the state’s constant crackdowns; conditions were the same in Andalusia. Aragón was the only area that seemed to have kept its forces intact. But, if they thought that they shouldn’t participate, they were free to make that decision, he told them. However, the CNT and FAI had pledged to make a show of force and would do so with or without them. Whatever their decision, they couldn’t afford to lose any more time. “You have to make up your minds and soon,” he said, “so that the National Revolutionary Committee can change its plans if necessary.” Durruti’s straightforward speech impressed the assembly and, after a brief discussion, the Zaragoza militants pledge their willingness to partake in the struggle. [390]
On December 8, there were general strikes in Barcelona, Huesca, Valencia, Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada, Badajoz, Gijón, Zaragoza, Logroño, and La Coruña, and partial strikes in the Socialist areas of the North, Madrid, and Oviedo.
The anarchist and Confederal groups tried to make the strike revolutionary wherever it was declared and there were soon confrontations with the police. The government declared a state of emergency and called out the entire police force and, in some places, the troops. Alejandro Lerroux was due to present his government to the Parliament that day. Troops guarded government buildings and the Civil Guard mounted machineguns in the Plaza de la Cibeles and other important sites in Madrid. Militants instituted the NRC’s directives in areas where the revolutionaries took control and armed militia patrols appeared. But twenty-four hours after the rebellion began, it was clear that it was doomed to fail. The revolutionary spirit had not spread: the Socialist working masses followed their bosses’ orders and stayed out of the struggle. It was only the CNT and FAI men who were on the streets, confronting the police and the army. Aragón kept its word and rose up aggressively. Barbastro, Zaragoza, Huesca, Teruel, and countless villages in High and Low Aragón rebelled. The insurrection spread from Rioja to Logroño and extended to diverse villages in Burgos. The struggle lasted for several days in Zaragoza, where revolutionaries took over the workers’ neighborhoods. They proclaimed libertarian communism in the villages of Cenicero, Briones, Fuenmayor, Castellote, Valderrobres, Alcorisa, Mas de las Matas, Tormos, Alcampel, Alcalá de Gurrea, Almudévar, Calahorra, and in neighborhoods of Logroño.
There were some repercussions in parts of Valencia. In Alfafar, army troops bombed a union hall in which peasants had holed up. Railroad tracks were ripped up.
In Villanueva de la Serena (Badajoz), a sergeant and several workers barricaded themselves in the Recruiting Office, where they resisted a mixed infantry column armed with machine-guns and mortars for two days. The miners took control in Fabero (León). The rebellion was not completely defeated until December 15. For seven days, in dozens of areas, the local Revolutionary Committees seized Town Halls, Courts, telegraph buildings, and other vital centers.
The government declared a state of emergency in Zaragoza and it was impossible for the NRC to escape the police. Its members decided to accept complete responsibility for the rebellion. At least there would be a public trial, which they could use to indict the capitalist system and assert the people’s right to revolution.
The crackdown was brutal. The government outlawed the CNT and closed its unions and cultural centers (and destroyed the libraries within them). It banned all anarchist and CNT newspapers, in addition to technical and scientific magazines like <em>Tiempos Nuevos</em> and <em>Estudios</em>. There were endless arrests and the state handed down roughly seven hundred sentences several months later. Ordiales, the governor of Zaragoza, wanted to apply the “ <em>ley de fugas</em>” to the NRC but some politicians managed to dissuade him. Nonetheless, the police viciously beat the members of NRC. Countless other prisoners suffered the same fate and signed compromising declarations under torture.
As the inmates went to prison, the government—in which Gil Robles and Lerroux were united—began abolishing positive laws enacted during the Socialist-Republican biennium, including agrarian and educational reforms. Naturally, the new government did not change the coercive laws decreed during the same period. In fact, Socialists and Republicans would soon feel the bite of these reactionary laws themselves, and this contributed to Largo Caballero’s turn toward a more radical position and acceptance of the idea of the working class seizure of power.
In the Predicadores prison, the NRC (Durruti, Puente, and Mera) discussed how to free the greatest number of detainees. Durruti suggested that they try to make the government’s dossier on the case vanish (this was being prepared in the Zaragoza Court, since it was large enough to accommodate the multiple employees dedicated to the trial). The disappearance of that dossier would force police to get prisoners to the make their statements about events again and this would permit them to modify those extracted by force. Puente and Mera agreed to his idea and entrusted a group of local libertarian youths with carrying out the mission. The press printed an account of that unusual robbery:
<quote>
An extremely audacious surprise attack took place at the Zaragoza Court of Commerce, where the Court of Urgency was preparing the trial scheduled for the recent revolutionary events. A group of seven individuals armed with pistols entered the room in which the judges were working and forced them to stay still while they put the dossier on the December 8 revolutionary movement into bags.[391]
</quote>
The NRC assumed sole responsibility for the rebellion when police conducted the new interrogations necessary to reconstruct the case. Numerous detainees corrected their previous statements and were later released. The Zaragoza unions declared a general strike, which would last, they said, until all those imprisoned for the December actions were free. The situation was explosive. The government was afraid that militants would attempt to break their comrades out of prison and thus decided to transfer the members of the NRC to the Burgos provincial prison in late February 1934.
The city of Burgos was the complete opposite of Zaragoza. Whereas there was a strong workers’ movement in the latter, the Church prevailed in the former, along with its retinue of convents and churches. The military had troops in multiple barracks there as well. It was the classic reactionary Castilian city and, needless to say, the local population was terrified to learn that FAI leaders were being held there. Compared to Zaragoza, the Burgos prison meant almost complete isolation for the internees. They were the only political prisoners and internal surveillance made relations with common prisoners impossible. But, despite everything, this isolation made it easier for them to reflect on important events taking place among Socialists at the time.
The Socialists’ electoral failure weakened Indalecio Prieto’s influence in the party and strengthened that of Largo Caballero. Caballero’s views had already begun to change and, in a December 1933 speech, he declared that it was necessary to transform the bourgeois republic into a socialist republic and advocated working class unity. By 1934, Largo Caballero’s radical views became the norm among SP leaders. He had also the support of the Socialist Youth’s publication <em>Renovación</em> and the party’s theoretical magazine, <em>Leviatán</em>. Araquistáin edited the latter, which was breaking radically with the social democratic line.
Besteiro, Trifón Gómez, and Saborit led the Socialist Party’s rightwing, which still advocated collaboration with the Republicans. As a critique of that position, and to relieve his conscience, Largo Caballero publicly admitted that the party’s collaboration with the Republicans had forced it to approve all the coercive laws that were now muzzling the workers’ movement and that Lerroux was using to his advantage.
The Socialist Party had approximately 69,000 members at that time, although its real strength lay in its control over the UGT. The party’s rightwing dominated the National Committee, which is why it rejected Largo Caballero’s December proposal to launch a revolutionary movement to seize political power (Largo Caballero’s proposition had no connection with the CNT’s December rebellion). In January, the divide in Socialist circles began to have an impact on the UGT and it was then that Largo Caballero became Secretary of the UGT’s Executive Commission. From then on, the UGT’s political stance became more radical. It had approximately one million members, including 150,000 peasants organized in the Federation of Land Workers.
Libertarians followed developments in the UGT and Socialist Party with great interest. Orobón Fernández was the first anarchist to extend a hand to them. On February 4, 1934, he published a long article in <em>La Tierra</em> titled “Revolutionary Alliance, Yes! Factional Opportunism, No!” The article analyzed the Spanish situation and outlined the huge errors that the Socialists had committed since 1931. It also pointed out the reactionary nature of the Spanish bourgeoisie and denounced the criminal offensive against the CNT that had begun in 1931 and continued in the present. Orobón Fernández called for proletarian unity against the danger of fascism:
<quote>
How? Through the center and the periphery, from underneath, from above, and from the middle. What is essential is that it is based on a revolutionary platform that presupposes loyalty, consistency, and integrity on the part of the pact’s signers. To bury oneself in long discussions about methods of rapprochement would be devastatingly Byzantine. It is necessary to want the rapprochement sincerely and that alone is enough. This isn’t time for literary competitions or demagogic obstruction.
</quote>
The article’s headings summarized its content: “Combative unity, a question of life or death,” “To oppose unity is to oppose the revolution,” and “Party deals, no.” (In the last section, he criticized the Communist Party for printing falsehoods in its newspapers, particularly for its statements about the December rebellion, where it had the nerve to write: “The Communist Party immediately took part in the struggle and admonished the <em>putschist anarchists.</em>”) He concluded his article by outlining the foundation of what could be called a <em>platform for a revolutionary working class alliance</em> based on <em>direct democracy</em>. He divided it into five sections:
a) A strategic plan excluding all bourgeois politics and with a clearly revolutionary character.
b) Acceptance of revolutionary worker democracy as a foundation.
c) Socialization of the means of production.
d) A federated economy, managed directly by the workers.
e) All executive bodies necessary for non-economic activities (political-administrative) will be controlled, elected, and recallable by the people. [392]
Orobón Fernández’s article was well received by CNT members in Madrid and Asturias. However, in the rest of Spain, particularly Barcelona, where one lived from crackdown to crackdown, militants did not imagine the workers’ alliance as something that could be established from above. There were strenuous debates about the issue, which the National Committee hoped to clarify at a national meeting of regionals held in Madrid on February 13. There was a serious conflict between the Catalan, Center, and Asturian regionals at this meeting. Catalonia alleged that a workers’ alliance between the UGT and the CNT could not be made from above (later events would confirm the correctness of this assertion). Meeting participants nominated a committee to analyze the question and publicly called on the UGT to declare its position on an alliance:
<quote>
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo implores the UGT to state its revolutionary aspirations clearly and publicly. But it must take into account that a revolution is not a simple change in governments—like what occurred on April 14—but rather the total suppression of capitalism and the state.[393]
</quote>
This debate naturally had echoes in the prisons, particularly in Burgos, where the NRC members were being held. Durruti articulated his opinion on the matter in a letter to <em>Liberto Callejas</em>:
<quote>
The workers, real workers, have to make up the alliance if it’s going to be revolutionary. No party, even a socialist party, can participate in a pact of that nature. For me, the factory committees are the basic organs of a workers’ alliance, which the workers elect in open assemblies. Federated by neighborhood, district, locality, county, region, and nationally, I believe those committees will be the authentic expression of the base. In other words, I interpret the issue in the same way that we interpret everything: from the bottom up, with diminishing power as the bodies move further away from the factory, workshop, or mine committees. To think of the worker alliance in the opposite way is to denaturalize it. That’s why I don’t share some comrades’ view that a workers’ alliance can be made in “any way.” Of course, one of those “any ways” is from above, through the CNT and UGT national committees. But I reject that, due to the bureaucratic danger that it implies. I repeat: for a workers’ alliance to be authentically revolutionary it has to be felt, loved, and defended by the workers in the workplaces, because the primary goal of that alliance is to create worker control over the means of production, in order to establish socialism.[394]
</quote>
Durruti’s comrades in Catalonia agreed with his perspective on the workers’ alliance, but other militants imprisoned with him did not. This was true of Cipriano Mera, who was in Madrid’s orbit of influence (and whose spokesperson, as we know, was Orobón Fernández).
The UGT did not respond to the call that the CNT made to it at its February national meeting, which suggested that its leaders did not want the type of revolution envisioned by the CNT. Years later it would come to light that the Socialist Party had drafted a political program in January 1934 that focused overwhelmingly on expelling the Lerrouxists from power. It was not genuinely revolutionary and was perfectly consistent with the party’s reformist practice. In the program, it declared: “If the revolution is victorious, the Socialist Party and UGT will have room for those who contributed to the revolution’s triumph in the new government that is created.” [395]
This clause suggested that the Socialist Party either believed that it was capable of making the revolution alone or, more likely, that it did not want one and thought the best way to prevent it was by rejecting a revolutionary workers’ alliance. Both things were complementary. They also continued to think of the Republicans as allies and their vision of socialism did not go beyond a Republic like the one existing between 1931 and 1933. The Lerroux-Gil Robles alliance was bearing fruit: on February 11, 1934 the government issued a decree that annulled the few effects of the Agrarian Reform Law in the countryside and that prompted the eviction of twenty-eight thousand peasants who had installed themselves on the large estates. Rural caciques took the initiative to cut salaries. The peasantry’s situation returned to more or less what it had been prior to 1930.
However, neither the workers in the countryside nor the cities were going to retreat. The years of struggle had given them a more acute and accentuated class consciousness. When the state tried to crush them, their response was agitation, strikes, and sabotage; confrontations between peasants and police; the construction workers strike in Madrid, where the CNT began to place itself on equal footing with the UGT and the forty-four hour workweek was secured (paying forty-eight); the metalworkers’ strike in the same city; and shootouts between Falange and workers’ groups. The question of the political prisoners came up in Parliament. The Rightwing was in a rush to pardon the leaders of the on August 10, 1932 rebellion (Sanjurjo and others) as well as various financiers imprisoned for the capital evasion. Amnesty was proposed as a way to resolve their situation, which would also benefit many workers arrested during the revolt in December 1933.
The amnesty decree was approved in late April 1934. The President of the Republic was willing to pardon Sanjurjo and other leaders of the 1932 rebellion, but refused to restore them to their posts. This caused a governmental crisis, which was quickly resolved when Lerroux was replaced by the president’s right-hand man, the lawyer from Valencia, Ricardo Samper (April 28, 1934).
An apparently insignificant event occurred around the same time: Monarchists Antonio Goicoechea, General Barrera, Rafael Olazábal, and Antonio Lizarza traveled to Italy to meet with Mussolini and Italo Balbo, the Italian Minister of War. Together they decided to organize a coup in Spain that would abolish the Republic and restore the Monarchy. The Italian government gave the conspirators 1,500,000 pesetas to begin preparations. Mussolini’s support for the plan reflected his desire to control the Balearic Islands and thus close England and France’s maritime passage.
Durruti and his prison mates left the Burgos prison when the government proclaimed amnesty. Durruti needed to return to Barcelona immediately, but lacked the funds to make the trip. Ramón Alvarez, a young Asturian—who, despite his youth, was Secretary of the CNT’s Asturian Regional Committee and had gone to prison in that capacity in December—gave Durruti what money he had, while he waited for the Asturians to send him some cash so he could get back to Gijón, his place of residence. [396]
** CHAPTER XVIII. The general strike in Zaragoza
Durruti left Burgos with the comrades from Zaragoza who had been imprisoned with him (Ejarque, Joaquín Ascaso, the Alcrudo brothers, etc) and they paid a visit to local militants when they stopped in the capital of Aragón. They could see the effects of the general strike declared in solidarity with the prisoners as soon as they set foot in the Zaragoza train station. The unions said that the strike would last until the government freed everyone detained for the December events and, since there were still militants in prison, the strike continued. Nothing functioned in the city except vital services like hospitals, dairies, and bakeries. All the other branches of production were suspended, including lighting and public services like garbage collection. Zaragoza seemed like a city under siege, but there was enormous enthusiasm among the workers. The CNT in other parts of the country offered to send shipments of food, but the Aragónians rejected this and only agreed, after much insistence from Francisco Ascaso, to let CNT members elsewhere care for their children.
When Durruti arrived, some Barcelona militants were already there, organizing the shipment of youngsters to the Catalan capital. There was a group from Madrid as well, which would also take responsibility for a large number of the strikers’ children. After meeting with the CNT men from Catalonia, Durruti went to Barcelona to prepare the children’s reception. During the trip, Durruti read the underground paper that Barcelona’s Local Federation of Anarchist Groups published as a substitute for the banned <em>Tierra y Libertad</em>. Its description of the situation in Barcelona reminded him of the worst times of Anido and Arlegui:
<quote>
The Catalan prisons are packed with inmates, who are treated terribly. Rojas the executioner has returned to run Barcelona’s Modelo prison. Our newspapers are banned, and so <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> and <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> can’t reach the working masses. Police raid our editorial offices. They arrest magazine editors and staff. Authorities fined <em>Tierra y Libertad</em>’s supplement [a theoretical magazine] five thousand pesetas for no reason at all. They outlaw CNT unions. Cafes and bars where comrades meet are now “secret meeting places.”
Thugs and police hunt down FAI and CNT militants with unprecedented ruthlessness. Militants suffer brutal beatings in the police stations. Police searches and frisks after the recent holdups outrage even the most spineless.
Authorities hold our comrades for a handful of days at whim. Our female comrades go to prison for minor offensives. All of this occurs in Catalonia, under the aegis of Luis I, President of the autonomous Catalan government.
What should we do? We have to respond from the underground into which the Generalitat has forced us. The illegal publication of this newspaper is the beginning of our response to the threats made by Catalan authorities, who say that they’re ready to exterminate us. The FAI begins a new revolutionary stage with this publication. Comrades should distribute it in the factories, workshops, workers’ neighborhoods, and in every workplace. We don’t like caverns and prefer to propagate our ideas in sunlight but, since we’ve been forced underground, we go there with faith in victory, enthusiasm, selflessness, and confidence in our strength and the righteousness of the working class’s daily struggle for bread and freedom.[397]
</quote>
Reading that article, Durruti must have thought of the hypocrisy of politicians. Durruti had conspired with Francesc Macià in Brussels and France and on multiple occasions had provided the old Catalanist with resources that he needed. During Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, the <em>Solidarios</em> acquired weapons for the Catalanists who were now beating CNT men in the police stations. Macià reached the height of political theatricality when he and Durruti were both at a rally in Lérida shortly after the proclamation of the Republic. Hugging him, he tearfully said: “In you I embrace all the anarchists who fought so valiantly for the Republic!” A few days after this emotional outburst, the Generalitat’s autonomous police attacked the 1931 May Day demonstration. They had even had the nerve to declare that it was impossible to clean up the repressive forces because Catalans still lacked full self-government. Of course, the enactment of the Catalan Autonomy Statue did not stop authorities from hounding the CNT with unprecedented severity (and this, for an organization with an endless history of persecution). Durruti was shocked to see his daughter Colette when he returned to his home on Fresser Street. He hadn’t been able to watch her grow or learn to walk or speak, and now she was talking, running around, and infusing everything with her little girl’s joyousness.
The pleasures of home did not last long. That very night several comrades came to talk with him and the subject of government repression dominated their conversation. They told him about the loss of two good friends at the hands of the police. One was Bruno Alpini, an Italian comrade who Durruti had met in Belgium. He worked as a shoemaker on Rogent Street, not far from Durruti’s home, and Mimi used to take shoes to him for repair. Bruno’s activities in Barcelona had more to do with Italy than Spain: he sustained contacts with the comrades living under Mussolini’s regime and provided them with weapons and other types of support. His elimination was inexplicable unless Italian and Catalan authorities were working together and had decided to kill Bruno because of his revolutionary efforts against the Italian fascist government. Whatever the reason, Bruno was arrested at work around 9:00 in the morning and found dead at 11:00 that evening on Cruz Cubierta Street with six bullets lodged in his head and one in the nape of his neck. The newspapers published a police statement that said the following: “Bruno Alpini, a thirty year old Italian from Milan, was arrested while carrying out a robbery. He resisted, but police were able to capture him. He tried to escape when they were taking him to the Police Station and it was then that the unfortunate accident of his death occurred.” It was the same excuse as always: the “ <em>ley de fugas</em>.”
The incident did not end with Bruno Alpini’s murder. A young militant from the Manufacturing and Textile Workers’ Union who went by the name “El Cèntim” was a good friend of Aplini’s and wanted to avenge his death by assassinating Miguel Badía, the General Commissioner of Public Order. “El Cèntim” knew that Badía frequented a cabaret on the Paralelo and waited for him one night at the cabaret’s exit. He tried to fire his pistol at the person he held responsible for Alpini’s death, but unfortunately “El Cèntim” did not accomplish his aim; Badía’s numerous guards protected their patron and shot down the assailant, leaving him dead in the street. [398]
These constant losses enraged Durruti. He had a generous spirit and formed strong bonds with his friends and comrades, despite his reputation for cruelty, which was cultivated so assiduously by the bourgeois press. Durruti repudiated violence and never used it willingly; he only accepted it as a last resort and something that had to be applied as carefully as possible. Nonetheless, that night his gestures and demeanor suggested that he would have destroyed Badía if he could have laid a hand on him.
One of the first things Durruti did in Barcelona was discuss the situation in Zaragoza with the CNT Regional Committee, whose Secretary happened to be Francisco Ascaso. For the moment, there was nothing they could do but attend to the thousands of children that were about to arrive. Barcelona’s population had responded enthusiastically to the CNT’s call for solidarity; more than twenty-five thousand came to <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>’s editorial office and pledged their willingness to take in the youngsters. This was the second time that a fraternal demonstration of this type had occurred in Spain. The first was in 1917 during the long Riotinto miners strike, although now the magnitude of the act was much greater, given that Zaragoza was a large city.
Ascaso told Durruti that they were likely to have problems with the Catalan authorities. For them, it was a slap in the face that the CNT—which they were persecuting and had forced underground—could still mobilize the Barcelona population so dramatically. When the Barcelona City Council found out that the CNT was preparing to receive the Zaragoza children, it sent a representative to the local Aragónian Community Center to say that the Generalitat would take care of the youngsters. CNT militants and sympathizers were a majority on the Aragónian Community Center’s administrative council and the group had already voted to support the Confederation’s initiative. They told the Generalitat’s spokesperson that “Aragónians living in Barcelona have a responsibility to help their striking compatriots and fully intend to honor it.” It was the Generalitat’s interference that made Ascaso think that authorities would devise something to try to stop that act of workers’ solidarity. Durruti reproached him for his skepticism and told him that would be too outrageous.
Durruti explained the problems that he was having finding work. Ascaso said that he would put him in contact with comrades from the Food Workers’ Union. With the arrival of summer, they could get him a job as a seasonal worker in one of the two beer factories (“Damm” or “Moritz.”) They agreed to meet the following day, May 6, in the Soli office. The families that were going to care for the Zaragoza children had been told to gather there that day as well.
That May 6 was a Sunday. The expedition was due to arrive at 6:00 in the evening, but by 4:00 pm there were so many people there that it was impossible to take a step on Consejo de Ciento Street or the block holding the Soli editorial office. More than twenty-five thousand people had come to receive the children. Women and youngsters were everywhere; militants had brought their whole families in order to emphasize that day’s fraternal and comradely character.
At 6:00 in the evening, a CNT activist announced over a loudspeaker that the children had been significantly delayed because the residents of several towns along the way insisted on greeting them and expressing their support for the strikers. The expedition was now scheduled to arrive around nine. Many of those waiting decided to stay where they were, for fear of losing their place near the building’s entrance. The size of the crowd remained essentially unchanged.
The expedition was not there at 9:00 pm. Several CNT taxi drivers became suspicious and set off in their cars to find it. It was nearing 10:00 pm and there was still no news. People were wondering about the delay when a cavalry squad of Security Guards appeared out of nowhere and began to charge on their horses, shouting “Clear the area!” The crowd contracted into itself and women and children cried out. The men, fearing the worst, tried to protect their <em>compañeras</em> and sons and daughters by surrounding them and turning their backs to the Guards. The horsemen advanced, knocking people down and stomping them. There was tremendous shouting. A representative from the Aragónian Community Center, foreseeing a massacre, urged everyone to stay calm. Another member of the same group tried to speak with the Guards, but firecrackers suddenly started exploding everywhere. As if that were a sign, the Security Guards redoubled their attacks.
A large number of Assault Guards emerged from nearby vans and joined in. With truncheons in hand, they begin to attack without concern for the numerous women and children present. There were scenes of unbelievable sadism. The men did their best to sustain the protective cordon around their families while the guards mercilessly pounded on their backs.
The yelling and children’s screams mixed into a horrendous sound. It seemed like an inferno. The level of terror increased when the Assault Guards began to fire their pistols. A space began to clear and bodies were visible on the ground. There were several injured and one dead person. Some guards grabbed the leg of the corpse and threw it into the middle of the street. Ascaso watched this unimaginable brutality from the balcony of the Soli office.
He was absolutely enraged. Durruti, at his side, regretted chastising Ascaso for his suspicions the previous day. But what to do? The people’s response was more instinctual than reasoned. Those forming the human wall against the police valiantly endured the onslaught, which enabled the women and children to move to a safer space. Later, those remaining decided to stop passively accepting the blows and attacked the guards en masse. The guards were surprised and withdrew, although not without first taking some well- directed swipes. [399]
People spontaneously went toward the city center, forcing the streetcars, metros, and buses to come to a standstill. They set streetcars alight and attacked a police station, causing the police to flee through the windows. Workers declared a general strike that night, which would last until May 12. Proletarian Barcelona unanimously showed its disdain for the authorities. But where were the children? During the tumult, one of the taxi drivers had been able get to the Soli office and let them know what had happened in Molins de Rei, near Barcelona. The Public Order Station, determined to prevent that expression of proletarian solidarity, mobilized several companies of Assault Guards, who blocked the numerous buses carrying the youngsters. The residents of the town struggled with them, but the Guards managed to carry out their orders and divert the caravan to Tarrasa, where they intended to hold the children. Ascaso, Durruti, and other comrades set off at once for Tarrasa. When they got there, they found that the town’s anarchist groups had already mobilized. Everyone went to the esplanade where the buses were parked and under armed guard. Durruti and Ascaso immediately walked toward them, protected by local workers. When they reached the first bus, they shouted to the driver: “The last stop is the CNT. Quickly, to Barcelona!”
The people of Tarrasa joined the children in the buses. The taxi carrying Durruti and Ascaso placed itself at the head of the caravan. That night, the children from the Zaragoza slept soundly in the designated proletarian homes in Barcelona.
** CHAPTER XIX. A historic meeting between the CNT and Companys
Scholars of this extremely agitated period in Spain’s history have passed over this meeting between the CNT and Generalitat President Lluís Companys. Indeed, we have never seen it cited and were ourselves unaware of it for a time. We learned of the meeting only by chance, while reading the CNT’s underground publications from the era.
There is an article on page three of the first issue of <em>La Voz Confederal</em>, (dated June 2, 1934) entitled “Report on the meeting between the President of the Generalitat and comrades Sanz, Isgleas, García Oliver, Herreros, and Carbó, representatives of the CNT’s Catalan Regional Confederation.”
The meeting took place on Wednesday May 9, 1934, three days after the brutal attack described in the previous chapter. Had the encounter been arranged before or after those events? We don’t know. We also do not know if a CNT regional gathering had mandated the meeting or if it was arranged by militants in some other capacity, although it is notable that Ascaso, the Regional Committee’s Secretary, did not participate. A curious fact about the comrades meeting with Company stands out: all except for Ricardo Sanz were Catalan (Sanz was from Valencia). Was this an attempt to show Companys that the CNT’s leading men were not <em>Murcianos</em>, as the Catalanist newspapers of the Esquerra and the Estat Català continually claimed? Possibly. And it might have also been a way to appeal to Companys’s nationalism and thus strengthen their position in the discussion. Whatever the case, their effort was doomed to fail at the outset. The conflicts between the CNT and the Catalan government were equally or even more severe than those between it and the Madrid government. There was a social war between authority—the government—and the freedom represented by the CNT, an organization created by the working class to destroy capitalism and the state. There can be no understanding between enemies of this sort. A brief truce is the very most that can be expected.
Before examining the meeting, we should point out several things. One issue pertains to García Oliver, whom we saw distance himself from Durruti and Ascaso during the discussion of the December 8, 1933 rebellion. By this time, Ascaso and Durruti functioned as a pair, whereas there is a vacuum with respect to García Oliver’s activity. We wonder if his participation in the meeting with Companys indicates that he was moving away from his earlier revolutionary positions, given that it went against the prevailing current of opinion within the CNT and FAI. There is no evidence of objections to the meeting in the CNT, but a careful reading of the editorial in the fourth issue of FAI (June 1934) suggests some discord. The title is suggestive: “Warning, a yellow traffic light!” It discusses disagreements within the CNT and the Esquerra’s continued efforts to recruit CNT activists. It also underscored the brusque change within the Socialists, who seemed to wink at the CNT as they talked about “social revolution.” The piece says:
“Warning! The traffic signal is turning from yellow to incandescent red! It’s time to expose the loafer, the opportunist, and the informer, who hide behind their bureaucratic positions and leaderesque vanities.” In another article, while discussing the last meeting of anarchist groups in Catalonia, the paper declared:
<quote>
The FAI has embarked on a new stage of its revolutionary journey in Barcelona and its effects will soon be felt. The recent signs of revisionism in the Confederation should prompt all anarchists to be vigilant. The FAI will know how to carry out its duty with regard to such things...
</quote>
Nevertheless, the publication also carried an optimistic piece titled “Salutation.” It noted that the FAI had urged the CNT to print underground propaganda to ensure that the workers were not left without guidance. Welcoming the CNT’s decision to do so, <em>FAI</em> wrote: “Clearly our call resonated in Confederal circles, given the appearance of <em>La Voz Confederal</em>, the underground publication of the unions in the Catalan Region. We send a fraternal greeting to the paper from the pages of <em>FAI</em>.”
It appears that the matter of the CNT’s legality was what the delegates hoped to resolve at their meeting with Companys in May. Their effort, as we will see, failed and the CNT remained underground. We will look at the May 9 meeting.
There is a preliminary note in the account of the meeting printed in <em>La Voz Confederal</em> specifying that the meeting with Companys was arranged between him and the CNT as an organization. It is important to bear this in mind to understand the attitude that Companys adopted. He stated that “as a representative of the government, he could not have a dialogue with delegates of an illegal organization, which would be a clear contradiction in terms.” The CNT activists responded “that they were authorized by the Regional Committee to speak in its name and, since they were not accepted as such, they considered the meeting over.” Apparently their attitude “caused an abrupt and clear change in Companys.” He stated: “Evidently, you’re accustomed to playing with words and making them a matter of the utmost importance.” They replied that it was not a question of words but of something substantive, to which he responded: “OK, since words aren’t the important point, we will forget the issue. I receive you as representatives of the CNT.”
The meeting lasted two hours. According to <em>La Voz Confederal</em>, the CNT men gave Companys “a detailed statement, explaining that the government’s ruthless actions against the Confederation are making its life impossible.” A key issue was clarifying why there was such an acute difference in how authorities treated the CNT nationally and how they treated it in Catalonia, and even a difference in how they treated it in the rest of Catalonia and Barcelona. In other parts of Spain or the three Catalan provinces, the government might close a union, but never as completely and permanently as in Barcelona. The pretext for banning the CNT in Barcelona was that it did not submit to the law of April 8, although that was patently absurd. The CNT did not submit to that law anywhere. On the contrary, it continued to abide by the 1876 Law of Associations, which the government had not repealed and remained in vigor. Indeed, Interior Minister Casares Quiroga publicly admitted that it was not obligatory to observe the law of April 8: “If they consider it more consistent with their interests, the unions can follow the 1876 Law of Associations, which was reinforced by the August 6, 1906 decree and which has not been annulled.” According to the CNT representatives, Companys “claimed that he was unaware of these things and limited himself to taking note.”
They also protested the practice of the “ <em>ley de fugas</em>” and the harassment and suspension of the workers’ newspapers. Lluís Companys again limited himself to “taking note” when they raised these issues.
At the end of the meeting, he declared that “he had heard the CNT’s complaints with pleasure, due to the frankness with which they had been expressed.”
On May 12, the Generalitat sent a note to the press, stating:
<quote>
The President informed the government about the complaints made by members of the CNT, who assert that they receive an inferior treatment in Catalonia as compared to that applied to them by Republican authorities elsewhere. The government does not know how it could improve its treatment of citizens or socio-political organizations, because it has no directive other than the law, within which it hopes all can co-exist, without the need to force them to do so. The government protects all ideologies within the legal framework, without distinctions or exceptions of any sort. But we cannot make deals or accord special treatment to any group, as this would undermine the authority and prestige of the state, which is a direct expression of the free and articulated will of the people.
Consequently, the government sees no reason to change its conduct and will continue as before. It will fulfill its duty and act in the interest of the moral and effective defense of autonomous Catalonia and the democratic Republic.[400]
</quote>
If the CNT men had hoped that Companys might alter the government’s stance toward their organization, they must have been discouraged after reading the above statement. The Generalitat made it clear that it would not modify its posture, which was a duty to the “moral and effective defense of autonomous Catalonia and the democratic Republic.” Did autonomous Catalonia really demand that the government fight a war against the CNT? Or was it actually imposed by Miguel Badía and Josep Dencàs, who held the Esquerra and Lluís Companys as captives?
Events demonstrate that it was Badía and Dencàs who dominated Catalan politics at the time. These two individuals—founders of a fascist ideology that lived off Catalan ultra-nationalism—wanted nothing less than to establish an authoritarian regime that would militarize life in region. It is safe to assume—given what was later learned about Josep Dencàs and Mussolini’s penetration into Spain through the island of Majorca—that Dencàs was operating under the guidance of Mussolini’s agents and attempting to destroy the workers’ movement and push Companys into taking impossible positions on Catalan independence.
Did Companys know that he was a pawn of the Estat Català? Possibly. This would explain his frenzied attempt to create his own “escamots” during those months. He entrusted that mission to Catalanist deputy Graus Jassaus—soon to be Badía’s victim—who understood that Companys wanted to free himself of the burden of the rightwing Catalanists.
Catalan authorities’ preoccupation with these power struggles in the region made it impossible for them to institute reforms that might mitigate the suffering caused by the deep economic crisis. The CNT denounced the mediocrity of Catalan politics and the dirty game played by its leaders, but couldn’t do more than take swipes. The government’s permanent crackdown on the CNT was not a secret to anyone and was in fact a product of Catalan politics itself. Manuel Cruells brings this out clearly when he writes:
<quote>
The Esquerra had profoundly mediocre goals and plans, which it tried to conceal by feeding demagogic propaganda to the Catalan masses. That is why the autonomous Catalan government turned toward a more verbal than genuine nationalism, on the part of its followers within the ruling party and Dencàs’s “escamots.” It also turned, as a counter-weight, toward a <em>novecentista</em>[401] democratic republicanism, which was a little imprecise and exaggerated for President Companys’s followers.... The period between Macià’s death [December 25, 1933] and the events of October is marked politically by inflammatory ultra-nationalism from the ruling party and by a confrontation, also a little demagogic, between the “rabassaire” [small tenant farmer] agrarian movement and the large Catalan landowners. These two currents, opposed since time immemorial within the same governmental party, became perfect allies when the conflict pit the autonomous government against the central government, thanks to imprudent acts of both.[402]
</quote>
Cruells take us to the heart of the problems weighing on the Generalitat at the time. They will be the cause of the events on October 6.
On April 12, 1934, the Generalitat enacted a law on agricultural contracts [ <em>Llei de Contractes de Conreu</em>], which the Catalan Parliament approved. This law changed how land was rented and benefited the so-called “rabassaires” (renters, medium sized landholders, etc.). [403] The Lliga Catalana—the party of the large Catalan bourgeoisie that Cambó led—pushed the large landowners to appeal the law in the Spanish Republic’s Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees, which they forced to determine whether or not the Generalitat had authority to legislate on such matters. On June 8, the Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees declared that the law approved by the Catalan Parliament was null and void.
Catalans saw the Madrid government’s annulment of this law as an attack on their sovereign authority, although in reality the central government had merely bestowed “autonomy” to Catalonia. We have pointed out how vehement Catalan nationalism had become, and this helps explain the Catalans’ response. Lluís Companys, pressured by the ultras, replaced the Catalan Interior Minister (Joan Selvás), who was seen as too moderate, with Josep Dencàs, a proto-fascist Catalan nationalist. He made this change on June 10, two days after the ruling from the Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees. Companys then presented a new law to the Catalan Parliament on June 12, which was a verbatim reproduction of the law contested by the central government. It was approved. Esquerra Republicana deputies withdrew from the Spanish Parliament to show that a battle with Madrid had begun. The Generalitat was at war with the central government from then on and carried out a jingoistic campaign designed to win the multitudes over to its cause. To do so, it had to discredit the CNT and undermine the workers’ faith in the organization. That is the source of its persistent claims about the CNT’s “banditry,” the FAI’s “Murciano” composition, and the endless slanderous clichés that filled the Catalanist press at the time.
** CHAPTER XX. From the damm boycott to the cells of the headquarters
Durruti had been intensely active since returning to Barcelona in May 1934, in the CNT unions as well as FAI groups. His activist commitments and need to look for a job made it impossible for him to carry on a normal life in the way that it is commonly imagined when one is in a couple and has a child. It is thus difficult to say much about Durruti’s family life, but we can offer a few anecdotes, which help give a human dimension to his personality. In his daily behavior, Durruti had overcome many of the customs of Spanish men in relation to women. Since he was blacklisted by the bourgeoisie, it was Mimi who bore the burden of household expenses by working as a box office clerk in a cinema or in the “chain” of metallurgic or textile factories. Durruti did his best to care for their little girl and attend to the home. It was not unusual for his frequent visitors to find him in the kitchen wearing an apron or bathing Colette while singing her a children’s or revolutionary song with his deep voice. His comrades often asked if Mimi was sick when they found him doing these things. In such instances, he would say sarcastically: “When the woman is working and the man isn’t, the man is the woman of the house. When will you stop thinking like the bourgeoisie, that women are men’s servants? It’s enough that society is divided into classes. We’re not going to make even more classes by creating differences between men and women in our own homes!” [404]
These exchanges took place repeatedly, although things were different with his closer friends, particularly Ascaso. During the latter’s visits, the two men spoke while Durruti peeled potatoes or cleaned beans. Ascaso, like his other intimates, knew him well enough not to be surprised by his behavior. Durruti was characteristically optimistic, although he went through a period of depression during this time. He was not happy with how things were going within the CNT. He was also frustrated with militants who, in his opinion, did not work hard enough to educate themselves and learn about events, which he thought was essential if activists were to be well-rounded. In his case, he tried to read publications from diverse political tendencies, in Spanish as well as French. His wide-ranging reading was apparent in letters that he sent to his brother Pedro, especially when he reflected on problems like the war, which seemed like as an imminent threat on the world horizon. Durruti’s will to overcome and sharp intuition gave him an intellectual equilibrium that revealed itself during discussions of topics like Catalanism or the Workers’ Alliance, which was promoted by the Socialists at the time. But he was never opportunistic: he grasped reality and tried to impose anarchism on it, always conscious of the historical role that anarchists had to play. For him, labor activism was simply an instrument of the struggle, into which one had to constantly inject a political stimulus to prevent it from stagnating in economic reformism. As he understood it, that was the anarchists’ specific task. Durruti did everything he could to bring that revolutionary perspective to the workers’ movement and help it evolve into a conscious, revolutionary force capable of abolishing wage labor and destroying capitalism. In theory, at least, that was the CNT’s goal although sometimes it contradicted itself in practice, such as by holding the lamentable meeting with Companys. On the topic, Durruti said:
<quote>
Why did we fight “the Thirty” if we’re also practicing “thirty-ism”? Isn’t it a form of “thirty-ism” to complain to Companys about the fact that we’re persecuted? What’s the difference between Companys, Casares Quiroga, and Maura? Aren’t they all declared enemies of the working class? Aren’t they all bourgeois? They persecute us. Yes, of course they do. We’re a threat to the system that they represent. If we don’t want them to harass us, then we should just submit to their laws, integrate ourselves into their system, and bureaucratize ourselves to the marrow. They we can be perfect traitors to the working class, like the Socialists and everyone else who lives at workers’ expense.
They won’t bother us if we do that. But do we really want to become that? No. We have to draw on our creative imagination. Our strength lay in our capacity to resist. They may weaken us, but we’ll never fold. Blunders like the one made could turn us into political opportunists, into that something we don’t want to be.[405]
</quote>
Durruti believed that extraordinary times lay ahead and knew that they had to prepare for them. The working class would not generate these new conflicts; they would emerge from the very complexities of Spanish society itself, whose clashing internal contradictions would reveal the bitter antagonisms between the social classes. The socio-political crisis was imminent for Durruti and, if revolutionaries weren’t ready to confront it, they would not only lose a unique opportunity to make a revolution in Spain, but the working class might also suffer a terrible defeat. He concluded that they had to devise a strategy of gunpowder and men, one capable of shutting down the bourgeoisie. “Our methods,” he said, “may change at times, but our strikes must always weaken the enemy and strengthen the working class.” Of course 342
Durruti was not content with mere theorizing, but jumped at any opportunity to practice his ideals. He demonstrated this during the Damm boycott.
Durruti had been unemployed since returning from Burgos. Ascaso suggested that he go to the Food Workers’ Union and join the “work pool” there, which he did. The summer season started in late May and the beer factories had begun operating at full capacity. They divided the day into three, eight-hour work-shifts, but they still needed additional “seasonal” personnel. Durruti was among the first group of “seasonals” sent by the Food Workers’ Union to the Damm Factory. However, when the men arrived, they were dismayed to discover that management agreed to hire all of them except Durruti. What to do? They immediately considered going on strike, but Durruti suggested another tactic that would be much more effective: a boycott of Damm’s products. The workers would continue producing, but—if the boycott was well-orchestrated—the company would be unable to sell its goods. That is exactly what happened. In fact, the action was so popular that not only were Damm’s products boycotted in Barcelona, but port workers also refused to load them onto ships and transporters declined to ferry them around the country. The beer-maker finally gave in and negotiated a contract with the Food Workers’ Union in April 1935 that ended the boycott. The contract won eight months of back pay for the unions’ workers and required that the company reimburse the union for the costs of union propaganda and lawyers’ fees (incurred while they defended workers charged with sabotage). This unmitigated victory inspired the Moritz beer workers to demand salary increases and better working conditions, both of which they received immediately.
The political situation was becoming explosive when the Damm boycott was declared, particularly because of the Rightwing’s policies toward the peasantry and battles over the law on agricultural contracts. Social relations in the countryside—especially in Andalusia—were increasingly conflicted. The Federation of Land Workers, which was a UGT affiliate but in open rebellion against the organization’s national leadership, declared a general strike in June. Authorities threatened strike leaders with prison, but they carried on nonetheless. The strike was general in Jaén, Granada, Cáceres, Badajoz, and Ciudad Real, and partial in Córdoba and Toledo. CNT peasants used the action as an opportunity to strengthen their ties with the UGT workers and a grassroots peasant alliance emerged, just as the anarchists had wanted. This united front from below—formed directly by the peasant workers themselves—frightened Largo Caballero. He criticized the peasant leaders harshly, alleging that the strike weakened the workers’ capacity to participate in the Socialist Party’s revolutionary plans. However, what actually scared Largo Caballero was not the erosion of strength—a debatable assertion—but the formation of a rank and file worker-peasant alliance outside the normal channels of union bureaucracy. If workers did the same thing elsewhere, their grassroots initiative would overwhelm the Socialist bureaucrats and disrupt their conspiratorial plans. That was the real source of the Socialist leader’s fear.
In the heat of these events, the CNT National Committee called a national meeting of regionals for June 23 in Madrid. In anticipation of the meeting, it urged regional Confederations to study the issue of the Workers’ Alliance.
Although they had been forced to hold the regional meeting in Catalonia clandestinely, the organizers tried to make it as representative as possible. Durruti played an important in preparations for the gathering. Following the example set by the Andalusian peasants and others, attendees decided to challenge the UGT and created Alliance Committees on workers’ foundations. They absolutely discarded any agreement with the UGT that was not premised on their February call for a revolutionary workers’ alliance. The regional meeting nominated Durruti, Ascaso, and Eusebio Carbó to defend these positions.
There was an important disagreement between the Asturian Regional and rest of the country at the national meeting, although we should note that the Center Regional defended Asturias (without agreeing to its position). The source of the disagreement lay in the fact that CNT militants in Asturias had formed some alliances with the UGT in their region and allowed the Asturian Socialist Federation to become a signer of their accord. Critics reproached them for the following reasons:
a) The UGT had not responded to the call made to it in February and the CNT needed to maintain a coherent position as a whole. Asturias weakened the CNT nationally by forming an independent alliance with the UGT.
b) A workers’ alliance between the two labor organizations is positive, but why include the Asturian Socialist Federation?
c) Such an alliance made it easier for UGT leaders to demand that the CNT sign an accord in which the Socialist Party plays a role. That would be a repetition of the errors of the 1917 alliance.
In essence, they told the Asturians that even though the exceptional conditions they faced might justify an alliance, the presence of the Asturian Socialist Federation would limit its effectiveness and have a negative impact on the CNT nationally. (The behavior of the Austurian Socialist Federation during later events in October will reveal the correctness of this assertion.) Given the serious debates at the meeting, and the heavy charges leveled against the Asturians, we will conclude our account of this CNT meeting with the Asturian delegate’s summary:
<quote>
After assessing the rebellion in Aragón, which only had weak echoes in other parts of Spain, there was a passionate debate about the Worker Alliance. Some reproached our Regional for signing a pact with the UGT in March. There were desperate attempts to find common ground and erase or at least ease the tensions, but the disagreements were more powerful than the generous efforts of Durruti, Ascaso, Orobón Fernández, Ejarque, Servent, and Martínez (to mention only a few). The national meeting could only agree that a national deliberation on the matter would determine, by means of a vote, the CNT’s position on this issue.
The meeting sent the following mandate to the National Committee: it was to call a national conference of unions within the three months and the decisions made there would be binding for all regionals. Asturias would rescind the alliance agreement, if that was the freely expressed will of the majority of the CNT. Or, if the conference supports the Asturian position, the Workers’ Alliance, which was previously not valid outside our region, would then become national.
The revolution of October exploded three months after the meeting. Since the national conference of unions had not occurred, we alone remain responsible for our intervention in the Asturias rebellion, even if everyone has suffered the consequences of the failure.[406]
</quote>
When the national meeting ended, the Catalan delegates returned to Barcelona and reported to a clandestine regional meeting. Everyone could see that the police commanded by the ruling Esquerra Republicana continued their persecution of the CNT. They became even more severe after Dencàs occupied the Catalan Interior Ministry on June 10.
The Esquerra was creating a volatile environment in Catalonia by exasperating its conflicts with the central government. It repeatedly declared that it would defend Catalan liberties with arms in hand. However, while it raved about Catalan freedoms, the working class—of which sixty percent belonged to the CNT—did not even enjoy the right of assembly. Propaganda and reality were at odds. If Companys hoped to attract the workers to his party, his strategy was a disaster: he would not appeal to the workers by trying to disassociate them from an organization that fought for their interests so resolutely. A Catalanist revolt forged in such a way was destined to fail. The full “complexity” of this Socialist-Catalan conspiracy will probably never come to light, for the simple reason that its principle protagonists are those most interested in concealing the history of an uprising conceived by strategists who took their desires for reality.
The Socialist Party’s defeat in the November elections ignited a collision between the antagonistic tendencies within the party. Each one provided its own analysis of the fiasco.
After a vigorous internal struggle, the SP decided upon on a revolutionary action program in January 1934 (which <em>El Liberal</em> first revealed two years later). Its goal was to force the Right from power and put itself in its place. Their program did not anticipate any alliances: the revolution would be the work of the UGT and the Socialist Party alone. The conspirators drafted their battle plan on that assumption, which helps explain why they did not respond to the CNT’s February 1934 call for a revolutionary alliance. What was the relationship between the Catalan conspirators and the Socialists in July 1934? There was a conversation between SP men and Companys’s representative in Madrid (Lluhí), in which Lluhí told the Socialist Party that the Catalans had no intention of handing over power if the Madrid government declared a state of emergency. But, otherwise, there is reason to think that the Socialists—especially after their electoral defeat—would have been supportive of the Catalans. In reality, the Catalans did not figure into their plans, for the simple reason that factoring in the Catalans would have required that they deal with the CNT, the only serious force in the struggle in Barcelona. This enables us to conclude that the Catalan revolt being planned, as well as the appearance of a Worker Alliance in the region—based of the Bloc Obrer i Camperol had no relation to the Socialists’ designs on power.
Although the Socialist Party had summarized its aims in a program that they would implement if they took power, they hadn’t set the date for their rebellion. The Socialists ultimately decided that they would set off the revolt as soon as the CEDA joined the government. That was a good pretext, because the CEDA’s entrance into the government would violate the constitution, given that it had not declared its support for the Republic.
José María Gil Robles, the key man in this period, understood that he alone would determine whether or not the Socialists rose up. It was important for Gil Robles to have the initiative, because it permitted him to plot his march to power in the best possible conditions. His first step was to leave the Lerrouxistas—who were busy abolishing the few positive reforms achieved during the previous biennium—which he imagined would allow the CEDA to appear untainted in the eyes of the public.
Ricardo Samper’s clumsy handling of the Catalan problem complicated things. And they became even more complicated when the Treasury Minister tried to institute a new tax policy in the Basque region, which reduced the already scarce liberties possessed by the Basque peoples. In response, the municipalities denied power to the provincial Deputations and elected Management Boards that would take responsibility for collecting and administering taxes (August 12). [407] The Madrid government retaliated by declaring those elections illegal. Just like in Catalonia, the government transformed an administrative problem into a political one.
With the Basque and Catalan crises, the situation was becoming uncontrollable. It would only take a spark to set off a widespread revolt. Meanwhile, on the other side of Europe, important things were happening in Russia that would have a significant impact in Spain. The Communist International began to make a turn, which was a prelude to what would become the theory of the Popular Front a year later. We will explore the reasons for this change below, but here it is important to note that on May 31 the French Communist Party got the green light to form alliances with those who had previously been its enemy: the reformist socialists and French parliamentarians, whom they had labeled “social-fascists” before. French Socialists and Communists signed an agreement calling for mutual respect. The Spanish Communists received the same orders as the French and, to ingratiate themselves with the Socialists, hurried to bury their past antagonism.
Before August, when the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) began its turn, the party had very limited influence. It did not win even one deputy’s seat in the 1931 elections and won only one in 1933 (this candidate did not run in the party’s name and his victory was a result of his personal popularity in workers’ circles). It is difficult to specify the PCE’s size, but it probably had less than ten thousand members, which is a laughable number, considering that the CNT had 1,200,000 members and the high degree of politicization among Spanish workers generally.
Why did the Socialist Party allow the PCE to enter the Worker Alliance? The answer lay in the transformations that Largo Caballero experienced under the influence of Marxist-Leninists Alvarez del Vayo and Araquistáin. Likewise, the meager size of the Communist Party enabled Socialists to think that it would be a palatable traveling companion. Thus, on September 12, 1934, the Communists joined the Worker Alliance; a body whose name covered up the murky deal between the SP and PCE (that is, the Social Democrats of the Second International and the Stalinists of the Third International).
Gil Robles took the floor of the Parliament on October 1, 1934 and gave an ultimatum to Samper’s government. This triggered a ministerial crisis and, with it, the revolt. Everything indicates that Gil Robles consciously selected the date of his speech under the premise that if there had to be a rebellion, it would be best to provoke it. The Socialists fell into their own trap and aggravated their error even more by trying to save the legal aspect of their revolt, thus depriving themselves of their best chance of victory. After Gil Robles’s ultimatum and a suspension of the session, the government was in crisis.
If the Socialist Party had really wanted to seize power, it would have declared a general strike and unleashed the uprising on October 2. It would have recovered the initiative by doing so, since, in such conditions, Alcalá Zamora would not have agreed to the CEDA’s entrance into the government or, if he did, what the Socialists had been preventing—an alliance between the CNT and UGT—would have emerged spontaneously in the street. Perhaps that is why the SP and the UGT remained passive and waited for the CEDA to enter the government on October 4 before declaring a general strike. Whatever the case, what is certain is that General Franco officially entered the General Staff of the Army and the Socialist Party initiated a struggle that was over before it began.
** CHAPTER XXI. October 6 in Barcelona: against whom?
The Socialist Party feared that CEDA leader Gil Robles would try to install fascism in Spain. Paradoxically, those protesting the fascist threat in September had been inactive on December 8, 1933 when CNT workers rose up in arms to confront that very danger and were massacred as a result. That would have been a good time to intervene, but the good Republicans and legalistic Socialists preferred to stay in the comfort of their homes, hoping that the CNT would do their dirty work for them or disintegrate in the process. Instead of supporting the CNT revolutionaries when the time was right, the more extreme Socialist leaders undertook an adventure of their own nearly one year later. Its goals will always remain a mystery.
The pervasive nationalist propaganda and Madrid’s annulment of the law on agricultural contracts had inflamed the Catalanists. They jumped on the bandwagon and enrolled in the Socialist Party’s uprising without knowing exactly what they wanted or where they were headed.
The Catalanists tried to seize the state from within the state. What did they pursue? Without a doubt, they wanted to establish a regime in Catalonia that would be truly catastrophic for the CNT, the labor organization controlling the vast majority of the Catalan working class. And how could revolutionaries respond? The fate of the Catalan October 6 lay in the response to this question.
We will briefly analyze the context of the Catalan revolt.
According to the Catalan Autonomy Statute, the Generalitat was not an independent government per se, but a relatively autonomous government whose powers had been delegated to it by Madrid. In this sense, the Generalitat was actually part of the central government. So, then, how can we define their peculiar rebellion? For Marcelino Domingo, “the Generalitat did not make a revolution, but rather a coup d’etat from within the state.” [408]
Historian Carlos Rama says that it was a “rebellion of an organ of the state against the state itself,” and adds that “it was neither separatist nor regionalist, because it linked itself with events unfolding nationally at the time.” [409] Indeed, we must place this revolt in the context of the Socialist’s rebellion against the CEDA’s entry into the government, although the difference between the two is that the Socialists wanted to take power while the Catalanists already had it. If the Socialists intended to reform the state in the ways outlined in their program, what did the Catalanists seek? “The men of the Generalitat did not want to make a social revolution. They limited themselves to a Republican-Liberal rebellion from power.” [410] And that is why the Catalan revolt will always be somewhat incomprehensible as a “revolutionary” action.
The CEDA matter was not what motivated the Generalitat to rise up, but rather the central government’s attack on what it regarded as Catalan sovereignty, particularly the annulment of the law on agricultural contracts. The fact that it would ultimately link its rebellion with the Socialists is incidental. In essence, the Catalanists wanted to enhance their autonomy or <em>better affirm themselves in power</em>. And that explains the ultra-nationalist “nosaltres sols” [411]
campaign used to secure or extend their public support. Lluís Companys’s comment to Doctor Soler i Pla after his October 6 proclamation is sufficiently expressive in this sense: “We’ve already proclaimed the Catalan state. You can’t accuse me of not being Catalanist enough. We’ll see what happens.” [412]
The Generalitat rebelled against the Madrid government and proclaimed the Catalan state on October 5, 1934. The Catalanists must have thought that Madrid and the CEDA would accept their uprising without violence. Otherwise, they would have immediately detained the army leaders and neutralized the troops in the region, while making an effort to win the latter over to their cause. They would have also formed citizens’ militias to defend Catalan borders. Amazingly, they did none of this. Instead, the Generalitat took very different measures which, as we will see, turned it into Gil Robles’s objective ally. They instituted in Catalonia what he wanted to institute—but still didn’t dare—in Spain as a whole.
On October 4, on the eve of the Socialist’s general strike, the Generalitat’s police arrested all the well-known CNT militants that they could find in their homes, including Buenaventura Durruti. The police took them to Police Headquarters on Vía Layetana and held them incommunicado in the building’s foul basements.
On Friday, October 5, the Worker Alliance—a conglomerate of small, essentially bureaucratic, and petty bourgeois parties or groups with limited popular influence and zero revolutionary predisposition [413] —declared a general strike. [414] The Generalitat’s police tried to enforce the strike by forming pickets at factory gates and stopping the workers from entering. This strike was a surprise for the CNT: no one had consulted the Confederation about the action and thus it found itself before a consummated event. CNT workers had never been strikebreakers and were inclined to support this one, although that was not because of the coercion exercised by the Assault Guards and “escamots.”
One of the first absurdities of this Catalan revolt is that while the Generalitat knew that the CNT controlled the lion’s share of Barcelona’s workers, it used its appendage, the Worker Alliance, to declare the general strike. Another absurdity is that authorities did not arrest military leaders with clear fascist leanings, but rather the most outstanding CNT and FAI activists. Why was it necessary to prevent the CNT from engaging in the rebellion, whose aims were a mystery to everyone? “Josep Dencàs, responding to the general sentiment in his political party and the Generalitat, began to restrain the CNT from the [Catalan] Interior Ministry. They feared that the anarchists would overwhelm the revolt if they participated and cause the Generalitat to lose its control as well as the political advantages that it hoped to extract.” [415] Cruells’s explanation is persuasive, particularly if we consider that Dencàs had worked to “restrain the CNT” long before the rebellion erupted: the Generalitat has been clamping down since September 1932 and increasingly after May 1934. That was when the CNT offered Companys a “truce.” As we know, Companys not only rejected the “truce” but also increased the pressure and even undertook the October adventures while the CNT’s unions were still closed.
But we continue with the events. <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> appeared several hours late on October 6 due to delays caused by censors. Because of that, the CNT Regional Committee printed an illegal leaflet to help orient the Confederal workers:
<quote>
Catalan Regional Confederation And Barcelona’s Local Federation Of Unions. To All The Workers, To The People In General!:
During these intensely agitated moments, when every popular force is in play, the Catalan Regional has to take part in the struggle in a way that corresponds to its revolutionary anarchist principles. A conflict battle has erupted and we are in the first stages of events that could determine our people’s future. Our response cannot be contemplative. We need strong and forceful action that will end the present state of affairs. These are not times to theorize, but to work, to work hard. Action from the revolutionary proletariat, making its decisions for itself. Vindication of our libertarian principles without the slightest involvement with the official institutions that reduce the people’s action to their own interests.
We must turn this morning’s rebellion into a popular movement through proletarian action, without accepting police protection and shame on those who allow and call for it. Authorities have bitterly stifled the CNT for some time now and it can no longer continue in the reduced space they mark out for it. We demand the right to take part in this struggle and we take it. We are the best obstacle to fascism and those who try to stop us from acting only help the fascists. We thus concentrate our forces and prepare for the coming battles.
Immediate instructions of the Catalan Regional Confederation: 1. Open our union halls at once and assemble the workers in the premises. 2. Articulate our anti-fascist libertarian principles in opposition to all authoritarian principles.
3. Activate the District Committees, which will be entrusted with transmitting precise instructions as events unfold.
4. All unions in the region will have to strengthen ties with this Committee, which will guide the movement by coordinating the forces in struggle.
Today, more than ever, we must demonstrate the revolutionary anarchist spirit of our unions.
</quote>
<quote>
For the CNT! For libertarian communism!
The Regional and Local Committees of Barcelona.
Barcelona, October 6, 1934.[416]
</quote>
José Peirats write: “Militants from the Woodworkers’ Union are the first to put the first of these instructions into practice. They tear the seals off the closed union halls and open their doors, but police respond immediately and violently. Shots are exchanged. The police force the workers to withdraw and close the buildings again. After these clashes, Interior Minister Dr. Dencàs releases a statement inciting the armed forces and citizens—who had begun to patrol the city—against the ‘anarchist provocateurs, bought off by the reactionaries.’ Uniformed forces from the Generalitat launch an armed attack on <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>’s editorial office at 5:00 in the afternoon. Police go to suspend a regional meeting that is fortunately being held elsewhere. The newspaper’s administration and workshops are shut down.” [417]
Some well-known CNT and FAI militants stayed away from their homes, aware that police had already arrested other significant activists. In general, militants adopted an expectant attitude: they avoided clashes with the armed groups of “escamots” patrolling the city and waited attentively for the denouement of that crazy revolt, which could have very negative consequences for the workers.
Interior Minister Josep Dencàs spoke by radio at 12:30 on that October 6 and Lluís Companys addressed the Catalan people through Radio Barcelona. At 8:10, Companys’s comments were retransmitted at the Generalitat Palace to a crowd that a Catalanist newspaper described as very modest. Companys limited himself to proclaiming the “Catalan State within the Spanish Federal Republic.” Those present sung the <em>Els Segadors</em> hymn after his speech. [418] The Generalitat met after the proclamation of the Catalan State. Companys telephoned General Batet and informed him that he had declared the Catalan State and that Batet and his forces were under his command. The general stated that he could not reply immediately and told Companys to send him the order in writing. Deputy Tauler went to Captaincy to give Batet the directive. Following instructions from Madrid, Batet declared a state of emergency in response. From that moment on, the Generalitat and the central government were at war.
Barricades began to appear, in a disorganized way, and the city’s official buildings were protected with sandbags. “The leaders of the insurrection started distributing their armed groups at 8:30 pm, although it was clear that their troops had already diminished. By 9:30 defections from the Generalitat’s forces had increased greatly.” [419] There were one hundred people in the “Somatens” headquarters on the Rambla Santa Mónica but not all were armed, despite an abundance of weapons in the “casals” [local Catalanist centers]. Likewise, Jaume Compte was in the CADCI building with approximately thirty men and only seventeen rifles. [420] The same contradiction.
Here is a chronological account of the main events: 10:00 pm. Numerous armed groups wait for orders along the Ramblas up to Canaletas. There are approximate 1,500 concentrated on the Ramblas. Some four hundred men are in the Worker Alliance building. Apparently only the sentries have arms (there were ample weapons in the Novedades café on Caspe Street, which no one went to pick up, although they were only about three hundred meters away). After their defeat, Worker Alliance militants said that Dencàs had refused to arm them. One witness wrote: “In principle, a revolutionary force doesn’t wait to receive arms but takes them. It would have been extremely easy to do so that night.”
10:15 pm. An Infantry company leaves from the Buensuceso Street barracks, takes the Ramblas at Hospital Street, and ascends to the Plaza de Cataluña. The soldiers remained there until 6:00 in the morning, when they returned to their barracks, without having had any encounter.
10:40 pm. A company of the Thirty Fourth Infantry arrives at the CADCI building, where Compte and his roughly thirty men are. They come under fire from within the building when a Captain begins to read the state of emergency. A Sergeant dies and a lieutenant and five soldiers are injured. The soldiers begin to cannon the building at 11:00 pm.
12:30 am. A shell explosion kills Jaume Compte and Manuel González Alba.
1:30 am. The defenders in the CADCI building are abandoned to their fate, despite requesting reinforcements from Dencàs. They leave the building chaotically.
1:30 am. The Santa Mónica Police Station surrenders without firing a shot: there are sixty guards, more than one hundred civilians, and plentiful weapons (especially hand grenades).
6:00 am. Conversation between Companys and Dencàs:
<quote>
Dencàs: “I will do what you command.”
Companys: “Put up the white flag.”
They hoist a white flag on the Catalan Interior Ministry building, while Dencàs shouts: “Viva free Catalonia.” There is a generalized and uncontrolled dispersion of troops. Dencàs escapes through the sewers.
6:00 am and minutes. The Generalitat gives up. Companys telephones General Batet, telling him that they surrender and to hold his fire.
The few remaining rebels then learn about what has happened. “They drop their weapons right there and go home, somewhat ashamed, somewhat disillusioned, and all with a profound sense of the ridiculous.”
<quote>
Why hadn’t anyone coordinated these people? Why weren’t they given an order throughout the entire night? Why launch such a disorganized and poorly led revolt, with so little enthusiasm among its leaders?
It was the Libertarian Youth who made the most of things when the Catalanists discarded their weapons in Barcelona’s streets and sewers. They reaped a good harvest in the early hours of Sunday, October 7.
</quote>
The government imposed Martial Law. When the army commander took over Police Headquarters, he found its cells full of anarchists arrested by the Generalitat’s police on October 4. The Generalitat was incapable of revolting successfully, but demonstrated its efficiency in persecuting the CNT. In its demise, it delivered a large group of militants to Gil Robles’s forces. Thanks to the Catalanist “revolutionaries,” Durruti added six months of prison time to his previous sentences.
</quote>
** CHAPTER XXII. The Asturian Commune
Gil Robles was undoubtedly the shrewdest of Spain’s reactionaries. He understood that the country’s problem was social not political and that while the CNT had been unable to unleash a revolution, it had maintained a state of pre-revolutionary ferment that was so dynamic that one could break out at any time. Gil Robles’s political strategy rested on interrupting that process, which is exactly what he did on October 5 by forcing the Socialist Party to either accept the CEDA ministry or rise up. His cleverness lay in his ability to know precisely when he could provoke an uprising without jeopardizing the privileges of the ruling classes. What made Gil Robles so confident that he would risk inciting a revolution? His confidence lay in the very complexity of the Spanish situation, in which his supposed opponents had made a social problem into a political one and thus became his objective allies. Basque leaders stood aloof from the Socialists’ rebellion and tried to neutralize worker action in their region. We have seen how the Generalitat tried to incapacitate the working class in Catalonia. With respect to the Socialist Party nationally, it created the pre-conditions of its own defeat by restraining its worker base and preventing the emergence of an authentic alliance between the CNT and UGT.
For Gil Robles, the center of danger was in Asturias: it was there that the threat of proletarian revolution was the greatest. The Socialists were more revolutionary than elsewhere; the CNT was not worn out by insurrections; and there was a clearly revolutionary workers’ alliance. It was imperative for Gil Robles to crush the rebellion there, if only to prevent it from spreading to the rest of Spain. In fact, the Socialists and Catalanists helped the government suppress the Asturian revolution. The chatter about whether the CNT could have seized control in Barcelona after the Catalanists’ defeat is nothing but conjecture. The Generalitat forced revolutionaries to choose one of three options. The first was to stay out of the revolt (which the Generalitat wanted). The second was to join it, which the Regional Committee advised, although that would have meant an armed confrontation with the Catalanists and, later, the army quartered in the region. The final option was to wait for the defeat of the Catalanists and throw themselves into a venture against the army, which by then controlled the capital and had the support of “elite” units brought in from Africa and unloaded on the afternoon of October 7. The CNT choose the first alternative and seized as many arms as it could after the Catalanists surrendered, while also doing everything possible to prevent a massacre of workers.
In many respects, one can see the revolution unleashed in Asturias on October 5 as a general rehearsal of the revolution in 1936. Although the Asturian workers were defeated militarily, their undertaking was ultimately a victory and one that had enormous consequences for the Spanish workers’ movement.
The national repercussions of the Socialist’s revolt were soon localized. The party failed to accomplish its aims anywhere. In Bilbao, the Basque Nationalist Party urged its members to abstain. Its labor organization, Basque Workers Solidarity, told its members to go to work but return home if they encountered difficulty or danger. It also ordered them not to undertake any activities that it hadn’t sanctioned. There was a more or less general strike in Bilbao, but it was passive. In nearby villages—such as Portugalete, Hernani, and Eibar—revolutionary committees were formed and there were armed conflicts.
There was a general strike in Madrid: businesses closed, the newspapers did not publish, and there was no vehicular traffic. On October 5 and 6, there were battles between groups of workers and police in the proletarian neighborhoods of Cuatro Caminos, Tetuán, Atocha, Delicias, and others. Workers also attacked the head postal office and the General Office of Security, which resulted in shootouts on the Gran Vía, Alcalá Street, and in the Puerta del Sol. However, police arrested the Socialist leaders almost as soon as the struggle began, just as they had done during all their previous rebellions. Authorities captured them in the studio of Socialist painter Quintana, where they had established their headquarters. The insurrection was headless from that moment on and destined to fail.
Nevertheless, there were fierce struggles in Asturias and the government mobilized at once to neutralize the Asturian revolutionaries. At 9:00 in the evening, Spanish Interior Minister Eloy Vaquero made a statement over the radio typical of all governments in similar situations: “Calm reigns in Spain,” he said. This did not prevent the government from hurrying to meet in full at 11:00 pm in order to discuss the situation. Its first act was to censure the press. The Prime Minister told journalists that the “presence of a revolutionary movement obliges the government to declare a state of emergency in Asturias.”
On October 6, the government extended the state of emergency throughout Spain and ordered General Batet to subdue the disorders in Barcelona. Lerroux stated that he would be implacable against the Asturian anarchists and Catalan separatists.
Minister of War Diego Hidalgo ordered General Franco to draft a plan of attack for Asturias. Hidalgo went to sleep at 2:00 in the morning on October 7, after conferring with General Batet, who assured him that the Catalan revolt would be suppressed in four hours. He gave General Franco and Lieutenant Colonel Yagüe the task of crushing the Asturian rebels.
Various people visited Lerroux on October 7 and offered their unconditional support during those critical moments. One of those to volunteer his aid was José Antonio Primo de Rivera (for whom Lerroux felt “a very strong affection”). The government met that evening and, afterwards, the Minister of War stated that “the army’s combined land and sea forces are very close to achieving their objectives in Asturias.” The Interior Minister asserted that “the total submission of the Asturian rebels will occur in a matter of hours.”
The Parliament met on the afternoon of October 9, without the Leftwing deputies. The government was congratulated for its quick response. A rumor was circulating that Manuel Azaña had been arrested in Barcelona and loaded onto a ship.
The Socialist Party’s uprising, without leadership from the beginning, had failed. But what collapsed in the rest of Spain became a deep proletarian revolution in Asturias.
The rebellion began there at 3:00 in the morning on October 5, when workers attacked all the Civil Guard barracks in the region with dynamite. By the mid-day, twenty-three Civil Guard barracks and all their armaments had fallen into the workers’ hands. The barracks in Mieres surrendered with its forty-five Guards and the barracks in Rebolleda, Santullano, and Sama capitulated on October 6.
The workers had failed to take Oviedo, but fought against the Civil Guard and army there. The military commander declared a state of emergency and sent troops to the areas where the revolutionaries were holed up or controlled completely. He sent a detachment of Assault Guards to Manzaneda, which the revolutionaries held, but the Guards were foiled by a workers’ column hiding out in Armatilla, Pico del Castillo, and on the other side of the valley in Santianes.
Meanwhile, rapidly organized workers’ columns advanced on Oviedo and prepared to seize it. There was street fighting in Gijón, but the workers completely took over the Cimadevilla neighborhood and raised barricades at its entrances.
The revolutionaries controlled the situation in Avilés, where they occupied the gas factory and the electric company’s main office.
They called upon the Civil Guard to surrender in La Felguera, where there was an arms factory that employed three thousand, predominantly CNT metalworkers. The Civil Guard refused and the miners attacked their barracks, which they took at midnight. The rebels controlled La Felguera from then on and published a manifesto signed by the Revolutionary Committee and headed with the letters: CNT-FAI. It said: “The social revolution is victorious in La Felguera. Our duty is to organize distribution and consumption properly. We ask for good sense and prudence from all. There is a Distribution Committee, and all those entrusted with attending to domestic necessities must go there.” [421]
Rebels proclaimed a Socialist Republic throughout the entire Turón valley, which took on anti-authoritarian characteristics in areas of anarchist influence and bureaucratic characteristics where Marxists dominated. In that sense, the Asturian revolution offered a material expression of the differences between the two systems. A careful study of social relations established during the Socialist Republic’s fifteen days would be extremely valuable as a study in revolutionary transformation.
On October 5, Madrid ordered General Bosch, the military leader in León, to bring his troops (two infantry regiments) to Asturias. He could not transport them by train because revolutionaries had blown up the Los Fierros Bridge. He had to move them in trucks, but workers entrenched in Vega del Rey held them back for two weeks. General López Ochoa suffered the same fate when workers detained his forces in the narrow Peñaflor gorge while they tried to go from Galicia to Asturias The workers columns surrounding Oviedo attacked on October 8. One entered through the San Lázaro neighborhood after defeating a company of Assault Guards near the Aguila River. When they occupied the Adoratrices Hill Convent, women in the workers’ neighborhoods welcomed them with enthusiastic cheers. Groups of miners entered another part of the city and forced their way through with dynamite on Fierro, Santo Domingo, and Guillermo Estrada streets before finally taking over Town Hall at 2:30 pm. On Leopoldo Alas and Arzobispo Guisasola Streets, the <em>carabineros</em> tried to stop a miner’s column led by Sergeant Diego Vázquez but were overcome by dynamite and shouts of “Viva the social revolution!” At 3:00 pm, the column had complete control of the surrounding neighborhood and had occupied the hospital. The miners’ onslaught made the Civil Guard and army troops defending Oviedo retreat, who took refuge in the Pelayo barracks and the Cathedral. The arms factory, now in the miners’ hands, offered a significant booty: twenty-one thousand rifles, three hundred machine-gun rifles, and numerous machine-guns.
While the fighting occurred, revolutionaries began to transform social relationships and establish a type of socialism that the population genuinely supported. They abolished private property and declared it collective. Now that the metallurgic centers were in workers’ hands, the factories in La Felguera and elsewhere began to work overtime in an effort to rapidly produce munitions. They managed to turn out thirty thousands cartridges per day in La Felguera, although even that was not enough for the thousands of fighters ready to die for the Asturian Commune.
Rebels set up the Provincial Revolutionary Committee in Oviedo, which maintained contact with revolutionary committees in the villages. However, there was a dispute between the Socialists and the anarchists. Although the agreement between the UGT and CNT naturally indicated that both organizations would lead the struggle, the Asturian Socialist Federation formed the Provincial Revolutionary Committee with its members alone and later even invited the Communist Party to join, despite the fact that it had not signed their accord and was insignificant in the region. This confirmed the La Felguera anarchists’ fears about the Socialists’ revolutionary sincerity, which they had expressed at a CNT meeting held in Gijón on the eve of the rebellion.
Gijón’s Revolutionary Committee repeatedly sent representatives to the Provincial Revolutionary Committee in Oviedo in an attempt to acquire arms and ammunition. These visits were “fruitless,” says Peirats. [422] The villagers formed the Revolutionary Committees in two different ways. In zones of libertarian influence, residents appointed them in assemblies; in areas of Socialist influence, party groups assumed executive power. The edicts and proclamations issued in these villages also had a different character: the libertarians appealed to the population’s sense of solidarity and good will to carry the struggle forward, whereas the Socialists issued commands and announced that draconian measures would be applied to anyone who didn’t follow their orders.
Despite these contradictions, the revolutionary wave swept through the entire region. And there were relatively few sectarian conflicts, which seemed pointless in the face of the great dangers lying in wait and already weighing upon on the rebel zone.
The Ministry of War was distressed to learn that workers had stopped General Bosch and General López in their tracks. Fortunately, they thought, General Franco had anticipated such problems and ordered Foreign Legion troops and Moroccan Regulars to set off for Gijón. Morocco once again became the cancer of Spain. The Moroccans had asked the Socialist-Republican government to declare it autonomous when the Republic was proclaimed in 1931, but were unable to convince it to do so. In fact, the government instituted an even more brutally colonial policy than the deposed monarchy. How could the Socialists complain if Franco brought troops from Morocco and many of the Moorish forces vented their justified anger upon the Spaniards? Wasn’t it the Spaniards who were responsible for colonialism in Morocco? In this sense, General Franco used the Republic’s failures to crush the workers. He wasn’t to blame for the barbarism of the Moorish forces; that was a consequence of the Socialists and Republicans’ institutionalization of a barbaric colonialism.
Authorities loaded the warships <em>Libertad</em>, <em>Jaime I</em>, and <em>Miguel de Cervantes</em> with African troops and they set off for Gijón. Libertad was the first to arrive. It began bombing intensely on October 7, which covered the landing of a Marine Infantry battalion. The well-fortified Gijón residents stopped the seamen from passing in Serín, but arms and ammunition were running short. The Provincial Revolutionary Committee did not seem to appreciate the gravity of the situation. The Gijón Revolutionary Committee contacted La Felguera and requested ammunition, weapons, and men. La Felguera came rapidly to its aid, but they were ultimately unable to resist the bombardment and the overwhelming number of troops (now including Regulars from Morocco, members of the Foreign Legion, and the Eighth Battalion of Hunters from Africa). They had to give in on October 10, after three days and nights of hellish battle. The Asturian commune could count its hours from then on. López Ochoa’s men escaped their detainment by diverting their route through Avilés. The government’s forces ( <em>Tercio</em> and Regulars) entered through the port.
The Provincial Revolutionary Committee ordered a general withdrawal on October 11. Some militants opposed this order and from then on the CNT forces began to act with some independence. José María Martínez died in Sotiello on October 12 while carrying out a mission for the Provincial Revolutionary Committee.
Government forces detected a renewal of the resistance and called in the air force, which promptly began bombing mercilessly. The planes also dropped pamphlets demanding that the insurgents give up:
<quote>
Rebels of Asturias, give up! It is the only way to save your lives. You must surrender unconditionally and hand over your arms within twenty-four hours. All of Spain is against you and ready to crush you without pity as a just punishment for your criminal madness.... All the damage that the troops and bombs have caused thus far is nothing but a foretaste of what you will receive if you do not end your rebellion and relinquish your arms before sunrise.[423]
</quote>
Despite these threats, the Asturian revolutionaries continued fighting until October 18, when the Provincial Revolutionary Committee called for an end to the resistance. It released a statement that said: “After proving the strength of the working masses ... a pause in the struggle is necessary. But this withdrawal is honorable, because it is only a stop in the journey. The proletariat can be beaten but never defeated!” The spirit of Karl Liebknecht’s declaration on the eve of his murder impregnates this manifesto: “There are defeats that are victories, and victories that are more shameful than defeats.”
Indeed, the government’s triumph over the Asturian revolutionaries was the most shameful of victories. It did not even respect the single condition that the miners imposed before surrendering: that the mercenary troops not occupy Asturias. General Arande, after giving his “word of honor,” offered the region to the Foreign Legion and Regulars as war booty.
** CHAPTER XXIII. “Peace and order reign in Asturias”
When the government ended its military operations in Asturias, it told journalists that “peace and order reign in the rebel zone.” That “peace and order” caused 1335 worker deaths, 2951 injuries, and an undetermined number of exiles, who took refuge in the mountains. The working class paid dearly for that bourgeois “peace and order.”
The government entrusted the mission of imposing order to Civil Guard commander Lisardo Doval and Judge Alarcón. Instruments of torture were improvised in the cells and the legal system ground on. Thirty thousand people were detained.
But this wasn’t enough for the Rightwing: it wanted an even harsher crackdown. Calvo Sotelo stated as much in the November 6 session of the Parliament. Alejandro Lerroux declared that his government would be “merciless in Asturias.” “Until the seeds of revolution are exterminated in the mothers’ wombs,” insisted Calvo Sotelo.
There were a number of prominent political figures among the 30,000 people imprisoned as a result of the October events. Manuel Azaña was arrested in Barcelona, despite his opposition to the rebellion, which he objected to because he considered it class-based. Authorities released him on December 2 after he proved that he had not participated. However, the prosecutor demanded that life sentences be imposed on Lluís Companys and the Generalitat ministers for the crime of “military rebellion.” Various members of the Socialist Party’s Executive Committee, including Francisco Largo Caballero, joined the other inmates from the “high political circles” in prison (police had arrested him on October 14). Ramón González Peña, who had been prominent in the Provincial Revolutionary Committee, was also incarcerated. He was facing the death penalty.
All the detainees had to respond to judges’ questions about their conduct and participation in the revolt. This was easy for Socialist Party and UGT leaders, since they had decided beforehand that no one would take responsibility for the uprising if they were captured and that they would declare that it had emerged spontaneously from the working class. Largo Caballero describes his interrogation in his memoirs and illustrates the conduct of those ”deserter bosses at the hour of truth. He appeared before the Examining Magistrate, an army colonel:
<quote>
“Are you the leader of this revolutionary movement?”
“No, sir.”
“How is that possible, being President of the Socialist Party and General Secretary of the Unión General de Trabajadores?”
“Well, anything is possible!”
“What role did you play in organizing the strike?”
“None.”
“What is your opinion of the revolution?”
“Mr. Magistrate, I appear here to answer for my acts, not my thoughts.”
The District Attorney: “You are legally obliged to answer the Magistrate’s questions!”
“Indeed, that’s why I’m answering them. I wouldn’t do so otherwise.”
They showed me some typed notes found during a search of the UGT’s offices. “Are these notes yours?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who delivered them to you?”
“The mailman. I received them through the mail, but if I knew who sent them, I wouldn’t say so.”
The District Attorney: “I repeat that you are required to truthfully answer the questions you are asked.”
“That’s what I’m doing. However, if Captain Santiago, who conducted the search, wants to find out who sent me those notes, he should know that he’ll never get that information. I won’t say any person’s name for any reason and I’m fully aware of the responsibility that I incur.”
Indeed, the General Office of Security had shown me copies of these notes, while they were telling me what they had done and intended to do against us. Captain Santiago wanted to know who sent them, to punish the person harshly. He was beside himself with the matter of the notes. The magistrate continued asking me:
“Who are the organizers of the revolution?”
“There are no organizers. The people rose up in protest because the Republic’s enemies entered the government.”[424]
</quote>
Largo Caballero was legally absolved and resumed his activities as UGT General Secretary.
Largo Caballero dedicated some paragraphs in his memoirs to Ramón González Peña, whom Indalecio Prieto had described as the “hero” of Asturias. Largo Caballero writes:
<quote>
Much to my great regret, this obliges me to treat the case of González Peña, the “hero” of Asturias.
Peña wasn’t responsible for the revolutionary movement in Asturias; he just couldn’t deny his participation, because they caught him in the act. They had seen him moving around the region and confirmed his presence in the mountains and other places. If they had captured me “red-handed,” I would have had to admit my participation, despite the decision we had made. Yet that wouldn’t make me a hero, just one among many who had risked their lives and liberty.
However, one should read his statements to the Parliamentary Commission and the Court Martial. Since he couldn’t deny it, he said that he had taken part in the rebellion, but out of discipline, to carry out the decisions of the Worker Alliance Committees and other leading bodies. He said that his activities were limited to <em>preventing barbarities and saving lives, even Civil Guardsmen, who were only doing their duty</em>. He gave the names of people with whom he had spoken and worked, indicating places where he had been and slept. At the end of his declaration to the Court Martial, he surrendered himself to the mercy of the court. His testimony implicated people and places, and cost some of his comrades their lives. He presented the revolutionaries as bloodthirsty, which is why he had needed to intervene. He tried to diminish the importance of his participation in hopes of escaping a harsh sentence.
But is this the conduct of a hero? Was this declaring himself responsible for the revolutionary movement in Asturias? No one could affirm such a thing after reading his statements. And if another coreligionist who participated in the event had the sincerity to repeat in public what was said privately about González Peña, we would have a much more accurate picture of his heroism....
I don’t criticize him for trying to reduce the sentence, but I do criticize those incriminating statements about people and places.[425]
</quote>
Without intending to, Largo Caballero had expressed an important truth when he gave his testimony to the magistrate:
<em>There were no organizers. The workers rose up in Asturias because it was ripe for revolution and the people were the only heroes</em>.
However, Largo Caballero would draw the opposite conclusion while he reflected in prison. Apparently Largo Caballero used his incarceration to read Lenin’s writings and was impressed by his theory of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” He had discovered revolutionary Marxism.
The same “measles” also afflicted other Socialists. Araquistáin, the most advanced of the group, would distinguish himself with his writings on the “return to Marxism” in the Socialist Party’s theoretical magazine Leviatán.
It was fine to study Marxism, but what good was such a “discovery” if it lacked an immediate practical application? But application is not imitation; it should be a creative act. The Bolshevik model was not relevant to Spain: the Spanish revolution had to find its own strength and trajectory. Asturias had demonstrated the Spanish path to the revolution. That revolution could not be reduced to a single party, because there were diverse and contradictory forces among its various tendencies. To ignore that historic reality was to restrain, and turn one’s back on, the revolutionary process initiated by the working class. That is what Largo Caballero did; who failed to see that the revolution demanded an alliance between the CNT and UGT. Largo Caballero “matured” in prison only to be duped by the strategy that the Communist International was exporting to “democratic-bourgeois” countries in its effort to implant Soviet communism worldwide.
** CHAPTER XXIV. “Banditry, no; collective expropriation, yes!”
Durruti followed the country’s political and social evolution from Barcelona’s Modelo prison with great interest. The disposition of Lerroux’s government, the savagery in Asturias, and the Rightwing’s insatiable demand for “more heads” all presaged a bloody conflict. The inmates constantly discussed all these issues in the Modelo’s cells and courtyards. Durruti argued emphatically that they had to be careful not to squander their strength and patiently work to rebuild the unions. He saw organization as the key element in a revolutionary victory or a confrontation with the reactionaries. He also noted that “if the Right tries to take power, it won’t do so like Primo de Rivera. Asturias should be an example: the issue in Spain is not bourgeois democracy or fascism, but fascism or social revolution. Bourgeois democracy died after the elections on November 19, 1933.” [426]
The question of the revolutionary alliance came up as well, now with greater urgency than before. The CNT had shown that it could not make the revolution alone and, after the October experience, the Socialists clearly faced the same problem. Would the Socialists draw relevant conclusions from the revolt in Asturias? The libertarians were skeptical: the reformists had betrayed them so many times, there was no reason to expect them to confront the new situation with revolutionary decision. “The Socialists still haven’t demonstrated their revolutionary commitment,” they said. Durruti replied by saying: “Yes, that’s correct, but the coup won’t be delayed forever. We’ll have to deal with it one way or another. That, and also the fact that we’ll suffer the first blows, is why we should work harder for the workers’ alliance. We have to draw UGT workers into our camp or at least make them understand the seriousness of the times. Ultimately, the intensity of our propaganda will determine the number of workers swept along by the revolutionary avalanche.” [427] Months passed in discussions of this sort, as authorities continually admitted new guests into Barcelona’s Modelo. Some of them had been convicted of armed robbery and entered complaining about the CNT and even the FAI.
The proliferation of this crime—now known as the “holdup measles”— alarmed militant anarchists in the prison. And they became even more concerned when some of those charged with the offense demanded that the CNT’s Prisoner Support Committee procure defense lawyers for them. Durruti took a strong position on the issue at a prisoners’ meeting called to discuss the matter: “It isn’t time for individual expropriations, but to prepare the collective one.” Of course that didn’t sit well with those arrested for robbery, but it was impossible to resolve the question halfway. The Prisoner Support Committee ultimately embraced Durruti’s more radical stance. Durruti’s time as a “governmental prisoner” came to an end in early April 1935.
It is outrageous enough that Durruti had to spend six months in prison just to satisfy a governor’s whim, but his problems didn’t end there. Shortly after being released, Durruti read an article in <em>La Publicidad</em> authored by a “specialist” in armed robberies. His name was José María Planas and he had asserted in the paper that “Durruti and his gang are behind the latest holdups in Barcelona.” This absolutely infuriated Durruti. He took off in a rage to find the writer, whom he described as a “shameless hack.”
<quote>
It was Sunday morning and the Ronda de San Pedro was completely empty. I suddenly saw someone coming in the opposite direction along the sidewalk. It was Durruti. He walked by without noticing me. He had a newspaper in his hand and a sour look on his face. As soon as he passed, I said loudly:
“Don’t friends at least say hello to one another?”
He stopped in his tracks, looked in my direction, and then approached as soon as he recognized me. “How could I miss you?”
“Why are you walking around so blindly? What’s going on?”
“Take it, read.” He gave me the newspaper that he was holding. It was <em>La Publicidad</em> and he had circled an article by José María Planas in red. “I’m going to beat the living daylights out of that shameless hack!” Durruti said irately.
“Where are you going?”
“To <em>La Publicidad</em> to kick that liar out of there!”
“But there’s no one at the newspaper now.”
“Let’s go right now!”
And so we went. As I’d said, there was no one there except the night watchman. Durruti pushed him aside and we entered. He walked through the editorial office, convinced himself that it was empty, and we left. Once we were back on the street, Durruti said:
“This irresponsible prick left me holding the bag for the holdups and yet yesterday I received an eviction notice because I couldn’t pay the rent while I was in prison. Tell me if that’s not enough reason to smash his face in!”[428]
</quote>
The Spanish political situation was intensely conflicted in early 1935. There were nearly continuous governmental crises. Their secret probably lay in two complementary facts: first, one only had to be a minister for twenty-four hours to secure a lifetime salary (the Radical Party boasted that it had the most ministers “in reserve”). The second was Gil Robles’s methodological effort to seize power. The CEDA ministers provoked a crisis at the time of Durruti’s release from prison when they opposed commutating the eighteen death sentences handed down after the October rebellion. Alejandro Lerroux resolved the matter by replacing three CEDA ministers with three Radicals. There was another crisis fifteen days later, which was resolved in May when six CEDA ministers entered the government, including Gil Robles in the Ministry of War.
José María Gil Robles will always be an enigmatic figure in the political history of this period because none of his actions reflected his declared goal of assuming power legally. In fact, the complete opposite was the case. When he took charge of the Ministry of War, he made General Francisco Franco chief of the Central General Staff. He made General Fanjul sub-secretary of the Ministry of War, entrusted the General Office of the Air force to General Goded, and made General Mola responsible for the Army in Morocco. It was precisely with these generals that Calvo Sotelo planned to form a Directory after the coup d’etat.
Gil Robles postponed his dream of being dictator indefinitely by taking the aforementioned steps, but helped those conspiring to carry out the coup. None of them made a great effort to conceal their intentions. Gil Robles isolated generals and army leaders known for their Republican sympathies, stripping them of military command or relegating them to secondary positions without troops. He reorganized the Spanish Military Association, which was supposed to clean the army of suspicious figures, in such a way that it became a General Staff inside the General Staff.
Preparations for the coup included activities designed to convince the “silent majority” of the need for a “strong man” to impose order on civic life. This included the Falange’s terrorism against the Left; the bourgeoisie’s systematic lock-out of workers, closure of factories, and suspension of whole branches of production; and the deliberate prolongation of strikes, which pushed workers to use sabotage, arson, or bombs. Nonetheless, while a part of the population was impressed by this and ready to welcome a military man, most of the working class had recovered from the October crackdown and was active in the underground unions. Those intimidated at first now began to show up at meetings.
The Barcelona CNT was the center of activity for Durruti and the <em>Nosotros</em> group and, despite the injuries it had suffered in October, its ranks were growing quickly. Underground CNT publications like <em>La Voz Confederal</em> sold around forty thousand copies weekly. When workers couldn’t pay their dues in their workplaces, they did so in bars or through representatives that visited their homes. These contributions were always voluntary. Although it still wasn’t possible to hold large assemblies and rallies, there were many reasons for optimism.
But there were also reasons for concern among CNT and FAI militants: they were clearly heading toward a violent confrontation with the bourgeoisie. They had to work quickly to strengthen the CNT and build up its offensive reserves. When the <em>Nosotros</em> group finally managed to gather all its members for a meeting, it decided to labor intensively toward that goal. García Oliver believed that they should link CNT action groups and FAI groups through the Neighborhood Committees, which would federate from a local up to national level, while the CNT’s Secretariat of Defense would direct the revolutionary action. They even discussed forming guerrilla units, which would be composed of one hundred men and focused on pre-selected targets. García Oliver expounded this vision of the CNT and FAI’s military organization in meetings of militants and at workers’ assemblies, such as one held in the Woodworkers’ Union around the time.
Many militants opposed that coordinated vision of the revolutionary struggle; they had more confidence in the spontaneity of the masses than revolutionary organization. But workers had to decide quickly what they regarded as permissible forms of organization, given the immediacy of the dangers facing them. The <em>Nosotros</em> group set out to raise these issues among the working class, so that it could analyze them and thus confront the uncertainties of the future. To begin the discussion, the <em>Nosotros</em> group proposed that Barcelona’s Local Federation of Anarchist Groups call a meeting of groups. Other anarchist groups supported their proposal and the Local Federation scheduled a meeting in May on Escudillers Street. The <em>Nosotros</em> group placed this topic on the agenda: “Analysis of the political situation and strategies for making the FAI’s revolutionary action effective.” Another anarchist group asked for a discussion of the “FAI’s position on the ‘holdup measles.’”
Durruti spoke in his group’s name during the discussion of “individual expropriations” (i.e., holdups):
<quote>
Comrades, I think I can address this issue with some authority. And I do so because I think it’s a duty. The group to which I belong, whose members you all know, believes that the recent eruption of robberies is a serious threat to our movement and could lead to our practical decomposition if it isn’t stopped in one way or another. The first thing that those who carry out holdups do when arrested is show their CNT membership cards and call the Prisoner Support Committee. That’s a serious problem, because it confuses people about our real motives. The CNT is a revolutionary workers’ organization that intends to radically transform Spain, particularly in its political and economic terrains. The unions are tools of the struggle and the Prisoner Support Committee exist to help workers who fall in the struggle, not to supply lawyers and other types of aid to petty thieves captured by police. No anarchist group, individual, or committee can deny this. As a revolutionary anarchist militant, I’m fundamentally opposed to holdups, which, in the present circumstances, can only discredit us. That’s why we propose that the FAI urge each of its members to try to get the union to which he belongs to distance itself from such actions and, also, that no practical support of any type be provided to individuals involved in the endeavors in question.[429]
</quote>
This was a delicate question, and some of the meeting’s attendees held strange sociological theories about expropriation, particularly a youth named Ruano who had recently arrived from Buenos Aires and had been a member of di Giovanni’s group during the last period of its activity in Argentina. The Argentine government had executed di Giovanni, his comrade P. Scarfó, and other militants on February 1, 1931 during the country’s first military dictatorship of the twentieth century. Ruano “protested that Durruti once employed the very tactic that he now condemns.” Durruti responded calmly:
<quote>
It’s true, my friend. <em>Nosotros</em> and I used those tactics in the past, but times have changed, due to the ascendant march of the CNT and FAI. There are more than one million workers unionized in the CNT—waiting for the right moment to make the great collective expropriation—and they demand a conduct from us that is consistent with the needs of the struggle. There’s no longer any place for individual actions. The only ones that matter are collective, mass actions. And tactics overcome by history must be left in the past, because they’re now counter-productive and outdated. Anyone who intends to remain outside the times must also place himself outside our ranks and accept responsibility for the lifestyle he has chosen. [430]
</quote>
“Durruti’s intervention in the meeting was effective. A problem that threatened to become epidemic was promptly contained.” [431] Then they discussed the political situation. Durruti offered a summary of the <em>Nosotros</em> group’s thoughts on the matter:
<quote>
Comrades, I don’t know if you realize how serious things are. In my opinion, the revolution could explode at any moment, and not because we provoke it... But we must be organized and ready to exploit the circumstances that arise, putting ourselves at the head of the revolutionary current that others are going to trigger. What form might that struggle take? I think there will be a civil war, a devastating and cruel civil war for which we must be well- prepared.... We will have to form worker’s militias and take to the countryside. It will demand discipline, our own type of discipline, but discipline nonetheless. Think about what I’m saying: if it’s just a hypothesis now, it will be a reality in the near future. [432]
</quote>
In June, shortly after this meeting, police again arrested Durruti and incarcerated him as a “governmental prisoner.”
** CHAPTER XXV. Toward the “Popular Front”
The time that Durruti spent going in and out of jail did not undermine his optimism or change the direction of his thought, but such prolonged “isolations” were hard on the CNT and FAI. The organizations suffered while some of its most valuable militants wasted away in prison.
Durruti would start devouring magazines and newspapers as soon as he left prison, until a new incarceration again disrupted his access to information and ability to following the thread of events. It was only his intuitive capacity to grasp issues and developments that saved him. His last conversation with Ascaso before his arrest revolved around what looked like the Socialist Party’s new strategy of forming alliances and coalitions, in which the Communist Party would also play a role thanks to Largo Caballero’s Bolshevik “measles.” They agreed that the CNT would face problems if the Popular Front tactic being tested in France was introduced into Spain, because supporters of the electoral coalition would try to asphyxiate the CNT by any means possible. They had to respond to that threat immediately so that the working class wouldn’t be deceived like it had been on April 14, 1931. Durruti, who had plenty of intuition but an excess of prison time, began serving his new sentence shortly after their discussion.
Around this time, the Communist Party held a rally in Madrid’s Cine Monumental. José Díaz gave a long speech in which he proposed the formation of a Popular Anti-fascist Concentration. [433] It would have a four-point program:
<quote>
a) Confiscate the land held by large landowners ... without compensation and its immediately delivery to poor peasants and agricultural workers.
b) Liberate peoples oppressed by Spanish imperialism. Grant the right to self- government to Catalans, Basques, Galicians, and other national groups oppressed by Spain.
c) Improve the working class’s living and working conditions.
d) Amnesty for the prisoners.[434]
</quote>
The program was very short. Except for the point about the land, which was included for propagandistic reasons, it was an exact replica of the program that Manuel Azaña would set out in Mestalla (Valencia) and Comillas (Madrid), where he called upon Republican parties to form a coalition before the next elections. There was a section on Spanish imperialism in Díaz’s program indicating that the Spanish regions noted should have the right to self-determination, but there is no mention of Spain’s imperialist venture in Morocco. Why this oversight? The military forces operating in Asturias came from Morocco, because the government didn’t trust soldiers from the Peninsula. The Communist Party proposed an anti-fascist front and yet accepted Spain’s continued domination of the Moroccan people, on whose very soil the fascist threat denounced in José Díaz’s speech was brewing. A typical contradiction for the Moscow-led “communists.”
José Díaz’s speech had no political effect, but its general outlines reflected the direction that the PCE would follow within a few months. It is important to note that Moscow still hadn’t taken Spain into consideration in the new strategic orientation that it had been developing over the previous year. France was what mattered most to Stalin and his subordinates, because it believed that it had an important role to play in the “defense of the Soviet State.” Indeed, the Popular Front will respond solely to the Soviet Union’s interests and it is those interests that will determine its consequent repercussions in Spain. That is why we are obliged to offer a summary treatment of that very specific dimension of international politics in this biography.
Stalin’s policy was consistent since Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 until January 26, 1934. In February 1933, the social democratic Socialist Workers’ International called upon the Communist International (Stalin and the Moscow party leaders) to form an anti-fascist front, but it received no reply. It repeated the call six months later and achieved the same result. The Communist International did not respond simply because it did not see Hitler or Mussolini as enemies at the time. Indeed, the Soviet State had very good relations with both dictators. Stalin’s primary concern was preserving the 1922 agreement between Germany and Russia known as the Treaty of Rapallo. [435] While that was still possible, he cared little if Hitler and his Nazi Party eradicated socialism and communism from German soil. Stalin hoped to sustain that treaty until Germany and Poland signed an accord on January 26, 1934. Moscow military men saw this as a direct attack on Russia and thus Stalin changed his strategy, aligning it with concerns in the French government, which regarded the accord as a dangerous rupture of the equilibrium of alliances formed between European states after the First World War. Perhaps, without wanting to do so, Hitler reestablished the tripartite, crossed alliances between Russia, France, and England that had existed before 1914. [436]
The diplomatic sounding out between the Soviet Union and France began in January 1934. The French supported the Soviet Union’s attempt to join the Society of Nations and Stalin, in compensation, ordered the French Communist Party to form an alliance with the Socialists and the French bourgeoisie. The July 14, 1934 Blum-Thorez-Daladier Pact was the result of this command. [437] That was the first act of the Popular Front comedy. The second occurred on May 2, 1935, when France and the Soviet Union (Stalin and Laval, respectively) signed the Mutual Assistance Pact. After signing the agreement, Stalin declared that he “understood and fully approved of France’s national defense policy, in which it maintains its Armed Forces at the level of its security.” Prior to that date, the French Communist Party had always refused to vote for military credits. In fact, a month and a half earlier, Maurice Thorez [438] stated in the National Assembly that “We will never allow the working class to be dragged into a war called in defense of democracy against fascism.” Stalin’s declaration caused an abrupt change in their stance. That very May 2, posters proclaiming: “Stalin a raison” (“Stalin is right”) covered the walls of French cities. The central organ of the French Communist Party did its best to explain the new strategy to French CP members.
The third act of the comedy took place between July 25 and August 17, 1935, the dates of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International. The actors were Georgi Dimitrov and Palmiro Togliatti, in front of an audience of Communist International representatives. The Popular Front tactic called for an alliance between the working and middle classes to “block the path of the fascist offensive.” Dimitrov explained its necessity as follows: “Today, in a series of capitalist countries, the working masses have to choose not between the dictatorship of the proletariat and bourgeois democracy, but between bourgeois democracy and fascism.” Togliatti, for his part, inveighed against some disobedient delegates who challenged the revolutionary legitimacy of the Popular Front tactic: “Certain comrades have come to think that signing the Mutual Assistance Pact with France means renouncing the revolutionary perspective in Europe and compare it to a forced retreat under enemy fire. They are completely wrong. Far from being a retreat, it is an advance; and those who don’t understand its deep internal coherence understand nothing of the true dialectic that moves events and the revolutionary dialectic even less.”
If we look carefully at the Popular Front tactic, we can prove that it was not appropriate for Spain. Although it was devised for France, Communist Parties in all the “democratic-bourgeois” counties had to accept it without question. Moscow and the Communist International permitted no debate on the matter, even if applying the Popular Front in Spain required that the invention of the middle class and its parties. That is evident in the dialogue between Largo Caballero and Jacques Duclos, the itinerant agent of the Communist International. Duclos explains:
<quote>
Largo Caballero, the main leader of the Socialist Party and the UGT, was a decisive factor in the formation of the Popular Front in Spain. He had to be convinced that the Spanish worker’s movement needed to consider what had happened in France and, toward that end, the Communist International ordered me to visit him in Madrid, as a representative of the International and a French Communist leader closely linked to the creation of the French Popular Front.
</quote>
Julio Alvarez del Vayo put Jacques Duclos in contact with Largo Caballero. Under Alvarez del Vayo’s watch, the Young Communists and the Socialists had fused to create a Unified Socialist Youth. The group’s secretary was Santiago Carrillo, who had joined the Communist Party during his recent trip to Russia. Alvarez del Vayo turned out to be an excellent bridge between the two men. Duclos describes their dialogues:
<quote>
We spoke over the course of three days. It was an open dialogue, without intermediaries or interpreters.... I wanted to convince Largo Caballero of the working class’s need for allies. I made a long statement, and was interrupted by questions about the formation of the Popular Front in France. I pointed to the fascist danger and explained that the masses would be defeated if they’re not united. I emphasized that the threat of fascism was no less significant in Spain than in France....
On this point [relations between Socialists and Communists], I knew that Largo Caballero would agree with me in general, especially given his positive comments about the Spanish Communist Party. But I also knew that he wouldn’t agree with the need for an alliance between the working class and the other social categories.
</quote>
Duclos spoke at length about why the workers had to form a partnership with the middle class and intellectuals, in light of the elections, etc. He says:
<quote>
On this point, Largo Caballero began by expressing the intransigence that I anticipated. He talked about the middle classes’ lack of importance and explained that the working class was the only consistently revolutionary class.
He made references to Marx and Lenin, whom, he told me, he admired greatly.
</quote>
With all due respect for the “masters” Marx and Lenin, Duclos argued that one must never close oneself off from reality... that sometimes phenomena occur that influence one class over another, etc. Then he spelled out the “electoral arithmetic,” which was extremely interesting to Caballero. Then, finally, came the coup de grace:
<quote>
I asked Largo Caballero what the electoral consequences might be in Spain if the Popular Front were created. He agreed that it would be beneficial for the Communist and Socialist Party. I was on the verge of obtaining a favorable response when I told him that, after I returned to Paris, I would then have to go to Moscow and give his response to the leaders of the Communist International. He said that I should tell them that the Popular Front will be formed in Spain. I was happy and felt tremendous affection and respect for that old militant, who had changed his views in light of realities whose breadth and complexity he hadn’t initially perceived. [439]
</quote>
The machinery-guillotine of the Popular Front was greased. We now go to the Modelo prison in Valencia, where authorities had transferred Durruti from Barcelona in August.
** CHAPTER XXVI. The CNT judges Durruti
The “straperlo” affair was what brought down the Radical Party in the summer of 1935. “Straperlo” was a game of roulette designed to ensure that the house always won. Its inventor, a Dutchman named Daniel Strauss, had bribed various government officials to obtain permission for the game’s use in San Sebastián’s Gran Casino. However, the government received complaints and was forced to withdraw its authorization. The Dutchman had paid dearly for the permission and asked for compensation from his accomplices. He obtained nothing and, feeling deceived, publicly denounced how he had been treated and revealed the names of the culpable government men. Leading figures in the Radical Party were compromised, including Aurelio Lerroux, Alejandro Lerroux’s son. This caused a scandal and the government had to respond. Alcalá Zamora resolved the crisis by dismissing Lerroux. After sounding out various political figures, Alcalá Zamora then asked the financier Joaquín Chapaprieta to form a new government: three Radicals, three CEDA members, and an agrarian joined on September 29.
On October 20, on the Comillas esplanade before an audience of some four hundred thousand people from all over Spain, Manuel Azaña gave a speech in which he analyzed the past two years of rightwing government and urged the Left to form a united block to compete in the upcoming elections. “We have to create a political program that all the left parties can support,” Azaña said, “and one that addresses the country’s urgent problems. But, right now, the important thing is the electoral unity of the Left.” Azaña hardly concealed his moderate views: “We have to give Spanish society the vaccine of social reformism,” he affirmed, “so that tomorrow it can cure itself of the black smallpox” (i.e., of revolution). There was an unambiguous concordance between Manuel Azaña and Jacques Duclos’s ideas. Indeed, the Communist International could celebrate that it had found in Azaña someone capable of creating the Popular Front. The electoral campaign had begun and, with it, the race to merge the parties.
In <em>Claridad</em>, its recently launched newspaper, the leftist faction of the Socialist Party reported that it was leaning toward signing a deal with the Communists. Alvarez del Vayo played an important role in that turn, given his close ties with Largo Caballero. Moscow’s agent in Spain, Vittorio Codovila, who led the Argentine Communist Party and was known as “Medina,” also urged Largo Caballero to fuse the Socialists and Communists. Largo Caballero was not particularly drawn to the idea and even noted his annoyance with “Medina” in his memoirs. However, Caballero’s apprehensions did not stop the CP from beginning to infiltrate the SP. One of its initial successes was the merger of the Communist and Socialist youth organizations and also the December 1935 entrance of the Confederación General del Trabajo Unitaria (CGTU) into the UGT. The CP had created the CGTU to compete with the CNT in Andalusia. [440]
An important combination of dissident Communists took place in November when Joaquín Maurín’s Bloc Obrer i Camperol and Andreu Nin’s Communist Left joined forces. The unification of these two tiny groups created the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification).
Manuel Azaña’s vision of a leftwing electoral coalition was taking it shape. The support of Indalecio Prieto—who had been living in exile in France since October 1934—made it a reality. The Socialist Party and Azaña began discussions about the formation of the electoral front. It would be a “leftwing coalition” for the Socialists and a “prelude to the Popular Front” for the Communists.
Leftwing students from the Federación Universitaria Española also campaigned for the coalition. This resulted in violent clashes in the universities with student groups linked to the Falange Española, CEDA, or Renovación Española (Calvo Sotelo’s party), who were grouped around the Sindicato Español Universitario.
Spain began to split into two antagonistic blocks. The ship of state tried to navigate between them, but it was totally adrift and made up by individuals that the public disdained.
Mussolini rang the bell of war on October 4, 1935 when he sent his forces into Ethiopia. Falangist groups supported the war and left groups naturally opposed it. This led to even more bloody conflicts.
England, frightened by Mussolini’s actions in the Mediterranean, brokered a pact between Portugal and Spain to counteract the Italian dictator’s growing influence in Spain (his sights were set on the Balearic Islands). Hitler was also drawn to Spain, particularly to the iron and potash in the Spanish Sahara. When General Sanjurjo’s requested Nazi support for a fascist uprising in Spain, Hitler began to focus more intently on the Iberian Peninsula’s riches. He offered “disinterested” technical help in the form of aviation specialists and instructors. Each of the countries intervening in Spain’s internal affairs in late 1935 sought out their own allies among the Spaniards. The fascist powers found them amidst those conspiring against the Republic, whereas England had them on the Left as well as the Right (showing clearly that diplomatic interests trump morality). While the electoral coalition was trying to find a political program that could mobilize the working masses, the foreign powers positioned themselves to secure the greatest possible advantages. We will now explore the reorganization of anarcho-syndicalist forces as well as Durruti’s concerns in the Valencia prison.
Although the CNT’s prestige among the workers was growing, the long periods spent underground had weakened it organizationally. There were also contradictory perspectives within the Confederation about how to respond to the elections. The organization needed an interval of legality, in which the government respected the right of association, so that it could hold a National Congress and clarify its position with the full participation of its members. But that was impossible for the time being, which meant leaving important questions unaddressed.
It was much easier for the FAI to determine its position on the elections. Underground since formation and light in structures, its groups could easily meet and discuss problems thoroughly. That is why the anarchist organization was able to establish its place in the political scenario earlier than the CNT. <em>Tierra y Libertad</em> wrote:
<quote>
The struggle against fascism cannot be placed on the electoral terrain, which is a terrain of impotence that precludes all other actions of greater significance. The promise of future elections, united political fronts, or working class parliaments won’t get the workers to vote for a social leftist list on a given day. They can’t be pushed along the bland and comfortable path of least resistance, which ends only in deception and disaster. We must shake the rebel fiber and make it clear that only revolution can stop fascism.[441]
</quote>
Socialist and Communist activists tried to turn the discussions in the prisons into forums for electoralist propaganda. They argued that only a unified political front that brings the Left to power can stop fascism. However, many workers escaped the control of the party apparatuses and drew different lessons from the October rebellion. For them, the workers’ alliance did not exist on the electoral plane but rather on the revolutionary plane. An important aspect of this proletarian insight was the identification of fascism with the bourgeoisie. For the working masses, fascism included the clergy, the military, big business, high and low financiers, the state bureaucracy, rural landowners, and of course the aristocracy. Those who embraced this anti-fascist outlook were completely against “popular frontism” and the Republican-Socialist electoral alliance. They had a class conscious proletarian orientation that saw the battle against the bourgeoisie as a vital part of the anti-fascist struggle. There was no concord between their views and the attempt to construct the anti-fascist movement as an act of class collaboration that included anyone who identified as “progressive” or “liberal” in the anti- fascist front. Unfortunately, while it was easy to intuitively see who held the revolutionary anti-fascist position, that stance was not articulated clearly in the debates in the courtyards and cells and that imprecision was dangerous to the future of the revolution itself. The FAI, which addressed the issue in the article quoted above, oriented all its propagandistic efforts toward clarifying that confused anti-fascist sentiment.
CNT and FAI members predominated among the inmates in Valencia’s Modelo prison, where Durruti had been since August. Most came from Catalonia, Aragón, or Levante itself. That political homogeneity meant that prison debates often focused on the CNT and FAI’s internal problems and one of those problems was related to “the Thirty,” which had strong roots in Valencia and among some of the prisoners. The two years that had transpired since “the Thirty” split from the CNT had been a period of reflection for some and, for the group as a whole, clarification among the diverse currents clustered around the tendency. The Sabadell group soon oriented itself in two directions: one led them toward the UGT and the other toward the Esquerra Republicana. In any case, they were now forever separate from the CNT. Pestaña’s supporters followed him when he founded the Syndicalist Party in 1933, with which he tried to secure an influence over the CNT very much like the influence that the Socialist Party exercised over the UGT. But the majority formed the Opposition Unions and continued to identify with the CNT ideologically but remained firm in their stance about the dictatorship of the FAI (ironically, they created the Libertarian Syndicalist Federation, which practiced its own dictatorship over the Opposition Unions). But, two years later, now that the debate was less heated, Juan Peiró, Juan López, and others began to call for a return to the CNT. What wasn’t obvious was exactly how that return should take place. Militants passionately discussed all these issues in the prison’s cells and yards.
Durruti was somewhat isolated from these conversations, since he was more concerned with problems of another nature. In fact, a letter from the period suggests that he was in the midst of a vigorous conflict with the CNT committees. The document doesn’t show the “disciplined” Durruti that Manuel Buenacasa described, but rather a committed militant who didn’t conceal his views for the sake of “organizational responsibility” (a formulation that prompted many activists to keep their criticisms to themselves). The letter in question was a reply to a letter from José Mira. It is dated September 11, 1935.
<quote>
I have your letter in my possession and will respond to it now. Of course! It treats things that interest me greatly. I have nothing new to tell you from here, apart from the fact that two comrades were released yesterday. We hope that the releases will continue and that we’ll all be back on the street soon, where we’re really needed...
Let me make this clear at the outset: I’m hardly concerned about what some comrades imprisoned with you [in Barcelona] think of me. I’m consistent with myself and follow the same path that I set for myself many years ago.
If you’ve followed my activity as an anarchist through the press or conversations with comrades, you will have noticed that I don’t have the mindset of a common robber or gunman. I came to my ideas and continue with them because I believed and still believe that the anarchist ideal is above all trifles and petty quarrels.
I also believed and still believe that the Confederation’s battles for a peseta more and an hour less were necessary skirmishes, but never the end point, never the CNT or anarchists’ goal. The Confederation has well-defined principles: it fights to overthrow the capitalist regime and implant libertarian communism. A revolution like that, my good friend Mira, requires anarchist ideas and revolutionary education, not a troublemaker’s mentality. And we certainly can’t allow the CNT to expend all its strength on one or two conflicts just so those concerned can add another piece of codfish to the Sunday meal.
The CNT is the most powerful organization in Spain and needs to occupy its rightful place in the collective order. Its battles must reflect its greatness. It would be ridiculous to see a lion in the middle of the jungle waiting for a mouse to come out of the mouse hole so that it can eat. Yet that is exactly what’s happening to the CNT right now. Some claim that its actions in Barcelona are virile and revolutionary. I have the opposite view, my dear Mira. Anyone can carry out sabotage, even the most fainthearted, but the revolution needs men of courage, in the committees and among the militant cadre that have to fight it out on the street. One can’t speak of Confederal dignity, after the comrades and organization’s stance during the October rebellion, simply because some streetcars were set on fire. Isn’t it terrible, at a time like this, to have to admit that the organization in Barcelona can’t provide the most minimal revolutionary guarantee? Could it be that now, when revolutionary possibilities are going to appear when we least expect them, that the organization is incapable of playing its true role? Isn’t it disgraceful to abandon our collective interests for two petty conflicts, from which only a few will benefit? I’m one of the few who will benefit and I’m ashamed to see the CNT discard its revolutionary trajectory for my weekly wage. Some think the organization is simply a vehicle for defending their economic interests. Others see it as an organization that works with the anarchists for social transformation. Of course it makes sense that it’s so difficult for the straight union activists and anarchists to get along.
Now, with respect to the document in question, I only give it the importance that it deserves: a suggestion to the National Committee about the present situation and nothing more. I don’t understand how it could create all the stir that you describe. It was a personal act. Every militant has the right to expound his views, even to the National Committee. Some NC representatives came here and we reached an agreement, once some ideas were clarified that, according to them, had to be clarified. And, furthermore, after I spoke with one of the NC delegates, he agreed with me about the essence of the document...
The document only articulates the views that I stated every day in the courtyard of the fifth Gallery in Barcelona. Nobody objected at the time. Evidently they had to move me to Valencia so that the critics could express themselves. The Catalan Regional Committee also came to see us. We spoke openly and they had no disagreements. They only complained about some words that they found offensive. We had no problem changing them, since that didn’t change the meaning of the document at all.
When everyone finished stating their views (the National Committee, Regional Committee, and the signers of the document), all agreed on the need to print a clarifying note in Soli to inform all the militants. We wrote the note and sent it to the Regional Committee for publication. The note didn’t contradict the content of the document at all and it was what the organizational representatives had agreed upon. So why hasn’t our note been published? The Catalan Regional Committee and the National Committee committed to printing another, to calm spirits and ensure that our text isn’t interpreted badly; why haven’t they published it? All this suggests that those on the outside have an interest in spoiling everything. And that’s significant. They’re the ones, who have all the resources in their hands, that have to clarify the issue. Why don’t they do so? The behavior of the Committees is suspicious. Why don’t they explain things?
I have letters from comrades in the Burgos prison, where they read the document at a meeting. They tell me that no one objected (which doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone agreed with it). But nonsense was said before it was public and now that it is, there’s a more sensible reflection. One could say a lot about the Barcelona strategy, but I have to be prudent by mail. The only comment I’ll make is that, after so much sabotage, they’ve had to place themselves—contacting the boss of the Ramo del Agua and the Urban Transports Company—somewhat beyond Confederal principles. I’m not condemning them, given the exceptional circumstances that we’re facing, but I’m conscious of the great damage that systematic sabotage has caused and causes us. It mustn’t become the norm. It’s very debatable as a tactic and has lost us much more than we can win with it. We have to consider the costs and benefits in any struggle. I’ve never supported walking away from strikes, but it’s one thing to stick to our guns and another to make all our activities revolve around a single conflict. That limits the CNT’s scope of action. To reduce it to salary battles is to limit its ultimate goals.
Fortunately, the political situation is getting clearer, although our comrades have to ask themselves if we’ll be prepared to engage it with all our weight. No one is talking about the CNT in prison now. Everyone looks to our enemies for solutions, because the CNT offers none. The feeling among the prisoners is: “open the Parliament, end the state of emergency, hold the elections.” Not a word about the CNT. That’s what the organization’s position has done: killed their faith in our strength.
Most prisoners belong to the CNT, which unfortunately won’t play an important role either before or after the elections. CNT prisoners will have to get out of prison thanks to the politicians... And, for me, as an anarchist, that doesn’t make much sense. I want my freedom because of my comrades’ efforts and not because of the philanthropy of someone I’ll have to fight tooth and nail as soon as I get out.[442]
</quote>
This letter, more than anything that Durruti ever wrote, shows his critical mind and unambiguous revolutionary anarchist convictions. A spirit of pride in the CNT’s work pervades the text, which he clearly wanted to transmit to his comrades so that they would have the courage necessary to ensure that the CNT plays its historic role. He raised various issues, but focused on what should be the CNT’s ultimate goal. For Durruti, it was a proletarian organization that worked with the anarchists to implant libertarian communism.
He agrees that economic struggles are essential, but not at the expense of the Confederation’s primary aims. The <em>Nosotros</em> group attacked the “expropriators” for the same reason that Durruti was now criticizing the waste of forces in the daily acts of sabotage. Both strategies were ineffective and distracted militants from more important issues. The dangers of the underground had become apparent once again: it had separated the CNT from the workers— who are always the source of momentum and creativity—and put men in the Committees who lacked the capacity to confront the challenges of the day. Durruti got out of the Valencia prison in November 1935 and had to defend his position at a meeting of militants. His main faultfinders were from the Transport Workers’ Union, who felt directly affected by his observations. Some of his accusers (the “troublemakers,” as Durruti called them) implied that Durruti’s time in prison had softened his radicalism (they didn’t say this openly, but made it understood). José Peirats, who took the meeting’s minutes at Durruti’s request, gives a sense of what occurred: “Durruti’s own fame trapped him.... They would have reproached him severely for any deviation from his tragic trajectory, which is what occurred in the trial that the Barcelona transport workers heard against Durruti after he got out of the Valencia prison. They would have pardoned anyone else for human weakness, but not Durruti. To defend himself, he had to renew his reputation as a warrior, beating the table with his fists while he spoke. This was more convincing than his arguments. He was absolved.” [443] A few days after this meeting, Durruti and Ascaso spoke at a rally for Jerónimo Misa, a young libertarian sentenced to death in Sevilla for having freed (at gunpoint) a group of prisoners being sent to El Puerto de Santa María.
Ascaso spoke first. Before addressing the main topic of the meeting, he made some philosophical comments about the right to life. Then, when it was least expected, he violently denounced the state’s plan to garrote Jerónimo Misa. It was already too late by the time the policemen on duty reacted: everything had already been said. They tried to arrest Ascaso, a scuffle ensued, and Ascaso escaped in the confusion, thanks to Durruti’s help. The police charged Ascaso and Durruti with insults to the government. Durruti, now semi-underground, received a request from friends in León to participate in a rally there. It had been a long time since he had seen his family and his mother was always urging him to spend a few days relaxing in León. He accepted, excited by the thought of both helping comrades and seeing loved ones.
As always, the bullring was the ideal place for such events and the spectacle of Durruti’s last appearance there was repeated. Not only did residents of León pack the site, but also many who came from Asturias and Galicia by bus. Durruti’s speech was more cautionary than aggressive. Days of struggle are brewing, he said, and they had to be prepared and ready to take to the street. This will be the difficult, final battle. [444] While he was leaving the rally, a Civil Guard officer instructed Durruti to accompany him to the Command Headquarters, where the superiors in charge wanted to speak with him. Once there, they told him that he could not remain in León and that they had orders to take him to Barcelona. They detained him only briefly. He was released on January 10, 1936.
** CHAPTER XXVII. February 16, 1936
Manuel Azaña and the Socialist Party began discussing the creation of the electoral coalition on November 14, 1935. Leaders of the SP proposed a platform that could serve as its foundation, although only the clause on amnesty in their suggested program would be retained later. The program that was ultimately adopted was an extremely modest republican platform in every sense. It called for:
a) Amnesty for prisoners convicted of social-political crimes committed after November 1933. Anyone sentenced for such crimes between 1931 and 1933 would not receive amnesty, which meant that a large number of anarchist militants would remain in prison.
b) Rehire state employees that the Rightwing fired for their political views.
c) Reestablish the Constitution.
d) Address socials problems in the countryside and carry out administrative reforms, like reducing taxes, etc.
Other points included were: salary increases, educational reform, and the reestablishment of the Catalan Autonomy Statute. The document was silent on the increasingly pressing question of Morocco.
The following organizations and political parties accepted and endorsed the program: for the Izquierda Republicana, Amós Salvador; for the Unión Republicana, Bernardo de los Ríos; for the Socialist Party, Juan Simeón Vidarte and Manuel Cordero; for the Unión General de Trabajadores, Francisco Largo Caballero; for the Juventudes Socialistas, José Cazorla; for the Communist Party, Vicente Uribe; for the Syndicalist Party, Angel Pestaña; and for the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, Juan Andrade.
While the Left formed its coalition, Joaquín Chapaprieta’s government entered into crisis as a result of another financial scandal. Alcalá Zamora held meetings with Rightwing leaders, but was unable to find a Prime Minister who could assure even minimal political stability. To resolve the matter, on December 13 Portela Valladares pledged to form a government without the CEDA or the Radicals, which would mean the dissolution of the Parliament and new elections. In response, CEDA leader Gil Robles urged Rightwing members of the government to resign (both Melquíades Alvarez and Martínez de Velasco did so). This would be the last crisis of the rightwing governments, as Alcalá Zamora formed a government made up by individuals entrusted with dissolving the Parliament and organizing the elections scheduled for February 16, 1936.
The elections presented a difficult problem for the CNT: should it tell its members to abstain or to vote for the leftwing list? The latter option was attractive, because a Popular Front victory would mean freedom for the prisoners (most of whom were CNT members).
On January 9, the CNT’s Catalan Regional Committee issued a circular calling the unions to a regional conference in Barcelona’s Meridiana cinema on January 25. The topics to discuss were: “1. What should the CNT’s position be on an alliance with institutions that, without being in solidarity with us, have workerist nuances? And 2. What concrete and definitive stance should the CNT adopt toward the elections?” [445] The very presence of these points on the agenda indicates the confusion among the men on the CNT committees, whom Durruti found “suspicious” and with whom he had clashed. A certain indecision, if not coercion, is evident in the submission of the above agenda, which limited or nullified the discussion of the immediate political challenges. In part, this reflects the fact that some CNT militants had responded favorably to Largo Caballero’s calls for the CNT to form a “brotherhood in the proletarian revolution” with the UGT. It was also a way to make it easier for CNT militants to justify voting for the Popular Front.
Authorities released Durruti a day after the mentioned circular was issued. The atmosphere in the street had changed during his short incarceration. As if by magic, the bombings, attacks on individuals, and clashes with the police had stopped. This suggested that at least some of those actions had been the work of Falange provocateurs. An air of tragedy seemed to float in the air and there was a general feeling of dispiritedness. Few could hazard a confident guess about the outcome of the political moment. Durruti noted the confusion in conversations he had with militants, who didn’t know whether or not they should abstain (as they had in November 1933). He expressed himself bluntly in one of those discussions:
<quote>
We anarchists are really very few in Spain. Although our ideas and propaganda influence the workers, this only happens under the right conditions. The results of the November 1933 elections would have been the same whether or not we had advocated abstention, for the simple reason that the Socialists and Republicans were completely discredited. There were no other Left candidates and the workers wouldn’t have voted for the Right. They would have abstained on their own accord. Then, the important thing was making the abstention conscious and active; a way of making the proletariat class conscious. We did that and the Republican Socialist policies actually helped us. But the situation is different today. We’ve suffered two years of harsh oppression and the immense majority of the working class is fed up with it.
Furthermore, there are thirty thousand inmates in the prisons and it seems like all we need to do is vote to get them out. That’s what the leftwing politicians encourage us to think in the rallies that they’re holding throughout Spain. Unfortunately, the workers are too generous. Do you remember when Barcelona workers supported Francisco Largo Caballero’s deputy candidacy to get him out of prison after the sad strike in August 1917? They forgot the Socialists’ behavior during that strike and only thought of freeing an incarcerated man. Today most of the workers have forgotten the repression from 1931 to 1933 and only think of the Right’s atrocities in Asturias. Whether or not we advocate abstention, the workers will vote for the Left, but we should do the same thing that we did in November 1933. We must not deceive the proletariat. We have to make it aware of the reality that’s right under our noses: if the Reactionaries win, they’ll impose a dictatorship legally and, if they lose, they’ll attempt a coup. Either way, a confrontation between the working class and the bourgeoisie is inevitable. That’s what we have to say clearly and decisively to the working class; so that it’s warned, so that it’s armed, so that it’s prepared, and so that it knows how to defend itself when the time comes. Bourgeois democracy is dead and the Republicans killed it.[446]
</quote>
Durruti will maintain this position consistently in the months of life remaining to him. The regional conference took place on January 25, 1936:
<quote>
The majority of the delegations (142 delegates representing ninety-two unions, eight Local Federations, seven counties, the National Committee, and the Regional Prisoner Support Committee) did not carry mandates from their respective unions, the bulk of which were still closed. The limited time between the call for the conference and the conference itself meant that militants could not make decisions in the normal way. Most of the decisions emerged out of meetings of militants. This prompted sharp criticisms against the conference organizers. Many claimed that the Regional Committee was trying to force them to take an accommodating stance toward the electoral situation. The delegation from Hospitalet del Llobregat was particularly emphatic. It proposed censuring the Regional Committee for alleged coercion.
A delegate pointed to a decision from a national meeting of regionals (on May 26, 1935) as a response to the issue. That decision established the following:
</quote>
<quote>
All propaganda, during elections and otherwise, will be a doctrinal exposition of our principles and practical goals. We will fight politics and its parties in equal measure, without falling into demagoguery. We will carry out abstentionist propaganda at every possible opportunity, in a way that is consistent with the organization’s decisions and without subordinating our conduct to elections. The relevant Committees will oversee these efforts.
</quote>
But, nevertheless, most delegates saw the CNT’s anti-electoral position as a matter of tactics more than principle and thus managed to start a debate on the topic. The discussion revealed a state of ideological vacillation within the CNT, despite all the exegetes who spoke endlessly about the intrinsic value of the “apolitical” and “anti-political” perspectives. The conference finally nominated a committee to issue a statement. The committee’s declaration reasserted the CNT’s principles and goals, affirming that it had “to demonstrate the inefficiency of voting to the workers, pointing to historic events such as those in Germany and Austria.”
In the discussion of the worker alliance, conference attendees agreed that the “UGT must recognize that the emancipation of the workers is only possible through revolutionary action. Accepting that point, it must break off all political and parliamentary collaboration with the bourgeois system.... For the social revolution to be effective, it must completely destroy the regime that presently controls Spanish economic and political life.... The new social relations born of revolutionary victory will be governed by the express will of the workers, gathered publicly and with complete and absolute freedom of expression for all.... The defense of the new society requires the unity of all forces and that the particular interest of each tendency is put aside.” They added a note for the CNT National Committee asking it to convene a national conference of unions in April to explore the possibility of an accord with the UGT. It concluded by calling autonomous organizations to join the CNT or UGT, in accordance with their affinities. [447] This statement about the necessary foundations of an alliance with the UGT simply reaffirmed the CNT’s longstanding position. Unfortunately, the Socialist’s stance also remained the same. Largo Caballero was still trying to win CNT votes, although he was also becoming dangerously Bolshevik.
<em>Claridad</em> printed a speech that he gave in early June at a meeting of the Agrupación Socialista Madrileña. He said that “Preventing the Socialist Party from being the sole leader would betray the Party’s very essence.... When the dictatorship of the proletariat is established, the government will have to fight anyone who disagrees with it, just as the Bolsheviks permitted no opposition and destroyed their opponents.” [448]
The February 16 elections occurred in an environment of unprecedented calm. Even the conservative paper <em>La Vanguardia</em> recognized that they had been held in “perfect discipline.” The Left coalition was victorious, but only by a small margin:
Left: 4,838,449 263 deputies
Right: 3,996,931 129 deputies
Center: 449,320 52 deputies
The Socialist Party elected ninety deputies, which meant that it had lost twenty-six posts since the 1931 elections. That was surely part of Socialist’s concession to the Communist Party, which gained thirteen deputies. The Izquierda Republicana (Azaña) and Unión Republicana (Martínez Barrio) won the liberal bourgeois vote, sharing 117 deputies between them. In Catalonia, the Esquerra Republicana elected thirty-eight deputies.
The CEDA continued being the most important faction on the Right, with ninety-four deputies. La Falange Española ran its founder José Antonio Primo de Rivera as an independent candidate and did not elect even one deputy.
As for the Center, the Radical Party (Lerroux) suffered a huge defeat. It went from eighty deputies in the 1933 elections to eight on February 16. According to the Constitution, Portela Valladares and his government had to wait one month before handing power over to the victors of the February 16 elections. However, to prevent a coup in the interim, Alcalá Zamora violated the Constitution and got Manuel Azaña and his ministerial team to assume power in three days.
Calvo Sotelo and Gil Robles asked Portela Valladares to decree a state of emergency in the early morning of February 17. Meanwhile, General Franco tried to get Minister of War General Molero and Civil Guard Inspector General Pozas to support an intervention of the Army with the forces that they commanded. Molero and Pozas refused, and so General Franco set out to organize the coup on his own. According to Joaquín Arrarás: “General Franco had the appropriate orders drafted and circulated. He also initiated a series of discussions with the commander generals, but had to suspend them when an aide told him that Mr. Portela needed to see him at once. It was to express his irritation.”[449] Although there was no coup that night of February 18, that had less to do with Portela Valladares and Alcalá Zamora’s actions than the indecision among the military leaders that Franco consulted. But, given the circumstances, Alcalá Zamora decided that it would be imprudent to wait a month to transfer power and entrusted Manuel Azaña with forming his government on February 19.
Manuel Azaña put together a leftwing Republican government. The workers, who had been holding public demonstrations and forcibly releasing inmates from the prisons, again awarded their trust to the left Republican leaders, hoping that this time they understood the need to break with the policies of the past and take the country along a new path. During the electoral campaign, the left coalition had presented itself as an obstacle to fascism; the people would receive their first disappointment when the new government acted oblivious to and made no attempt to stop the conspiracy initiated by Gil Robles, Calvo Sotelo, and General Franco, despite the fact that they had clearly revealed their ploys.
On February 19, everyone thought that authorities would surely arrest General Franco. Indeed, Franco himself went directly to the Interior Minister, perhaps hoping to reduce the severity of his punishment. He was surprised to discover that not only did Amós Salvador leave him in liberty, but that he also recognized his fidelity to the Republic. Manuel Azaña made Franco the Military Commander of the Canary Islands in order to remove him from the Peninsula and made General Goded (another plotter) military chief of the Balearic Islands, where Mussolini—in Majorca—had set up his operational headquarters for Italian activities in Spain.
By taking such measures, Manuel Azaña and his government were simply rehashing the policies of Gil Robles or Lerroux. People felt the deception like a slap in the face and the government’s enactment of amnesty on February 21 did not diminish the impact of the insult. That was because the people had already partially imposed amnesty themselves by opening the provincial prisons and also because the government was beginning to limit the scope of the amnesty. Its restrictions left endless CNT social inmates in prison, as well as many sentenced for common law offenses who were actually social prisoners, given that they were peasants whose crimes had been motivated by hunger.
Durruti denounced these affronts in a meeting held in Barcelona’s Price Theater on March 6. “We remind the men in government that they’re there because the workers voted them in and they can throw them out just as easily if their patience is exhausted. There is already reason to think that the working class is reaching the limits of its tolerance with the government.”[450]
The situation was becoming increasingly desperate in the countryside. Many landowners abandoned their fields, perhaps because they feared revolution or to protest the new government. The landowners who remained found any excuse to halt productive activity, which preserved the crushing rates of unemployment among the peasantry. On February 27, the government issued instructions for rehiring workers who had been fired for their political views or for participating in the October 1934 revolutionary events. The rural and industrial bourgeoisie ignored those directives and refused to readmit the laborers in question. Although unions in the industrial areas were able to force the bourgeoisie to follow the government’s orders, the only solution in the countryside was to occupy the abandoned lands. Rural expropriations spread like wildfire once the Cenicientos peasants took the first step:
<quote>
The peasants of Cenicientos in the province of Madrid have occupied in a body the pasture land called “Encinar de la Parra,” covering an area of 1,317 hectares, and have begun to work it. When the occupation was completed, they sent the following letter to the minister of agriculture:
“In our village there is an extensive pasture land susceptible of cultivation, which in the past was actually cultivated, but which today is used for shooting and grazing. Our repeated requests to lease the land from the owner, who, together with two or three other landowners, possess almost the entire municipal area—at one time communal property—have been in vain. As our hands and ploughs were idle and our children hungry, we had no course but to occupy the land. This we have done. With our labor it will yield what it did not yield before; our misery will end and the national wealth will increase. In doing this, we do not believe that we have prejudiced anyone, and the only thing we ask of Your Excellency is that you legalize this situation and grant us credits so that we can perform our labors in peace.” Two weeks after the Cenicientos occupation, the peasants of eight towns in Salamanca did the same thing. Four days later, the inhabitants of some towns in the province of Toledo followed suit and, by daybreak on March 25, eighty thousand peasants in the Cáceres and Badajoz provinces were taking over the lands and beginning to cultivate them.[451]
</quote>
Press reports on these occupations made it clear that a battle was unfolding: “Two thousand hungry residents of this locality [Mansalbas-Toledo] just took over the ‘El Robledo’ farm, which the Count of Romanones appropriated twenty years ago without giving anything to the people.” [452]
Popular Front leaders had assumed that they could continue manipulating the peasantry with their speculations about whether “we will or will not apply agrarian reform,” but quickly realized that would no longer work when the first land occupations began in Murcia, just a few days after they took office. They resorted to the time-tested procedure of expelling the peasants with the Civil Guard, who injured twenty-seven on this occasion. The peasants responded with the dramatic rebellion described above, which made Manuel Azaña understand that he couldn’t rely on mausers alone and had to send agronomical engineers and legalize the occupied farms. This proved once again that the only effective reforms are those imposed by force from below. Indeed, direct action was infinitely more successful than all the parliamentary chatter that took place between 1931 and 1933 about whether to institute the approved Agrarian Reform law.
There were other actions after the land occupations. There were attacks on churches, for example, whose pulpits had become sites of open conspiracy against the government and whose vestries were being used to store arms. The revolution began from below and had little to do with defending bourgeois democracy, the supposed purpose of the Popular Front.
Statistics from the period between February 16 and June 15, 1936 show that a class war was breaking out: “One hundred sixty churches burned down; 269 deaths; 1,287 injured; 113 general strikes, 228 partial strikes, and 145 bombings.” The political physiognomy of the country was: “UGT, 1,447,000 members; CNT, 1,577,000 members.” These numbers totaled more than three million, indicating that more than a third of the country’s eight million workers were unionized.
The Right “had 549,000 enrolled in its diverse organizations; from 20,000 to 30,000 retired soldiers; 50,000 falangists; 50,000 priests, and millions and millions of pesetas.” [453]
That was the distribution of forces when the CNT held its Fourth National Congress on May 1, 1936 in Zaragoza’s Iris Park Theater.
** CHAPTER XXVIII. The Fourth Congress of the CNT
The <em>Nosotros</em> group achieved a new level of dynamism after January 1936. Its members threw themselves into action: they worked to strengthen the CNT’s unions, built up CNT-FAI Defense Committees, and forged contacts with soldiers in order to stay informed about developments within the military. Of course they also went almost daily to conferences, union meetings, and rallies. However, the <em>Nosotros</em> group wasn’t alone in this; all CNT and FAI militants seemed to be growing increasingly engaged.
The CNT had no paid staff, other than the general secretary of the National Committee and the income it brought in from dues went entirely to prisoners, propaganda, and unemployed workers. However, despite the fact that the government constantly forced it underground (especially in Barcelona), it still managed to be an important presence in Spanish life, with its million and a half members. It is a testament to the incredible dedication and fortitude of its militants that the organization could recover so quickly, put its unions in order, and prepare a National Congress that thousands of activists would attend. We don’t know of any comparable organization.
There was a certain leaderism in the CNT, but the Confederation’s anti- authoritarian structure made it unique. It arose solely from an activist’s abnegation and determination, and the men with such virtues received no reward other than the respect that they inspired among their fellow workers. Their prestige derived from their conduct and commitment in the daily struggle. They emerged as activists among the workers in the factory. They were on the front lines of every battle. They were always the first to go to prison, had no right to weakness in times of peril, and the organization sanctioned them inexorably if they made mistakes or faltered. Above all, they were respected because they lived exemplary lives.
That fame and esteem weighed like a tombstone on Durruti and Ascaso. Both knew that while they exercised no formal power, they were very prominent and that could be pernicious from an anarchist perspective. They expressed their discomfort with this by continually making statements like: “A man subject to another man’s influence will never be his own master;” and “if a man isn’t master of himself, he’ll never be completely free.” Ironically, instead of diminishing people’s regard for them, these comments actually enhanced it. Their awareness of their importance to the movement occasionally caused conflicts with their close comrades or other militants. This was particularly true of García Oliver, for example. He was very confident in his views and typically expressed himself with brutal honesty, which gave him a certain air of superiority. There was always a risk that the feeling of superiority could prompt him to adopt a conscious leaderism or fall into the role of “influential militant.”
García Oliver’s perspective had matured greatly in recent months. He saw the coming of the military coup with precision and thought the CNT had to use it to make its own revolution. He accorded a unique role to the CNT and FAI in that revolution and there was a degree of Bolshevism in his conception of revolutionary efficiency. If nothing else, he was a daring revolutionary.
Durruti’s views had also grown and a concern appeared on his horizon that put him at odds with García Oliver, precisely over the question of efficiency. Although Durruti understood that the CNT and FAI were Spain’s only genuinely revolutionary organizations, what he wanted was an anarchist revolution, not a CNT-FAI revolution. A CNT-FAI revolution would almost be a Bolshevik revolution, whereas an anarchist revolution would involve all the popular forces oriented toward libertarian communism. García Oliver was a very practically minded revolutionary, but his practical sense could lead him to a dictatorship of the CNT and FAI. Durruti, even while recognizing the revolutionary singularity of those organizations, did not want a CNT-FAI dictatorship because obviously an anarchist dictatorship would still be a dictatorship. Implicit in both of their views was the question of revolutionary power, a taboo topic that yielded misunderstandings to the extent that it was not addressed directly. Although those misunderstandings were not a terribly pressing issue at the moment, they would be as soon as the CNT and FAI had to confront a real revolution.
Durruti and García Oliver clashed at a meeting of the Manufacturing and Textile Workers’ Union during a discussion of revolutionary preparation and defense. García Oliver argued for building a paramilitary organization to resist the anticipated coup, whereas Durruti believed that would be untenable, even from the perspective of efficiency. “It’s true,” he said, “that García Oliver’s theory is more efficient, in military terms, than the guerrilla strategy that I advance. But there’s no doubt that a paramilitary organization of the sort will lead to revolutionary defeat. It will impose itself as an authority—precisely in the name of efficiency—and end up asserting itself over the revolution. The Bolsheviks crushed the Russian Revolution in that way exactly. I’m sure that wasn’t their intention, but it was inevitable. We shouldn’t repeat their mistakes.” [454]
A majority of Barcelona’s Manufacturing and Textile Workers’ Union supported García Oliver’s motion. Textually, his proposal read: “CNT action groups and anarchist groups will form a national defense organization. With the local group as its point of departure, it will form <em>centurias</em>, the primary element of the Proletarian Army.”
The CNT Congress had a very full agenda. One item focused on clarifying the meaning of libertarian communism. Trying to define such a thing would have been an idle exercise under other circumstances, but it was absolutely essential in the turbulence of May 1936. There were two, conflicted tendencies within the CNT: the simple syndicalists believed that CNT structures should provide the foundations of the new society, whereas the anarchists argued that an organization formed to wage class war should not serve as the model for the new social order. In the three months preceding the Congress, there were vigorous debates on libertarian communism and revolutionary defense in workers’ meetings, rallies, and newspapers. These discussions sensitized militants to the challenges that they would soon face and helped them clarify their views.
On May 1, 1936, the CNT inaugurated its Fourth Congress in Zaragoza with a large rally in the city’s bullring, which was packed with local workers as well as thousands who traveled there from Barcelona, Valencia, and Madrid in specially commissioned trains.
The Congress first had to resolve the question of the Opposition Unions; that is, the militants who had left the CNT in March 1933 and now wanted to return en masse. Activists had discussed the issue at length in meetings prior to the Congress and the general sentiment was to allow them to rejoin the Confederation. The Congress now had to decide if that would, in fact, happen. The matter was pressing, too, because the Opposition Unions had brought resolutions bearing on several items on the agenda.
They argued that the CNT should readmit them because the “need to stop the Marxists from overwhelming us makes unity imperative. The Marxists have neither made revolutionary sacrifices nor created an environment susceptible to working class insurrection. The future Spanish revolution must not fall into their hands. Congress participants have to appreciate the primary importance of unity, so as to forestall any Marxist deformation of events.” [455] Although some asserted that important issues about the anarchists’ role in the unions were being left unresolved under the pretext of unity, the majority wanted to end the dispute. García Oliver’s speech was representative of the spirit:
<quote>
Comrades of the Opposition: Minorities always win when they’re right. Everyone should learn from us; everyone should fight to win the majority as we fought. If you’re right but not victorious it’s because you lacked energy, because you didn’t emphatically propagate your views. Fight, fight to win, but everyone must respect decisions made by the organization. That has to be the norm. And disputes must be addressed from within the Confederation....
The CNT had only one, four page newspaper [1931]. Then we released another in Madrid [CNT ]. Barcelona’s <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> grew first to six pages, later to eight, and then quickly to twelve. This, comrades of the Opposition, is the CNT that you’ll find when you return. We should settle the split at this Congress. Our forces must be solidly united for revolutionary action in support of our program.[456]
</quote>
Another important point on the agenda was a discussion of the cycle of insurrections that the CNT had launched over the past four years:
<quote>
There were circumstances in 1931 that favored the proletariat and our libertarian revolution. These circumstances have not been repeated since. The regime was in crisis: the state was weak, and still hadn’t consolidated itself or fully taken the reigns of power; the army was relaxed by indiscipline; there were fewer Civil Guards; a poorly organized police force; and a frightened bureaucracy. It was the propitious moment for our revolution and the anarchists had the right to make it.... At the time, we said “the further we are from April 14, the further we are from our revolution, because we’re giving the state time to recover and organize the counterrevolution”.... The CNT made two revolutionary attempts, one in January and another in December. These cleared the way. The first completely pulverized the left, after the crime of Casas Viejas, and threw the masses and the Socialists themselves on the revolutionary path. It removed all obstacles and crushed political illusions. Yes, it’s true that we failed in both attempts, but those failures made it clear that the CNT, for the first time, could undertake vast national struggles. Until then we had been absorbed by local conflicts with employers and now we’re known around the world. We represent the hope for a libertarian communist society. We’ve given a flag and a symbol to the working class.
</quote>
The Congress also passed resolutions on the following topics: libertarian communism, unemployment, the military-political situation, agrarian reform, and the revolutionary worker alliance. With respect to the final issue, the CNT invited the UGT to join it in the struggle against capitalism and for a socialist society based on workers’ democracy.
The Confederation marked the end of the Congress with a large rally in Zaragoza, followed by others in Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla, Madrid, and elsewhere.
In its final piece on the Congress, <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> wrote: “The Congress is over; now the great work of Confederal reconstruction and revolutionary preparation begins. No one’s personal opinion prevailed at the Congress, but rather the organization’s collective thought. There was unanimity and it is unanimously that we must put its decisions into practice. We will show the workers of the world how we prepare to make the revolution.” [457] A million and a half workers declared themselves for libertarian communism through revolution. Were they utopians? Events will soon show that their understanding of Spain’s situation was completely lucid.
The Popular Front had only the most tenuous control over the country. Analyzing events between February and July, Fernando Claudín correctly notes that Spain “was living under a tripartite power: the legal, which had minimal effectiveness; the workers, whose parties and unions demonstrated in broad daylight; and the counterrevolution, which expressed itself in the aggressive speeches made by its parliamentary representatives, economic sabotage, and fascist street actions. Above all, the counterrevolution operated in military quarters, where it was meticulously preparing the military coup. Its preparations were a public secret: the Generals’ conspiracy was denounced in Parliament and at public rallies. Anyone studying those crucial months in 1936 must at least wonder: why didn’t the parties and labor organizations act in a concerted way to crush the military uprising in the womb and resolutely push the revolutionary process forward?” [458] The workers became increasingly radicalized during June and July. Every battle seemed to re-affirm the revolutionary strength of the proletariat and the peasantry. Yet, the bourgeoisie, wedded to the Army and Church, also demonstrated that it intended to confront the workers. Durruti had been right to assert that the dilemma was between bourgeois dictatorship and social revolution.
The revolutionary horizon broadened after the Popular Front victory in France, which unleashed a tremendous wave of factory occupations. [459] The combination of the Spanish and French events opened European-wide possibilities for proletarian revolution. At a public meeting, Durruti declared:
“If the strike movement becomes more radical in France and the workers don’t let themselves be tricked by politicians or union bosses, we’re going to enter a revolutionary process on a continental scale. Comrades, precipitate the events!”
Militants in Catalonia urged the CNT National Committee to push UGT leadership to immediately form the revolutionary alliance defined at the CNT Congress. The UGT did not respond to the CNT’s urgent appeals. Francisco Ascaso denounced their silence at a rally: “Socialist comrades, why wait?” [460] While the revolutionary fever rose in Spain, French workers were anesthetized by their leaders and traded their true liberation for a miserable eight days of vacation.
** CHAPTER XXIX. The long wait for July 19, 1936
When Manuel Azaña became President of the Republic on May 10, Santiago Casares Quiroga became both Prime Minister and Minister of War. Casares Quiroga responded to the conspiracy against the Republic in the same way as his predecessor: he acted oblivious. As far as he was concerned, “there’s no reason to be alarmed; the government has the situation under control.” The absurdity of this attitude became clear after July 10, when everyone saw that the government had completely lost control. The soldiers enlisted in the plot took orders only from General Mola, the leader of the rebellion who had installed his General Staff in Pamplona. When soldiers loyal to the Republic saw the ineffectiveness of the Ministry of War, they put themselves at the disposal of the workers’ organizations or political parties of their preference and prepared for the battle that everyone now believed was inevitable. Falange Española groups escalated their terrorism in an attempt to create panic among the people. Assaults on individual Left activists multiplied. They seriously injured Socialist legal expert Jiménez de Asúa, the Vice President of the Parliament, among others.
Largo Caballero had a long conversation with Casares Quiroga in Araquistáin’s house in Madrid before leaving on July 8 to attend the Congress of the International Syndical Federation in London. The Socialists emphatically warned the Prime Minister that a military coup was imminent. Casares Quiroga dismissed them as “alarmists.” [461]
A falangist group took over Radio Valencia on July 11. It broadcast: “the Falange Española is occupying the studio of Unión Radio” and ended its statement with a “For the heart!” The next day in Madrid, four gunmen shot down Assault Guard Lieutenant José Castillo, who was well-known for his leftist views. The execution was carried out on the orders of the Unión Militar Española or, according to some, falangists. [462] That night a group of Assault Guardsmen pulled Calvo Sotelo out of his home to take him to the General Office of Security. His corpse was found early the next morning in Madrid’s Eastern Cemetery.
On July 14, General Mola summoned military leaders from towns in northern Spain to his command post, where they surely concretized the final details of the rebellion.
Funerals for both Calvo Sotelo and Lieutenant Castillo took place on July 15 in Madrid. Uniformed soldiers accompanying the coffin of the former shouted “We will avenge you!” Civil Guard officers attacked workers marching with the latter, injuring several with their violent charges. General Balmes, the military leader in Las Palmas, died in an accident on July 16. Franco went there on July 17 to pay homage to his comrade-in- arms and received the false passports that he would use while traveling to Spanish Morocco via Casablanca on an English plane known as the “Dragon Rapide.” The Melilla garrison rose up that afternoon and Franco took off for Morocco moments later. The war had begun. The government published a statement saying that it had the situation “under control.”
On July 14, Durruti checked out of a hospital where he had been resting after being operated on for a hernia a few days earlier. He hadn’t recovered completely, but left nonetheless. That day he met with his <em>Nosotros</em> group comrades, who also made up the Barcelona Defense Committee. They told him that their plan was beginning to bear fruit. The District Defense Committees had gone into operation the previous day and there was perfect communication between them and CNT, FAI, and Libertarian Youth groups. Contact between the District Committees and the local Defense Committees was equally fluid.
They were in continuous contact with the Atarazanas Artillery Base through Sergeants Manzana and Gordo. They also had ongoing dialogues with several officers at the Prat military air base, who had agreed to bomb the Sant Andreu Central Artillery Barracks as soon as the rebels took to the street. Workers from Poble Nou, Sant Andreu, and Santa Coloma would attack the barracks once the bombing began. It would be easy to arm the people if that barracks fell into workers’ hands: nearly ninety thousands rifles, dozens of machine-guns, and more than a few canons were stored there. [463] The District Defense Committees studied their military strategy over a map during a large meeting. Each district would take responsibility for the government buildings, police stations, and Civil and Assault Guard barracks in its area. Militants from the Gas and Electricity Workers’ Union would immediately occupy the main warehouses of CAMPSA (a state-owned gasoline and petroleum company). CNT and FAI defense groups would take control of the subterranean parts of the city: the sewers were ideal for ferrying reinforcements to military hotspots. Action groups from the Subway Workers’ Union would seize the subway tunnels. The Defense Committees were to allow the troops to march confidently forward when they went into the street, thus getting them as far as possible from their respective barracks. They would then block their retreat and attack, forcing them to endure heavy shootouts that would exhaust their ammunition, while also preventing the rebel units from communicating among themselves. They would let the troops get as far as the Brecha-Rondas-Plaza de la Universidad-Cataluña line, stopping Las Ramblas from falling into rebel hands at all costs.
They would vigorously defend the capital’s old quarter as well as the ports.
Each Neighborhood Committee would defend its own zone, thus making it unnecessary to move militants from one place to another. The fighters’ familiarity with one another would also limit the possibility of enemy infiltration.
On the July 15, <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> reported that CNT and FAI militants had been patrolling the city the entire night, on the lookout for suspicious enemy movements. They had very few arms in their possession: only small caliber pistols and limited ammunition as well. They had some Winchesters that Estat Català forces discarded on October 6, but they were holding them in reserve, since the Generalitat’s police—who were also patrolling the streets—had been frisking people and in some cases taking their arms. The police soon returned the weapons: neither the police nor the workers wanted to spark a battle between potential allies.
That day, an individual dressed in an elegant summer suit visited Durruti. They shut themselves up in a room and spoke for a good quarter hour. When the men left, Durruti said: “It was Pérez Farràs, the Commander of the Mozos de Escuadra [trans.: the Generalitat’s autonomous police]. He came to sound us out and find out what we’re scheming. They know that they’ll suffer the same fate as they did in October without us, but they’re scared of us and don’t want to give us weapons. They’re planning to use us as cannon fodder.” [464]
An important meeting of the Defense Committees occurred on the night of July 16 at the Manufacturing and Textile Workers’ social hall in El Clot. It became clear at the meeting that it was quite unlikely that the Generalitat would give arms to the CNT. Militants had to accept the idea of acquiring them by assaulting the Sant Andreu barracks, as originally planned.
According to Santillán, CNT representatives met with Generalitat Interior Minister Josep María España on July 17. They told him that if the Generalitat armed one thousand CNT militants, that the Confederation could guarantee the soldier’s defeat. España claimed that the Generalitat had no weapons to give out; maybe some pistols, at the very most. Santillán writes: “We had the distinct impression that if the politicians feared fascism, they were even more afraid of us.... On the eve of July 19, we had to focus all our energies on defending the few guns that we possessed, stopping the police from disarming our comrades who were carrying out their nightly patrols.” [465]
On July 17, censors blacked out a statement that the CNT and FAI had published in <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> to orient the working class. The text was extremely important, so they printed it illegally and distributed it by hand. That night there were rumors that troops in Morocco had risen up against the Republic. The rumors were true. The evening papers made no mention of the event, although they did print a note from the government claiming that it “had the situation under control.”
That evening, members of the Maritime Transport Union stormed several merchant ships and seized their cargo of arms. They captured approximately two hundred rifles, which they immediately distributed to several unions, including the Metalworkers’ Union on the Rambla Santa Mónica. When the Catalan Interior Minister learned of the assault, España ordered Federico Escofet to recover the rifles at once. Escofet, the Generalitat’s General Commissioner of Public Order, entrusted the mission to his Chief of Services, Commander Vicente Guarner. Guarner and a company of Assault Guards went to the Metalworkers’ Union and got ready to storm the premises and disarm its occupants. Union secretary Benjamín Sánchez went out to speak with Guarner and told him in no uncertain terms that he must not move forward, unless he wanted to start a conflict between the CNT and the Assault Guard. “The Generalitat refuses to arm the people and claims that it has no weapons to distribute,” Sánchez said. “Yet when the workers show that there are arms, it sends out the police to take them. Commander, in these tragic moments, don’t you think your obsession with maintaining the principle of authority is more than a little infantile?” [466]
Commander Guarner knew perfectly well that Benjamín Sánchez was right. He had already arrested Valdés, an Assault Guard Captain, from whom he had confiscated the troops’ orders to rebel. And he also knew that the Barcelona military garrison had some six thousand men, not to mention the falangists and other rightists who might make common cause with the insurgent soldiers, whereas the Generalitat could only marshal 1,960 Security and Assault guards in reply. Furthermore, he was aware that the three thousand Civil Guardsmen under General Aranguren’s command had dubious loyalties and could easily side with the rebels. Guarner knew all this and yet—since orders are orders—he was prepared to ignite a war with the workers. Whether by chance or because someone had informed them, García Oliver and Durruti appeared on the scene. Guarner hoped that these “bosses” would be more sensitive to the delicacy of the situation. He explained to García Oliver that he had to the search building and take the rifles. Exasperated, Durruti intervened. He said: “There are times in life when it’s impossible to carry out an order, even when the person giving the order is very high up. By disobeying, man becomes civilized. Civilize yourself by making common cause with the people. Your uniform doesn’t mean anything anymore. There is no authority other than the revolutionary order and it demands that the rifles are in the workers’ hands.” [467]
Whether or not Durruti convinced him, Guarner tried to “save the prestige of authority” by accepting the dozen unserviceable riffles that they handed over to him.
The long wait for July 19, 1936 401Both Vicente Guarner and Federico Escofet put special emphasis on the matter of the rifles in the works they later wrote about the war. The first says that authorities recovered fifty or sixty rifles and the second claims that they seized all two hundred. The truth is that nothing more than twelve broken rifles left the Metalworkers’ Union and Guarner wouldn’t have found the rest even if he had raided the building, for the simple reason that they had already been distributed to the District Defense Committees. [468]
Saturday July 18 was a day of intense activity and agitated nerves. Despite all the CNT’s efforts to secure arms, they had not acquired anything of significance. Some youths had managed to get weapons by disarming the city’s night watchmen, but their six-bullet, .38 caliber guns were more for show than real fighting. The dozen gunsmiths that they planned to raid were still in reserve. And what would their stock mean against machine-guns and cannons? The only hope was to take the Sant Andreu barracks, which is where the workers were told to go.
For its part, the Generalitat took measures that might appear fitting at first glance, but actually bordered on the absurd. It emitted an order informing soldiers that they were no longer obliged to obey their officers and then backed it up with another order firing officers suspected of fascist sympathies. This was ridiculous because the soldiers were in their barracks at the mercy of their officers as well as the falagists who were pouring in. And the “fired” officers could laugh at the second edict, since they were working precisely to “fire” Lluís Companys.
At 11:30 pm, Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver were in the Catalan Interior Ministry building making a final attempt to convince España to disarm part of the Civil and Assault Guard and give weapons to the workers. While they were inside the building negotiating, the Palacio Plaza was filling with workers from Barceloneta, who came to demand weapons. There were three Assault Guard companies in the Plaza protecting the Interior Ministry. The crowd increased until it nearly filled the entire Plaza and Colón Avenue. Minister España showed how frightened he was when he begged García Oliver to say something from the balcony to calm the workers. García Oliver went to the balcony and told the port workers the same thing that the Generalitat had been saying for a week: “They have no weapons for the workers.” The people below received those words with indignation and shouted in unison: “October! October!” España, Companys, and all those holding the reigns of power understood the unmistakable meaning of their cry. But, even so, they were more afraid of the working class than the fascists. Would the workers draw pertinent lessons from the Generalitat’s stance during the night of July 18?
While the tense deliberations continued in the Interior Ministry— García Oliver speaking aggressively and Francisco Ascaso with transparent disdain—the telephone rang. España took the receiver and the paleness that immediately covered his face made it clear that he had heard something very troubling. He hung up and told the CNT men: “This can’t be! This is disorder! They tell me that CNT members are requisitioning cars and painting them with the letters of their unions! The gunsmiths have been stormed! Go calm those people!”
Durruti stared at España intently. He stepped toward him and pounded on the table that separated them. “Who do you take us for? We represent the people in the streets who are demanding arms, who are requisitioning cars and storming the gunsmiths. We’re representatives of a working class that isn’t going to go to battle defenselessly. It’s your responsibility to calm those workers, who you think of as ‘rabble.’” Durruti then turned to his comrades and said: “There’s nothing more for us to do here. Let’s go.”
When they were leaving the Interior Ministry, they passed Diego Abad de Santillán and two militants from the Construction Workers’ Union, who were also on a mission to acquire weapons. Santillán and his two companions insisted on seeing España. Their efforts were not completely fruitless: when it was announced that the rebel troops had left their barracks, an Assault officer, without asking permission from anyone, began to search the Palace’s rooms until he found a box containing one hundred pistols, which he handed over to Santillán. [469]
Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver spoke with the port workers in the street. García Oliver told them to go to Sant Andreu, but Durruti contradicted him, thinking that it would be better if they stayed there, continuing to demand arms and keeping watch over the Artillery barracks in the Docks as well as the Parque de la Ciudadela Infantry barracks.
At the last moment, General Mola made General Goded the leader of the fascist uprising in Barcelona and Catalonia as a whole. Goded was in the Balearic Islands at the time and would not arrive in Barcelona until daybreak on July 19. While Goded traveled, Cavalry General Alvaro Fernández Burriel led the rebellion. Burriel, the oldest of the generals with a command in Barcelona, established himself in the Cavalry barracks on Tarragona Street. It was there that he linked up with the other barracks and coordinated the revolt.
General Llano de la Encomienda was the Capitan General of the Region. He knew from the outset that the majority of the officers surrounding him had gone over to the conspirators and that therefore he was their prisoner. Nevertheless, he could still help the Generalitat by refusing to declare a state of emergency, which General Burriel insistently asked him to do in hopes of using the declaration as cover while he moved troops around the city. Several military leaders were in Dependencias Militares—an imposing building buried on the Ramblas-Paseo corner—who relied on the army’s bureaucratic services and took orders from Ramón Mola, the General’s brother and his representative in Catalonia. We will now review the military forces planning to rise up at dawn on July 19. [470]
<em>Regiment number 10</em>, of the Seventh Infantry Brigade, which General Angel San Pedro commanded. The Regiment’s barracks were in Pedralbes, under the control of Colonel Fermín Espallargas. Almost all its officers participated in the uprising. Commander López Amor took command of its two battalions after imprisoning Fermín Espallargas and San Pedro, who had remained faithful to the Republic. Given the many men on summer leaves of absence, the exact number of soldiers in the Regiment at the time is not clear. But there were at least six hundred, in addition to the falangists and rightwing youth that joined the rebels that afternoon. Its armament consisted of seventeen machine-guns and four mortars.
<em>Regiment Number 34</em>. Parque de la Ciudadela Barracks (on Sicilia Street). Colonel Jacobo Roldán, who supported the rebels, was in command. Half the officer corps in this barracks supported the insurgents, which later rendered it half neutral. It had approximately the same number of men and weapons as the preceding Regiment.
<em>Second Cavalry Brigade</em>. It was under the command of General Alvaro Fernández Burriel and the Brigade’s two Regiments had their barracks on Tarragona Street. Like the Seventh Infantry Brigade, it had approximately six hundred men, but only six machine-guns.
Regiment number 3. It was in the Lepanto Barracks, under the command of Colonel Francisco Lacasa. Almost all of its officers and also the Colonel were engaged in the rebellion. Its endowment of arms and men was more or less the same as the previous.
<em>Artillery Brigade</em>. Rebel General Justo Legorburu was in command. This brigade was made up by two Regiments. Regiment number 7 had its barracks in Sant Andreu and was led by Colonel José Llanas. It was composed of two groups of three batteries with four 10.5 Vickers artillery pieces each. The officer corps was split, but those supporting the rebels seized the artillery as well as machine-guns. This Brigade also had another Regiment in reserve in Mataró, which possessed sixteen artillery pieces.
The Central Artillery Station and the general armory were also in Sant Andreu, which the CNT-FAI Defense Committee believed contained around nine thousand rifles. There was later talk of thirty-five thousand rifles. In either case, there was a significant number of arms there and the Confederal Defense Committee was not wrong to think of it as the arsenal of the revolution.
<em>Mountain Regiment number 1</em>. It was commanded by Francisco Serra and its barracks were on Icaria Avenue (in the Docks). It had twenty-four 10.5 Skoda artillery pieces. Except for the Colonel, the entire officer corps sided with the rebels. The basic nucleus of the conspiracy worked out of this barracks, whose representative from the UME was Captain López Varela. Engineers Battalion. Its barracks were on Cortes Street, next to the Plaza de España. It had approximately four hundred men.
The Prat del Llobregat Military Air Base was commanded by Colonel Díaz Sandino, who was loyal to the Republic. It had three small squadrons with five Breguet planes each. The majority of its officers supported the Republic and the Confederal Defense Committee was in contact with some of them. Nonetheless, several fascist officers deserted with some of the planes at dawn, surely those in the best condition.
The <em>Naval Air Force</em> had ten Savoia hydroplanes. Except for some mechanics, the entire base supported the uprising. The Savoias that ferried Goded from Majorca to Barcelona took off from this base in the early morning hours.
<em>Carabineros Command Headquarters</em>. There were approximately four hundred men in this body and its barracks were on San Pablo Street. It leaned toward the rebels, but did not join the uprising because it had been surrounded immediately on July 19.
<em>Civil Guard</em>. It had three thousand men in all of Catalonia and was under the command of General Aranguren, who declared his loyalty to the Republic. In Catalonia there were two Tercios (a Tercio is the equivalent of a Regiment). The nineteenth was garrisoned on Barcelona’s Ausias March Street and under the command of Colonel Antonio Escobar. It was made up of two commands (the equivalent of Battalions) of four companies. Colonel Francisco Brotons led Tercio number 3 and although it was spread throughout Catalonia, it did have a squad in Barcelona whose size we do not know. There was also a Cavalry Command with three Squadrons of 150 men each, whose barracks were on Consejo de Ciento Street. These forces supported the rebels and, like the Carabineros, were a constant preoccupation for the revolutionaries from 5:00 am to 2:00 pm on July 19. The Generalitat, in hopes of controlling these forces, ordered General Aranguren to concentrate them in the Palacio Plaza.
The majority of the military forces scattered throughout Catalonia backed the fascists. General Goded called upon them to march on Barcelona at 3:00 pm on July 19, but the people’s clear successes by that time undermined their initiative and local Revolutionary Committees had also barricaded them in their barracks.
What forces could the Generalitat deploy against the rebels? Vicente Guarner answers the question:
<quote>
We were immensely inferior; the “iron of our armed squadrons” was little more than filings. We estimated that we were facing approximately five thousand disciplined but poorly led men, with twenty-four artillery pieces, forty-eight machine-guns, and twenty heavy mortars. Against this we had 1,960 Security and Assault Guards, supported by sixteen machine-guns and eight light mortars. The Civil Guard’s loyalty was still uncertain and our local companies of Security guards ... were out of training militarily.... We had no hand grenades or even tear gas.... The outlook could not have been more bleak.[471]
</quote>
The Generalitat’s General Staff—Escofet, Guarner, and Commander Arrando—drew up their plans to defend Barcelona on the basis of tactics that they thought the rebels would apply. Their defense would turn on the following key points: the “Cinc d’Ors”—where they hoped to concentrate all the enemy’s forces—and on protecting the Catalan Interior Ministry against the artillery troops and infantry from the Parque de la Ciudadela sector. They scattered companies of Assault Guards around the city: some in the Plaza de España; some in the port, to protect Customs and confront Atarazanas; and others at the Sant Andreu barracks. There were also some troops on Urquinaona and in the Plaza de Cataluña protecting the Generalitat and the General Station of Public Order. When he received this plan, Díaz Sandino said “given the magnitude of the rebel forces and the weakness of our own, the President of the Generalitat, his advisors, and upper-level Catalan functionaries should go to the Prat del Llobregat airbase.” [472] With morale like that, and clearly inadequate military resources, they would surely face a repetition of the October 6 defeat if the working class did not intervene. And yet during the week preceding the rebel uprising, authorities did their best to demoralize the workers, when not confronting them with arms in hand, such as during the July 18 episode at the Metalworkers’ Union.
There is a striking difference between the defensive plan that the Generalitat embraced and that applied by the workers from the Confederal Defense Committee. The latter adopted a strategy based on the workers’ strengths. Against classical military tactics, they responded with urban guerrilla warfare, which focused on wearing down the enemy, isolating its units, and defeating those units one by one. The workers assumed that the soldiers would try to divide the western workers’ districts from the eastern industrial zone in order to dominate the central part of the city, which contained the government buildings, the telephone exchange, and the radio transmitters. To block this, workers would distract the rebel units while stopping them from making contact either among themselves or with their barracks.
The Generalitat’s plan was purely defensive. And its efforts to protect the Sant Andreu Central Artillery Barracks were clearly designed to prevent the workers from storming the site and seizing its weapons. They took that measure as soon as they learned that the Confederal Defense Committee wanted aviators to bomb the Barracks. As we will see below, the aviators’ bombardment was unnecessary by the time it took place, since the workers were already in control of the situation and the rebels still fighting had no hope of victory. They continued resisting mainly because of pressure from their officers, who preferred death before falling to the revolutionaries. Around three in the morning on July 19, Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver visited the District Defense Committees and the unions designated as meeting places for the workers: the Woodworkers’ Union on Rosales Street at the Paralelo; the Construction Workers’ Union on Mercaders Street in the middle of the Santa Catalina neighborhood; the Transport and Metalworkers’ Union on the Rambla Santa Mónica in the heart of Fifth District, and the Manufacturing and Textile Workers’ Union in the midst of the large Sant Martí workers’ neighborhood. After completing their inspection, they went from the Manufacturing and Textile Workers’ Union down San Juan de Malta Street to 276 Paseo de Pujadas. That was where Gregorio Jover lived, whose third floor apartment had become a gathering place for the <em>Nosotros</em> group. Everyone let out a sigh of relief when they entered. García Oliver and Ascaso were exhausted and sat down. Durruti was the only one who continued to stand; fatigue seemed to increase his energy. He teased his weary friends: “These guys won’t be fighting any battles today!”
His joke fell on deaf ears. Everyone was convinced that this was the moment that they had been waiting for. No one said a word while Jover distributing spiced sausage sandwiches and glasses of red wine. Everyone ate except for Ascaso, who drank a coffee and nervously smoked a cigarette. Languid music drifted in from an old radio, but then stopped suddenly when the broadcaster broke in. Everyone listened attentively to what he might say. It was an anguished warning to the people, saying that the fascists would soon rise up. It was nearly four in the morning. Durruti grew somber and looked at the people in the room: Ascaso, nervously puffing a cigarette as if in a rush to light another: García Oliver, who was looking at Aurelio Fernández, surprised by the fact that he was wearing his customary fancy suit, with a white handkerchief poking out of the breast pocket; Ricardo Sanz was devouring his sandwich while holding a half glass of wine in his right hand; Gregorio Jover, thin, with a gaunt face, coming and going from the kitchen to the dining room; Antonio Ortiz, running his hand through his hair repeatedly, trying to order his rebellious black locks; and, finally, “El Valencia,” the oldest, a new member of the group, who was as nervous as Ascaso and also smoking cigarette after cigarette. What did Durruti think after this passing glance? He could have only wondered who among them would survive the battle that was about to begin.
García Oliver broke the silence: “Is the machine-gun mounted?”
The machine-gun was an old Hotchkiss that had been extracted piece- by-piece from the Atarazanas barracks.
“Yes,” someone responded. “It’s already installed on the truck. There’s nothing more to bring down but the things in the room.”
Those “things” were two machine-gun rifles and several repeating Winchesters. Silence descended again. It was a heavy silence, laden with worry. There were some discreet knocks on the door and then the news: “The troops are beginning to leave the Pedralbes barracks.” Everyone jumped as if yanked by a string and grabbed a weapon. There were two trucks in the street, pointing towards Poble Nou and escorted by a dozen militants. The men of the <em>Nosotros</em> group divided themselves between the trucks. The one in front carried the machine-gun and a black and red flag, which began to flutter as the vehicle moved forward. While the vehicles drove toward the center of Barcelona, groups of workers who had been patrolling all night greeted them with a shout that would be heard in every corner of the city within a few hours: “CNT-FAI!” [473]
News of the troops’ departure reached the Palacio Plaza, where thousands of workers were still futilely demanding weapons. They stopped shouting for a moment and everyone stared at one another. There was a sudden quietness, which the hasty departure of Santillán and his two comrades did not interrupt, as they ran off with the celebrated hundred pistols that had been found so opportunely. An Assault Guard looked at the crowd and then looked at himself. He had a rifle in his hand and a pistol on his belt. He didn’t need both weapons and there were so many unarmed men. He took his pistol from his belt and gave it to the person standing closest to him. “Take it,” he said. “We’ll fight together!” [474]
It was 4:45 am on what would be the longest day in the lives of thousands of men and women. At that moment, all the factory sirens began to scream out simultaneously, just as the CNT and its District Defense Committees had planned. The hour of struggle was ringing...
* <strong>Third Part:</strong> The revolutionary, from july 19 to november 20, 1936
** CHAPTER I. Barcelona in flames [475]
The fascists put their military apparatus in gear just before five in the morning. The leaders knew what they wanted, but the soldiers had been deceived into thinking that they were defending a Republic in peril.
The Montesa Calvary regiments took Tarragona Street toward the Plaza de España. The Santiago regiment left its barracks on Lepanto Street and followed Industria Street on their way to the “Cinc d’Ors.” The Seventh Light Artillery from Sant Andreu divided into two columns; one circumvallated the city and the other cut across it, both heading for the Plaza de Cataluña. The Mountain Artillery from the Docks took Icaria Avenue; its objective was Palacio Plaza and control of the port. The Badajoz Infantry Regiment left its barracks in Pedralbes behind it and advanced along the Diagonal to occupy the center of the capital. The Sappers Battalion companies left their barracks on Cortes Street, which they followed on their march toward the Plaza de España. There they would link up with the Montesa regiments and seize the Paralelo, establishing a direct route to the port. The divided loyalties among the officers of the Alcántara Infantry Regiment mostly neutralized it, but Colonel Jacobo Roldán managed to send out a company to attack Radio Barcelona’s transmitter on Caspe Street.
Who will fight these forces led by men who confidently repeated: “The rabble will run like pussies as soon as they hear the cannons’ thunder.”[476] The rabble? Assault Guards were already breaking ranks: they were fraternizing with the CNT and FAI workers and, together, they all formed an urban guerrilla force that would determine the outcome of the battle. They were joined by POUM groups (who were as unarmed as the CNT), UGT militants, and, later, the Esquerra Republicana’s boldest activists, whom the Generalitat had armed generously. The ideological differences that existed among the members of this human conglomerate melted as they faced the common danger and threw themselves against the military machine that was declaring war on everything in its path.
Where was each side’s General Staff? The fascists installed theirs in General Captaincy, where General Fernández Burriel would lead the rebellion after Captain General Llano de la Encomienda was abandoned by his men. Where was the General Staff of the other camp? Not exactly in the Catalan Interior Ministry, where Minister España showcased his inability to give an order or coordinate anything, despite having the assistance of General Aranguren, three companies of Assault Guards, and the Civil Guard’s Nineteenth <em>Tercio</em> in the Palacio Plaza.
Nor was it in the Generalitat. Its leader, Lluís Companys, had accepted the struggle “whatever fate awaits him,” but hightailed it to Vía Layetana as soon as the first shots rang out. Captain Federico Escofet urged him to do this, thinking that location more secure for his person.[477]
It certainly wasn’t in Police Headquarters, where Escofet, Guarner, and Arrando hoped to lead the battle from a map of Barcelona. Escofet had disdainfully rebuffed Julián Gorkin when he demanded weapons for the POUM.
Then where was the General Staff of the “rabble”? In reality, it had no General Staff. The popular resistance was a decentralized initiative led by unions, District Committees, and an enthusiastic multitude of women, men, and youngsters who laid in wait for the enemy, built barricades throughout the city, and invested a firm resolve to crush the rebels in every cobblestone that they passed from hand to hand.
The situation had already clarified by 8:00 am, as a truly Mediterranean sun rose over the capital of Catalonia. When the Light Seventh Artillery column came out into Balmes Street at the Diagonal, loyalist Assault Guards stopped it with hand grenades, pistol fire, and musket shots. Groups holding an intersection on Claris Street blocked the other detachment of the Seventh Artillery. The rebel officers ordered their soldiers to retreat, who tucked into doorways and planted their machine-guns.
The Pedralbes infantry, protected by a squadron of Montesa Cavalry, irrupted into the Plaza de la Universidad shouting “Long live the Republic!” This created enough confusion for them to seize several workers on guard and also send part of the Regiment (and the captured workers) toward the university. The rest of the soldiers took off for the Plaza de Cataluña, in hopes of descending along the Ramblas, but soon encountered gunfire, which broke their military formation and caused a dispersal of troops. They occupied the Hotel Colón, the Casino Militar, the Maison Doré and, after a scuffle with Assault Guards, the telephone exchange.
The Montesa Cavalry entered the Plaza de España with a cannon operated by Captain Sancho Contreras. These soldiers also shouted “Long live the Republic!” and immediately began to take positions. This caused the same turmoil as elsewhere, which grew more intense when the Assault Guards joined the rebel soldiers. The workers reacted quickly and began firing pistols and hunting shotguns. The insurgent officers took advantage of the disorder to occupy part of the Plaza de España and distribute their troops along the Paralelo and on Cortes Street in the direction of the Plaza de la Universidad. Meanwhile, Captain Sancho Contreras placed his cannon and fired at a barricade erected in front of the Alcaldía de Hostafrancs building. He wounded nineteen, but no one ran, except to attend to the victims. People recovered from their shock and the Assault Guards abandoned their Captain and went over to the workers’ side. The din of rifle and cannon fire drew more people to the scene and the fighting became more severe. The cannon fire left strips of human flesh hanging from a tree. Women threw whatever they had on hand at the troops from the balconies and let out enraged shouts of “assassins!” Captain Sancho Contreras had his first surprise: the “rabble” didn’t run from the cannon’s fury, but remade its defenses and continued to resist defiantly. This was no October 6!
The struggle in the Plaza de España, which was perhaps the first that really exploded that morning, created enough confusion for a rebel infantry company led by Captain López Belda to pass by. General Burriel also sped by in a car on his way to the Captaincy, where he intended to deal with Llano de la Encomienda. That was the only rebel victory.
After linking up in the Plaza de España, the soldiers from the Montesa Regiment and the Sappers took the Paralelo and then faced off against the barricade that militants from the CNT’s Woodworkers’ Union had erected at the Brecha de San Pablo. The workers turned back the soldiers, who shielded themselves with the men that they had taken prisoner earlier. This enabled them to position several machine-guns, whose gunfire nearly swept the width of the Paralelo. The workers continued fighting, despite the carnage caused by the machine-guns. They stabilized the front here. That group of rebels was also unable to reach its objective.
The Mountain Artillery forces that departed from the Docks soon encountered a big surprise. Using electric forklifts from the port, the workers made a gigantic barrier out of numerous huge balls of pressed paper. Then, with the support of Assault Guards, they formed a line of resistance behind them that confronted the relentless cannon fire ordered by Captain López Varela and Commander Fernando Urzué. This astonished Urzué. He had been the braggart who insisted that the “rabble” would run once they heard the cannon fire, just as they had run when he shot at the Generalitat on October 6. That was not the case at all. But there was enormous confusion. Shots rang out from everywhere, from the rooftops as well as the barricades. The rebels tried to protect themselves, while their mules neighed and swung from side to side under the weight of the armaments loaded upon them or simply broke into pieces when a marksman was skilled enough to hit their cargo of explosives.
The Santiago Regiment and a Civil Guard squad led by Commander Recas had to bring their advance to a halt in the “Cinc d’Ors.” Workers as well as Assault and Security Guards stopped them in their tracks. The barricades appeared immediately, as soon as the shooting ended.
There was also intense fighting around the statue of Columbus, in the area encompassing Customs, the Puerta de la Paz, the Atarazanas barracks, and Dependencias Militares. General Mola’s brother Ramón was operating out of the latter location.
There was a crossfire between Atarazanas and Dependencias Militares (which faced one another) that swept the port area and the entire width of the Rambla Santa Mónica up to the old street market of secondhand books. Further above, militants from the Transport and Metalworkers unions had erected an imposing barricade across the Rambla, which effectively trapped the troops.
The local CNT and FAI Defense Committee installed its coordination post in the Plaza Arco del Teatro and used liaisons to maintain contact with the CNT Regional Committee. The latter had set up camp in the large building at 32 Vía Layetana called “Casa Cambó,” which had previously held the offices of the Ministry of Public Works. They communicated with the fighters on the Paralelo through the alleys of the Fifth District and with the area around the Palacio Plaza through the so-called Gothic Neighborhood. The CNT’s control of the Paralelo, one of the city’s principal arteries, would be a central factor in the workers’ victory, as García Oliver later noted.[478] By eleven in the morning, the workers had the upper hand in all the “hot spots” mentioned above.
At 9:30 am, the Mountain Artillery regiment fighting around the Palacio Plaza realized that it would not be able to advance. Before accepting complete defeat, the force’s commander ordered the troops to withdraw and try to win the barracks in the Docks. This was not going to be easy. When the soldiers began retreating, workers pushed the balls of paper that they been using as barricades toward them, while others hidden behind opened fire. Their retreat turned into a complete rout. Despite the rebel machine-guns sweeping the area, the workers and Guards launched an overpowering assault and seized several officers, including López Varela, as well as a number of cannons. The soldiers, now free of their officers’ coercion, fraternized with the workers and joined them. This occurred around ten in morning, in front of Durruti, who had just arrived on scene to hear a report on the situation from the Assault Guard Captain commanding the Guards fighting with the workers there.[479] This was the first battle that the workers won that morning. The cannons, now in the hands of impromptu artillerymen, hastened the people’s victory. The rebels managed to reach the Docks and shut themselves in the barracks there, but the workers controlled the surrounding streets and erected barricades less than one hundred meters from barracks’s main door. The siege there would last until the final assault on the building. Unable to communicate among themselves, the rebels were in a state of disorder. They had established communication through France[480] in the morning early hours, but when the Worker Committee that occupied the main post office on Saturday night noticed what was happening, it intercepted and altered their messages in such a way that confused the fascists. The insurgents were in disarray. They simply did not know what was going on.
The Infantry company that departed from the Alcántara barracks ran into a groups of workers at the Arco del Triunfo that prevented it from occupying the radio transmitter on Caspe Street. Its Captain, Maeztu, was losing men through desertion and injury. He ordered them to retreat to Urquinaona Plaza. They managed to take refuge in the Hotel Ritz around 10:00 am. However, Captain Maeztu had little reason to be optimistic, since they had entered a zone of trouble: at the intersection of Claris and Cortés, workers decided to finish off the Seventh Light’s machine-guns by driving three trucks into them at 120 kilometers per hour, running over firearms and men in the process. As soon as the rebel lines broke, the workers seized their machine-guns and quickly turned them against their old owners.
Barcelona was on fire. People roaming the streets were shot from church bell towers, bourgeois homes, or rightwing centers. Workers also erected barricades and patrolled the streets in areas outside the main centers of the struggle. When they found someone shooting from a house, church, or clerical center they attacked the building on their own initiative. They burned down churches when they found a priest or priests inside firing.
Pressure from the Santiago Regiment in the “Cinc d’Ors” prompted a change in tactics. When Colonel Lacasa realized that his troops were about to be cornered, he ordered them to make a staggered retreat and take refuge in the convent next to the Carmelitas. What remained of the Santiago Regiment and Commander Recas’s Civil Guard squadron were shut in there and killed. Recas also died there during the final attack.
There was fighting in the Plaza de España, Plaza de la Universidad, and the Plaza de Cataluña. Neither side was giving an inch. The situation became truly dangerous in the Brecha de San Pablo. Although the troops there had been unable to move forward, they had made contact with the Plaza de España and the port. It was essential to control the latter, given the potential that rebel troops might be shipped in. García Oliver, Ascaso, and Durruti met in the Plaza Arco del Teatro to talk about the issue around 9:00 in the morning.
A militant from the Woodworkers’ Union by the name of Belmonte joined their discussion. He told them about the situation in the Brecha San Pablo, where soldiers had planted their machine-guns and driven the workers from the barricade on the Paralelo. “But the comrades didn’t give up,” he said. “They fired from the terraces and doorways, from anywhere that they could get at the enemy. However, the situation is difficult and we have to rid ourselves of those machine-guns that are pinning us down.”[481] Sergeants Manzana and Gordo were also present. They had failed to take the Atarazanas and had been forced to escape through the gate opening onto Montserrat Street. Fortunately they had been able to grab some boxes of rifle ammunition and machine-gun ribbons as they fled.
Antonio Ortiz and Aurelio Fernández came to participate in the conversation as well. The latter had parted with his ironed jacket. His shirt, once white, now clung to his body, yellowed by gunpowder.
“They’re shooting from the Hotel Falcón,” they said while approaching the group.
“And they’ll roast us with bullets if we don’t respond soon,” Durruti replied.[482]
They stormed the hotel and cleaned out the rebel marksmen. When the area around the Plaza Arco del Teatro became calm again, they decided to move an available machine-gun to the balcony of the building holding the Casa Juan restaurant in order to attack Dependencias Militares from there. They gave the task to Sergeants Manzana and Gordo, who operated with the support of militants from the Transport Workers’ Union.
“What should we do about the Brecha?” Belmonte asked.
“We’re going to clean it out,” Ascaso said.
They gathered the best-armed militants among those present and formed two groups. One, led by García Oliver, would take off along San Pablo Street; the other would go up Nueva de la Rambla Street, with Ascaso at its head. Durruti would remain in the Plaza, coordinating forces and leading them to wherever they were needed most.[483]
The situation was very delicate in the Brecha de San Pablo. The rebels had installed three machine-guns. One, opposite the Teatro Victoria, another next to the Moulin Rouge cabaret, and the final one in the Brecha de San Pablo itself, which they fired relentlessly. The comrades going with Ascaso along Nueva de la Rambla Street were an easy target when they came out into the Paralelo. They tried to take cover in doorways or behind any object they could find while continuing to fire their pistols. The fascists would have massacred them if García Oliver’s group had not slipped around the enemy. The rebels were now caught between the two groups and were completely disoriented. The militants who had been holding them down until then responded promptly and everyone launched a mass attack. A burst of gunfire from Ascaso’s automatic pistol brought down the Captain leading the troops. A Lieutenant tried to take his place, but a Cavalry Corporal killed him at once. This ended the resistance in the Brecha de San Pablo. A historian sympathetic to the rebels concludes his account of the battle in the following way: “Darnell [the Captain] and his forces held the positions that they had captured ... until the masses physically overcame them and annihilated the squadron. The officers were taken prisoner and suffered the unfortunate fate reserved for them.”[484]
By noon that day, the military insurrection in Barcelona was essentially over. The remaining holdouts were clearly identified: Hotel Colón-Telephone exchange, Universidad-Plaza de España, Atarazanas-Dependencias Militares, and the Carmelitas convent in the northern part of the city. That was all.
Republican Colonel Díaz Sandino ordered his planes to make an exploratory flight and drop pamphlets on the barracks telling the soldiers that the coup had failed and that they had to surrender. While Díaz Sandino’s planes cut through the blue space over the city, five hydroplanes coming from Majorca landed at Barcelona’s naval base. One of them carried General Goded, who inspected the Catalan capital from above before landing.
** CHAPTER II. General Goded surrenders
Several officers went out to greet Goded when his hydroplane landed at the naval base. They shouted “Viva” when he emerged from the plane. That reception alerted the base’s mechanics to the fact that there was no “anarchist rebellion against the Republic,” but rather a military uprising against the government. They went into action against the seditious officer corps.
The officers welcomed Goded in such a way because they were expected to do so, not out of real enthusiasm. However, even if they had been genuinely excited, it is unlikely that they could have cheered him up after what he saw while flying over Barcelona.
Commander Lázaro, leader of his General Staff, stepped toward Goded and whispered: “My General, I think we’ve stuck ourselves in a mousetrap.”
“I know, but I’ve given my word and here I am.”
The clamor of the fighting outside—rifles firing and machine-guns rattling—was clearly audible in the room.
An officer approached to tell Goded that the route to the Captaincy was extremely dangerous. A canon thundered in the distance.
“Is the artillery on the street?” asked Goded.
“Yes, my General,” an officer said. “Some batteries went out this morning, but fell into the masses’ hands.”
They got into an armor-plated car, which took them to Captaincy around 1:00 pm. Goded could not suppress his rage when he saw Llano de la Encomienda.
“Traitor!”
“You’re the traitor!”
Goded put his hand on his pistol, but Burriel intervened.
“An honor tribunal will judge your treason.”
Llano de la Encomienda smiled sarcastically.[485]
Goded’s presence raised the spirits of the officers in Captaincy, who hoped that the prestigious General could somehow transform defeat into victory. But Goded was worried, and his alarm must have increased when he learned the details of the battle. Nevertheless, this General held the workers in utter disdain and it was inconceivable to him that they could conquer the army. He forced himself to be optimistic. If he could win over the Civil Guard, then things would turn in his favor. He telephoned General Aranguren in the Catalan Interior Ministry:
“General Aranguren,” Goded shouted, “put yourself at my orders!”
Aranguren replied: “I only take orders from the Republic.”
Goded let out an exclamation: “It is unbelievable that you, General, say such a thing in the face of the ruin of Spain.”
Aranguren asked calmly: “But, Goded, are you rebelling against the government or the regime?”
“Against the government. The regime is something else; we’ll take care of that later.”
“If that’s the case,” Aranguren declared, “then you should know that a new government has been in place since the morning.”
“It is not a new government,” said Goded, losing his patience, “but the same parties!” Then, trying to adopt a more affable tone, he continued: “You should know, General Aranguren, that the army is ready and our victory is inevitable.”
“Are you aware of what has actually transpired? The government controls the situation and the uprising is a complete failure.”
Goded interrupted furiously: “Is that your final word, Aranguren?”
“My final word.”
“Well, it will be very sad for us to fight against the Civil Guard, but there’s no alternative.”[486]
Aranguren’s calm drove Goded crazy. He stared scornfully at General Llano de la Encomienda, who was impassively following Goded’s comings and goings around the large room in Captaincy. He burst out: “Aranguren is a traitor like you!”
Llano suffered the insult in silence. Burriel, nervous, wanted to shrink to avoid Goded’s fury. This trio of Generals faced one another, as their entourage of Colonels and officers stood nearby, not knowing what to do.
Goded grabbed the telephone and asked to be put through to the Alcántara Regiment. Colonel Roldán took the call.
“Roldán, is that you? I’ve called to tell you that I’ve taken charge of the Division and I’m going to launch a re-conquest operation. What forces do you have there?”
“Almost the whole Regiment, but the masses have surrounded the barracks. They decimated the two companies that tried to deploy. The soldiers think we’re fighting to defend the Republic. This situation can’t last much longer. God knows what will happen when the troops find out that we’re rebelling against the Republic.”
“Wait for my orders,” the General told him.
Commander Lázaro continued telling Goded: “Just like I said, a mousetrap...”
That reminded him of the hydroplanes. “Lázaro, send a messenger to the naval base ordering the hydroplanes to stay there.”
Captain Lecuona brought the response to his order minutes later: “My General, the hydroplanes took off for Mahón as soon as we left the base.” It was 2:45 pm.
“Lázaro, you’re right, very right: we are abandoned,” Goded told the Commander. But he refused to accept defeat and contacted Roldán again:
“Send forces to the Artillery barracks in the Docks, which you’ll lead. And wait until I instruct you to leave escorting a battery that Commander Urzué will send.”
He called Commander Urzué and gave him the corresponding orders:
“Commander Urzué, it’s imperative that you send two batteries. The infantry forces will support them, which will arrive or have already arrived, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Roldán.”
Urzué replied: “If that’s my General’s command, then I will carry it out, but I must tell you what happened before you arrived. I went out with two batteries, with all their artillery pieces, and others with muskets to protect them. Groups of compatriots and Assault Guards attacked us with such viciousness that the advance pieces fell into enemy hands. So did the officers, including Captain Varela. It was only with great difficulty that I could withdraw the other one. Now it’s much harder to leave the barracks—the masses have built a barricade less than one hundred meters away and have the main exit covered. We’re presently under heavy fire, because the people on the barricade and in the area saw Roldán’s reinforcements enter. It’s truly miraculous that the reinforcements made it to us. That’s my situation, General.”
“Stay there, until we can organize something else,” Goded told him.
After hanging up, he repeated, “Abandoned, abandoned...”
Llano, sitting on the other side of the room and guarded by the officers, corrected him: “Defeated, Goded. It’s not the same thing.”
Goded looked at Llano like he wanted to eat him: “Not yet,” he growled.
“Lázaro,” Goded said, “send a telegram to Palma and get them to send us an Infantry battalion and a Mountain battery as soon as possible. Send another to Zaragoza asking them to dispatch forces at once. Tell Mataró and Gerona to march on Barcelona.”
Commander Lázaro left the room but promptly returned: “My General, the radio telegrams have been sent, but I can’t reach Mataró and Gerona: communications are cut.”
“Send an officer to Mataró to personally ensure that the orders are carried out.” The officer came back in five minutes:
“It’s impossible to leave Captaincy. We’re surrounded.”[487]
The atmosphere was suffocating. The “spirited” officers who wanted to kill General Llano earlier now looked at him with a certain deference, as if hoping to erase the tense scenes of the morning. They whispered among themselves, without caring about Goded’s presence, who stood by himself, isolated from the other men. The latter had divided into two groups: those who wanted to surrender immediately (with General Burriel among them) and those who wanted to fight to the end.
Goded paced around the room. At his side, the frightened Commander Lázaro continued muttering: “A mousetrap... a mousetrap... ”
By midday, the revolutionary contagion had spread. The crowds in the street grew as people learned of the soldier’s multiple defeats. Even the most timid joined in.
Was it that everyone simply wanted to show that they had played a role in the battle now that there was no longer an immediate danger? That was the motive for those who personally feared the consequence of proletarian victory. But the common worker felt integral to the triumph even if he hadn’t fired a shot and wanted to share in the momentous revolutionary delirium in any way possible.
Cafes and restaurants near the barricades opened and became cafeterias in which combatants refreshed themselves; their throats parched by the heat and gunpowder smoke.
Cars painted with the letters “CNT” drove through the city and their occupants informed those manning the barricades about the evolution of the battle. It was rumored that a FAI group and some soldiers had seized the Pedralbes barracks. This meant that they would soon have plentiful rifles and could finish off the remaining groups of rebels.
The rumor was true. An anarchist group from Torrassa had occupied the Pedralbes barracks in the early afternoon. That building later became the famous “Bakunin barracks.” The first War Committee was born there, which organized a workers’ militia, an idea that quickly spread to the other barracks as they fell into the workers’ hands.[488]
The revolutionary spirit had also infected the armed forces. Military discipline was shattered and guards and workers formed a single body that collectively shouted: “Viva the CNT! Viva the FAI!” Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver’s names eclipsed those of all others. They had been seen in the most difficult moments, confronting the greatest challenges, and encouraging the fighters in the battle zones. The CNT nearly begged for arms a few hours earlier. Now it had hundreds of rifles seized during the fighting—as well as machine-guns and cannons torn from rebel hands—and popular opinion recognized it as the leader of the struggle.
By two in the afternoon, everyone was wondering about the Civil Guard concentrated in the Palacio Plaza. Was it with the people or against them? The decisive moment arrived when Aranguren received orders to “pacify the Cataluña-Universidad area.”[489]
The job was entrusted to the Civil Guard’s <em>Tercio</em> 19, led by Colonel Escobar. When he and his forces set out to execute the mission, the Quartermaster troops led by Commander Neira, who had been faithful to the Republic since the beginning, tried to isolate the first and second command by placing themselves between both groups. Marching double file, and filling the entire street, the Civil Guard advanced on Vía Layetana up to Urquinaona Plaza on their way to capture the Plaza de Cataluña and the Plaza de la Universidad. Workers flanked the column, watching it with tremendous suspicion. The Plaza de Cataluña was teeming with people, as were the adjacent streets and Metro entrances. This was the final clash. The Civil Guard began a heavy shootout. A cannon manned by a port worker began to thunder. Fascist machine-gunners in the Hotel Colón cut down the waves of people following the Civil Guard, while others gave the assault in front of it. The most valiant and committed militants led these groups. After thirty minutes of fighting, in which both sides won and lost ground and the plaza filled with bodies, white flags of surrender appeared. At the other end of the plaza, between Fontanella and Puerta del Angel, anarchist groups lead by Durruti stormed the telephone exchange. Numerous activists died here, including Mexican anarchist Enrique Obregón.[490] It was not easy to get to the building’s door, although they penetrated en masse once they did so. There was heavy fighting inside, but the CNT won the building during that battle, which would remain in the hands of a Workers’ Committee from then on.[491]
The Hotel Colón and the telephone exchange were occupied almost simultaneously, in the midst of absolute confusion. The Civil Guard tried to prevent the workers from entering the Hotel Colón (probably because the Catalan Interior Ministry had ordered them to stop the people from taking justice into their own hands). A POUM group led by José Rovira that had been there since the morning forced its way past the Guards. It was really these POUM militants who took the Hotel Colón.[492]
Once the rebels in the Plaza de Cataluña stopped fighting, soldiers entrenched in the Universidad building realized that it would be futile to continue. They raised the white flag and surrendered to the Civil Guard. When the people took the building, they freed the men seized by the soldiers in the morning. Angel Pestaña was among them; his captors’ failure to identify him surely saved his life. By 3:00 pm, the remaining centers of resistance were limited to the Carmelitas Convent, Dependencias Militares, and the Atarazanas barracks. Captaincy would give up in a matter of minutes.
In Captaincy, General Goded made one last attempt, more for show than with real hopes of success. He phoned General Aranguren and again implored him to join the rebels. However, even if he had convinced General Aranguren, his call made little sense, because he was surrounded. And popular enthusiasm had infected many of his men, who had broken discipline, lost their customary hats and jackets, and were now wrapped up among the crowds of workers.
“General Aranguren, tell the Generalitat that the people have to surrender. Events have been favorable to me.”
“I’m very sorry,” Aranguren responded, “but my reports suggest the contrary. They tell me that the rebellion is under control. I urge you to call a cease fire where there’s still fighting in order to avoid needless spilling of blood. If you do not surrender within thirty minutes our artillery will start bombing Captaincy.”
Lacruz writes: “Goded’s response couldn’t have been very pleasant; but Aranguren, in his little old man’s voice, and without showing the slightest irritation, again ordered him to give up and guaranteed the safety of the prisoners.”[493]
The deadline passed at 4:30 and there was no sign that Captaincy was going to yield. The bombing began, which turned out to be much more persuasive than Aranguren’s commands.
The bombardment heightened the confusion among the rebels, but Goded’s arrogance knew no limits: the idea of surrendering to the “mob” outside was beyond the limits of his “military pride.” Burriel realized that it was pointless to keep resisting and, without consulting Goded, told Catalan authorities that Captaincy surrendered. They instructed him to put out the white flag and said that they would stop firing when he did. Colonel Sanfeliz told Goded what had transpired. He said nothing.
They sent Neira, the Commander of the Quartermaster Corps, to take the prisoners from Captaincy. He pressed through the people, followed by a squad of Assault and Civil Guards. When they reached the main door of the building, a machine-gunner fired down upon the crowd from a balcony, causing multiple casualties. This absurd act enraged those congregated below and they rushed toward the door to lynch those who didn’t even respect their own conditions of surrender. Several militants intervened and stopped the assault from occurring. Goded’s life was spared as well, because Companys had ordered the Commander of the <em>Mozos de Escuadra</em> to bring him to the Generalitat.
When Goded and Companys were face-to-face, Companys told him to broadcast an order over the radio telling those still fighting to lay down their arms. Goded refused at first but then, after Companys insisted and he thought for a moment, he made a historic declaration:
“Fortune has not favored me and I am a prisoner. Therefore, if you want to avoid bloodshed, the soldiers loyal to me are free of all obligation.”[494]
** CHAPTER III. The death of Ascaso
The Pedralbes barracks was the first to fall into workers’ hands. Then it was the Alcántara barracks at 5:30 pm; Lepanto at 6:00 pm; the Montesa barracks at 8:00 pm; the Docks shortly before midnight, and the Sant Andreu Central Artillery Barracks at midnight exactly. The mechanics on the naval base took over after arresting the officers there. The soldiers in the Montjuich fortress seized their seditious officers and liberated their loyalist commander, Gil Cabrera, who had been detained. Worker and Soldier Committees were formed immediately in all the barracks. What began as a movement to defend the Republic became a social revolution in a matter of hours. This confirmed Durruti’s assertion that the revolution would emerge in a reply to an attempted rightwing coup.
While Barcelona’s proletariat secured its control over the Catalan capital, everyone wondered what was happening in Madrid and throughout Spain. No one knew at the time, but that didn’t stop the workers implanting themselves solidly in Barcelona and throughout the region.
Workers shouldered arms and patrolled Barcelona’s streets that night, confronting snipers hidden in the darkness. They consolidated the barricades and established rigorous control over the city’s entrances and exits. The only slogan was “CNT, CNT, CNT.”
People surrounded the remaining groups of rebels and waited for the sun to rise so that they could finish them off.
The Neighborhood Defense Committees became Revolutionary Committees and formed what was called the “Federation of Barricades.” It was the committees that held power in Barcelona that evening. They also took responsibility for defending the Catalan region and sent emissaries as well as arms to support Revolutionary Committees created in the villages and, wherever necessary, help crush any rebels still fighting. [495]
There was encouraging news from other parts of Catalonia: the people were in control in Tarragona. The soldiers and reactionaries had taken over in Gerona and Seu d’Urgell, but the leaders and soldiers joined the people once they learned of the defeat of their forces in Barcelona. The situation in Lérida was confusing in the morning, but clarified in favor of the proletariat by midday. The POUM and the CNT formed a Revolutionary Committee there. The Catalan masses had overthrown the rebel army in less than twenty-four hours. But what was happening in the rest of the country?
On Saturday, July 18, people knew that Queipo de Llano had risen up in Sevilla and that there was fighting in the streets. The same was true in Córdoba, Cádiz, Las Palmas, and Morocco. Authorities had also told them that the government had the situation under control in Madrid. But what happened after Saturday? What was occurring in Valencia? And in Zaragoza, where fascist troops had apparently set off for Barcelona? In the North? The workers in Madrid did not trust the government. They gathered on Friday and spent the next twenty-four hours doing the same thing as their peers in Barcelona: asking for arms. The CNT was in a difficult situation there because it did not belong to the Popular Front, which the Socialists dominated and which controlled the few weapons that Socialists soldiers had taken from the barracks. They had distributed those arms to the Socialists and Communists, leaving almost nothing for the CNT. Given those circumstances, the CNT decided to act as an independent force. The CNT’s Center Regional Committee called a meeting, which people from Madrid and elsewhere attended. They decided to form Defense Committees, made up by members of the CNT, FAI, and Libertarian Youth. The Neighborhood Committees federated locally and Village Committees federated by county. The Center Region Defense Committee would link them all into a whole. Members of the CNT, FAI, and Libertarian Youth made up this last Committee, which took on diverse responsibilities, such as coordinating anarchist forces in Madrid, procuring arms, and pressing the government to release the prisoners. At first, the government only freed David Antona, secretary of the CNT National Committee (on Saturday, July 18), but not the other incarcerated militants. The CNT decided to attack the prison if the government continued to hold the rest.
For the moment, what seemed most important was to organize a force that could effectively resist the rebels. Militants formed groups of five, and each group received one pistol and one hand grenade. Using staggered street patrols, they provided nighttime security and stayed in close contact during the day.
July 18 was a day of meetings and fruitless visits to the ministries in search of weapons. Casares Quiroga’s government refused to arm the workers and the people were losing patience. As in all moments of great political turmoil, the Puerta del Sol became the central meeting place. News arrived there continuously and passed through the immense crowd gathered in the square:
<quote>
Queipo de Llano was in control in Sevilla. In Cádiz and Granada, the rebels machine-gunned unarmed workers. The Republican Governor in Zaragoza and the CNT Regional Committee decided that the CNT should gather its members in the union hall and wait for orders. The Governor assured them that the army was loyal to the Republic, although this turned out to be untrue and the insurgents shot down the trapped workers. The rebels were victorious in Valladolid. And it seemed that they were going to ferry troops from Morocco to the Peninsula, unloading them in Algeciras.[496]
</quote>
The tension increased a notch with this news from Zaragoza. No one wanted to fall into the same trap as the workers there. That night, after growing frustrated with Casares Quiroga’s continued inactivity, some Socialists soldiers decided to hand over weapons themselves, but only to the Socialists in their <em>Casa del Pueblo</em>. The situation was always the same for the CNT: no arms.
CNT groups seized one of the Socialist trucks when it passed through Cuatro Caminos Square on its way from the Artillery Station to the Casa del Pueblo. It was loaded with rifles. They quickly doled out the weapons to CNT militants from the Tetuán district. These arms were used to fight the fascists wherever they had concentrated: Campamento Militar and the Mountain Barracks, which was General Fanjul’s headquarters. [497]
Casares Quiroga submitted the resignation of his government around 4:00 in the morning on July 19, while port workers and Assault Guards were fraternizing in Barcelona’s Palacio Plaza. Azaña nominated Martínez Barrio to form a “compromise government,” which was to contact General Mola and offer him the Ministry of War. When news of this maneuver circulated among the people, they immediately began to call the new government the “treason government.” Martínez Barrio made the offer to Mola, who told him that a ministry wasn’t the issue and that no deal was possible. Martínez Barrio resigned three hours after becoming Prime Minister. Manuel Azaña entrusted José Giral with forming another government at 7:00 am. Things changed a bit with Giral’s nomination. He freed the most prominent CNT activists, including Mora and Cipriano Mera, although he left many others behind bars. David Antona gave Giral an ultimatum: “Either you open the prisons within three hours or the CNT will do so itself.” Giral released the rest of the prisoners and distributed some weapons (to Socialist and Communists, of course). Indalecio Prieto acted as though he were a member of the new government, when that was not in fact the case, given that it had no Socialist component. Largo Caballero had just returned from London, where he had represented the UGT at the International Syndical Federation’s Congress, and took his place as UGT General Secretary.
On July 20, the people of Madrid got ready to attack the Mountain Barracks and the Campamento Militar. Meanwhile, their counterparts in Barcelona hurried to finish off the remaining rebel nuclei and devote their energies to new revolutionary initiatives, like organizing workers’ militias to help the villages that had fallen to the rightwing soldiers.
The Carmelitas convent surrendered first. Rebel marksman inside the building had killed many during the siege and the people wanted to vent their anger on them. Loyal Civil Guardsmen also participated in the action and their commander, Colonel Escobar, wanted to personally take charge of the prisoners. This outraged the people on the street and, in reply, he sacrificially offered his chest to them. This was a needless gesture, because people had already imposed a certain moderation on themselves. They were not going to lynch the prisoners; they simply wanted to demonstrate their power to them. They needed to do that with more than just words, but a pride in treating the prisoners decently tempered their indignation. Escobar shared Goded’s very bourgeois idea of “the rabble” and simply could not grasp the nature of the workers’ rage, which didn’t go beyond wanting to show the arrogant military men that they—largely unarmed workers—had defeated them.
While the Carmelitas convent fell, there was a fierce battle at Atarazanas and Dependencias Militares. Ramón Mola, the brother and local representative of the national leader of the rebels, blew out his brains with a pistol that evening. The fascists concealed his suicide, so as not to demoralize those still fighting. [498]
García Oliver, Ascaso, Ortiz, Durruti, Pablo Ruiz, and several other militants spoke in the Plaza Arco del Teatro. Everyone thought the same thing: they had to finish off Dependencias Militares and Atarazanas at once. Someone proposed using the truck on which the Germen anarchist group had mounted a machine-gun the previous afternoon. Protected by mattresses, they could drive the vehicle toward those sites while using the machine-gun to clear the way for those following behind. It was good idea. Ricardo Sanz and Aurelio Fernández joined those already occupying the vehicle. [499]
The truck set off in lower Ramblas. The situation became very dangerous by the time they reached the esplanade of Rambla Santa Mónica, due to the gunfire coming from Atarazanas, Dependencias Militares, and the Transport Workers’ Union. The militants following the truck knew that they had to get out of the line of fire and took shelter behind a wall near the barracks. Ascaso, Durruti, García Oliver, and Baró were among them. They were extremely vulnerable: there was a rebel in a sentry box in the Atarazanas barracks that looked out onto Santa Madrona Street and he could calmly pick them off one by one. Ascaso ran forward and, followed by the others, reached the rear part of the wooden book sellers’ stalls there. He wanted to get as close as possible to that sentry box. He took off again, so quickly that none of his friends could stop him. From afar, they asked him what he was doing and he made a gesture with his hand indicating that he was going to kill the gunman in the sentry box. He surveyed the situation and calculated that he could take a position behind a truck between Montserrat and Mediodía streets. He started running toward the truck. However, the marksman in the sentry box was watching him and fired several times, but missed. Ascaso stopped for an instant and shot back at the soldier, who was now quite close. He finally made it to the truck but, as soon as he did, a bullet ripped through his forehead. This revolutionary’s life—a very full thirty-five years—came to an end at that moment. The marksman would never know that his tiny of piece of lead had deprived the Spanish revolution of one of its most well-balanced and tenacious leaders. No one checked the time, but it was 1:00 in the afternoon on July 20, 1936. [500]
Events unfolded rapidly after Ascaso’s death. Dependencias Militares stopped its firing and the men inside surrendered. Minutes later, rebels hoisted a white flag on Atarazanas. It was just past 1:00 pm. Barcelona’s workers had defeated the “professional” soldiers in thirty-three hours of fighting. The members of the <em>Nosotros</em> group were now face-to-face. Pablo Ruiz asked García Oliver what they should do with the captured officers. García Oliver looked at Ruiz and, without giving it much thought, said: “Take them to the Transport Workers’ Union. Keep the prisoners there.” Who had spoken these words? It wasn’t García Oliver, but the anonymous voice of an entire people, who had been persecuted and ridiculed thirty-three hours before and were now masters of proletarian Barcelona.
Durruti, standing nearby, knit his brow as he held back his tears. Ascaso meant a lot to all of them, particularly Durruti.
With a tired gesture, García Oliver said: “Let’s go! This is over. We’ve won. A new world begins today.” [501] They ascended the Ramblas toward the Transport Workers’ Union. When they reached the Plaza Arco del Teatro, one of those manning the barricade planted himself resolutely before Durruti and told him: “We’re not going to leave this barricade!”
Durruti gazed at the familiar face, at the man’s determined stare and the rifle in his calloused hands.
“It’s not the barricade but the rifle that you have to hold onto. We have to preserve our weapons, if the revolution is going to succeed. With them, we can go further, much further. We haven’t won yet; the revolution is still in progress and it will be at risk as long as there are rebels anywhere in Spain.” [502]
** CHAPTER IV. July 20
The revolutionary wave had totally disrupted the fabric of civic life. Even <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> lost its editor and staff in the tumult. The July 20 issue was the work of a group of militants who had noticed the empty editorial office while randomly passing by and took the initiative to edit, layout, and print that historic edition. [503]
Their example, multiplied by thousands, became the point of departure for the new forms of social organization that rose from the ruins of the old regime. Daily life had been transformed and the first forays into industrial self-management began (in transportation and food distribution, specifically).
Power lay in the street on July 20, represented by the people in arms.
The army and the police had disappeared as institutions: soldiers, policemen, and workers formed a united block. The spirit of solidarity and fraternity was pervasive. Men and women, freed from the prejudices that bourgeois ideology had instilled in them over centuries, broke with the old world and marched towards a future that all imagined as the realization of their most cherished desires.
“A new life began in radical and rich Catalonia, where the immense industrial sites were held by the workers, where the fertile fields had been forever redeemed from the feudalist and priest. The entire city of Barcelona soon became a theater of the revolution unleashed. Women and men attacked the convents and burned everything inside, including money. The old concepts of master and slave burned with the religious icons in the bonfires ignited by the people. July 20 was like an enormous party, liberating energies and passions....” [504]
Life took on a new momentum and it both destroyed and created as the people worked to resolve practical necessities born from a collective life that lived—and wanted to continue living—in the street. The street had become everyone’s home: a world of barricades, workers’ patrols, and permanent vigilance against the snipers on the balconies, rooftops, or wherever they might lurk. The street and the people in arms were the living force of the revolution, its vanguard.
The Defense Committees, now transformed into Revolutionary Committees, backed up this force. They organized what was called the “federation of barricades.” Militants, standing resolutely behind these barricades, represented them in the Revolutionary Committees.
Their most immediate task was to secure the revolution’s success and protect it against reactionary attacks. But there was more: while the revolution had triumphed in Barcelona, important battles were occurring outside the Catalan capital. They had to extend their victory over the soldiers to the country as a whole.
And there was more still: Barcelona had over one million inhabitants, who had to continue eating and attending to quotidian needs. The social mechanisms that had satisfied such exigencies forty hours earlier were now gone and had to be replaced by others. They had to create new mechanisms that would link the city and the countryside, while ensuring that the city would reciprocate with the country and also supply militia fighters who would leave their jobs to go confront the fascists on the front. They had to build new circuits of consumption and distribution, new types of social relations between the proletariat and peasantry, and new modes of production; in essence, the revolutionaries had to build a new world to secure and defend their victory.
But how should it be organized? This was the question of power. The revolution had to find its own response to that crucial issue.
The revolutionaries allowed the Generalitat to live on as a symbol, although its real power had been destroyed when the people deprived it of its monopoly on violence. Was it enough to reduce the Generalitat to a symbol? Was it really a symbol? According to Jaume Miravitlles, Lluís Companys put it this way:
<quote>
“The state is not a myth, some machine that functions independently of human events. It is made up by living beings that follow a pre-established system of command, a liberal or authoritarian hierarchy that forms its “chain of transmission.” The President gives an order and it is automatically transmitted to the Minister or advisor entrusted with carrying it out. That Minister has his own “chain of transmission” which passes through his secretaries and sub-secretaries and ultimately reaches the bottom steps of the hierarchy, where the state shakes hands with the citizen and directs him along the route designated by the President. That is how a “normal state” operates. “On July 19, I pressed the bell in my office to summon my secretary. The bell didn’t ring, because there was no electricity. I went to my office door, but my secretary wasn’t there, because he had been unable to get to the Palace. But if he had been there, he wouldn’t have been able to communicate with the secretary of the General Director, because he hadn’t come to the Generalitat. And, if the General Director’s secretary had made it somehow, after overcoming thousands of difficulties, his superior was absent.
</quote>
Miravitlles adds:
<quote>
As a result of the brutal clash in the street, because of the irruption of the armed <em>miserables</em> (in the historic sense of the word), the state was only Companys. But it was not a state like that of Louis XIV, in the fullness of his practical powers, but a state reduced to his person, without bells that ring, without secretaries at the doors of the Ministries, without a chain of transmission capable of putting its complex and fragile machinery into motion. We, the few witnesses of Companys’ drama during the first days, will never forget his anguish, bravery, and desperate attempt to channel the infernal river of overflowing passions.[505]
</quote>
Reduced to himself, what could Companys do? Very little, if he had really been reduced to himself, but he wasn’t. Who was with him? The Popular Front. It was here that the revolution in Barcelona encountered its most substantial obstacle: the revolution left the Generalitat, the symbol of power, standing and with it the Popular Front. Who would shield themselves under the Popular Front banner and help the symbol of power recover real effectiveness? The enemies of the revolution, the counterrevolutionaries. Representatives of the miniscule Communist Party in Catalonia were the first to come to Lluís Companys’s aid, while fighting still raged in the street. Official Communist historians write:
<quote>
A Liaison Committee was formed to link the Partit Comunista de Catalunya, la Federació Catalana of the Socialist Party, the Unió Socialista de Catalunya, and the Partit Català Proletari. It would create a unified Marxist party between them. This Committee pressed upon Companys to call a meeting of the Catalan Popular Front to prepare an extension of the Generalitat and permit the various Popular Front parties to enter it. Companys agreed and the meeting occurred on July 20, 1936. Vidiella, Comorera, Valdés, and Sesé participated for the workers’ parties; Tarradellas and Aiguader for the Esquerra; and Tasis and Marcos for Acción Catalana Republicana and the POUM. There was a spirit of consensus at the meeting: everyone agreed that it was necessary to create a Catalan Popular Front government. They also accepted the organization of Popular Militias. Means of implementation and the editing of decrees were already being discussed. Suddenly, a large group of anarchist leaders entered the room en masse— García Oliver, Durruti, Vázquez, Santillán, Eroles, Portela—with ammunition belts and pistols, some with rifles. They came to present an ultimatum.[506]
</quote>
This final paragraph is confusing, because it does not explain exactly how or why that group of anarchists entered the picture. But the quote is valuable became it makes it clear that even on July 20, while the street battles continued, Catalan Communist and bourgeois Republican leaders had their hands on Lluís Companys and were working to support the counterrevolution or, as Miravitlles put it, channel “the infernal river of overflowing passions.” In his memoirs, General Commissioner of Public Order Federico Escofet depicts himself as the author of the victory over the rebels. However, he cannot explain why he had no control over his forces once the battle at Atarazanas and Dependencias Militares was over. Vicente Guarner clarifies what transpired:
<quote>
The military uprising had been reined in, but Public Order was still at a loss. The uprising against the government—a government that we considered legal although clumsy and hardly energetic—had completely usurped our authority in Public Order. Thousands of people of both sexes, the majority of which had not fought, took to the street with looted arms. They flew black and red, red, and Catalan flags, some of these with the single star, on trucks and cars requisitioned by party committees, workers’ organizations, or individuals. It was essentially impossible to reestablish discipline: our Public Order forces, and even the Civil Guard, had become drunk with enthusiasm and swept up in the commotion. In shirtsleeves, they were manning trucks draped with flags and signs of the organizations, the inscription “CNT-FAI” predominating.[507]
</quote>
Those were the circumstances when Federico Escofet went to the Generalitat to tell Lluís Companys that the rebellion had been defeated. “His face,” wrote Escofet, “showed a mixture of sadness, disappointment, and worry.”
<quote>
“President, I come to officially inform you that the rebellion is over.” The President replied: “Yes, Escofet, very good. But the situation is chaotic. There’s an armed, uncontrolled rabble on the street and they’re committing every type of excess.[508] The CNT, now powerfully armed, holds power. How can we respond?”
</quote>
Escofet’s response:
<quote>
“President, I promised to stop the military rebellion and I’ve done so. I carried out my pledge. But an authority needs the power of coercion to make itself obeyed and we don’t have that power. There is no authority. And I, my dear President, cannot perform miracles. I spoke with General Aranguren, leader of the Civil Guard and the Fourth Organic Division (Captaincy General), and also with Commander Arrando, leader of the Security and Assault Guards. We agree that reestablishing order would require a battle as brutal as the one we just fought, and that isn’t possible. How can we force our guards, who are exhausted but also euphoric because of the victory, to kill the same people with whom they were fighting side-by-side only moments ago? We wouldn’t succeed if we were insane enough to try it. It is for that reason, and for the simple humanity of it, that the forces of Public Order didn’t fire on the crowds invading the Sant Andreu Central Artillery Barracks, even though it meant losing all the armaments there.
“We’re overwhelmed right now, and so are the CNT leaders. President, the only solution is to maintain the situation politically without abandoning our respective posts. If you can do this, I promise to make myself master of Barcelona again, when you order me to do so or when circumstances permit. If not, I will resign as General Commissioner of “Public Disorder.”
</quote>
Escofet concludes:
<quote>
We said goodbye with sadness. I had never seen President Companys as depressed as I saw him at the end of our meeting. Would he know how to maintain the situation politically? Unfortunately, the President did not or was simply unable to. Could someone else have achieved what he—with all his talents, experience, and prestige—could not? I doubt it. Furthermore, I don’t think anyone, least of all myself, has the authority to judge his attitude and conduct during those difficult moments.
Hours after our conversation, the President expressed the desire to meet with all the political parties and labor organizations. Including, naturally, the CNT-FAI.”[509]
</quote>
Escofet got things backwards. The political parties didn’t matter then. They would only enter into the balance if the CNT and FAI agreed to deal with Companys.
When he requested a meeting with the CNT-FAI, Lluís Companys was convinced that the Popular Front’s support would not save him and that he could no longer rely on his own forces, after the spread of the revolutionary contagion. But he wasn’t merely a politician hanging on during a shipwreck. His case was more complex. To clearly understand Companys’ concerns, and why he ultimately swallowed his pride, we must recall the meeting that he held with the CNT on May 10, 1934. The CNT asked him to stop the government violence being exercised against it (that is, for a truce). Lluís Companys not only refused, but actually intensified the repression, in hopes of destroying the CNT. The failure of the October 6, 1934 revolt was a negative consequence of his decision. Although Companys did not want to admit his mistake, he would have to do so publicly and to the same person who asked him for the truce in 1934. The tables had turned: now it was Companys who was forced to ask for a cease-fire. Would the CNT grant it? If it did, Companys thought that the CNT wouldn’t give him more than a little breathing room: the Confederation, and men like García Oliver, would never cede the ground conquered. So, the CNT and Companys were going to make a circumstantial deal. [510]
When the holdouts in Atarazanas were finished off, members of the <em>Nosotros</em> group and other leading CNT and FAI militants went to the Construction Workers’ Union on Mercaders Street. The CNT Regional Committee had moved its offices there, after leaving those it occupied on Pasaje del Reloj until 10:00 pm on July 18. From the Ramblas, they took Fernando Street, crossing the Plaza de la República, with the Generalitat Palace on their left and Barcelona City Hall to their right, went down Jaume I Street to Vía Layetana, which they followed up to Mercaders Street. The esplanade in front of 32 Mercaders was full of cars and armed men. An imposing workers’ guard stood at the entrance, with rifles in hand. Mounted machine-guns pointed their barrels toward Vía Layetana, in the direction of the Police Headquarters. Durruti and García Oliver’s presence caused a stir among those present, since many had never seen them so close before. The office occupied by Mariano R. Vázquez was far too small for the people squeezed into it. It was impossible to work and also attend to all the comrades looking for information. Francisco Isgleas, on a mission to inform the Gerona comrades about the situation in Barcelona, had to make a great effort to get out of the room. He passed Durruti and García Oliver while leaving and gave each a hearty embrace that demonstrated the excitement felt by all.
There was an enormous racket, as people came and went with weapons, bearing or searching for news. It was hard enough to work under such circumstances, let alone really talk about events. There was a telephone call for Mariano R. Vázquez. He took the phone:
“Yes, secretary of the CNT Regional Committee here.”
Everyone sensed that the call was important. They heard Vázquez say in a mocking tone: “I understand. OK. We’ll get right on it.”
He hung up and turned around: “President Companys wants us to send representatives,” Vázquez reported. “He wants to negotiate.” [511]
There was a brief discussion and they decided that they couldn’t accept Companys’ request without first consulting the militants. They scheduled a meeting for two hours later. Emissaries were sent out and telephone calls made to inform the representatives from the unions, Revolutionary Committees, and County Committees about the gathering.
They decided to hold the meeting in one of the large rooms of the “Casa Cambó,” which was a quick step from the Construction Workers’ Union and had housed the national Public Works offices until anarchist youths seized it. People immediately began to head toward the building, which was transformed as the committees and coordinating bodies of Barcelona’s unions took over offices that the region’s great financiers and industrialists occupied only thirty-six hours before. [512]
The Casa Cambó suddenly took on a completely new appearance: now there was a barricade, sand bags, and two machine-guns protecting the structure’s semi-circular entrance. A large sign hung above: “Regional Committee of the CNT of Catalonia. CNT-FAI.” From then on, the building was known as the “CNT-FAI House.”
Those asked to attend the meeting had assembled in one of its halls by the end of the afternoon. The meeting began with the attendees divided on how to respond to Companys’ invitation and also to the situation in the street. The anarchists doubtlessly had to push the masses as far as possible, from a revolutionary point of view, but there were different ways to frame that task, all of which had complicated ramifications. It was necessary to study the problem, in a calm, unhurried way, but of course the militants did not have that luxury. The debate was rushed, carried on by protagonists who were physically and intellectually exhausted after thirty-six hours of conflict. Everyone’s voice was hoarse. They stayed awake thanks to coffee and cigarettes.
The possible responses became clear immediately after the first approximation of the problem. García Oliver called for proclaiming libertarian communism. Diego Abad de Santillán argued that they should continue collaborating with the other political groups that had participated in the struggle against the fascists. Manuel Escorza suggested a third possibility, which García Oliver considered erroneous: [513] using the Generalitat to collectivize the countryside and socialize industry. Escorza asserted that this would make the workers’ movement the determinant social force and empty the Generalitat of power, which would then collapse on its own accord. He said that they should make no deals with the government, since the problem of power had already been resolved in practical terms: it was in their hands. The Bajo Llobregat County, represented by José Xena, declared its opposition to collaborating with the government but, since it did not support García Oliver’s position, came close to Escorza’s. In other words, there was no clear response to an issue that demanded a solution.
They concluded—although this wasn’t really a conclusion—by agreeing to accept the meeting with Companys, to see what the President of the Generalitat had to say, without letting him intimidate or compromise them.
** CHAPTER V. Lluís Companys confronts the CNT, and the CNT confronts itself
Meeting participants sent a commission to meet with Lluís Companys. The group included García Oliver, Durruti, and Aurelio Fernández. Strangely, given the short distance to the Palace, they made the trip by automobile. They went to the Plaza de Jaime I and followed the street by that name up to the Plaza de la República. A detachment of <em>Mozos de Escuadra</em> stood at the Palace entrance. There were Assault Guards in the cross streets as well as civilians with Catalanist armbands. The heavily armed CNT and FAI men got out of the car.
The leader of the <em>Mozos de Escuadra</em> greeted us at the entrance of the Generalitat. We were armed to the teeth—rifles, machine-guns, and pistols—and ragged and dirty from all the dust and smoke.
“We are the CNT and FAI representatives that Companys called,” we told him. “Those with us are our guard.”
The leader of the <em>Mozos de Escuadra</em> greeted us warmly and led us to the Pati dels Tarongers [trans.: Orange Tree Courtyard].... we left the guard there, and it became an encampment.
Companys stood to receive us, visibly excited.... The introductions were brief. We sat down with our rifles between our knees. Companys said the following to us:
<quote>
“First of all, I must acknowledge that the CNT and FAI have never been treated as merited by their true importance. You have always been harshly persecuted. Even I, who had been your ally, was forced by political realities to oppose and persecute you, much as it pained me. Today you are masters of the city and Catalonia. You alone defeated the fascists, although I hope you will not take offense if I point out that you received some help from Guards, Mozos, and men loyal to my party.”
Companys thought for a moment and then continued slowly: “But the truth is that, harshly oppressed until two days ago, you have defeated the fascist soldiers. Knowing what and who you are, I can only employ the most sincere language. You’ve won. Everything is in your power. If you do not want or need me as President of Catalonia, tell me now, so that I can become another soldier in the battle against fascism. However, if you think that in this post—which I would have only left if killed by the fascists—that I, my party, my name, and my prestige can be useful in this struggle—which has ended in Barcelona, but still rages in the rest of Spain—then you can count on me and on my loyalty as a man and politician. I’m convinced that a shameful past has died today and I sincerely want Catalonia to march at the head of the most socially advanced countries.”
.... We had gone to listen. We could not commit ourselves to anything. Our organizations had to make the decisions. We stated this to Companys.... He told us that representatives of all the anti-fascist groups in Catalonia were waiting in another room. If we allowed him to gather us all together, he would make a proposal geared toward giving Catalonia a body capable of continuing the revolutionary struggle until the consolidation of victory. We agreed, in our capacity as intermediaries and reporters, to attend the proposed meeting. This occurred in another room where, as Companys had said, representatives of Esquerra Republicana, Rabassaires, Unió Republicana, POUM, and Partit Socialista were waiting.[514] I don’t remember the names well, either because of the rush, exhaustion, or because I never learned them. Nin, Comorera, etc., etc.[515] Companys explained the advisability of creating a Militias Committee. It would reorganize life in Catalonia, which the fascist uprising had disrupted so profoundly, and organize armed forces to go fight the rebels wherever they might be. Indeed, in those moments of national confusion, the balance of the fighting forces was still an unknown.[516]
</quote>
Companys made such an obliging speech because he recognized that he had no control over the situation. As a savvy politician, he tried to earn the CNT men’s trust, affirming that there was no way to take a step back. However, events will demonstrate that his real goal was to <em>gain time</em>, as suggested by his conversation with Federico Escofet several hours earlier, by the meeting that he held with Comorera right after speaking with the anarchists, and by the official orders of that night, July 20, which were issued without waiting for the CNT to resolve itself on the creation of the Militias Committee. We have already covered the Escofet exchange. Now we will look at the subsequent evolution of Companys’ Machiavellianism.
According Manuel Benavides, a sympathizer of the Catalan Stalinists, Juan Comorera implored Companys to work behind the scenes to displace the CNT and FAI from the positions they had secured. That coincided with Companys’ political goals:
<quote>
We should unify our forces and pit the Socialist UGT unions against the CNT. You, Mr. President, would not need to use force at this time. The unions must try to provide revolutionary security and support the formation of military units reporting to the Generalitat. We have to begin building an army. The anarchists and Trotskyists will start to squeal when they find out about this, but we’ll turn a deaf ear. As soon as we have an armed force and recover a solid worker-peasant movement, we’ll run the war on the front and defend the economy in the rearguard, instead of making the revolution, which isn’t our goal for now.[517]
</quote>
During the evening of July 20, Lluís Companys made an assessment of the day: he considered it so positive that when he met with his advisors he took his proposal to the CNT—to form a “body capable of continuing the revolutionary struggle”—as accepted. Lluís Companys conceived of the organization as a type of popular military-political junta that would answer to the Generalitat’s Ministry of Defense. The decree he drafted that night appeared in the <em>Butlletí Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya</em> on July 21. It left no doubts about his political intentions. Some Citizens Militias were created to defend the Republic. Commander Enrique Pérez Farràs would lead them and his political advisor was Lluís Prunes i Sato, the Generalitat’s Minister of Defense. This is the only Generalitat decree on the militias and there is no other—to our knowledge—instituting the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia (CCAMC) and its powers. This indicates that the Generalitat did not legally sanction the CCAMC and that it was therefore an entity imposed by the revolution. Jaume Miravitlles writes that he believes that it was the anarchists who took the initiative to create the CCAMC. As anarchists, they did not want to participate in the Generalitat, because it was a governmental institutional, although it was really the CCAMC that held power at the time. The Generalitat had been reduced to a purely symbolic existence. [518] From all of this, we can conclude that it was the resolutions of the CNT’s historic regional meeting on July 21 that annulled Companys’s conception of the CCAMC. This brings us to that CNT meeting, where the group that had met with Companys reported on their conversations with him.
Anarchism’s detractors have written a lot about the CNT meeting on July 21, but the interested parties have said very little. Any new exploration of the topic suffers from the lack of pertinent documents, which will permit a more in-depth study when they become available. For our part, relying on primary sources, we have tried to form an idea of the climate at the meeting and the character of the speeches.
About the Plenary, Federica Montseny writes:
<quote>
From the outset, people expressed the desire—rightly or wrongly—to maintain the anti-fascist front formed in the heat of the battle.... It wasn’t indecisive and scared men who created the CCAMC, but men that didn’t feel authorized to do more than search for the best way to continue a struggle that they knew was only just beginning....
[T]he idea of taking revolutionary power did not cross anyone’s mind, not even García Oliver’s, who was the most Bolshevik of all of us. It was later, when the extent of the rebellion and the popular initiatives became apparent, that there was a discussion about whether we could or should <em>go for everything</em>. That is undeniable.[519]
</quote>
José Peirats says that the question of power posed a dilemma for García Oliver: either <em>go for everything</em> or accept political collaboration. Peirats, abstaining from critical analysis, writes: “We are not going to examine the justness of the appraisal [that there were only two alternatives] here. What is beyond doubt is that the majority of the influential militants interpreted the reality of the moment in a similar way. Dissenting voices were drowned out; the silence of others was truly enigmatic. Between those who protested in vain and those who sheepishly shut up, the collaborationist position took root.” Peirats concludes his discussion of the thorny topic with a number of questions: “Did the militant anarchists and Confederals carefully examine that weighty issue? Did they use every resource to analyze the consequences of such a risky solution? Did they calmly weigh the pros and cons? Did they consider the history of previous revolutions? What is certain is that the collaborationist position triumphed over the ‘go for everything’ or ‘anarchist dictatorship’ stance; which, in reality, wouldn’t necessarily have been fatal.” [520]
García Oliver—a discordant piece in this matter—addressed the delicate question in a letter to us:
<quote>
I should state that the term all-embracing (in the sense of a radical revolution) is more appropriate than <em>go for everything</em> (a euphemism that I used precisely to avoid the issue of taking of power, which was so in vogue then). The term totalitarian is not applicable, but these issues were touched upon in our writings equivocally then.... If you had been able to read the meeting’s minutes, you would have seen the content of my speech, in which I supported my thesis for more than an hour, and also the impoverished arguments advanced by my adversaries (Santillán, Montseny, etc). Another Assembly-Meeting was held later (almost immediately after the first one), where I reaffirmed my perspective against Marianet’s vagueness (Secretary of the Catalan CNT at the time), who argued that “without going for everything, we can still control the situation from the street.” I had to say that such ideas were not serious at all ... the totality of the revolution’s problems (see what happened in Russia) demanded that the CNT take revolutionary power.[521]
</quote>
The militants rejected García Oliver’s argument and decided, with the exception of Bajo Llobregat County, to accept political collaboration and “maintain the anti-fascist front formed in the heat of the battle.” The supporters of this view believed that such collaboration would prevent the imposition of a dictatorship.
The CNT’s report at the AIT Congress in December 1937 contains the most concrete defense of their actions. José Xena, David Antona, Horacio M. Prieto, and Mariano R. Vázquez represented the Confederation there. They stated the following:
<quote>
The Central Committees of Anti-Fascist Militias of Catalonia was created to coordinate the fighting forces on the fronts. Our libertarian movement accepted that Committee, but only after resolving our revolution’s central question: anti-fascist collaboration or anarchist dictatorship. We accepted collaboration. Why? Levante was shaky and defenseless, with a rebel garrison inside its barracks, with groups of workers armed with shotguns and sickles fighting in the mountain. No one knew what was happening in the north and we thought the rest of Spain was in fascist hands. The enemy was in Aragón, at the gates of Catalonia, and we didn’t know the true extent of its strength, nationally or internationally.... We suddenly faced a revolution, and the problem of how to lead and channel it, but were unable to see its full breadth and depth. In those climactic moments, circumstances suggested that we collaborate with the other anti-fascist forces. Bear in mind that the totality of events and political, social, military, geographic, and economic conditions that we have noted constituted the circumstances in this case. Likewise, the anxiety at foreign consulates translated into a heavy presence of warships (French and English) near our ports.... From the very beginning, our revolution had to look to itself. There was no other way. We could not expect anything from abroad. To protect their liberties, lives, and illegitimate interests, no leader of the international proletariat went to prison for helping the Spanish revolution. None lost their lives for standing in solidarity with us. Not one single strike or rebellion has occurred to counteract the asphyxiating pressures that fascist and democratic governments impose upon us. Several thousand workers have come to Spain to share our enormous tragedy, but their sacrifices take place on the margins of global proletarian action.... A people in revolution cannot pause to contemplate. The libertarian movement made the only choice that it could, given the indifference and passiveness of the international proletariat. The revolution had to adapt to the possibilities at hand.[522]
</quote>
Peirats raises additional questions without responding to any of them, possibly because—as a witness and participant—he knows that he cannot give an impartial answer. Kropotkin says that we should see revolution as a long process of disequilibrium, in which society passes through various experimental stages before reaching an equilibrium. Anarchist’s role, he says, is to prevent a new power from replacing the old, because such a power will necessarily be conservative and counterrevolutionary. [523] Kropotkin is doubtlessly correct and historical experience is instructive here. But it is one thing to theorize and another to confront an event as overwhelming as the Spanish revolution. In this case, militants were in a tremendous rush to resolve the question of power and were unable to appreciate the revolution’s breadth and depth, as noted in the report quoted above. Had they embraced García Oliver’s position, the revolution’s problems would have become clear immediately. Creating the CCAMC was not an error in itself, nor was collaborating with the other revolutionary forces, such as those existing in the UGT and the POUM. What might have been an error was letting the Generalitat stand. Escorza had argued that they could use it to advance the revolution, although it turned out to be its gravedigger. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Spanish revolution lacked the key ingredient needed for it to become contagious and coherent on a national and international level. The revolution’s success required an effective revolutionary alliance between the CNT and UGT, which is to say—geographically and socially speaking—the Madrid-Barcelona axis. That did not exist on July 19. In Barcelona, as we will see, the proletariat smashed all the bourgeois structures and built the revolutionary foundation upon which the CCAMC could eliminate the Generalitat’s power for several months. But in Madrid, thanks to the Socialist Party, bourgeois structures were left intact and even fortified: a semi-dead state received a new lease on life and no dual power was created to neutralize it. The drama of the Spanish revolution resided in the great weight of anarchism on the one hand and an equally powerful social democracy on the other. The revolution needed to transcend that polarity through a workers’ alliance that would have improvised its own forms of organization. As we will see, these forms emerged everywhere, but they did so in a largely incoherent manner.
Those defeated at this CNT meeting were the strongest supporters of the revolution: Durruti and García Oliver. However, they did not give up. Even though both of these men were bound by organizational decisions, each fought in his own way to deepen the revolution. García Oliver will transcend the boundaries of the CCAMC and Durruti will extend the libertarian revolution through Aragón.
** CHAPTER VI. The Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias of Catalonia
The CNT accepted “democratic collaboration” and, according to García Oliver, the structural result was as follows: “The Central Committee of Anti- Fascist Militias was accepted and the balance of forces within it established. Although the distribution of seats wasn’t just—the UGT and Socialist Party, who were minorities in Catalonia, received as many as the triumphant CNT and anarchists—this was a sacrifice designed to lead the dictatorial parties down the path of loyal collaboration and to avoid suicidal competitions.” [524] This was not a bad idea, but groups make concessions when they are in the minority and not the majority. In any case, the CNT and FAI’s political enemies will avail themselves of this generous sacrifice in Catalonia, but won’t make similar gestures in places where the CNT lacks predominance.
This new body, due to the composition of the groups forming it, would be democratic-bourgeois. Along with the CNT, FAI, and POUM, the Esquerra Republicana and Acció Catalana Republicana were also members of the coalition. These parties represented the petty and middle bourgeoisie, which the revolutionary expropriation of the means of production would impact most strongly. Between the extreme left and the right, there was a newly formed party: the Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (PSUC). The PSUC, an appendage of the Communist Party, was a “party of order” (i.e., the counterrevolution).
After the CNT’s meeting, its representatives returned to the Generalitat to give Companys the Confederation’s response. There was a sharp difference between what the CNT thought the CCAMC should be and what Companys wanted: the latter thought it should be a secondary body controlled by the Generalitat, whereas the CNT believed that it should be a popular entity that controlled economic, political, and military life in Catalonia and reduced the Generalitat to legalizing its decisions. Lluís Companys reacted as one would expect to the CNT’s stance, but the CNT men were intransigent: either Lluís Companys accepts a popular and fully empowered CCAMC or the CNT will wash its hands of the matter and let the revolution unfold on its own accord. Companys capitulated since, for him, any break on the revolution was better than nothing. The CNT (Escorza and others) considered this a victory but, from a revolutionary perspective, it was really a defeat. García Oliver had correctly regarded that new body as a counterrevolutionary force. But the reality was that CCAMC held power and the CNT and FAI had a controlling influence within it. This at least allowed them to hope that the proletariat could launch the final strike at a later date, particularly if French workers, inspired by Spain, entered the struggle. All was not lost and—to ensure that it would not be lost—they formed the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias of Catalonia that night of July 21, 1936. [525] The following political forces belonged to the body: the CNT, the FAI, the UGT, the Socialist Party, the Esquerra Republicana, Acció Catalana Republicana, Unió de Rabassaires, and the POUM. To clearly mark its independence from the Generalitat, it installed itself that night in a large modern, building in the Palacio Plaza (which the Nautical School had occupied previously).
Its meeting first took place around the large table in the school’s central room. Few of the participants had a clear idea of what the organization was going to do; it was only the CNT and FAI representatives who really knew what they wanted. That, and the fact that they genuinely represented the revolution, put the others in an expectant stance, as if waiting for orders. Jaume Miravitlles represented the ruling party in the Generalitat at the meeting. He recorded his impressions of his first encounter with the CNT and FAI:
<quote>
I participated in the sessions as a representative of the Esquerra, a liberal leftwing party. We came dressed as typical bourgeois intellectuals—tie, jacket, and fountain pen—and suddenly found ourselves facing a group of anarchists who entered the room. They were unshaven, wearing combat uniforms, and carrying revolvers, submachine-guns, and ammunition belts from which they hung their dynamite bombs. Their leader was a man whose appearance, speech, and dynamic presence made him seem like a giant: Buenaventura Durruti.
I once wrote an article stating that there was no substantial difference between the fascists and the FAI. Durruti, a furious warrior, remembered that piece all too well. He approached me, put his large hands on my shoulders, and said: “You’re Miravitlles, right? Be careful! Don’t play with fire! It could cost you dearly!” This is how the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias began its activities: in an atmosphere of tension and threats.[526]
</quote>
No one but the CNT, FAI, and POUM had any interest in building the CCAMC and using it to neutralize the Generalitat. As if to illustrate that, Miravitlles, who took the meeting as a sort of discussion circle, started a debate. He asked: who had made the revolution and, in view of that, what would be the best way to serve it?
<quote>
The “sans culottes” made the revolution in France and it had been the “shirtless” in Peron’s Argentina.[527] Who made it in Barcelona?
I raised this question at the first meeting of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias on the night of July 21 in the Nautical School in the port. Myself, Josep Tarradellas, Artemi Aiguader, and Joan Pons participated as a representatives of the Esquerra Republicana.
“Who made the revolution?” I asked. The question was significant, and our answer to it would determine our political strategy and tactics. For the Esquerra men, it was important to reduce the historic panorama to the framework of the reality of events. Despite the name of the Committee to which we belonged, we did not believe that a “fascist” rebellion had occurred and that extreme right groups should be left in liberty if they hadn’t participated in the uprising. Being a Lliga member was not the same thing as being a fascist, and even less being a member of the Federation of Christian Youths, known by the unfortunate phonetic of “ <em>fejocistas</em>.”
The FAI men, as well as the POUM and the Communists, received my question with a shrug. As far as they were concerned, they were facing a historic opportunity and were not about to let it pass them by. Aurelio Fernández, one of the FAI’s most impetuous leaders, gave a response that perfectly reflected the first two or three—but decisive—days: “The revolution has been made by the same people that make all revolutions: the <em>miserables</em>.”[528]
</quote>
Miravitlles translated Aurelio Fernández’s response with the term “lumpenproletariat,” but what Aurelio Fernández said—and this was how it was interpreted—was that it had been the disinherited, those plundered by the bourgeoisie and the dominant class. The CCAMC’s “political strategy and tactics” would have to correspond to that.
The other men reflected while this exchange took place. They were Santillán, Durruti, García Oliver, Aurelio Fernández, Assens, and Ricardo Sanz for the CNT and FAI; those already mentioned for the Esquerra; Del Barrio, Comorera, Vidiella, Miret, García, and Durán Rosell for the UGT and Socialists; Torrents for Unió de Rabassaires; Fábregas for Acció Catalana Republicana; and José Rovira for the POUM.
Diego Abad de Santillán occupied himself during the conversation by doodling on a piece of paper. He suggested that they begin by discussing the practical division of activities. He submitted his sketches as a schema and, after some debate, they accepted his outline as the structure of the CCAMC. [529]
General Administrative Secretary: Jaume Miravitlles; Department of Militias: Santillán and Ricardo Sanz; Department of War: García Oliver, assisted by Durruti and military advisors such as Colonel Jiménez de la Beraza and later the Guarner brothers; Department of Investigation and Security: Aurelio Fernández, José Assens, Rafael Vidiella, and Tomás Fábregas. There was also a Department of Supply, under the care of José Torrents, and another of Transportation.
They created sections that reported to each department. These included one of statistics, which answered to the General Administrative Secretary; quartering and munitions, which reported to the Department of Militias; and others like cartography, war training, broadcasting, and operations, all of which answered to the Department of War. Santillán writes:
<quote>
The principle and most overwhelming work naturally fell on us, representatives of the largest and most active part of the Catalan proletariat. We assumed the positions of greatest responsibility, but also those in which exhaustion would soon threaten us, due to the enormous physical effort required. We spent more than twenty hours daily in incessant nervous tension, resolving thousands of problems and attending to the crowds that thronged around our offices with tremendously varied demands. It was hardly an environment that lent itself to serene reflection.[530]
</quote>
What follows is the first “edict” issued by the Central Committee of Anti- Fascist Militias of Catalonia:
<quote>
1. A revolutionary order has been established, which all parties constituting the Committee pledge to maintain.
2. For control and security, the Committee has formed teams to ensure that its orders are rigorously observed. The teams will carry credentials verifying their identity.
3. The Committee accredits those teams alone. Everything that takes place without its approval will be considered seditious and will suffer sanctions determined by the Committee.
4. The nocturnal teams will be severe against those who disrupt the revolutionary order.
5. From 1:00 to 5:00 in the morning, circulation will be limited to the following:
a) Anyone demonstrating membership in organizations belonging to the Militias Committee.
b) Persons accompanied by the above and who prove their moral solvency. c) Those showing that circumstances beyond their control oblige them to go out.
6. To recruit people to the Anti-Fascist Militias, organizations belonging to the Committee are authorized to open enlistment and training centers. An internal order will detail the conditions of recruitment.
7. Given the need for revolutionary order to confront the fascist nuclei, the Committee hopes that it will not have to take disciplinary measures to ensure that it is obeyed.[531]
</quote>
And they signed, in the name of the Esquerra Republicana, Acció Catalana Republicana, the Unió de Rabassaires, the Marxist parties (Stalinist and more or less Trotskyist), the CNT (Durruti, García Oliver, and Assens), and the FAI (Santillán and Aurelio Fernández).
When the first CCAMC session ended, Manuel Benavides says that “Durruti and García Oliver told Comorera, the Socialist Party representative: ‘We know what the Bolsheviks did to the Russian anarchists. We’ll never let the Communists treat us in the same way.’” [532] At that meeting, the CCAMC decided to send a group on a scouting mission to Aragón, to find out about the rebel soldiers’ actual positions. It also decided to mine Barcelona’s access routes as a precautionary measure against a possible attack of a motorized enemy column.
Barcelona’s urban and productive life also had to be normalized, which could only happen with the support of the unions and Revolutionary Committees. The main weight of this task fell on the CNT and FAI, as Santillán said, because they were the only organizations that could work with these groups.
There was also a pressing need to organize workers’ militias to engage the enemy outside of Barcelona. The first of these columns left on July 24, led by Buenaventura Durruti. [533] Although Durruti only participated in the CCAMC very briefly, Miravitlles offers a valuable commentary on his experience with the body. Miravitlles highlights some of Durruti’s personal qualities, which the new military campaign would not change:
<quote>
The cabinet continued functioning as always in the governmental palace, but only as a phantom government that impotently contemplated the revolutionary situation. With an exception: the President of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, who was a man of great personal merit. He had previously been a defense lawyer for the anarchists and had friends in the CNT. We all stood the first time that he came to a meeting of the CCAMC, except for the anarchists, who stayed seated. There were often vehement arguments between the CNT-FAI people and Companys, who reproached them for jeopardizing the revolution with their violent actions. Durruti got fed up one day and told the Generalitat’s representatives: “Send my regards to the President, but it’s better if he doesn’t come around here again. Something bad could happen to him if he insists on lecturing us.”
Durruti immediately realized that the CCAMC was a bureaucratic organization; it discussed, negotiated, took minutes, and carried out official tasks. But he wasn’t the type of man who could endure that for long. There was fighting outside and he couldn’t sit on the sidelines. He organized his own division—the Durruti Column—and took off for the Aragón front.[534]
</quote>
Before July 21, barracks and other military building were in the hands of the men who had conquered them; that is, in the hands of the CNT and FAI. But those organizations made a big mistake when the CCAMC was established by allowing each political party to organize its own militias and by ceding the barracks and weapons to them. The militias should have answered to the Department of Militias; this would have allowed arms seized by the workers to remain in their hands. Indeed, the first disarmament of the working class occurred when they permitted the political parties to organize their own columns. That only benefited those who had not fought, since they didn’t have weapons or, if they did, they were holding them in reserve until they thought it was time to unleash the counterrevolution (this was the case with the Stalinists).
Under this system, the Esquerra Republicana took control of the Montjuich fortress; the Cavalry barracks on Tarragona Street went to the POUM; and the Infantry barracks of the Parque de la Ciudadela to the party that was going to become the PSUC. The Partido Federal Ibérico received an old convent. The CNT and FAI kept the Pedralbes Infantry barracks, the Sant Andreu Central Artillery Barracks, the barracks in the Docks, and the Cavalry barracks on Lepanto Street. All would share the Artillery Station and the Quartermaster Corps. The organizations named their barracks as soon as they occupied them: the Stalinists baptized theirs the “Karl Marx Barracks,” the POUM called theirs “Lenin,” and the anarchists, not to be outdone, named theirs “Bakunin,” “Salvochea,” “Spartacus,” etc.
The division of organizational headquarters came after the distribution of barracks. The POUM ceded the Hotel Colón, which its militants had taken, to its PSUC rivals and a hotel on the Ramblas, which they had also occupied during the struggle, was reserved for its Central Committee. The CNT remained in the Casa Cambó. In the neighborhoods, the Revolutionary Committees installed themselves in places that were adequate to their needs. The unions occupied large buildings as well.
The canteens created in the clamor of the struggle became popular kitchens and they were installed in hotels. The Hotel Ritz became a hotel for the militiamen.
The general strike called at the beginning of the rebellion remained in effect, although it was not long before the most important services began operating again. This permitted the phenomenon that militants were unable to see on July 20 to manifest itself clearly: that is, workers’ self-management. Hospitals, laboratories, and pharmaceutical centers, which had been occupied during the initial moments of the battle, now functioned under workers’ control, as did streetcars, buses, metros, and railroads, as soon as they resumed operation. The workers’ committee holding the telephone exchange started repairing lines damaged during the fighting and installing new lines in the workers’ centers established during the first three days. In these centers, the workers met in assemblies and nominated committees, which formed links with workers in other industries. The Food Workers’ Union, which had created hubs for food distribution and popular kitchens from the outset, immediately began providing food for the entire city, collectivizing the Central Markets of fruits, vegetables, fish, and meat. Those who supplied these markets before July 19 continued to do so, but now introduced their products under a collectivist (not commercial) regime. Although the new collective procedures were rudimentary, they were able to immediately satisfy the basic needs of Barcelona residents. To a great extent, people simply gave things away, particularly food items in the popular kitchens. It seemed as though a classless, money-less society had been created. The rapidly established CCAMC prevented the emergence of new, more profound forms of social organization that could have transformed human relations in previously unknown and untried ways. Nonetheless, the collectivization of distribution and production was irreversible once it began, despite the controls and restraints that the CCAMC tried to impose.
Once the rebels were defeated and people began to return to work, it became possible to appreciate the depth of the proletarian revolution. Factory owners, technicians, and managers had felt threatened as a class and disappeared. Some went into hiding and others fled to France. The workers couldn’t care less and devoted themselves to producing and collectivizing the factories, workshops, and other production sites in Barcelona and Catalonia. Factory assemblies resolved the most immediate problems and appointed Factory Committees. Important metallurgic centers like Hispano-Suiza, Vulcano, and La Maquinista Terrestre y Marítima began to build armored trucks. This was the first step toward what was going to be a war industry in a few days.
CAMPSA’s petroleum and gasoline depots, the electricity headquarters, and the gas factories had all been occupied immediately and started operating under workers’ self-management on July 22. Gas stations filled the tanks of cars from the Committees after getting the union’s approval. Money disappeared from circulation.
Artillery Colonel Ricardo Jiménez de Beraza arrived in Barcelona around this time, after having fled Pamplona. García Oliver immediately enrolled him as an advisor in the Department of War. He asked his opinion on the emerging forms of revolutionary organization. His response was unequivocal: “Militarily, its chaos, but it’s a chaos that works. Don’t disturb it!” [535]
The Neighborhood Committees, which had diverse names but all shared a libertarian outlook, federated and created a revolutionary Local Coordination Committee.
Power, properly speaking, did not exist. The Generalitat was a pure symbol. The CCAMC could not take a step without the support of the unions and the militias could not be organized without the collaboration of the Revolutionary Committees and the unions. On July 22, the Neighborhood Committees took over the department stores, where self-managing groups of employees began distributing free clothes. The people opened the pawnshop and returned the items it held to their original owners. Sewing machines, mattresses, blankets, and warm clothes sold by the workers at the end of winter were now back in the hands of their initial proprietors. Lluís Companys called all of this an “excess” of the CNT.
On July 23, the CNT’s Local Federation of Unions published a flier saying: “Worker, organize yourself in militias. Don’t give up your rifle or ammunition. Don’t lose contact with your union. Your life and liberty are in your hands.” [536] This flier was a response to an order that the CCAMC issued to the Revolutionary Committees stating that it would give each armed worker a card listing his name, weapons, and union and that workers who no longer wished to bear arms were to hand their weapons over to the CCAMC, which would deposit them in the barracks closest to their sector. The unions interpreted this as an attempt to disarm the people. The Neighborhood Committees, which wanted to control their own areas with their own armed groups, had a similar reaction. Vicente Guarner, who replaced Federico Escofet as General Commissioner, had this to say about the popular mobilization:
<quote>
I made a last attempt to reestablish order, in so far as it was possible, by arranging a meeting in my office with the CNT Regional Committee, which led a whole network of Defense Committees in Barcelona’s districts. I believe that [Marcos] Alcón and [ José] Assens presided over the group, and there were other important CNT members there as well. I explained the need to normalize and structure the resistance to the fascists. The District Committees were not to carry out any searches without the approval of Police Headquarters, whose inspectors or agents had to hear a statement in every case. They also can’t allow acts against individuals, such as absurd and lawless assassinations; “popular tribunals” would soon be formed and their rules had already been drafted. They told me that the military rebellion had produced a revolutionary reaction of a certain type and that the people had to act on their own initiative. I replied that I was obliged to ensure that people obey the law. I was asked (by Alcón, I think) if I thought I could rely on my Security forces. He made me look out the balcony at various guards at the door of the General Station who had tied red and black CNT scarves around their necks. I said goodbye to the Confederals and ordered my secretary to arrange the arrest of all guards bearing anti-regulation garments. I also considered it my duty to immediately report that conversation to President Companys, who accepted my resignation. He called his secretary (Joan Moles at the time), who got me a position as a military advisor in the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias of Catalonia.[537]
</quote>
The whirlwind of events had scattered the members of the <em>Nosotros</em> group. Each was engaged in important tasks. Aurelio Fernández and Assens organized “Control Patrols,” which were formed by union-appointed militants. These patrol groups had the dual mission of ensuring revolutionary order (as decreed by the CCAMC) while also staying in contact with the unions and Neighborhood Committees so that they could respond in a concerted way if there was an attempt from “above” to crush the revolution. Ricardo Sanz, Santillán, and Edo organized militia columns and sent them off to Aragón. García Oliver, head of the Department of War, put the war industry in motion, as well as military and aviation instruction. Vivancos, Ortiz, and Gregorio Jover were busy putting together columns of their own, which would also go to Aragón.
Despite their manifold activities, the <em>Nosotros</em> group was able to meet and discuss the circumstances. They all agreed that it was necessary to transcend the alliance between the CNT and the political parties and create an authentic revolutionary organization. That organization would rest directly on Barcelona and Catalonia’s unions and Revolutionary Committees. Together, those groups would form a Regional Assembly, which would be the revolution’s executive body.
But the militants in the <em>Nosotros</em> group knew that the victory of the revolution required more than that. Without the support of the international proletariat, the Spanish revolution’s days were numbered, whatever the Spaniards themselves might do. That was the tragedy of Spanish anarchism. The anarchist movement had been growing in Spain and ultimately became a powerful and determinant force in the country. But anarchists had been losing ground in the rest of the world: they had lost their influence on the working class, which had fallen under the control of social democrats and Stalinists. Now everything depended on making the international proletariat aware of the fact that Spanish workers had embarked on one of the most extraordinary revolutions in history. This wasn’t an easy task. There was the Soviet Union, whose foreign policy demanded proletarian submission in the bourgeois democracies, with whom the USSR had forged alliances. It also wasn’t easy in the face of a Léon Blum, who was always respectful of democratic bourgeois norms. The Spanish revolution and its anarchist content agitated everyone and little help could be expected. The Spanish revolutionaries themselves would have to disrupt the whole world and internationalize the revolution. That is precisely what the <em>Nosotros</em> group set out to do, beginning with the explosive situation in Morocco. Franco’s headquarters and reserves were there and democratic, Popular Front France was waging a war against the nationalist Arabs. If Spanish revolutionaries could foment a revolt in the so-called “Spanish Protectorate,” the rebellion would spread to the French colonial zone. This would oblige France to intervene as a colonial force, which might wake up the French proletariat. García Oliver took on the task of inciting the Moroccan rebellion.
** CHAPTER VII. The Durruti-García Oliver offensive
On July 23, 1936, García Oliver spoke to the workers of Aragón by radio. He gave an incendiary speech: “Leave your homes. Throw yourselves on the enemy. Don’t wait a minute longer. Get to work right now. CNT and FAI militants have to distinguish themselves in this. Our comrades must be the vanguard fighters. If we have to die, then we have to die.... Durruti and I are leaving for the front with expeditionary columns. We will send a squad of planes to bomb the barracks. Activists of the CNT and FAI have to carry out the duty demanded by the present hour. Use every resource. Don’t wait until I stop talking. Leave your home. Burn, destroy, defeat fascism!” [538]
The announcement that they were organizing workers columns to march on Aragón aroused enormous excitement in Barcelona. The workers went to their respective unions to enlist as volunteers and, on soccer fields and other plots of land, Neighborhood Committees started instructing the volunteers in the basics of combat as well as the use of hand grenades and rifles.
People of all ages enrolled, from fourteen to seventy, including many of the most active and experienced workers and libertarians. Organizers soon realized that if all these militants went to the front, then the rearguard would be left in the hands of newcomers, which could jeopardize the rapid spread of workers’ self-management. The volunteer’s enthusiasm had to be restrained: it was important to fight, but victoriously transforming the economy was even more vital. [539] The triumph of the revolution would ultimately depend on the people’s ability to successfully create these new economic and social relations.
This was a very unique mobilization of workers. It was a completely undecreed, grassroots phenomenon. The volunteers decided among themselves how to organize themselves, and all opposed anything that suggested a resuscitation of the militarist spirit or hierarchies of command. The structure and organization of the militias, which lasted until the general militarization in March 1937, emerged from the discussions among the future combatants. It was simple: ten men constituted a group, which nominated a representative; ten groups formed a <em>centuria</em>, which elected a representative of its own; and five centuries would form an <em>agrupación</em>. The leader of the <em>agrupación</em> and the <em>centuria</em> delegates made up the <em>agrupación</em> committee. [540]
Pérez Farràs, the Durruti Column’s first military advisor, objected to this organizational structure and cast doubts about its feasibility in combat. Durruti quickly realized that Pérez Farràs would not make a good advisor and replaced him with artillery Sergeant Manzana, who had a better grasp of the anarchists’ anti-authoritarian psychology. Durruti entrusted Manzana and Carreño (a school teacher) with equipping the Column with artillery, munitions, as well as doctors, nurses, and an emergency operating room. Manzana didn’t need many explanations. He immediately understood what Durruti wanted from him and did a wonderful job carrying out his mission. He knew several soldiers who had joined the column, as well as some officers, and planned to have the military men instruct the others. All these people integrated themselves into the Column, fraternally and without conflict.
One day Pérez Farràs stated his criticisms to Durruti directly: “You can’t fight like that,” he declared. In reply, Durruti said:
<quote>
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I’ve been an anarchist my whole life and the fact that I’m responsible for this human collectivity won’t change my convictions. It was as an anarchist that I agreed to carry out the task that the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias entrusted to me.
I don’t believe—and everything happening around us confirms this— that you can run a workers’ militia according to classical military rules. I believe that discipline, coordination, and planning are indispensable, but we shouldn’t define them in the terms of the world that we’re destroying. We have to build on new foundations. My comrades and I are convinced that solidarity is the best incentive for arousing individual responsibility and a willingness to accept discipline as an act of self-discipline.
War has been imposed upon us and this battle will be different than those we’ve fought in Barcelona, but our goal is revolutionary victory. This means defeating the enemy, but also a radical change in men. For that change to occur, man must learn to live and conduct himself as a free man, an apprenticeship that develops his personality and sense of responsibility, his capacity to be master of his own acts. The worker on the job not only transforms the material on which he works, but also transforms himself through that work. The combatant is nothing more than a worker whose tool is a rifle—and he should strive toward the same objective as the worker. One can’t behave like an obedient soldier, but as a conscious man who understands the importance of what he’s doing. I know that it’s not easy to achieve this, but I also know that what can’t be accomplished with reason will not be obtained by force. If we have to sustain our military apparatus with fear, then we won’t have changed anything except the color of the fear. It’s only by freeing itself from fear that society can build itself in freedom.[541]
</quote>
Durruti had expressed himself with extreme clarity. His goal was to unite theory and practice. As an anarchist, he intended to remain faithful to libertarian ideals while leading a workers’ column that would soon fight important in Aragón, on the frontlines as well as among the peasants in the rearguard. [542]
The headquarters of the rebel’s Fifth Military Division was in Zaragoza under the command of General Cabanellas. The forces that he led there included:
<quote>
Two infantry brigades: the Ninth (headquarters, Zaragoza) and the Tenth (headquarters, Huesca). There was also the Fifth Artillery Brigade (Zaragoza), with six Regiments (four Infantry, two Artillery), a battalion of Engineers, and the corresponding Services.
As for non-divisional units, there was an Armored Car Regiment, a Cavalry Regiment, a Horse Care detail, an anti-aircraft group, an Army Corps Station, a Pontoon Battalion, and a Health Headquarters....
The main commanders were Generals Miguel Cabanellas (Fifth Division), Alvarez Arenas (Ninth Brigade), De Benito (Tenth Brigade), and Eduardo Martín González (Fifth Artillery Brigade).
One mustn’t forget the Public Order forces. Along with Assault Guards from Zaragoza, there were also eighteen Civil Guard companies and five Carabinero companies.
The Army contingents were few in number, but their passionate support for General Mola’s plans, from the highest chiefs to the most subordinate, compensated for their numerical shortcomings.[543]
</quote>
Writing about the fascist occupation of Zaragoza, José Chueca asked:
<quote>
Could we have done more than we did? Possibly. We had too much faith in the promises made by the Civil Governor [Vera Coronel] and were too confident in our own strength. We thought that the thirty thousand workers organized in Zaragoza’s unions would be enough to defeat the violent assault unleashed by the fascists.[544]
</quote>
Pro-Franco historian Martínez Bande writes:
<quote>
Determined masses of extremists took over the main thoroughfares on July 17 as soon as they found out what had happened in Morocco. All of July 18 transpired in a mood of tense expectation, as numerous groups of volunteers came to the barracks. The state of emergency was proclaimed in the early morning of the next day. The CNT responded by declaring a general revolutionary strike. Military authorities crushed the strike energetically on July 22, after several clashes.
In Calatayud, Colonel Muñoz Castellanos declared the state of emergency on July 20, but Army detachments, Public Order forces, and volunteer compatriots had to rescue some towns. [This included six towns north of the Ebro River, four along it, and ten south of it, Belchite among them].[545]
</quote>
Huesca and Teruel also fell to the rebels, but Barbastro was in the hands of soldiers commanded by Republican Colonel Villalba. That was the situation in Aragón when Durruti set off with some two thousand militiamen to take Zaragoza.
The Durruti Column was scheduled to depart at 10:00 am on July 24 from the Paseo de Gracia. At 8:00 am, Durruti spoke to Barcelona’s workers by radio, asking them to contribute food items to the Column. This unusual request surprised everyone. Food distribution was the responsibility of the Neighborhood Committees, the Food Workers’ Union, and the CCAMC. Had these organizations refused to help Durruti build a Quartermaster Corps? Durruti soon satisfied the curiosity:
<quote>
Enthusiasm is the revolution’s most powerful weapon. The revolution triumphs when everyone is committed to its victory, when each person makes it his own personal cause. The people’s response to my call will show us Barcelona’s dedication to the struggle. It is also a way to make people aware that our battle is collective and that its success depends on everyone’s effort. That’s the meaning of our request.[546]
</quote>
Durruti met with a journalist from the <em>Toronto Star</em> shortly before the Column left Barcelona. The reporter, Van Paassen, wrote a feature article titled “Two million anarchists fight for the revolution.” It begins by describing Durruti for the reader.
<quote>
He is a tall, swarthy fellow, with a clean shaven face, Moorish features, the son of poor peasants, which is notable by his crackling, almost guttural dialect....
“No, we have not got them on the run yet,” he said frankly at once, when I asked him how the chance stood for victory over the rebels. “They have Zaragoza and Pamplona. That is where the arsenals are and the munitions factories. We must take Zaragoza, and after that we must turn south to face Franco, who will be coming up from Sevilla with his Foreign Legionnaires and Moroccans. In two, three weeks time we will probably be fighting the decisive battles. “Two, three weeks?” I asked crestfallen.
“Yes, a month perhaps, this civil war will last at least all through the month of August. The masses are in arms. The army does not count any longer. There are two camps: civilians who fight for freedom and civilians who are rebels and fascists. All the workers in Spain know that if fascism triumphs, it will be famine and slavery. But the Fascists also know what is in store for them when they are beaten. That is why the struggle is implacable and relentless. For us it is question of crushing fascism, wiping it out and sweeping it away so that it can never rear its head again in Spain. We are determined to finish with fascism once and for all. Yes, and in spite of the government,” he added grimly.
“Why do you say in spite the government? Is not this government fighting the fascist rebellion?” I asked with some amazement.
“No government in the world fights fascism to the death. When the bourgeoisie sees power slipping from its grasp, it has recourse to fascism to maintain itself. The liberal government of Spain could have rendered the Fascist elements powerless long ago,” went on Durruti. “Instead, it temporized and compromised and dallied. Even now, at this moment, there are men in this government who want to go easy with the rebels. You never can tell you know,” he laughed, “the present government might yet need these rebellious forces to crush the workers’ movement.”
“So you are looking for difficulties even after the present rebellion should be conquered?” I asked.
“A little resistance, yes,” assented Durruti.
“On whose part?”
“The bourgeoisie, of course. The bourgeois class will not like it when we install the revolution,” said Durruti.
“So you are going ahead with the revolution? Largo Caballero and Indalecio Prieto (two Socialist leaders) say the Popular Front is only out to save the Republic and restore republican order.”
“That may be the view of those senores. We syndicalists, we are fighting for the revolution. We know what we want. To us it means nothing that there is a Soviet Union somewhere in this world, for the sake of whose peace and tranquility the workers of Germany and China were sacrificed to fascist barbarism by Stalin. We want the revolution here in Spain, right now, not maybe after the next European war. We are giving Hitler and Mussolini far more worry today with our revolution than the whole Red Army of Russia. We are setting an example to the German and Italian working class how to deal with fascism.”
That was the man speaking, who represents a syndicalist organization of nearly two million members, without whose co-operation nothing can be done by the Republic even if it is victorious over the present military-fascist revolt. I had sought to learn his views, because it is essential to know what is going on in the minds of the Spanish workers, who are doing the fighting. Durruti showed that the situation might take a direction for which few are prepared. That Moscow has no influence to speak of on the Spanish proletariat is a well-known fact. The most respectably conservative state in Europe is not likely to appeal much to the libertarian sentiment in Spain.
“Do you expect any help from France or England now that Hitler and Mussolini have begun to assist the rebels?” I asked.
“I do not expect any help for a libertarian revolution from any government in the world,” he said grimly. “Maybe the conflicting interests of the different imperialisms might have some influence on our struggle. That is quite well possible. Franco is doing his best to drag Europe into the quarrel. He will not hesitate to pitch Germany against us. But we expect no help, not even from our own government in the final analysis,” he said.
“Can you win alone?” I asked the burning question point-blank.
Durruti did not answer. He stroked his chin. He eyes glowed.
“You will be sitting on top of a pile of ruins even if you are victorious,”
I ventured to break his reverie.
“We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall,” he said quietly. “We will have to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, that we can also build. It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts,” he said in a hoarse whisper. And he added: “That world is growing in this minute.”[547]
</quote>
The volunteers joining the Durruti Column began to flock to the Paseo de Gracia around ten in the morning. A large crowd had also come to witness the departure of the strange caravan, made up of trucks, buses, taxis, and private cars. There was immense enthusiasm, which seemed to be justified by the rapid defeat of the rebels in Barcelona. Many thought the expedition to Aragón would be a quick trip.
The column of some two thousand men set off around midday to delirious cheers, raised fists, and refrains from revolutionary songs. The CNT- FAI’s hymn <em>A Las Barricadas!</em> rang out most strongly.
There were a dozen youth at the head on a truck. The Herculean José Hellín stood out among them, waving a black and red flag. He will die defending Madrid on November 17 while blowing up Italian armored personnel carriers. The <em>centuria</em> led by the metalworker Arís followed behind. Five <em>centurias</em> came next: there were the miners of Figols and Sallent, who would soon distinguish themselves as an elite force of dynamiters, and also sailors from the Maritime Transport Workers’ Union led by Setonas, who will prove to be outstanding guerrillas. “El Padre,” an old militant who fought with Pancho Villa’s during the Mexican Revolution, led the Third <em>Centuria</em>. Textile worker Juan Costa was responsible for the Fourth <em>Centuria</em> and the nineteen year old libertarian Muñoz represented the Fifth <em>Centuria</em>, formed exclusively by metalworkers.
Between two buses, there was a “hispano” automobile carrying Durruti and Pérez Farràs. Durruti rode silently, detached from the cheers and raised fists. He felt the immense weight of his responsibilities. Seventy percent of the men in his Column were the crème de la crème of Barcelona’s anarchist youth. All the volunteers had lived through street conflicts and confrontations with the police, both before and during July 19, but they didn’t have experience fighting in open terrain, that is, with war.
Before they left Barcelona, Durruti addressed the Column in the Bakunin Barracks. He warned them about the difference between the battles that they had known and what they were about to confront, although he knew that words are no substitute for experience. He spoke of aerial bombardments, the cannon fire that precedes the attacks, and hand-to-hand combat with knives. Above all, he insisted on the contrast between a bourgeois army and a proletariat in arms, particularly in its relations with the populations of the rearguard.
There was still the issue of leadership. He had stated his position clearly to the CCAMC and repeated it later to Pérez Farràs. Durruti knew how much his comrades trusted him and that they would follow him wherever he led, even to death. But Durruti sought life, not death. A soldier can send people to their ruin without worrying; you simply replace the losses and move on. But Durruti knew that most of the men following him were revolutionary militants, and such men are irreplaceable. He thought of something Nestor Makhno once said in his presence:
<quote>
The difference between a soldier who commands and a revolutionary who leads lay in the fact that the former asserts himself by force while the later has no authority other than that deriving from his conduct.[548]
</quote>
Vicente Guarner commented on the two men at the head of the Column:
<quote>
Durruti, the leader, with whom I had personally interacted, was an impressive figure. He was determined, around forty years old, and had a penetrating, almost childlike stare. He was taller than average. He had been a rail worker.... Pérez Farràs was from Lérida. He was impulsively courageous and vehement in his views. He was also tall, clear-headed, and had a natural talent that was sometimes obscured by obstinacy.[549]
</quote>
García Oliver was not wasting time in the Department of War while the Durruti Column advanced toward Zaragoza. On July 23, he received Julio Alvarez del Vayo, who was on his way to Madrid from France. Alvarez del Vayo was very influential among the Socialists, particularly Largo Caballero, and they, in turn, were very important in the Giral government. Considering this, García Oliver asked him to convey to the Madrid leaders that the war had to be won in Morocco, not on the Peninsula. It was essential, he insisted, that the Republican government publicly concede independence to the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco. If it did so, General Franco would be defeated in his own rearguard and they could secure control of the Peninsula in a matter of days. Alvarez del Vayo promised to relay his message, but “unfortunately there was no understanding in Madrid and they paid no attention to García Oliver’s views.” [550]
García Oliver had little faith in what Alvarez del Vayo might accomplish in Spain’s capital and began the task of inciting the rebellion in Morocco on his own:
<quote>
Days before our revolution, José Margeli, a comrade from the Graphic Arts Union who was closely linked to our work, introduced me to someone named Argila,[551] an Egyptian language professor at the Berlitz Academy. Margeli later told me that Argila, and his father before him, was prominent in the Arab world and well connected to the Pan-Islamic Committee in Geneva.[552] When the rebellion broke out and we saw the incompetence of the Republican governments, which were continually resigning, I called Margeli and Argila to the CCAMC.... I asked Argila about his links with the pan-Islamists in Geneva. He told me that he was their official representative in Spain and, accordingly, it was at my disposal. Considering the tremendous potential benefits of contact with conspiratorial leaders in the Arab world, I asked Argila and Margeli if they would lead a mission focused on building an alliance between ourselves and the Arab activists. They agreed and I set a meeting for the following day. With Argila and Margeli’s consent, I presented the issue to Marianet, Secretary of CNT Regional Committee in Catalonia. He said that I should continue forward. I also reported on the matter at our nightly CCAMC meeting. Everyone supported the effort and granted me the broadest possible facilities.
Margeli and Argila returned the next day. I put them in contact with comrade Magriñá, who was representing me in the CCAMC’s Department of Propaganda. I told them what we expected them to accomplish in Geneva and, after being given accrediting letters, passports, and money, they left.[553]
</quote>
Magriñá writes:
<quote>
We flew directly to Paris, where we obtained an address in Geneva, and then flew to Switzerland. In Geneva, we settled in the Hotel Russia. After making contact, we went to see an elderly gentleman in his luxurious home. He invited us to eat there, in the style and custom of his country. There was considerable formality and marked elegance.
My companion explained the object of our visit during the meal. The elderly man promised to convey our proposals to the nationalist Moroccan leaders. It was a question, concretely, of soliciting the help of Abdeljalk Torres and his organization for the Republican cause in Morocco in exchange for conceding them independence or autonomy, however they understood it.[554]
</quote>
These conversations followed their course. We now return to the Durruti Column.
** CHAPTER VIII. The Durruti Column
People crowded around to watch the Column pass through the villages. After seeing Durruti, more than one person exclaimed:
“But he can’t be the boss! He’s not wearing stripes!”
Others, better informed, replied that “an anarchist is never a boss and so wouldn’t wear stripes.”
Elsewhere peasants received the Column with shouts of joy and cheers to the CNT-FAI. Wherever the Column stopped, Durruti got out of his car to speak to the town’s residents, who gathered around the new arrivals:
<quote>
Have you organized your collective? Don’t wait any longer. Occupy the land. Organize yourselves without bosses or parasites among you. If you don’t do that, there’s no reason for us to continue forward. We have to create a new world, different from the one that we’re destroying. Otherwise, youth will die on the battlefield for no reason. We’re fighting for the revolution.[555]
</quote>
They were creating a new world in this way, while the Column traveled to Zaragoza and even before engaging the insurgent soldiers in battle. That and nothing else was why they were fighting.
Their first encounter with the fascists occurred in Caspe, which rebel Civil Guard Captain Negrete had seized. On July 23, a group of militiamen, including the Subirats brothers, left Barcelona on its own initiative to begin the battle. They were fighting when the Column arrived and Caspe was liberated thanks to its intervention. The Column had already begun to grow by the time of that victory. The villages of Fraga, Candasnos, Peñalba, La Almanda, and others now lay behind them. The Column reached Bujaraloz on July 27, where they temporarily set up the War Committee. [556]
The Column took off for the Ebro River the following day, with targets in Pina and Osera, on its way to Zaragoza. The Column came into contact with the reality of war shortly after they left, just a few kilometers from Bujaraloz. They suffered a fascist aerial bombardment, which terrified more than a few militiamen, who panicked and began to run. The bombing, to their surprise, had been lethal: it killed a dozen and injured more than twenty, including Artillery Commander Claudín, who led the Column’s three batteries.
A group of Column members instinctively jumped in the way of those who were fleeing and held them there. This prevented the panic from spreading and the expedition from ending in a retreat.
After this blow, Durruti decided that it would be better to go back and learn more about the enemy’s positions, to avoid being caught in another ambush. While returning to Bujaraloz, Durruti learned that Emilienne was on one of the trucks. He looked at her, smiling, without making any comment. About the encounter, Mimi writes:
<quote>
It was in that now historical town [Bujaraloz] that I found my compañero, after two weeks of separation. Once the initial excitement passed, we immediately organized the Column’s headquarters. In a dark and humid room, we undertook the first tasks and, with empty hands, built the initial administrative framework of the rapidly growing Column. It was in that small, austere town that the whole structure of our Column emerged, which was quite imperfect at first, but little by little, as far as was possible, satisfied the enormous needs of the several thousand men.[557]
</quote>
Durruti argued with Pérez Farràs when they returned to Bujaraloz. Pérez Farràs, a professional soldier who disapproved of Durruti’s methods, took advantage of the turmoil to try to convince Durruti to restructure his Column and revise his plan of attack on Zaragoza. Normally Durruti would have taken his comments in good grace, but they injured his pride under the circumstances. And he knew that Pérez Farràs was not making disinterested observations, but implicitly criticizing his anarchist approach. Durruti replied that anyone, libertarian or not, would have run in terror from the attack. The difference was that “the men who ran today will fight like lions tomorrow, but only if they’re treated like surprised workers and not deserting soldiers.” [558]
Durruti spoke to his men from the balcony of Town Hall. His comments were severe, but also deeply heartfelt:
<quote>
Friends, no one forced you to join the Column. You chose your fate freely and the fate of the first CNT-FAI Column is quite thankless indeed. García Oliver said it over the radio in Barcelona: we’re going to take Zaragoza or die in the attempt. And I’m saying the same thing today: we’ll give our lives before retreating. Zaragoza is in fascist hands and there are hundreds, thousands of workers under the threat of their rifles. Didn’t we leave Barcelona to liberate them?! They’re waiting for us and yet we ran in the face of the first enemy attack. That’s a beautiful way to show the world and our comrades the courage of the anarchists; filled with fear by three airplanes!
The bourgeoisie won’t let us create a libertarian communist society just because we want to. They’ll fight back and defend their privileges. The only way we can establish libertarian communism is by destroying the bourgeoisie. Our ideal has a clear path, but we must follow it with resolve. The peasants that we’ve left behind, and who have begun to put our theories into practice, see our rifles as a guarantee of their harvest. Letting the enemy pass would mean that all their initiatives are in vain. And, even worse, the victors will make them pay for their audacity with death. We must defend them. It’s a thankless struggle, unlike any we have fought thus far. What happened today is only a warning. Now the battle will really begin. They will bathe us in shrapnel and we will have to respond with hand grenades and even knives. The enemy will strike out like a cornered beast. And it will strike hard. But we haven’t gotten to that point yet; now it struggles not to fall under the weight of our arms. It also has support from Germany and Italy, and we have nothing more than faith in our ideal. But all the enemies’ teeth have broken upon that faith. Now the fascists will break theirs as well.
We count our victory in Barcelona in our favor and must rapidly use it to our advantage. If not, the enemy will grow stronger than us and subject us to its merciless rage.
Our victory depends on how quickly we act. The sooner we attack, the greater our chances of success. Right now, victory is on our side, but we have to consolidate it by taking Zaragoza at once. What happened today cannot happen again. There are no cowards in the ranks of the CNT and FAI. We don’t want people among us who tremble at the first signs of combat. To those who ran today and stopped the column from advancing, I ask you to have the courage to drop your rifle, so that another, firmer hand can pick it up. Those of us who remain will continue our march. We will conquer Zaragoza, we will free the workers of Pamplona, and we will join our Asturian miner comrades. We will win and give our country a new world. To those who return, I ask you not to tell anyone about what happened today, because it fills us with shame.[559]
</quote>
An eyewitness says: “No one dropped their rifle, although those who had fled cried furiously before their comrades. The lesson had been hard, but the men were reborn that day. Many of them became excellent guerrilla fighters and many also died in the course of the thirty-two months of desperate struggle.” [560]
Vicente Guarner adds:
<quote>
The Durruti Column set off for the Ebro River, taking Pina and Osera in quite determined onslaughts. It got approximately twenty kilometers from Zaragoza, but the river and resistance from the troops in the city stopped its progress. Durruti’s forces established an effective web of trenches and machine-gun nests in their most advanced positions. The Central Committee of Anti-fascist Militias ordered the column to halt its advance and stabilize itself while the Ortiz Column, to the south of the Ebro, took Quinto and Belchite. Days earlier, forces from that Column had waded across the river with considerable difficulty and seized a cavalry regiment with a captain and two lieutenants in the town of Quinto, while continually repelling counterattacks from the troops in Zaragoza.
Information obtained by this Column was very useful. Almost every night workers from Zaragoza left the city and armed militiamen entered. That was how we found out that many of the officers from Navarre had been trained in Italy and that General Germán Gil Yuste had succeeded General Cabanellas as commander of the Fifth Division in late July.[561]
</quote>
The previous quote shows the origin of the order to stop the Column twenty kilometers outside of Zaragoza. The military advisors all agreed that it was necessary to wait for other Columns to arrive before attacking Zaragoza head-on. Durruti, after consulting with Colonel Villalba (a CCAMC officer) in Bujaraloz and other military men, seemed to accept that idea. In the meantime, he improved his positions, with the conquest of Pina and Osera, and worked on restructuring the Column. Nevertheless, distinguished militants from Aragón such as José Alberola thought the Column should have tried to take Zaragoza immediately, given the psychological advantages offered by their victories in Catalonia. Also, instead of a frontal assault, it could have launched the attack through Calatayud, to the left of Zaragoza. [562] Later, when it became clear that it would be impossible to capture the city, Durruti had to recognize his error, which he justified by pointing out that such an operation could have decimated the Column.
The CCAMC continued organizing columns in Barcelona. The Black and Red Column (also known as the South-Ebro Column) took off for the front. Antonio Ortiz, a cabinetmaker and <em>Nosotros</em> group member, led the Column and Commander Fernando Salavera Campos was its military advisor. It left Barcelona with approximately two thousand men and three artillery batteries on July 25. Its duty was to occupy the region south of the Ebro River.
The Del Barrio Column (PSUC) departed on July 26, with Del Barrio as its leader and infantry Commander Sacanell as military advisor. [563] It had a force of some two thousand men, with three artillery batteries. The CCAMC ordered it to occupy the area between the city of Tardienta and the Alcubierre mountain range, establishing its command post in Grañén, and then to pass through southern Huesca and take Zuera. This Column was unique because it had a foreign group composed of German anti-fascist exiles who had come to participate in the Popular Olympics that had been scheduled to begin on July 19. The Germans named their group “Thaelmann” and it was led by Hans Beimler, a well-known German Communist Party militant.
A POUM Column also left Barcelona on July 25. José Rovira was in command and it had Italian ex-captain Russo as its military advisor. It had two thousand men, with the same artillery endowment as the others. Its position was to the north of the Del Barrio Column and its command post was in the town of Leciñena.
There were also other columns of lesser importance. One, led by CNT militant Saturnino Carod, was made up by natives of Aragón who had escaped from Zaragoza. It was organized in the zone where Antonio Ortiz’s column was going to operate. There was also a squad led by anarchist Hilario Zamora that left from Lérida. These two groups eventually merged with the Ortiz Column. This also was true of the six hundred soldiers arriving from Tarragona under the command of Martínez Peñalver. This occurred after Peñalver decided to return to Barcelona because, he claimed, he couldn’t get along with the anarchist Ortiz.
Meanwhile, a small POUM Column and the Ascaso Column—led by Gregorio Jover and Domingo Ascaso (Francisco’s brother)—reached the Huesca sector. These forces, and a column of three thousand men commanded by Colonel Villalba (whose headquarters were in Barbastro), [564] began the siege of Huesca.
The Durruti Column was largely inactive, although it had advanced its lines up to Pina and Osera. It established its headquarters in the Santa Lucía Inn on Zaragoza’s main road, in the heart of Los Monegros, the granary of Aragón. In the middle of August, the Durruti Column looked like this:
<em>War Committee</em>. Durruti, Ricardo Rionda, Miguel Yoldi, Antonio Carreño, and Luis Ruano.
The greater unit, the <em>Agrupación</em>, was composed of five <em>centurias</em> of one hundred men and divided into four groups of twenty-five. Each one of these units had a recallable representative, whom the rank and file appointed and who had no privilege or special authority to command.
<em>Military Council</em>. Commander Pérez Farràs led this body, which was made up by men who had been military officers before the revolution. Its mission was to advise the War Committee. It had no privilege or command authority.
<em>Autonomous groups</em>. The international group (French, Germans, Italians, Moroccans, British, and Americans) grew to approximately four hundred men. Its leader was the French artillery Captain Berthomieu, who will die in action in September.
<em>Guerrilla Groups</em>. Their mission was to penetrate the enemy line. They were formed by: <em>Los Hijos de la Noche, La Banda Negra, Los Dinamiteros, Los Metalúrgicos</em>, and others.
<em>Strategy</em>. The shortage of weapons and ammunition conditioned the Column’s activity. It established a seventy-eight kilometer defensive line in front of Zaragoza, from Velilla de Ebro to Monte Oscuro (Leciñena). As for offensive efforts, surprise attacks from the guerrilla groups enabled the Column to slowly move its positions forward. The Column had approximately six thousand men.
<em>War Materiel</em>. Sixteen machine-guns (most of which they had seized from the enemy), nine mortars, and twelve artillery pieces. They had three thousand rifles, which meant that not all militants could bear arms simultaneously.
<em>Mode of life</em>. The Column was the image of the classless society that they were fighting for. Peasant collectives emerged in its vicinity, which abolished money, wage labor, and private property. Column members who were unable to serve on the frontlines due to the scarcity of arms helped the peasants while they waited for their shift in the trenches. This prevented the parasitism that usually exists among soldiers.
<em>Discipline</em>. Discipline reflected the voluntary character of the Column: freely agreed to and based on class solidarity. Orders went from comrade to comrade. The leaders did not have any privileges. The principle was equal rights and responsibilities. The moral pressure in the social environment made up for the absence of punitive military regulations.
<em>Cultural action</em>. Cultural sections educated the militiamen. A transmitter disseminated readings and lectures on diverse subjects and broadcast calls to the soldiers fighting in Franco’s ranks. A bulletin named <em>El Frente</em> was published on a truck equipped with a mobile printing press. It reported on Column life and served as a bulletin board for ideas and criticism.
Various services were concentrated around the War Committee, such as the administrative services, in which Emilienne Morin worked among others. The Subirats brothers ran the column’s bakery. Antonio Roda led the mechanics’ group. There was an excellent health service, whose two surgeons—Dr. Santamaría and Dr. Fraile—were supported by a team of nurses, some of whom had come from abroad in solidarity with the Spanish revolution.
The structure of the Column emerged as it went along, and what didn’t work was abandoned and replaced by something that functioned better. It was an experimental process that had begun on July 22 when the first volunteers started to come to the unions. It wasn’t any one person’s creation: it was truly a collective project. [565]
Below, with a list of the respective representatives, is a breakdown of the Durruti Column’s forces:
<quote>
<em>First sector. Representative Ruano</em>
1 <em>Agrupación</em> (five <em>centurias</em>). Representative José Mira
2 <em>Agrupación</em> (five <em>centurias</em>). Representative Liberto Roig
3 <em>Agrupación</em> (five <em>centurias</em>). Representative José Esplugas
Second Sector. Representative Miguel Yoldi
4 <em>Agrupación</em> (five <em>centurias</em>). Representative José Gómez Talón
5 <em>Agrupación</em> (five <em>centurias</em>). Representative José Tarín
6 <em>Agrupación</em> (five <em>centurias</em>). Representative J. Silvestre
<em>Third Sector. Representative Mora</em>
7 <em>Agrupación</em> (five <em>centurias</em>). Representative Subirats
8 <em>Agrupación</em> (five <em>centurias</em>). Representative Edo
9 <em>Agrupación</em> (five <em>centurias</em>). Representative R. García
<em>International Group. Representative Louis Berthomieu</em>
Composition: in five groups of fifty. Total 250
Representatives: Ridel, Fortin, Charpenteir, Cottin, and Carles
<em>Summary</em>
General Representative of <em>centurias</em>: José Esplugas <em>Agrupaciones</em>: Miguel Yoldi
Sectors: Rionda (Rico)
Artillery: Capitan Botet
Tanks (Armored): Bonilla
Military Advisers: Commander Pérez Farràs and Sergeant Manzana
Column Representative: Buenaventura Durruti
<strong>War Committee</strong>: Miguel Yoldi, José Esplugas, Rionda, Ruano, Mora, and Durruti
War Committee, Head of Information: Francisco Carreño
Military Advisors: Commander Pérez Farràs, Artillery Sergeant Manzana, and Artillery Captains Botet and Canciller.[566]
</quote>
The deep revolutionary process in Spain attracted the most varied people to its lands: militants, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, historians, and of course schemers and adventurers. The majority brought a certain template, through which they self-confidently judged events on the Peninsula, often without knowing the history of our country or the reasons for war. Few could accept that the anarchist movement—which had been on the decline worldwide—was still a dynamic presence in Spain and played such an important role in the country’s affairs. Indeed, the debate between Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin that occurred seventy years earlier was going to reappear in Spain. It made sense that the Marxists would follow Stalin’s orders and denigrate whatever was not their work, particularly if those responsible were anarchists. With respect to the militias on Aragón front, Stalinists and Trotskyists tried to imprint a militarist spirit on their forces, but were forced to give up after the militiamen themselves resisted. Indeed, the POUM attempted to structure militia life with rigid military codes, but had to abandon the effort. [567] The social physiognomy of Aragón had changed, due to the presence of four hundred agrarian collectives and sixteen thousand CNT- FAI fighters, and it was impossible to turn back.
The militias’ “military” structure displeased many foreign visitors, who deemed it ineffective and doomed to fail. Koltsov, a correspondent for <em>Pravda</em>, the Bolshevik’s Moscow newspaper, visited the Aragón front in mid-August and mocked the proletarian militias in the same terms as his bourgeois colleagues. Nevertheless, others writers were better prepared to understand the revolution’s problems and they celebrated the revolutionary forces that had pushed back the rebels.
George Orwell, who fought in Aragón—and not among the anarchists— is the most significant among the latter group of commentators:
<quote>
The journalists who sneered at the militia system scarcely remembered that the militias had to hold the line while the Popular Army was trained in the rear. And it is a tribute to the strength of the ‘revolutionary’ discipline that the militias stayed in the field at all. For until about June 1937 there was nothing to keep them, except class loyalty.
</quote>
Orwell could have been even more pointed by asking those journalists: What would have happened if those men, instead of setting off for Aragón, had stayed in the barracks and marked time receiving military “instruction” when the uprising occurred? One doesn’t need to be a genius to know, with the Army being discharged by the Republic on July 20 and three quarters of its officers going over to the enemy, that the rebels would have taken over Spain in twenty-four hours. There was no army to prevent them from doing so. It was the militias who stopped the rebel advance. After a year of struggle, when a Stalinist-infiltrated half army existed, it was time, writes Orwell, to attack not the militias but the foundations upon which they rested:
<quote>
Later it became fashionable to decry the militias, and therefore to pretend that the faults which were due to the lack of training and weapons were the result of the egalitarian system.... In practice the democratic ‘revolutionary’ type of discipline is more reliable than might be expected. In a workers’ army, discipline is theoretically voluntary.... In the militias, the bullying and abuses that go on in an ordinary army would never have been tolerated for a moment.... The normal military punishments existed, but they were only invoked for very serious offenses.... ‘Revolutionary’ discipline depends on political consciousness—on an understanding of why orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square.... They had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society.[568]
</quote>
Although there was some Column activity in early August, it wasn’t enough to satisfy Durruti. He was not the type of man who could sit still or pass the time in the innocuous conversations. He made the rounds endlessly, visiting advanced positions and taking an interest in every detail of the enemy’s movements. Dawn was the most important moment for him, because it was then that comrades who had gone on special missions into enemy territory returned to the Column. The Column used their reports to reinforce its defensive lines and sent information of a more general character on to the CCAMC. [569]
Surprise attacks on the enemy also bore fruit, whether in the form of prisoners, dynamited enemy positions, or swiped arms and munitions. Despite all this, Durruti was still restless, so he fixed his attention on the peasant collectives that were sprouting up all over liberated Aragón. Relations between the collectives and the Column were exceedingly fraternal. [570] Peasants visited the Column to bring supplies or to ask Durruti to visit their collectives and offer his opinion on how things were progressing. Durruti generally consented readily but, if for some reason he was unable to go, he sent Carreño or another comrade in his place.
His visits to the communities enabled him to appreciate the collectives’ importance for the revolution and also the dangers that would soon threaten them if they didn’t form a united body. He urged the peasants to create a federation that would link all the collectives in the region. Such a federation, he told them, would not only give them an organizational force but also permit them to outline more general plans for putting a libertarian socialist economy into action. Durruti thought it was extremely urgent that they take that step, particularly because some Stalinist Columns were deliberately trying to sabotage the collectives. A federation would build solidarity among the peasants, which would be the best defense against their enemies. After returning from one of those visits, he suggested that the War Committee inform the militiamen about the collectivizations and urge them to help the peasants take in the wheat harvest. That would build solidarity and also give the more educated combatants an opportunity to discuss libertarian communism with the peasantry. A leaflet was printed that documented the work being doing by numerous collectives and it was circulated among the <em>centurias</em>. The response to the leaflet was very positive. Groups of libertarian youth were the first to volunteer to play the role of soldier-producer. This was the beginning of what would shortly become the Aragón Federation of Collectives of the Aragón Defense Council.
But of course life was not idyllic. They were at war, in all its terrible brutality, and Durruti was acutely aware that the mode of life imposed upon them degraded even the most vigorous revolutionary. “Man’s purpose is not to lurk and kill, but to live! To live!” he burst out at times, while striding through the War Committee office. “If this continues, it will ruin the revolution, because the man it creates will be more beast than human. We have to end this as soon as possible.” [571]
These reflections gave birth to an all-consuming impatience in Durruti. Many nights, unable to sleep, he left his straw mattress and “went as far as the vanguard positions, passing hours with the sentries staring at the lights of Zaragoza. Daybreak often surprised him in that attitude.” [572]
As the Column’s leader, Durruti heard complaints from peasants who bemoaned the behavior of some his men in the villages. Usually they were minor things, but it was clear that even volunteer militiamen can succumb to the vices typical of soldiers. When this happened, Durruti tried to reprimand the person in question in front of as many people as possible in order to get the group as a whole to reflect.
But sometimes a simple reprimand was not enough. One day Durruti found a <em>centuria</em> leader far from his sector and asked him what he was doing. The man told him that five members of his <em>centuria</em> had left their sentry post and that he was looking for them. Durruti finally found the men drinking wine in a nearby village. He said: “Do realize you what you’ve done? Didn’t it occur to you that the fascists could have passed through the position that you abandoned and massacred the comrades who’ve entrusted you with their safety?! You don’t deserve to belong to the Column or the CNT! Give me your membership cards!”
They took the cards out of their pockets and handed them over. Durruti couldn’t really demand anything more.
“You aren’t CNT men or even workers! You’re shit, nothing more than shit! You cause deaths in the Column! Go home!”
Instead of being ashamed, they almost seemed bemused. This exasperated Durruti even more: “Don’t you know that the clothes you’re wearing belong to the people? Take off your pants.”
They were brought to Barcelona in their underwear. [573]
Durruti could pass quickly from extreme anger to perfect calm. When he returned to the War Committee, he told Mora to call Barcelona. He wanted to speak with Ricardo Sanz: “Ricardo, did you know that a political party in Sabadell has eight machine-guns hidden in its office? I give you forty-eight hours to have these machine-guns sent to me. And, listen, send me three agronomists too.” [574]
He hung up the phone. Mora was confused, surely no less so than Ricardo Sanz. He couldn’t figure out the connection between machine-guns and agronomists.
Durruti had visited several collectives that day and all complained about the lack of technical personnel. Some had asked for agronomists and specialists to help them with tests that they wanted to conduct on new crops. Others lamented that their best men had left the collective to enroll in the Column. Durruti noted the name of the militants in question and summoned them to the War Committee. When they arrived, he told them: “The Column no longer needs your services.”
Seeing the effect of his words, he changed his tone and, smiling, said: “No, it’s not what you think. I know you fight well, that you’re valiant and brave. But the comrades in your villages need you. They need you to carry forward the work that they’ve begun. What will all our bullets leave after the war? The work being performed in your villages is more important than killing fascists, because what’s being killed there is the bourgeois system. And what we create in that sense will be the only thing that history will register.” [575]
** CHAPTER IX. “The clandestine revolution”
Reserves of rifle ammunition on the Aragón front were essentially exhausted only two weeks into the war. They also had to send many of the old model 94 rifles to gunsmiths for repair and often discard them as unserviceable. The artillery had to fire with great economy due to the lack of shells and the modest Republican air force made only brief appearances, which did little more than annoy the fascists, who had Italian and German planes at their disposal.
The Black and Red Column (led by Antonio Ortiz) tried unsuccessfully to take the fortified fascist positions in Belchite several times. The fascists received constant reinforcements and ammunition from Zaragoza and Calatayud, which greatly reduced the Column’s chances of success. Things were not much better for the militiamen in the Alcubierre sector, whose attempts to sever communication between Huesca and Zaragoza also failed. Franco’s troops were determined to defend the Alcubierre and Belchite areas at all costs, because they knew losing either would mean the loss of Zaragoza and thus leave the path open to the revolutionary militias.
With the military activity occurring on the periphery, the Durruti Column could do little except provoke skirmishes with its guerrilla groups. And it was impossible to consider withdrawing the Column from its position: a rebel charge would jeopardize the crucial Los Monegros zone and, worse still, break the lines of communication between the militiamen in Huesca and those in the vicinity of Teruel, thereby giving the rebels a clear route to Lérida. So, the Durruti Column focused on carrying out its vital function and used the calm to reinforce strategic parts of the front. But the inactivity was torture for the fighters as well as Durruti. To keep from being consumed by inactivity, he decided to go to Barcelona and speak directly with the CCAMC about breaking out of that impasse.
While he traveled from Bujaraloz to Barcelona, Durruti could witness the change that the revolution had made both in people and circumstances. The whirlwind of the first days of the battle had passed and the peasants and workers were now focused on changing their ways of life and creating new social relationships. The people were still armed and guarded the entrances of their villages. There was no trace of Assault or Civil Guards at these checkpoints: it was the proletarians who assured the revolutionary order. [576]
Durruti stopped his car at a checkpoint at a town in the Lérida province.
He portrayed himself as a militiaman leaving the front for the rearguard and requested gasoline for his vehicle. By doing this, he wanted to see how the peasant’s behavior had changed in that town of some three thousand residents. A militiaman told him that he should speak to the Revolutionary Committee in the old mayor’s office. They’d give him the “OK” that he needed to fill his car with gas.
Durruti crossed the town’s main square. It was around noon. The square was empty except for some women leaving the church with a basket of goods. Durruti asked them how to get to the Committee and also if mass was being officiated in the church.
“No, no,” they responded. “There’s no priest. The priest is working in the field with the other men. Kill him? Why kill him? He isn’t dangerous. He even talks about going to live with a town girl. Besides, he’s very happy with everything that’s happening.
“But the church is right there,” said Durruti, while pointing.
“Ah, yes, the church. Why destroy it? The statues were removed and burned in the square. God no longer exists. He’s been expelled from here. And, since God doesn’t exist, the assembly decided to replace the word “adios” [with God] with “Salud” [cheers]. The Cooperative now occupies the church and, because everything is collectivized, it supplies the town.” [577] Durruti came across an elderly man when he entered what was once the mayor’s office. It was the town’s former schoolteacher, who had been replaced by a young teacher from Lérida three months earlier. The old man had been inactive during those months but, when the revolution broke out, he volunteered to look after the town’s administrative needs and assure the continued operation of the Town Committee. The other members of the Committee were working in the fields. They gathered at nightfall to discuss pressing matters that had come up during the day or tasks that they needed to accomplish the next day. At the time, they had to focus on taking in the harvest. Since the town’s young people had volunteered to go fight on the front, the remaining residents had to do the work.
“But don’t think,” the retired teacher said, “that the work weighs on anyone. We work for ourselves now, for everyone.”
Durruti asked him how they had selected the members of the Committee. Durruti’s straightforward and simple air inspired the teacher’s trust, who took him as one of the many curious militiamen from the city who wanted to see what was happening in the towns.
“We held a town assembly,” he said, “and considered everyone’s abilities and also their conduct before the revolution. That’s how we appointed the Committee.”
“And what about the political parties?” Durruti said.
“Parties? There are some old Republicans like myself and some Socialists too; but no, the political parties haven’t played any role. During our assembly, we considered a person’s ability and conduct and appointed those who seemed best to us. It was no more complicated than that. The Committee represents the people and it’s to the people that it has to answer.”
Durruti asked about the parties again.
“The parties?” the teacher replied, intrigued by his insistence. “Why do we need political parties? You work to eat and eat if you work. Party politics don’t sow wheat, gather olives, or tan animal hides. No, our problems are collective and we have to solve them collectively. Politics divides and our town wants to be united, in total community.”
“By all appearances, everyone is happy here. But what about the old landowners?” Durruti inquired.
“They aren’t happy,” the teacher responded. “They don’t say so outright, because they’re afraid, but you can see it on their faces. Some have joined the community, others have chosen what we now call ‘individualism.’ They’ve kept their land but have to cultivate it themselves, because the exploitation of man by man no longer exists here, and so they won’t find any employees. “But what happens if they can’t cultivate their land themselves?”
“That simply shows that they have too much land and the town takes possession of what they can’t tend to. Leaving the land uncultivated would be an attack on all of us.” [578]
Durruti said goodbye to the teacher and, when he returned to the checkpoint, the workers on guard asked him if he’d received the gasoline that he needed. He told them yes with a smile and threw them a “Salud!” from the car as he took off for Barcelona.
There were similar circumstances in all the places that Durruti visited along the way, but life was more complicated in the larger towns. What was different was that the Revolutionary Committees had become an extension of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias and representatives from political parties and workers organizations operated within them. The people still exercised direct control over the Committee members, which was not the case in Barcelona, where the political party or labor organization that appointed the CCAMC members controlled them. This contrast was evident in the documents issued. CCAMC documents simply needed the CCAMC stamp and, until August 10, the FAI Regional Committee’s stamp to be valid, whereas in the towns each organization or party had to stamp a document for it to be legitimate. To an extent, the Town Committees had replaced the city councils and exercised a (very limited) political-administrative power. Nevertheless, the collectivization of the workplaces meant that economic power lay in the hands of the Workers’ Committees, which answered primarily to the unions. The unions had also experienced a change, and it was now possible to speak of Local Workers’ Associations.
Workers’ control was pervasive in Barcelona and the armed men guarding the factory gates made it clear that the means of production were in proletarian hands. The rapid transformation of daily life in the Catalan capital impressed Durruti. Workers’ collectives ran urban transportation and the metros. Indeed, the people had completely expropriated the transportation industry. Workers’ Committees were appointed by streetcar, bus, truck, subway, and maritime transport workers in large assemblies. The railway companies had ceased to exist and it was the CNT and UGT rail workers who ran them. Collectivism had also spread to the textile, metalwork, food, electro-chemical, gas, electricity, petroleum, and wood industries. Cinemas, theaters, and other parts of the entertainment sector were run collectively as well.
The transformation in property relations had an effect on the people as well. It changed social relations and toppled, in many cases, the old separation between men and women, as well as the traditional foundations of the bourgeois family. The revolution was like a volcano that shaped the material that it was spewing forth into new forms. Durruti had been right to tell Van Paassen that a new world was being born.
The Socialists and Stalinists had no control over the revolutionary process, although they did their utmost to conceal and falsify it. To the international audience, they presented the revolutionary changes as limited and abnormal and claimed that the people enthusiastically supported the Republican government. Jesús Hernández, a member of the Spanish Communist Party’s Central Committee, made comments along those lines a correspondent from Toulouse’s La Dépeche in August, but one had to be blind not to see that an enormous change was taking place in society and men.
Before going to the CNT-FAI Committees, Durruti stopped at workers’ collectives to see how they were developing. Wherever he went, whether to hospitals or industrial or transportation centers, the workers exuded a profound revolutionary passion. This time the revolution was real.
Durruti finally went to the “CNT-FAI House.” At its door, like at the factory gates, he saw armed workers standing guard, with rifles and a machine-gun sticking its barrel through the sand bags. A sign attracted his attention when he entered the vestibule: “Comrade, be brief: we make the revolution by acting not talking.” [579]
The elevators rose and fell, loading and unloading the masses of people who were going to or coming from an office. Those who were impatient used the building’s wide marble stairs. Durruti was like a stranger there, but still at home. The “CNT-FAI House” seemed like the nerve center of Barcelona and Catalonia. Durruti was thrilled to pass through the tumult unnoticed, having had the good fortune not to run into anyone he knew. Not long ago all of Barcelona shouted his name; today his was anonymous. When he saw Mariano R. Vázquez, he asked: “Doesn’t this whole apparatus scare you? Are we going to drown ourselves in bureaucracy?” Mariano didn’t respond immediately. After reflecting for a moment, he said:
<quote>
The CNT is suddenly indispensable to resolving all local and regional problems. Now that workers control the factories, the unions have to address all the complexities of the collective management of production. That’s why we’ve created this structure, which has continued growing on its own and imposing itself. But it actually has no center. The grassroots continue to make the decisions. The leading comrades are still workers in their factories and their assemblies oversee their activities. For the time being, rank and file control is still a reality.
</quote>
Mariano’s comments led Durruti to conclude that the Secretary of the Catalan CNT was sensitive to the threats facing the revolution. He became even more convinced of that when Mariano concluded their discussion by saying:
<quote>
The revolution has put anarchism to the test. For years we called for revolution and now that the moment of truth has arrived, we can’t skirt the responsibility of guiding it. We have to hope that our anarchist convictions will enable us to resist personal degeneration. Now, more than ever, it’s imperative that the base controls prominent militants like us, even if it doesn’t want to. The only way to stop the committees from taking over for the base is by making sure that those in leadership positions are subordinate to the people.[580]
</quote>
Durruti left Mariano thinking that thus far victory had not caused the militant anarchists to lose their heads. Mariano’s statements seemed to indicate that. Was he right to be optimistic? Anarchists who hold power are not immune to the temptations of power. All men can fall into its traps. Yes, as Mariano said, the rank and file had to control the leadership, but neither Mariano nor Durruti realized that they had taken the first step over the precipice on July 20 when a group of militants stood in for the base and made decisions on its behalf. From that moment on, a separation began to emerge between the base and the leadership: the grassroots wanted to expand the revolution, but the leaders wanted to control it and thus restricted it. That conflict was barely perceptible then, but it was there. The difference between Durruti and Mariano was that the former was in direct contact with the base, while the latter was not. When someone visited the Column and tried to confuse a militiaman by telling him that Durruti was obeyed because he was the boss, the militiaman replied that “he isn’t obeyed because he’s the boss, but because he’s responsible for leading the Column. We’ll dismiss him when he stops interpreting its will.” [581] Durruti didn’t appreciate that conflicted situation at the time, although it would not be long before he did.
After leaving the “CNT-FAI House,” Durruti went to the Plaza Palacio to visit García Oliver, who was ensconced in the old Nautical School building that now housed the CCAMC. He was tremendously active and barely slept as he went from one meeting to the next. Santillán acknowledged his tenacity when he noted that the CNT and FAI delegates had asked García Oliver to defend the two organization’s positions during the CCAMC’s nightly meetings: due to his inexplicable mental agility, he was the only one able to stay alert despite the fatigue. [582] García Oliver also attended to the CNT and FAI men who came to the CCAMC for military reasons: they only trusted him, knowing that he would keep his word if he gave it to them. He organized a school for military training, recruiting former professional soldiers to give brief courses to <em>centuria</em> and <em>agrupación</em> leaders. The school had a section specializing in guerrilla struggle, in which he himself gave lectures to youth attending the courses. With the help of some pilots, he laid the foundations for an Air force school, making use of the dilapidated planes at the Prat de Llobregat airbase for instruction. He sent emissaries to France to make contact with arms dealers to buy war materiel (the Revolutionary Committees supported the initiative by putting expropriated jewels and valuables at his disposal). He got Eugenio Vallejo, a militant from the Metalworkers’ Union, to immediately begin organizing a war industry. The Metalworkers would collaborate with the Chemical Products Union and the Miners from Sallent to obtain gunpowder and explosives as quickly as possible. Military operations on the Aragón front also answered on him and, as the last item among his extremely varied responsibilities, he had to meet with prominent foreigners and consular representatives sent by nations with industrial properties in Catalonia that were now under worker control.
Durruti didn’t recognize García Oliver when he saw him. The revolution had made him a different man, who now lived for the cause alone. There was a small bed in a corner of his office on which he occasionally laid down for a few minutes of rest. He had neglected his clothing and person, and this from someone normally quite attentive to such things.
“You’ve changed,” Durruti said.
“So have you,” García replied. “Who hasn’t been changed by the revolution? It wouldn’t be worth making it just to continue being the same.”
Both men paused for a few seconds before beginning to discuss matters that they knew they had to address: the attack of Zaragoza, the shortage of weapons and ammunition, restructuring the Aragón War Committee, the problem of Colonel Villalba, etc.
García Oliver looked at Durruti and tried to guess how he would respond to the bad news that he had to give him. He wasn’t pleased with the news either, but Captain Bayo, disrupting everything, had created a situation that they had to confront. It was the landing on Majorca.[583] The situation demanded special attention, which could only come at the expense of the battle on the Aragón front. The news would be a terrible blow to Durruti:
<quote>
“We have to postpone the attack on Zaragoza. First, because the Columns south of the Ebro River and around Alcubierre have not achieved their objectives and we needed that to occur before launching the frontal assault. Second, because of the expedition to Majorca, which could prompt the Italians to intervene in order protect their bases in the Balearic Islands. England would not remain impassive if Italy acted imprudently in Majorca. If England intervenes, the war will have a new dimension. The fate of the Spanish revolution,” García Oliver said, “is being decided outside of Spain. We have to set our sights on Majorca and Morocco.”
</quote>
Durruti argued that the French and the British would be able to get along very well with the Italians in an effort to avoid an extension of the conflict. In addition, the operation in Majorca might end in a fiasco and they risk losing precious time in Aragón if they delay the attack. The enemy would doubtlessly use that time to reinforce its positions: it was well aware of Zaragoza’s importance for the future of the war. Durruti asserted that it was essential to take the city at all costs. It was the link with the north and the war will be won once contact is reestablished with it, since that will enable them to focus all their efforts on the troops that Franco is unloading in Andalusia. As masters of the Peninsula, Durruti said, they will be able to resist whatever obstacles the international capitalists might impose.
There were two positions here. One was a statist strategy that played with diplomacy and conflicting imperialist interests. It was not completely incorrect, from a strategic-military point of view, yet its central defect was that its success depended on revolutionary forces and the English, French, Italians, and Germans were all united against them. The other position, which Durruti defended, was more revolutionary and realistic. It assumed the need to fight international capitalists but that to do so effectively they had to finish off the military rebels on the Peninsula at once. Any prolongation of the war would undermine the revolutionary conquests and a war alone is not worth dying for. The tragedy of the revolution and militant anarchism would revolve around these two positions. From then on, the revolution was subordinate to the war.
García Oliver reminded Durruti that their dilemma was the inevitable consequence of the CNT and FAI’s fateful decision on July 20 to accept collaboration with the bourgeois anti-fascist forces.
“In fact,” he added, “we gave up the revolution when we failed to abolish the Generalitat and agreed to collaborate with the political parties. What would have happened if we had adopted the more radical position? The situation would have become clear immediately. Taking all the responsibility on ourselves, everything would have been framed differently. And we wouldn’t have committed the Paris Commune’s error of enclosing ourselves in a single city, because we were already projected over two regions: Aragón and Levante, with the way open toward Andalusia. But the CNT rejected that solution and adopted the collaborationist position. It will be the death of the revolution in the long run.”[584]
These two revolutionaries were trapped by a situation that they had not wanted but had accepted as a duty to their organization. Neither gave up on the revolution and each fought in his own way to extend it. However, the reality was that the revolution was on hold until the defeat of the fascists. How could they vanquish an enemy that had excellent military supplies and the support of Italy and Germany? Catalonia did not have the primary materials necessary for making arms or the money with which to buy them. Spain’s treasury—its gold—was in the coffers of the Bank of Spain in Madrid and the Socialist Party controlled the situation there. How could the CNT get its hands on the gold in the Bank of Spain? There was only one solution: Largo Caballero was unhappy with the Giral government and thought it wasn’t doing enough to support the people’s victory. He was leader of the UGT and his prestige had increased after his dispute with Indalecio Prieto, an avid Giral supporter. The only solution that would enable the Spanish revolution to move forward was an agreement between the UGT and CNT, in which both organizations formed a National Defense Council that would assume the full leadership of the struggle. Could Largo Caballero be made to understand that the revolution demanded an alliance between the CNT and UGT? That was the only hope, but García Oliver and Durruti were not optimistic that the social democrat Largo Caballero would lean definitively toward the proletarian revolution. And, if he had ever considered such an alliance, someone was already in Spain doing his best to stop it from being made: Mikhail Koltsov, following the instructions of his patron, Stalin, would work ardently to keep Largo Caballero in his purely social-democratic role.[585]
Given the circumstances, García Oliver concluded that there was no choice but to follow events and try to control them. He had to remain in the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, hold onto the CNT and FAI’s key positions, support the Revolutionary Committees, use the armed force of the people as a constant threat against any attempt to reconstruct the old order, collectivize the economy, and create an armed body in the rearguard that would answer to the unions. But all of this, García Oliver thought, needed legal sanction from the CCAMC. In other words, they would push the revolution forward, but clandestinely.
The ideas was amusing to Durruti: it would be like years ago, when the FAI was underground and yet its principle militants were famous! When everything was said and done, García Oliver was defending the position that Manuel Escorza had advanced at the July 20 meeting. Durruti argued that no one was deceiving anyone then. But now, when workers expropriate the bourgeoisie, when they seize foreign properties, when public security is in their hands, when the unions control the militias, when a true revolution is occurring, how is it possible to give all that legal sanction without compromising the revolutionary spirit?
“Any attempt that we make to legalize our efforts,” he said, “will reinforce the Generalitat, because it legitimizes the body that decrees and puts its stamp on things; and the stronger the Generalitat, the weaker the CCAMC. In other words, the CNT will strengthen the Generalitat and, with an integrated economy in its hands, we will be marching toward a species of state socialism.”
Durruti’s final point about the economy was related to the creation of the Economic Council, in which Santillán was playing a very important role in the CNT’s name. That body, with its legal force, would end up integrating the entire economy into the Catalan state and thus lead to a form of state socialism. García Oliver recognized that Durruti’s criticisms were just. They had to oppose the spread of a legalist concept of the economy to the utmost. Nevertheless, both knew that an armed conflict was inevitable and to be prepared for it the working masses’ revolutionary ardor had to be preserved and pitted against the effective power of the CCAMC as much as the passive power of the Generalitat. It would be a revolution within the revolution. But Durruti was not satisfied with this confusing and contradictory situation and thought they should raise the question at the next meeting of the Catalan CNT. They agreed that this would be a good way to make the militants face their responsibilities.
When that regional meeting took place in early August 1936, it was already possible to see the ambiguity of a Generalitat that did not govern and a CNT increasingly more engaged in determining the real direction of events. García Oliver and Durruti argued bluntly that they had to break out of that ambiguity and end the political collaboration that disorientated the revolution and undermined its progress.
The collaborationist faction held fast to its position—despite its negative track record thus far—under the pretext that a rupture in the anti-fascist front would cause a civil war between the anti-fascists. Dramatic speeches silenced more critical views; clearly there would be no revision of the July 20 decision. A revolutionary alliance with the UGT and the formation of a National Defense Council were suggested as solutions. The more radical faction, unaware of the intense pressures to prevent such an alliance, once again let themselves be bound by the organization’s decisions. There was a way to get out of that vicious circle: it was by placing the problem in the street, against the sentiment in the CNT itself. But no militant, not even Durruti or García Oliver, was capable of that: first, because doing so would require a period of lengthy preparation, to ensure that the revolution would not be crushed; and, second, because organizational practices demanding respect for the majority’s decisions weighed too heavily on them. Furthermore, while one could be confident in the outcome of a revolutionary action in Catalonia, where the CNT and the FAI were very strong, the rest of Spain, Madrid especially, was an unknown. Both the collaborationist and the radical faction were convinced that an armed confrontation within the anti-fascist camp was inevitable: all the former group did was delay it.
Durruti received an urgent call from Bujaraloz and had to leave Barcelona at once. His strategy was clear: maintain his positions against all odds, shape the Confederal militias into a strong, armed force, and carry the revolution forward.
** CHAPTER X. Koltsov visits the Durruti Column
We noted that activities in Durruti’s sector had diminished by the time he left for Barcelona. The Column’s most advanced position was on “Calabazares Altos,” an observation point from which it was possible to see Zaragoza. Aguilar, Osera de Ebro, Monegrillo, and Farlete had been conquered. Pina was under siege. The shortage of ammunition made it impossible to consider large operations, so the guerrilla groups’ surprise attacks became more frequent:
<quote>
One day it is the Internationals,[586] who avail themselves of a ford in the vicinity of Aguilar and cross the Ebro. They surprise the enemy forces in their trenches, attack, and take them prisoner. Another day it is La Banda Negra, who wade across the river and assault the rebel command post in Fuentes de Ebro. They seize fifty-nine prisoners (including several officers) and an excellent war booty. Later, it is <em>Los Hijos de la Noche</em>, who go many kilometers behind enemy lines and come back in the early morning exhausted but happy because they’re returning with thousands of cattle.[587]
</quote>
It was the Aragón War Committee that had summoned Durruti with such urgency when he was in Barcelona.[588] Colonel Villalba was the senior military advisor in this body.[589] After examining the situation in the region, the Military Council planned a large operation in the Huesca area, but they had to move troops from other sectors to carry it out. The Council asked the Durruti Column, which was under less pressure, to assist in the action. Durruti was preparing his militiamen for the Huesca offensive—which ended with the seizure of Pina de Ebro—when Mikhail Koltsov, a correspondent from the <em>Pravda</em> newspaper, arrived in Bujaraloz.
Koltsov had come to Barcelona on August 8. He first visited with his Communist comrades in the Hotel Colón and then met with García Oliver (on August 10). His account of the meeting is very picturesque and typical of “Moscow’s eye in Spain”:
<quote>
I visited García Oliver at midday. All the Catalan militia units now report to him. His headquarters are in the Nautical School. The building is magnificent, with its large corridors and rooms, glass ceilings, and enormous, artistically executed models of old ships. There are many people, weapons, and boxes of cartridges.
Oliver himself is in a luxurious office, surrounded by tapestries and statues. He immediately offered me an enormous Cuban cigar and some cognac. Dark, handsome, cinematic, and sullen, with a scar on his face and an immense Parabellum pistol on his belt. At first he was quiet and seemed taciturn, but then suddenly let out a long and passionate monologue, which revealed the experienced and talented orator.
</quote>
The monologue that Koltsov puts in García Oliver’s mouth has two dimensions. First, he makes him sing the praises of the CNT and FAI. Then, Koltsov writes:
<quote>
Nervously, with what seems like excessive excitement, he begins to contradict everything that he said before.... “It’s not true that the anarchists are against the Soviet Union,” [Koltsov makes García Oliver say].... He tells me that the Soviet Union ... mustn’t disdain the Spanish anarchist workers.... He urges me to speak with his friend Durruti, although Durruti was at the front, at the gates of Zaragoza; why not go see him?
</quote>
Koltsov told him that he would like to visit the Aragón front and asks for a pass:
<quote>
“Could you issue me one, Oliver?”
“Yes,” Oliver gave it to me happily. He spoke with his assistant, who typed out a pass right there. Oliver signs. He extends his hand to me and asks me to be sure that Russian workers receive accurate information about the Spanish anarchists.[590]
</quote>
Koltsov was in Aragón on August 12, in a village named Angüés in Villalba’s sector. Someone named Julio Jiménez Orgue, a mysterious Russian artillery colonel who had come to “help the reds”, accompanied him. Koltsov decided to ask some questions to a captain, a professional soldier in Villalba’s forces:
<quote>
“What enemy are you facing?”
“The rebels.”
“But who, concretely? What forces? How many cannons and machineguns? Do they have cavalry?
The captain shrugged his shoulders. “They’re the enemy because they don’t report their troops or forces. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be an enemy, but a friend!” Everyone laughed all around at the captain’s wisdom and wittiness.”
</quote>
The only one who didn’t laugh was Koltsov, because he lacked a sense of humor. How could such questions occur to Koltsov on August 12, 1936?! Given what he wrote later, the most curious thing is that he asked them seriously. Perhaps Orwell penned his comments with the <em>Pravda</em> correspondent in mind.
Before visiting Durruti, Koltsov saw Trueba and Del Barrio in Tardienta. Naturally, what he found there was the greatest organization, efficiency, and even an “armored train.” Trueba joined Koltsov’s entourage when he learned that Koltsov was going to meet with Durruti (Trueba wanted to “have a look at the anarchist Column.”) The <em>Pravda</em> writer’s account of his discussion with Durruti has the same value as the rest of his <em>Diario de la guerra de España</em>, which his <em>Izvestia</em> colleague Ehrenburg said has “no historical merit.”[591] Durruti was in the Santa Lucía Inn when Koltsov arrived on August 14. He says that Durruti was “two kilometers from the front,” which was “crazy,” and thus preferred to speak with him in Bujaraloz.
Koltsov describes the town and says that it was flooded with orders and decrees signed by Durruti. He then describes his encounter with Durruti:
<quote>
The famous anarchist received us without paying us much attention at first, but he immediately became interested after reading the words “Moscow” and <em>“Pravda”</em> in the letter from Oliver. Right there, in the middle of the road, among his soldiers and clearly hoping to make an impression on them, he launched into an ardent polemic.
</quote>
This is Koltsov’s account of the notorious Durruti. We will now examine the dialogue that actually occurred between Koltsov and Durruti, which we can reconstruct thanks to help from a witness.
Durruti began by asking Koltsov, “what does the Soviet Union intend to do for the Spanish Revolution?” The journalist said that diplomatic concerns prevented the USSR from intervening directly, but did not exclude the possibility of indirect Russian aid. He also said that Russian workers had organized a national support campaign through their unions, whose first remittance of money had been sent to Prime Minister Giral.[592] The response did not satisfy Durruti. He replied forcefully:
<quote>
The battle against fascism isn’t the work of the government, but the Spanish proletariat, which unleashed the revolution in response to the military uprising. The Republican government hasn’t armed the workers or done anything to stop the military assault. Under such circumstances, it makes no sense that money from the Russian workers is sent not to the Spanish workers, but to a government that refuses to arm the revolutionary militias, even though it controls the Spanish treasury. The meaning of our war is clear: it’s not about supporting bourgeois institutions, but about destroying them. If the Russian people aren’t aware of the nature of our efforts, then it’s the duty of Russian journalists to inform them.
</quote>
This was Durruti’s clear response to Koltsov, which he failed to include in his <em>Diario</em>. Of course such an “omission” was extremely understandable, given that Stalin did not want the Russian people to know what was really happening in Spain. By concealing Durruti’s actual response and making him say nonsense, Koltsov reinforced the image of anarchists that Stalinists promoted.
After a digression in the dialogue, in which Koltsov declared that the Soviet Union passionately wanted victory for the Spanish anti-fascists, the conversation focused on military topics. Koltsov’s insistence on the subject is revealing.
Durruti said that they should concentrate forces on Zaragoza and launch a decisive attack on the city, but recognized that the battles were occurring in outlaying areas, which he lamented.
He explained that his forces were immobile because of the strategy put forward by the military advisors, who believed that they had to improve positions to the north and south before attacking Zaragoza. Nonetheless, circumstances will get better after the upcoming attack on Fuentes de Ebro. With respect to the so-called “discipline” and “command” problems, Durruti said that they did not exist in the Column.
He told Koltsov that the War Committee and the Column’s Military Council acted in mutual agreement and that there was no split between the professional soldiers and militiamen. The Column operates in a spirit of self-discipline and comradely responsibility, which renders military punishments unnecessary.
Durruti offered a detailed account of the state of the Column at the time, which Koltsov transformed in his <em>Diario</em>. The <em>Pravda</em> correspondent claimed that Durruti told him that there had been a high number of desertions and that the Column only had about 1,200 men remaining. The truth was that the Column had six thousand and 4,500 of them were armed.
With respect to the Column’s armaments, Koltsov claims that Durruti told him that “it’s excellent.” In reality, Durruti said that “we have old rifles and not enough to arm everyone. We’ve had to use a system of turns, in which militiamen switch between being fighters and helping out with agricultural efforts, in which some 1,500 are employed at present. Some are also engaged in agricultural projects on a trail between Gelsa and Pina.” About the ammunition, Durruti said that it was “a real nightmare, so much so that militiamen have to save empty cartridges and send them to Barcelona to be refilled.”
Koltsov raised the issue of “military training.” Durruti was also concrete on this topic: “Fighters are taught how the weapons work, how to shoot, how to fortify a position, how to protect themselves from bombardments, how to launch surprise attacks, and how to win in hand-to-hand combat. But we don’t teach them to toe the line or salute, because there are no superiors or inferiors here. Relations between Column leaders and militiamen are fraternal.” Durruti believed, and the militiamen shared his view, that the Prussian heel was unnecessary for waging war. Despite all this, Koltsov wrote, “militarily, the Column was a disaster.” Koltsov and Durruti said goodbye cordially, according to Koltsov. He punctuated their separation with a celebrated comment:
<quote>
“So long, Durruti. I’ll see you in Zaragoza. If you don’t die here, and or in the streets of Barcelona fighting with the Communists, perhaps you’ll make yourself a Bolshevik after some years.”
He smiled and, turning his broad shoulders, immediately began to speak with someone who was standing there.
</quote>
That “someone who was standing there” was Mora, the Secretary of the War Committee, who had been present during the entire meeting, as had Francisco Carreño and Francisco Subirats.[593] Mikhail Koltsov was not the only journalist to go to the Aragón front and of course no reporter could fully cover the front without visiting the Durruti Column and meeting its leader. The Spanish revolution was unique, as Van Paassen noted, because of the anarchists’ central role in the conflict. Most of the journalists who came to Spain were influenced by what Noam Chomsky calls “liberal culture” or were Stalinists or “fellow travelers.”[594] One could not expect such writers to examine Spanish reality without those tinted lenses, if only because they had to please the patrons who paid for their work. We would also add that the journalists’ ideological dispositions prompted them to see anarchism as a mortal enemy. These writers and intellectuals influenced the mass media, mystified events, and delivered doctored pieces to posterity that still cause researchers to draw false conclusions about the events that transpired in Spain between July 1936 and April 1, 1939. Before Koltsov’s stopover in Bujaraloz, Guy de Traversay visited the area on behalf of <em>L’Intrasigeant</em>. He wrote his article in Barbastro on August 13, 1936. It began like this:
<quote>
Here I have Durruti, who told me in his picturesque French: “French? I learned it in La Santé, where Alfonso XIII ordered your government to imprison me. Ask me whatever questions you like and I’ll respond as I see fit. But I can’t give details about the front that might aid the enemy and you’ll only see places where there’s no risk if their positions are revealed.
</quote>
Guy de Traversay stopped by several sites in the Column’s sector and discussed the militarization of the militias with Durruti. Durruti defended his already well-known point of view but De Traversay, even after seeing the situation firsthand, was not convinced of the military efficiency of his approach. That was to be expected. In his piece, he noted that a new regime emerged and private property was abolished wherever the Column went.
<quote>
But everything happens in an orderly way. The peasants make decisions in assemblies. They burn the property registries and requisition valuables from the bourgeoisie, which they send to the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias in Barcelona. But there is no banditry, which is severely punished.
</quote>
Guy de Traversay concludes his essay with this observation:
<quote>
If the rebels are defeated or there’s some agreement with them behind the scenes, this whole workers’ world and its incorruptibles like Durruti will weigh in the balance. This man who considers Largo Caballero an innocuous orator will not let himself be robbed of victory easily. Certainly most aren’t with him, but more than a few will think twice before going to war against the anarchist army.
</quote>
After Guy de Traversay and Koltsov, Albert Souillon from <em>La Montagne</em> and the Argentine journalist José Gabriel came to Bujaraloz.[595] They told the War Committee that they wanted to witness the attack on Fuentes de Ebro. Souillon described the seizure of that town for his newspaper and how frightened he was during the operation, although he was clearly proud that he had been present at the Durruti Column’s victory. He spoke with Durruti after the battle:
<quote>
“What about France?” Durruti asked me point-blank.
He wanted up-to-date information about France. He complained about the French government’s stance [Léon Blum’s non-intervention policy] and could not accept it. He understood it—Durruti was quite intelligent—but could not accept it, because he is a courageous fighter and sees the German and Italian trimotor planes bomb his men to death.
“I would have spoken to the French people by radio,” Durruti told me, “but your government needs its middle classes. Say clearly in your article, say in Paris, that we’re fighting as much for you as for ourselves. Stress that we need planes to end this war quickly. And emphasize that we, the anarchists, have numerous militia columns, that our only goal is to crush fascism. Tell the French that we all fight as brothers in Spain and that after victory, when it’s time for us to set up the new economic and social structures, those who really fought elbow to elbow will know how to get along and resolve things fraternally.[596]
</quote>
The anarchist Emma Goldman also visited the Durruti Column in August:
<quote>
I had heard a lot of talk about Durruti’s strong personality and the revolutionary prestige that he enjoyed among the Column’s men. Furthermore, I wanted to know how Durruti maintained the coherence of the Column. Durruti was surprised that I, an old anarchist, asked him that question.
Durruti responded: “I’ve been an anarchist all my life and I hope to continue being one. It would be very unpleasant to suddenly convert myself into a general and command my comrades with senseless military discipline. The comrades who have come here have done so willingly and are ready to give their lives for the cause that they defend. I believe, as I have always believed, in liberty: liberty understood in the sense of responsibility. I consider discipline indispensable, but it should be self-discipline motivated by a common ideal and a strong feeling of camaraderie.”
Of course not everything was easy for Durruti, who was responsible for six thousand men and engaged in the very difficult task of leading them in combat. In addition to those challenges, not all Column members had the same fraternal sense of collective responsibility. Some, at the most delicate moments, requested special furloughs. When that occurred Durruti patiently told the comrade in question: “You’re aware, comrade, that the war we’re waging is for the triumph of the revolution. We’re making the revolution to change men’s lives and end their physical and moral miseries.”
No military strictness, no impositions, no disciplinary punishments existed to hold the Column together. There was nothing more than Durruti’s tremendous energy, which he communicated to the others through his conduct and made everything a whole that felt and acted in unison.[597]
</quote>
Some see Durruti as an educator of the masses, although we do not think that term adequately expresses his motives. We believe it is better to recognize that Durruti was convinced that if the revolution does not transform men and arouse their sense of responsibility, then it would fall into the hands of a caste that would denature it and dominate it under the pretext of <em>better serving the people.</em> We think that Durruti’s goal was to make men and women understand that the revolution was everyone’s concern, and that’s why he became the axis of libertarian Aragón. In this context, it was worth citing an anecdote printed in <em>Guerre di Clase</em>:
<quote>
One day Durruti was eating with militiamen who were responsible for a battery. One of them asked him for permission to go to Barcelona. “Impossible at the moment,” he replied. The militiaman insisted. Durruti then made a decision: he spoke to the rest of the men and suggested that they vote on the matter with a show of hands. The majority supported his request and the militiaman took off for Barcelona.
</quote>
** CHAPTER XI. Largo Caballero, reconstructing the republican state
Largo Caballero broke his enigmatic silence on September 4 and told the country that he would assume the leadership of the government and the war. There would be five Socialist ministers in his government, including Juan Negrín in the Treasury Ministry, Julio Alvarez del Vayo in Foreign Affairs, and Indalecio Prieto in the Ministry of the Navy. He gave two ministries to the Communists—Agriculture to Vicente Uribe and Public Instruction to Jesús Hernández—and the rest went to Republican politicians sympathetic to President Manuel Azaña.
Largo Caballero set out to reconstruct a state that had broken to pieces, between the rebel attacks and the popular mobilizations. He was the only politician capable of accomplishing this. He not only enjoyed a certain prestige among the working masses, but also in high places elsewhere. Moscow’s agents in Spain, under the leadership of the Italian Togliatti, promoted him as the “Spanish Lenin” and emphasized his rivalries with Prieto. They also sought to end the flirtations between the UGT and the CNT. Indeed, in mid-August 1936 Largo Caballero momentarily thought that the best way to undo José Giral’s government was a UGT-CNT accord and for the two organizations to form a workers’ government, although Moscow’s operatives did everything they could to stop that from happening. Koltsov and then Soviet Ambassador Marcel Rosemberg rained down from the Moscow sky in late August to prevent the old UGT leader from making any blunders. Those two figures imbued Largo Caballero with the belief that he was destined to play a titanic role in Spain, like Lenin had in Russia. Once they had aroused his appetite for greatness, controlling the state and the war would be the zenith of glory for the UGT Secretary. He rocked in the Procrustean bed that the Communist International gave him. Although he eventually rebelled against Communist Party control, that is incidental: in September, Largo Caballero was the Noske of the Spanish revolution. [598]
Marcel Rosemberg became the political advisor to the leader of the Spanish state. This was his advice:
One cannot lead a state without control of the state apparatus and, since no state apparatus existed, it had to be created. A state without an army or police force is not a state. To govern, a state needs to have complete authority. In Spain, state power was atomized and distributed among the thousands of committees that exercised it within their field of action. While it was good that the people had defended the Republic against the military uprising, once the immediate threat had passed, everything had to return to the framework of a democratic-bourgeois Republic that was fully respectful of private property and, above all, foreign capitalist interests. What mattered was winning the war against Franco, which could not occur without France and England’s support. Those countries would never help a Spain that resembled Catalonia, where the CCAMC had superseded the Generalitat and workers had expropriated the Spanish and foreign bourgeoisie.
Given all that, Stalin asserted:
<quote>
The Spanish revolution follows a different path than the Russian revolution. This is a consequence of its distinct social, historical, and geographic circumstances as well as the unique international realities that it confronts. The parliamentary route may be a more effective means of revolutionary development in Spain than it was in Russia.
</quote>
Stalin supplied the following specific rules:
<quote>
First, the peasants have to be taken into consideration, as they make up a majority of the population in an agricultural country like Spain. Agrarian and fiscal reforms need to be devised that correspond to their interests. It is important to recruit the peasants to the army and create guerrilla detachments that will fight the fascists in their rearguard. Decrees favorable to the peasantry will facilitate recruitment.
Second, the small and medium bourgeoisie have to be attracted to the government. If that isn’t possible, they must be neutralized. Toward that end, the bourgeoisie must be protected against any property confiscations and assured freedom of commerce, to whatever degree possible.
Third, leaders of the Republican parties must not be rejected but rather encouraged to work with the government. It is necessary to guarantee the support of Manuel Azaña and his group and to do everything possible to help them overcome their hesitations. These measures are necessary to prevent Spain’s allies from considering it a communist Republic.
Fourth, the Spanish government should inform the press that it will not permit damage to property and the legitimate interests of foreigners living in Spain who are citizens of countries that do not aid the rebels.[599]
</quote>
Largo Caballero assimilated these wise pieces of advice and continued José Giral’s policy of suffocating revolutionary Catalonia and boycotting the Aragón front.
On September 11, 1936 the Huesca sector was in the midst of war operations, as battles raged over Siétamo and Estrecho Quinto. Seizing these positions would allow Republican forces to cut the supply of water to Huesca and then capture the city in a decisive attack. Colonel Villalba led the campaign, with his Column of approximately three thousand soldiers. There had been disagreements between Durruti and Villalba from the beginning, based on Durruti’s distrust of the professional soldier. The militias had a War Committee in Sariñena that represented all the militia Columns, but Villalba— although a strong supporter of the <em>Single Command</em> elsewhere [600] —fought to maintain his independent War Committee in Barbastro. This organizational duplication created significant problems for general offensives: when one sector moved, the other would remain inactive. The need to coordinate military activities obliged Durruti to confront Villalba and the dispute between the two came up at a meeting of the CCAMC. Durruti accused the Colonel for being responsible for the loss of Siétamo in mid-August. Then, Villalba asked Durruti to help his forces attack the site. The Column sent several <em>centurias</em> from the <em>agrupación</em> led by José Mira. After three days of hard fighting, the militiamen occupied the location and then left it under the control of Villalba’s men, who bore responsibility for defending it. We do not know if Villalba understood the position’s significance, but rebels in Huesca counter-attacked and defeated his forces, who abandoned the site. From then on, Siétamo became a nightmare for the attackers of Huesca. In early September, they attacked the town again, but the combat was much harder this time.
The rebels had brought in reinforcements (an infantry company, a group of falangists, and large numbers of Civil Guard). The town’s elevation also allowed them to strategically place six machine-guns and an artillery battery.
Villalba requested Durruti’s help once more and the War Committee sent José Mira with several <em>centurias</em> again. They began the fighting on September 4, under pressure from low flying German planes that machine-gunned and bombed incessantly.
<quote>
From the beginning of the offensive, the “Alas Negras” [black waves] didn’t stop flying for an instant, reducing all the villages in our rearguard to ruins.... They also circled over our “tribes”[601] at a low-altitude, machinegunning our guerrillas and dropping endless bombs.... After three days of hellish battle, we managed to occupy the outermost houses of Siétamo, where the fighting was extremely difficult: every building had become a bunker and discharged deadly bursts of gunfire against our men.[602]
</quote>
Commander Vicente Guarner, sent by the CCAMC as an observer, corroborates Mira’s account:
<quote>
The resistance was fierce. That was something that I could personally appreciate, since I was at Colonel Villalba’s side on September 4 and 5. Planes from Zaragoza’s Garrapinillos airfield, probably German, bombed the command post mercilessly, killing and injuring many.... There was even shooting around the huts in Siétamo. A house-to-house battle began, since the enemy had fortified itself in the town, with the church and the Count of Aranda’s castle as its final defensive line. The situation was unsustainable for the rebels and they evacuated on September 12, withdrawing the fortifications at Estrecho Quinto, at kilometer six on the road to Barbastro, using the Flumen River as a moat. Our land reconnaissance and aerial photographs indicated that the adversary’s trenches stretched from Loporzano and Monte Aragón up to a hill named Plano Loporzano, in front of the Tierz village. They were covering Tierz and Quicena, on the other side of the road, with artillery, machine-guns, anti-aircraft guns, and roughly one, well-positioned battalion. Our forces tried to flank the reinforced lines at Estrecho Quinto in the north and the south and ran into strong resistance between September 15 and 18. We occupied Loporzano on September 30 ... after a brilliant attack by the militia column. At the same time, Fornillos fell, further to the north, and Tierz, in the south, was besieged. Our people advanced head-on to Estrecho Quinto, which had no choice but to withdraw with all the fortifications covering the area east of Huesca. There were many dead and injured and Villalba’s men seized a large number of prisoners. They also captured twelve machine-guns, two 75 and one 155 caliber artillery pieces, two anti-aircraft guns, and several trucks. The path to Huesca was free....[603]
</quote>
Note that Guarner mentions an anonymous “militia column” in his account, but highlights Villalba.
We continue with Mira’s narrative, who both observed and participated in the operations:
<quote>
Rousing themselves with a “<em>Viva the FAI!</em>” cheer, the anarchists threw themselves into battle. The first attack was extremely aggressive and some of our forces almost reached the church, which was surrounded by the Siétamo ravine and where most of the enemy fighters were. They took the church in hand-to-hand combat and liberated Siétamo.... But the offensive didn’t stop there; we intensified it, thanks to the timely support that we received from some POUM <em>centurias</em>.... Our comrades boldly climbed the hills of Estrecho Quinto and in five days of fighting won Loporzano, Estrecho Quinto, and Monte Aragón for the revolution.... The war materiel seized in Siétamo included two 10.5 caliber cannons, four 81 caliber mortars, eight machineguns, three hundred rifles, and 150 prisoners. The quantity was roughly the same in Loporzano. In Monte Aragón and Estrecho Quinto, it was four 7.5 and two 10.5 caliber artillery pieces, twelve mortars, and one thousand rifles.... Durruti was a tremendous inspiration to the fighters, who endured the vicissitudes of war with the best of them.[604]
</quote>
The CCAMC thought it would be a good idea to have a Column leader address the Spanish workers by radio in order to make the most of the victories in Siétamo, Monte Aragón, and Estrecho Quinto. They gave Durruti the task. The professional soldiers hoped that he would emphasize two topics in his speech—discipline among soldiers and need for a unified command in military operations—but Durruti had very different concerns. He had seen what Largo Caballero’s government was doing and that the counterrevolution was raising its head in the rearguard, particularly in Barcelona. There, the PSUC, which had not existed before July 19, suddenly became a political force and grew rapidly—enrolling those expropriated during the revolution and leading figures of the Esquerra Republicana—as it attempted to build a common front against the Catalan working class (that is, against the CNT and FAI’s base). Although the revolution was not explicitly attacked and the CNT and FAI were not mentioned, the workers were identified with the “uncontrollables” and their conquests and economic experiments were disparagingly branded as “crazy” initiatives that undermined the national economy with their ”utopianism.” [605] Durruti had to address those issues, which were so important to the revolution:
<quote>
Comrades: the worker militias aren’t slacking on the Aragón front. They attack and defeat the enemy and win ground for the revolutionary cause. And this is only a prelude to the great offensive that we will soon initiate across the entire Aragón front. You, workers of Spain, also have an important role to play, because we can’t win the revolution with guns alone; we also have to produce. There is no such thing as a frontline and a rearguard, because we all form one block that has to struggle in unity toward the same goal. And our objective can be none other than building a Spain that represents the working class.
The workers fighting on the front and in the rearguard don’t fight to defend bourgeois privileges. They fight for the right to live with dignity. Spain’s strength is in the working class and its organizations. After victory, the CNT and the UGT will meet and come to an agreement about the country’s economic and political structures.
Those of us on the battlefield aren’t fighting for medals. We don’t fight to be deputies or ministers. And when we’re victorious and return to the cities and villages, we’ll fulfill our responsibilities in the factories, workshops, fields, and mines that we left. Our great victory will be the one that we win in the workplaces.
We are peasants and we sow against the tempests that can put our harvest in danger. We’re ready and know how to resist. The harvest is ripe. We must collect the grain! And it will be for everyone. There will be no privileges in its distribution. Neither Azaña nor Caballero nor Durruti will have a right to more when it’s shared out. The harvest belongs to everyone, to all those working steadfastly and sincerely with their complete intelligence, will, and strength in order to prevent the harvest from being stolen from us. Workers of Catalonia, I spoke to you a few days ago from Sariñena to make it clear to you that I’m proud to represent you on the Aragón front. I also told you that we will be worthy of the trust that you put in us and our rifles. But for that trust and fraternity to continue, we have to devote ourselves completely to the struggle and even stop thinking of ourselves. You, female comrades, don’t follow your heart’s cries: let those on the Aragón front focus on fighting. Don’t write to tell them bad news. Endure it on your own. Let us fight. Remember that Spain’s future, and our children’s future, depends on us. Help us be strong in this war that demands every once of our will if we want to win!
Comrades, the weapons have to be at the front. We need all the arms to build a wall of iron against the enemy. Trust us. The militias will never defend the bourgeoisie’s interests. They are and will always be the proletarian vanguard in the struggle that we’ve launched against capitalism. International fascism is determined to win the battle and we have to be determined not to lose it. To you, workers listening to me from behind enemy lines, we tell you that the hour of your liberation is near. The libertarian militias are advancing and nothing will stop them. The will of an entire people drives them forward. Help us in our work by sabotaging the fascist war industry, by creating centers of resistance and guerrilla cells in the cities as well as the mountains. Fight, anyone who can, while there is a drop of blood in your veins!
Workers of Spain, courage! If it’s written that there’s a moment in a man’s life when he has to show his strength, that moment has arrived. The time is now!
Comrades, we should be hopeful. Our ideal accompanies us. That is our strength. Courage and forward! You don’t argue with fascism, you destroy it, because fascism and capitalism are the same thing![606]
</quote>
** CHAPTER XII. García Oliver, Largo Caballero, and the problem of Morocco
When the press reported on Durruti’s speech, each paper interpreted it according to its political color. The Communists and Socialists focused exclusively on Durruti’s call to ship arms to the front. The PSUC newspaper used it as an opportunity to polemicize against the “uncontrollables,” who fled the battle fronts and kept weapons in the rearguard that were needed in the trenches. It also made veiled attacks on the Revolutionary Committees and openly criticized the unions and collectives. The paper inveighed against “utopian economic experiments” and told people to focus on producing with efficient structures of command and obedience. It wasn’t the time to make a revolution, but to defend the Republican legality that the fascists had put in jeopardy. [607]
The Barcelona Revolutionary Committees were the first to react against this onslaught. They held a large assembly and decided to release a statement:[608]
<quote>
The defense groups will not lay down their arms while the problem of political power is still unresolved and there is an armed force that obeys the Madrid government and that isn’t under workers’ control. Our weapons are the best guarantee of the revolutionary conquests.
</quote>
<em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> did not respond to the attack on the Revolutionary Committees but did defend the collectives. It said that such assaults on the workers’ victories would only lead to defeat, since it was the proletariat’s revolutionary enthusiasm that drove resistance to the fascists. No worker would sacrifice his life for a war stripped of its revolutionary character or to defend a government like the one that existed before July 19. [609]
It was during the course of these debates that workers in Sabadell, a town near Barcelona, discovered that weapons taken from Barcelona’s Karl Marx Barracks had been stored in that town’s PSUC building. The unions, sensitized to the issue by Durruti’s speech, sent a group to Bujaraloz to report the finding to the Column’s War Committee. The news circulated among the militiamen and the <em>Centuria</em> Committee sent an ultimatum to the CCAMC saying that it had to immediately recover the arms being held by the PSUC or they would solve the problem themselves.
This was an explosive issue within the Durruti Column. The War Committee telephoned Santillán and Ricardo Sanz, leaders of the Department of Militias in the CCAMC, and demanded that they acquire the arms at once. Santillán realized that the <em>Centuria</em> Committee had not made its threat in vain. He immediately contacted the Karl Marx Barracks and told them that they were risking an armed confrontation if they didn’t hand over the weapons. Whether it was because they were frightened or simply didn’t think the time to do battle had arrived, they produced the eight machine-guns stored in Sabadell. [610]
Barcelona was in the midst of these conflicts when Pierre Besnard, the AIT’s General Secretary, arrived in Spain for the first time on September 15. The CNT was a member of the AIT and Besnard had previously addressed CNT-related issues by mail exclusively. However, when he saw that the Spanish revolution had begun to retreat, he decided to travel from the AIT’s office in Paris to Spain and intervene more directly. When he got to Barcelona, he met with the CNT’s Catalan Regional Committee and with CNT men in the CCAMC. He told them that “internationalizing the struggle is the only way to get the Spanish revolution out of the mire into which Léon Blum has put it.” Toward that end, Pierre Besnard advanced a detailed plan for inciting a rebellion among the Moroccan tribes (in the Spanish Protectorate), beginning with the escape of Abd el-Krim, [611] whom the French had banished to Reunión Island in 1926. The revolt in Morocco would coincide with a revolution in Portugal, a country allied with Franco. With respect to Portugal, he said that he had good relations with the country’s opposition and that they appeared willing to participate in the action against the Salazar dictatorship. Portugal’s Confederación General del Trabajo, another AIT affiliate, would also play a role. Besnard thought the rebellions in Morocco and Portugal could be extraordinarily important in themselves and very beneficial to the Spanish revolution. He also mentioned that before leaving Paris he had met with Léon Jouhaux and other Socialists who were opposed to Léon Blum’s non-intervention policy and that they had authorized him to speak in their names in an effort to convince Largo Caballero to publicly declare that Spain would grant independence to the Rif and the whole Spanish Protectorate. [612]
García Oliver told Pierre Besnard that he needed to think about his idea and also that they should inform Durruti about the matter, so that he could partake in the discussion. He spoke with Durruti by telephone, who arrived in Barcelona that very day. During their meeting, García Oliver reported on the negotiations that they had been having with the Moroccans since July: they were going well and the Moroccan Action Committee (MAC) was going to send a group to Barcelona to discuss how they could help the Republican government fight the rebels.
In the document that we utilize to explore this intricate issue, Pierre Besnard puts great emphasis on the differences that Durruti and Santillán had with García Oliver regarding the Moroccan question, but says nothing about García Oliver’s dialogues with the MAC. However, it is difficult to believe that the AIT General Secretary was unaware of these discussions and that is why we assert above that García Oliver detailed his conversations with the MAC. Besnard’s document is somewhat confusing, but we think that when he affirms Durruti and Santillán leaned toward Abd el-Krim, he means that they thought the exiled Moroccan leader’s participation would be more effective than that of the Fez dignitaries, which is not to suggest that they preferred Abd el-Krim over the MAC. There were obvious reasons to focus on the Fez dignitaries: they were not imprisoned and were one hour by plane from Barcelona, while Abd el-Krim was incarcerated and thousands of kilometers from the Rif. Considering the French position in Morocco, particularly in relation to Abd el-Krim, Pierre Besnard’s plan was absolutely fanciful and had no chance of success, despite the sympathetic response he had received from Socialists opposed to Léon Blum’s policy.
The participation of Abd el-Krim and the MAC in Pierre Besnard’s scheme presumed that the Spanish government would agree to declare Morocco independent. Given the support that Besnard had among the French Socialists and also the Secretary General of the French CGT, if he managed to interest Largo Caballero in the Moroccan matter, then his attempt to incite insurrection among the tribes in the Rif would start to look promising. In an effort to help Besnard in his discussions with Largo Caballero, García Oliver informed Lluís Companys about the meeting and its purpose, who told Largo Caballero what Besnard had to confer with him about and also indicated that he thought these issues were very important to the Republican cause.
Pierre Besnard left for Madrid on September 16, but bad weather forced his plane to stop in Valencia and he was detained there until the following day. He reached the Spanish capital around noon on September 17. Besnard went to the Ministry of War as soon as he arrived in Madrid and was informed that the Prime Minister was not there to receive him. Besnard then went to the CNT National Committee, where Federica Montseny, who happened to be in the capital at the time, was delegated to accompany him. Largo Caballero received the two at 5:00 pm but alleged that he was in a very bad mood because of an “incident” he had just had with the CNT. It was obvious to all that Largo Caballero was simply trying to escape a discussion of the Moroccan plan. Federica Montseny angrily told him that such vital matters could not be postponed with excuses about vague “incidents.” Federica’s attitude impressed the Socialist leader and he seemed to calm down, although he did not agree to hold the meeting immediately but rather set it for 4:00 pm the next day.
Pierre Besnard was waiting in the antechamber at the designated hour on September 18, this time with the CNT General Secretary David Antona. Largo Caballero did not see them until sixty minutes later [613] and, when he did, greeted them in a cold, discourteous manner. Then, without preamble, he said that he could not meet with the AIT Secretary and apologized for all the confusion. Besnard insisted, telling him that he represented an international organization to which the CNT belonged, a workers’ confederation that was equally or even more important than the UGT. Largo Caballero hesitated for a moment, perhaps because he hadn’t expected an attitude as arrogant as his own, but claimed that such important questions should be discussed in another psychological climate. We have good reason to assume that all this was a charade on Largo Caballero’s part. By not talking about the topic, he could allege ignorance of the issue if a French colleague were to reproach him. “We separated,” writes Besnard, “after a bittersweet exchange of words.” David Antona reported on the exchange to the rest of the National Committee. According to Besnard, they “took note without reacting.” Pierre Besnard later drafted an open letter to Largo Caballero, which the National Committee promised to publish. The text did not touch on important points but simply declared that there should be mutual respect between the CNT and the UGT. [614]
Besnard returned to Barcelona and told García Oliver about Largo Caballero’s behavior. This concerned García Oliver, because the Moroccan Action Committee representatives had just arrived to discus the Spanish Protectorate.
Besnard recorded his impressions of Spain as he sat in the plane that would take him to Paris:
<quote>
The revolution is taking a step backward. It isn’t the people’s fault—they fight with unparalleled enthusiasm—but that of their leaders, who are simply following events. The loss of revolutionary initiative is evident in humiliating situations like the one I experienced with Largo Caballero. If the anarchists commit the foolishness of collaborating with Largo Caballero, or simply supporting him, then the revolution will be doomed. The anarchists’ only chance to break out of the deadlock is by making a show of force. But I wonder if the men who lead the CNT today are the same men they were on July 19. The only one who seems to have escaped degradation is Durruti, an original revolutionary who reminds one of the guerrilla Nestor Makhno. Like Makhno, he fights with the people, without separating himself from them. He’s different from the other anarchist leaders in that sense.
</quote>
Besnard thought Durruti was “superior to the Ukrainian” in many respects, particularly in the control that “Durruti exercises over himself.” [615]
Besnard mentions that he briefly spoke with Durruti in Barcelona before returning to France. Their meeting was hasty because loyalist forces had launched an attack on the fascists in the Column’s sector and Durruti had been called urgently to the front. Nonetheless, Durruti took the time to talk to Besnard about the Column’s armament and asked him to do everything possible to make contact with a munitions dealer that could provide them with abundant and modern weapons.
While Durruti traveled back to the Aragón front, García Oliver devoted himself to diplomatic negotiations with the nationalist Arab leaders from the Moroccan Action Committee.
The first contact with them occurred, as we have noted, in late July. The Moroccan activists in Geneva communicated with Fez and Tetuán (the MAC’s two centers). While they discussed the CCAMC’s proposition, two Frenchmen arrived in Fez: Robert Louzon and David Rousset. The CNT- FAI had delegated the former to lead the initial discussions and the second was there representing the French Section of the Fourth International. [616] Discussions with the two men prompted the MAC to send a group to Barcelona. The young Abdeljalk Torres presided over the delegation. García Oliver describes the encounter:
<quote>
I remember that one of the Moroccan delegates was named Torres. He was very fond of me and always sent a New Year’s greeting card. I believe he was the son of one of the great Moroccan leaders. I explained my plan to them and they listened to me attentively. It consisted of this: the CCAMC was offering them arms and money to start an uprising in Morocco against Franco’s soldiers and for their country’s independence. I told them that they could ask me for whatever guarantees they thought necessary, but they didn’t respond. They simply said that their mission was to listen to my propositions and, now that they had done so, they would return and report to the Pan-Islamic Committee, which had asked the MAC to act in this matter, Morocco being the first link in the Spanish problem.
</quote>
An additional phase of those negotiations took place around September 20. García Oliver comments:
<quote>
The MAC representatives returned and replied to my offer of arms and money for fighting the soldiers in Morocco and defending their country. They stated their points of view:
1. They did not want independence for Morocco at that time because they believed such independence would bring Italian or German aggression upon them and those two nations would be worse for them than the Spaniards.
1. They wanted an autonomy for Morocco similar to what England conceded to Iraq after the First World War.
1. If the two previous points were accepted, they were ready to sign the corresponding agreement, which would come into effect once we achieved the following:
a) That the Spanish Republican government accepts the accord.
b) That the Spain gets the French government to accept it.
Their propositions extracted the problem from a revolutionary framework and placed it in an essentially conservative, legalistic perspective. My position, which I articulated to them repeatedly, consisted of the following: we are experiencing a revolution in Spain and its victory will necessarily affect all our international relations, including those with Morocco. That’s why I urged them to take the revolutionary stance of immediately accepting the fact of independence and letting the right to such independence be granted later. Nevertheless, these representatives of an Arab world still sleeping the secular siesta of submission to the west clung to their conservative mandate, focusing first on the right and later on the fact.
I did not want to jeopardize any advantages that might unexpectedly emerge, so I decided not to break off negotiations and actually accelerated them. I agreed to all their points of view and conditions, while stating my fear that section B would annul the whole agreement and thus delay Moroccan independence indefinitely. We agreed that we would sign three originals of the accord: one for the CCAMC, which I would keep, another for the Republican government, and a third for the MAC. The signing, an act that I shrouded with the greatest possible splendor, took place in the Throne parlor of Barcelona’s General Captaincy. The three MAC representatives and all the General Secretaries and Presidents of the organizations and parties making up the CCAMC participated in the event. A photograph of the group was taken, which was signed and remained in my possession.[617]
</quote>
If the Spanish and French governments accepted the agreement, the MAC would organize an uprising against Franco in Morocco, oppose the rebel‘s recruitment of Moors, and work to demoralize Moorish troops fighting against the Republic on the Peninsula.
The CCAMC sent a group to inform the Madrid government about the agreement and also to defend it. The following individuals made up the delegation: Aurelio Fernández for the CNT-FAI, Rafael Vidiella for the UGT and PSUC, Jaume Miravitlles for the Esquerra Republicana, and Julián Gorkin for the POUM. Navy Minister Indalecio Prieto was the first person that they met with in Madrid. After they explained the plan to him, he said:
<quote>
I agree with the deal you’ve signed. I’m even ready to support it at the next cabinet meeting and ask for the approval of credits to buy arms for the Moroccans. And if the struggle in Spanish Morocco has repercussions in French Morocco, it just gets better and better.
</quote>
The meeting with Largo Caballero was not as positive. Rodolfo Llopis introduced the delegation to the Prime Minister:
<quote>
Caballero stood to receive us. When I concluded my brief exposition, he stated: “But you represent an autonomous region and don’t have authority to negotiate or sign deals. Go find those Moroccan delegates and tell them to come deal with me. Then we’ll see.”[618]
</quote>
There was no reason to let things go to ruin simply for the sake of pride and so the Moroccans were informed that Largo Caballero wanted to speak with them. They met with him and later shared the results of the meeting with David Rousset. He explains:
<quote>
The Moroccan group met with Largo Caballero in Madrid. He was under heavy pressure from Paris and London, who had learned about the initiative. Who told them? I don’t know, but it was inevitable, and they were openly hostile. Paris’s case was clear: the French had to ask what would happen if the Rif really became independent. So, the Spanish government told the Arab delegates that it could not accept the treaty signed in Barcelona, but that it would provide money and arms in support of efforts against Franco in the Spanish Protectorate. And here we had to wrestle with the behavior of the Moroccan delegation. If I’d been among them, I would have told them to accept the resources, but that wasn’t what transpired. The Moroccans acted as though they represented a bourgeois movement that wouldn’t do anything without all the necessary political guarantees. They told Largo Caballero... that they were ready to immediately begin actions in the terms identified in the treaty signed in Barcelona, which was the same sort of pact that Franco had made with Syria.[619]
</quote>
We conclude our discussion of this important and ignored chapter of the Spanish revolution—in which all the sources that we have consulted coincide almost completely, something truly rare in history—by citing Allal el Fassi, one of the Moroccan representatives:
<quote>
A group of Spanish Republicans went to Geneva to contact Emir Shakib Arslan and discuss the matter with him. The Emir told them that only our committee [the MAC] could undertake the project, assuming its demands were met, of course. In September 1936, the Catalan government gave our delegation a reception proper to diplomatic officers. The conversations occurred in an environment of understanding and mutual respect.... But the Catalan representative’s efforts were in vain and the agreement remained a dead letter.
</quote>
Allal el Fassi explains why:
<quote>
After a discussion between the two groups, Madrid’s Minister of Foreign Relations [ Julio Alvarez del Vayo] was very circumspect and asked to delay the decision until the French government could be consulted. We learned afterwards that the Spanish Minister had consulted the French Government, which in its turn sought the views of General Nogues [France’s representative in its zone in Morocco]. The General rejected the plan outright, while Monsieur Herriot threatened the most serious measures if Spain went ahead with the plan, which in his view was sheer madness. The Madrid government communicated orally to our delegation its inability to grant independence in the existing circumstances; it asked us to accept the sum of forty million pesetas for publicity on behalf of Spanish democracy, together with the promise that after victory had been achieved the Republic would strive for the well-being of Morocco. Our delegation protested against this mean offer and indignantly withdrew from the conference meeting.[620]
</quote>
The Spanish revolution was under siege from that moment onward.
** CHAPTER XIII. Antonov Ovssenko and García Oliver
From the very beginning, the Spanish civil war transcended the country’s national boundaries and had to be understood as an international affair. Italy (Mussolini) and Germany (Hitler) were the first countries to intervene. France (Popular Front) followed later, when it provided armaments to the Spanish Republican government. The French government was forced to determine its position on July 19 when it received a telegram from Prime Minister José Giral that reminded it of a 1932 agreement between the two nations on arms sales and that requested the rapid delivery of planes, trucks, and ammunition.
Léon Blum consulted with the men of his party after receiving Giral’s cable: some insisted that France had to fulfill its obligations to Spain whereas others objected, saying that doing so would put them at risk of war with Germany. Prime Minister Blum held the latter view. Socialist politician Vincent Auriol, on the contrary, thought that France not only had to provide arms to Spain but should also intervene in Morocco, given that the established agreement demanded both actions: “General Franco is nothing but a rebel altering the Moroccan order.” [621] Indecisive, Léon Blum traveled to London in search of advice. There he was told that France should stay out of the conflict on the Iberian Peninsula and “let the Spaniards slit their own throats.” To calm his “socialist conscience,” Léon Blum devised the “non-intervention” policy. [622]
This policy deprived the Spanish Republic of needed military supplies, while it gave Franco every possibility of victory, thanks to the aid that he received from Italy, Germany, and England (the latter under the pretext of protecting its mercury mining interests in Almadén). [623]
For its part, the Soviet Union waited and watched to see how western governments responded to the conflict in Spain. When it saw that it could engage without significant risk to its own interests, it did so. A Russian agent, Krivitsky, explains:
<quote>
Stalin wanted to make Madrid a vassal of the Kremlin. If he could accomplish that, he could forge closer ties with Paris and London and also strengthen his position for a treaty with Berlin and Rome. As master of Spain, his ship of State would have the security that it needed and become a coveted, essential ally.
But unlike Mussolini, Stalin was not willing to risk anything in Spain. Soviet intervention could have been decisive at certain moments, if Stalin had gambled for the Republican side what Mussolini gambled for Franco, but Stalin wagered nothing until he was assured that there was enough gold in the Bank of Spain to cover the cost of his support. He did every thing he could to prevent the Soviet Union from getting entangled in a conflagration. His slogan was “stay beyond the reach of artillery fire.” That defined our line of conduct during the whole campaign.[624]
</quote>
The first phase of Soviet intervention began in August 1936, when Spain and the Soviet Union established diplomatic ties.
The Spanish Republic sent Marcelino Pascua to Moscow and the Soviet Union sent Marcel Rosemberg to Madrid. The latter, a genuine bureaucrat, had the support of two important figures: Ilya Ehrenburg and Mikhail Koltsov.
The Spanish Republic facilitated the second phase of Soviet interference in late August when it sent three Spaniards to Russia to purchase weapons. They had already failed do so with three arms dealers (England’s Vickers, Czechoslovakia’s Skoda, and France’s Schneider). They met with a Soviet operative in Odessa, whom they told that Spain was ready to pay in gold for any war materiel that it could buy. The Russian left them in a hotel under the surveillance of the GPU (the Soviet secret police). The USSR had to decide what it was going to do. The government appeared to resolve the matter on August 28, 1936, when Stalin signed a decree prohibiting “the exportation, re-exportation, or shipment to Spain of any type of armaments, ammunition, war materiel, airplanes, or war ships.”
The Soviet Union thus joined the signers of the non-intervention pact. However, Stalin’s decree was little more than a ruse: in September, after Largo Caballero formed his government, Stalin convened the Political Bureau and ordered immediate engagement in Spain. He emphasized that Soviet assistance must be kept completely secret in order to eliminate any possibility of his government being drawn into an armed conflict. We continue with Krivitsky:
<quote>
Two days after this meeting, a special envoy flew to Europe and brought me instructions from Moscow. The orders were: “Immediately expand your activities in Spain. Mobilize all available agents and provide every facility for the quick creation of a system for purchasing armaments and transporting them into the country. An agent has left for Paris who will help you with 526 Antonov Ovssenko and García Oliverthis assignment. He will present himself to you and will work under your supervision.” At the same time, Stalin ordered Yagoda, the leader of the GPU, to create a branch of the Soviet secret police in Spain.
On September 14, Yagoda urgently called a meeting in the Lubianka, his main office in Moscow. It was attended by General Uritaky, from the Red Army General Staff; Frinovsky, presently Commissioner of the Navy and then leader of GPU Military Forces; and my comrade Sloulsky, chief of the GPU’s International Department. They selected an officer at the meeting to organize the GPU in Republican Spain; his name was Nikilsky, alias Schewed, alias Lyova, alias Orlov. They also put Comintern activities in Spain under the control of the Soviet secret police. Spanish Communist Party and GPU activities would be coordinated and harmonized.
It was also decided that the GPU would control the movement of international volunteers to Spain. In the Central Committee of every Communist Party around the world, there is a member who secretly plays a GPU role.
</quote>
While this happened in the USSR, Rosemberg, Ehrenburg, and Koltsov made contact with leading figures of Republican Spain in hopes of convincing them that the country had to return to the bourgeois normality that existed before July 19. They “worked on” Largo Caballero the most. Ehrenburg told Moscow to send a consul of “substance” to Catalonia; someone who could deal with the anarchists. It dispatched Antonov Ovssenko. In the beginning of the second fortnight in September, Ehrenburg met with Ovssenko in Paris, who was on his way to Barcelona to begin serving as Soviet consul. Ehrenburg reports that he said: “They gave me orders in Moscow to make the anarchists listen to reason, so that they participate in the defense.”
Ehrenburg’s commentary:
<quote>
How fortunate, I thought, that Moscow chose Ovssenko to be the consul in Barcelona! He will know how to influence Durruti; since he’s not like a diplomat or functionary at all. He’s modest, simple, and still breathes the atmosphere of October [1917]. He remembers what it was like to be underground before the Revolution.
Indeed, I was right: Antonov Ovssenko quickly learned to speak Catalan and formed friendships with Companys and Durruti.[625]
</quote>
We haven’t found any evidence of a meeting between Ovssenko and Durruti, but that is not surprising. Nonetheless, Jaume Miravitlles has written about the relations between Ovssenko and García Oliver. His comments merit reproduction:
<quote>
Stalin sent a functionary to Madrid and a revolutionary to Barcelona. Why that difference? Each had different tasks. Antonov Ovssenko came to Barcelona, the capital of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism and the European center of a revolutionary ideology hostile to Marxism. There had never been a Catalan socialist movement of any significance. The Socialist Party had always been miniscule here, without any meaningful strength. While the Unió Socialista de Catalunya did have prestigious leaders, without an alliance with the Esquerra it never would have elected a deputy or a municipal counselor. The pro-Moscow Communist Party was nonexistent, whereas the Bloc Obrer i Camperol was a young and dynamic group but without any influence on the working masses.
The two large popular forces were the CNT, with anarcho-syndicalist foundations, and the Esquerra Republicana, with Catalanist bases. The mission of the Soviet consul was certainly difficult, even more dangerous than the assault on the Winter Palace: he had to attract, neutralize, or destroy those two organizations.
A few days after arriving in Barcelona, and probably advised by an expert on Catalan politics, Antonov Ovssenko made contact with me, the Esquerra, and García Oliver, one of the most authentic representatives of Catalan anarcho-syndicalism.
At first, the Soviet consul stayed at the Majestic hotel on the Paseo de Gracia. On two or three occasions he invited us—García Oliver and I—to eat with him, just to “talk about the situation.” His goal was twofold: to find out who we were and how we thought and also to see if he could win us to his position.
The debate centered on the “war or revolution” polarity. The anarchists defended the revolutionary thesis. García Oliver argued that once the attempted coup of July 18–19, 1936 turned into a civil war, the victory of Republican forces depended on the militant action of the working class. Thus, it was necessary to make a “revolutionary war;” a social, economic, and physical expression of the revolutionary proletariat.
The Soviet consul held the opposite view. It was not a workers’ revolution, but a movement for national liberation in which all the anti-fascist forces could participate, from proletarians to the liberal bourgeoisie, including the middle class and intellectuals. It was necessary to suspend all social reforms likely to accentuate antagonisms between those strata until after victory. Now we have to make war; we’ll make the revolution later.
The issue had immediate practical implications. The anarchists wanted to preserve the militias as a military force; the Communists asked for the creation of a highly centralized popular army; the anarchists had proceeded to collectivize industry and agriculture; the Communists supported the conservation of the old socio-economic structures, although adapted to the necessities of war; the anarchists advocated the formation of “Regional Councils”—as they demonstrated with the Council of Aragón, a true popular government; the Communists championed “democratic centralism” and managed to drastically limit—always in the name of the war—the Generalitat’s power.
Schematically, when explained in this way, the Communist’s propositions seemed more “logical” and “strategic,” and Ovssenko defended them in those terms. But García Oliver, who was not lacking in intelligence or persuasive skills, refuted them one by one. “There’s no point in ignoring the fact that the civil war is already a revolutionary war,” he said. “The only forces that have spontaneously participated in the struggle on the Republican side are the workers’ forces. The bourgeoisie, liberal as well as reactionary, is and will always be hostile: the middle classes don’t engage nor will they engage actively in the battle. They’ll passively accept the outcome, whatever it may be. Making concessions to those sectors won’t mobilize them but will compromise the workers’ revolutionary enthusiasm. On the other hand, we can see where everything that you argue has taken Russia: to the liquidation of the authentically revolutionary elements and the imposition of Communist Party tyranny under the false platform of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’”
Antonov Ovssenko, thin, vibrant, with a penetrating look under the white locks of the years, listened to García Oliver with growing interest. Lenin had not applied—against the democratic government led by the socialist Kerensky—the tactics of “popular unity” that he was now obliged to defend to García Oliver.... The Bolsheviks had <em>first</em> made the revolution and then <em>later</em> made the war. And they won that war precisely because the revolutionaries identified with the regime that emerged out of the revolution.
I saw in his face how that old and tired man was revived by the contagious enthusiasm of his anarchist interlocutor; his youth, his participation in a revolution that assured him a permanent place in history. The “old revolutionary” was gaining ground on the “new diplomat.” Little by little, Antonov Ovssenko let himself be captivated by García Oliver’s eloquence and feverish excitement.... The “seducer” was seduced. One never would have suspected—either Ovssenko or us—that this just vision of Catalan reality, which we helped him understand so well, would cost him his life.
It was in those circumstances when we heard that the first Russian ship coming to Spain had landed in Barcelona.... London’s Non-intervention Committee had made it impossible for Republican Spain to get arms and ammunition abroad. The CCAMC ordered an attack in the Huesca province [the previously noted assault on Siétamo] with a shortage of ammunition so severe that militiamen had only one rifle cartridge in their possession. The Russian ship’s name was <em>Zirianni</em> and everyone in Barcelona expected it to arrive loaded with weapons or at least ammunition. The CNT dockworkers’ union mobilized all its personnel to unload the steamer as quickly as possible, as a precaution against the possibility that planes might bomb the port and blow up that eagerly awaited cargo. The people came to the port en masse to welcome the Russian sailors and gaze at the red flag with its hammer and sickle. The exuberance of the moment made Stalinism into an abstraction and evoked the October revolution.
</quote>
The ship anchored outside the port and Ovssenko, consulate personnel, and various CCAMC members set off in a canoe to greet the seamen. Miravitlles was part of that privileged group that welcomed the Russian sailors. He describes the historic encounter as follows:
<quote>
There were scenes of great emotion onboard the <em>Zirianni</em>. “Viva la Republic!” the sailors shouted. “Viva the Soviet Union!” the anarchists replied. Antonov Ovssenko, incapable of controlling his excitement, suddenly gave a shout that surely sealed his fate: “Viva the FAI!”
My blood ran cold when I heard that cheer. I knew quite well that the official Russian bodies and GPU agents were implacable. I instinctively looked around, searching for the mysterious person who would lodge the event in a future accusation against the old conqueror of the Winter Palace.[626]
</quote>
There was a reception that evening for the sailors and the staff of the Russian Consulate. Lluís Companys, other Generalitat ministers, and the entire CCAMC attended.
Meanwhile, CNT dockworkers and Russian sailors hurried to unload the goods, under the protection of a cordon of militia members. They were eager to find out what the boxes contained and opened several out of impatience. Tins of condensed milk and canned meat dropped out.
The news reached us as we were in the midst of the social and revolutionary euphoria at the Majestic hotel. The anarchists indignantly threatened to withdraw from the room. I witnessed—and mediated—an angry exchange between García Oliver and Ilya Ehrenburg. At one point, the anarchist from Reus called him stupid in Catalan. Ehrenburg impassively asked me if I would translate the word for him. With the same apparent calm, I replied that the similarity between “stupid” in Catalan and the French “estupide” was so great that I felt that my help was unnecessary. [627]
** CHAPTER XIV. The spanish gold road to Russia
By late September 1936, the euphoria of July 19 seemed like a distant memory. The revolution hadn’t been defeated but it was under siege, between Moscow and Madrid. Madrid controlled the national treasury and Moscow, thanks to the non-intervention policy, became the custodian of the Spanish Republic. And the horrors of war were a reality. Everywhere Franco’s troops went they used terror as a psychological weapon. In many places, people fought only to save their lives. The tragedy of Andalusia and Extremadura brought that home. And while the war spread, ascending from the south toward Madrid and descending in the north, the government’s only concern seemed to be creating a strong state that could reverse the workers’ conquests. Largo Caballero’s recently formed government accomplished the latest counterrevolutionary act when it abandoned Irún, thus isolating the north by land. [628]
The militias in Irún were ready to spill their last drop of blood defending the town, which was so important for the revolution, but lacked the arms and ammunition necessary to do so. It is impossible to understand why they didn’t receive them from Bilbao, given that Spain’s best armament factories were there. Nonetheless, a group of workers from Irún went to Madrid to demand help but left with empty hands and many promises. Of course you win war with steel and lead, not promises. The same group then went to Barcelona and the Catalan war industry gave them several hundred rifles and machine-guns, which they shipped to Irún on a route that passed through France. French authorities, scrupulously attentive to the non-intervention policy, seized the trucks and stopped the armaments from entering Irún. In response, from its dwindling supply of ammunition, the CCAMC set aside thirty thousand cartridges for Irún, which it prepared to send by air, in order to prevent another confiscation of war materiel. They urgently requested a plane from the Madrid government, which promised to send them a Douglas. The plane never arrived. The boxes of ammunition sat in a pile in Barcelona, while the residents of Irún fired their last round, burned down the town, and fled to Hendaya. [629] San Sebastián fell on September 15. General Mola’s troops now threatened the north as a whole. One might imagine that the government had sacrificed the north to defend the capital and, although that wouldn’t have been a good strategy, it would have at least mitigated government culpability for the failure. But that wasn’t the case. Talavera fell into Yagüe’s hands and his Regulars found an open path to Madrid. Republican General Asensio thought the battle was already over and assumed that the capital would be in rebel hands shortly.
The militias were also retreating above Madrid. They battled courageously, but had to give ground. In fact, Franco could have easily occupied the city, but that didn’t interest him for political reasons at the time. He still hadn’t formed the Burgos Junta, which would be a vital step toward seizing national power. He preferred to occupy the Toledo Fortress, which the Nationalist soldier José Moscardó would defend against loyalists with the sword that the reactionary newspaper <em>L’Echo de Paris</em> had awarded him for his “bravery.” [630] Taking the Toledo Fortress was a more political than military action, but General Franco understood that “war isn’t won on the battlefield, but in the chancelleries,” as someone once wrote. While the rebels continued changing Spain’s geography in their favor, the Republican government’s only goal was to crush the revolution by attacking Barcelona, its heart. The revolution was in deep crisis there, and the divide between the grassroots and the leadership had increased dramatically. The path that the CNT decided to follow on July 20 took it gigantic leaps toward revolutionary defeat. Something new appeared in the CNT, as if by spontaneous generation: bureaucratism in the leading bodies and the subservience of its key men (for the sake of “organizational responsibility.”) [631]
The CNT and FAI’s Revolutionary Committees held on as well as they could. They represented the movement’s rank and file, although they were also paralyzed by the problem of the war. Furthermore, leading militants sympathetic to these Committees were now implicated in positions of responsibility and simply hoped that a coherent response would emerge from one of the organization’s regular assemblies. Others, fighting in Aragón, focused exclusively on taking Huesca and Zaragoza, thinking that once they had done so they could “stop the concessions, confront the counterrevolutionaries, and proclaim libertarian communism.” [632] Meanwhile, CNT and FAI Committees, acting on behalf of the grassroots and making themselves into “realists,” accepted the political game. They did this not to expand the revolution, but to preserve the power that they had concentrated in their hands. They committed their first counterrevolutionary act when they agreed to dissolve the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias so that some of their men could become ministers in the Generalitat on September 26, 1936. The rank and file reacted against this outrage, but the most significant militants, including García Oliver, Aurelio Fernández, Severino Campos, José Xena, and Marcos Alcón accepted it reluctantly, which made them complicit in the betrayal. The ground was growing increasingly shaky under the CNT’s feet.
Durruti led six thousand men in Aragón who would have followed him to Barcelona to crush the counterrevolutionaries. But he wasn’t fighting for power. What he wanted was revolutionary victory; a fully self-managing society made up of free men. He took the most difficult route and he knew it. But he had been an anarchist all his life and wasn’t going to stop being one now. [633] He intended to push the revolution as far as possible and overwhelm the counterrevolution with revolutionary advances. A revolutionary blow would follow every counterrevolutionary attack.
Durruti was reflecting on these issues when García Oliver called to tell him the good news: Pierre Besnard had made contact with arms dealers who were ready to sell Spain the weapons it needed. Durruti had to come to Barcelona immediately so that they could finalize the deal.
He arrived in Barcelona several hours later, on the night of September 28. García Oliver and Santillán were euphoric: they were finally going to have enough arms to win Zaragoza and Huesca for the revolution.
They couldn’t afford to miss this opportunity. Thus far, all of Catalonia’s attempts to secure arms through the Madrid government—whether led by Giral or Largo Caballero—had ended in failure. Their emissaries returned with promises, but never access to the requisite currency, which was sitting in the Bank of Spain. [634] Barcelona’s war industry produced much less than it could, because its machinery was old and the region lacked sufficient raw material. They told Madrid that its machines had to be updated, but the government did nothing. Clearly Madrid would never give the workers the means that they needed to assure revolutionary victory; Catalonia would only receive resources if it delayed the revolution until after the war. That was the trap. The CNT committees fell into it when they dissolved the CCAMC and joined the Generalitat, but the workers refused to take that route and were not willing to give up their control over the workplaces. The problem was extremely complicated, although both Santillán and García Oliver believed that Largo Caballero would purchase the weapons being offered, assuming that he didn’t prefer Franco’s victory. They knew that the government would do everything it could to stop the arms from reaching Barcelona, but that was another matter that they could address later. The important thing, Durruti’s two friends insisted, was that the government buys the weapons.
“And we think that you, as a fighter and representative of the Aragón front, should go with Pierre Besnard to Madrid. Your presence will be decisive.” [635]
Durruti was not convinced: Largo Caballero could agree to everything and then later go back on his word. He thought that the time for “half-measures” was over: either Largo Caballero was for the revolution or against it. In the former case, the government would have to clearly explain its policy to the workers, so that they could make up their own minds about its actions.
Or, in the latter case, there was no point in talking, because Durruti wasn’t going to betray the revolution. As always, they abandoned the debate when it reached that point, while waiting for the next CNT meeting and then... Durruti was fed up with so many “thens”...
The idea of robbing the Bank of Spain arose in this context. Santillán writes:
<quote>
Would ours be the first war lost because of a shortage of arms when there was enough money in the national treasury to buy them? ....
The plan was to take what belonged to us from the treasury in the Bank of Spain. We couldn’t leave the treasury to a government that was getting everything wrong and losing the war. Would we fail to buy arms after the robbery? At least we would get raw materials and machines for our war industry. We could make the weapons ourselves. With very few accomplices, we plotted to move at least some of the Bank of Spain’s gold to Catalonia.
We knew that we would have to use force. There were around three thousand trusted men in Madrid and we arranged all the details of transporting the gold in special trains. We had very little time, but if the plan was well executed, part of the gold would have already left for Catalonia before the government could take preventative measures. This would be the best guarantee that the war could start on a new path.[636]
</quote>
Who were these three thousand men that Santillán mentions? They were members of the Tierra y Libertad anarchist column, which had been put together in a different way than the others. Its members had been specially selected and all belonged to Catalan anarchist groups. When the column was assembled, the situation in Madrid demanded their deployment there. Its purpose was to defend the revolution and they had to be prepared to respond immediately to any government attempt to crush it. The column discussed the national treasury and developed plans that they could put into practice at once. [637]
Waiting for Besnard was now less important than carrying out the “Operation Bank of Spain.” Durruti was able to fly to Madrid that very night thanks to André Malraux, who happened to be in the Prat del Llobregat airfield. Durruti was traveling without an official pass and thus it was difficult for him to find someone to take him. He bumped into Malraux, who fortunately agreed to do so. That was the first time that the two men met. [638]
Santillán also flew to Madrid, but he had official documents and thus no problem finding a pilot to transport him. In Barcelona, García Oliver had to attend to Pierre Besnard’s arrival and make the necessary presentations at the Generalitat. Did García Oliver know about Santillán and Durruti’s plan? He claims that he did not in a private letter to us. We have no reason to doubt him and therefore correct the assertion that we made in the French edition of this biography. Besnard describes the developments:
<quote>
I arrived in Barcelona and García Oliver introduced me to the Generalitat ministers. I told them about the opportunity to buy arms for the Spanish Republic.... Two representatives from the arms consortium came to Barcelona the following day and corroborated my statements.... Lluís Companys called Largo Caballero to inform him about the matter. The latter indicated that he needed to see us right away and stressed that Generalitat ministers and I should accompany the representatives.[639]
</quote>
Regarding the robbery of the Bank of Spain, Santillán explains:
<quote>
When it was time to act, the instigators of the plan did not want to bear responsibility for a deed that would have such great historical consequences. The idea was communicated to the CNT National Committee and also some of the best-known comrades. Our friends shivered in horror; the principle argument that they made against the project, <em>which was going to be carried out at one moment or another</em>, was that it would only increase the prevailing animosity toward Catalonia. What could we do? It would be impossible to work against our own organizations as well and so we had to give up the idea. The gold left Madrid a <em>few weeks later</em>,[640] although it didn’t go to Catalonia but to Russia. More than five hundred tons fell into Stalin’s hands, and helped lose our war and reinforce the global counterrevolution. [The italics are ours.][641]
</quote>
Besnard continues:
<quote>
Largo Caballero received us as soon as we arrived in Madrid. After a brief conversation, in which Durruti reminded the Prime Minister of his obligations, he agreed to raise the matter during the Cabinet meeting.
The Cabinet decided that afternoon to purchase 800 million pesetas worth of war materiel. They doubled the amount the next day, with the understanding that a third of the purchase would go to Catalonia and Aragón.
Caballero’s Chief of Staff gave the Spanish Embassy in Paris the instructions necessary to conclude the purchase quickly. A list of materiel to buy was drawn up on October 3 in the Navy Ministry, in the presence of Durruti, the sellers, and myself.
The contract had immediate repercussions.... The Russian ambassador in Madrid called Durruti and me at 3:00 am on October 4 at the Gran Vía Hotel and said he wanted to see us immediately. We declined the invitation, since we had nothing to discuss with him. We left for Barcelona the next morning.[642]
</quote>
The local press reported on Durruti’s visit to the Spanish capital two days later. <em>CNT</em> published an interview with him, which we will reproduce:
<quote>
<strong>Comrade Durruti Speaks</strong>
We make the war and the revolution at the same time. Militiamen are fighting for the conquest of the land, the factories, bread, and culture... the pickaxe and the shovel are as important as the rifle. Comrades, we will win the war!
<em>Picture of a guerrilla</em>
Durruti was in Madrid. We shook his scarred and strong proletarian hand. We listened to his sincere remarks, in which one can hear the bravery of a lion, the perspicacity of a veteran militant, and the cheerful sparks of youth. He has always been a legendary combatant, a steely fighter; indeed, his natural habitat is the rough and difficult struggle. His hour is ringing in Spain and he had to step forth, with all he has and everything he is worth, in the tragic panorama of the present war.
He was among us for a day. Strong, tall, and burly; weather-beaten by the winds on the Aragón front; victory already shines in his eyes. He is hopeful, and his visit brings us tremendous optimism. With his leather coat and mountaineer’s cap, he is the perfect image of a revolutionary guerrilla.
But Durruti—we should note—is nothing like Pancho Villa. The Mexican adventurer fought for the sake of fighting, made war without knowing why or for what, and lacked a political or social program. Durruti is an anarchist in combat, with a clear sociological vision and a powerful revolutionary impulse that makes him far superior to Villa. The former was a warrior, with his old and brutal soul, whereas our comrade is a revolutionary, with his spirit open to tomorrow, enlightened and eager for the best that life has to offer.
<em>Deported yesterday...</em>
Durruti leads thousands of comrades in Aragón and with them he has won a long series of anti-fascist victories. His Column is the model of organization and we have put all our hopes in it. Today our comrade is one of the stars of the war against fascism, although we cannot help but recall that those who have demonstrated their inability to defend the Republic deported him to Villa Cisneros four years ago. We are living in a time of the rectification of errors, when the false coin of empty men disappears from social circulation. While the masses don’t think of Casares Quiroga warmly, they drape Francisco Ascaso’s name with heroism and Durruti’s incites the hope of the Spanish proletariat—especially in Zaragoza which, under the horror of fascist executions, is awaiting the hour of popular justice.
Durruti came to Madrid to attend to questions of extraordinary importance for the war and he achieved his goals to a great extent. When we have defeated fascism and can speak without reserve, the people will know the value of this extremely rapid and effective visit, thanks to which our operations on many fronts will soon improve dramatically.
<em>The offensive on Madrid</em>
We took the opportunity of his visit to ask our comrade about various aspects of the present struggle. With respect to the fronts of the Center, he told us the following:
“It doesn’t take much common sense to see what the enemy is doing. It’s focusing all its attention on attacking Madrid, although that doesn’t mean that its situation throughout the country has improved. The opposite is true. Catalonia and Levante are putting more pressure on the Aragón front daily, and the fascists know that whatever they do, no matter how hard they try, Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel will soon fall into our hands. Once that happens, they’ve lost the war. Those three cities are extremely important from a strategic point of view. When we win them, and it’s certain that we will, that will be the end of the enemy front, from Calatayud to Burgos, and they’ll run from the siege of Sigüenza, just like they fled the Sierra offensive.
“For our part, we can mobilize an army of more than 100,000 men.
And there’s the situation in Oviedo. We’ll clean the fascists out of Asturias within several days: the comrades there, who fought so bravely in October ‘34, know what to do with Galicia and Castilla. And think of Granada and Córdoba, which our people are about to capture. That’s how the war is going. So, given all that, the enemy would be stupid not to think of saving itself by taking Madrid. Of course! It’s intoxicated by dreams of seizing the Spanish capital, but it will break apart on the fronts of the Center. And it needs to withdraw troops from other fronts to carry out that desperate attack. The resistance in Madrid, combined with our offensives elsewhere, will ruin it. It’s that simple.”
<em>Fortifications</em>
“You don’t fight a war with words, but with fortifications. The pickaxe and the shovel are as important as the rifle. I can’t say it often enough. As usual there are plenty of rearguard slackers and freeloaders in Madrid, but we have to mobilize everyone and must conserve every drop of gasoline. Our principle strength in Aragón lay in the fact that we buttress all our advances, however small, by immediately constructing trenches and parapets. Our militiamen know how to set up their battlefield and understand that not retreating is the best response to any assault. The survival instinct is very powerful, but it’s not true that it causes you to lose battles. We fight for life and apply the survival instinct to the fighting itself. The comrades in my Column don’t budge when the enemy attacks, thanks to the survival instinct. We can only achieve that with fortifications.
“So, in response to your questions about the fronts of the Center, I insist that it’s absolutely necessary that you open a web of trenches, parapets, and wire fences; that you build fortifications; that everyone in Madrid lives for the war and fights to defend themselves. If that occurs, we can be certain that the fascist’s maneuvers that concern you will almost help us, because the enemy will uselessly invest resources here that it needs to resist our attacks elsewhere.”
<em>We are revolutionaries</em>
“What can you tell us about your Column?”
“I’m pleased with it. My people have everything they need and when they fight, they function like a perfect machine. I don’t mean to imply that they’re dehumanized. Nothing of the sort. Our comrades on the front know why and for what they’re fighting. They’re revolutionaries and don’t wage war for hollow slogans, or some more or less promising laws, but for the conquest of the land, the factories, the workshops, the means of transport, bread, and culture... They know that their lives depend on victory.
“Furthermore, and I think circumstances demand this, we’re making the war and the revolution at the same time. We’re not only taking revolutionary steps in the rearguard, in Barcelona, but right up to the line of fire. Every town we conquer begins to transform itself in a revolutionary way. That’s the best part of the campaign. It’s exciting! Sometimes, when I’m alone, I reflect on what we’re doing and that’s when I feel my responsibility most deeply. The defeat of my column would be horrifying. It couldn’t just retreat like a typical army. We would have to take with us all the inhabitants of all the places that we’ve passed through. Absolutely everyone! From the frontlines to Barcelona, there are only fighters on the path we’ve followed. Everyone works for the war and the revolution. That’s our strength.
<em>On Discipline</em>
<em>We come to the question of the moment: discipline.</em>
“Man! I’m very happy you brought this up. People talk a lot about the topic but few hit the nail on the head. For me, discipline is nothing more than respect for your own responsibility and that of others. I’m against the discipline of the barracks, which only leads to stultification, hate, and automatism. But I also can’t accept—indeed the necessities of war make it impossible—the so-called liberty that cowards turn to when they want to duck out of something. Our organization, the CNT, has the best discipline, and that’s what enables the militants to trust the comrades occupying the posts in the Committees. They obey and carry out the organization’s decisions. People have to obey the delegates in times of war; otherwise it would be impossible to undertake any operation. If people disagree with them, there are meetings where they can suggest their replacement.
“I’ve seen all the tricks of the Great War in my Column: the dying mother, the pregnant <em>compañera</em>, the sick child, the swollen face, the bad eyes... I have a magnificent health team. Anyone caught lying: a double shift with the pick and mattock! Discouraging letters from home? To the garbage! When someone wants to return home, claiming that a volunteer can come and go, he must first hear my thoughts on the matter. After all, we rely on his strength. Afterwards, we’ll let him leave, but only after we’ve taken his weapon—it belongs to the column—and he’ll have to go on foot too, because the cars also serve the war effort. It almost never comes to this. The militiaman’s self-esteem quickly surfaces and, as a rule, with an attitude of “No one will look down on me, not even the leader of the Column!” He returns to the battlefield, ready to fight heroically.
“Frankly, I’m happy with the comrades that follow me. I suppose that they’re happy with me too. Nothing is lacking. Female comrades can spend two days at the front; after that, they go to the rearguard... The newspapers arrive daily, the food is excellent, there are abundant books, and lectures arouse the comrades’ revolutionary spirit during free time. The leisure time isn’t easy. You have to occupy yourself with something: principally, being at war, it’s with making fortifications. What time is it? One in the morning, right? Well, now, behind their sandbags, my lions on the Aragón front are digging new trenches with the greatest enthusiasm...”
Durruti smiles as he thinks of his comrades in the battle. Even in Madrid he feels the excitement of his faraway Column.
“They don’t know that I’m here,” he says, as if speaking to himself. He looks up and stares into the dark Madrid night. He gathers himself quickly and stands up, firm and smiling; under the visor of his leather cap, the penetrating gaze of a revolutionary guerrilla shines with optimism. He puts his rough proletarian hands on our shoulders and, when the interview is over, says:
“We’re going to win this war, comrades!”[643]
</quote>
** CHAPTER XV. The Libertarian Confederation of Aragón
Pierre Besnard reflected on the efforts that he and Durruti made to acquire arms in Madrid:
<quote>
Largo Caballero—who really did not think very highly of our intervention—let himself be convinced (or Rosemberg knew how to convince him) that it was better to wait for Russian help.... Clearly Russia would never have played any role, either then or later, if Spain had used its gold to buy its own arms from abroad.... Rosemberg was able to persuade the stubborn Caballero and, from then on, it was obvious that the government would never purchase the 1,600 million worth of war materiel. And it didn’t: in part due to the sellers, largely due to the buyers, and mostly due the Russians, who portrayed the sellers as Franco’s agents.... That is why free Spain didn’t get the weapons it needed and how Russia could repay hard cash with materiel of dubious value, which arrived sparingly and on the condition that none would go to CNT columns and that all would be used to strengthen Communist Party’s position.[644]
</quote>
The most committed anarchists focused on Aragón. The spread of the agricultural collectives and the presence of the armed militias, not to mention the revolution’s retreat in Barcelona, made Aragón seem like the beacon of the Spanish revolution.
That was Durruti’s view. From the beginning, he became not only the core of the anti-fascist resistance in the region, but also one of the most vigorous supporters of the collectives. And Durruti knew that if they did not organize themselves, they would be vulnerable to attacks from Marxist militias. Even POUM militias opposed them.
Peasants from all over Aragón came to the libertarian columns’ War Committees to complain about abuses that they suffered in areas controlled by Catalanist or Stalinist troops. Sometimes they forcibly dissolved the councils that the peasants had elected in assemblies. Other times, claiming the necessities of war, they robbed stored foodstuffs or farming machinery procured by CNT units. Durruti always told them that they had to build their own means of self-defense and not rely on the libertarian Columns, which would leave Aragón as the war evolved. They needed to coordinate themselves, although he also warned them against forming an anti-fascist political front like the type existing in other parts of Spain. They needn’t make the same error as their compatriots elsewhere. There were no political parties in Aragón nor should they be created just to please some of the actors in the struggle. The popular assembly must be sovereign. [645] Durruti returned from Madrid on October 5, 1936, a day before the CNT’s Regional Assembly in Bujaraloz. Militants would form the Aragón Defense Council and the Aragón Federation of Collectives at the meeting. [646] When its sessions began, there were 139 militants representing all the villages in Aragón. Delegates from the following confederal Columns were also present: Cultura y Acción, Roja y Negra, Fourth Group of Gelsa, the Malatesta <em>Centuria</em> (the Italian Group from Huesca), Sur-Ebro Column (Ortiz), the Confederal Columns of Huesca and Aldabaldetrecu, and the Durruti Column.
The secretary of the Aragón Regional Committee began the assembly by reporting on decisions made at the national meeting of regionals held in Madrid on September 15. Militants there had decided to propose the formation of a National Defense Council, made up primarily by the UGT and CNT. Their proposal stated that the body should have the following structure: “There will be local, provincial, regional, and national federalism in political and economic administration. Defense Councils will be implanted, abolishing the city councils, local, and civil governments. Regions will be empowered to establish the balance of anti-fascist forces within the Regional Defense Councils and make any local modifications that circumstances and the facilities of the environment require.”
“The UGT did not receive their proposal favorably,” the secretary said. “Given that, the meeting [he is referring to another national meeting held on September 30] decided to undermine the influence of the central government by forming the Aragón Defense Council.”
After the secretary’s report, the Barbastro delegation declared that “[it] considers the creation of this organism a pressing necessity, since it will reduce the influence of particular military forces that take advantage of the situation to try to oppose the people’s advance in the social order” All the subsequent speakers agreed that the body should be created, although some believed that it should only occupy itself with the region’s economic and administrative concerns and not get mixed up in the war, since the Columns are supposed to report to Catalonia. Others felt that the Council should intercede in military matters, since the Columns operate in Aragón, and it would be easy enough to resolve the Catalonia issue by sending a representative there. The groups arguing that the Council should take control of the war efforts were those that had to confront Stalinist militias or the War Committee created by Villalba. [647] Halfway through the assembly, Durruti spoke in the name of his Column.
<quote>
It’s essential that we create the Aragón Defense Council. With it, we will achieve a unity of wills, finally confront the single command [mando único] question, and ultimately win the war.... You have to realize how things are going in Spain. I went to Madrid and told the Minister of War about our circumstances. I didn’t beat around the bush, and he had no choice but to surrender to the evidence. But that’s not enough. For things to follow their proper course, we must put the decisions of the CNT’s national meeting into practice. We risk losing everything if we don’t form the National Defense Council. That’s how we’ll defeat the fascists. So, to pressure Madrid to accept our proposal, we must create the Aragón Defense Council.
</quote>
Durruti’s speech allows us to refute those who assert that he believed that the Aragón Defense Council should direct the war efforts.
To sum up the general opinion, the meeting issued the following statement:
<quote>
In compliance with the revolutionary events triggered in this country by the battle against fascism, and to fulfill the most recent decisions made at the CNT’s meeting of regionals, we have decided to form the Aragón Defense Council, which will take charge of all political, economic, and social development in Aragón. The Council will be composed of the following departments: Justice, Public Works, Industry and Commerce, Agriculture, Information and Propaganda, Transport and Communications, Public Order, Health and Hygiene, Public Instruction, and Economy and Supplies. Each Department will develop plans that it will submit to the represented bodies for study and approval. Once approved, these plans will be carried out in all their aspects. Localities will carry out the general economic and social plan. This plan will contain short and long-term measures leading toward the new social structure. This is in contrast to the present state of affairs, in which there are many, often contradictory initiatives and activities. We believe it is better not to create a war department, which could provoke confusion, given the already existing bodies. Instead, to exert pressure and work more efficiently, we resolve:
1. To name two delegates, who will represent the Aragón Regional at the War Department in Barcelona.
1. To create a War Committee made up by forces operating in Aragón, which will bear sole responsibility for directing the movement of the Columns.
1. That representatives from the following forces make up the Committee: One from the Durruti Column, one from the Ortiz Column, three from the Huesca sector, and two for the Aragón Defense Council.
This composition will be provisional, until the Columns operating in the Teruel sector nominate a delegate, who will join the War Committee. This report, once approved by the delegates, will be subject to consideration by the Catalonia and Valencia Regionals.
</quote>
The following people signed the document: Francisco Ponzán (County of Angües): Gil Gargallo (Union of Utrillas), Macario Royo (Mas de las Matas), Gregorio Villacampa (Huesca Provisional Committee); Francisco Muñoz (Regional Committee), P. Abril-Honorato Villanueva (Occupied Zone of Teruel Committee), and Francisco Carreño and Joaquín Ascaso (Aragón Front Columns).
The proposal was accepted unanimously and they established the office of the Aragón Defense Council in Alcañiz. [648]
During the Bujaraloz assembly, there was a discussion of Aragón’s problems as both a war zone and rearguard. They were so intimately connected that it was impossible to know where one ended and the other began. The diversity of political forces directing the Columns aggravated those difficulties, because each tendency hoped to structure the peasant’s economic life in its respective zone according to its own presuppositions. That was the primary source of the confusion in the area. Forming the Aragón Defense Council was an important step toward resolving that problem, but only if the function of the Columns, the powers of the Defense Council itself, and the Generalitat’s role in the region were clearly demarcated. But that would not be easy, given the deep conflicts of interest.
The CNT was the predominant force in the area. The UGT, where it existed, was so minuscule that it hardly mattered. The Confederals in Aragón did not want to make the same mistake as the Catalan CNT and thus did not give the UGT equal weight in the Aragón Defense Council. The village assembly was sovereign and elected the members of the local councils.
Residents selected those who were well-known among them and with the greatest revolutionary experience. The libertarian configuration of Aragón emerged from those assemblies.
There were few problems in the areas where CNT columns operated: the militiamen and peasants interpenetrated fully. But that was not the case for libertarian collectives in areas under PSUC or POUM control; those forces, although hostile to one another, concurred in their hatred of anarchism and the CNT. The area most affected by those conflicts included Huesca and Barbastro. Colonel Villalba operated like a typical soldier and the Del Barrio Column (PSUC) showed its commitment to the idea that it was “time for war not revolution” by protecting individuals who had reason to fear the revolutionary expropriations. Del Barrio tried to dissolve the libertarian collectives, but CNT peasants didn’t surrender passively and armed clashes occurred. These rearguard conflicts prevented loyalist forces from taking Huesca. The situation was untenable. This, as well as the existence of two War Committees, was what prompted the Bujaraloz assembly’s concern with the “single command” issue.
A War Committee was initially formed in Sariñena; all the Columns were represented there and a Military Council advised them. The CNT was the predominant force in that War Committee, which makes sense, given that it had some fifteen thousand men on war footing in the region whereas the PSUC and POUM barely had two thousand each. But of course that was a problem for the Stalinists and Colonel Villalba, who divided the War Committee and set up another one in “North Aragón.” Del Barrio joined his Committee and led it in Villalba’s absences, despite the smaller size of the PSUC forces. Del Barrio took advantage of his absences to attack villages and forcibly dissolve their collectives. Such things were occurring when the Bujaraloz assembly took place. The decision to create the Aragón Defense Council sounded like a gunshot in Barbastro and had immediate echoes in Barcelona. The PSUC press described it as “cantonalist and seditious.” The Generalitat also disproved. [649] Even the CNT National Committee opposed it: since Largo Caballero had refused to form the National Defense Council, it was working to negotiate the CNT’s entrance into the Madrid government. All these factors underscore the revolutionary boldness embodied in the formation of the Aragón Defense Council, which was only underscored by the fact that all the men who composed it belonged to the CNT. Now, for the first time in history, a region embarked on a revolutionary venture without political parties and took the assembly as the paramount body. That is why the regime emerging in Aragón was so close to libertarian communism. The audacity was immense: the revolution was on the retreat throughout Spain and Aragón became its most advanced pole. Was the same thing going to happen in Aragón that had happened in the Ukraine during the Russian Revolution? Durruti inevitably invoked comparisons with Nestor Makhno. Rebels launched an attack on October 4 while the Bujaraloz assembly was being held and their assault put the whole Perdiguera-Leciñena front in jeopardy. They immediately defeated the Durruti Column’s advance party there, which occupied an area contiguous with a POUM zone. We will deal with that attack and how the Column responded in the following chapter. Now we will examine the immediate consequences of the formation of the Aragón Defense Council in Barcelona.
Colonel Felipe Díaz Sandino took over the Generalitat’s Department of Defense on September 26. García Oliver was its Secretary.
When Díaz Sandino assumed his post, his primary concern was instituting Madrid’s decrees on the militarization of the militias. He knew that he could not accomplish that in Aragón immediately and had to proceed cautiously in order to avoid a confrontation with the CNT Columns. Tensions in Aragón between Confederation members and Villalba gave him the opportunity that he needed.
The problem in Aragón was not military but political. The CNT wanted to carry its revolutionary work forward and the PSUC wanted to stop it. The counterrevolutionary pressures were extremely clear there. Colonel Villalba, presenting himself as a Republican soldier who “doesn’t do politics,” helped the PSUC by creating conflicts on the front and forming an autonomous War Committee. The offensive against the collectives delayed the attack on Huesca. The CCAMC had set aside one million cartridges for the assault on Huesca, but it wasn’t taken and the cartridges were used in rearguard operations or sent to Barcelona. Given the situation, Díaz Sandino and García Oliver called a meeting of Column leaders in Sariñena to consider forming a General Staff in Aragón. This meeting occurred on October 8, as Colonel Gustavo Urrutia threw his 4,500 men, with air and artillery support, against the Durruti Column.
The meeting was attended by Díaz Sandino, Joan Moles, and García Oliver for the Department of Defense and, for the columns in Aragón, Colonel Villalba, Del Barrio, Antonio Ortiz, José Rovira, Durruti, and Pérez Salas. This list of names makes it clear that they would have to confront the dispute between Villalba-Del Barrio and Durruti-Ortiz.
Colonel Díaz Sandino began by commenting on the grave dangers threatening Madrid after the loss of San Martín de Valdeiglesias, Sigüenza, and Navas del Marqués. The rebel advance on the Spanish capital had compelled the government to mobilize the 1932 and 1933 conscripts and to militarize the militias, he said. Sandino felt that it was necessary to strengthen discipline on the front and unify military leadership by creating a General Staff. Air force Commander Reyes would lead the body and Columns leaders would join it as well. Del Barrio objected to this plan and said that “a certain sector of the militias is fighting Colonel Villalba.” He wasn’t interested in creating the General Staff, but in clarifying why Villalba was under attack. Colonel Díaz Sandino said that it wasn’t time to talk about old problems but rather to create an organization with which the militias could retake the positions that they had lost. Del Barrio persisted, claiming that he “couldn’t forget the past.”
“Your political differences,” Díaz Sandino said, “will be resolved after we win the war. What we have to do now is unify the commands.” Rovira, speaking for the POUM forces, stated that there are “various ways to interpret a unified command,” and so his party “withholds its opinion on the question.”
Del Barrio insisted that what they had to address was “not unifying the military leadership, but other things.”
Díaz Sandino replies: “We won’t achieve anything if we don’t all go arm in arm. They’ll beat us with things as they are. We don’t have materiel and we’re burdened by a series of problems. They’re organized and have materiel. If we don’t unify our forces, then we might as well as go home and let the fascists enter Barcelona.”
Del Barrio exclaimed: “We won’t argue any more. We’ll start this, but we’ll also express our opinion, because we’re the ones who’ll suffer the consequences. There has always been a split between Barcelona and the front.”
García Oliver stated: “We tried to be as impartial as possible in selecting the leader of the General Staff. You would have said that we were playing political games if we’d appointed Durruti and the same thing if we’d proposed Ortiz. He has to be a soldier who has distinguished himself on the front. It could have been Villalba, but all your quarreling disqualified him. So, we sought a man who seems to have all the moral and practical capacities.... But if he’s accepted with reservations, then I won’t shoulder the responsibility and I’ll resign.”
Del Barrio responded: “There is a hostile environment... Part of the front is fighting against Colonel Villalba.”
Ortiz: “I’ll be frank: I’m an anarchist and I think we’ll take things as far as we can. But, until then, we won’t argue and we’ll proceed honorably. Everything that is ordered of me I will do, do, and have done.
Durruti stated the following: “I’ve come to a conclusion. Barbastro is the worst of the Aragón front, where there are endless conflicts. It’s a nest of intrigues.... Think about the situation. They’ve already moved forces toward us from the north, just like they’re moving forces from other sectors on the Aragón front. I can see them almost one hundred meters in front of us. There are an enormous number of people there and we’re waiting for them to give us a push. If you were to ask me how we defended Farlete and Monegrillo the other day, I could only say that we did so as well as we could. I can see the moment that we took off running toward Fraga and lost those two positions. This has to end. It’s necessary to clarify the problems in Barbastro so that confidence on the front is restored.”
Then Del Barrio commented: “The other day, in the Colonel’s absence, I took the power that I believe I possess as a member of the War Committee to send twenty-five <em>carabineros</em> to Graus, with an order to arrest the whole village council. And if we hadn’t, the CNT men would have shot seventeen men that were not all Socialists, but Republicans in their majority. Unfortunately the <em>carabineros</em> didn’t carry out the order, but that was the order, which I signed. I didn’t send the Civil Guard because I didn’t want to hear talk about the Civil Guard fighting the people again....”
Colonel Villalba intervened: “Something remains in the air, a charge....”
Durruti stated: “The soldiers should be advisors, real advisors, and you shouldn’t mix yourself up with edicts. That should be the responsibility of the Column leaders.... ”
Del Barrio: “The people love the soldiers and they’re with us. They demonstrated this when I spoke about Colonel Villalba at the rally; the people rose up and cheered him.”
Durruti: “As far as decrees and edicts are concerned, the people never put up with soldiers. When a solider signs a decree or edict, it may be effective but it immediately raises suspicions. They’re loved because they’re fighting, nothing more.”
Del Barrio: “I’ve stated my reservations with respect to the unified command. I will state them to my party and do what it orders....”
Ortiz: “As far as I’m concerned, such reservations are dishonest.”
Durruti: “The reservation is inadmissible. We didn’t have any reservation. A government was formed in Madrid and we went to fight without worrying if it was socialist. And if you now come and tell us, ‘here, there’s a reservation,’ we won’t let you get away with it. Under these conditions, such reserves are a falsehood...”
García Oliver, speaking to Del Barrio: “What do think about unifying the commands?”
Del Barrio: “I’ve always supported a unified command but, due an earlier situation, the unified command being formed isn’t normal.”
García Oliver: “I’ve resisted the unified command on the front more than anyone and Sandino knows why. There’s always a problem with the unified command, which is that someone has to give the orders. Something is happening in this war and that’s that the fascists, when they’re attacked in the cities, put up with a lot. Our people don’t put up with anything. The rebels surround a city and take it after two days; we surround it and spend a lifetime there. Now a position has been abandoned, Leciñena, but that can’t happen again. No one can abandon an occupied position just like that. To abandon a trench when it’s attacked... ”
Rovira: “We abandoned the town because we didn’t have ammunition. We were incommunicado.”
García Oliver: “It’s not just a question of Leciñena. That’s an example. Of course a city or town defend themselves, because otherwise this would be like Madrid, and we’d find them in our homes after a series of pushes. Now, with a unified command, if a city is engaged, it doesn’t have to give up. They can send in reinforcements from wherever. All the commanders have to do is call other forces.”[650]
What stands out in the summary of this meeting is the conflict between the PSUC and the CNT, a rivalry that weakened the militias’ capacity to fight the war and largely explains the inactivity on the Aragón front. Villalba and the PSUC forces stood aloof from actions around Huesca and Del Barrio’s troops—although they were only a few kilometers away—even let the fascists take Leciñena, because it was the POUM’s responsibility. Del Barrio’s opposition to the creation of a unified General Staff that would take control of the entire Aragón front contrasted with the PSUC press’s vociferous advocacy for the army and a “single command.”
Given these events, the wisdom of the Bujaraloz assembly’s decision to form the Aragón Defense Council in order to end the “mexicanization” of the war becomes even more pronounced.
** CHAPTER XVI. Stalin’s shadow over Spain
A rebel offensive against the area occupied by the Durruti Column coincided with the Bujaraloz assembly and the Sariñena military conference. Fascist Lieutenant Colonel Urrutia led a large force made up of infantry battalion number 19, three armored car companies, the <em>“Tercio</em> of the Pillar,” three machine-gunner companies from the Gerona Regiment, machine-gunners fighting under the “Palafox” flag, five Falange companies, two squadrons, and two batteries. There were approximately 4,500 men, as well as air support. On October 4, he attacked to the north of Osera and Villafranca. On October 8, he launched another assault in the direction of Farlete and got within three kilometers of the town. On October 10, the rebels sent a large number of reinforcements to Perdiguera, Zuera, Villanueva, and Quinto. That night, fascist troops took off from Perdiguera to ascend the heights that run along the east from Perdiguera to Leciñena, while other forces seized the more distant heights of the Sierra de Alcubierre in order to later fall on the port of the same name. The operation ended when the nationalist units entered Leciñena on October 12, after inflicting heavy losses on their adversaries. [651]
José Mira explains how the Durruti Column responded to the offensive:
<quote>
The Mobile Column attacked our position at Calabazares-La Puntaza on October 4. They were trying to break through the Osera-Monegrillo road and occupy Osera. They made some progress at first, but we held them back and later repelled them completely, despite the constant machine-gun fire that their new air force rained down upon us from a low altitude. They initiated a much more vigorous offensive the following day. Moving their artillery and tanks along the Villamayor-Farlete road, the majority of their forces got to the outskirts of Farlete. The right flank was in the area of the previous attack. There was a heavy presence of Cavalry detachments among their troops. The left flank was in the area around the Perdiguera-Farlete road.
The battle was intense and although our small number of combatants in the area fought well, they had to give ground due to the enemy’s enormous superiority. We quickly organized a powerful Column made up by Artillery and forces from other sectors in order to counter-attack, but we were alarmingly short on ammunition. We withdrew ammunition from other units to equip the operating forces, which meant that militiamen in the calm parts of the front had only ten cartridges each.
Our reinforcements came when the enemy was less than a kilometer from Farlete. Their cavalry tried to circle around the southern edge of the town, but one of our light batteries placed its artillery on the road, in front of the trucks, and opened fire. This was extremely effective. It forced them to make a bloody, hasty retreat. Armored trucks set off in pursuit, which turned the enemy’s retreat into a chaotic flight.
The enemy was in disarray after our action against its right flank but then launched a successful counter-attack. It withdrew shortly thereafter, when our bombers appeared and bombarded a few times from a low altitude. This leveled enemy concentrations and caused them a high number of casualties, turning the adversary’s withdrawal into a complete rout. The assailants dispersed in various directions, abandoning weapons and other materiel in the process. We seized a large number of prisoners, almost all falangists and Carlists. Many enemy soldiers deserted as well, who came over to our lines with arms.
Our forces were in complete control by the end of the day, despite our indisputable inferiority in men and materiel. We pursued the enemy, which retreated fifteen kilometers in the direction of Perdiguera.
Days later [on October 12], the rebels attacked positions covered by a POUM column to the north of the Sierra de Alcubierre. Their occupation of Leciñena caused a dangerous rupture in our lines and threatened the security of the entire front. Fortunately, our reinforcements managed to contain the assailants in the vicinity of Alcubierre. To clear the besieged Column from the front in Leciñena and assist in the counter-attack, our Column attempted to make contact with the enemy [on October 14], which had been lost since its defeat in Farlete. We also intended to put pressure on the Villamayor-Perdiguera-Leciñena road.
Our troops were cohesive, disciplined, and followed the orders that they received. The International Group, which was covering our right flank, advanced toward Perdiguera. However, it went too far, due to excessive combative ardor, and lost touch with the rest of the forces.
The International Group attacked the enemy’s defenses on the outskirts of Perdiguera with hand grenades. They managed to enter the town and defeat the adversarial garrison [October 16]. But more than two enemy battalions from Zaragoza arrived in trucks and laid siege to the site. Our internationals fought energetically and some broke through enemy lines and retreated toward our positions. The others, taking cover in the town’s houses, fought to the end. The rebels captured and executed three Red Cross nurses of various nationalities there.
Several of our centuries approached Perdiguera, in hopes of helping the International Group, but a much larger number of adversarial forces appeared simultaneously, which made our efforts impossible.
We finally established a continuous front, as ordered by the Column’s War Committee. Our lines stretched northward to the Oscuro Mountain, the highest point of the Sierra de Alcubierre, once we cleared the enemy from the area, which offered scant resistance. We secured a connection with the neighboring POUM Column, which used its patrols around Alcubierre to counterattack.[652]
Corman writes the following about the internationals:
Berthomieu and forty of his men had been too daring. They advanced impetuously and, as a result, separated from the rest of the Column. The fascists realized this and surrounded them with their Moorish cavalry.
Cornered in several houses, the forty men faced a force twenty times larger and soon ran out of ammunition. Two militiamen, Ridel and Charpentier, took on the dangerous task of slipping through the Moroccans to warn Durruti. They were the only ones among the forty who entered Perdiguera to survive. The rest died fighting. Among the dead were Berthomieu, Giralt, Trontin, Bourdom, Emile Cottin, Georgette (a young militant from Paris’s <em>Revista Anarquista</em>) Gertrudis (a German Trotskyist youth), and two nurses whose names are unknown.
We improved our lines by eight kilometers, but the territory gained didn’t compensate for the Column’s losses. Berthomieu alone was worth more than all that.
If war is the great devourer of men, here she took men of quality. The most valiant and generous were the first to fall.[653]
</quote>
When calm returned to the area, Durruti went back to the Santa Lucía Inn , where Besnard told him that Largo Caballero had broken the pact. [654]
This infuriated Durruti. He cursed Santillán for not following through with the plan to rob the Bank of Spain and himself for taking Largo Caballero at his word. But this wasn’t the only news: there was also the militarization decree, which reestablished the hierarchy of command in the military forces and reinstituted the old Military Code. Many fighters asked Durruti for leave, because they did not want to submit to these government edicts. What could Durruti tell them? That they submit to them? He didn’t say anything. He was truly dispirited and realized that they were heading toward the precipice and that nothing could prevent them from going over it. Should he resign? He, who had never given up on any of his undertakings! How greatly he missed Ascaso!
Durruti didn’t sleep in his headquarters that night. Instead, he went to meet with the <em>Hijos de la noche</em>, who were going to carry out a surprise attack.
The militarization decree was a significant victory for the Russians. The Spanish government had instituted their military policy and Largo Caballero was in their hands. The decree also coincided with the shipment of the Bank of Spain’s gold to Odessa. Clearly Caballero had mortgaged his future by following Stalin’s orders. Who knew then that so many would trade Spain’s freedom for their short-term gains?
The Russians’ influence increased the strength of the Spanish Communist Party, which suddenly became the master of the new situation. Previously its leaders only attacked the anarchists and Trotskyists verbally, but now they moved to deeds. The militarization decree permitted this. The militiamen on the front fought for the revolution without worrying about the Party, but the Party fought for itself alone. While soldiers fell on the battlefield, the Communist Party, at the orders of the Stalinist Carlos Contreras, created a “commanders’ school:” this was the “Fifth Regiment,” which simply groomed future leaders of the Popular Army. Professional soldiers, which the militias only tolerated as advisors, joined the “Fifth Regiment” and shielded themselves under the Communist Party flag. The “Fifth Regiment” also contained a large number of intellectuals, functionaries, and former state bureaucrats. The CP, presenting itself as a “party of order,” was really a party of the middle class. [655]
The Russians became increasingly more demanding on the political terrain, as Largo Caballero, their captive, went from concession to concession. He had no clue that each compromise brought him a step closer to his own political abyss.
The situation was even more tragic in Catalonia than Madrid. The Russians first set out to eliminate the POUM and then to render the CNT-FAI powerlessness. Although Antonov Ovssenko’s efforts were staggered, he operated so quickly that the passage from one stage to the next was nearly imperceptible. The Aragón front and the Catalan war industry were the CNT’s weak points. The militias in Aragón needed arms and the factories needed raw materials. If they held back the revolution, Ovssenko promised that they would get one or the other. The CNT and FAI Committees accepted his pledge and made the maximum concession by agreeing to dissolve the CCAMC. This set a whole chain of events into motion. The unity pact between the CNT and the UGT and between the PSUC and the FAI (marked by Mariano R. Vázquez and Rafael Vidiella’s [656] embrace on October 25, 1936) facilitated the POUM’s elimination from the Generalitat and was the prelude to the May days of 1937.
To escape the pressure of the CNT and FAI, the Esquerra Republicana tried to form an alliance with the PSUC, but the PSUC’s first condition was Andreu Nin’s removal as Justice Minister in the Generalitat. Lluís Companys assented and simulated a government crisis in order to form a new government without the POUM. The PSUC had thus improved its position, so much so that its leader, Joan Comorera, felt strong enough to attack the Aragón militias directly (disdainfully comparing them to tribes). The great militarization push had begun.
The CNT and FAI Committees responded by securing their control over their militias. However, that didn’t worry the government or the Communist Party, because they knew that the regular army, once established, would eliminate the CNT’s influence in the combative forces by the very logic of its operation. The CNT and FAI Committees were too absorbed with their political maneuvering to see “the forest for the trees,” although militia fighters did grasp things much more clearly. The internationals in the Ascaso Column on the Huesca front raised the issue of “revolution or war.”
If we divest the war of its revolutionary content—its idea of social transformation and sense of universal struggle—then nothing will remain but a war for national independence. While it may force us to confront life or death choices, it will not be a war fought out for a new social regime. We don’t think everything is lost, but do believe that everything is at risk. Victory is unlikely unless something unanticipated occurs. [657]
The confederal militias of the Center raised the same question: By what right does the government forge new chains on a proletariat that already broke those that restrain it? By what right does it resurrect militarism, which we have suffered for so long? For us, militarism is an integral part of fascism. The army is a typical instrument of authoritarianism. To destroy the army is to crush authoritarianism’s ability to oppress the people. The state hasn’t decreed our war; it’s a popular reaction against forces that want to strip us of our dignity. It’s the people who have to choose the best method and strategy for carrying it out. The working class doesn’t want to lose what has cost it so much blood to achieve. Forming an army is nothing but a return to the past, a past that was buried on July 19.
Durruti replied to the new developments in comments that he made to <em>L’Espagne Nouvelle</em>. The newspaper, before printing his reflections, made some remarks about the situation on the front:
<quote>
Forced to choose between submitting to the new law or laying down their arms and leaving the militias, most of the fighters will refuse to do either. They believe that either option would be destructive to the revolution that they intend to carry forward, regardless of the orders received. But it’s a blow to the militiamen’s fighting spirit. The Durruti Column decided to feign ignorance of the new regulations, although it did institute some of their positive aspects and, by doing so, protected itself from charges of indiscipline. This demonstrates Durruti’s personal realism as well as his moral influence on the men in his Column and the country. His peasant slyness is evident in his obstinate and astute responses to our questions:
</quote>
“Is it true that they’re going to reestablish the old army Military Code and hierarchy of command in the militias?”
“No! That’s not how things are. Some conscripts have been mobilized and the single command has been instituted. The discipline necessary for street battles wasn’t enough for a long and hard military campaign against a well-equipped, modern army. We had to overcome that deficiency.” “What does the re-enforcement of discipline mean exactly?”
“Up to now, we had a large number of units, each with their own leaders and forces (which varied radically from one day to the next), with their own armory, transport, supply, a distinct policy toward rearguard inhabitants, and often a very unique way of seeing the war. That had to stop. Some corrections have been made and surely others will follow.”
“But the ranks, military salutes, punishments, and rewards?”
“We don’t need any of that. Here we are anarchists.”
“Hasn’t a recent decree from Madrid put the old Military Code of Justice into effect?”
“Yes, and the government’s decision has had a deplorable effect. They have absolutely no sense of reality. <em>The spirit of that decree totally contradicts the sentiment among the militiamen. We’re very conciliatory, but we know that those two ways of approaching the struggle can’t coexist.”</em>
“If the war is prolonged, do you think that militarism could stabilize itself and put the revolution in danger?”
“Well, that’s exactly why we have to win the war as soon as possible!” With this reply, comrade Durruti smiles at us and we shake hands. [658] For its part, the CNT and the FAI published the following note: It would be childish to give the government absolute control of the proletarian forces. A mobilized worker is not a soldier, but a worker who has exchanged his tool for a rifle. The struggle is the same in the factory as on the battlefield, and so the organizations should control their own forces. The CNT, without waiting for orders from anyone, accepts its responsibilities and gives the following instructions to the member workers affected by the mobilization: “Immediately go to the CNT barracks or to your unions or defense committees, where you will receive the militiaman’s card for your incorporation into the Confederal Columns.” Making this decision, the working class once again affirms its faith in the revolution in progress. [659] The CNT was trying to harmonize the attitude of the anarchist militiamen with the government’s decisions. But what the CNT didn’t know was that the statist machinery led by Largo Caballero was insatiable; and not because Caballero wanted it to be that way, but simply because that was the nature of the apparatus he was reconstructing.
The militarization decree was followed by the nationalization of the war industry, which tore that industry from the workers’ hands and put it under the control of a state bureaucracy seeking to return expropriated businesses to their former owners.
Camilo Berneri denounced the progress of the counterrevolution in his newspaper <em>Guerre di clase</em>, the publication of Italian exiles in Spain. He wrote that “a certain scent of Noske is floating in the air.” [660] Yet complaining wasn’t enough, it was necessary to respond. But how?
Largo Caballero’s policy was clearly directed against the working class and therefore against the CNT. But could his policy have been different? Wasn’t his government formed precisely to reconstruct the old Republican, bourgeois, statist apparatus?
And hadn’t the CNT facilitated that reconstruction by accepting collaboration with the other anti-fascist tendencies? The revolution was in a stalemate and there was no way to break out of it except by crushing the counterrevolutionary forces within the anti-fascist camp while simultaneously fighting Franco’s troops. Was that possible?
A national CNT meeting came up with a solution that might have been feasible if the Soviet Union had not infiltrated Spain, didn’t have Largo Caballero in its grips, and hadn’t moved the Spanish treasury to Russia. The plan was to form a workers’ government called the National Defense Council, which would be based on the CNT and UGT and in which the political parties would play a secondary role. Largo Caballero found the idea attractive momentarily, but a light jostle from Russian Ambassador Marcel Rosemberg returned him to his political senses. Likewise, the Communist Party launched a campaign against the “CNT-UGT conspiracy” and the entire pro-Stalinist wing of the Socialist Party (led by Indalecio Prieto) rose up against the attempt to exclude the political parties from the leadership of the war.
Largo Caballero felt the ground crumbling beneath him. [661] And the Communists, not caring if they provoked a civil war among the anti-fascists, went on the attack against the working class. Vicente Uribe, the Communist Minister of Agriculture, released a decree stating that lands could not be expropriated unless there was incontrovertible evidence that the former owners were truly fascists. This threatened the existence of the 1,500 agricultural collectives that the CNT had organized in Levante, Aragón, Andalusia, and Castilla. But the counterrevolutionaries didn’t stop there: they also went after collective management in the transportation industry, the mines, and elsewhere. All the workers’ conquests were now at risk. There would have to be an armed confrontation, and that would be Franco’s victory.
On July 20, all Spanish militants knew that the revolution would fail if the international proletariat, or at least the French, didn’t come to its aid. By October, any hope that the world proletariat might go into action had dissipated and Spanish revolutionaries had to fight not only against the fascist and “democratic” powers but also the USSR, the “fatherland of the proletariat.”
The Socialist Federation of the Seine held a rally on September 6 in Luna Park demanding that the French Popular Front government give real support to the Spanish revolution. Léon Blum was not invited, but decided to defy the people’s rage and attend anyway. The crowd received him with shouts of “Cannons for Spain! Cannons for Spain!” Then, once the initial commotion had passed, he delivered a sentimental speech:
<quote>
Those who know me well understand that I haven’t changed. Do you think that I don’t support and share your feelings? You heard the representatives of the Spanish Popular Front the other night in the Winter Velodrome. I spoke with them that day, in the morning. Do you think that I listened to them with any less emotion than you? (Applause.) We have to do everything possible to eliminate the threat of war.[662]
</quote>
For the sake of peace, it mattered little if the Spanish people perished! That was the essence of Léon Blum’s message to those workers. And, since crowds can be fickle, he won the day. Everyone stood up and yelled “Viva Léon Blum!” in unison, while the notes of The International mixed with their cheers. They went from “Cannons for Spain!” to applauding Blum, which was the equivalent to applauding the non-intervention policy. That sad scene announced the sure defeat of the Spanish revolutionaries! But in Spain, where the counterrevolutionary noose tightened daily, there was no way to stop fighting.
Given the CNT’s failure to form the National Defense Council, and that it was now maneuvering on the political terrain, it was inevitable that it 556 Stalin’s shadow over Spainwould join the central government. After dissolving the CCAMC and entering the Generalitat, the last stop had to be Madrid. By choosing that route, the CNT selected the worst of all possible routes, since it not only threw all its anti-statist ideas overboard but also deprived itself of its own strength: its activist base, which abhorred that political “turn.” By trying to avoid a battle among anti-fascists, it only delayed it while simultaneously reducing its capacity for fight.
The Stalinists followed the CNT and the anarchists’ internal crisis attentively and hoped to make the most of it. Antonov Ovssenko played a central role here. He constantly repeated that “Comrade Stalin has no political ambitions in Spain and sincerely wants victory for the Spanish Republic.” And the Communist’s propaganda offensive did have some impact inside the CNT and FAI. The Russian Consul confidentially told Lluís Companys that it would be good if a large group of Catalans attended the anniversary commemoration of the October Revolution in Moscow. He even insinuated that it would be magnificent if Durruti was among them. Lluís Companys conveyed Ovssenko’s suggestion to the CNT Regional Committee, which agreed to send CNT men to Russia and also dispatched a group to Bujaraloz to convince Durruti to join the delegation. When the CNT envoys in Bujaraloz finished explaining the idea, Durruti said:
<quote>
Maybe, for propagandistic purposes, it would be good if the CNT sent someone along, but to think that there will be an opportunity to tell the Russian people what our revolution really means and needs is to misunderstand Soviet reality. GPU agents and other authorities will besiege our comrades. They’ll go from celebration to celebration and be a banner on the official rostrum. The government will use them to show the Russian people that Spain is grateful for its help. So, I think it’s a mistake to send CNT representatives and of course useless to send someone from the Column. But, nonetheless, the War Committee will have to make the decision.[663]
</quote>
The War Committee decided that Francisco Carreño would represent the Column in Moscow. Durruti insisted on drafting a greeting to the Russian workers, which Carreño pledged to release in the Soviet capital. If we place Durruti’s text in its historical context—when Stalin’s cult of personality had reached the most absurd extremes—we can be certain that Carreño did not read his statement in Moscow. A letter to Russian workers that didn’t mention the “glorious” Stalin, the “heroic” Bolshevik party, or recognize the Soviet Union as the “fatherland of the proletariat” would necessarily be received as an insult by the Stalinist bureaucracy. Here is the text in question:
<quote>
Comrades:
The purpose of these lines is to send you a fraternal salutation from the Aragón front, where thousands of your brothers fight, as you fought twenty years ago, for the emancipation of a class that has been offended and humiliated over the centuries. Twenty years ago the Russian workers flew the red flag in the East. It was a symbol of the international proletariat, in which you placed all your trust, in hopes that it would help you carry out the momentous work that you had begun. We, the workers of the world, honored that trust and responded selflessly.
Today a revolution has been born in the West and a flag also flies that represents an ideal, which, triumphant, will fraternally unite two peoples once mocked by Czarism on the one hand and a despotic monarchy on the other. Today, Russian workers, we place the defense of our revolution in your hands. We have no faith in self-styled democratic or anti-fascist politicians. We rely on our class brothers, the workers: they are the ones who have to defend the Spanish revolution, just like we defended the Russian Revolution two decades earlier.
Trust us. We are authentic workers. Nothing in the world will make us forsake our principles. We will never betray the working class.
Greetings from all the workers who fight against fascism with weapons in hand on the Aragón front.
Your comrade: B. Durruti
Osera, October 23, 1936[664]
</quote>
The military situation in the Center was becoming more desperate daily and rebel troops had come dangerously close to Madrid. The government began to assume that the city would fall into insurgent hands and seriously considered relocating, taking the leaders of the political parties and labor organizations with it. On October 18, Largo Caballero called a meeting of Popular Front and CNT representatives (despite the fact that the CNT was not a member of the Popular Front).
Horacio Martínez Prieto—who had recently become the organization’s General Secretary—represented the CNT at the meeting. Largo Caballero gave a pathetic speech in which he argued that moving the government would be good for the war effort. No one, not even the Communist Party representative, thought his suggestion was foolish. Just when it seemed like everyone supported the move, Prieto declared that the people would think the government was abandoning Madrid and see its action as a cowardly flight. That, in addition to the continuous defeats that they had been suffering, would be a mortal blow to the militias’ fighting spirit. Caballero’s only response was to say that the CNT “doesn’t have a realistic view of the situation.” But Prieto held firm, adding that “if the government does move, the CNT will stay in Madrid: its National Committee won’t follow.” Given their stance, the Socialist leader had to give up the projected relocation. The CNT thus earned the antipathy of all the Popular Front representatives, who had always imagined themselves “beyond the line of fire” and were now up to their necks in the war thanks to the CNT’s failure to have a “realistic view of the situation.” [665]
Horacio M. Prieto won the first battle. However, Largo Caballero, who didn’t appreciate the CNT’s autonomy, intensified his efforts to get it to share in governmental responsibility. The militarization of the militias and the nationalization of industry and agriculture were designed with that end in mind. Caballero knew that Prieto supported the CNT’s entrance into the government and thought his stubbornness at the October 18 meeting was more of a political maneuver than a reflection of a genuine concern for mass feeling. He assumed that the CNT’s willingness to participate in the government depended on the distribution of ministries. Largo Caballero and Horacio M. Prieto began discreet conversations in which they negotiated the CNT’s admittance into the Cabinet. Ultimately, they decided that the CNT would receive four ministries and that it could select its own ministers. Prieto also promised that they would send Durruti to help defend Madrid. Things began moving quickly.
Prieto knew that getting leading figures of the CNT’s leftwing—that is, militants identified with the <em>FAI</em>—to agree to be ministers would be the best way to make the organization’s rank and file accept its entry into the government. Federica Montseny and Juan García Oliver were the most well-known <em>“FAIistas</em>.” Prieto didn’t consult anyone when selecting the ministers, not even his comrades on the National Committee. He operated like a typical party boss. He called the moderates, Juan López and Juan Peiró, and told them that they would occupy the ministries of Trade and Industry, respectively. Things were different with Montseny and Oliver: not only did they have to overcome anarchist “scruples,” but they also had tactical concerns. A phone call wasn’t sufficient in their cases and so Horacio went to Barcelona to resolve the matter directly. Montseny felt horribly torn when he pressed her to accept the position. At first she refused, claiming that others were better suited. She also consulted her father, the old anarchist Federico Urales, and despite the fact that he counseled her to consent, she continued to resist.
She didn’t agree until Prieto, using all the prerogatives of his post, appealed to her sense of “organizational responsibility.”
Encouraged by his success with Montseny, Prieto then spoke with García Oliver. Things were more difficult with him. For García Oliver, the question of whether or not to join the government wasn’t something that kept him up at night. There were more important tactical concerns that inclined him to say no. He believed that the nerve center of the revolution and the war was in Barcelona and that the CNT would lose everything if it lost its influence and political control there. He thought that it had been a significant mistake to dissolve the CCAMC, but that the CNT had compensated for it by securing its command over the Ministry of Defense, where he occupied the most important post and directly oversaw the militias in Aragón, the War College, and the Air Force school. Likewise, Aurelio Fernández and Dionisio Eroles still ran the police and José Assens still led the “Control Patrols.” It was possible to use these positions to contain the PSUC, which was gaining ground thanks to the weakness of the CNT’s Regional Committee. García Oliver justly claimed that he was an integral part of that fragile equilibrium and that, if he left the Ministry of Defense, someone without his influence would replace him and their positions would slowly fall to the PSUC. García Oliver’s analysis was coherent, and to deny it was to put all the revolutionary conquests at risk. But Prieto didn’t really believe in the revolution and simply wanted to turn the FAI into a political party, using the CNT as an electoral trampoline. He pressured García Oliver, who ended up accepting, but not without first saying that he would hold the National Committee responsible for the consequences. In our opinion, García Oliver committed a serious error here: his experience with the demise of the CCAMC should have led him to emphatically reject Prieto’s proposition. Once again, García Oliver’s reputation as an “anarcho-Bolshevik” seemed to be confirmed, although the charge was unjust, since one of his biggest flaws was an unwavering respect for and submission to CNT decisions.
Prieto only had to convince Durruti to come to Madrid to be successful in his entire endeavor and he took off for Bujaraloz to accomplish the task. However, García Oliver had already informed Durruti about Horacio’s intentions by the time he arrived and, when the discussion came up, Durruti immediately cut off the CNT General Secretary: “No, I won’t leave Aragón, especially when the Aragón Defense Council is in such a precarious position, still unrecognized by the CNT, treated as an ‘uncontrolled’ body by the Communists, and ignored by the Madrid government.” Horacio insisted, reminding him of his “responsibilities” and the need to be “disciplined.” To lecture Durruti about “responsibility” and “disciple,” given everything that he was experiencing, was enough to drive him crazy: “I don’t recognize any discipline other than revolutionary discipline,” he said angrily. And, with respect to “responsibility,” he told Prieto that “in the rearguard, you’ve replaced the old militant responsibility with a disastrous <em>bureaucratic responsibility</em>.” [666]
Prieto had no choice but to leave Aragón, cursing “the irresponsibility of the fighters on the front.”
What led Durruti to oppose the CNT? One thinks of a comment that Francisco Ascaso made to Manuel Buenacasa, when the latter was CNT Secretary and told him that the “organization is always right.” Ascaso responded: “Not always and, on this occasion, I’m the one who’s right.” [667] The fact that Durruti, who had always submitted to the organization’s decisions, was saying no to its Secretary can be seen as a “revolt” against the bureaucratism of the Committees, which had been working in the CNT’s name and standing in for its militants. One could say that Durruti’s revolt began on July 20 and affirmed itself when he made himself the “axis” of libertarian Aragón. [668]
Durruti had learned endless things during the months of civil war, but the main lesson that he received was a full confirmation of the working class’s capacity to govern itself and the damage done by the committees’ bureaucratic leaderism.
Prieto hurried to finalize the details of the CNT’s admission into the government with Largo Caballero as soon as he returned to Madrid. But Durruti’s attitude could ruin everything, if García Oliver went back on his word and a CNT regional meeting in Catalonia was called, at which there would be a debate about the serious step that the National Committee was taking behind closed doors.
On November 4, the press reported that four new ministers had joined Largo Caballero’s government. This surprised the immense majority of CNT and FAI militants. The whole “upstanding” bourgeoisie world was also shocked when it found out that García Oliver—an old outlaw and “legendary bandit”—ran nothing less than the Ministry of Justice.
** CHAPTER XVII. “Viva Madrid without government!”
When the four CNT ministers sat down with the rest of Largo Caballero’s government, the rebel columns maneuvering to take Madrid had nearly surrounded the city. Many leading Republicans and Socialists (including Indalecio Prieto) thought that Madrid would fall in a matter of hours or two or three days at the most. Government officials focused more on leaving the city—escaping to Valencia—than on organizing the resistance. Consumed by panic, the ministers pressured Largo Caballero to order a departure and let the “crazies” make Madrid a new Numantia if they wanted to do so. They intended to stay well beyond the line of fire.[669]
Although there was a different sentiment in Barcelona, and shells weren’t landing in the Plaza de Cataluña as they did in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, there was the same level of turmoil. However, no one there thought to flee and instead concentrated on coming to Madrid’s aid. Everyone knew that if the rebels took the capital, governments around the world would recognize Franco as the leader of Spain and the war would be over. The Generalitat’s Ministry of Defense convened a meeting of all the Column leaders operating in Aragón to discuss the situation. Many of them were already wearing the military uniforms awarded with graduation, which the recent militarization decree compelled. The only ones who hadn’t changed were the CNT Column leaders and Rovira, who represented the POUM’s forces. Díaz Sandino and then Santillán reported on the desperate situation in Madrid and both called for a shipment of troops to the capital. Silence followed their comments and everyone looked to Durruti, who kept quiet like the others. They all knew that it was imperative to help the threatened city immediately, but they hadn’t determined what force to send or the date on which to send it. They suggested that Durruti try to raise the fighters’ morale and inspire the resistance by giving a speech over the radio. He consented. His speech would be broadcast on November 4.
Durruti met with Marcos Alcón after leaving the meeting. The latter was a militant from the 1920s and they decided to have dinner with other longtime comrades from the heroic years. What could be said among that group of revolutionaries who had not given up on the revolution, each of whom was fighting in his own way against the bureaucratism of the committees? Durruti told us that he was alarmed by the rapid progress of the counterrevolution and the havoc that bureaucratism was causing in the ranks of the CNT and FAI. He said that he intended to confront the issue in the speech that they wanted him to give.” Marcos Alcón adds:
<quote>
I clearly remember the effect that his comments had on many of the “responsible” comrades in the CNT and FAI. I have an even more dramatic memory of the panic felt in Catalan political circles. Durruti made them shake with fear when he told them in no uncertain terms that, whatever they did, they wouldn’t be able to strangle the revolution for the sake of some colorless antifascism. I’m not exaggerating, and there are still witnesses who assert that the text of the speech published in the press, even the confederal press, had been censored. The printed version wasn’t anything near what Durruti said. His sentences were like slaps in the face for the opportunists of the revolution. It was a violent, aggressive, yet reasoned speech.[670]
</quote>
Here is the transcript of his comments:
<quote>
Workers! I speak to the Catalan people, to the generous people that four months ago defeated the soldiers who tried to crush them beneath their boots. I send you salutations from your brothers and comrades in Aragón, who are only kilometers from Zaragoza, within sight of the towers of Pilarica. Whatever threat may hover over Madrid, we have to remember that a people have risen and nothing will make them retreat.
We will resist the fascist hordes on the Aragón front and we tell our brothers in Madrid to do the same. The militiamen from Catalonia will know how to carry out their duty, just like they did when they demolished the fascists in the streets of Barcelona.
You can’t forget the workers’ organizations. That’s imperative. There’s only one idea and one goal on the front and in the trenches: we look forward resolutely and focus exclusively on destroying the fascists.
We ask the Catalan people to stop the intrigues and bickering. You must rise to the occasion: stop quarreling and think of the war. The people of Catalonia have the duty to support those fighting on the front. We have to mobilize everyone, but don’t think that it will always be the same people. If Catalan workers have assumed the responsibility of going to the front, it’s now time to demand sacrifices from those who remain in the cities. We have to activate all the workers in the rearguard. Those of us on the front need to know that we can count on the men behind us.
No one should think of salary increases or reduced working hours now. It’s the duty of all workers, especially CNT workers, to make sacrifices, to work as much as necessary.
To the organizations, stop your rows and stop tripping things up! Those of us who are fighting on the front ask for sincerity, above all from the CNT and FAI. We ask the leaders to be genuine. This is a completely modern war and it’s costing Catalonia a lot. The leadership has to realize that we’ll need to start organizing the Catalan economy if this lasts much longer. Of course we’re fighting for something greater and the militiamen will prove it. They blush when they read about attempts to raise money for them in the press, when they see those posters asking you to make a donation. They blush because fascist planes drop newspapers that also talk about campaigns for their soldiers. We must build a granite wall against the enemy. The men at the front want responsibility and guarantees behind us. And we demand that the organizations look after our women and children. They’re mistaken if they think that the militarization decree will scare us and impose an iron disciple on us. We invite those who instituted the decree to come to the front and see our morale and discipline. Then we’ll compare it to the morale and discipline in the rearguard!
Be calm. There’s no chaos or indiscipline on the front. We’re all responsible and cherish your trust. Sleep peacefully. But remember that we’ve left Catalonia and its economy in your hands. Take responsibility for yourselves, discipline yourselves. We mustn’t provoke another civil war after this one. Anyone who thinks that his party is strong enough to impose its policy is wrong. Against the fascists we must marshal one force, one organization, with a unified discipline.
The fascist tyrants will never cross our lines. That is our slogan on the front. To them we say: “You will not pass!” To you: “They will not pass!”[671]
</quote>
This speech, like many of Durruti’s speeches, had a dual effect. For the workers, it showed that he was the same revolutionary as always. For the bureaucrats and politicians, it confirmed that he and those he inspired were still a threat. Clearly, the ball was “up in the air.”
Things were also “up in the air” in Madrid. The rebel columns had come extremely close to the city between November 4 and 5. General Varela had captured Leganés, Alcorcón, and Getafe. The Burgos Junta—the rebel’s government—thought that Madrid’s fall was inevitable and had drafted a list of those who would take control of the capital. Martínez Anido, interior minister in the Burgos Junta, stated that they would execute two million “reds” between Valencia, Madrid, and Barcelona.
Although the militias fought valiantly, they had been losing to the rebels’ modern army. So they ran, hoping that something might miraculously come between them and their assailants. They reached Madrid and could run no more. What they saw when they arrived was unthinkable: women, 564 “Viva Madrid without government!youngsters, and old people building barricades, without orders or pre-defined plans, and making it patently obvious that no one had the slightest intention of leaving the city. It was in this context, which seemed like a reproach upon those who had fled, that the retreating forces prepared to fight back. If they had to die, then at least they’d die fighting. The hoped for miracle had occurred.
Panic reigned in the government. Largo Caballero had pathetically proposed an immediate retreat to Valencia at the first Cabinet meeting attended by the CNT ministers. Leaving Madrid in a stampede didn’t seem like an auspicious beginning to any of them. All, even the moderates, were deeply conflicted about accepting their ministerial positions to begin with. Peiró later wrote that “the CNT had other options, before coming to that.” And they knew that their appointments had caused an uproar in the CNT’s ranks, given the dubious way in which they were made. They were also aware that the militants would never forgive them if, added to everything, they fled the city. To justify its entrance into the government, the CNT declared: “We are absolutely certain that the comrades selected to represent the CNT in the government will know how to carry out their duty and the mission entrusted to them. They are not so much people as warriors and revolutionaries in the service of anti-fascist victory.” [672] Warriors and revolutionaries and, in the face of the first attack, they abandon ground and join the fleeing crowd? Impossible!
“Leave?” García Oliver asked Largo Caballero in the name of the four Confederals. “We just got here! No! The government should stay in Madrid and the ministers should lead the struggle and even fight on the barricades.” All the ministers, including the Communists, looked in horror at the lunatic telling them to man the barricades. Then they looked at the Prime Minister, who made his irritation clear with his gestures. Largo Caballero urged the CNT ministers to “behave reasonably;” time was of the essence and the decision had to be unanimous. García Oliver reasserted his position and this put the government in a deadlock. What to do? Largo Caballero proposed that the CNT members confer about the issue privately because the vote, he repeated, had to be unanimous. The four CNT ministers left the room to meet alone. They couldn’t change a position that they all shared, but they did have to resolve the situation. They decided to call the CNT National Committee and let it decide. Horacio M. Prieto’s response was “Hold firm, but cede if there’s a risk of crisis.” There was a new affirmation from García Oliver and a new response from Largo Caballero: a dead end. The atmosphere was unbearable. The other ministers lost their patience with those CNT madmen; members of Manuel Azaña’s party reproached Largo Caballero for his zeal to put the anarchists in the government. “You yourself created this situation!”
The Confederal ministers left the room again to meet in private. There was another telephone call to Prieto. This time he responded: “Vote, and then return to Madrid immediately.”
There was a heavy silence when García Oliver rose to communicate the result of their deliberations. He announced that “the CNT votes for the government’s departure.” The other ministers let out a loud sigh of relief. [673] From then on, everything moved at a crazy pace. The obsession was: leave, leave, and leave as soon as possible.
The spirit in the street stood in sharp contrast to the cowardliness found among the ministers. The CNT and UGT released a manifesto that said, in essence, “Liberty or Death!” Radio stations broadcast improvised speeches calling upon the people to fight. Street orators roused the crowds who were demanding weapons. The excitement turned into a collective delirium and the individual dissolved into the group. People breathed collectively because they had visions of a collective death.
The government began its escape as soon as darkness fell and its departure wasn’t organized but rather a frenzied flight. Largo Caballero prepared a series of orders for General Miaja, after putting him in charge of the defense of Madrid. [674] He also made up instructions for General Pozas pertaining to the army of the Center. He placed the commands in envelopes and sealed and marked them with: “Do not open before 6:00 am on November 7.”
The government took off for Valencia on a road that passes through Tarancón, a town that is approximately forty kilometers from the capital. The remains of a unit that had fought in Sigüenza were there, under the command of the anarchist Villanueva. Neither Villanueva nor his men knew what had happened in Madrid, but the CNT Defense Committee of the Center had instructed them to stop anyone from leaving the capital and to disarm whomever came to their checkpoint.
<quote>
A large caravan of cars left Madrid, carrying the cowards running from the danger. The militiamen stopped the automobiles in Tarancón with rifles in hand. They asked:
“Where are you going?”
“To Valencia.”
“Why?”
“Special mission”
Everyone seems to be on a special mission. All the spineless weaklings are trying to get special missions. The militiamen don’t budge: “You’re cowards! Go back to Madrid!”
Some, ashamed, return. Others insist on passing.
“Ok, leave your arms. You don’t need them in Valencia.”
Pedro Rico arrives in a car. He’s curled up in a ball with panic written all over his face. The militiamen laugh at him:
“So, you want to clear out too, you pushover?!”
Pedro Rico is the Mayor of Madrid and tries to make an excuse for himself, but a militiaman interrupts:
“We should kill you right here!”
He manages to escape. He heads back toward Madrid, followed by laugher and jeers. He’ll seek refuge in a foreign embassy when he gets to the city.
It’s already late at night. José Villanueva is commanding the groups at the checkpoint. He’s thin and determined. He fought at the Mountain barracks, in Guadalajara, and also Sigüenza. At daybreak he and his men will march off to help defend Madrid. He will fight in the Casa de Campo and die in the battle of Teruel.
A caravan of cars arrives. The militiamen hold them. A voice shouts: “Clear the way! There are ministers in the cars!”
But all the occupants are told to get out of the vehicles. One of them approaches Villanueva:
“This is outrageous! I’m the minister of Foreign Affairs and I’m going to Valencia.”
Villanueva responds: “As a minister, it’s your responsibility to be at the people’s side. You demoralize the fighters by fleeing.”
Three or four more ministers turn up (Communists Jesús Hernández and Vicente Uribe and the CNT’s Juan López). Villanueva disarms them and sends them to a room. Frightened, one of them asks: “What are you going to do?”
“To my liking,” he replied, “put you between us and the fascists when we go into battle tomorrow...”
“This is unbelievable!”
“Executing you would be even better, which is exactly what you deserve.”[675]
</quote>
While traveling to Madrid, Cipriano Mera stopped in Tarancón to speak with Feliciano Benito, whose command post was in the town. He found out that Feliciano wasn’t there, because had left for Madrid after Eduardo Val had summoned him. He spoke with José Villanueva to find out what was new: Villanueva told me that he had detained the following individuals for fleeing Madrid: General Asensio, the Sub-Secretary of War [676] ; Socialist Alvarez del Vayo, the Minister of Foreign Affairs; our comrade Juan López, the Minister of Trade; General Pozas, who claimed he’d been ordered to establish his command post in Tarancón, [677] and a few others.... I called Val in Madrid ... and told him about the people detained and asked him what we should do with them ... Val told me that he was leaving for Tarancón immediately.
It was 2:00 am when comrade Val and Horacio M. Prieto, the CNT’s General Secretary, reached Tarancón. Prieto was also leaving.... Val told us that given the circumstances, particularly in Madrid, everyone should occupy their place: that is, let the detainees go to Valencia, where the government now resides. Likewise, he reiterated that the comrades representing us in the government had opposed the abandonment of Madrid but, since the majority opted to do so, it was best to accept the decision. He said: “So, comrades, once again we’re going to cede. Let them go.” [678] The above story is important because it sets the context for two acts of indiscipline that enabled Madrid to be saved. Clearly men have to live as thinking beings, not automatons...
Miaja’s instructions were to keep his envelope sealed until 6:00 in the morning on November 7. Obviously that was an absurd order, given the situation in Madrid and that he had to assume his post right away. But he hesitated, and turned the envelope over and over in his hands. While trying to decide what to do, he made Vicente Rojo Lluch chief of his General Staff and realized how extraordinarily chaotic things were: nobody knew anything about anything, not even the exact location of those who were supposed to defend the capital. Everything had to be organized from scratch. So, considering all this, Miaja decided to stop waiting and opened the envelope at 11:00 pm. And wouldn’t he be surprised when he found out that the contents of the envelope were not for him but for General Pozas! Therefore Pozas must also have the wrong envelope! Where was he?
Pozas was in Tarancón, detained by Villanueva, which Miaja didn’t know. It was only after Cipriano Mera called Eduardo Val to tell him that Villanueva had detained General Asensio and Pozas that Val contacted Miaja and informed him that Pozas was in Tarancón. Thanks to this, Miaja was able exchange his envelope with the one in Pozas’s possession.[679] There was a heavy battle that night, but the militias fought firmly and without retreating. Radio stations encouraged the fighters with speeches declaring that “Madrid will be the fascists’ tomb!” The CNT’s Local Federation of Unions disseminated a call by radio:
<quote>
Madrid, free of the ministers, commissioners, and “tourists” feels more confident in its struggle.... The people of Madrid don’t need all those tourists who have gone to Valencia and Catalonia. Madrid, free of ministers, will bury the fascists! Onward, militiamen! Viva Madrid without government! Viva the social revolution!
</quote>
In Valencia, the CNT and FAI released an even more militant statement:
<quote>
We offer our homes and our bread to Madrid’s women, children, elderly, and injured. But we have only disdain for the cowards and deserters running from the capital: comrades, make their lives impossible![680]
</quote>
The CNT’s reaction in Madrid, Valencia, and Barcelona embodied the revolutionary spirit of the people. As always, during key historical moments, the people are more radical than their leaders. It was in the midst of this turbulence that Durruti gave the speech cited above. His stance coincided with that of the working masses and would only enhance their radicalization. Durruti’s popularity shot up in a few hours and he became the voice of the people’s will. Durruti said out loud what the workers felt:
<quote>
We’re fighting to crush the enemy on the front. But is that the only thing? No! There is also an enemy among us that undermines our revolutionary conquests. We’ll crush it as well.
</quote>
Many others spoke in the same terms as Durruti, but there was a difference and the people knew it. Durruti combined theory and practice. He said no to militarism and didn’t dress up like a general. He said no to privileges and lived among the militiamen. He fought for a classless society and the daily practice in the Column came as close to it as possible. Durruti’s prestige emerged from his revolutionary coherence.
** CHAPTER XVIII. The crossing of the manzanares river
In this chapter, like many others, we must confront contradictory accounts of Durruti’s activities. The first difficulty arises when we try to establish exactly when the Durruti Column reached Madrid. The claim that the Durruti Column entered Madrid on November 13 is very important for those who argue that the fascists were able to set foot in Madrid’s University City because the Durruti Column cowered before the enemy avalanche and allowed them to pass. From that, it is only natural to conclude that “CNT militias contributed nothing to the defense of Madrid and the Communist Party was responsible for the resistance.” One can find this outlandish assertion in the now “classic” works of endless “impartial” historians. But what if the Durruti Column actually arrived in Madrid on November 16? That simple fact would oblige historians—the honest ones, at least—to revise much of what has been written about the matter and to burden other parties with the nationalist’s entrance into the University City. This would put General Kleber’s “heroic legend” in doubt as well as the inordinate importance given to the squads of the Fifth Regiment. [681] Indeed, historians would have to focus more on the anonymous activists of the Construction Workers’ Union, who were the real heroes of Madrid’s resistance. For our sake, as iconoclasts, we shatter myths.
On November 3, Yagüe’s Regulars (one of the rebel columns attacking Madrid) occupied Getafe, thirteen kilometers outside the capital, and advanced up to the buildings in the outer perimeter of Carabanchel Alto. Largo Caballero did not want to leave Madrid without first implicating the CNT in the government. He argued with and almost imposed himself on Manuel Azaña in his effort to get him to allow the CNT to join the government. Four CNT ministers entered Largo Caballero’s second government on November 4. The next day, Largo Caballero argued that the government should leave Madrid and all the ministers took off for Valencia on November 6. General Miaja received orders to defend the Spanish capital and that night made Lieutenant Colonel Vicente Rojo Chief of his General Staff. He began to organize the city’s defense and prepare to fight the assailing columns with any means possible. At the same time, the people of Madrid rose up heroically and aided the soldiers.
It is at this juncture that the myth begins, as one can appreciate in the following account:
<quote>
Generals Varela and Yagüe attacked at dawn on November 8: Asensio, Castejón (who was injured), and Delgado Serrano’s Columns all went in the direction of the Casa de Campo. Tella and Barrón pressed toward the Toledo and Segovia bridges in a diversionary movement. Meanwhile, the XI International Brigade paraded along the Gran Vía to delirious cheers. It was composed of the Edgar André, Paris Commune, and Dombrowski battalions (German, French, and Polish, respectively). General Kleber led the Brigade and Nicoletti [De Vittorio] served as its Commissar. There were about two thousand men. The Brigade took its position in the Parque del Oeste, but some of its units went into action in the Casa de Campo. The enemy attack was extremely intense there, and its air force bombed Madrid mercilessly. But Varela’s attack failed; all he managed to do was penetrate the Casa de Campo.
Mola took charge of the whole sector the following day. His forces occupied the strategic Garabitas Hill and mounted their artillery on it so as to fire on Madrid. They came close to the Manzanares River near the Los Franceses Bridge.
</quote>
Tuñón de Lara [682] did not invent the preceding cliché; he just copied it from others, as others will surely copy it from him. This is how authors will continue to describe the first forty-eight hours of Madrid’s resistance. The account is correct in general and only inaccurate with respect to the IX International Brigade. Fortunately, Lieutenant Colonel Vicente Rojo gives us an exact account of where Kleber and his men were at the time: One can be sure that they’ll say what they want, all those books that relate the event in those or similar terms, as well as the brilliant journalists who announced the city’s imminent fall that day from their parapets in Madrid’s hotels. Kleber and his men (who fought valiantly and efficiently some days later, along with the twenty or twenty-five thousand others who heroically defended the capital) were simply sunbathing somewhere in the Tajo or Tajuña valley, where they couldn’t even hear an echo of the fighting.... and he didn’t meet with Berzin, Kleber, and General Miaja, as is often claimed, on November 8, 10, 0r 12 (dates that Hugh Thomas mentions) or any other day to find out where the attack on the capital was going to be repeated. [683]
The XI International Brigade went into action on November 12 and, despite fighting brilliantly, lost ground in the area that would become the Achilles heel of the University City:
<quote>
The enemy Column managed to sink its first echelon into the Manzanares on November 13, between the Los Franceses Bridge and the Hippodrome. It established a front of approximately one thousand meters in length, although it did not cross the river. For its part, Column 4 moved in an eastward and northern direction, but without reaching the wall. The XI International Brigade fought brilliantly.[684]
</quote>
The XI Brigade fought but gave ground. That would be a serious charge if one were speaking of troops from another political sector. What do the historians say about the Durruti Column’s first steps in Madrid? Robert G. Colodny describes it very <em>colorfully</em>:
<quote>
On November 14, the Durruti Column of Catalan anarchists reach Madrid, and its 3,000 men, well armed, wearing beautiful green uniforms, paraded up the Gran Vía, their martial display evoking the same wild acclaim as that which greeted the International Brigade <em>six days previously</em>. Rojo and Miaja were elated with the arrival of the tough-looking fighters from Catalonia, little realizing that the Catalans would soon cancel the hard-won gains of the Madrid militia and the International battalions.
García Oliver, the anarchist Minister of Justice, accompanied Durruti to the War Ministry for an interview with General Miaja and Lt. Colonel Rojo. The anarchist chieftains demanded that the Durruti Column be given an independent sector of the front in order that their achievements not be claimed by other units. Miaja agreed and assigned Durruti the key sector in Casa de Campo.
“We will save Madrid and then return to the walls of Zaragoza,” said Durruti, as he agreed to attack in the morning and drive the rebels from the areas they still held in the park. The anarchist commander asked for an adviser from the International Brigades and was given “Santi” from the staff of General Goriev.
On November 15, Durruti demanded all the aviation and artillery in the city as support for his column. Artillery was concentrated from all the city sectors and the few tactical planes at the disposition of the General Staff flew over the Catalans, but the machine-gun from the rebel lines demoralized the anarchists and they refused, despite the threats of their valiant commander, to go into battle.[685]
Durruti, furious and ashamed, promised Miaja that the attack would be repeated in the morning. The President of the Madrid Junta of Defense then made a tragic blunder. He left the Catalans in the Casa de Campo, in the area directly in front of the University City.[686]
</quote>
Robert G. Colodny is writing science fiction here, as he adapts himself to Koltsov’s “bible” and confuses and deliberately mixes up people and events. It was the PSUC’s Libertad-López Tienda Column marching in the military parade that he describes. Although they were Catalan, they were not the Catalans of the Durruti Column, who were still in Barcelona on November 13 (as we will show in the following chapter). And the Catalans who were soon going to “cancel the hard-won gains of the Madrid militia and the International battalions” were not the Catalan anarchists but the PSUC Marxists.
We previously noted that the Generalitat’s Ministry of Defense called a meeting of Column leaders to discuss Madrid’s defense. At that meeting, they decided that Durruti would address the Spanish workers by radio. Durruti gave this speech on November 4 and then returned to Aragón. The Generalitat’s Ministry of Defense held another meeting of Column leaders on November 11, which we will discuss in the following chapter. But important things happened in the interim, events in which we find all the biased “misunderstandings” about the “crossing of the Manzanares River.” Under the GPU’s wise counsel, the Communist Party (the PSUC, in Catalonia) went to war against the CNT. [687] One of the GPU’s recommendations was to speed up the shipment of troops to Madrid. Their goal was to counteract the effect that the possible arrival of Durruti and his men could have in the capital. [688] The PSUC thus threw together a Column, which it named Libertad-López Tienda. A member of this Column will help us understand the formation:
<quote>
- In response to the request for more troops from Madrid’s Defense Ministry, the Libertad-López Tienda Column was hurriedly organized in barracks controlled by the UGT-PSUC. It left Barcelona for Madrid on November 9 and was composed primarily of the following elements:
- A majority were Marxists (or at least individuals with UGT or PSUC membership cards).
- Remnants of Marxist Columns that had broken up on the Aragón front, whose members had returned to Barcelona and joined the new Columns. Troops from the 1935 draft who could not go back to their residences after the dissolution of the army in 1936 and who were roaming around Barcelona.<br>They also signed up, in part, because they’d heard that the conscripts were going to be mobilized and had discovered some of their old officers in the Column.
- A group of professional soldiers ... who joined because of the danger of circulating through Barcelona with military identification papers alone (not very well seen then). The UGT, for its part, did not stop them from enlisting, either because they were needed or because López Tienda, who had a certain prestige among them, imposed it.
As noted, the Column was put together quickly and divided it into Battalions.... There were more than 2,500 men in total. Professional soldiers commanded almost all the Battalions, <em>Centurias</em>, and Sections.
The men did not receive any military training, although they were equipped and uniformed in a regular enough way. (They weren’t armed, but received weapons on the way to Madrid.) It was the first unit—the only one, I think—in which the commanders wore insignia indicating their rank (that is, the stars).[689]
</quote>
The Column received Czech weapons and a small quantity of ammunition in Valencia. “They continued marching to Albacete where, as indicated to López Tienda in Valencia, the Column would be armed completely.”
<quote>
According to this witness, they received nothing in Albacete, although the officers were obliged to exchange the stars for the “bars,” the emblem designating commanders in the army that was being formed. There were several incidents during the march from Albacete to Madrid and part of the Column got lost.
López Tienda, the officers around him, and Miaja and Rojo were in constant contact. The following day, on the morning of November 13, the Column paraded on Madrid’s Gran Vía to the crowd’s cheers for the “Catalans coming to defend Madrid!” ... In the early afternoon, the Column took its positions in the upper parts of the Moncloa-Parque del Oeste, particularly in the previously opened trenches along Moret and Rosales avenues.
The Column was totally inactive ... during the day of November 14, [although] López Tienda and his immediate collaborators were quite busy. As Mr. Martínez Bande[690] says, he had been ordered to put his Column under Durruti’s command, who had arrived with the bulk of his Column (made up by anarcho-syndicalists) from the Aragón front. The Palacios Column must have received the same order. However, this order never existed more than on paper. The Libertad-López Tienda Column never joined Durruti’s forces.... López Tienda was personally opposed to putting himself under Durruti’s command and ceding his control over “his” Column; the professional soldiers also didn’t like the idea of reporting to a militia leader; and the Commissar and part of the Column [Marxist] categorically refused to fight under an anarchist like Durruti. So, the command never took effect and López Tienda continued to receive his orders directly from the Defense Council: that is, from Rojo and Miaja.[691]
</quote>
Here we must interject: To save time, Durruti left his men in Valencia and traveled to Madrid with Manzana, Yoldi, and surely García Oliver. He had to tell Miaja and Rojo to prepare for the arrival of his Column. Rojo had planned a counter-offensive for the early morning hours on November 15 and, as Martínez Bande noted, put the Libertad-López Tienda Column under Durruti’s command the previous day, given that he had come to Madrid to be the general leader of the Catalans. López Tienda and the Marxists in the Column rejected this order. As we will see, the Durruti Column arrived in Madrid in the morning of November 15 and did not enter the battle until November 16, which means that neither Durruti nor his column had anything to do with what took place on November 15, which was when General Asensio’s rebels crossed the Manzanares River. The following statement on the issue is definitive:
<quote>
On November 15, López Tienda gave the Column commanders the following order: “Advance and take positions along the banks of the Manzanares, especially in front of the Los Franceses Bridge,” where the nationals were attacking furiously in an effort to establish a bridgehead that would enable them to enter Madrid. The order noted that they had amassed large numbers of aerial and battleship forces as well as Moroccans. They must not cross the river anywhere, especially over the bridge.
The approximate positions that each Battalion would have to cover and hold were marked out on a map. Militarily speaking, they crossed the Parque del Oeste in a laughable and absurd way [remember that the Column lacked all military training, despite the presence of the professional soldiers]. This resulted in our first losses, even before we took the designated positions. There is no doubt that the nationalist forces launched a vigorous attack and that the Republicans held their ground. Dynamite had been placed on the Los Frances Bridge earlier, and we blew it up then, for fear that the nationalists might fight their away across. There were two tanks and Moroccan troops near the middle of the bridge when it exploded. They had almost forced through, since the Republican’s fire had diminished as a result of the shortage of weapons and ammunition, and also because the artillery was focused on the forces on the grounds of the Casa de Campo.
As an anecdote, in an interval in the fighting shortly before we blew up the bridge, a small group of Civil Guardsmen occupying an area on the right flank of the [López Tienda] Column left its position and approached the bridge. The national forces did nothing to stop them from crossing the bridge [had they been told to expect this?] and the Republicans, although somewhat surprised, also did nothing, wondering if it was a “maneuver ordered by the command.” They broke into patriotic cheers once they crossed the bridge and, joining the nationalists, began to shoot at their old position.
There was some subsequent fighting, but it less intense after we had demolished the bridge, except for sporadic and violent attacks under its ruins.
But this is all I can describe as an eyewitness. I was wounded in the early part of the afternoon and vacated from the front with many others. I received emergency care, then I was hospitalized, and then later evacuated. This is where my relationship with the Libertad-López Tienda Column and the Madrid front ends.
But, “apparently,” from what “I heard” before I was evacuated, and what a member of the Column “told me”—someone with whom I was connected throughout the war—the Libertad-López Tienda Column existed on paper alone after only forty-eight hours of operation.[692]
</quote>
Given this testimony, Vicente Rojo’s explanation of the crossing of the Manzanares makes sense:
<quote>
We had to stop their attack immediately, with all the resources that we had placed there during the preceding days, which were superior to those that we had anywhere else. But in this case, the enemy applied extreme pressure to a very narrow part of the front. They also managed to cause one of our improvised units to panic. This unit, which had come from other fronts and hadn’t experienced the city’s reaction to the crisis on November 7, hadn’t grasped the nature the struggle in Madrid.
That unit withdrew in disorder, which spread to our other forces. The enemy was thus able to overwhelm them and enter the University City. They occupied various buildings and got as far as the Hospital Clínico.[693]
</quote>
Obviously, the Durruti Column was not an “improvised unit,” since it had been fighting in Aragón since July 25. We can thus infer that Rojo is not referring to the Durruti Column. Nonetheless, his work is confusing, particularly when he mixes up the “Catalans.” Fortunately Francisco Hidalgo’s insistence on the improvised nature of the Libertad-Lopez Tienda Column clears up any ambiguity.
Alcofar Nassaes was one of the first to see this matter clearly. He writes:
<quote>
Today we know that the Romero Column defended the Los Franceses Bridge, which had absorbed the men of the old Francisco Galán Column. At its right there was the IV Mixed Brigade that Arellano led, which Romero took over after Arellano died in the University City that day. There was also the Catalan PSUC Libertad-López Tienda Column. We sincerely believe that these last two units were responsible for the passage of the nationalist forces to the other side of the river. But, then, where was the Durruti Column? Very possibly in reserve in Madrid. It didn’t enter into battle until that night.[694]
</quote>
** CHAPTER XIX. The Durruti Column in Madrid
The CNT militants in the Center region were the first to request Durruti’s presence in Madrid. Recognizing that his legendary name could offer an immense psychological boost to the resistance, they decided at a November 9 meeting to bring him into the struggle for the capital. David Antona and Miguel Inestal went to Bujaraloz to convince him to come to the city. Apparently the government had the same idea and Federica Montseny, on its behalf, also set out to secure an agreement with Durruti. [695]
There was also activity in Barcelona designed to get Durruti to go to Madrid. Soviet Consul Ovssenko told the Generalitat’s Ministry of Defense that if it sent reinforcements to Madrid quickly, the Russians would arm them. Diego Abad de Santillán, occupying García Oliver’s old post in the Ministry of Defense, urgently summoned all the Column leaders in Aragón to a meeting in Barcelona on the evening of November 11. The Column representatives wondered who among them could best lead the Catalan forces in the capital. They decided to send 12,000 men and all agreed that Durruti should be at the head:
<quote>
Durruti was the only person to object. He was excited and asked us to leave him on the Aragón front. “If you saw the streetcars in Zaragoza, as I do from our lines, you wouldn’t want to go either,” he said to Santillán. I told him that it was pointless to think of an attack on Zaragoza, given our situation. Then he said that they should send someone else: Miguel Yoldi, who was more capable than he. Even if that were correct, I said, Miguel Yoldi’s name wasn’t “Durruti” and “Durruti” was what we needed to raise the fighters’ morale in Madrid. He finally gave in and that’s how the meeting ended. Each one went to his post to organize the men that he would send to the capital.[696]
</quote>
Durruti called Bujaraloz in the morning on November 12 and asked them to prepare the following forces for Madrid: the 1<sup>st</sup> and 8<sup>th</sup> <em>Agrupación</em> (led by José Mira and Liberto Ros, respectively), in addition to the 44<sup>th</sup> , 48<sup>th</sup>, and 52<sup>nd</sup> <em>Centurias</em>, which were made up by internationals exclusively. These forces included miners, who were experts with dynamite and also the most experienced. They had participated in the occupation of Siétamo, Fuente de Ebro, and had led the counter-offensive in Farlete against Urrutia’s Mobile Column. They were not novices by any stretch of the imagination. The total number of these troops was approximately 1,400 men, which is a much smaller number than that advanced in texts that we have cited. Miguel Yoldi, Ricardo Rionda (Rico), Manzana, and Mora (Durruti’s secretary) constituted the force’s War Committee.
To reconstruct the Durruti Column’s departure from Barcelona and its arrival in Madrid, we will use two memoirs, written months after the events and many kilometers from one another. If one of the authors—José Mira— can be suspected of hiding some facts to protect his organization (the CNT), the other, Belgian journalist Mathieu Corman, is free of that sin, since he was not an anarchist and joined the Column’s international group for reasons of solidarity alone. Corman writes:
<quote>
[On November 13], in the port—under the constant pressure of Durruti’s “Let’s go! Let’s go!”—the militiamen feverishly unloaded box after box from a ship that had arrived from Central America. They were full of rifles or pieces of machine-guns. Others piled the crates into railway cars. None had slept in forty-eight hours and when the operation was over that night they would begin a long, eight hundred kilometer trip. The cars, pulled by two powerful locomotives, bore the heavy load of our war materiel, some of which would go to the internationals when it reached Madrid.[697]
</quote>
Corman describes Durruti in the Barcelona port; wearing glasses and recording the materiel unloaded under the light of the streetlamps. This indicates that it was nighttime or at least already dark on November 13. Although there are endless errors in Joan Llarch’s book about Durruti’s death [698] —and, inexcusably, he fails to cite his sources—Llarch does provide some historical data that can be useful when one knows the outlines of Durruti’s life. We will draw upon his book to expand on Corman’s account of the unloading in the port, which occurred on platform number eight. The arms were Swiss and Mexican and, although the Russians had purchased them at a high price, they were pure junk. The Mexican guns were Winchesters with five bullet cartridges, like the mauser rifles, but their caliber wasn’t Spanish, which made it extremely difficult to find ammunition for them. That, in addition to the fragility of their butts, which broke after a light blow, drastically reduced the utility of these weapons. The Swiss rifles were even worse: they were an 1886 model and the ammunition (also from that period) blocked their barrels after a few shots. Durruti didn’t have a chance to test the arms in Barcelona, but when he learned about their quality in Madrid, he called Santillán and told him that “he could shove the rifles up his ass ... but immediately send thirty-five thousand ‘FAI’ hand grenades.” [699]
Although we don’t know the exact hour, the expedition took off for Valencia in a cargo train during the night of November 13. While the train took its route, Durruti flew to Valencia with Manzana and Yoldi. When the expedition reached Turia around noon the following day, Durruti and García Oliver were waiting on the station’s platform. [700] He spoke with José Mira and Liberto Ros, leaders of the <em>Agrupaciones</em>, and told them that they would have to complete the trip to Madrid in buses or trucks because rebel bombers had destroyed some of the railroad lines. He said that he and García Oliver would fly to the capital and prepare for the Column’s arrival. They arrived in the Madrid in the afternoon on November 14, as Rojo and Miaja were planning their attack for the next day. Durruti’s presence in the capital led many to believe that his Column was there as well as. Durruti and Rojo may have thought that the Column would arrive that night, which would help explain the order putting the Libertad-López Tienda Column under Durruti’s command.
Durruti and García Oliver bumped into Koltsov while going from the War Ministry to 111 Serrano Street, the headquarters of the CNT Defense Committee. Koltsov left a picturesque account of their conversation in his <em>Diario</em>, which we transcribe for its curiosity:
<quote>
The Catalan Column arrived with Durruti [Koltsov merges Durruti with the Catalan Libertad-López Tienda Column here]. They are three thousand, well armed and well equipped men, who look nothing like the anarchist fighters who surrounded him in Bujaraloz.
Durruti gave me a jubilant hug, as if I were an old friend. Joking, he immediately said:
“See? I haven’t taken Zaragoza, they haven’t killed me, and I haven’t become a Marxist. Everything remains ahead.”
He’s thinner. He’s more disciplined. His aspect is more martial. He has assistants and speaks to them not like he’s addressing a rally, but as a leader. He requested a (Russian) officer-adviser. They suggested Santi. He asked several questions about the Russian and then accepted him. Santi is the first Communist in Durruti’s units. When he appeared, Durruti said to him:
“You’re a Communist. That’s OK. We’ll see. Don’t leave my side. We’ll eat together and sleep in the same room. We’ll see.”
“I’m going to have some free time, as is normal in war,” Santi replied. “I ask permission to leave your side during those hours.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to teach the men how to shoot machine-guns. They shoot very poorly with them now. I want to teach some groups and create machine-gun sections.”
Durruti smiled: “I’d also like to learn. Teach me too.”[701]
</quote>
García Oliver came to Madrid at the same time; he is now Justice Minister. Durruti and Oliver function as a pair.
The two famous anarchists spoke with Miaja and Rojo. They explained that the anarchist units have come from Catalonia to save Madrid and that they will save it. However, they won’t remain here afterwards, but will go back to Catalonia and the walls of Zaragoza. Later they ask for an independent sector, where the anarchists can demonstrate their successes. Otherwise there could be misunderstandings, and other parties might even try to claim anarchist victories as their own.
Rojo proposed putting the Column in the Casa de Campo, where they will attack the fascists tomorrow and kick them out of the park in the Southeast direction. Durruti and Oliver agreed. [702] The value of Koltsov’s narrative is that it clearly reveals the origins of the story advanced by Hugh Thomas, Tuñón de Lara, and others, who never took the trouble to verify what they copied from him. Unfortunately this author of “historical fiction,” as his colleague Ehrenburg described him, has been a true “mine of information” for the historians of the Spanish Civil War.
Eduardo de Guzmán writes:
<quote>
The situation is desperate at sunset on November 15. There are no forces to command. There is no one to stop the enemy advance. To take men from one sector would be to leave it exposed. But if that doesn’t happen, Madrid might be lost tomorrow...
Fortunately, the Durruti Column reaches Vallecas that evening. They are four thousand vigorous and determined fighters, four thousand anarchists hardened by four months of incessant battle. They have come in one go from the Aragón front. Although they’re suffering from a punishing fatigue after completing the long journey, Durruti tells Miaja: “At 2:00 in the morning, my men will be in their assigned position....”[703]
</quote>
De Guzmán is mistaken about the number of fighters, but correctly places the Column’s intervention at 2:00 am on November 16.
We will now consider the state of the University City after the rebels ruptured the front on November 15:
<quote>
The rebels didn’t capture the University City in “ten minutes” [as some foreign writers suggest]. The nationalist troops had to take its buildings one by one and the anarchists, Communists, and internationals defended them tenaciously. Both sides suffered terrible loses. The Republicans reacted to the enemy crossing of the river by placing all their reserves in the University City, in order to launch a counter-attack that would restore the situation. It was surely during that counter-attack that the Durruti Column entered into action. But, due to poor leadership led, it was decimated.
To surround the new nationalist wedge, the internationals of the XI Brigade occupied the northern part of the University City—the so-called Palace area—leaving its old zone up to the San Fernando Bridge to Sabio’s V Mixed Brigade. The remains of the López Tienda Column, the Durruti Column, and the battered IV Brigade (now commanded by Romero) completed the front. Reserves from the V Regiment—the Heredia and Ortega Columns—soon arrived as reinforcements. Colonel Alzugaray took control of the defense of the entire University City area.
Kleber established his command post in the Club de Puerta de Hierro while his battalions advanced. He put the Paris Commune Column in Philosophy and Letters, the Dombrowski Column in the Casa de Velázquez, and the Thaelmann Column to its left, on the other side of the Cantarrana stream next to the viaduct. The V Brigade covered the right, up to the river. Durruti occupied the Science Department, with his men in the School of Dentistry, the Departments of Medicine and Pharmacy, and the Santa Cristina Asylum. The V Regiment was placed further behind, at the Clínico and the hospitals nearby.[704]
</quote>
Vicente Rojo and Miaja ordered the counter-attack to begin at the crack of dawn on November 16. We will examine the Durruti Column’s participation in the action and, to do so, we’ll continue using Corman and Mira’s writings. But we must first say a word about a meeting held that night in the CNT Defense Committee headquarters. We take the following from Cipriano Mera:
<quote>
Around ten in the evening, a phone call came into the command post urgently demanding my presence at the CNT Defense Committee. I hurried to Serrano Street, where I met Eduardo Val, Durruti, García Oliver, Federica Montseny, Manzana (Durruti’s assistant), Yoldi, and some other comrades.... Durruti wanted to know my opinion of the situation in Madrid. I told him what I thought and also about the suggestion we had made to General Miaja, Lieutenant Colonel Rojo, and our Defense Committee [Cipriano Mera and Commander Palacios proposed an immediate counter-attack when they learned that the fascists had crossed the Manzanares]. I emphasized how dangerous it was that the enemy had occupied the heights of Cuatro Caminos and also pointed out that a sewer ran from the Hospital Clínico to the Manzanares, through which the rebels could supply their forces without being seen. [Mera had once worked as a builder in the Hospital Clínico.] Later, Mera said to Durruti:
“It seems like you’ve come with sixteen thousand men.”
“No; only four to five thousand,” he said.[705] “How do you think we should counter-attack?” ....
“Get it in your head, Buenaventura, that there aren’t only enemies on the other side. General Miaja seems to want to do right by us but he’s surrounded by Communists and they don’t want the people to think that Durruti—the most distinguished anarchist guerrilla—is responsible for Madrid’s defense, when they, with their posters and musical bands, try to make themselves look like the city’s only defenders.”
“I know, Cipriano. And I didn’t want to come here without my entire Column. Our organization demanded that I bring only part of it, to see if we could save the situation. The government also insisted, given the risks, that I leave some of my forces in Aragón, since there wasn’t enough time to fully relieve my troops there. So, that’s where things are. What we can do now is unite our two Columns. That seems feasible to me, taking yours from where it is and joining it with mine.”
“That’s impossible under these circumstances,” I stated. “Miaja will object. He thinks my forces should protect the sector that they’re occupying now, since it’s one of the most delicate.”
“OK, then I’ll have to work with my people alone,” Durruti said. “I’ll do as I’m ordered: counter-attack in the early morning toward the Casa de Velázquez and try to get up to the Manzanares. I would have preferred to wait another day, so my forces could rest and learn more about the enemy’s positions. But we’ll do what they command.”
“What I can do,” I responded, “is give you a Centuria that’s familiar with the area, so it can guide your men.”
“It’s too late for that today. You can do it tomorrow.”
We said goodbye with a hug. I wished him luck and went back to my command post.[706]
</quote>
José Mira writes:
<quote>
It was approximately 9:00 am [on November 15] when we entered on the Vallecas Bridge. Workers and fighters welcomed us passionately as we marched through the city. The fascists launched a cowardly attack on our Column as we passed the Finnish Embassy. We assaulted the Embassy and inside found a real arsenal of automatic weapons and hand grenades, which we seized.... After liquidating that rebel stronghold, we stopped on Hortaleza road, where we were given accommodation at a children’s school located near the Ciudad Lineal train crossing.
At four in the afternoon, a town car pulled up to the gate of the school and an agitated Federica Montseny got out. She hastened to tell us: “Comrades, the Moors have reached Rosales Avenue. It’s extremely important that these forces go there right now, unless you want the grief of wondering how they took Madrid this very afternoon.”
</quote>
In reply, Liberto Ros and José Mira said:
<quote>
“Durruti told us not to leave here under any circumstances when he left. We have to wait for him to come back, which surely won’t be long, if what you just said is true.”
“Good luck to all!” she said, and tore out quickly. [707]
</quote>
It was 4:00 pm on November 15. Mira’s statements, both the written and what he has communicated to us verbally, are reliable and consistent with those made by Mera. José Mira continues:
<quote>
Meanwhile, the enemy was advancing along the Bombilla and had even reached the Los Franceses Bridge. The bridge had been blown up earlier, so they waded across the river and entered through that part of the University City.
Durruti arrived a few minutes after Federica left. He told us: “Prepare to leave at 2:00 am for the Celular Prison. There, on the ground, we’ll study the situation and determine the best way to counter-attack.”
We covered the distance to the Moncloa barracks on foot. The “Madrid Group” went at the head, led by comrade Timoteo, who would die in battle in Puerto Aravaca on January 5, 1937. When we reached the prison, I saw Durruti and Manzana impatiently awaiting our arrival. Over a map of the University City, they pointed out the positions that we had to occupy. Manzana suggested that we examine the terrain a bit. Protected by darkness, we marched toward the Plaza de la Ciudad, and returned shortly afterwards, leaving comrades Miguel, Navarro, and Marino en route, so that they could direct the forces that were going to follow later.
We quickly distributed the hand grenades and ammunition that each militiaman could carry on his back...[708]
</quote>
General Kleber, like the other military leaders, received orders to begin the counter-attack in the early morning hours. But Kleber—according to Vicente Rojo—ignored that order and did not enter into action until 10:00 am; this delay “benefited the enemy, by giving it time to reinforce and organize its positions.” [709] But “those who did attack in the near-darkness were Asensio’s soldiers. Despite their fatigue and smaller numbers, these rebels conquered the Casa de Velázquez and the school of Agronomic Engineers, precisely in the area entrusted to the XI International Brigade. The attack surprised the Dombrowski battalion, which had recently set up camp in the Casa de Velázquez, and two-thirds of its men fled. After fighting heroically, the remaining third was completely annihilated....” [710]
The occupation of the Casa de Velázquez and the School of Agronomic Engineers, coupled with the scattering of the Dombrowski battalion, doubtlessly made the counter-attack much more difficult, particularly for the Durruti Column, which was setting foot in the University City for the first time.
José Mira’s continues:
<quote>
We deployed in two flanks at daybreak. Liberto and his force entered through the Parque del Oeste and continued forward until they occupied the Rubio Institute. They encountered ferocious resistance during their advance. I was designated the left flank, which included the Santa Cristina Asylum and adjacent buildings, the wall along the avenue that ran up to the Hospital Clínico [occupied by the V Regiment], Casa de Velázquez, and Philosophy and Letters, where we had to establish contact with Liberto through the Palace and an International group [the XI Brigade] along the northern edge of the building.
Our push coincided with an enemy advance and both sides were exposed. There was terrible carnage, for them as well as us. We had to fight hand-to-hand on several occasions.
</quote>
Mira continues his account of the fighting without being precise about places, although we can suppose that they occupied the Santa Cristina Asylum: “At 6:00 am,” he continues, “the Hospital Clínico was occupied and remained in the care of the 44 <sup>th</sup> <em>Centuria</em>, led by Mayo Farrán.” Mira says that at around 9:00 in the morning “ninety enemy batteries, hundreds of planes, and numerous tanks supported the enemy’s relentless drive: the earth boiled with shrapnel.”
The “microscopic planes,” later known as “chatos” [trans.: snub-nose] also “joined the battle and confronted one hundred rebel trimotor fighter planes with indescribable courage. Despite their smaller numbers, our bold aviators shot down ten enemy planes, which fell on our lines.” “At 11:00 am, forces led by a commander named “Minenza” appeared at Cuatro Caminos. They carried a written order from the General Staff instructing them to garrison in the Clínico, aiding the advance of our forces...” Documents we have consulted indicate that the men under “Minenza” were members of the V Regiment. Thus, like Kleber’s forces, the V Regiment joined the battle only after a considerable delay. “Meanwhile,” Mira continues “several attempts to take the Casa de Velázquez ended in failure due to the lack of men, since most of our reinforcements had been decimated and others were occupying rescue positions [Santa Cristina] in the early morning hours.”
Mira writes that they were fighting to capture the Casa de Velázquez and Philosophy and Letters on the night of November 16. He also notes that there was hardly any combat in the Hospital Clínico area then and that “Commander Minenza left or evacuated, whatever you want to call it, the Hospital Clínico at 11:00 pm.” He later adds that “we finally had the satisfaction of embracing the internationals who had managed, with tremendous effort, to break though the perimeter and help us carry out the final assault on Philosophy and Letters.” But, he notes, “we had to defend ourselves throughout the night against non-stop nationalist attacks on the building.” He continues:
<quote>
“We hadn’t eaten since we started our drive through the University City or done anything to mitigate the overpowering exhaustion. Those were our circumstances when we watched the sun rise on November 17. We kept fighting with the same intensity as we had the previous evening.[711]
</quote>
November 17 was tragic. The bombing of the capital was terrible. A journalist from <em>Paris Soir</em> included this in his report from Madrid: “Oh, old Europe, always so preoccupied with your petty games and dire intrigues!! You’ll be lucky if you don’t drown in all this blood!”
Another journalist, César Falcón, wrote: “Madrid is the first city in the civilized world to suffer an attack from the fascist barbarians. London, Paris, and Brussels should see, in Madrid’s destroyed houses, in its devastated women and children, in its museums and bookstores now reduced to piles of rubble, in its defenseless and abandoned population... what their fate will be when the fascists go after them.” [712] General Asensio’s troops stormed the city in three directions: those led by Barrón attacked the Students’ Residence, with the intention of winning Rosales and Moret Avenues near the Parque of Oeste; Serrano’s forces divided into two columns, one fighting against the Santa Cristina Asylum and the other against the Hospital Clínico, to open way toward Cuatro Caminos. Bombings accompanied the advancing troops, as well as artillery fire shot from Garabitas and Carabanchel Alto onto the University City. The Junkers let their deadly loads fall. Describing the scene, José Mira again used a very expressive phrase: “the earth boiled with shrapnel.”
To get to the Hospital Clínico, Serrano’s troops first had to attack the Santa Cristina Asylum, where part of the Durruti Column was billeted. The clash was extremely violent and there were constant hand-to-hand melees.
Some troops scattered in the clamor of the battle, particularly those that Commander “Minenza” had left in the Hospital Clínico before evacuating it the previous night. Some of these ran toward the Moncloa Plaza, but a group that Miguel Yoldi pulled together, most of whom did not belong to the Column, held them back. With a pistol in his hand, Yoldi stopped them from fleeing and put an end to the incipient wave of panic.[713] Cipriano Mera met with José Manzana at 4:00 pm on November 17 in order to help him position troops in front of the Hospital Clínico. Mera writes:
<quote>
Our people quickly occupied the cemetery in front of the reservoir of the Isabel II Canal, the nuns’ convent, and the Guzmán el Bueno Civil Guard barracks. We also took the Geography and Cadastral Institute, the Red Cross Hospital, and the whole area of small houses around the Metropolitan Stadium.
At nightfall, comrade Yoldi and I went to the Durruti Column’s headquarters [at 27 Miguel Angel Street in the Duke of Sotomayor’s old palace]. Durruti arrived shortly afterwards and we updated him on the situation. He sent messengers to order the <em>Centuria</em> leaders to gather during the night, without abandoning any of the buildings that they were holding.
</quote>
There was such disorder, and circumstances had changed so radically in the University City during the day, that Durruti no longer knew where his <em>Centurias</em> were. After he dispatched the messengers, he asked Mera to send the <em>Centuria</em> that he had earlier promised to the Guzmán el Bueno Civil Guard barracks.
When Durruti assembled the <em>Centuria</em> leaders in the Department of Sciences at midnight, the balance of the battle was terrible. More than half of his forces had died. Only a quarter of the internationals’ <em>Centuria</em> was still alive, according to Corman. In total, barely seven hundred of the 1,700 men who entered the fray remained, and they were in desperate shape after thirty-six hours without a bite to eat or a sip of coffee. They were also soaked, thanks to the relentless rain, and the cold froze to the bone. The fighting seemed endless, while death—by bullet or bayonet—could surprise at any moment. Durruti spent that night among his men, visiting them at key sites in the area. Mira describes the conditions:
<quote>
It was neither better nor worse than the previous night. Bayonet attacks followed one another without interruption. There was an extremely high number of casualties on both sides, although our ranks became thinner, because there was no way to replace those who fell. But the enemy received constant reinforcements; it sent us fresh meat every ten minutes, which we liquidated with our automatic weapons.
The following morning, terrible volcanic craters opened up across the University City. Death was everywhere.[714]
</quote>
When Durruti parted with Liberto Ros and José Mira, he said that he was going to discuss relieving those still fighting with the Ministry of War. He would try to replace those who were most exhausted.
Durruti was obsessed with relieving his men. He knew that you can only demand so much from combatants and that the best way to ensure the struggle’s continuity was by giving them a rest. However, circumstances in Madrid made that impossible. In fact, of all the forces fighting in the University City, Durruti’s were the ones who were completely engaged. The others, beginning with the Internationals, alternated their men. For example, Durruti saw how the XII International Brigade partially replaced Kleber’s internationals in the early hours of November 18 and that other Spanish units were relieved as well.
When he returned to the Column’s headquarters, Durruti ran into Ariel, the <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> correspondent. Ariel asked him for his impressions of the battle.[715]
<quote>
“The conflict will be difficult, very difficult, but we’ll save Madrid if we fight well today. The fascists won’t enter the capital. Our comrades have fought and continue fighting like lions, but we’ve had many losses. Manzana and Yoldi are injured. We need to replace our fighters because, I assure you, the battle is and will be very tough.”
Without wasting time [Ariel writes], I went to the Defense Committee to tell Eduardo Val what Durruti had said to me. When I informed him about the situation, Val wanted to discuss the matter with Durruti personally.
We took off for Miguel Angel Street.
</quote>
Durruti told Val the same thing: they had to replace the men at once. Val immediately called the Confederal centers and asked for fighters. A comrade from a Confederal unit replaced Yoldi, but Manzana, despite having his arm in a sling, wanted to continue fighting. [716]
After making more calls, Val, discouraged, told Durruti that there was no way that they could gather the necessary people to replace his men. All the comrades were mobilized, many of them fighting with non-Confederal units. The situation was terrible. If he kept his men in battle, it was to lead them to certain death. And yet withdrawing them without replacements was impossible: it would undermine the morale of those still fighting and leave the path open to the enemy. Given the dilemma, Durruti decided to raise the issue with the General Staff.
As Durruti was leaving for the Ministry of War, Liberto Ros entered with bad news: José Mira had been injured and the men were insisting on a relief.
Liberto Ros and Mariño were members of an anarchist group that received its baptism in struggle in 1933. Mariño was now twenty-one years old and Liberto twenty-two. Durruti appreciated those two young men greatly who, despite their youth, had conducted themselves excellently in the battle.
Durruti stared at Liberto and asked him:
“Where are the fascists?”
To his strange question, Liberto responded:
“You know perfectly well where they are: we’re fighting in the Moncloa.”
“Exactly,” Durruti replied, “a stone’s throw from the Puerta del Sol! Liberto, do you think that a relief is possible under these circumstances? Speak frankly to the comrades. Tell them the truth: there is no relief. They have to endure, endure, and endure! My conditions are no different than the rest of yours. I spent last night in the University City, I was with you in the Moncloa this morning, and tonight I’ll replace Mira. Tell this to the comrades.
And stay at your post if your wound isn’t serious.”[717]
After Liberto left, and Durruti again got ready to go to the Ministry of War, Mora told him that Emilienne was on the phone, calling from Barcelona. Durruti hesitated for a moment and then nervously took the receiver:
“How are things?” he asked in a tone that was far too sharp for an anxious loved one. “Yes, I’m fine, but excuse me... I’m in a rush... See you soon!”
He hung up. Durruti saw that Mora was startled by the exchange. “What do you want?” he asked. “War makes man a jackal.” [718]
** CHAPTER XX. November 19, 1936
Durruti met with Vicente Rojo and General Miaja in the Ministry of War and told them about the state of his Column (or what remained of it). Durruti was neither the only one in the University City whose forces were in dreadful shape nor the only one to press the General Staff for a relief. But what could Miaja and Rojo do? The battle for Madrid didn’t unfold according to the classical patterns that they had studied in military school. In fact, these men had been reduced to little more than coordinators of information, which they retransmitted to those responsible for the various sectors at nightfall of each day. It was the fighters themselves who dictated the defensive strategy, by their own volition and without coercion. “The militias won the battle for Madrid,” Rojo repeated constantly then and also later in writings on the topic.
The only positive thing that Durruti extracted from his meeting with Rojo and Miaja was that they pledged to do everything they could to replace his men the next day. But his fighters would have to carry on until then, while seizing, if possible, the Hospital Clínico and holding the line in the University City. The soldiers in the Ministry of War thought the rebels had thrown everything they had into battle during the previous day and now, having failed to take the city, would focus on retaining the positions they had won and preparing future attacks. But, nevertheless, if the militias could contain the fascists in the University City for the next twenty-four hours, then Madrid would be saved. Events will demonstrate that this prognosis was correct.
Durruti was worried when he left the Ministry of War. There weren’t enough men or arms in the capital. The people were holding the city out of sheer desperation. Even the government, when it ordered General Miaja to defend Madrid, didn’t really believe that he could do so and told him to retreat to Cuenca if things went poorly. But the unexpected had occurred: when those fleeing toward Madrid arrived, they realized that they couldn’t run any more and, if they had to die, it was better to die fighting. This explains the psychological phenomenon that took place on November 7. The military textbooks became superfluous from that moment on: courageous individuals transformed themselves into a collective force that was determined to defeat the fascists or perish in the attempt. Vicente Rojo captures the sentiment perfectly:
<quote>
There was no shortage of that type of “ambassador’s attaché” during the confusing the first days [of the battle for Madrid]. With a somewhat insolent and somewhat stupid attitude, one could find it in the offices of the command: “But why don’t you surrender now?”
“Because we don’t feel like it!” was the reply.[719]
</quote>
That spirit made Madrid’s defense possible. And it produced characters like Antonio Coll, who showed his comrades that with a little calm and a bomb you could blow up the tanks razing Carabanchel Bajo, Usera, the Segovia Bridge, and outlaying districts. Coll started a trend and more than a few of those mechanical beasts were detonated with his method, although many fighters were also crushed underneath them. The leader of the España Libre Column was among those who died. He went after a tank while trying to inspire his men. He destroyed the tank, but paid with his life for the achievement.
Durruti’s mind was full of these chaotic details as he descended the stairs in the Ministry of War. He bumped into Koltsov on the landing. They greeted one another and Durruti declined his invitation to go witness a battle in the University City (it was an extremely unusual invitation).
“He shook his head and told me that he was going to attend to his own sector, specifically, to shield some of his fighters from the rain.... These were the last words that I heard from him. Durruti was in a bad mood.” [720]In addition to all this After his departure from the Ministry of War, Durruti occupied himself by checking on the integrity of the Column’s new positions. He went “from the Petróleo Gas factory, crossing the Pimiento Hill, up to the Civil Guard barracks, including all the small houses to the east of the Hospital Clínico, until linking with some of the buildings in the University City.” [721]
Before returning to his headquarters around 8:00 pm, Durruti passed by the War Committee to get information relevant to the next day’s activities and discuss the militarization of the militias with Eduardo Val. The Confederal militias were the only ones in Madrid still using the old structure. All the Socialist and Communist forces had accepted the militarization and their leaders assumed the corresponding military rank. Naturally, the Communists were the most frenetically militarized and their influence was expanding rapidly. Communist propagandists exaggerated the well-orchestrated intervention of the International Brigades and portrayed them as the soul of the anti-fascist resistance. The Soviet Union coordinated the arrival of its military aid with that propaganda. The “chatos” flew the skies of Madrid and valiantly confronted the squadrons of rebel fighter planes and German bombers that were leveling the capital. The Russian tanks also made an appearance. Madrid’s residents naturally welcomed this support, but the Communist Party exploited the people’s gratitude in a tragically ignoble way. It multiplied Soviet sales by a thousand, presenting them as the utterly disinterested contributions to Spain’s defense, and flooded its papers with tales of the USSR’s generosity (amidst exaltations of Stalin). And of course the heroes of the moment were always Party men like Líster or “The Peasant.” [722] In addition to all this, attacks on the anarchists began to slip through with alarming regularity. The fact that the Soviet Union was the only power selling military products to Spain enabled the Spanish Communist Party to implant itself firmly. It had already begun to control the Ministry of War through the intermediary of the “feted General Miaja.” [723]
Durruti and Val discussed the Russian issue. In an effort to confront the Stalinist danger, a meeting was called for the following day, November 19. Cipriano Mera, Val told Durruti, would come see him that night at his headquarters.
“That evening, Feliciano Benito, Villanueva, and I went to his command post,” Mera writes, “to see if we could be useful in any way.”
They spoke about Madrid’s defense. Mera insisted that they had to unify all the Confederal forces into one, strong unit that Durruti would lead. Durruti was concerned about the issue of leadership. He thought that the War Committees should still be subject to rank and file control. He recognized that this created some problems, but at least it stopped an army from forming, which would certainly act like an army even if it wasn’t called one. [724] Mera received a call from his command post and had to leave, but before doing so he and Durruti agreed to meet at the Civil Guard barracks at 6:00 am on November 19. Durruti would lead the attack on the Hospital Clínico from there. The General Staff put some forces that had come from Barcelona at his disposal and it would be with them, plus the <em>Centuria</em> from Mera, that they would have to take the Clínico.
November 19 broke with the same weather as the previous day. There was rain—which fell torrentially at times—and a cold wind that made the day especially bitter. Mud, water, wind, and led, with death spying from every corner and behind every tree. It was still dark when Durruti and Mera met at the entrance of the Queen Victoria Civil Guard barracks. Feliciano Benito and Artemio García (his messenger) were there as well. Yoldi and Manzana had come with Durruti. Together they ascended the barracks tower, which would give them a good vantage point from which to follow the operation.
<quote>
It was dark, so we couldn’t see the first moments of the attack, but around 7:00 we confirmed that our forces were on some of the floors of the Clínico that opened onto the exterior and the flat roofs. Durruti sent a message to the captain in charge of the assault, telling him to occupy the first floor and the basement, and then clean out the rest of the building. Messengers had informed us that our forces had met some resistance on the lower floors, which is why they went to the upper levels. I then told Durruti that I remembered distinctly, from when I had worked there as a builder, that there was a corridor in the Clínico that led to the main sewer from the Manzanares and that it was large enough to travel through. That was when Durruti sent the urgent message to the captain.[725]
</quote>
But the order arrived late. Since the rebels were in control of the first floor, the forces above them were incommunicado. So, they had to attack the first floor again. Durruti had a reserve battalion and ordered its leader to send two companies to the Clínico. The battalion Captain expressed some concern about the mission, but Durruti insisted, pointing out that if they didn’t take the floor, the comrades upstairs would remain trapped. “If fighters can’t rely on each other,” he said, “then there’s no trust, and victory is impossible when that’s gone.” Whether or not he was convinced, the Captain sent the designated forces to the Clínico.
When Durruti returned to the observation post, Cipriano Mera wanted to have a discussion about discipline: “I was telling him that sometimes orders have to be carried out immediately when a bullet suddenly interrupted our conversation. It tore into the casing of the stairs. “That bastard almost got us!” Durruti exclaimed.
They renewed the attack on the Hospital Clínico and Mera and Durruti left the tower and went down to the street. Mera was preoccupied with the issue of discipline. The struggle had taught him, he said, that “for people to carry out their mission and not budge from their assigned position—in a word, so that they obey—there is no choice but to use the tool that we’re afraid to even mention: discipline.” Mera recorded Durruti’s response: “OK, Mera, we’re mostly in agreement about this. I agree with the core of what you’re saying, and also with your idea of joining our forces. Mine have to be relieved because they’ve suffered heavy blows in the last few days.
We’ll see comrade Val at 4:00 and can discuss all this together.” [726]
It was 12:30 pm on November 19, 1936.
When Durruti entered his headquarters and asked Mora for an update, Mora gave him the most recent communication from the fighters:
<quote>
Comrade Durruti: Our situation is desperate. Do everything you can to get us out of this hell. We’ve had many losses and haven’t slept or eaten in seven days. We’re physically shattered. I await your prompt response. Salutations, Mira.[727]
</quote>
As soon as he read this, Durruti sent the following note with a messenger: Comrade Mira: I know that you’re exhausted. I am too. But what do you want, my friend? War is cruel. However, the situation has improved. You have to stay at your post until you’re replaced, which will easily happen today. Salutations, Durruti.
And he dictated the following order to Mora, who would get it signed by General Miaja:
<quote>
Comrade Mira: The Ministry of War has decided to relieve Column personnel occupying the vanguard positions. You will ensure that today these forces retire from the positions they defend and assemble in the barracks at 33 Granada Street. You will communicate with the person responsible for that sector, so that he designates replacement forces for the Department of Philosophy and Letters and the Santa Cristina Asylum. You will report back to me regarding the fulfillment of this order by noon tomorrow. Madrid, November 19, 1936. Signed: B. Durruti. Approval: General Miaja.[728]
</quote>
Durruti had just finished signing this document and was instructing Mora to have it authorized by General Miaja when Bonilla arrived, accompanied by Lorente and Miguel Doga. They told him about unpleasant developments at the Hospital Clínico. Bonilla’s news changed Durruti’s plans. Julio Graves, his driver, already had the Packard ready to take Durruti to the meeting at the CNT Defense Committee that day. Manzana told Durruti to go to the meeting and that he would take care of the problem at the Clínico. Durruti hesitated for a moment and then said: “If it’s a dispersal of forces, my presence would be more effective.”
We follow Antonio Bonilla’s account:
<quote>
I decided to speak with Durruti at 1:00 pm to tell him what had happened. Lorente was driving the car and a very admirable Catalan carpenter named Miguel Doga came with me. When we arrived at the barracks, we saw that Durruti’s Packard was running and that he was getting ready to leave with Manzana. I explained to him what had occurred and he decided to go see it personally. I told Julio Graves to follow our car in order to avoid passing through areas where there was fighting. He did this. Manzana, as was customary, wore his submachine-gun on his shoulder and had a scarf hanging around his neck, upon which he rested his right hand at times, because his finger had been injured several weeks earlier. Durruti appeared unarmed, but as usual carried a Colt 45 under his leather jacket. They followed us until we reached the houses occupied by our reduced forces. They stopped their car, and we stopped ours about twenty meters ahead.
Durruti got out to say something to some militiamen sunning themselves behind a wall. There was no fighting in the area. Durruti was fatally wounded right there and the Spanish revolution suffered the hardest and most unimaginable setback...
We were in the other car, some twenty meters ahead, and had been stopped for three or four minutes. When Durruti was getting into the car, we put our car in gear. When we looked back to see if they were following us, we saw the Packard turning and pulling out at a high rate of speed. I got out of the car and asked the boys what had happened. They told me that someone had been injured. I asked them if they knew the name of the man who had spoken with them and they said no. I told Lorente that we should return immediately. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.[729]
</quote>
Antonio Bonilla makes two things clear: a) that Durruti left the headquarters on Miguel Angel Street with only <em>two</em> companions (Julio Graves and José Manzana); and b) that they hadn’t seen what happened because when “Durruti was getting into the car, we put our car in gear. When we looked back ... we saw that the Packard was turning and pulling out at a high rate of speed.”
Nevertheless, Bonilla’s comments immediately raise questions. He says: “I got out of the car and asked the boys what had happened. They told me that someone had been injured.” Bonilla stated that there was “no fighting in the area” and they were “twenty meters” away from where Durruti was. Twenty meters is a short distance and a shot, even from a submachine-gun, should have been clearly audible to them. Bonilla doesn’t mention hearing a shot. How did the boys know that “someone had been injured”? Bonilla doesn’t clarify this. It’s strange that Bonilla didn’t investigate further after those militiamen told him that “someone had been injured” (since there was “no fighting in the area” and he hadn’t heard gunfire). Ariel, the <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> correspondent, recorded Julio Graves’s account of the events:
<quote>
That day—the day of Durruti’s death—a meeting was going to be held in the National Sub-Committee on Reforma Agraria Street across from the Retiro. Comrade Prats from Tarrasa had come to Madrid as a representative of the National Committee. Since the <em>Soli</em> building had been abandoned due to the recent nights’ bombings, we used a room on an upper floor of that building to prepare the newspaper. The National Sub-Committee comrades knew that I went to Durruti’s headquarters everyday to gather information for the paper and at noon asked me to tell Durruti that there would be a meeting at 3:00 that afternoon to discuss the militarization of the Confederal militias. After eating, I made my customary trip to Durruti’s headquarters. When I arrived, they told me that he had left for the front a few minutes earlier. I had just missed him once again! Had I caught him before he left, perhaps he would have gone to the meeting and thus escaped death. But fate, destiny, had something else in store for him. Durruti had to die like a hero that day.... In the middle of the afternoon ... I saw Durruti’s driver enter. He was a young man of medium height and with a refined bearing. Julio Graves was his name. He asked for my brother Eduardo (they had been good friends since the battles in Barcelona) and I told him that he was sleeping in the next room. The young man’s face was full of sadness, but I didn’t give it much thought, given the emotional times in which we were living.
“I heard my brother wake up and say a few words to Durruti’s driver. Both began to cry. I got up quickly and rushed into the room where they were sobbing.
“What’s happening?” I asked, full of concern.
“Durruti’s been seriously wounded,” one of them told me, “and might be dead already.”
“But it isn’t a good idea to disclose the news,” comrade Julio Graves said.
It was 5:00 in the afternoon....
“Tell me the whole truth,” I said to Graves.
“The truth is very simple. After eating, we headed for the University City, along with comrade Manzana. We went up to Cuatro Caminos and from there down along Pablo Iglesias Avenue at a high speed. We passed through the colony of small houses at the end of this avenue and turned rightward. Durruti’s forces had changed locations, after the losses they’d suffered in the Moncloa and at the walls of the Modelo prison. An autumn sunlight filled the afternoon. When we reached the wide road, we saw a group of militiamen coming in our direction. Durruti thought that they were some boys deserting the front. There was heavy fighting there. The Hospital Clínico, taken by the Moors at the time, towered above the surroundings. Durruti made me stop the car, which I did, at the corner of one of those small houses for protection. Durruti got out and approached the fleeing militiamen. He asked them where they were going and, since they didn’t know what to say, he forcefully convinced them to return to their posts.
“Once the boys obeyed him,” Comrade Graves continues, “Durruti came back toward the car. Bullets were raining down with increasing intensity. The Moors and Civil Guard were shooting with greater determination from the gigantic colored Hospital Clínico building. Durruti collapsed when he reached the car door. A bullet had pierced his chest. Manzana and I jumped out of the vehicle and hurried to put him inside. I turned the auto and, driving as fast as I could, headed for the Catalan militia hospital in Madrid, where we had been a little bit ago. The rest you already know. That’s all.”
</quote>
Graves concluded his statement with an important detail: “Some tears slipped down the young Confederal’s cheek. He and Manzana had been the <em>only</em> eyewitnesses to that tragic and fatal hour for the hero of Madrid’s defense.” [730]
** CHAPTER XXI. Durruti kills Durruti
They carried Durruti’s mortally wounded body into the Column Hospital at the Hotel Ritz between 2:30 and 3:00 pm. The doctors on duty were José Santamaría Jaume (manger of the Column’s Health Service), Moya Prats, Martínez Fraile, Cunill, Sabatés, and Abades.
They immediately took him into the operating room, which had been installed in the basement as a precaution against the constant bomb raids. All the medical personnel rushed there once they found out the patient’s identity.
“Durruti recognized a trusted friend among them and sat up slightly on the table on which they’d placed him. He spoke with an excited and upset voice; he was confused and incredulous at what had happened to him. The doctor grew pale when he heard Durruti’s revealing words. With a firm gesture, he ordered him to be quiet.” [731] Once the doctors examined the wound and saw how serious it was, they realized that they would incur an enormous responsibility—given the patient’s importance—if they operated and he died. Doctor Martínez Fraile and Doctor Santamaría decided to consult a prestigious surgeon with many more years of operating experience.
Santamaría instructed several militiamen to immediately find Dr. Manuel Bastos Ansart. He was in another CNT hospital located in the Hotel Palace, not far from the Ritz.
The CNT’s Surgical Hospital number 1 had been installed in the Hotel Palace and Bastos Ansart oversaw its operations. There are two curious details about that hospital. The first is that the Soviet Embassy occupied one of the wings of its first floor and the other is that it was precisely there that Franco’s espionage service established one of its first webs. It had compromised the medical activities there and ferried information about the injured and dead to the rebels.
We now move on to Manuel Bastos Ansart’s testimony:
<quote>
A group of militiamen came to see me during one of the bombings and, with great mystery and visible agitation, insisted that I examine an important leader, who was seriously injured and in another hotel-hospital.... The patient was clearly a prestigious bigwig with a huge reputation. Those around him didn’t hesitate to let me know that his own followers bore responsibility for his wound. The bullet had horizontally crossed the upper abdomen and injured crucial internal organs. The wound was fatal and nothing could be done for the patient, who was already on his last breath. I heard what were probably his final words: “they’re going away now.” He was alluding to the increasingly muffled noise of the explosions, which led one to suppose that the bombers were withdrawing.
When I made my diagnosis that he was terminal—indeed, he died shortly thereafter—all the medical assistants let out a tremendous sigh of relief. I had released them from a heavy burden: the possibility that they might be ordered to operate on the patient, who would very probably die. They knew that his acolytes would attribute his death to their medical intervention and hold them responsible for it, with all its consequences. I’ve bumped into doctors many years later who were present at the scene and they still shudder to recall it. They only speak of it in a whisper and pale at the memory alone.[732]
</quote>
Given Manuel Bastos’s diagnosis, they decided not to operate, which meant letting the patient die. In the Hotel Ritz’s room fifteen, in the presence of Dr. José Santamaría, who stayed by the bed stringently ordering no one to disturb him, Buenaventura Durruti passed away at 4:00 am on November 20. It was forty years and 129 days after his birth and four months after Francisco Ascaso’s death. The demise of these two men marked the end of one of the most agitated chapters in the history of proletarian struggle. Durruti had lived a good deal of his life underground and his trajectory had always been controversial. He was necessarily an enemy and a bandit for the bourgeoisie. But, for revolutionaries, Durruti was a uniquely gifted man who devoted himself body and soul to the cause. And his death, for either group, had to be exceptional. The fate of those falling daily in the struggle against Madrid’s invaders was simply inadequate for Durruti. The collective imagination began, even before he expired, to turn his death into something extraordinary.
After leaving the site where Durruti was wounded, Antonio Bonilla, Lorente, and Miguel Doga went to the Column’s Headquarters on Miguel Angel Street:
<quote>
Manzana received me. I asked him where Durruti was and he told me that he had gone to a National Committee meeting. I told him that was a lie, that the CNT National Committee wasn’t in Madrid. The color of his face changed and he told me that he was in the Column for Durruti, and for all of us, and that he would quit if we lost trust in him. “You’ve lied to me,” I told him, “and I hold you responsible for that. I insist that you tell me everything at another time.” I had to return with the people I was with. Comrade Mora arrived on a motorcycle at 5:00 am the next day and told me that Durruti had died.[733]
</quote>
Cipriano Mera writes:
<quote>
Although Durruti was an hour late [it was 4:00 pm on November 19], his delay didn’t surprise us because we knew how busy he was, that he needed to be everywhere at once. Manzana came a little later and pulled me aside to speak with me privately. I could see that he was extremely upset and I hastened to ask him: “What’s happening, Manzana?”
Almost in tears, he replied: “They just shot comrade Durruti and it looks like there’s no hope for him.”
“What? What the hell are you saying? I was with him just hours ago and he told me that he was going to his command post to put things in order.” “Yes, but around 4:00 in the afternoon [the hour is incorrect] a messenger told us that the Captain in charge of the two companies sent to the Hospital Clínico had ordered his troops to withdraw. You know how Durruti is with these things. He summoned the car and we took off for the Clínico to see if the messenger’s report was true. I told him that he didn’t really need to be there to confirm the facts. It wasn’t that I thought something might happen, but simply felt that he should stay in the command post and lead the men more calmly from there.”
“OK, OK, but what happened?”
“We reached the end of the avenue and, without stopping, entered through a street that goes to the eastern part of the Clínico. Durruti made us stop the car when he saw a militiaman running in our direction. He got out and asked him why he was running. The militiaman said that he was going to the health post, to get them to send some stretchers, because several men were injured and one had been killed. Durruti let him continue on his way. As he entered the car, whose door opened toward the Clínico, he told us that they had shot him.”
“Who was with you?”
“It was Durruti, his two messengers, Yoldi, and I.”
“Do you think the shot came from the Clínico and that our forces had already abandoned it?”
“Yes, there’s no doubt that it was enemy fire.”
Comrade Manzana told me that it was extremely important to keep quiet about what had happened, since Durruti’s men, after so many scares, might think that he had been assassinated by other anti-fascists. We agreed to this, but I told Manzana that we had to tell Val. He concurred and we entered his office to communicate the terrible news....
Manzana and I went to the Hotel Ritz immediately afterwards.... They were taking Durruti out of surgery on a stretcher when we arrived. They brought him up to an isolated room on the main floor.... He opened his eyes as they put him in a bed and stared at us silently. I was moved and kissed him on the forehead. I then left the room with Manzana, to whom I said: “We’ve lost our comrade Durruti.” ...
Val suggested that I go to Valencia right away to tell the CNT National Committee what had happened and personally inform comrades Mariano Rodríguez Vázquez [who had recently become CNT General Secretary after Horacio M. Prieto was sanctioned for leaving Madrid], García Oliver, and Federica Montseny. I resisted, saying that perhaps the doctor was wrong and there was no need to alarm the other comrades. I didn’t convince anyone: they were all certain that Durruti’s fate was sealed. We again spoke about the circumstances of the deplorable event. Val voiced his suspicions when he asked Manzana:
“Was this an act of Communist treachery?”
“No,” Manzana responded categorically, “the shot came from the Clínico. It was bad luck. The hospital was in enemy hands.”
We talked some more and then said goodbye. I left for Valencia at once. [734]
</quote>
During the hours that transpired between Bastos Ansart’s terminal diagnosis and the moment of his death, Durruti received massive doses of morphine to counteract the pain. This left him in a state of semi-consciousness, interrupted by brief moments of lucidity. He died at 4:00 in the morning on November 20.
Doctor Santamaría conducted the autopsy in the hospital and confirmed the damage caused by the 9 caliber long bullet. The projectile had entered the thorax under the left nipple near the armpit. His autopsy stated:
<quote>
Durruti had a very developed chest. Given the topography of the thorax, I realized that the diagnosis that surgery was impossible had been mistaken. An operation could have produced positive results, although doubtlessly the patient would not have survived.[735]
</quote>
When the autopsy was completed, Durruti’s body was delivered to the city of Madrid’s specialized services for embalmment. They had decided to transfer his corpse to Barcelona for burial.
There are more contradictions enveloping Durruti’s last moments than any other period of his life. Each of three eyewitnesses gives a different version of the events, introducing or omitting various details. That is why Durruti’s death, which should presumably have been a relatively straightforward matter, has become a mystery. Manzana contradicts Julio Graves when he affirms that there were three more in the car in addition to the three passengers that we already know of: two unknowns (the messengers) and Miguel Yoldi. But Graves was categorical: he and Manzana were the only witnesses. The recent declaration from Antonio Bonilla that we have used (thereby correcting the French edition of this book) allows us to discard him as an occupant of the vehicle. However, neither Manzana nor Graves mentions that Bonilla was the person who informed Durruti about the developments at the Hospital Clínico.
The two doctors also contradict one another. José Santamaría declares that Durruti’s wound was “caused by a bullet fired less than fifty centimeters from the victim, probably around thirty-five, a calculation deduced from the intensity of the gunpowder stains on the garment that he was wearing.” [736]
Manuel Bastos Ansart, who gave the definitive (and wrong, according to Santamaría) diagnosis says the “bullet had horizontally crossed the upper abdomen and injured crucial internal organs.” More concretely, expanding on his statement, he writes: “the large caliber bullet (surely 9 caliber long) grazed the colon, destroyed the spleen, perforated the diaphragm, and damaged a lung, where it remained lodged.”[737] Doctor Bastos does not note that the bullet could have been fired from a short distance or any discoloration that a close-range shot would leave around the entry hole.
In addition to these contradictions, there was the absurd decision, apparently made by Manzana, to keep Durruti’s injury a secret and to advance the theory of a bullet fired from the Hospital Clínico: at a distance of one thousand meters, it is impossible that a 9 caliber long bullet could have caused the damage evident in Durruti’s body. What prompted Manzana to falsify the facts? Eduardo Val was the only significant CNT leader in Madrid at that time and Mera states that he found out from Manzana. Mariano Rodríguez Vázquez, García Oliver, Federica Montseny, and other “established” militants were not in the capital and thus had to accept the explanations given to them by Manzana, Graves, and others.
As a result of all this, even before Durruti’s funeral, while he still lay dying, the issue had become a huge problem for those directly or indirectly linked to the fatally wounded revolutionary. Durruti’s comrades, inspired by his exemplary revolutionary life, continued to defend Madrid resolutely. And these men—his comrades from so many battles—knew that the revolution had begun to retreat and that the loss of Durruti would only accelerate the process. Any attempt to explain Durruti’s death—especially as an accident—smelled of assassination and an assassination could only have come from the Stalinists. If we mix all these elements together, we end up with a “conspiracy of fear.” Manzana and Graves (and those around them) were afraid. The doctors were frightened when they found an injured Durruti in their hands: they trembled at the thought of operating because the militiamen would hold them responsible if he died. Doctor Bastos’s diagnosis saved all of them and they let Durruti’s life fade away in the twelve hours of agony that he had left. That fear is apparent in Santamaría’s statement above, in which he says that they were wrong not to operate but that Durruti wouldn’t have lived in any case. What is he trying to say with this? If an operation was possible, that means that there was a chance that he might survive. They did not exploit that possibility and thus condemned Durruti to death by internal hemorrhage.
Durruti, the anti-hero, had become a hero. Ultimately, Durruti the hero killed Durruti the man.
** CHAPTER XXII. Durruti’s funeral
While Durruti slowly died in room fifteen of the Hotel Ritz, the CNT militants in Madrid continued their meeting on Reforma Agraria Street. Ariel didn’t dare send the news to <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> in Barcelona before the meeting’s decisions were publicly revealed. “To disclose Durruti’s death without examining the consequences would have been flippant at the time.” He was afraid of undermining the fighters’ morale. Franco’s troops had redoubled their efforts and any change in the Republican side could have disastrous results for the defense of Madrid. [738] Cipriano Mera reached Valencia around 6:00 am and found that the building housing the CNT National Committee was empty at that early hour. He bumped into a young man there and explained that he urgently needed to see García Oliver and Federica Montseny. The youth told him that they were staying with most of the other government ministers at the Hotel Metropolitano.
When he learned that Durruti had been seriously wounded, García Oliver lamented the sad but unsurprising event. He had always opposed the CNT’s decision to send Durruti to Madrid and thought it much more important for him to stay in Aragón. The news was crushing for Federica Montseny: she felt responsible because she had made the greatest effort to get him to go to the capital.
The telephone rang. The caller told García Oliver that Durruti died at 4:00 am. They had expected the news, but it still dazed all of them. They wondered what was going to happen when the CNT fighters found out about his demise. Cipriano Mera writes:
<quote>
The three of us finally left the hotel for the National Committee. We met with Marianet, who had become the General Secretary a few days ago. He told us that Val had already called from Madrid and told him about Durruti’s death. He then looked at all of us; wondering who should replace our lost comrade.... Various names were mentioned: Ortiz, Jover, Ricardo Sanz. It was finally decided that the latter would be the best person to take the reigns of the remnants of the Column in Madrid and continue fighting there. Manzana would go to Aragón and lead those forces. Personally, I wasn’t happy with the decision. I thought García Oliver was the person who should take Durruti’s position.[739]
</quote>
Ariel writes:
<quote>
Durruti’s corpse rested in a square, white room on a small iron bed, wrapped in a sheet. A cushion supported his head. The light of the new day entered through the glass balcony doors, which opened to the plaza holding the obelisk for the heroes of May 2.... It was all so fitting for the new popular hero. Some horse chestnut trees let the last leaves of autumnal gold fall. Victoriano Macho, the famed Spanish sculptor, arrived at 8:00 am to make Durruti’s death mask. Other artists from the Alianza Intelectual came with him.... Macho asked to remove the sheet covering his body so that he could work better: “A Hercules, a real Hercules!” Victoriano Macho burst out when he saw Durruti’s nude cadaver.[740]
</quote>
Ricardo Sanz writes:
<quote>
I was in Figueras at noon on November 20 with Commander Ramos de Iglesias [on a mission to inspect the coastal front]. The table was set. We were going to eat... García Oliver called and gave me the terrible news: “Get the car and return to Barcelona immediately. Madrid just told us that Durruti was killed in the University City. The Defense Council met and we decided that you’ll take his place. Don’t waste time, come at once.” I was distraught when I entered the dinning room. They were all sitting around the table, waiting for me so we could eat. I gave them the tragic information.... Minutes later we took off for Barcelona at top speed. I didn’t learn anything new at the Ministry of Defense. They made me leader of the Catalan troops in Madrid. And García Oliver gave me the following task: “Find out what happened and keep me apprised of everything.”[741]
</quote>
Ariel writes:
<quote>
At night, they took Durruti’s body to the National Sub-Committee building and put it in a mahogany coffin.
They brought along Durruti’s suitcase, the only luggage that he carried with him. It was old and small. What did it contain? It was almost empty, except for a dirty change of clothes and a shaving kit. That’s all it held. That was the entirety of Durruti’s baggage.
This fighter’s austerity was evident there. Two days earlier, he had asked the CNT National Sub-Committee for one hundred pesetas to attend to some minor necessities.... He, who risked his life to provide the Confederation with large sums of money, relinquished all to be an example of meticulousness. That suitcase was a treasure of dignity.
He had renounced everything except victory. But for him victory was a matter of one’s daily conduct. That is the luminous wake that he left behind, the memory of a lifetime of daily struggle....
A group of men from Durruti’s forces made the most moving visit. They wore leather caps, jackets, and corduroy trousers. Their rifles were still warm from being fired. They had left the front for a moment. All the fighters from his unit wanted to see their dead comrade, whom they loved so much and who had demonstrated his loyalty and courage so many times. But that was impossible. They couldn’t abandon the front.... Disconsolate tears glistened in their eyes.... In the silence, in the deep emotion of their silence ... they promised from the bottom of their hearts to continue the struggle until true freedom is victorious... until the triumph of the proletariat.[742]
</quote>
Ricardo Sanz:
<quote>
I left for Madrid at dawn on November 21. At the entrance to Valencia, near the San Miguel de los Reyes prison, I ran into the entourage of vehicles taking Durruti’s corpse to Barcelona.
I stopped for a moment, to get some details about what had happened and I questioned eyewitnesses who had been with Durruti. I then continued on to Madrid.
I arrived at sunset. There was great disorder everywhere. No one could believe that Durruti was dead.
Everyone thought he couldn’t die. Anything but that could happen. It didn’t matter if he was sunk into the earth. It was the same thing as Madrid’s last cat perishing: it was impossible. There was no way to accept that this time it was Durruti’s heart that had been grazed by an enemy bullet. “The communists murdered him,” some said. “They shot him from a balcony,” others added. “Only his enemies could have killed him,” all agreed. Talk like that showed that no one thought that Durruti could have died from a bullet fired from the fascist trenches. [743]
</quote>
The group escorting Durruti’s body to Barcelona arrived just after midnight on November 22. The Vía Layetana and the area surrounding the CNT-FAI building were impassable from that moment until the morning of November 23, when his funeral occurred.
<quote>
The funeral took place in the beginning of the next day. The bullet that killed Durruti had clearly struck the city of Barcelona in its heart as well. It is estimated that one of every four or five Barcelona residents marched behind the coffin, not counting those lining the streets, in the windows, on the rooftops, and even in the trees along the Ramblas. Parties and unions from every tendency convened their members and the flags of all the anti-fascist organizations flew alongside the anarchists, above this human sea. It was grandiose, sublime, and extravagant. The crowd moved forward without being led. There had been neither orders nor prior organization, but everything happened anyway. The scene was incredible.
The burial was scheduled for 10:00 and yet by 9:00 it was already impossible to get to the Anarchist Regional Committee building. No one had thought to clear a path for the procession. Groups came from everywhere. Those from the factories passed each other, intermixed, and blocked the way.
In the center, the cavalry detachment and motorized troops there to precede the coffin were hemmed in. Cars bearing wreaths were stopped everywhere, unable to go forward or backward. It was only with tremendous effort that the ministers could be taken to the casket.
At 10:30, covered with a black and red flag, militiamen from the Durruti Column carried his body out of the anarchist’s building on their shoulders. The crowd raised their fists for the final salute. They sang the anarchist hymn <em>Sons of the People</em>. It was a powerful moment.
Inadvertently, two musical groups had been invited; one played quietly, the other very loudly, and neither managed to retain the same rhythm. The motorcycles revved their engines, the automobiles honked their horns, the militia leaders blew their whistles, and the coffin bearers couldn’t take a step.
It was impossible to form the funeral procession. The musical bands played again and the crowd sang the same hymn once more; neither the bands nor the people paid heed to one another and the sound blended into a music without melody. The fists were still raised. The music and the salutes finally stopped. From then on, one could only hear the noise of the crowd, in whose center lay Durruti, resting on his comrades’ shoulders.
It took at least half an hour to clear the street so that the procession could set off. It required several hours to reach the Plaza de Cataluña, which is only blocks away. The cavalry men found their own way to the Plaza, each one individually. The musicians, who more or less got lost, tried to regroup there. The cars, stopped in the opposite direction, went backwards. Autos carrying wreaths drove through side streets and tried to position themselves as if they were in the cavalcade. Everyone shouted and yelled.
No, it wasn’t a royal funeral. It was a popular funeral. Nothing was ordered; everything was spontaneous and improvised. It was an anarchist funeral and therein lay its majesty! It was strange at times, but always magnificent and conveyed a rare and somber greatness.
The speakers delivered their funeral orations at the foot of the Christopher Columbus statue, not far from where Ascaso, his companion in death, fought and fell at his side on July 19.
Oliver, the only surviving member of the group of three friends, spoke as a mate, comrade, and the Spanish Republic’s Minister of Justice. “In these anguished hours,” he said, “the government of the revolution salutes Durruti and all those who have fallen in the struggle against fascism. In his <em>compañera</em>, it pays homage to all the women who cry at the loss of a loved one; in Durruti’s daughter, all the children whose parents have perished. We salute all those who fight on the front and who will continue fighting until victory.” The Russian consul spoke afterwards and ended his speech in Catalan, exclaiming: “Death to fascism!” Companys, the President of the Generalitat, spoke last: “Comrades,” he said, “forward, forward!”
It had been assumed that people would disperse after the speeches and that only a small group of friends would accompany the coffin to the cemetery, but it was impossible to follow the program devised beforehand. The crowd didn’t disband but, instead, occupied the cemetery, blocking the path to the tomb. The thousands of wreaths obstructing the cemetery’s walkways made the approach even more difficult.
Night fell. It began to rain torrentially. The cemetery turned into a field of mud, drowning the flowers. At the last moment, they decided to postpone the interment and the coffin bearers made a half turn in front of the tomb and carried their load to the mortuary.
They buried Durruti the next day. He will rest once and for all in the mausoleum that will be constructed for him and Ascaso. It will be a site of pilgrimage for those who feel the death of their heroes without mourning them, who honor them without that sentimentalism that we call piety.[744]
</quote>
Martínez Bande writes: “On November 23, 1936, a very significant meeting took place in Leganés, which <em>Generalísimo</em> [Franco] presided over and Generals Mola, Saliquet, and Varela, as well as the leaders of their General Staffs, attended. They made the extremely important decision to give up the frontal attack on Madrid, thus changing the course and fate of the war....” [745] That same day the national and international press reported on the funeral services held for the anarchist, for the outlaw that Durruti had been his entire life.
Kaminski accurately noted: “The proletarian demonstration that accompanied Durruti’s body was, along with Lenin’s burial, one of the most important worker demonstrations in the history of the working class. More than a half million people were there, although its greatness lay not in the physical presence of the crowd but in the deep emotion that Durruti’s death elicited throughout revolutionary Spain.”
<em>El Frente,</em> the publication of the Durruti Column, concludes the article that it published on November 23, 1936 by saying “history and legend will be his august heralds.” Indeed, since news of Durruti’s demise first circulated, a legend began to emerge that still exists to this day. For the popular imagination, Durruti’s death did not reflect his historical magnitude. And, like at other times during his adventurous existence, that imagination wove a different story that seemed more consistent with the man who embodied so many of their aspirations. <em>Ruta</em>, the Libertarian Youth’s magazine, said: “Durruti, the fighter who never forgot the workshop; Durruti, the leader of the Column that spurned honors and stars; Durruti, the man of the people who lived for the people... he was a powerful inspiration for us, the anarchist youth.”
<em>El Frente Libertario</em>, the newspaper of the Confederal Militias, cited Durruti’s final words as a “shout of courage”: “Brothers, forward for the revolution!” Adding: “We will deserve nothing less than disdain if we fail to fulfill his last wish.”
The press from all the anti-fascist forces celebrated the hero. But the anarchists, enemies of leadership cults, voiced this in <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>: “Any organization other than the CNT would have consecrated him as a caudillo.” <em>Tierra y Libertad</em>, the FAI’s publication, said: “The city and the man sought one another, found one another, and interpenetrated. They were worthy companions.”
The CNT and FAI Committees received thousands of letters and telegrams from around the world. Spanish political figures and Column leaders expressed their grief. Leaders of the revolutionary left, like Andreu Nin or Marceau Pivert, said that Durruti’s death was a terrible loss for the revolution.
Dozens of Spanish and foreign writers articulated their sorrow. Among them, it was Pierre Scize who best pointed to the immense vacuum left by Durruti when he asked: “Who will be strong enough, and dignified enough, to take on Durruti’s legacy?” [746] How could we summarize his bequest? There is nothing better than citing a paragraph from his last letter, which he wrote to Liberto Callejas twenty-four hours before he died:
<quote>
Before I left Catalonia, I asked those sharing my views for support. I’m not talking about those with weak souls and lacking in energy, but those of us determined to give the final push. Rifles alone do nothing if there isn’t a will and a plan in every shot. <em>There’s no doubt that we’ll stop the fascists from entering Madrid, but we have to get rid of them soon, because we must conquer Spain anew.</em>[747]
</quote>
<sup>Above: Barcelona, September 1936. Photo taken on the roof of the “CNT-FAI House.” Left to right; Martín Gudell, Lithuanian, who advised the CNT-FAI on international affairs; Mariano R. Vázquez, general secretary of the Regional Committee of the Catalan CNT; his <em>compañera</em> Conchita; Feroze Ghandi, lawyer and husband of Indira Ghandi, daughter of Nehru, who appears in the foreground; Bernardo Poo is between the two, who was head of the CNT’s Information and Propaganda Services.
</sup> <sup>Nehru Sri Jawaharial (1889–1964) visited Republican Spain on behalf of the Hindu National Congress Party. In an effort to inform the world about what was happening there, he wrote a book titled <em>Why Spain?</em> which was published in London in 1937.</sup>
<sup>Below: “Casa Cambó” or the Ministry of Public Works, was known as the “CNT-FAI House” after July 19, 1936</sup>
<sup>Formation of militiamen on the front.</sup>
<sup>Special supplement of <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>, dated July 20, 1936, detailing the military insurrection. The disorder at the time caused the impromptu editors of this issue to confuse the date.</sup>
<sup>CNT-FAI bulletin published in various languages. This and the following three pages contain the first issue in French, which appeared on July 24, 1936. The articles comment on the tragic situation in Spain during the first days of the civil war.</sup>
<sup>Organization of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, showing the connections or relation between its services.</sup>
<sup>
1. Bueno (Small column made up almost completely by Catalans from Esquerra.)
1. Lenin (Column made up by POUM members and some internationals.)
1. Ascaso (Column composed of CNT- FAI militiamen. Gregorio Jover led the force.)
1. Aguiluchos (CNT-FAI Column. Led by García Vivancos.)
1. Karl Marx (PSUC Column led by José del Barrio.)
1. Maurín (POUM Column, largely made up of workers from Lleida. Led by José Rovira)
1. Durruti (CNT-FAI Column. Led by Buenaventura Durruti.)
1. Sur-Ebro (CNT-FAI Column led by Antonia Ortiz.)
1. Peñalver (Small Column from Tarragona, made up by workers and soldiers. Led by Peñalver)
1. Mena (Small Column lead from Tarragona. Led by Mena) The last two Columns were absorbed by the Sur-Ebro Column and the Macià-Companys Column. The later was commanded Pérez Salas.
</sup>
<sup>Issue number 3 of the Durruti Column’s war bulletin <em>El Frente</em>, published in Pino del Ebro on August 27, 1936.</sup>
<sup>Part of the front page of <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> on September 12, 1936. This issue reports on the speech that Durruti gave by radio on the Aragón front to all of Spain.</sup>
* <strong>Fourth Part:</strong> The deaths of Durruti
<quote>
<em>The purge of Trotskyist and anarcho-syndicalist elements has begun in Catalonia. This work will be conducted in Spain with the same vigor with which it was conducted in the USSR.</em>
— <em>Pravda</em>, December 17, 1936
</quote>
** Introduction
The fourth section of this book would be unnecessary if a haze of confusion hadn’t emerged around Durruti’s death immediately after it occurred. But, since the <em>mystery</em> of his death still exists today, forty years after the fact, we are obliged to add this epilogue.
From the moment Durruti received the injury that would end his life, the witnesses of the event began circulating contradictory accounts of the incident, which even the CNT could not counteract. There were clear political interests motivating each account. Koltsov correctly acknowledged that Durruti was one of the most brilliant men of Catalonia and the Spanish workers’ movement, which is why every tendency within the anti-fascist camp wanted to exploit his death for its own purposes and ideological ends. The most dramatic example occurred when he was posthumously granted the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (he, who had died as a simple militiaman) in order to make it easier to give the same rank to Líster, Modesto, Valentín González, and Cipriano Mera. That was an unambiguous political assassination, given the revolutionary attitude that Durruti maintained up to the moment of his demise. That, in addition to the pervasive exploitation of a phrase attributed to him (which we find no trace of in his own statements), not only consummated Durruti’s political murder but also contributed to the annihilation of the proletarian and peasant revolution. Indeed, immediately after his death, the GPU used the Communist Party to begin the hunt for the anarcho-Trotskyists. This was all done in the name of “renouncing everything except victory” (to cite “comrade Durruti”).
It is impossible to analyze the various accounts of Durruti’s death without considering the political climate at the time and the psychological dimensions of the Spanish tragedy. In that conflicted situation, an official account of Durruti’s death that was not definitive—and it couldn’t be said definitively that Durruti died from an “enemy bullet”—had the potential to provoke an armed conflict among anti-fascists. But a persuasive explanation of his death was never provided. In fact, the existing accounts are so contradictory and raise so many questions that we believe it is unlikely that the issue will ever be clarified. We can group the accounts of Durruti’s death into three categories:
1. A fascist killed Durruti.
1. One of Durruti’s comrades assassinated him because he was beginning to turn toward the Communists.
1. The GPU murdered Durruti.
To those three possibilities, we can add a fourth, that of the “vox populi”: the counter-revolution—all the political forces trying to make Spain return to the starting point of July 18, 1936—executed Durruti.
** FIRST CHAPTER. The first versions
*** CIPRIANO MERA (NOVEMBER 18)
<quote>
Manzana asked me to go up to one of the flat roofs of the so-called Cerro del Pimiento, where we saw that the Hospital Clínico was indeed in enemy hands. To retake it, given the positions, we would have to capture the whole block in front of the hospital house-by-house. We went up to Canalillo, so our people could seize the cemetery in front of the reservoir of the Isabel II Canal, the nuns’ convent, the Guzmán el Bueno Civil Guard barracks, the Geography and Cadastral Institute, the Red Cross Hospital, and the whole colony of little houses north of the Metropolitan Stadium.[748]
</quote>
*** ANTONIO BONILLA (NOVEMBER 19)
<quote>
To defend the area, the survivors of the Durruti Column took positions in cottages near Pablo Iglesias, some 400 meters from the Hospital Clínico, whose building in construction was under the control of Franco’s forces. On November 18, the Del Rosal Column from Asturias came to help us and one of its members, a dynamiters’ captain, pointed out to me that the enemy left the building under construction nightly and then returned at dawn. He proposed that we take it that night.... We fired a volley at the building at 4:00 am, and, since no one responded, a large group of comrades occupied it. They shouted from the balcony, asking me if I could hear them sing <em>The International</em>.
There was a dramatic encounter several hours later. The nationalists returned to the building through a tunnel connected to the Casa de Velázquez,[749] as they had every morning. The two sides were face-to-face. There was shooting and more deaths among Durruti’s men. The survivors sought refuge on the upper floors. Franco’s forces eventually withdrew through the tunnel and the men from the Durruti Column returned to the cottages.
I decided to speak with Durruti at 1:00 pm to tell him what had happened. Lorente was driving the car and a very admirable Catalan carpenter named Miguel Doga came with me. When we arrived at the barracks, we saw that Durruti’s Packard was running and that he was getting ready to leave with Manzana. I explained to him what had occurred and he decided to go see it personally. I told Julio Graves to follow our car in order to avoid passing through areas where there was fighting. He did this. Manzana, as was customary, wore his submachine-gun on his shoulder and had a scarf hanging around his neck, upon which he rested his right hand at times, because his finger had been injured several weeks earlier. Durruti appeared unarmed, but as usual carried a Colt 45 under his leather jacket. They followed us until we reached the houses occupied by our reduced forces. They stopped their car, and we stopped ours about twenty meters ahead.
Durruti got out to say something to some militiamen sunning themselves behind a wall. There was no fighting in the area. Durruti was fatally wounded right there and the Spanish revolution suffered the hardest and most unimaginable setback...
We were in the other car, some twenty meters ahead, and had been stopped for three or four minutes. When Durruti was getting into the car, we put our car in gear. When we looked back to see if they were following us, we saw the Packard turning and pulling out at a high rate of speed. I got out of the car and asked the boys what had happened. They told me that someone had been injured. I asked them if they knew the name of the man who had spoken with them and they said no. I told Lorente that we should return immediately. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.
</quote>
This is what Bonilla said to Pedro Costa Muste. [750] When we spoke with Bonilla and asked him if he had heard a shot, he said no. We also asked him how many people were in Durruti’s car and who his guards were. He replied that only Manzana and the driver left the barracks with Durruti, that Durruti and Manzana sat in the backseat, and that Durruti did not have any “official guard,” but that if someone was accompanying him “it was whoever happened to be around him at the moment.” When we asked Bonilla if he knew a person named Ramón García (“Ragar,” according to Montoto), [751] he answered: “There were two militiamen in the Durruti Column with that name, but neither frequented the Column’s Headquarters and certainly wouldn’t have been one of Durruti’s ‘guards.’ Besides, I don’t recall having seen either in Madrid.” [752] There is nothing in what we’ve transcribed here that provides any compelling evidence explaining exactly how Durruti was killed. In Bonilla’s account, there is only the suggestion of the possibility of a shot from José Manzana’s machine-gun.
*** JULIO GRAVES (DECLARATION TO ARIEL AT 5:00 PM)
<quote>
After eating, we headed for the University City, along with comrade Manzana. [753] We went up to Cuatro Caminos and from there down along Pablo Iglesias Avenue at a high speed. We passed through the colony of small houses at the end of this avenue and turned rightward. Durruti’s forces had changed locations, after the losses they’d suffered in the Moncloa and at the walls of the Modelo prison. An autumn sunlight filled the afternoon. When we reached the wide road, we saw a group of militiamen coming in our direction. Durruti thought that they were some boys deserting the front. There was heavy fighting there. The Hospital Clínico, taken by the Moors at the time, towered above the surroundings. Durruti made me stop the car, which I did, at the corner of one of those small houses for protection. Durruti got out and approached the fleeing militiamen. He asked them where they were going and, since they didn’t know what to say, he forcefully convinced them to return to their posts.
“Once the boys obeyed him,” Comrade Graves continues, “Durruti came back toward the car. Bullets were raining down with increasing intensity. The Moors and Civil Guard were shooting with greater determination from the gigantic colored Hospital Clínico building. Durruti collapsed when he reached the car door. A bullet had pierced his chest. Manzana and I jumped out of the vehicle and hurried to put him inside. I turned the auto and, driving as fast as I could, headed for the Catalan militia hospital in Madrid, where we had been a little bit ago. The rest you already know. That’s all.”[754]
</quote>
Joan Llarch makes an error when he discusses Julio Graves’ testimony in <em>La muerte de Durruti</em> and thus leaves a question in the air. Llarch believes that Durruti and his companions went to the Militias Hospital in the Hotel Ritz after leaving Miguel Angel Street but before going to the University City. This is false. Julio Graves’s comment is unambiguous: “[I] headed for the Catalan militia hospital in Madrid, where we [Ariel and Graves] had been a little bit ago.” Graves left the injured Durruti in the hands of the doctors and then went to see Ariel’s brother at the CNT’s National Sub-Committee building on Reforma Agraria Street, where the Soli correspondent had occupied a secretary’s office. Graves went there at 5:00 pm. And it was there where that he told Ariel the news:
<quote>
“What’s happening?” I asked, full of concern.
“Durruti’s been seriously wounded,” one of them told me, “and might be dead already.”
“But it isn’t a good idea to disclose the news,” comrade Julio Graves said.
It was 5:00 in the afternoon. The three of us went to the Hotel Ritz, where the hospital of the Catalan Militias was.
Very few knew about Durruti’s dire condition at the time.
</quote>
Ariel narrates the trip that he, Julio Graves, and his brother made to the Hotel Ritz. He also describes his conversation with Doctor Santamaría.
<quote>
I said goodbye to them, after saying that I’d return shortly. I went to the CNT National Sub-Committee to report the news. Some information had already arrived there. There was talk of keeping quiet, of discretion. I didn’t dare call Barcelona until later. Madrid’s defense demanded that and much more if necessary. We had to wait for the release of the decisions made by the CNT militants, who were meeting at the time.[755]
Durruti’s driver and I went to the Soli building, where we could speak more calmly.
</quote>
It is logical that Julio Graves concluded his statement to Ariel with the phrase “where we had been a little bit ago,” given that both he and Ariel were coming from the Hotel Ritz.
*** CIPRIANO MERA
<quote>
I went to the Defense Committee on the afternoon of November 19....
We [he and Val] continued our chat, while waiting for Durruti to arrive.... [H]is delay didn’t surprise us because we knew how busy he was, that he needed to be everywhere at once. Manzana came a little later and pulled me aside to speak with me privately. I could see that he was extremely upset and I hastened to ask him: “What’s happening, Manzana?”
Almost in tears, he replied: “They just shot comrade Durruti and it looks like there’s no hope for him.”
“What? What the hell are you saying? I was with him just hours ago and he told me that he was going to his command post to put things in order.”
“Yes, but around 4:00 in the afternoon [the hour is incorrect] a messenger told us that the Captain in charge of the two companies sent to the Hospital Clínico had ordered his troops to withdraw. You know how Durruti is with these things. He summoned the car and we took off for the Clínico to see if the messenger’s report was true. I told him that he didn’t really need to be there to confirm the facts. It wasn’t that I thought something might happen, but simply felt that he should stay in the command post and lead the men more calmly from there.”
“OK, OK, but what happened?”
“We reached the end of the avenue and, without stopping, entered through a street that goes to the eastern part of the Clínico. Durruti made us stop the car when he saw a militiaman running in our direction. He got out and asked him why he was running. The militiaman said that he was going to the health post, to get them to send some stretchers, because several men were injured and one had been killed. Durruti let him continue on his way. As he entered the car, whose door opened toward the Clínico, he told us that they had shot him.”
“Who was with you?”
“It was Durruti, his two messengers, Yoldi, and I.”
“Do you think the shot came from the Clínico and that our forces had already abandoned it?”
“Yes, there’s no doubt that it was enemy fire.”
Comrade Manzana told me that it was extremely important to keep quiet about what had happened, since Durruti’s men, after so many scares, might think that he had been assassinated by other anti-fascists. We agreed to this, but I told Manzana that we had to tell Val. He concurred and we entered his office to communicate the terrible news....
</quote>
Cipriano Mera describes their trip to the hospital. There, Mera, Manzana, and Yoldi again discussed the need to keep the news secret to prevent the Durruti Column’s men from doing something rash. Mera writes that Val, who had just come to the hospital, urged him to go to Valencia to communicate the news to Mariano R. Vázquez, the CNT General Secretary, and Ministers García Oliver and Federica Montseny:
<quote>
We again spoke about the circumstances of the deplorable event. Val voiced his suspicions when he asked Manzana:
“Was this an act of Communist treachery?”
“No,” Manzana responded categorically, “the shot came from the Clínico. It was bad luck. The hospital was in enemy hands.” ... I left for Valencia at once.[756]
</quote>
There are several flaws in Cipriano Mera’s account. The time of Manzana’s arrival at the Defense Committee is confused with the time of Durruti’s injury. Manzana arrived at 4:00 pm and Durruti was not wounded then. Mera did not go to Valencia because of Val’s insistence, but at the request of the CNT militants who were meeting.
Manzana’s and Julio Graves’s accounts are incompatible, in essence and detail. They differ about the militiamen. Also, Manzana says that Yoldi and two messengers were present, whereas Julio Graves states that only he and Manzana were there. Graves is closer to the truth than Manzana.
Nevertheless, it is comprehensible that Mera makes this error, given that Yoldi and Durruti were together so frequently.
Despite all these mistakes and contradictions, all agree that it was necessary to <em>keep silent</em>. Only a small number of people knew about what had occurred until 5:00 pm on November 19.
*** R. DIKNANIE KARMEN
Karmen was a Russian cameraman who traveled with Ilya Ehrenburg, the journalist from <em>Izvestia</em>. In 1947, he published his notebook from the Spain in Moscow’s <em>Novy Mir</em>. In one entry, he recounts his last meeting with Durruti, which supposedly occurred shortly before his death. He writes that he bumped into Hadji (alias “Santi”) in the Ministry of War. Hadji, he claims, was getting ready to visit Durruti to try to convince him not to withdraw his men from Madrid. Karmen decided to go along, since he also wanted to speak with Durruti, whom he hadn’t seen since he and Ehrenburg were in Bujaraloz in August.
They found Durruti in the palace on Miguel Angel Street:
<quote>
We entered his office, where Durruti was dictating something to a typist. He got up immediately when he saw us and rushed to greet Hadji, shaking his hand at length, as if fearing that he would never see him again. His black eyes, which had always been bright and shiny, now suggested a certain sadness. A few days ago Hadji had been added to Durruti’s General Staff as an advisor and Durruti couldn’t go very far without him.
</quote>
According to Karmen, Durruti made them walk through the palace, telling them to take whatever they fancied, paintings or anything else, but all “with the intention of dodging any explanation of his decision to withdraw his men from the front.”
<quote>
Hadji took him by the arm and sat him down on a velvet couch. Durruti docilely lowered his gaze.
Hadji protested Durruti’s plan to withdraw his men from the front. Doing so, he said, would deal a serious blow to the combatants’ morale. He finally convinced Durruti to continue fighting in Madrid:
“OK, I’m going to the brigade...”
“I’ll go with you,” Hadji said.
“No, no,” Durruti replied, visibly annoyed. “I’ll go alone.” With a quick step, he went to his guard: “The car! To the brigade!”
Durruti adjusted the pistol on his belt and we all went into the street. The car and the guard were already there. Durruti’s Chief of Staff came out of the building with a bandaged arm. I asked Durruti to let me join them, because I wanted to take some photos of the front. He curtly told me: “No, no, especially not now.”
He asked his Chief of Staff: “What’s new in the sector?” and jumped in the vehicle, which took off quickly, followed by four other cars. Hadji and I returned to the headquarters of Madrid’s defense.
An hour later, I saw Hadji while walking through a corridor in the Ministry of War. He was looking out a window. I called out to him, but he didn’t respond. I shook him by the shoulders. He turned to me and I saw that his eyes were full of tears.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’ve killed Durruti. They just killed him.”
A treacherous blow from behind took Durruti’s life, in the most critical moment of his struggle against himself and the “classical” anarchists.... He was an honest man, ready to draw pertinent conclusions from everything that took place in his fatherland, but they killed him.[757]
</quote>
If we take Karmen’s account seriously, we have to ask: who told Hadji that Durruti had been shot immediately after the event?
*** THE DOCTORS’ CONTRADICTIONS
They brought Durruti to the hospital and immediately took him to the operating room. Half a dozen doctors surrounded him, all of whom were paralyzed by fear. Since none were prepared to take the initiative, they decided to call Dr. Manuel Bastos Ansart. After seeing the patient, he declared that Durruti “was terminal ... all the medical assistants let out a tremendous sigh of relief. I had released them from a heavy burden: the possibility that they might be ordered to operate on the patient, who would very probably die. They knew that his acolytes would attribute his death to their medical intervention and hold them responsible for it, with all its consequences. I’ve bumped into doctors many years later who were present at the scene and they still shudder to recall it. They only speak of it in a whisper and pale at the memory alone.”
Dr. Bastos reported that the “bullet had horizontally crossed the upper abdomen and injured crucial internal organs. The wound was fatal and nothing could be done for the patient, who was already on his last breath.” [758]
Bastos’s diagnosis was incorrect, as we will see. Regarding the characteristics of the wound, he does not say that it was visible under the left nipple, at heart-level, as it appears in all the photographs of Durruti’s cadaver. Why this silence? We suspect that Dr. Bastos no longer recalled Durruti’s wound clearly when he wrote his book, after having operated on thousands of patients in the interim. In any case, his comments only render the case even more enigmatic, since they contradict those made by Dr. Santamaría. José Santamaría Jaume conducted the autopsy on Durruti: “I opened the thorax to inspect the damage caused by the bullet. Durruti had a very developed chest. Given the topography of the thorax, I realized that the diagnosis that surgery was impossible had been mistaken. An operation could have produced positive results, although doubtlessly the patient would not have survived.”
According to Santamaría, the injury was “caused by a bullet fired less than fifty centimeters from the victim, probably around thirty-five, a calculation deduced by the intensity of the gunpowder stains on the garment that he was wearing.” With regard to the bullet, it was “surely 9 caliber long.” And “the injury was under the left nipple, in the thorax.” [759] Santamaría’s localization of the injury is not consistent with Bastos’ description, and thus one must conclude that they were either discussing different wounds or simply expressed themselves in different terms. We must also point out that we cannot understand Santamaría’s assertion that “an operation could have produced positive results, although doubtlessly the patient would not have survived.” If the patient died, the operation would not have been positive. And if the operation could have had positive results, that implies that there was a significant chance of survival. Santamaría’s emphasis on its possible negative consequences seems best understood in terms of the panic reigning among the doctors (and that Dr. Bastos alluded to).
To summarize, what we have thus far is a series of contradictions that do not clarify the circumstances of Durruti’s injury. Instead, they lay the foundations for the legend that immediately formed around his death and ensure that his demise will always remain a mystery.
The CNT National Committee ordered Ricardo Sanz, another Nosotros group member, to replace Durruti in Madrid. He was in Figueras at noon on November 20 when García Oliver instructed him to go to the capital. He set off at dawn the next day and bumped into the caravan taking Durruti’s body to Barcelona at the San Miguel de los Reyes prison in Valencia. According to Sanz, he spoke with Manzana and Miguel Yoldi, who were representing the Column in that procession. Sanz does not say what they told him. He continued the trip to Madrid, which he reached at sunset.
<quote>
There was great disorder everywhere. No one could believe that Durruti was dead.
Everyone thought he couldn’t die. Anything but that could happen....
“The communists murdered him,” some said. “They shot him from a balcony,” others added. “Only his enemies could have killed him,” all agreed. Talk like that showed that no one thought that Durruti could have died from a bullet fired from the fascist trenches.
I was extremely interested in finding out how Durruti died. This preoccupied me, as is easy to understand, for several reasons.
In the first place, Durruti was a very close, life-long friend of mine. Second, as Durruti’s replacement, I needed to know exactly what had happened in order to determine how to proceed as the new leader of the unit that he had led.
</quote>
Ricardo Sanz met with Dr. Santamaría and inspected the Hospital Clínico sector. He says that he took statements from those with Durruti when he was injured (but doesn’t mention any names) and concluded, after his investigation, that there was “no doubt that Durruti died fighting the enemy and from a bullet fired from the Hospital Clínico building in the University City.” He also says: “Durruti was a victim of carelessness.... The vigilant enemy saw the car stop a mere kilometer from the building and waited for its occupants to get out and become exposed. When he had them in range, he shot a burst of machine-gun fire that hit the mark. Durruti was fatally injured, and two of his companions less seriously so.... Thus it was, when there was no fighting and when no one expected it, that an entirely unanticipated attack cut short our precious Durruti’s life.” [760]
There are various problems with Ricardo Sanz’s statement, which he made in 1945. Instead of clearing up Durruti’s death, it simply makes it even more obscure.
Julio Graves and José Manzana mention one or more militiamen to explain why Durruti got out of the car. Antonio Bonilla agrees on this fact.
Sanz does not note any militiamen and writes only that it was reckless to leave the vehicle in a combat zone. Sanz also cites a burst of machine-gun fire, which neither Manzana nor Graves mention. And then Sanz contradicts Manzana, who spoke of heavy shooting, when he writes “there was no fighting.” Sanz should have been more precise in his account and also provided the names of the two men injured with Durruti.
If we give credence to Joan Llarch, Ricardo Sanz responded to a questionnaire of his, possibly in 1970, in which he identified Manzana and Yoldi as the wounded comrades (although in reality neither was injured then, but rather a few days earlier). In his new statement, Sanz admits that he did not speak with anyone in Madrid who had been with Durruti when he was shot, but says that he spoke with Manzana and Yoldi near Valencia. None of his informants had been present during the incident. Thus, Sanz’s new comments only raise more questions.
Before concluding with Sanz’s testimony, we should say a few words about the psychological state in which he found the Column members. Sanz held a meeting with the surviving members of the forces that Durruti brought to Madrid in the barracks on Granada Street. Federica Montseny was also there, trying to calm the agitated men. After Sanz and Montseny spoke, a militiaman voiced the group’s sentiments: “Comrade Sanz, don’t be surprised by our alarm. We’re convinced that it wasn’t the fascists who killed Durruti but our enemies within the Republic.... You run the same risk, since they want to eliminate all men with revolutionary ideas. Some fear that the revolution is going too far.” Sanz later commented: “Everyone who hadn’t died at Durruti’s side thought more or less the same thing.” [761]
Some Column members fulfilled their pledge to return to the Aragón front but most stayed in Madrid. A document sent to José Mira by Miguel Palacios, the Chief Commanding Officer of the X Brigade, confirms this: “Chief Commander to Comrade Mira, representative of Durruti’s forces. Given that the Polish Company must withdraw to the town of Pardo, use your reserve forces to try to cover the area it occupies along the Casa de Campo wall, after Puerta de Aravaca. Leave the rest of your force behind and consult with the Company that you have to relieve. Command Post.
December 7, 1936. Chief Commander.” The document was signed and sealed with the round stamp of the X Brigade. [762]
Most historians who discuss the battle for Madrid obscure the Durruti Column’s contribution to the resistance and also make it disappear from the conflict after Durruti’s death. We hope that the above text will inspire the authors in question to correct their writings.
<em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> dedicated the front page of its November 21 issue to Durruti’s death. Its version of events also does nothing to illuminate the matter:
<quote>
Our comrade went to visit his Column’s advance positions around 8:30 in the morning. On the way, he ran into some militiamen who were returning from the front. He stopped the car and a shot rang out as he emerged, which we believe was fired from a window of a house near the Moncloa. Durruti collapsed without saying a word. The assassin’s bullet penetrated his back. The injury was fatal.
</quote>
Who could have provided that information to <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em>? Clearly Ariel wouldn’t have done so, given his statements. Could this version be a fantasy of the newspaper’s editor, Jacinto Toryho?
The first public commentaries appeared on November 23, the day after Durruti’s funeral. The fascists broadcast this on Radio Sevilla: “Durruti was killed by those he annoyed while alive, because he was a threat to their political ambitions.” They added: “What happened to Durruti will happen to many of his friends.”
Moscow’s <em>Izvestia</em> published this on the same day: “To a great extent, the Popular Front government was formed because of pressure from Durruti. After the terrible experiences of the fight against fascism, Durruti underwent an evolution that brought him closer to the Communist Party. When he left the Aragón front for Madrid, he declared: ‘Yes, I feel like a Bolshevik and I’m inclined to put Stalin’s portrait on my desk.’” [763]
The following rumor was circulating through Madrid at the time: “Durruti, convinced of the efficacy of the Communist Party, had renounced anarchism and joined the Communists, on the condition that his membership be kept secret until the opportune moment.” [764]
In response to these stories, the CNT and FAI released a joint communiqué:
<quote>
Workers! The ambushers of the “fifth column” have circulated the false and despicable rumor that our comrade Durruti was murdered in an act of treason. We urge all comrades to reject that terrible slander. It is a vile attempt to break the proletariat’s formidable unity of action and thought, which is its most effective weapon against fascism. Comrades! Durruti was not the victim of treachery. He fell in the struggle like so many other freedom fighters. He fell like heroes fall: while fulfilling his duty. Dismiss all the rotten lies circulated by the fascists to undermine our unity. Disregard them completely. Don’t listen to those who sow fratricidal myths. They are the greatest enemies of the revolution! CNT National Committee. Peninsular Committee of the FAI.[765]
</quote>
This document explains nothing about Durruti’s death, but it underscores that he died while confronting the enemy, whatever the exact circumstances of the event. The CNT and anarchist committees conducted an in-depth investigation of his death, although they have never revealed its results. This suggests that their main concern was maintaining the anti-fascist front at all costs. However, the CNT and FAI’s allies were not as generous. Some, particularly the CP, not only spread falsehoods about Durruti’s demise but also hastened to fill the void he left with Kleber. General Vicente Rojo denounced this in a November 26 letter to General Miaja:
<quote>
The press is making a patently exaggerated and false attempt to exalt this General [Kleber].... And his leadership qualities aren’t real, if only because they depend on his artificial popularity.... It seems that [Kleber] is the military idol of some of our political parties ... who are presenting him as the caudillo capable of leading the revolution to a happy ending.... As always, this is extraordinarily harmful, because it foments the leaderism that has caused so much damage to our homeland. It’s even worse if the person that they’re trying to elevate doesn’t really have the ability to lead. [766]
</quote>
** CHAPTER II. Fact or fiction?
*** Mathieu Corman (militiaman in the Column’s International Group)
<quote>
Durruti was killed by a blast of gunfire when he got out of his car. That was the only victory of the “fifth column” in Madrid. The militiamen surrounded the house from where the gunshots came and killed everyone inside.[767] Another Column fighter, who prefers to remain anonymous, expanded on Corman’s version:
</quote>
*** J.M.
<quote>
When they left the Headquarters on Miguel Angel Street, Bonilla, Manzana, and a third person whose name I don’t recall took their seats in the car. Once they got to the Moncloa Plaza—the place closest to the Hospital Clínico—Durruti told the driver to stop near one of the cottages on the avenue.
Just as he did so, someone in a cottage shot at the vehicle. A bullet pierced the car window and injured Durruti in his side. After collecting themselves, the car’s occupants went toward the building. Two or three individuals took off running. A round of gunfire hit one of them, who died instantly, but the others managed to escape. A CNT membership card issued by the Baker’s union in Madrid was found on the corpse. There was an investigation, which confirmed that its owner had died a few days earlier and that his family had noticed that the card was missing when they gave them his personal belongings. This indicated that members of the “fifth column” had infiltrated the hospitals and were stealing political identification documents.[768]
</quote>
*** JAUME MIRAVITLLES
In his memoirs, Jaume Miravitlles says that “one year after Durruti’s death, there was an exposition in Barcelona commemorating the heroic resistance in Madrid. Among other objects, the shirt he wore on the day of his death was on display. It was spread out in a showcase and people gathered around to see the tattered edges of the bullet hole.” Miravitlles alleges that he “heard people say that it couldn’t have been caused by a bullet shot from two thousand feet away.”
“That very night,” he states, “I had specialists from the medical laboratory come to examine the shirt. All concluded the same thing: the bullet had been fired at close range.”
Days later, “at a banquet that Durruti’s <em>compañera</em> attended,” he questioned Emilienne Morin about the matter:
<quote>
“Surely you must know the truth: how did Durruti die?” “Yes, I do know,” she answered. I insisted: “So, what happened to him?” She stared at me and said: “For as long as I live, I will accept the official account: that a Civil Guard shot him from a window.” Then, in a low voice, she added: “But I know that he was murdered by someone close to him. It was an act of vengeance.” [769]
</quote>
*** PIERRE ROSLI
Pierre Rosli, a French Communist Party activist and Section Chief in the XI International Brigade, declares:
<quote>
On November 21, the same day as Durruti’s death, his Column attacked the Hospital Clínico and the Santa Cristina Asylum. They began in the morning and, after numerous unsuccessful attempts, finally penetrated the hospital’s walls in the early afternoon. Durruti was in his command post, in front of the Modelo prison. At times the shots seemed to come from behind. Durruti dropped dead. A stray bullet? A ricochet? The anarchist leader had had many enemies among old CNT and FAI militants since August. They reproached him for his disciplinary harshness and some accused him of ambition and compromising with the Communists.
</quote>
Minutes after the event, Pierre Rosli claims that men from the Durruti Column told him: “Our own people killed Durruti...” [770]
*** MIKHAIL KOLTSOV
<quote>
November 21. A stray or perhaps intentionally fired bullet fatally wounded Durruti as he got out of his car in front of his command post. What a shame, Durruti! Despite his errors and his anarchist practices, he was doubtlessly one of the most brilliant men in Catalonia and the entire Spanish workers’ movement.[771]
</quote>
*** DOMINIQUE DESANTI
<quote>
They killed Durruti in front of the Modelo prison, the pride of the Republic.
Everything has been said about his death, but some years ago we meet an old, repentant anarchist who claimed—with details that would be difficult to invent—that one of his comrades had executed him. “With his discipline in indiscipline, Durruti would have made us lambs. We grumbled, like the Socialists and Communists. He demanded that we fight without challenging his orders, but we believed that everyone should have the right to decide whether or not to attack. He commanded like a ‘Soviet’ general.” The contrite anarchist added: “I didn’t know it back then, but while there are many ideologies, there’s only one way to fight and the goal is to win.”[772]
</quote>
*** HUGH THOMAS
<quote>
On November 21, while the battle was still raging, Durruti was killed in front of the Model Prison. His death was said to have been caused by a stray bullet from the University City. It seems more probable, however, that he was killed by one of his men, an “uncontrollable,” who resented the new Anarchist policy (termed “the discipline of indiscipline”).... Durruti’s funeral in Barcelona was an extraordinary occasion. All day long a procession of 80 to 100 people broad marched down the Diagonal, the widest street in the city. In the evening, a crowd of 200,000 pledged themselves to carry out the dead man’s principles. But the death of Durruti marked the end of the classic age of Spanish anarchism.
</quote>
*** PIERRE BROUÉ AND EMILE TÉMIME
<quote>
On 14 November the 3,500 men of the Durruti Column arrived from the Aragón front. The Madrid crowd gave them a triumphal welcome. Durruti asked for the most dangerous sector. He was given the Casa de Campo, opposite the University City. The General Staff allocated him an officer, the Russian “Santi,” as advisor....
On 15 November, the main attack actually began.... By the end of the afternoon, the Asensio Column had managed to break through and gain a footing in the University City.... On 21 November, Durruti was killed in the University City, probably by one of the men in his column who resented the risks he made them run and the discipline he imposed on them during this hell.[773]
</quote>
*** THE REVIEWER FROM <em>THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT</em>
<quote>
To his enormous credit, Durruti finally agreed to go to Madrid and work out a deal with the Communist Party and the Government. He and his bodyguard went clattering into the underground restaurant of the Gran Vía while the shells from general Franco’s troops crashed into the street outside. The Madrileños had never seen such a display of military hardware as those warriors carried, and they were enthusiastic at the thought that these well-accoutred men were at last on their side.
“Durruti left his bodyguard. He made a deal with the communists. And fifteen minutes later he was shot in the street by agents of an anarchist organization called “The Friends of Durruti.”[774]
</quote>
This is the version of Durruti’s death advanced by a writer from <em>The Times Literary Supplement</em> in a review of <em>The Anarchists</em> by James Joll and <em>Anarchism</em> by George Woodcock. He reproached both historians for their depiction of the event:
<quote>
Neither of the authors under review has the episode quite right. They both accept the theory that Durruti got out to the Madrid front and was there shot by persons unknown. This was the theory which was, for obvious reasons, circulated by the Spanish Republican Government and the Communist Party at the time. They also had every interest in blurring the violence of the conflict between the anarchists and the communists. It was even said that perhaps Durruti had been killed by a stray bullet from the Franco trenches. None of all that was true. He was shot in the back in the presence of many observers in the streets of Madrid. And the killing could be seen as perhaps a final demonstration of the philosophy of anarchism and above all of the final conflict between the anarchists and the communists.
“The Friends of Durruti” were organized quite a while before Durruti was murdered. It was intended to express the ‘true spirit’ of anarchism as against the authoritarian tendencies of communism. It was therefore logical that ‘The Friends of Durruti’ should shoot Durruti. It was the last act in the quarrel between Bakunin and Karl Marx.
</quote>
People mentioned in his article, as well as others interested in the war in Spain, replied in the following issue of <em>The Times Literary Supplement</em>. [775] Hugh Thomas writes:
<quote>
Sir: your reviewer of James Joll’s <em>The Anarchists</em> (TLS, December 24) says categorically, as a definitive fact, almost as if he had been there himself, that the Spanish anarchist leader Durruti was murdered in the streets of Madrid in 1936 by the extreme organization known ironically as ‘The Friends of Durruti.’ He adds that: ‘many observers’ saw the murder and that the Spanish Republican Government and Communist Party circulated the theory that he had been shot at the front, either by the nationalists or ‘unknown persons.’ It would be very interesting to know exactly who these ‘many observers’ were and whether any of them can now be identified.... It is also perplexing why your reviewer should think that the Government and the communists had a good reason for hiding the facts of Durruti’s death, if they knew them. Surely their relations with the anarchists were already tense enough by November, 1936, for them to have used the opportunity of Durruti’s “murder” to discredit Durruti’s colleagues, particularly those reluctant to submit to the disciplines of war. And then, what evidence is there that the “Friends of Durruti” were organized at this time at all, as a group?
</quote>
*** Albert Meltzer
There is a statement by Albert Meltzer immediately after the letter from Hugh Thomas:
<quote>
Your reviewer of the Joll’s <em>The Anarchists</em> claims to have greater knowledge of Durruti’s death than he seems prepared to substantiate with sources. When a man is shot in the open street, in a period of warfare, one can attribute his death to his opponents or his supporters quite easily. At the time of his death, Durruti was shot, in the open street, in a quarter from which the fascists were being evicted. It is impossible that the killer could have recognized him, and shot him knowing that he was shooting Buenaventura Durruti. He wore no special uniform. The killer was shooting at random at militiamen advancing and therefore could have only been a Francoist. While Durruti was shot in the back, it was from a height, among buildings still occupied by the enemy. Later recriminations in the Republic brought forward the suggestion by the Anarchists that Durruti had been shot by a Communist, but that is improbable. It was however, true, that Durruti’s death was of great tactical advantage to the Communists, since it removed the one man in the Anarchist Movement whose prestige was great enough to have withstood the growing Communist influence.
The “Friends of Durruti” was formed months after Durruti’s death (and so named in accordance with a traditional anarchist practice to call groups ‘Friends of ’ this or that dead philosopher or militant, but never a living one). Those who adopted this name in Spain (the first group was in Paris) were the Anarchists who opposed their organization’s policy of compromise with the Government and submission to the blackmail by the Communist Party. Your reviewer (possibly a former fellow traveler?) mixed up two Communist lines of attack upon the Anarchists when he asserts that The Friends of Durruti killed Durruti, who was about to ‘do a deal’ with the Communists.
The Communists at the time of his death were in no position do a deal. It was only with the Russian influence, coming to a head after Durruti’s death, that they could have done so. In several published interviews, with the veteran Russian anarchist, Emma Goldman, Buenaventura Durruti made his position clear, shortly before his death. Asked if he were not too trusting, he replied: ‘I have no fear that if the workers are called to choose between our methods of freedom and the so-called communism you have seen in Russia, which they will choose.’ She asked what would happen if the communists proved too strong for the workers to be able to choose, and he said quite pointedly: ‘It will be an easy matter to deal with the Communists when we have disposed of Franco, or <em>even before</em> if the necessity arises.’ Had he lived, this might have been proved true.
</quote>
*** JAMES JOLL
Joll also commented on the review in <em>The Times Literary Supplement</em>. Students of Spanish anarchism and of the Spanish civil war will be grateful to your contributor for his account of the murder of Durruti. It is perhaps a pity that your insistence on anonymity make it impossible to identify this particular source in order to assess its value and to refer to it accurately in future versions of the story.
*** ANONYMOUS:
The incriminated critic responded to his opponents in the same edition of the <em>Times Literary Supplement</em>:
<quote>
Your correspondents, Mr. Thomas and Mr. Meltzer, raise four principal points. First, where was Durruti shot? Secondly, who shot him? Thirdly, why did they do so? And finally, why should the story have been officially distorted?
Mr. Thomas believes that he was shot in the Parque del Oeste; that is to say, at the front, not in Madrid. Mr. Meltzer accepts that he was shot in the street but not that he was shot by ‘The Friends of Durruti.’ I was in Madrid on the day of the murder and was at the scene of the crime within half an hour. There were several people there whom I knew at least by sight, two of them members of Durruti’s bodyguard. They certainly had no time to concoct for my benefit the story of what had happened.
Durruti was shot, as Mr. Meltzer rightly points out, from an upper window, but he amazes with his statement that ‘nationalists were being evicted’ from that section of the city at the time and therefore he was shot by a nationalist who was simply firing at Republican militiamen advancing. I would really ask Mr. Meltzer to re-examine his sources. Such an episode might have occurred many weeks earlier or many months later. No such battle with Franco supporters could possibly have occurred inside Madrid at that time. There was no need for Durruti to wear a special uniform to be identified. The killers were waiting at a window from which they could cover the exits of the building where Durruti was known to be completing his negotiations. The window was on the same side of the street; hence the shot in the back as he came out of the door.
Naturally it is possible for anyone at this date to deny that the killers were really members of ‘The Friends of Durruti.’ When Mr. Meltzer, naming no sources of his own, asks me for mine, I can only remind him of what that sort of war is like. My sources are, I should think, long since dead on many fronts. They were not the sort of men to be found now alive and happy at Chatham House or the United Nations.
Nevertheless, it is just possible—I am afraid this is the only help I can offer Mr. Joll—that one or other of the American correspondents in Madrid may have got the news past the censorship, so that it might be worthwhile looking through American newspapers files of the period. Both Mr. Meltzer and Mr. Thomas are, to my knowledge, mistaken in suggesting that ‘The Friends of Durruti’ was not in existence as an organization at the time of Durruti’s death. Their slogans were on the walls, their leaflets distributed.
Two views of them can be held. They can be seen on the one hand as “purist” anarchist idealists who felt, as any anarchist might, that under the pressure of the war the anarchist leadership was abandoning basic anarchist principles. Or they might be in fact agents of the enemy masquerading as anarchists for disruptive purposes. Here, Mr. Thomas’s reminder that the anarchists “were often used by other organizations” is valuable. Their killing of Durruti is explicable on either count.
As for the official version of the story, surely it is obvious that, since the object of the killers—whether idealistic or otherwise—was to disrupt and provoke, the object of the Government and of the communists, who had just been negotiating, must be to thwart this attempt by preventing the general public and, above all, the men on the fighting front, from learning the truth. It was an elementary riposte to the provocation.
In my view Mr. Meltzer touches the heart of the matter with his quotation from Durruti’s interview with Emma Goldman. She asked if he were not being “too trusting.” He denied it. But there were dedicated anarchists who thought that he was. And they also thought that in the brief interval between the interview and the murder he was changing his mind in the direction of a necessary cooperation with the communists, who in my personal judgment were at that date a very great deal more powerful in the republican armed forces than Mr. Meltzer suggests.
</quote>
*** ANTONIA STERN’S VERSION
Her account differs from those previously mentioned and adds a new dimension to Durruti’s death by linking it to that of Hans Beimler, a German Communist (and onetime CP deputy), who served as a military attaché in Spain.
Beimler’s mysterious death filled his friends with worry, including Antonia Stern, who was among his closest intimates and also a collaborator. Beimler had quarreled with the German section operating out of Barcelona’s Hotel Colón, the PSUC premises. He had reproached them for bureaucratism and for focusing more on what was happening in the Catalan rearguard than the fight against fascism. Antonia Stern conducted a painstaking investigation into Beimler’s death. We extract the following paragraphs from her work:
<quote>
It was a year before the tombstone at Hans Beimler’s grave received a name or any information relative to his death. And the inscriptions that were added were false. Hans Beimler died in the University City not in the Casa de Campo, some three kilometers away. Did they hope that this incorrect information would disorient the public if there was an investigation or did they simply want to avoid mentioning the University City? <em>One can’t forget that Durruti was shot down there ten days earlier, from behind, in a cowardly way.</em> Were they trying to stop anyone from noticing the coincidence? Perhaps there is a connection! ... But there is more... Beimler’s real friends, who spoke of him and cherished his memory, were immediately regarded with suspicion and persecuted...
</quote>
Antonia Stern acknowledges that she initially believed the official version of Hans Beimler’s death. She explains what happened to her:
<quote>
I wanted to collect statements from Hans Beimler’s militia comrades and publish a book in his memory. I was isolated as soon as I arrived in Barcelona and later tyrannized. Despite the fact that I had the best recommendations and permission to travel, my work, my trip to Madrid, and ultimately everything related to my effort to gather material for the book met with difficulties and prohibitions. I was finally told outright that I should give up my projected work on Hans Beimler. But, since I didn’t obey Party orders, I was arrested. They also detained all the militiamen who had shared their recollections of Beimler with me. The reason for our mistreatment, and why they wanted to prevent any talk of Beimler, escaped us. We understood when we found out how Beimler died: “They strangled the revolution with Hans. We couldn’t win because the best comrades had been liquidated by their own Party,” a militiaman confided to me. [776]
</quote>
*** FATHER JESÚS ARNAL AND THE JOURNALIST MONTOTO
Father Jesús Arnal, better known in Aragón as “Durruti’s secretary” or “Durruti’s priest,” was fulfilling his religious duties as a parish priest in Aguinaliú (in the Huesca province) when the military uprising erupted on July 19. Fearing for his life, he hid for the first few days and then fled the area.
His got as far as Candasnos. There, a CNT militant named Timoteo, who saw no reason to execute him, tried to protect the priest and ending up taking him to the Durruti Column in Bujaraloz. He was given a job as a clerk in the <em>Centurias</em> Committee, along with Antonio Roda, José Esplugas, and Flores. Eventually Arnal became Company Commissioner and Secretary to Division Captain Ricardo Rionda Castro (Rico). He went to France once the war ended but soon returned to Spain, where authorities interned him in a concentration camp. When he was finally freed, he again began working as a priest, this time in Ballobar (Huesca). Such was the life of “Durruti’s priest” until one day he made the decision to write his memoirs and explain the mystery of Durruti’s death. From the moment that he publicly declared that he was doing so, journalists and filmmakers besieged him and he didn’t have a moment of peace.
Father Jesús claims that his primary reason for writing his memoirs was to justify his presence in the Durruti Column. Apparently the idea occurred to him in 1967 after he spoke with Mariano Pacheco, a technician involved in filming <em>Golpe de mano</em> ( <em>Surprise Attack</em>) in his village. According to Father Jesús, Pacheco wanted him to confirm the circumstances of Durruti’s death, which Pacheco had already learned from Julio Graves.
Jesús Arnal, perhaps inspired by the filmmaker and aware that divulging a new account of Durruti’s demise could be profitable, set out to pen his memoirs. After he publicized the fact, some journalists from the EFE Agency in Monzón came to interview him in November 1969. They ran an article on November 11 in Barcelona’s <em>El Noticiero Universal</em>. <em>El Heraldo de Aragón</em> reprinted the piece on November 30, Lérida’s La Mañana did so on December 2, 1969, and Angel Montoto published an article on the issue in <em>La Prensa</em> on July 7, 1970. Durruti’s death is the central matter in all of these pieces. Jesús Arnal writes:
<quote>
Before reaching the bridge that separates France from Spain, Rico [i.e., Ricardo Rionda Castro] told us:
“Now you’ll know the truth about Durruti’s death. I’d always said that it was a secret, which we’d sworn not to reveal for political reasons and because it was a ridiculous death for Durruti... When we got to the University City and before entering the battle zone, Julio, the driver, parked the car along the curb. The vehicle was the convertible Hispano that we had taken from Bujaraloz. Durruti carried a <em>naranjero</em> submachine-gun, the type with a short barrel that you use to really blast the gendarmes.
“When he leaned forward to get out of the car, he went to rest the <em>naranjero</em> on the curb. The safety latch slipped when the gun hit the ground and the fateful shot rang out.”
</quote>
According to Arnal, the following occurred shortly after the above statement appeared in the press:
<quote>
.... a car stopped in front of my rectory house, and a gentleman, a lady, and a child got out. They came to my office and the man said to me:
“I’m from Barcelona. I’ve come to greet you and find out how you learned the truth about Durruti’s death.”
I calmly gave him my version and the sources who had given it to me.
He said: “I was in the car. You can’t use my name, only my pseudonym ‘Ragar.’”
He showed me some documents proving his identity.
“You’re right, except for some minor details. The vehicle was not a Hispano but a Buick, the machine-gun did not hit the curb but the car’s running board, and Ricardo Rionda Castro was not there but Bonilla and Manzana were. I don’t know how Rico learned the facts, but he wasn’t in the vehicle. The accident occurred in the Moncloa Plaza at the corner of Rosales Avenue at 4:00 pm on November 19, 1936. They immediately took him to the Hotel Ritz.... Federica Montseny and Mariano Vázquez swore us to secrecy.”
</quote>
These comments from the mysterious “Ragar” turned Father Jesús into a detective, because the difference between his version and Rionda’s troubled him. He writes: “With many questions in mind ... the journalist Angel Montoto and I began a series of meetings with people that we assumed would be well-informed.”
They spoke with Doctors Martínez Fraile, Manuel Bastos, and José Santamaría. This resulted in the contradictory statements from Bastos and Santamaría that we’ve already noted. Arnal and Montoto accepted Santamaría’s version, because it fit more comfortably with their own theory.
Ready to continue their investigation, Montoto went to Toulouse to question Federica Montseny and Father Jesús went to Realville to speak with Rionda.
<quote>
Mr. Angel Montoto visited Federica Montseny in France and told me this when he returned: “She said that we’re right, when I asserted that Durruti’s death was an accident.”
But I still wasn’t satisfied and went to France, to the town of Realville, where I’d been told that Rico lived. He received me like a father would receive a son. I told him: “Look, Rico, I come to embrace you, you and your family, but also for an issue that I really want to clarify: Durruti’s death.” “The truth is what I told you when we crossed the border and there is none other. However, you can add or clarify that I wasn’t present at the accident, but you know that Manzana and I were closer than brothers. He told me everything within ten minutes of the event. I don’t hesitate to say that Durruti was killed accidentally....
</quote>
“I believe,” concludes Father Jesús, “that the last word has been said on the matter.” [777] The last word?
** CHAPTER III. Contradictions and fabrications in the presented versions
None of the above attempts to resolve the mystery of Durruti’s death are credible enough to be accepted as the “last word” on the topic. There are simple too many contradictions, omissions, or other inadequacies. While each account may have some <em>positive element</em> and perhaps all of those elements, taken together, could produce a narrative of Durruti’s death that is more consistent with the truth, that would involve pure speculation, which is hardly appropriate in historical research.
The Stalinist version first surfaced in <em>Izvestia</em>; it was reinforced by the journalist from London’s <em>Times Literary Supplement</em>, and was finally embraced by historian Federico Bravo Morata. It was the latter who wrote that Durruti “joined the Communists, on the condition that his membership be kept secret until the opportune moment.” The Stalinist account had two goals: to appropriate Durruti’s personality for their political ends and to incriminate the anarchists. That is also the purpose of the Russian cameraman’s assertion that most of the Column’s “adventurist members were capable of killing Durruti.” Of course all of these sources are deeply suspicious. While it is true that one can interpret some of Durruti’s published statements as sympathetic to the united front against fascism as advocated by the Communists, Durruti had clearly specified what he meant by the <em>unity of action</em> and <em>his</em> affirmations on the issue are unambiguous. His last public statement was his “letter to the Russian workers.” Although Durruti personally opposed sending a delegation to Russia, when the Column’s War Committee decided to do so, he drafted his declaration. There is not one mention of Stalin or the Bolsheviks or the Soviet government in the text. It is a statement from one worker to other workers, asking them to support the social revolution in Spain and asserting his determination to carry it forward. With this as Durruti’s final statement, one would have to make huge leaps of imagination to see Durruti’s “evolution” toward the Communist Party.
The Stalinists insinuated that one of Durruti’s own men could have killed him and Pierre Broué, Hugh Thomas, and Dominique Desanti repeat this claim. This is the greatest possible affront to the thousand Durruti Column fighters who lost their lives defending Madrid. The Durruti Column men who went from Aragón to the capital not only had faith in Durruti, but also followed him without hesitation, even to death. Any one of them was willing to die at his side. Durruti’s exemplary and constant engagement in the struggle, whether in Aragón or Madrid, backed up his influence over his men. There was no contradiction between Durruti the Column leader and Durruti the militant, and he fulfilled his leadership responsibilities not in his headquarters at 27 Miguel Angel Street or the Santa Lucía Inn, but on the frontlines. There is no way that a man from his Column could have shot him, unless the assassin was mentally unstable and it was an isolated act.
But this merits further commentary. We have already seen that General Vicente Rojo made Durruti responsible for the University City. We also noted that a Communist Party Column refused to take orders from Durruti the anarchist. But, nevertheless, since Rojo’s order is in the archives, historians have assumed that the Libertad-López Tienda Column was under Durruti’s command and have therefore denominated it the Durruti Column in their writings. It was this Column that was <em>responsible for the nationalists’ passage across the Manzanares River</em>.
That order prompted Martínez Bande to mistakenly describe the Libertad-López Tienda Column as anarcho-syndicalist, although he later corrected himself. Neither Hugh Thomas nor Pierre Broué nor others who assert that the Durruti Column was responsible for the crossing of the Manzanares have made such clarifications.
Vicente Rojo also put other troops in Madrid under Durruti’s orders, including some <em>carabinero</em> companies. Thus, in Durruti’s sector, there were survivors of the original Column that came from Aragón plus various others that are difficult to classify politically. If Durruti’s murderer was among them, he would have to be one of the troops added to the Column in Madrid, who neither knew nor loved Durruti and might have been ideologically hostile to him.
*** JAUME MIRAVITLLES’ FANTASTIC IMAGINATION
We also attended the exposition in Barcelona. A shirt was on display, but not the leather coat on which the famous “gunpowder stains” were visible. Miravitlles saw Durruti’s shirt in a display case, but it was not removed for analysis. Did the doctors that Miravitlles brought in determine that the bullet had been fired at “close range” by looking at the garment through the glass of the display case? Ricardo Sanz, who was responsible for the exposition, is still alive and can confirm whether or not Miravitlles was permitted to take the shirt to the laboratory for analysis.
We will now address Miravitlles’s second claim. Emilienne Morin, Durruti’s widow, left Barcelona with their daughter shortly after Durruti’s death to work with organizations supporting the Spanish revolution in France. We asked her if she attended an official banquet, at which she would have had the opportunity to speak with Miravitlles. She replied categorically that she did not and had never met him.
*** “SANTI,” DURRUTI’S MILITARY ADVISOR
“Santi” is a strange figure and his role in Spain will always be somewhat mysterious. He used numerous names, although apparently his real one was Kh D. Mansurov. Ehrenburg, who frequently mentions him, calls him Hadji, although Koltsov designates him Santi. In any case, according to Ehrenburg, “Hadji was recklessly courageous, to the extreme of infiltrating the enemy’s rearguard (he was from the Caucasus region and could pass for a Spaniard).
A good deal of Hemingway’s novel <em>For Whom the Bell Tolls</em> comes from stories Hadji told to the American novelist.” [778] Ehrenburg also portrays Hadji as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet Army and a member of the Russian General Staff in Spain, which General Ivan Berzin (Grichine) led.
We have asked many of those who were close to Durruti in Madrid (José Mira, Antonio Bonilla, Ricardo Rionda, Liberto Ros, and Mora among others) and none offer any support for the claim that Santi was a military advisor to Durruti. All agree that Manzana and Durruti’s own instincts were his only advisors. While Russian soldiers visited Durruti’s headquarters in Bujaraloz as well as Madrid, none remained. This suggests that in this instance—as in others—Koltsov confused history by inventing people or giving real people invented functions.
Karmen’s story is equally far-fetched, both his depiction of Hadji’s relationship to Durruti as well as his statement that four cars followed Durruti when he departed for the University City. There were no additional drivers in his Headquarters at Miguel Angel Street, other than Mora, who served Durruti as a messenger. Nevertheless, there is something intriguing in Karmen’s story. He situates the death between 2:30 and 3:00 pm and sites a statement from Hadji: “They’ve killed Durruti. They just killed him.”
Who were “they”? The succeeding paragraph is an attack on the anarchists: “A treacherous blow from behind took Durruti’s life, in the most critical moment of his struggle against himself and the ‘classical’ anarchists. Durruti tried hard to break with the clique of adventurers that surrounded him, and was beginning the real, unreserved struggle for the Spain’s freedom. He was an honest man, ready to draw the pertinent conclusions from everything that took place in his fatherland, but they killed him.” This “they” is ambiguous: “they” could be the “classical” anarchists, the fascists, or Orlov’s GPU men. In any case, it would be very suspicious if Hadji did in fact know about Durruti’s injury at the time that it occurred, particularly when Mera, Val, and the militants at the CNT meeting did not learn of it until 5:00 pm.
*** THE ACCOUNT OF THE JOURNALIST FROM <em>THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT</em>
This outrageous version is fully consistent with the Stalinist manipulation pointed to above and Enrique Líster even embraces it today (1976). However, the information provided by the journalist is inconsistent with the actual circumstances (we are referring to the scene of the shooting) and only underscores the extravagance of his literary imagination.
The writer from <em>The Times Literary Supplement</em> does not mention the Column’s role in Madrid’s defense and implies that Durruti was in the capital solely to “work out a deal with the Communist Party and the Government.” He says “Durruti left his bodyguard.... made a deal with the communists.... fifteen minutes later he was shot in the street by agents of an anarchist organization called ‘The Friends of Durruti’” who were “waiting at a window from which they could cover the exits of the building [the Communist’s building?] where Durruti was known to be completing his negotiations. The window was on the same side of the street; hence the shot in the back as he came out of the door.”
He mentions a window, not a balcony. From a balcony one can survey an entire street, but not from a window. The window must have been very close to the door. Was it a window in the same building? Despite the wealth of detail that he provides, the writer has forgotten the essentials: the name of the street, the window’s location, and, finally, how did he know that the meeting lasted <em>fifteen minutes</em>?
Nothing in the English author’s statement about the scene of Durruti’s death conforms to reality. From start to finish, his story is pure invention. Even the assassins he calls “The Friends of Durruti” did not exist at the time, as Meltzer points out.
The journalist argues that the Communist Party had an interest in making the public believe that Durruti died in battle. But all the Stalinist sources spread the rumor that one of Durruti’s own men had killed him because he was “evolving” toward Bolshevism.
The author claims that Durruti was shot from behind and in the presence of numerous witnesses. What did the observers do and what did Durruti’s famous guard do? Apparently neither did anything to stop the killer and simply let him escape. Thus one has to conclude that everyone present was complicit, even the Communists, since the attack took place in the threshold of their building.
The writer from <em>The Times Literary Supplement</em>, who is unable to support his account with logic and facts, clings to the life raft that Hugh Thomas tosses him: that the killers could be “agents of the enemy masquerading as anarchists.” This, if Durruti was executed, is the only potentially valuable aspect of this fanciful British version of Durruti’s death.
*** CORMAN AND ANONYMOUS
Corman’s theory is supported by the anonymous Column member and corroborated by <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> (a shot rang out when he emerged from the car, which was presumably fired from a window in a house near the Moncloa). This opens up a new track in the investigation. Unfortunately, we have not found anyone able to confirm this story. The CNT men that we questioned—who were members of the Bakers’ Union—do not recall these events.
*** FATHER JESÚS ARNAL
We still need to consider the theory of the accident circulated by Father Jesús Arnal.
Jesús Arnal claims that he wrote his “memoirs” to justify his presence in the Durruti Column, although his entire book focuses on demonstrating that Durruti’s death was the result of a stupid accident. Whether it was a stupid mishap or “carelessness,” as Ricardo Sanz claims, the implication is the same, and certainly stopping in a combat zone would be to court death. Ricardo Sanz’s version does not seem bereft of logic, particularly since the other accounts, such as Arnal’s, run into contradictions at every step.
Jesús Arnal’s theory of the accident rests on three claims: that Ricardo Rionda confessed it to him, that Federica Montseny acknowledged its truth, and that the mysterious gentleman known as “Ragar” reaffirmed it. We will set aside the discrepancies in the doctors’ statements (which do not seem to interest Jesús Arnal). We are also not interested in the make of the car (first a Hispano, then a Buick according to “Ragar,” and finally—which is more accurate—a Packard according to Bonilla). What is important is the claim made by “Ragar” that the machine-gun hit the car’s running board, which suggests that Durruti did not manage to get out of the automobile. “Ragar” says that he, Manzana, Bonilla, and the driver were in the car. “The accident occurred in the Moncloa Plaza at the corner of Rosales Avenue at 4:00 pm.... Federica Montseny and Mariano Vázquez swore us to secrecy.”
We will examine the site of the event. Fernández de los Ríos and Princesa Streets begin in the center of Madrid and let out in the Moncloa Plaza. Isaac Peral Avenue is to the right of the Plaza and Moret Street is to the left. The latter lets out into Rosales Avenue, in the middle of the theater of operations at the time. Moncloa Plaza and Rosales Avenue do not meet. “Ragar” could have stopped himself from making that blunder by looking at a map of Madrid: the scene that he depicts is simply impossible. With respect to the occupants of the car, neither Manzana nor Julio Graves nor Ricardo Sanz mentions “Ragar.” As for Bonilla, he asserts that he was in a separate car, which preceded Durruti’s. “Ragar” claims that the accident took place inside the automobile. Bonilla says that Durruti got out of the vehicle, spoke with some with militiamen, that he was not carrying a machine-gun, and that the shooting occurred when he returned to the car. “Ragar” is an utterly mysterious figure. This makes us suppose that he was not among Durruti’s guards, since Durruti would not entrust himself to a stranger. The only possible explanation is that all the witnesses want to conceal his presence. Of course, none of this does much to support the existence of the so-called “Ragar”...
Both Jesús Arnal and Angel Montoto bring Ricardo Rionda and Federica Montseny into the discussion.
We exchanged letters with Jesús Arnal in May and June 1971 after <em>La Prensa</em> published his story. We also asked the relevant parties to confirm his claims about Federica Montseny and Ricardo Rionda. Rionda answered us on July 21 and 26, 1971. He said:
<quote>
I will now discuss the question of Durruti’s death. I wasn’t with him at the time. Only the driver, Manzana, and a Catalan that he always took as a guard were there. I was in Moncloa Plaza, which is where Manzana broke the news to me... I went to his side immediately.... The fascist radio first said “The Communists executed Durruti” and then “His guards killed him.” The CNT had to intercede to clarify things....
The driver and the guard told Jesús [the story of the accident]. Jesús didn’t know if I was alive, but one day a young man from Barcelona turned up at my house and told me that he knew how Durruti died.... All of this is a moral obligation for me, and I never considered saying anything about the issue. I think this is propaganda from a certain communist party.... Jesús, who had been my secretary, never asked about Durruti’s demise.... Jesús found my address and I later received some letters from him. I responded and then later he came to my home in Realville and told me “Durruti was wounded in the Moncloa Plaza.” I told him that was incorrect: I was in the Plaza and it was there that I found out what had happened. He said: “Did you know that the driver says that the machine-gun fired accidentally and that he died shortly afterwards?” I told Jesús that I couldn’t say anything, because I wasn’t there and didn’t have any information other than what Manzana gave me. In any case, there’s no doubt that Durruti died defending the social revolution.
</quote>
For her part, Federica Montseny told us:
<quote>
On the issue of Durruti’s death, I can tell you that I maintained, despite the German [Hans Magnus Enzersberger] and Montoto, the same version as always: that Durruti died after being shot while exiting the car. Montoto was the first person to advance the thesis of the accident, based on the famous priest’s story. Hans spoke with Montoto and Montoto began to circulate the idea of the accident after he returned from his first trip to Barcelona. They even made me vacillate, after sharing the doctors’ testimony with me [they only gave Federica the diagnosis of a close-range shot, not Bastos Ansart’s account]. But the worst is the claim made by Rionda, who Montoto and then the German went to see. Rionda says that Manzana told him what had happened and that everyone kept silent, because Marianet had instructed them to do so, since no one would believe that Durruti could die in such an absurd way. Everyone promised to keep quiet and have done so until today, thirty-five years later.
I don’t know if Rionda was in Madrid when Durruti died. I think you should write him... Ask him about it, so he can give you his version of the incident.
I didn’t admit anything to the priest. I’ve never laid eyes on him. I have always maintained the thesis of the stray bullet; if I vacillated and expressed some doubt, it was after Rionda’s comments. What I can affirm is that no one EVER, until now, gave me any version of Durruti’s death other than the one generally accepted....
I never made any comments supporting the theory of the priest in question who, I repeat, I’ve never seen in my entire life and didn’t know existed until Montoto told me about him. But, given the circumstances, my testimony can’t prove anything to the contrary because I WASN’T IN MADRID WHEN HE DIED. Mariano arrived [in Madrid] before me, and it would be relevant to know if Rionda was there. In any case, this secret has been held so well that no one, until today, has suspected its existence. There have been various theories—from Communist assassination to one of his guards shooting him—with the Communist account dueling it out against the other version. But no one has ever suggested to me that a bullet accidentally fired from his own submachine-gun might have killed him UNTIL NOW.
I’m as disconcerted and intrigued as you. Tell me what you find out. (July 28, 1971)
</quote>
We should make a few comments about these letters. Rionda was very sick when he sent them to us and had recently undergone an eye operation. He was also ill when Montoto and then Jesús Arnal visited him. It is clear from Rionda’s letters that he didn’t say anything to Jesús Arnal about Durruti’s death and that it was Arnal who supplied Rionda with the accident theory. All Rionda said was that he had no version other than what Manzana gave him, since he was not present when the incident occurred. Arnal provided him with supporting evidence: the statements by “Ragar” and his conversation with Mario Pacheco. Rionda now had new information that he could neither deny nor affirm. That Arnal had to present such evidence further affirms our assertion that Rionda had not said anything to him about Durruti’s death when crossing the border. Where had Arnal gotten his theory? Arnal himself to tells us indirectly: “As a further confirmation of my account, a few years ago (in 1967 approximately) the movie <em>Golpe de mano</em> was filmed in my parish in Ballobar. During the filming, which lasted a long time, I struck up a friendship with its technical crew. One day, a member of the crew named Mario Pacheco, who lived in Madrid, said the following to me while drinking a few beers in my house:
<quote>
“Jesús, I won’t leave your house until you tell me how Durruti died.”
“Why does this interest you?” I asked.
“Well, it does,” he said, “and I’m not leaving until you tell me.”
I gave him the version that I received from Rico, which I had already stated some other time.
“You’re right,” he said. “The driver, Julio, was my father’s assistant until he retired and he discussed it with us several times. It occurred in the Moncloa Plaza just as you describe. They even painted a black and red flag where he was shot, which was visible for a long time.”
</quote>
I had always believed that I was among the few people who knew the truth about this momentous historical event. Without intending to or seeking to, I entered the public discussion in the following way... Before explaining how this became a public matter, we must note something: According to Arnal, Rionda’s disclosed his version as an <em>act of trust</em> and presumably, when dealing with a priest, such trust would be inviolable. If Rionda really confided a secret to him, shouldn’t Arnal have asked Rionda if he was permitted to reveal it? His failure to consult Rionda was a clear violation of trust. Nevertheless, since Rionda indicates that he did not say anything to Arnal at the border, we must place the question on another plane.
Durruti’s death was always a mystery to everyone. Arnal—“Durruti’s priest”—was living in Ballobar and it is not surprising that Pacheco would speak with him about the issue. We believe that the origins of Arnal’s story lay in his conversations with Pacheco. However, if the priest wanted a fuller confirmation, why not question Julio Graves, who was an eyewitness? Pacheco was friendly with Julio and therefore must have known how to reach him. The priest did not do this but instead traveled around querying people who were only indirectly involved, like the doctors and, later, Rionda. That oversight disconcerts us, and we are even more disconcerted when he writes “without intending to or seeking to, I entered the public discussion...”. This is unconvincing: no one, we assume, put a pistol to his chest and forced him to betray Rionda’s trust.
<quote>
In November 1969, some journalists from the EFE Sub-Agency in Monzón came to my house, saying that they had learned that I was writing my memoirs and wanted the first fruits of the information. They begged me to agree to an interview. The result was an article that appeared in <em>El Noticiero Universal</em> on November 11.
</quote>
It was a public issue now and the anticipated commotion followed. “In July 1970, someone from <em>La Prensa</em> turned up.... Of course the reporter, Mr. Angel Montoto, wanted to discuss Durruti’s death....”
The priest and the journalist became detectives from that moment on. “Ragar” enters the picture, they speak with the doctors, they visit Rionda and Federica, but <em>forget</em> to ask Pacheco how to contact Julio Graves and <em>forget</em> to confront Santamaría with Bastos’s diagnosis. Arnal says: “Mr. Angel Montoto visited Federica Montseny in France and told me this when he returned: ‘She said that we’re right, when I asserted that Durruti’s death was an accident.’”
Federica Montseny denies this categorically. She vacillated when presented with the statements from Rionda and “Ragar” as facts but did not admit anything, for the simple reason that she couldn’t confirm or deny the account, since she was not present when the shooting occurred (although she did reaffirm the version that she had maintained for thirty-five years). There is a lot of flippancy here. Mixed up with the version of the “priest in question” we see the EFE journalists, the <em>La Prensa</em> newspaper (whose editor was a falangist), and, if that wasn’t enough, the latter discord between Arnal and Montoto, which we will provide as an epilogue to their collaboration.
In a letter sent on June 13, 1971, Jesús Arnal said:
<quote>
With respect to Montoto’s mailing address, I don’t want to give it to you, because I don’t want you to get entangled like I was, but it would be easy enough to find it in the telephone book. He doesn’t work for <em>La Prensa</em> now and no longer has journalist credentials. A mess was made for me with the German TV, which seems to be interested in this matter of Buenaventura. They had to film at the Santa Lucía Inn and in the Casilla, where they took me by car. The police had been informed about this and it turned out that they didn’t have permission to film. On the other hand, my memoirs are dormant: he promised to touch up the style a bit, but what he did was exploit the matter for his own benefit. I’m going to try to get back all the material of mine that he has. We’ll see if it’s published some day, which may not be easy.
But keep in mind that I’m not writing history, only justifying my presence in the Column and defending Buenaventura’s memory.
</quote>
What could we call this account of Durruti’s death? The marketing of a secret—assuming there was a secret.
** CHAPTER IV. Durruti’s second death, or his political assassination
There is no legitimate hypothesis about Durruti’s death that could diminish him or the organization to which he gave the best years of his life. The controversy over his death is not a consequence of his death per se, but rather the nature of the struggle in which the Spanish working people were engaged at the time and Durruti’s revolutionary role within it: specifically, the battle between the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces that began in late September of 1936.
In the context of a revolution in retreat, Durruti evoked the possibility of a return to and renewal of the journey initiated on July 19, 1936. He was a beacon of hope whose presence suggested that not everything was lost and that peasants and workers, if they continued to fight, could truly re-conquer Spain. His death was a terrible blow to the revolutionaries. Indeed, there were already ominous signs on the horizon by autumn of that year. The moral disarmament of the militias began with the militarization decree in October. Also, the war was beginning to lose its social content and become a nationalist war. The counterrevolutionaries, led by the Communist Party, had stepped onto the stage. For Durruti to die in those circumstances would necessarily open the door to every possible conspiracy.
Durruti’s political and moral assassination began immediately after his physical death. We noted previously that Durruti, a leader despite himself, embodied the people’s revolutionary desires. The counterrevolutionary offensive initiated after his demise made it seem as though Durruti had been killed because he was an obstacle to that offensive. At least that is how the <em>popular soul</em> experienced it. Whatever the circumstances of his death, it was a significant victory for the counterrevolution.
The Communist Party and the PSUC’s actions left no doubt that his absence benefited them. The CP, which won the struggle for power among anti-fascists, can be considered his moral assassin. And the ordinary man, who simply wants to end the suffering imposed by capitalism once and for all, does not distinguish between the <em>moral</em> and the <em>physical</em>. The Communists, manipulated by Moscow, tried to appropriate Durruti’s memory while simultaneously discounting his libertarian ideas and, even worse, insinuating that his killers were among the anarchists in the Column. Framing the debate in this way ensured that Durruti’s death would never be clarified. But, for revolutionaries, Durruti’s death is no mystery: he died as an anarchist fighting for the social revolution and as a victim of the counterrevolution, like Nestor Makhno was of the Bolsheviks or Gustav Landauer was of Noske in Germany.
Juan Negrín, Spanish Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense, consummated Durruti’s political assassination on April 25 1938 when he posthumously made him a Lieutenant Colonel in the Popular Republican Army:
<quote>
In agreement with the Cabinet and in light of the brilliant military services that citizen Buenaventura Durruti y Domínguez rendered to the Republic, who died gloriously at the head of his Column on November 20, 1936 in Madrid, I have decided to name him Major of Militias, effective July 19, 1936. Likewise, taking into account his distinguished conduct in war operations, I have the pleasure of granting him the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, effective on the day of his death, November 20, 1936. Barcelona, April 25, 1938. Signed: Juan Negrín, Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense.[779]
</quote>
The reader has seen Durruti’s resistance to militarization throughout the pages of this book. In October, he renounced the rank of Major of Militias that Francisco Largo Caballero had conceded to him and was simply the “general leader of the Durruti Column” when he died. Naming him Lieutenant Colonel for services “rendered to the Republic” was the greatest affront to his and the militias’ revolutionary legacy.
As we said, his political assassination began immediately after his death. “Durruti, the hero,” “Durruti, the leader of the people”... These slogans were a way to empty Durruti of his anarchist content. It was a way to obscure his struggle and manipulate his memory in order to conceal the advances of the counterrevolution.
Prior to April 1938, military regulations indicated that leaders of the Militia Columns could not aspire to any rank higher than Major of Militias, although this did not prevent them from commanding army divisions and even corps. But the Communist Party wanted absolute control of the army and was seeding it with its militants. How could the Communists overcome existing military regulations without starting a war with the other sectors of the “anti-fascist block”? Durruti had been an “exemplary leader” and so presumably no one would be troubled if he received an award for his “exemplarity.” However, by making him Lieutenant Colonel, they not only paid ”homage” to the militias but also covered the CP’s massive appointment of Lieutenant Colonels. They killed two birds with one stone: the Communists executed Durruti politically and consolidated their power in the army. It was Machiavellianism at its best.
Durruti’s name became a watchword in the propaganda released by all the governmental parties. They cited his name to justify any counterrevolutionary measure and always followed it with the famous phrase ascribed to him: “We renounce everything except victory.” This sentence became the war’s motto. Even in the Cabinet, when a CNT minister resisted some policy that was antagonistic to the proletariat, his enemies shut him up by reminding him of the lapidary maxim attributed to Durruti, “the leader of the people.” “Victory is what’s important. We’ll make the revolution later. Wasn’t that what our great Durruti wanted?”
The manipulation of his memory reached such extremes that Emilienne Morin felt obliged to refuse the “high honor” granted to her when the government tried to make her a “Lieutenant Colonel:”
<quote>
I am not betraying Durruti’s legacy when I say that he remained the intrepid anarchist of his early years up to the last moment of his life. It’s not superfluous to invoke this, since it’s no secret that various political groups have tried to appropriate the undeniable prestige of the hero of Aragón and Madrid for their own purposes.
They’ve tried to make him into a <em>great soldier</em>, who was convinced of the need for an iron discipline and even welcomed the militarization of the militias, which was already being talked about in November 1936. His final words—“we renounce everything except victory”—have become the fighters’ mantra, but each one interprets them according to the needs of his organization or party.
I don’t want to begin a debate, because these aren’t times for polemics, but in the midst of the contradictions and confusion borne of war, allow me, as a witness, to say what I think. When Durruti spoke of victory, he meant, <em>without any possible doubt</em>, the victory of the Popular Militias over the fascist hordes, since he rejected the idea of a military victory of a bourgeois republic that didn’t lead to social transformation.
I heard him say so many times: “It wouldn’t be worth dressing up like soldiers to be governed by the Republicans of 1931 again. We accept concessions, but we won’t forget that we have to carry out the war and the <em>revolution</em> simultaneously.”
Durruti never forgot his years as a hunted militant. The dramatic persecutions suffered by the CNT and FAI were etched in letters of blood in his memory. He didn’t trust the Republican politicians in the slightest and refused to describe men like Azaña as anti-fascists.
In a word, he believed that the Spanish bourgeoisie that supported the Republican cause would not miss the opportunity to unscrupulously undermine, even in the middle of war, the proletariat’s revolutionary conquests.
Regrettably, events show that he was right...
Durruti was disgusted and horrified by the growing bureaucratism. In the famous speech that he gave in Barcelona before leaving for Madrid, he shouted the alarm about the corruption beginning to appear in the rearguard and denounced that bureaucratic parasitism. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough... and the bureaucratism of the conformists spread shamelessly...
But Durruti’s thought, his soul, if you’ll permit me the expression, still lives in the heart of the Spanish proletariat, which has not, despite his martyrdom, forgotten his message. And that is why we have faith in the revolutionary potential of the Iberian workers, who will one day free themselves from their so-called “leaders.” Let the disorder of the French Popular Front make our Spanish brothers reflect: they should not have high hopes for help from Europe’s “great democracies.” The prevailing affection for the combatants of liberty is nothing more than a passive and teary sentimentalism.
We can’t achieve the victory to which Durruti alluded—<em>our victory</em>— without help from the French proletariat, freed from the tutelage of its parties and beyond all nationalist considerations. We haven’t lost the hope that French workers will understand their class duty and break the “truce” that their “leaders” have preached to them for so long.[780]
</quote>
** CHAPTER V. Conclusion
<quote>
Today, with the Red Army captive and disarmed, National troops have achieved their final military objectives.
THE WAR HAS ENDED.
Burgos, April 1, 1939. Year of the Victory.
(Final war report of the National Army)
</quote>
Time was passing. The French and international proletariat did not rise up and Spanish revolutionaries lost their first battle. General Franco’s forces imposed the “white peace of the cemeteries” described by Georges Bernanos. [781]
More than 250,000 executed, 500,000 exiled in France, and a million dead or disappeared—that was the tragic balance of the military adventure initiated in Morocco on July 17, 1936.
And Spain, the so-called “red” Spain that Socialist León Blum and Bolshevik Stalin abandoned to its fate, entered the tragic night of fascist domination that would last for nearly forty years.
The non-intervention policy, which was supposed to prevent the Second World War, met its greatest failure in August 1939 when the world began the most horrific war known to man.
Joseph Stalin carried out his purges and his most “faithful servants” in Spain fell. Arthur Stashevsky, who negotiated the shipment of gold to Russia with Negrín, was one of the purges’ victims. And there were many more: Antonov Ovssenko, Mikhail Koltsov, General Benin, Ambassador Marcel Rosemberg... As Arthur London noted, the purges impacted almost every Communist activist, regardless of their country of origin, that could have had direct contact with the International Brigades or the Spanish question. The “cleansing” was so severe that it seemed like Stalin was possessed by a diabolic desire to erase his tracks in Spain. The French Communist Party went along with the other Communist International affiliates in the application of the abuse. André Marty, the principal inquisitor in the International Brigades, was a casualty, as was Charles Tillon, who administered a part of the Spanish gold entrusted to the French Communists. That money was used to subsidize French guerrillas fighting the Germans, while Spanish guerrillas died without support in the mountains.
Why was Stalin so savage with anything connected to the Spanish civil war? Was it because his envoys, after seeing what had happened in Spain, understood the true meaning of Stalinism? What other reason could there be? A serious investigation of this issue would reveal a good deal about the present crisis of international communism. Indeed, Fernando Claudín has only thrown the first rock into the Stalinoid “pool”... [782]
Of course Spanish Communists did not escape the witch-hunt. The men who most helped Stalin betray the Spanish revolution and lead the Republic to defeat, like José Díaz and Jesús Hernández, were also victims of the “arbitrary” (Ilya Ehrenburg’s euphemism for Stalinist terror). The first was thrown out a fifth floor window in a remote part of Greater Russia and the second had to flee to Mexico to save his skin.
The conflict in Spain is still unresolved. Enrique Líster’s attacks on the “opportunist” Santiago Carrillo put the importance of the Communist record during the Spanish war in greater relief than Yo fui ministro de Stalin [trans.: I was Stalin’s Minister].[783] Those who say that they want to “wipe the slate clean” are doing a lot of wiping away...
On January 26, 1939, Franco’s Headquarters sent an order to the man in charge of occupied Barcelona: “Erase all signs identifying the burial sites of red leaders in the Montjuich Cemetery and prevent their graves from becoming meeting places for the people.” Military bureaucrats transmitted General Franco’s order to the civil governor, who sent the cemetery managers the following note: “Erase anything from the graves of anarchist and Catalanist leaders that could attract people’s attention, especially from Buenaventura Durruti’s tomb, which is there. Security guards, appointed for this purpose, must prevent all visits to those graves and detain anyone who expresses the desire to see them. I hold you personally responsible for fulfilling of this order.” [784]
There are three graves shielded by a large cypress tree in the Montjuich Civil Cemetery, more commonly known as the Casa Antúnez Cemetery: the first, next to the cypress, belongs to Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, who was executed for his anti-authoritarian pedagogy on October 13, 1909. The adjoining one is Durruti’s and the third belongs to Francisco Ascaso Abadía, born in 1901 in Almudévar (Huesca) and killed at the Atarazanas barracks on July 20, 1936.
Covered with smooth stone, these three graves lack any inscription, thanks to El Caudillo (Franco). General Franco had unintentionally rendered a great homage to these men, since he not only stripped them of their leaderism but also made their graves easier to identify thanks to their anonymity.
We have come to the end of our work, although the debate over Durruti’s death will surely continue. It is undeniably a historical enigma. Unfortunately, men are more attracted to enigmas for their mystery than out of a desire to reflect deeply on a life, but that needn’t concern us. What matters for us is Durruti’s action-packed, revolutionary life. This is presumably what the poet León Felipe had in mind when he wrote: “The nobility of Durruti’s life will inspire the birth of a legion of Durrutis in the times to come.” Paris, April 1972 Revised in Paris, February 1977.
** APPENDIX. The jigsaw puzzle of the search for Durruti’s body[785]
When Antonio de Senillosa was a deputy for the Democratic Coalition, he submitted a motion in Congress to compel the government to give documents seized in Catalonia during the civil war to the Generalitat. At the time, the San Ambrosio Archive in Salamanca held these important historical resources. The Minister of Culture supported the motion and said the following: “I’m in a position to promise that this slice of Catalonia’s history will be housed in Catalonia shortly.” Today, fifteen years later, the archival material has been recovered. However, the history of Durruti and Ascaso’s lives is not only in the archives, but also scattered throughout Spain. Among other places, it is in Barcelona’s South-East Cemetery.
*** ERASING HISTORY
We will begin by identifying questions that must be asked to Barcelona’s city councilors and Mayor Pascual Maragall to find out where Buenaventura Durruti and Francisco Ascaso’s remains are. The former was provisionally buried on November 22, 1936 in Small Grave number sixty-nine in the San Juan Bautista Way, Ninth <em>Agrupación</em>. The latter was buried (also provisionally) on July 21, 1936 in the rented wall tomb number 3,344, tier four, in Sin Vía.
We must first wonder about the absence of one thousand wall tombs in San Olegario Way, Division Five: the tombs go from one to 4,999 and then jump to 6,000. It is a strange coincidence that Domingo Ascaso Abadía, killed during <em>events of May</em> 1937, was buried in wall tomb 5,817, according to cemetery management. What should one think? Was there a <em>deal</em> to make those tombs vanish? Was there an attempt to <em>erase</em> history?
History can help us recover history: we will see the context that frames our inquiry.
As mentioned, Durruti was buried on November 22, 1936 in Small Grave number sixty-nine. This grave had been empty since 1905, when it was given to the Barcelona City Council. The City Council ceded it to the Catalan Militias, who would own it in perpetuity.
It is logical that the CNT and FAI buried Durruti and Ascaso in a mausoleum dedicated to their memories. The mausoleum was unveiled in November 1937 and the two were symbolically joined to Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, who had been executed in a ditch near the mausoleum on October 13, 1909. On November 23, 1937, Barcelona’s <em>Solidaridad Obrera</em> reported on the ceremony held in Durruti’s honor at his grave. The printed photo does not show Small Grave number sixty-nine but the mausoleum. On November 22, 1938, the same newspaper recorded a second public commemoration of Durruti’s legacy. <em>Umbral</em> magazine devoted two pages of text to the event and published several photos. One shows García Oliver and Ricardo Sanz; the latter, Lieutenant Colonel of the 26 <sup>th</sup> division (formerly the Durruti Column), is speaking to those gathered around the mausoleum. They are standing with their backs to the sea on the Igualdad esplanade of what was then known as the Civil Cemetery and today is called the San Carlos Way protestant grounds.
*** THE CONFUSION OF THE MAUSOLEUMS
One of the photos shows a funeral wreath interwoven with a banner inscribed “The 26 th Division to Durruti, 20-XI-1938.” The wreath rests on a triangle shaped wall, which was surely made of the same material as the tombs and on which there must have been an inscription etched in memory of the three men. Presently, as any visitor can see, the wall in question no longer exists and the three smooth tombs are quite anonymous. Civil or military authorities must have ordered the demolition of the wall after Barcelona’s occupation on January 26, 1939.
In 1966, after researching Durruti’s tomb, we learned that one could see a document in the cemetery office that ordered the management to do the following: “Erase anything from the graves of anarchist and Catalanist leaders that could attract people’s attention, especially from Buenaventura Durruti’s tomb, which is there. Security guards, appointed for this purpose, must prevent all visits to those graves and detain anyone who expresses the desire to see them.” Was the wall demolished then? Everything suggests that this was the case. And that is how we concluded the final chapter of our biography of Durruti.
Concluded? Perhaps a story was only beginning.
Several months ago, we set off for the South-East Cemetery and requested information about where Buenaventura Durruti and Francisco Ascaso are buried from cemetery management. An employee, with book in hand, was about to attend to us when another staff person entered the office and asked what we wanted to know. We repeated the question. He pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of his overalls that contained typed information about Francesc Macià, Luis Companys, Buenaventura Durruti, and Francisco Ascaso.
*** EMPTY TOMBS
“The tombs that you’re looking for are in the San Carlos Way protestant grounds, toward the upper left. The three tombs are identical and have no markings. But Durruti, Ascaso, and Ferrer’s remains aren’t there... The tombs are empty.”
That is extremely strange, we thought.
“Why are you sending us there if they’re empty?”
“Those are our orders,” the employee responded without hesitation.
“Then where are their bodies?” we insisted.
“They told me that Durruti’s <em>compañera</em> took his remains when the war ended,” he said.
We knew that was false. Emilienne Morin, Durruti’s <em>compañera</em>, went to France in 1937 and hadn’t returned.
“Isn’t there any more information about Durruti or Ascaso?” we insisted again.
“There’s nothing more than what’s written in the book.” The employee re
|
#pubdate 2017-09-16 12:26:02 +0000
#title The Embargoism of Anarchism
#author abissonichilista
#LISTtitle The Embargoism of Anarchism
#SORTauthors abissonichilista
#SORTtopics Anarchism, critique, critique of leftism, anarchy, egoism, Dora Marsden, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
#date 2014
#source http://abissonichilista.altervista.org/embargoism/
#lang en
Whatever its form, anarchism, the “libertarian creed,” is basically a bad dream that laments political conflict and seeks the end of the intrusion of individual interests and self-assertion in social life. It is a fantasy that, sooner or later, appeals to morality and the internal police of conscience to repress and renounce the self by “respecting” the interests of the other.
The exhortations to morality, conscience, right, and respect in the “libertarian creed” tend to favor the strong and powerful over the weak and powerless, contrary to the intentions of the anarchists. The anarchist appeals to liberty, conscience, and morality function as a form of social control by marginalizing the weak and gullible from the war of each against all.
<quote>
The fact to be borne in mind is that whether one “should” or “should not,” the strong natures never do. The powerful allow “respect for other’s interests” to remain the exclusive foible of the weak. The tolerance they have for others’ “interests rests” is not “respect” but indifference. The importance of furthering one’s own interests does not leave sufficient energy really to accord much attention to those of others. It is only when others’ interests thrust themselves intrusively across one’s own that indifference vanishes: because they have become possible allies or obstacles. If the latter, the fundamental lack of respect swiftly defines itself.
</quote>
Part of what enables domination, or the stratification of rich and poor, powerful and weak, is that the rich and powerful have been able to convince others to renounce themselves and their interests. History and society are the domains where the rich and powerful assert and fulfill their interests while proselytizing the poor and weak about liberty, rights, and respect. History and society record little more than the “respect” the rich and powerful have for their neighbor’s interests. The rich and powerful succeed because they are concerned only for the imposition of their interests wherever their whim or purpose is focused. “Their success has been proportional to the unformedness of the characters with which they have had immediately to deal.”
For egoists, the decentralization and pluralism of democracy is an advantage because compulsion, the imposition of interests, can be exercised from an increased number of centers. The multiplicity of laws does not signify the oppressiveness of the state, as Proudhon, Tucker, and anarchists complain; instead it indicates the detailed channels through which interests are imposed and potentially fulfilled.
<quote>
It is too vague to say that democracy represents the liberty of the people: rather one would say democracy represents the increase in the number of people who are prepared to take liberties (i.e., per persuade by personal violence), with the people who refuse assistance in the furthering of the audacious ones’ interests. It is the increase in the number of those who have the courage and ingenuity to become in an open and unequivocal fashion the tyrants we all are subtly and by instinct. It is part of the trend toward human explicitness.
</quote>
In a democratic regime, liberty “is the ghostly spirit the moralists would have the meek always carry inside their waistcoats: it plays the policeman inside the man.” The “libertarian creed” of the anarchists is only able to help subjugate the poor and weak because those who can rule and dominate will rule and dominate, regardless of the preaching of the moralists. Those who do not have the strength or will to assert their interests, espouse the “gospel of liberty” as a substitute for living. Those who have wealth and power will be given more because they seek it. Those who have less, will have more taken away for the same reason. The cry for liberty and respect for rights is “hoisting of the white flag followed by an attempt to claim victory in virtue of it.”
“Archist” is just another name for the person. Until they encounter morality, the church, and self-renunciation doctrines like anarchism, each person intends to establish, maintain, protect, and extend his or her own life, identity, and interests with all available means. Marsden says that the first inclination of living human beings is to assert their own vitality and the importance of their own existence. Interest is the conceptualization of the person’s assertion of their own value. Interest is the claim, assertion, and fight for a place among a myriad of other claims, assertions, and fights. Even aggression must be interpreted in light of the existential circumstances persons inhabit. The person who grows physically or intellectually is aggressive; growing life-forms are always aggressive and intrusive on the space and resources. Life guarantees that both aggression and conflict are inevitable.
<quote>
We are one another’s daily food. We take what we can get of what we want.
We can be kept out of “territory” but not because we have an compunction about invading. Where the limiting line falls is decided in the event, turning on the will, whim, and power of those who are devoured and devourers at one and the same time. Life is feasting and conflict: that is its zest. The cry for peace is the weariness of those who are too faint-hearted to live.
</quote>
The world belongs to the archists, to those who are willing to assert themselves by valuing their lives, their growth, and their prosperity. The social world is ”a bundle of interests” and a contest among those who choose to push their own outwards. Moreover, the other assesses the vitality and quality of the person by the sweep and intensity of interests she or he asserts. The more successful the person is in accomplishing goals, the more appealing she or he is to others; they excite stronger passions and evoke more intense images. The attitude of the world is friendliness toward, and admiration for, strong, bold, and successful interests because they are indicative of survival, security, growth, health, and prosperity.
For Marsden, this is why anarchism, and all forms of “embargoism,” never succeed at gaining large numbers of committed adherents. Anarchism is always abandoned by persons who have their wits and abilities about them because they reject placing an embargo on their ability to appropriate themselves, their relationships, and the world around them.
The social world is a field where interests encounter and collide. At the encounter or collision of interests, the anarchist places a limit, or an embargo, on what can be valued and appropriated by individuals. Anarchismis constraint. Anarchism differs from statism because the embargo is self-imposed. Conscience and morality, or the internal policeman, demarcate what the individual can and cannot do, what the individual can and cannot want, value, or appropriate. Anarchism is always a form of humanism and moralism, despite its objections.
Tucker’s concept of equal liberty establishes moralistic constraints in the behavior of persons to ensure that the “natural and just” rights of the other are respected and protected by the individual. In individualist anarchist thought, individuals are free to pursue their own interests as long as they do not invade or intrude on the interests of others. Individualist anarchism, like all forms of humanist thought, attempts to immunize the “human” from “egoism,” or the individual’s pursuit of his or her interest. It attempts to insulate the “human” from “archism,” or the individual’s challenge to limits or boundaries.
The “human” ensures that individuals can go “this far but no farther.” The “human” must be protected in anarchist thought; it is the shield that confers right. Anarchism, the libertarian creed, is another form of humanism. Even in Tucker’s individualist anarchism, the egoist is a lower form of life, subordinate to the human. For Marsden, Tucker’s individualist anarchism is not a break from modernism, but another expression of it. Like the Christian and the socialist, the anarchist loves humanity, and benevolently extends the concept of “equal liberty” to encompass all.
But the Christian, the socialist, and the anarchist despise humans; the mass of whom who reject embargoism, and embrace egoism and archism. In anarchist thought, equal liberty is the foible or opiate of the poor and weak. The ragamuffins monopolize the virtues, while the archists and egoists monopolize the world.
Marsden’s critique of anarchism is in no respect a defense of the state, or an attempt to develop a philosophic legitimation of political authority. It is an antistatist alternative to anarchism. In Marsden’s egoist critique of politics, the state is little more than organized coercion. She defines it as the “National Repository for Firearms and Batons Company,” which is owned, directed, and exploited by “state’s men” whose main task is to preserve the state’s charter granted to it by the people, the chief terms of which are:
1. The state cannot be dissolved;
2. It can do no injury sufficiently serious to justify retaliation or attack;
3. It can acquire as much money from people as it deems prudent;
4. It can use any and all resources to defend its interests; and
5. It can make alliances with those who can further its interests.
Marsden does not believe that governments serve any interests other than their own, nor does she believe that they serve any higher purpose than their own reproduction. She suffers no illusions about the presumed beneficence of governments, no illusions that they meet any needs of individuals or societies, and no illusions that they can be improved. Moreover, she rejects the notion of limited government or libertarianism because no state will place an embargo on what it can and cannot do to serve its own interests or to ensure its own permanence.
Marsden differs from anarchists in that she does not think that the state can be abolished. Nor does she think that the blame for its permanence and abuse can be completely attributed to the malevolence of politicians and bureaucrats. A major part of the problem anarchists attribute to government is actually the na’ivete and subservience of the subjects, which anarchism unintentionally promotes through concepts like equal liberty and a foolish fantasy of an improved future.
<quote>
A modern “poor” citizen appears so unmitigatedly a fool in his attitude towards the “state” that suggests he is not merely a fool but a knave in addition.
One of the awestruck crowd of toilers, who when they are not licking their wounds in jail for not minding their manners, are performing forced labor to feed and fatten those who dare to govern . . . . They dream of heaven, toil, starve and are penalized: then lisp of liberty. All the same, they seem to be able to stand it. If these things have a lesson to teach, the meek at any rate have not learned it.
</quote>
Part of the reason why governments have power is because the poor and weak fail to challenge them; they refuse to become egoists and archists.
Echoing Stirner’s comments on the proletariat, Marsden argues that the poor will cease to be poor when they refuse to be exploited by the rich and by the state. The “downtrodden” will disappear when they decide to resist. “The hungry will have bread when they take it.” The anarchists are at least partly to blame for the poor’s acceptance of domination since the anarchist theory of social order includes an “embargo” on the person wanting “too much” power, autonomy, wealth, and enjoyment. Instead of attempting to “level up” by embracing egoism and archism, the anarchists and all other “saviors of society,” insist on leveling down, reducing all desires, aspirations, motivations, and outcomes to the lowest possible level. Their ideal person is the ragamuffin. Marsden counters that “one cannot desire enough.” There is no limit to individual desires, aspirations, intentions, and achievements. As a social theory, anarchism functions to “level down” by imposing conceptu al, ethical, and political boundaries on what the poor and powerless can think and do.
Marsden asserts, anarchism will not liberate the “down and outs.” They will liberate themselves through a “self-assertion” that will obliterate anarchism and the “saviors of society” who impose artificial limitations on the thoughts and actions of individuals.
The egoist or archist opposition to anarchism is based on the notion that belief in the sanctity or legitimacy of government is gone. Also gone is the belief that government can be improved or made ethical and accountable.
Without legitimacy, democratic regimes are revealed as nothing more than “individual caprice,” the first, final, and only basis of the will to govern. The anarchist notion of a harmonious society, purified of inequality and egoism is analogous to reformist ideas of “clean government,” or arguments that government can liberate the proletariat or respond to the will of the people. Governments are not neutral and they do not serve. Egoism reveals the will to govern as an ineradicable force that is expressed on an individual and a collective level. Whether it is welcome or unwelcome, the will to govern is an important form in which power inevitably expresses itself.
The anarchist opposition to the state because it is a state, is futile and delusional. For the egoist, the abolition of the state is a “negative, unending fruitless labor.” “What I want is my state: if I am not able to establish that, it is not my concern whose state is established.”
The egoist’s cause is to establish his or her “own,” to acquire and defend his or her property. Egoism does not defend an abstract master concept of social order. The egoist works to mold the world according to his or her aspirations, including power relations in everyday life. Failing to either establish his or her “own,” the egoist does not pretend that there is no state or external world at all. More powerful others will see that there is.
When one state or form of government is overthrown or disintegrates, another one arises. “The state has fallen, long live the state.” The most consistent, thorough revolutionary anarchist cannot evade the simple fact that power is an inescapable feature of life, in the face to face relationships between individuals and among large numbers of people. What happens on the day after a successful anarchist revolution? To protect the new regime, the anarchists will need to develop and implement policies, programs, and structures. The anarchistic blueprint of society and individuality must be defended. Anarchists will find themselves protecting their own interests with all the power and weapons they can acquire and use. They will necessarily have to repress the statists, egoists, and archists who will surely attempt to reassert their will and exert power over others. Anarchists will protect their revolution and whatever social formation follows it, formulating law and maintaining order through persuasion and coercion. At least, until more honest archists arrive to overthrow and supersede them.
Marsden argues that anarchists confuse the attitude that refuses to hold law, power, and authority sacred with the attitude that refuses to acknowledge the existence of law, power, and authority. All ”saviors of society” tend believe that their vision of an improved world will inevitably triumph, but the anarchists are especially prone to the confusion that saying it is so, makes it so. Egoists and archists do not believe that government and law are sacred, but they respect any and every law for the volume and severity of retaliatory force there is behind it. Respect for “sanctity” and respect for ”power” are different. The anarchist confuses the two, believing that the elimination of the first automatically entails the elimination of the second; the egoist and archist dismisses the first but acknowledges the persistence of the latter.
In concert with Stirner, Marsden’s egoism rejects the legitimacy or sanctity of existing regimes, but not their reality. Egoism assesses the power of the state, and challenges, confronts, and evades it as circumstances warrant.
Egoism rejects any concept of utopia, or the imposition of any idea that places an embargo on how individuals can act. It rejects any final solution to the problems persons encounter in living, particularly those that pretend that force and power can be eliminated in social life. Life cannot be subordinated to an artificial blueprint because individual egoism soon asserts itself in opposition to others and to external constraints.
Anarchism is an illusory path to freedom because the forces of human survival, security, and prosperity are directed in the opposite manner.
Persons constantly challenge limitations and embargoes on their thought and behavior. They are unlikely to accept any regime, like anarchism, that uses ideology, conscience, and moral coercion to promote compliance and conformity. It is the nature of human beings to create, construct, and direct their will on the world of events. This will never be restrained by any ideology or cultural value that promotes a “spiritual embargo,” despitethe best efforts of anarchism and other humanist ideologies.Ultimately, the anarchist is a “derieo-libertarian” who glosses over the aspirations of “a unit possessed of the instinct to dominate – even his fellow-men.”
|
#pubdate 2017-09-16 12:37:29 +0000
#title The Intersection between Feminism and Stirner Egoism
#author abissonichilista
#LISTtitle The Intersection between Feminism and Stirner Egoism
#SORTauthors abissonichilista
#SORTtopics egoism, Max Stirner, feminism, identity politics, Dora Marsden
#date 2016
#source http://abissonichilista.altervista.org/beyond-feminism-beyond-anarchismegoism-political-thought-dora-marsden-marsden-ii/
#lang en
It is oxymoronic to simultaneously declare oneself an Egoist and a Feminist if one means Feminism in a legal sense, and even moreso if one is inspired by Max Stirner in the endeavor. The individualism presented by Max Stirner rejects any and all collective ‘ism’. I do not wish to appear to suggest otherwise, or be misconstrued as a ‘Stirnerite Feminist’ which is akward in constitution. Nevertheless, whether one refers to oneself as a Feminist foremost or an Egoist foremost, there is still much to be said about where the two intersect.
Stirner Egoism emphasizes fading out ones need to ‘outsource’ authority. Whether it be religious, political, or social; the Stirner Egoist looks only to self as an existential authority and sovereign. It is not a higher God nor socio-political trends which determines oneself. Although Stirner does speak of involuntary egoists who are not egoists proper, rather that their Ego seeks out the confirmation of an external authority, they certainly do find this to be an external confirmation. In other words, it is the self which decides there is something that must be sought externally, and it is the self which fulfills this requirement as it has orchestrated the whole thing.
It has been said that one is both jailed and jailer.
From this application of individualist sovereignty, I draw multiple criticisms of the present day feminist movement and ideology. This is not an attempt to tear down nor re-define, alternatively it is best to attempt refinement of the presently crude. Regarding feminism, what I dub ‘outsourcing’ is a major downfall in the position. To outsource is to contract out a particular job or role to an external entity. The earliest waves of feminism were the first to recall this traditional outsourcing. It was no longer the man nor Church whom the woman look to for permission. Instead, women began to look to themselves in deciding their own choices and fates.
There are those today whom criticize present day feminism, and the general population, for being far too self-centered in decisions. I do not find this altogether true, and perhaps true only at the most superficial layer. It is more accurate to say people tend to outsource decision-making to a near infinite plethora of external forces. Be it craving validation from peers, the latest magazines dictating ones personal self-image, society deciding what ones future should entail; what we normally call selfishness tends to be the resulting behavior due to this rampant outsourcing.
If self looks to self as sovereign authority, then it is she who makes decisions, not the never ending line of external entities looking to take on the mantle of decision-maker. One may think of liberalism, secular free thought, the narration of contributing to man’s collective knowledge, and other similar Enlightenment ideals which continue to this day though costumed in heavily commercialized and herd-like branding. Indeed, Max Stirner made such a point. Even the strain of ‘free thought humanism’ or what some call ‘progressivism’ today is still an intangible ‘spook’ that is all too ready to take on the role of arbiter.
In brief, a ‘spook’ is an intangible abstract of which only has power because it is given power by others collectively and is practically nonexistent if alone in itself. What is called ‘progressivism’ or ‘social justice’ or even ‘feminism’ is indeed a spook. This does not render them negative or bad or undesirable, only that a self which designates self as sovereign will not outsource authority out to these current trends. If the concept of God or religion is not ones master, then how can one allow passing social movements and over zealous herd thinking to become ones master? A feminist who trades in one external authority for another external authority has done little to come into their own.
A feminist declares self-liberation and personal autonomy, to stand alone as oneself, as free and as separate as any man. Of course this must be taken within context. No person is an island. We live in constant contingency and interrelating factors. In other words, interdependency. Be that as it may, one can still attain a particular degree of separation and ontological or existential isolation. Dora Marsden was an early feminist who was inspired by Max Stirner, but we know little about her analysis of his work, only that she found it profound. In her latter activism she shifts from using the label feminist, as she disliked its reactive disposition. In a Stirnerite fashion she understood liberation of the self in the ‘here and now’, that the self was already sovereign, and did not require an external entity to emancipate it. Therefore, it is the self first that has realized its own sovereignty, and any ‘activism’ concerning feminism which may occur afterwards is a secondary detail.
<quote>
“The time has arrived when mentally-honest women feel that they have no use for the springing-board of large promises of powers redeemable in a distant future. Just as they feel they can be as ‘free’ now, as they have the power to be, they know that their works can give evidence now of whatever quality they are capable of giving to them. To attempt to be freer than their own power warrants means that curious thing–protected freedom and their ability, allowed credit because it is women is a ‘protected’ ability. ‘Freedom’ and ‘ability’ recognised by permission, are privileges which they find can serve no useful purpose.”
-Dora Marsden
</quote>
Inspired by Stirner, Marsden distinguishes self-liberation from emancipation, or rather those whom acknowledge their own power versus those who demand others grant them rights.
Here differentiates the reactive and active. The reactive is one who rages against the Other, demanding emancipation, condemning the Other as the oppressor, the violator, leaving oneself as the morally good and downtrodden. ‘Those whom reign, whom have a position of power, they are the bad, and thus that makes me the good.’ There is little power of ones own in the reactive position, indeed any power that is acquired is through the negative, via deflecting from the active. Stirner Egoism is concerned with the active, which Stirner refers to as Ownness or Self-Enjoyment. It is not the crusade for freedom or social justice. Instead, it is the focus upon ones ownness, ones own unique intrinsic power and autonomy.
Indeed, one has the right to be what their strength allows them to be. The active position sees oneself as good in itself, ones owness, without need of an external Other of which to be defined.
Outsourcing to trending groupthink such as ‘progressivism’ and various other socio-political trends is antithetic to autonomy. If one declares themselves a feminist, one who has disregarded the yokes of external authority concerning women (religion, tradition, patriarchy, consumerism, etc.) commits an error if they soon after don the yoke of yet another socio-political authority, be it groupthink or hive-minded political movements, no matter their use of rhetoric claiming free thought or diversity. A feminist in the truest dons no yoke, and this makes it synonymous or intersecting with Stirner Egoism.
There are tangible situations in which a person is indeed a victim of an injustice, be it mild or severe. Be the injustice real or imagined is another argument entirely. What must be eradicated is the constant victim mindstate which is inherently and relentlessly reactive to the Other. Whether it be words, actions, or images; the reactive victim state is perpetual, is always the persecuted, is always the ‘good’ based purely on the fact that they are the downtrodden. The definition of self is defined based upon the latest whims of the Other; be it called patriarchy, capitalism, systematic sexism, or whatever it be labeled. This includes the slang reference to the ‘politically incorrect’. An individual who is at the whim of the rhetorically aggressive has freely given away their power and autonomy.
One can be at the receiving end of an injustice or an indecency, and it will certainly damage the individual, but perpetual or imagined victimhood is a reactive mindstate that permanently places one at the mercy of external whims. This is commonly found in feminism as well as general liberalism; an incessant pursuit of martyrdom, of glorifying the downtrodden rather than praising the strong. Much like the Mother Mary, the secular woman is a receptacle and receiver, the one who must endure and bear weight. To the feminist this is unacceptable. The feminist is defined by the positive, by affirmation, and only voluntarily does she allow herself to play the opposite role. The feminist is not a prey to be hunted, she is the one who hunts.
The feminist in her truest actualization ultimately becomes an isolated being, a lone egoist in and of herself. It is not necessary for me to go to length to clarify that this does not mean a disgruntled life of selfishness, reclusiveness, pettiness, and callously caring only about oneself. Quite the contrary, the ‘isolated being’ I speak of maintains their own separation, even when fully engaged with social crowds and friendships. Amongst the crowd, she resides unto herself and thinks for herself without outsourcing to an external. A collective ‘ism’ is shed, and technically that includes feminism, for she ceases to cling to the identity. She may advocate ‘feminism’ or other ‘isms’ for the sake of assisting the actualization of others, but ultimately she is the self and only the self.
<quote>
“In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies – an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, e. g. God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: “I alone am corporeal.” And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself.”
— Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own
</quote>
Indeed, the ultimate conclusion is as an isolate atom, an isolate subject. Stirner Egoism cuts to the bone, to the bare minimum, a near Zen-like manner which never foregoes the Unique I. No matter the gender or the collectivist angle from which one approaches, Stirner Egoism is an ultimate incision separating from the whole. Identity politics speaks of emancipation, be it of race or sex, though Stirner’s teachings declares self-liberation to the utmost possible. It is not asking permission, asking for emancipation, nor is it protesting the Other and shouting ‘freedom for all’.
No, it is the proclamation of the self, as the self, unto the self. It is the joy of the self itself, the power and strength thereof. It is an affirmative act rather than the negative. It is an essential detail that feminism has lost, along with multiple other present day schools of thought, and as a result has become increasingly anemic and weak.
|
#pubdate 2017-09-16 12:41:19 +0000
#title The Unique One meets the Overhuman
#author abissonichilista
#LISTtitle The Unique one meets the Overhuman
#SORTauthors abissonichilista
#SORTtopics Max Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche, egoism
#date 2015
#source http://abissonichilista.altervista.org/the-unique-one-meets-the-overhuman/
#lang en
Nietzsche’s concept of the Ubermensch or overhuman is easily one of the most recognized ideas in his thought. However, it actually plays a small and somewhat vague role in the entirety of his philosophy. Nietzsche’s definition and characterization of the overhuman is also very limited. The overhuman is discussed with any depth only in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
The overhuman is a problematic concept for understanding of Stirner and his influence, because it has been associated with the unique one. The same body of literature that intends to establish Stirner as Nietzsche’s predecessor, also tends to see the overhuman as a poetic restatement of the unique one. In addition, a significant number of the scholars who argue that there are profound differences between Stirner and Nietzsche, also see parallels between the unique one and the overhuman, arguing that the concepts are similar egoist reactions to both humanism and modernity.
But these efforts are specious, even with the scant and ambiguous information Nietzsche provides about the overhuman. About all that Nietzsche says about the overhuman is that it
(a) is a collective concept, not a reference to an individual;
(b) is devoid of the timidity, cowardice, and pettiness that frequently characterizes modern human beings, especially those in leadership positions;
(c) aspires to warrior values of greatness and nobility;
(d) acknowledges and relishes the fact that life is risky and adventurous. What appears to matter more than the specific qualities of the overhuman is the rationale for its coming, and what humans must do to prepare for it.
In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche discusses the inspirations and frustrations he experienced as he wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, thus creating the concept of the overhuman . When his health permitted in the spring and winter of 1 881, Nietzsche woul d walk in the mornings from Rapallo on the Italian Riviera, where he was living, to Zoagli amid the pine trees . In the afternoon he would walk along the bay from Santa Margherita to Portofino. It was on these walks that the concept of Zarathustra “as a type” came to him, or, as he put it, ” overtook me.” To understand Zarathustra as the prophet of a great change, he suggests that one must review his concept of “great health,” which he initially elaborated in The Gay Science. “Great health” is an acknowledgement, an appreciation, and a frustration with the intellectual journey toward discovering new goal s, new values, new means, and new idea ls, particularly those pertaining to human beings and their actions. The beautiful views of the Mediterranean contrasted sharply with his ill health, shaking Nietzsche with a profound agony that became a metaphor for his disgust with the values and archetypes of modernity.
Nietzsche claims insight because he suffers deeply but still appreciates beauty and majesty.
After such vistas and with burning hunger in our science and conscience, how could we still be satisfied with present-day man? It may be too hard but it is inevitable that we find it difficult to remain serious when we look at his worthiest goals and hopes, and perhaps we do not even bother to look anymore.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche looks at “modern man.” He finds the values, hopes, and lives of modern humans inadequate. When we first meet the hero in the early pages of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he has emerged from the cave in the mountains where he has spent the past decade in isolation. He is now a transformed human, overburdened with the wisdom that he wants to bestow and distribute until the wise are once again “glad of their folly” and the poor are once again “glad of their riches.” He encounters a holy man as he descends but he soon parts company, astonished to l earn that the holy man has not heard that “god is dead.” He comes to a crowded market in a town and dramatically announces the coming of the overhuman, telling the crowd that the overhuman is to the human what the human is to the ape. His appeal to the mob in the market is that the greatness in humanity, or in themselves, is found in the efforts of persons to lay the foundation for the arrival of this being, or ideal, that transcends the human.
“What is great in the human is that it is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in the human is that it is a going-over and a going-ullder.” Zarathustra says that he loves the humans who sacrifice themselves for the earth so that it will one day belong to the overhuman. He loves those who “will” their “going under” so that the overhuman may live, and those who prepare a home with animals and plants so that the overhuman will have a home with the resources needed to live. Zarathustra’s initial message is not only to announce the coming of the overhuman, and the overcoming of the human, but to instruct his audience in what they need to do to prepare the way for the life of the overhuman and the death of the human. This preparation involves both a “going-over” the bridge that is humanity and a “going-under” so that the human will “live no more.” Individual human beings are not the overhuman and neither is Zarathustra. Zarathustra is the “herald of the lightning from the dark cloud of the human,” and the lightning is the overhuman. Zarathustra’s task is to rally the humans to be m ore than themselves by contributing to the arrival of the overhumcm. Nietzsche tells us directly that Zarathustra is the promoter of a cause, which is the arrival of the overhuman, and he demands the sacrifice of the thoughts, feelings, and activity of individuals to the cause, so that they can be part of something that is more than themselves. Their purpose, the m eaning of their lives, the goal they should set for hum anity is to assist in the creation of something better than themselves.
As the “herald of the lightning,” Nietzsche speaks through Zarathustra about the failures, limitations, and inadequacies of human beings, encouraging and applauding their “going under,” their sacrifice, in favor of the overhuman. He counterposes the overhuman with “the last human,” and warns his audience about the final, most despicable humans. The last humans are despicable because they have abandoned all interest in transcending the human. They no longer understand or seek to understand love or creation. They have made the earth small and petty. They have contrived happiness. They no longer challenge themselves, but seek only comfort, warmth, and a little pleasure. They do not even realize how despicable they are. But there is still some “chaos” within the souls of humans and Zarathustra will exploit this chaos, work with the “higher humans” to bring about the overhuman. To make way for the overhuman, the human and all of the products of human folly must be overcome.
Zarathustra critiques the “new idols,” but this is not the critique of dialectical egoism.
The state is especially singled out for Zarathustra’s wrath because i t is the implacable enemy, not of the unique one, but of “peoples and herds” who have a faith and serve the cause of life. The state is the annihilator of peoples; it rules by the sword and generates a “hundred desires” in people, while “moderate poverty” should be praised. Where peoples, tribes, cultures still exist, they despise the state as an abomination against customs and morality. The state creates its own concepts of good and evil, and undermines traditional notions of customs and rights. The state generates superfluous, unnecessary persons who clamor for equality, rights, and material desiderata . It separates people from nobler values of duty, honor, and struggle because its reason for being is to provide security, rights, equality, and freedom from material deprivation. Only where the state ends is where the overhuman begins. Zarathustra assails the political products of equality and individual rights in a similar manner.
Humans are not equal and never will be. The deception of equality generates nothing but petty resentment and a desire for revenge; the deception of equality represses nobility. The overhuman will not bring equality nor individual rights, but a clash of rich and poor, the high and low so that life can overcome itself again and again. “And because it needs the heights it needs steps and opposition among steps and climbers! To climb is what life wills, and in climbing to overcome itself.”
Nietzsche’s critique of politics and society is not oriented toward the overcoming of the individual’s alienation from self, nor toward the individual’s assertion of ownership of thought, behavior, and property. His critique is oriented toward the coming of the overhuman. Nietzsche’s assault on the state, culture, religion, and science does not establish any sort of compatibility with Stirner either in form, content, or purpose. Nor does it make him an anarchist or atheist. Nietzsche attacks authority in order to recreate it. Nietzsche attacks the human abstraction, the human essence, in order to make way for the overhuman, a new abstraction, a new essence. The state, culture, religion, and science must go so that there is no competitor for the attention, trust, loyalty, and adulation due to the overhuman.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra wants to rally the mob so that they can sacrifice themselves, effecting the transition to the overhuman. He is not rousing the rabble so they can make the internal and external changes needed to appropriate and consume their own lives. God and the state must die, and so must the human, but this is so the overhuman can live. It is significant that Stirner not only counterposed the state in the abstract to the egoism, the “I,” of the unique one, but he attacked the state in its specific historical and ideological manifestations: the Greek, Roman, Christian Germanic, liberal, socialist, and humanist. In each case, he outlined the specific form of opposition of the state to the egoism of the individual, extracting from each form the antagonism between the “cause” of the state and the “ownness” of the person. Stirner’s critique of culture, virtue, religion, and science has a similar trajectory: the historical and ideological facts are opposed to egoism, the ” I,” and the unique one. They are eventually related back to the opposition between the external “cause” and the ownness of the person. Stirner’s critique of the abstraction – god, state, and humanity – was based on an objection that the essence supplanted the real, concrete individual. The overhuman is a n abstraction, an essence, a spiritual ideal . It is another cause that is “more to m e than myself.” Zarathustra proclaims the downfall of modernity, conventional values, and the birth of a new era with a new morality and a new view of greatness that ordinary humans cannot envision, much less achieve.
Zarathustra attacks individual humans for what they are, how they live, what they value, and what they aspire to become. They are disparaged because they do not fit the spiritual ideal of the overhuman.
He announces the death of god, but does not attack the supernal and mystical expressions of human thought because he knew it would destroy any notion of the supernatural di gn i ty of humanity as the precursor of the overhuman. He wants to resuscitate the supernatural and the mystical so that the overhuman is greeted with awe and admiration. As a supernatural and mystical being, the overhuman dominates the passions and lesser values. The overhuman forms his or her own character ab novo, valuing creativity above all else.
The overhuman accepts that life is hard, that injustice occurs, but chooses to live without resentment or any form of pettiness. The overhuman is not motivated by everyday commerce, the necessity of meeting everyday needs, but by the opportunity for greatness and nobility.
The overhuman is the alternative to both god and humanity. Unlike god, the overhuman is not perfect. Unlike humani ty, the overhuman embraces perfection as a life-goal . The overhuman struggles for perfection in a worl d without inherent meaning and without absolute standards. There is no meaning in life except the meaning that persons give their life. There are no standards other than those people create. Most humans – the last humans – settle for petty values and do not attempt to surpass the mediocrity and cowardice of modern life. To raise themselves above meaninglessness, mediocrity, and cowardice they must cease being merely human, all too human.
They must be harsh on themselves and each other. They must be disciplined to endure deprivation with joy. They must become creators instead of remaining mere creatures. Nietzsche says that suffering strengthens people and prepares them to overcome mediocrity and cowardice.
Harshness, suffering, and discipline are important because there is no other way to prove one’s worth or to transcend modern values.
The death of god is an opportunity, not a lament, because a world without god demands that humans transcend themselves. Perfectibility or improvementis the task of the overhuman made possible and necessary by the death of god. The overhuman demands more of self than human beings.
The overhuman welcomes difficulties and duties in contras t to humans who demand nothing special, who seek only comfort and satiation, and fail to push themselves toward perfection. The overhuman accepts the risks, terrors, and deprivations inherent in living, but values life without hesitation. The existence and vocation of the overhuman is dangerous.
Danger reveals the destiny of persons; those who accept and confront danger transcend humanity and modernity, those who refuse to confront it are condemned to extinction .
Other archetypes of ” modern man” are equally problematic in Nietzsche’s concept of the overhuman. Those who idolize the protection and security provided by the state, those who idolize acquisition and consumption, and those who refuse to challenge the Christian ideal of humanity are “worms,” “mere animals,” “mechanical robots;” collectively, they are a “herd .” Nietzsche’s criticism of modernity is a protest against the weakness, complacency, and fake civility of Christian humanism because it imposes a distorted image of what human beings can be. He demands the transcendence of humanity and modernity that will negate the entirety of Christian humanitarianism . Modern human beings must be transcended by the overhuman. The only hope is that the “higher men,” those humans who can still despise themselves, as Nietzsche did during his walks along the Italian Riviera, will recognize the need for a transcendence, and assist the being who can impose some meaning on the purposeless existence of humanity.
The “humanity” that Stirner targeted was rooted in Christianity, but it was not a Christian idea; it was the atheist idea of Feuerbach and Bauer. Stirner’s conflict was not with modernity as a catalog of human failures and inadequacies, it was a fight with modernity as a social system that dispossesses persons of power and property, a culture and ideology that infuse the world with spooks, and a form of cognition and everyday behavior that converts persons into ragamuffins who welcome their dispossession.
The unique one is not the overhuman and does not transcend the human. The unique one is the practicing egoist, the individual human being who owns his or her life, thoughts, and actions.
There is no external, overarching purpose for humans. There is no external, overarching meaning. Purpose and meaning are created, destroyed, recreated, and ignored by persons continually. Nietzsche is bothered by the death of god and the lack of inherent meaning in life. He wants it recreated in the form of a new being and a new morality. For Stirner, god was not dead but resurrected as humanity. Humanity is the supreme being of modernity.
Stirner objects to the imposition of meaning and purpose by culture and social institutions. Individuals can determine for themselves what matters in their lives. They can appropriate and consume what they find meaningful. Self-liberation is not a matter of discovering prefabricated meaning or waiting for the overhuman to provide it. Perfection and improvement are not measures of liberation, they are external images of how people should live, think, and behave. Ownness is a quality or the act of determining for oneself what images one will use to live; dialectical egoism is the philosophy of living without external measures of value, meaning, or purpose.
It challenges the notion that harshness is better than gentleness, that duty is better than choice, that necessity is better than freedom, that perfection is better than imperfection. Stirner did not seek a new morality, a new spi ritual ideal, nor a new, improved version of human collectivities. He did not disparage persons; he disparaged social systems, the state, and “the dominion of mind” for what they do to persons. Stirner rejected all supernal and mystical essences. In The Ego and Its Own, humanity is a “spook.”
The overhuman is also a spook.
|
#title In-depth Interviews with 3 Members of FAUDA
#subtitle The Anarchist Movement in Palestine
#author @abolishtheusa, FAUDA
#date October 24<sup>th</sup>, 2023
#source https://intimitescriminelles.noblogs.org/?p=61
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-01-08T21:52:51
#authors @abolishtheusa, Fauda
#topics anti-Imperialism, Israel/Palestine, palestine, feminism, anti-zionism, FAUDA
#notes The text has been translated into various languages: linktr.ee/abolishtheusa
*** PART 1: MEMBER 1
Note: Member 1 is the same member interviewed by Black Rose Anarchist Federation, please see [[https://libcom.org/article/voices-front-line-against-occupation-interview-palestinian-anarchists][that interview]] for topics not covered here.
Everyone suffers. The great disaster is in Gaza, but people in the West Bank and in the occupied interior also suffer from the deprivation of personal and collective freedoms. Arrests and torture in prisons have increased greatly in the past weeks. They are usually large, but in the past weeks they have increased greatly for fear of the outbreak of clashes and confrontations in the West Bank and internally. Yesterday night, they bombed the Alma’madani Hospital in Gaza and killed more than 1,500, including a large number of children.. Are you listening?? children..
Close to 1,000 innocent women and children were killed in this massacre… The world must see and know the truth about the terrorist Israeli Nazis…. Just imagine your child taking refuge in a hospital in the hope of getting protection and sitting there and feeling safe. Then you come to the hospital to see your child, and the surprise is that your child has been turned into dismembered pieces.
Yes, this is what the Nazi Israeli occupation did in Gaza. It killed more than 600 Palestinians, all of them children and women, and turned them into dismembered pieces after Israeli warplanes fired a missile towards the Baptist Hospital known as the « Ahly Arab » in Gaza.
Tell your people what is happening here
<br>
Let them know the truth
<br>
Not the lies of occupation
We officially established our movement in Palestine 4 years ago. We knew little about anarchist and anarchist movements in advance, but due to the academic study of some members of the movement in the United States and Britain, we learned more deeply about anarchism and saw its activities closely, and that is why we decided to follow this approach in occupied Palestine.
One of the main reasons that led to following this approach is, firstly, the freedom of thought of anarchists and their acceptance of other ideas and personal freedoms of others. Secondly, the methods used by them to express their opposition to the state and authority. When Palestinian youth want to express their protest, unfortunately, they only use old methods. But when we learned about anarchism and anarchism in Europe and America, we discovered that there were various other methods for confronting the occupation.
For example, in the past and to some extent today, some Palestinian youth see the fight against occupation only in armed resistance. Since the Israeli security environment is very tight here, these armed actions, which are known here in Palestine as the « lone wolf operation, often lead to the killing of many Palestinian youth without having a significant impact on the apartheid regime and its security forces. So pay attention: the life of a young Palestinian man is facing a simple and unnoticeable event. Therefore, we decided to adopt other policies in fighting the occupation, and we found these policies in anarchism. Here, for security reasons, I cannot reveal our plans and some facts on the ground. We are present throughout occupied Palestine, but are mostly concentrated in the West Bank.
Our projects revolve around several axes. The first axis is educating and training Palestinian youth on new methods of confronting the occupation (the educational unit). The second axis is implementing these methods on the ground in different ways (executive unit). The third axis is to publish everything related to arrests, killings, humanitarian crimes, and the deprivation of individual and social freedoms practiced by the occupation against the Palestinian people, to keep this issue alive in the consciences of all segments of society, especially anarchists (Al-Wehda News). The fourth axis is to disseminate important information about the history of Palestine, the history of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict, and the intellectual differences that the new generation may face from its past, because here we are facing a fierce media war that distorts the facts and turns the facts in favor of Israel. As you know, Israel has channels that broadcast around the clock in in Arabic in order to distort historical facts and spread its false narrative about the past and what is currently happening on the ground (Media Unit). Unfortunately, for security reasons, I cannot send pictures.. but you will find some of them in our Telegram group @fauda_ps and @fauda_education.
We only want peace
<br>
We only want to be given freedom
<br>
And to return our lands to us
Yes, there are many needs that we have to provide here in order to help others and also in order to carry out demonstrations and protests in the streets, such as:
1. Helmets, goggles, gas masks and gloves for personal safety during protests.
2. Basic medical supplies such as bandages, painkillers, etc.
3. Banners, posters and speakers.
4. Smartphones and walkie-talkies.
5. Water bottles, snacks, and portable food during long protests.
6. Flags and clothing that represent the anarchist movement (especially during black bloc protests).
7. [REDACTED]
8. Notebooks, pens, and cameras to document events.
9. Identities and documents relevant to emergencies or unforeseen circumstances.
10. Money for hospital and other expenses, whether for anarchists or to help some needy people and poor Palestinians.
11. [REDACTED]
12. [REDACTED], and also purchasing some tools for self-defense during protests, such as [REDACTED], a computer cable, [REDACTED], wooden boards, tools for blocking streets, and [REDACTED] to make it difficult for the police and security forces to see.
This is a section of the needs for which we will disburse aid. We support whatever you want to do with the money you have fundraised, whatever charity you decide to send it to. But usually this aid does not reach the Palestinians. Especially if you want to provide it through some international organizations… because in more than 90 percent of cases the occupation prevents this aid from reaching the Palestinians.
*** PART 2 & 3: MEMBER 2
In 2020, when we saw the anti-racist demonstrations for George Floyd and actions of anarchist Americans, we decided to create this movement in Palestine. On the one hand, we did not want to be like Hamas military groups, and on the other hand, we did not want to remain neutral and forget the cause of Palestine. Israel is really apartheid here. Zionists are racist. We do not criticize Jews. Many Jews have helped us and are helping us, but the Zionists want the Arabs to leave Palestine. They occupied our houses and support the attacks of the Israeli army against children and defenseless women. Therefore, it was necessary to form a proudly Palestinian group of young people to resist Israel. We have friends in almost all parts of Palestine who help this movement as the main staff. We are present in the West Bank and Gaza as well as the occupied territories of 48.
Our collective is an anarchist collective. Of course, you cannot appoint a leader for an anarchist group. Because we act like headless movements in other parts of the world. In the Middle East, many leaders and political officials who have been the head of a party or group have deviated the movement from its original ideals and beliefs for their personal and party interests. In Palestine, many officials and heads of the government headed by Mahmoud Abbas are corrupt people and have an economic and security agreement with Israel. The Arab representatives who are in the Israeli Parliament are also corrupt people and have accepted the sovereignty of Israel.
FAUDA movement has a steering group that consists of several main and old members whose work is done with their coordination. This group is responsible for directing and issuing orders for campaigns, demonstrations and operations. Under this steering group, there are 4 departments. Each of these 4 departments has a manager and dozens of Palestinian youths are working in these departments. These sections are present in most parts of Palestine, especially in the West Bank. Many people also join us when we hold rallies or demonstrations.
Regarding the political prison guard, you should know that more than 7,000 innocent Palestinians are in the prisons of the Israeli apartheid regime. Some of them are women and even teenagers. Teenagers who were imprisoned at a young age and have been in prison for more than 15 years now.
Israel does not even allow a trial for them and they are in prison without charge! We call this, « phenomenon » (اعتقال الإداري). You can search the same Arabic phrase on the Internet and see and read about the injustice and cruel approach against the prisoners.
The FAUDA movement carried out activities for these prisoners for their support. In different cities, we held rallies in front of the courts or the headquarters of the Israeli police. We organized a campaign on social networks. We went to visit some families whose members are prisoners and they talked to us about the torture that Israeli forces have on prisoners. Unfortunately, Israel’s security systems interpret all our work, even our humanitarian work, as security threats. That’s why we don’t publish photos and videos of many of our actions, such as going to prisoners’ homes.
We reject large international organizations, because they ultimately always stand with or are passive to Israel. When Palestinian youths are assassinated by Zionist settlers or Israeli forces, or when Israeli warplanes bombard Gaza and kill defenseless people and civilians, international organizations do nothing. What is the point of simple words of condemnation? Israel brings whatever disaster it wants to the defenseless Palestinian people and organizations only express regret!
But we announce to all the anarchist and humanita groups of the world that we are ready to cooperate with them to be the voice of the oppressed Palestinian prisoners, we must help their families. Fascist Israel will imprison the father of a Palestinian family on trumped-up charges then the family has almost no income and becomes poor. That father stays in prison for several years and there is no one to help his family. We ask the freedom loving groups of the world to pay attention to this issue and help us in this direction.
In our opinion, every Palestinian can be on the path of resistance by declaring his disgust with the apartheid system of Israel. What does resistance mean? It means standing in front of the enemy with all the strength, initiative and creativity and not giving up on one’s right. This is the philosophy of resistance and we follow it in the FAUDA movement. We have stated many times that a student, student, poet, teacher, painter, musician, composer and singer, media activist, seller, an armed fighter, etc., can all be popular resistance by declaring disgust and taking appropriate physical action. This is the basis of the movement FAUDA. Resistance must be popular resistance. We should not wait for foreign armies or foreign organizations to come and defend us. In this movement, we have started a path that all people can die for and stand against Israel’s racist policies. Today, the movement has entered an important period. We used to be a small movement. By the grace of God, today we are present all over Palestine and we are present and active in various news, cultural and social sections, in the month of Ramadan, and guerrilla sections and campaigns against the occupying Israeli police forces. This is our national and people’s resistance, and people’s resistance has shown in history that it always overcomes the oppressors of fascist regimes. The resistance throughout Palestine and even in the Syrian Golan Heights, where Israel has occupied it, is a uniform resistance and has one goal, and that is to expel the Zionists who have conquered our land and homes. Therefore, we should. not look at Gaza and the West Bank from a separate point of view. But naturally, there are differences in the way of resistance and fighting model in different regions.
As the first and largest anarchist movement in Palestine, the FAUDA movement has extended its hand for help to all freedom-seeking groups in the world from the east and the west. These groups can help us in several areas. First, in the discussion of financial aid. Our forces need equipment to strike the oppressive Israeli police who attack the Palestinian people with weapons of war and kill hundreds of our friends every year. Obtaining this equipment is sometimes very expensive. Israel uses ultra-advanced equipment with foreign aid, especially American aid, but we really stand against them with the least facilities. We need financial help to take the initiative and deliver more [REDACTED]. Also, our friends provide financial aid to help the families of the victims, the families of the prisoners and the people who help us on the path of resistance so that they can have the lowest level of welfare. You can be with us in helping these oppressed people.
The second is media assistance. If there are me teams who want to help us in producing and publishing content, we are ready to cooperate with them. This is very useful in Gaza. When you check the media, you will see that the western media affiliated with the fascist system do not publish any content about the oppression of thousands of children and women and girls and boys or old men and women! You don’t know about many inhumane incidents in Gaza, such as lack of medicine, lack of sanitary materials, lack of safe. drinking water, etc. The youth of FAUDA in Gaza can present these documentaries with your support and the anarchist media groups will publish them so that the world will know. In this war that we are in these days, many western media have closed their eyes and our friends outside of Palestine say that they show Israel as a victim and consider you Palestinians as terr**ists!
The third case is in our campaign organizations, which we cannot talk about due to our security agreements. Libertarians (context: outside of the US, « libertarian » is synonymous with anarchist, and always has been) all over the world are fighting against elements affiliated with the fascist system. We are also fighting with the Israeli police and we need help. The fourth thing is that our movement is ready to participate in meetings and interviews to introduce the world to this movement formed in Palestine. We invite all the press and media to introduce this movement to the freedom seekers of the world. Write and publish, even the plan of making a documentary film about the first anarchist movement in Palestine would be very suitable.
There are about 15 anti-Zionist resistance groups in Palestine, of which our movement is one. H***s and Islamic Jihad are among these groups. All resistance groups are together and follow the same goal. We should not divide them. Israel wants to divide between the left and groups like H***s and use this division for its own benefit. So we must be alert and not play. in the enemy’s playground. H***s, Islamic Jihad, Kitab al-Aqsa and other armed resistance groups in Palestine have always been destroyed in the Western media for their anti-Zionist stance and actions.
The image of H***s reflected in the media is not real. When they entered the settlements of the Gaza Strip, they didn’t go after the elderly and children, they didn’t cut off anyone’s head. In the first hours of the war, Israel announced that H***s would behead and slaughter the Jewish people, later the Americans said the same thing. A day later they retracted their statement, and said that they don’t have evidence to prove their claim!
But there are differences in the fighting pattern. Fauda movement has invited all people, whether Muslim, Jewish or Christian, to join the popular and national resistance against apartheid. Well, H***s is purely Islamic and has no non-Muslim forces. But it doesn’t matter, now is not the time for internal conflicts.
In the early months when the movement started, senior members of ***** contacted us. And we had a meeting and they asked about the quality and quantity of our work and we talked together. They fully agreed that Palestinian Christians and Jews should also be helped as part of the anti-Zionist resistance.
Therefore, the goal is the same, but there are differences of opinion in some fields and patterns, which are not the place to raise them here. In addition, H***s is currently engaged in a war and we cannot comment further.
The number of active and effective anarchist groups here is very small. Many of them are no longer active. There are some groups that we have a relationship with and in some cases we work together. In Israel, i.e., the occupied territories of 48, there are also some anarchist groups formed by anti-Zionist Jewish youth, and we support them. But in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, our movement is the only one that operates according to anarchist principles, and unfortunately, this opinion has not yet spread in Palestine as it has spread in Europe and America.
We are trying to enlist the help of all Palestinian friends, regardless of race, tribe, or religion, to resist the fascist regime. Many Jewish youth have helped us in these years. Also, Muslims and Christians have many activists in this movement. All of us today are the leaders of a movement that is nationally and popularly seeking to achieve the same ultimate goal.
Supporters of Palestine can helps us in 2 ways:
1. print our flag (fauda flag) and go into the street with friends and make videos. We will share these videos so our people see world supporters
2. help us with donations. We need some items to resist zionists and need money to buy them.
*** Q&A with Fauda: questions submitted by anarchists & others from around the world
Firstly, regarding your question about the « two-state solution », we will never accept the two-state solution. Imagine someone comes to your home and forcefully robs your home. After he sees that you are resisting and won’t leave your home, he suggests that you share your home between you both. Does this make sense to you? If this is logical, then all of the following events are also logical: Someone steals your mobile phone on the street, gets caught, and then suggests you share that phone or sell it and split the money. Or someone steals your car and after he realizes that you will never give up your car, he suggests that you share the car or sell it and split the money.
There are many, very comparable examples to our situation with the Zionists, and no sane mind accepts them, so why do you expect us to accept the « two-state solution »?
We completely reject the two-state solution. But this does not mean that we do not accept Jews in Palestine. Before the Zionists occupied our lands, we all lived in peace in our lands and did not face any problems, neither with Muslims, nor with Christians, nor with Jews, nor with any other religion.
We seek our individual & social freedoms. In fact, we do not want any country to rule us, but this will lead to other matters and will complicate matters. The conditions in Palestine are completely different from the atmosphere in Europe and America.
Currently, we reject the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas, and we completely reject the Zionist occupation, which takes away all the freedoms of the Palestinians.
Frankly, currently the only practical solution we have is the one-state solution. But this does not mean that we will not offer other options in the future. We may face some circumstances in the future that enable us to present other options and pursue them. Most of our focus as anarchists here is on the new generation. The new generation must know how our conflict with Israel began. The Israeli media is currently focusing on reversing historical facts. The Arabic « Makan » channel, which broadcasts around the clock in the Arabic language, broadcasts films, documentaries, and television programs targeting the new generation and seeking to shape their ideas, mislead and brainwash them.
One of the very dangerous actions and activities practiced by Israel is that it is trying to change academic subjects in Arab schools through its influence with the traitorous Palestinian Authority, in favor of its policies. In other words, Israel cannot even accept the differences in cultures among us.Look! When we see these practices by the apartheid regime, how do you expect us to believe that Israel seeks to establish two independent « states » on Palestinian lands? How do you want us to believe that it will allow us to be independent? All of these are lies. Israel has lied to us for the past 75 years on many issues. We will not let them deceive us again. We first determine what Israel’s goals are (whether political, cultural, intellectual, or other goals) and then we organize activities that are compatible with the local Palestinian culture to confront these Israeli racist practices. The main question we have as Palestinian anarchists is to guarantee our individual and social freedoms. Often, even a workers’ state as a transitional stage causes major problems and can lead to tyranny, injustice, and the abuse of power to take away the freedoms of others. Focusing excessively on laws and the management of society by the state will lead to excessive accumulation of power, as we have seen in many Marxist movements, and this will increase the possibilities of corruption and tyranny. We also believe in the complete abolition of states, but if there is no escape from the existence of the state, there must be a small state with very limited powers in which all segments of society participate.
But currently in Palestine the main issue is not this. We are now living in an atmosphere of war. We first want to remove the occupying entity from existence. That’s why no one is raising these issues now. Conditions do not allow us to search for these matters. We are currently experiencing a crisis. We need to make great efforts and it will take a long time for people here to recognize these theories, let alone accept them. Most people here in Palestine live in a religious atmosphere (whether Islamic, Christian,Jewish, or other) and have cultures that are completely different from European, American, and other cultures. This is why our people sometimes see social classes and the differences between these classes as very natural and sensical. Here in Palestine, we try to focus on commonalities more than differences. Of course, there are many things that Palestinian society, especially the older generations, may not accept. The reason is that they were raised in a somewhat traditional and religious environment.
But what do we do? First, we focus on the new generation, which has more vitality and activity than others and can accept many of the new ideas that we put forward, or at least can deal with them more openly. Secondly, we do not see the time as appropriate to discuss controversial matters, but rather we emphasize solidarity and cooperation together to achieve our common goals. There are a large number of our siblings from other religions and different orientations with whom we cooperate, including Jews, Christians, Muslims, LGBTQ+, and others. We need very broad media support. Currently, the Palestinian media is blacked out and blocked all over the world, especially in the West. We call on all our siblings and comrades in the world to officially monitor Palestinian news from Palestinian channels, translate it into English or other European, Asian and African languages, and publish it in their media. But unfortunately so far no one has responded to us. We call on all our anarchist siblings and others who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause not to be satisfied with the news published by well-known Western government channels. Because we see that they distort and falsify the facts and do not publish much of what is happening in the Palestinian arena.
*** PART 4 & 5: MEMBER 3
Due to rapidly worsening israeli genocidal violence, including the arming of all israeli settlers, in the West Bank, we were unable to finish this interview, and hope to expand it in the future.
For your information, I don’t know much about academic studies. I have never done an interview before. I’m just a Palestinian woman engaged in and supporting my comrades in the Fauda anarchist movement. I was born into a Palestinian Muslim family. I have a brother who is 3 years older than me and a sister who is 4 years younger than me. In childhood, my life was normal and everything was good. But as soon as I became an adult, problems started with my father and brother. My personality was different from most of the girls around me. Originally, I couldn’t bear to live in a cage. Here, if an Arab woman is born into a traditional family, she is usually obliged to stay at home (except in the case of exceptions and vows) and do household chores such as cooking, cleaning, sewing, and other things. But I didn’t like these tasks. That’s why usually, after I came back from school, I would go to see one of my friends who was an older girl than me and studying at the university. She painted wonderfully. That’s why I fell in love with drawing too. I used to talk to her about everything. She was a very beautiful girl. I loved her with all my heart. That’s why we always talked together about everything. But on the contrary, my relationships with my father and brother were getting worse day by day. I was living between two completely separate worlds. A world that I loved and adored with my friend, and a second world filled with hatred, orders, and prohibitions violating all the boundaries of my life and every little, private aspect of my life.
Imagine… I used to hear these sentences several times daily:
Do not wear these tight clothes
<br>
Why are you late?
<br>
Where were you?
<br>
Don’t be friends with so-and-so.
<br>
Why are you wearing all this makeup?
<br>
Why do you make your voice soft when you speak?
And many similar questions that targeted all the private aspects of my life. I had nothing left that I could control for myself. I had nothing left until I personally decided what I waswilling to go through to get what I wanted out of life. All the affairs of my life were under the umbrella of control of my father and sometimes my brother. They were deciding what I should do, how to do it, when to do it, where to do it, and, and, and.. The only person I could talk to comfortably at home was my mother. My mother loved me, but she did not have the ability to stand up to my father or do anything for me. She too was a woman, but what did a woman have in this house? Nothing. I could go on but…I’ll cut it short: One day I was at my friend’s house and we were talking about her university. I don’t know how the conversation got carried away to the topic of some of the young men at her university. She said that there are some young people who talk about freedom and liberation, and that human rights are the most important thing in this life, and she mentioned to me that they adopted some ideas called…anarchism.
This was my first encounter with anarchism. After weeks or months passed (I don’t remember), I asked this friend of mine to introduce me to these young men, and that’s how I got to know Fauda. Due to the difficult circumstances I was living in, I unfortunately did not study academic studies. But if feminism and anarchism mean that women have the right to determine their destiny in life and to choose their way of life, then I am a feminist and an anarchist. I cannot stand anything that puts me in cage and wants to determine for me how to live and what to do.
<em>Already life-threateningly dangerous, conditions in the West Bank have escalated even more in the past two weeks, especially for anarchists and youth organizers. We completed the second part of this interview to the best of our ability.</em>
America and Israel lie to everyone. They never attack Hamas. Hamas forces have underground tunnels and use them well in order to eliminate the Israeli army. Therefore, the Israeli army has not yet been able to eliminate Hamas, and I believe that it will not be able to with ease. But it bombs hospitals, mosques, churches, and residential neighborhoods inhabited by civilians who have absolutely nothing to do with Hamas. They deliberately kill women and children. They prevent any humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip under the pretext that it will reach Hamas and Hamas will use it against them in the war. These are all nonsense and lies. What is the fault of children and women? Do they die of hunger and thirst and without any humanitarian supplies in hospitals? Children are killed in front of their mothers in hospitals that are out of service. Why and for what sin? Israel and America aren’t fighting Hamas. They only fight children, women and civilians. Israel is not a good society for women or non- women. This system is built on the foundation of apartheid. It divides people in one way or another. Even the Jews themselves in Israel are distinct from one another. Statistics indicate that women in the Israeli army are always exposed to sexual harassment and assault by men. According to statistics, they had 1,542 complaints of « sexual harassment » in the Israeli army during the year 2020 alone. Is this a society suitable for women? That respects women? Or gives women their rights? Israel is built on the foundation of extremist ideology. This ideology is the only thing that Israel cares about.
Everything other than this ideology is just lies in order to maintain this apartheid system. All the propaganda and all the lies, such as the claim they are « the most moral army in the world, » and the propaganda carried out by the charming and beautiful women in the Israeli army and all the influential figures on social networking sites… All of these are just propaganda to polish Israel’s image in the world, but from within, Israel is full of hatred. Hatred between different Jewish sects, hatred between Arabs and Jews, hatred between political parties and on and on.
I don’t know what Palestine will be like in the future. But I would like to see everyone living in peace in my country. Women and men. Children and adults. Young men and women. Jews, Muslims, Christians, even atheists, homosexuals, converts, and anyone who has any idea that might make him different from others. We are tired of these situations.
We are tired of the many problems, war, fear, and notliving in safety. All I want is to be able to walk down the street without worry. All I want is to sit in a café, walk along the coast, or attend a party with my friends and have fun together. I don’t think that’s a big ask. This is what everyone around the world experiences and this is our right. These are the least of our rights on our land. Why should we be kicked out of our homes? Why do we have to leave our land? Why did the West gather the Jews in our land? Why don’t America, Britain, France, and Europe receive them themselves? We lived here in peace. We lived with the Jews on our land in peace. We don’t have any problem with the Jews. Our problem is that they gathered foreign people in our land and handed them the leadership of our country. Would America, for example, accept that Arabs from all over the world meet in America and that Arabs assume leadership there? Does this make sense in your opinion? This is as clear as the sun in the middle of the day. I don’t know why everyone discusses these simple matters as if they were solving complex mathematics equations!
I am very grateful to my friends in the Fauda movement. They helped me a lot. I’ve had very difficult days. I was alone and they helped me find a job and supported me so that I wouldn’t feel alone. I learned a lot from them. I learned from them the meaning of life. I learned freedom from them. I learned from them how to live on my own and how to rely on myself. They even gave me sums of money to get a job. They are really cool. I love each one of them. It is wonderful to live among people who appreciate you, respect your feelings, understand you, and try to help you. It feels very nice. A feeling I never found in my family.
|
#title Abolition Media Statement on Editorial Decisions Regarding Palestine and Anti-Colonial Resistance
#author Abolition Media
#LISTtitle Abolition Media Statement on Editorial Decisions Regarding Palestine and Anti-Colonial Resistance
#date February 23rd, 2024
#source Retrieved on March 29th, 2024 from https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/02/23/abolition-media-statement-on-editorial-decision-regarding-palestine-and-anti-colonial-resistance/.
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-04-04T18:40:09.207Z
#authors Abolition Media
#topics anti-imperialism, palestine, analysis, media, counter-information, Abolition Media, editorial
As a news source for revolutionary movements we consider it vital to spread the perspectives and action reports of anti-colonial resistance groups, regardless of whether we, as anarchists, are in complete agreement with their politics.
In regards to Palestine, the historic resistance to occupation by the most brutal and formative of settler colonial projects is of extraordinary importance for the international revolutionary movement. It is always important to analyze the revolutionary forces in a given struggle, then examine the larger context and then position solidarity efforts in a more pinpointed manner. As a news source our work is primarily the former.
The left forces in Palestine (PFLP and DFLP) are supported by revolutionary groups around the world, including those based in Rojava, and have, or had, historic military alliances with forces fighting the colonialists, including the Black Panthers. The success of their struggle will strengthen the international revolutionary cause. The PFLP and DFLP have vocally and publicly formed an alliance with other local resistance groups in Palestine and beyond. While those groups may not reflect our political ambitions, it is important (especially as militants not based in Palestine) to not leap to judgment but to try to understand why they would do this and to appreciate the merits of such an approach. While we are aware of ideological differences between the groups that are currently in alliance, it is important to honor their choices and strengthen and support them while they are currently fighting together against the brutal colonial system of apartheid that is backed up by the enthusiastic support of the US and other Western countries. Additionally, it is helpful for us to understand the tactical and strategic approaches of the only groups in the world having a material effect against the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Throughout history, there have been several examples of organizations and individuals who differ politically, but who we believe anarchists should clearly support in their efforts. For example, the FLN in Algeria, Nat Turner in the US, or Pancho Villa in Mexico. Many of these actors had questionable politics from an anarchist perspective, but in terms of anti-colonial struggle, they were very important for pushing liberatory movements forward. We do not view struggles against oppression as a zero-sum, black and white process, but a complex process that unfolds with waves of contradictions and tensions that will change with the world situation.
It must also be appreciated that there is an ongoing genocide in which Western radicals have a tremendous degree of complicity. The burden is on Western radicals to fight against the barbarism doled out by the countries they reside in. The well-being of people around the world and the relevance of anarchist politics depend on it. It is with this in mind that we make the editorial choices that we do. We want to see greater degrees of organization and far more complicity in anti-colonial struggles. Western anarchists need to know about these struggles, be aware of the actors, study their tactics, etc. Unfortunately, anarchism is not a prominent political tendency in the world today, nor is it associated with the most poor, culturally excluded, or those struggling against imperial domination. We hope to change that. By featuring both explicitly anarchist actions and anti-colonial warfare strategies, we hope to bring these struggles into anarchist consciousness and intent, as well as to raise awareness about anarchist political ideology with those who are already fighting for liberation.
We are exceptionally aware that the world situation is rapidly changing and that many of the actions of the United States and Europe are driven by fear of a non-white, non-Western global hegemony. We are also painfully aware that the imperial powers have ruthlessly colonized the global south, massacred its people, installed puppet governments while fighting tooth and nail against left wing forces. The collapse of the left in the global south is from this process and now the situation is vastly more complex.
We know that without a viable anarchist movement in many places, it is sometimes difficult to sort through who to support. However, it must be pointed out that there is hypocrisy in the harsh condemnations of resistance groups in Palestine from some anarchists, who were more supportive toward anarchists fighting in a NATO-backed military alongside fascists in Ukraine. Why was it acceptable for the anarchist movement to ignore or even endorse the far right in Ukraine and the Ukrainian state but not to give a mouthpiece to anticolonial resistance combating an ongoing genocide?
These are the questions we grapple with. We think the movement would be in a stronger place if it worked through these questions and took advice, or listened to global south and anti-colonial voices more than the Euro-American ones that dominate these projects.
We are aware that our positions are not the most popular within Western anarchism but we feel strongly that to become relevant again and to do the right thing in terms of the history of humanity, it is important that Western anarchists also grapple with these questions and consider perspectives outside their own.
Finally, the process of anarchism is founded in questioning and understanding other perspectives, and not just adhering to hard and fast rules. We hope that our readers will see the importance and value of bringing these connections and questions to the forefront of anarchist consciousness, and that we can strengthen international connections as we strive to support the courageous resistance of Palestinian people in the face of genocidal colonialism.
|
#title Interview with Anarchist Union of Iran and Afghanistan
#author Abolition Media Worldwide
#SORTauthors Abolition Media Worldwide, Anarchist Union of Afghanistan and Iran
#SORTtopics interview, Iran, Afghanistan, US foreign interventions, solidarity, internationalism
#date July 25, 2019
#source Retrieved on 25<sup>th</sup> February 2021 from [[https://anarchistnews.org/content/interview-anarchist-union-iran-and-afghanistan][anarchistnews.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-02-25T01:52:20
#notes AMW interviewed comrades from the Anarchist Union of Iran and Afghanistan (Asranarshism) about the potential war between Iran and the United States and building international solidarity with anarchists around the world.
*** As anarchists, what is your analysis of the threat of war occurring between the US and Iranian state?
Today, while we write this response, an American drone was targeted by the Islamic Republic, so now it’s very difficult for all of us anarchists to provide a uniform analysis. We can only predict what will happen because we cannot observe behind-the-scenes communications between states and many other issues. Only different hypotheses can be considered and assessed. Your question is focused on what, as anarchists, what is our analysis of the threat of war between these two states? It must first be said, naturally, anarchists oppose state wars, but how does this opposition affect wars of states is another discussion. We will always remain anti-war. A war between states is at the service of states and capitalism, and the Iranian people must strive to put an end to this deadly war and conflict, and the state militia and infantry cannot go to war and must have their own independent line. It should not remain unsaid that a large part of the Iranian people are waiting for the Islamic Republic to weaken so they can dissolve the dictatorship and theocracy ruling Iran—and us anarchists will be alongside the people and in the streets and we will do whatever we can do for the revolution and the fall of the Islamic Republic. People in Iran have experienced the devastating 8 year war between Iran and Iraq; however some people in Iran have been reluctant to end the Islamic Republic after 40 years of atrocities and unfortunately, they have given assent to the US war against the Iranian state and see it as the easiest possible way to break the evil Islamic Republic. Although they know war will destroy all the infrastructure, they say that the last forty years of the Islamic Republic’s record has been nothing less than war; it plundered the country’s wealth, destroyed the environment, the lakes, and wetlands, brought the people of Iran poverty and misery, executed more than 100,000 people, and expelled 8 million, setting them adrift around the world.
*** You have criticized the defence of the Iranian regime by some Western leftists who call it “anti-imperialist.” How can revolutionaries effectively oppose both the fascism of the Iranian state and imperialist intervention?
The target of absolutist and state-oriented anti-imperialist critique is only American imperialism, but we are more open to this than some so-called anarchists or communists such as Noam Chomsky or Slavoj Zizek who defend the Islamic Republic of Iran. The silence of these intellectuals about the crimes of the Islamic Republic repressing the Iranian people and the severe crackdown on anarchists, Islamic Republic crimes against immigrants, especially Afghan immigrants (who are deprived of their basic human rights and have been slaughtered in the Syrian war for the promise of temporary residence in Iran), and the repression of women, workers, and students is unacceptable. In fact, Chomsky and his like are silent about the Islamic Republic because it is a state that appears to stand against American imperialism and if they are presented with the choice between the ruling government of Iran and the Iranian people, they will choose power. This is a tragedy because the power and authority that has crystallized in the Iranian government has conquered and fascinated them, and the fate of the Iranian people does not matter to them—and instead of always opposing power and defending individual freedom and the collective freedom, they are entranced by power and forget about freedom and opposing domination of the Iranian government; instead they examine this major contradiction through Marxist theory and not on the basis of liberty and anarchist libertarianism.
*** What historical revolutionary movements and figures are particularly inspiring or relevant for your movement today in Iran and Afghanistan?
The failure of state communism globally on the one hand and the failed, unsuccessful political developments in Iran and Afghanistan on the other hand led youth to gravitate toward liberal and libertarian alternatives that were new to them. The Internet, anarchist artists and anarchist activists abroad have helped in this process. Since we are anarchist militants, individuals and revolutionary movements close to our tendency are most relevant to us. But if we were to name some of them, we would include the Paris Commune of 1871, the Spanish Civil War, the Chicago anarchist workers, the Kronstadt sailors, the Black Army and Nestor Makhno, Emiliano Zapata, Dorothy Day, the AANES (Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) and Abdullah Öcalan, the Chiapas Zapatistas, Japanese anarchists, Bakunin, Emma Goldman, Louise Michel, and Camillo Berneri.
*** As your website has published articles on the death of Lorenzo Orsetti and repression of Indonesian anarchists this past May Day, would you like to comment about these two important moments for the anarchist movement internationally?
So far, more than 500 international fighters have been killed in Syria fighting for the AANES and mostly in the war with ISIL. Many of them were our fellow international anarchists and Lorenzo Orsetti is one. We have always tried to identify international fighters who were anarchists fighting for our ideals to commemorate these comrades by introducing them to our audience and we emphasize that anarchists are idealists without pretensions and they are mostly anonymous and only called International Fighters, and main-stream platforms use it to deliberately hide anarchism so they do not advertise anarchists accidentally. Of course fallen anarchists do not care because they did not fight for power or fame, but to take revolutionary action. As you mention comrades, anarchist fighters in Rojava and the presence of anarchists in Indonesia are two significant historical moments, and it is very important to record these historical moments and our responsibility to highlight them. We emphasize the revolutionary nature of anarchists by calling attention to fallen comrades and encourage our young audience to radicalize.
*** Are there any new development in the situation of anarchist prisoner Soheil Arabi?
Anarchist prisoner Soheil Arabi was imprisoned in Ward 1, Hall 9 within the Greater Tehran Prison and is currently serving his 11 year prison sentence. He has been on a hunger strike to protest the horrendous conditions in the prison, which includes: violent behaviour by prison authorities, the spread of drug use among prisoners, lack of prison maintenance and provisioning, confessions coerced with shockers and batons, not separating prisoners by crimes, absence of adequate accommodations and sanitation facilities, denial of right to treatment, and an infestation of bedbugs and lice. The hunger strike happened because the prison authorities ignored Soheil’s repeated requests to address prison conditions. While performing his hunger strike, Soheil Arabi was transferred to the dispensary in the Greater Tehran Prison on June 20, 2019 after his health deteriorated severely. Farangis Mazloum, the brave mother of Soheil Arabi, was arrested in Tehran at her home on Monday July, 22 2019 by eight members of the security forces. She has been transferred to an unknown location. Anarchist comrade Soheil Arabi should have been released last year, but he was tried again last year in October and sentenced to another 3 years. After the last time he was tortured and beaten, he was not sent to the hospital despite a groin injury and broken nose. Recently, a 21-year-old political prisoner named Alireza Shir Mohammad Ali, his mother’s only son, was deliberately killed by two other prisoners with a knife in the same prison—this is one of the methods the Iranian state uses to physically remove political prisoners. We are worried about comrade Soheil because there is no security in the Islamic Republic’s prisons. Of course, besides Soheil, there are several anarchist prisoners in Iranian prisons. On May 1, 2019, fifty participants at a May Day demonstration, including women activists Neda Naji, Marzieh Amiri, Anisha Asadollahi, and Atefeh Rangriz were arrested and detained by security forces and have not been released. There are others that we cannot name for security reasons
*** What are some of the ways in which you have been organizing in your communities?
Anarchists in Iran and Afghanistan have clandestine activities that cannot be shared externally, because of the very dangerous security conditions, so that the secret police in Iran do not know how to fight anarchist organizations and do not know where we are operating. If we make our organizing, campaigns, and areas of activity public, then the Iranian state will focus their security institutions on them and create security traps. After the ten-day protests in more than 100 cities in Iran beginning on December 28, 2017, security agencies realized that people were organizing without leadership and, as a result, were at risk. Of course, when we began our activities 10 years ago, security institutions were at risk because since 1979, they had been able to suppress all of the opposition in Iran and quash them in the eyes of the people, and for three decades of repression, it was easy to imagine that no politics were attractive to young people and women, and that they were comfortable with the political structure, parties and currents. The regime was shocked by the emergence of new and fresh political currents, which on the one hand, was welcomed by young people, women and workers, and on the other hand, the regime itself had no knowledge about this new political thinking, its main activists, and how it spreads. For this reason, we and other political activists asked the questions: what would the regime do to counter the spread of anarchism through society? And what methods of oppression will they use to repress anarchists? Until the answers to these questions reveal themselves over-time, security agencies are opposing us and by using their Internet and propaganda facilities, they created a virtual faction and ordered them to create parallel organizations. By creating a counterfeit political movement called “anarchism,” it destroys the anarchist movement and pushes teenagers and young people in the desired direction of the state.
*** What issues do you see percolating in Iran and Afghanistan that would make people more responsive and interested in anarchism?
In Iran and Afghanistan, cases such as patriarchy, religion, limited individual liberty, lack of social justice, ecological collapse and the extinction of many animal and plant species, the theocracy in Iran, and the lack of alternative, revolutionary opposition in Iran and Afghanistan. Anarchism is attractive because anarchist libertarianism and its emphasis on the importance of individual and secular freedom and radicalization, the importance of women’s rights, the protection of animals and the environment, the opposition to all hierarchy, and opposition to authority are all essential for Iranian society and strongly catches people’s attention.
*** How can anarchists in other parts of the world act in solidarity with the movement in Iran and Afghanistan?
We can say that so far anarchists in other parts of the world have been supporting the anarchist movement inn Iran and Afghanistan very well, and shared our struggles through interviews and voluntary translation of interviews on their own websites in different languages. Our anarchist comrades supported Soheil Arabi and other actions that we cannot mention for security reasons. Because we are all anarchists, we have a deep interest in the global anarchist movement and in the vastness of the world, our range of struggles is wide and all anarchists face many anarchist struggles; however they do as much as they can for the anarchist movement in Iran and Afghanistan. In any case, the struggle continues and all kinds of anarchist support from the international anarchist movement will continue.
*** In the long term, how do you think anarchists can build stronger connections internationally to support revolutionary movements in a way that is not merely reactive to crises or repression?
Now the left movement and communist movement are facing a crisis, they do not have a strong presence at the international level or in international struggles, they have largely lost their revolutionary and militant characters, and even the parliamentary left is facing a crisis, even liberals face a crisis—but anarchists do not face this situation and they have not lost their revolutionary character and are still pragmatic. Anywhere in the world that has the smallest movement, the whole international anarchist movement focuses on it and stands up like in Syria, where several hundred international anarchists have fallen in the fight against ISIS alongside the SDF. Yes, we also think that in the long run anarchists can create create stronger international ties to support revolutionary movements abroad. They should not only be involved in everyday struggles and should attract many other popular political tendencies and movements, as we do. This is the very nature of the revolutionary and honestly also of anarchists: their pragmatism and the importance they invest in international struggles provides the groundwork for the practical support of revolutionary movements. The next important point is that anarchists from different parts of the world communicate with one another through their websites and email to share news about each other, which means they have a true and broader political worldview, and that they are quick to learn of problems and struggles, so they can rapidly support their international peers.
|
#title Reflections on Revolution
#subtitle “Anarcho-Syndicalism” by Rudolf Rocker
#author AbolitionistWrites
#LISTtitle Reflections on Revolution
#date January 13, 2023
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-01-13T22:02:50
#topics Rudolf Rocker, 1938, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Revolution, Capitalism, Green Syndicalism, IWA-AIT, Review
#source Retrieved on 2024-01-13 from <[[https://medium.com/@abolitionistwrites/reflections-on-revolution-anarcho-syndicalism-by-rudolf-rocker-2af7b10a70fa][medium.com/@abolitionistwrites/reflections-on-revolution-anarcho-syndicalism-by-rudolf-rocker-2af7b10a70fa]]>
In today’s world, the effects of living in a highly stratified society is a reality that can be felt as a constant stress upon the marginalized. While we have relatively high standards of living in so-called “Western” countries, those living conditions are only present for those already well-off and are based on the exploitation of workers locally and globally. The world seems trapped in a spiral of ecological destruction, and constant economic crises that only ever seem to benefit the rich. I’ve noticed more and more of a trend in my generation, Gen-Z, that we are becoming increasingly aware of these issues and want to pursue change, but are lacking in our methods and structures for transforming society. This is where Reflections on Revolution is situated, where I review and assess texts about historical and contemporary currents in liberation movements.
In this first Reflection on Revolution, I’ll be reflecting on the text “Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice” written by Rudolf Rocker and published in 1938. This text was published during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, a hard-fought conflict between an alliance of Fascists, Monarchists and Nationalists, and an alliance of Republicans, Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists. In addition to being a civil war, this was also a period during which an Anarchist revolution was occurring. The main Anarchist presence in Spain at the time was the CNT-FAI, a federation of Anarcho-Syndicalist trade unions where workers collectively managed their production and distribution of goods. The acronym CNT-FAI is commonly understood to be the close relationship between two organizations; the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo/National Confederation of Labour (CNT), and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica/Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI). While the specifics of the CNT-FAI play in important role in this text for contextualizing the structure and methodology of Anarcho-Syndicalism, a deep dive into the CNT-FAI is fit for a different reading in the future. For now, let’s talk about that word; “Anarcho-Syndicalism”.
*** What is Anarcho-Syndicalism?
[[a-r-abolitionistwrites-reflections-on-revolution-a-4.png f][Ana Garbín Alonso, the militiawoman portrayed by Antoni Campañà in Barcelona in 1936.{1}]]
Anarcho-syndicalism is a fusion of two terms that describe distinct political tendencies; Anarchism and Syndicalism. In this text [2], Rudolf Rocker gives a definition of the first term
<quote>
“Anarchism is a definite intellectual current in the life of our times, whose adherents advocate the abolition of economic monopolies and of all political and social coercive institutions within society. In place of the present capitalistic economic order Anarchists would have a free association of all productive forces based upon co-operative labour, which would have as its sole purpose the satisfying of the necessary requirements of every member of society…”
</quote>
Syndicalism refers to the organization of workers into trade unions (unions organized along the lines of a specific trade), which use direct action such as strikes, boycotts, sabotage, and protest to better the conditions of workers as a class.
Anarcho-syndicalism brings together these two frameworks of thought, into a set of practical methods and structures for revolution. It views the role of trade unions as not just improving workers conditions within the existing capitalist system, but also as a vessel for transforming society as a whole. It is based on the fundamental idea that by engaging in the revolutionary practices of class struggle, workers not only change the society around them but also transform themselves into the type of people that can collectively manage the economy.
*** Why Anarcho-Syndicalism?
In his text, Rocker attributes the formation of Anarcho-Syndicalism as a political current to the culmination of the experiences of union organizers during the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> century. A particular focus here is in England, which in the 19<sup>th</sup> century was at a time of extreme repression for workers. Laws were blatantly targeted at criminalizing and executing union organizers and radical workers. This included the outlawing of “combinations” (now called unions), which were eventually repealed. Early Syndicalism in England heavily intersected with Chartism, a movement which sought political reform. However, the political reform movement resulted in marginal changes to law, which would be repeatedly repealed or go unenforced to cater to the profits of industrial corporations. This resulted in the following shift in thinking as Rocker describes:
<quote>
“Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace.”
</quote>
This quote to me, is reminiscent of a recent case of freedoms being limited in Canada. In November 2022, the Canadian province of Ontario used the notwithstanding clause to pass Bill 28, which limited the freedom of association of Canadians to force striking education workers back to work. Several days later, the use of the notwithstanding clause was revoked, and the bill was never put into effect. The revocation of Bill 28 was not due to Ontario’s government magically gaining a conscience. Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford is universally known for suppressing resistance to his profiteering off of privatizing public infrastructure. No, Bill 28 was revoked after an illegal strike and protest by CUPE, a union of 50,000 public sector education workers [3][4]. CUPE was also open to the possibility of a “general strike”, where other unions across different trades strike in solidarity to bring the economy to a grinding halt [5]. This militant force is what ensured the right of workers to freedom of association, and what Rocker generally means in that quotation.
Continuing with Rocker’s description, Anarcho-Syndicalism was gaining a foothold in several countries as well as the International Workingmens’ Association (commonly referred to as the “First International”). The international characteristic of the labour movement in the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> century was focused initially on libertarian socialism, as opposed to state socialism. In addition to the aforementioned negative experiences of workers’ organizations with States, Rocker also attributes this initial libertarian characteristic to the observation that
<quote>
“…the various schools of state-socialism of that time attributed to the trade unions either no importance at all or at best only a subordinate one”.
</quote>
At the 1868 Hague congress of the First International, the influence of Marx and Engels resulted in a split in the organization into two camps:
1. Anarchists who believed in bottom-up organizing through working class organizations while rejecting electoralism as a strategy.
1. Marxists who believed in top-down control of working class organizations through running communist parties in state elections.
In this text, further attention is also given to the continued harsh experiences of Syndicalist unions with state socialism after the Russian Revolution. A particular focus here is given to Lenin, who under the guise of “Internationalism” attempted to form a Third International to bring together workers and trade unions after the dissolution of the Second International during WW1. But such an International was compromised from the start by Lenin’s underlying ideology surrounding the role of trade unionism which pushed away the major Syndicalist unions from joining. As Rocker puts:
<quote>
“The foundation of the Third International, with its dictatorial apparatus of organisation and its effort to make the whole labour movement of Europe into an instrument of the foreign policy of the Bolshevist state, quickly made plain to the Syndicalists that there was no place for them in that organisation.”
</quote>
For Lenin, the Syndicalist trade unions were not for workers to institute self-management, but were to be subordinated to communist party leadership. This resulted in the split of many major Syndicalist unions from the Third International to form a separate international organization centred not on party politics, but on the principles of direct action and the free association of workers.
*** How Anarcho-Syndicalism?
In this section, I’ll be explaining those specific methods that Rocker details in this text. Be advised that I will also be inserting some of my own reasoning in here about the specific things that he states as I understand them. I have modified the wording to something I think is more clear, but if you are interested to read his explanation you can find it on pgs. 38–40 of the text.
Anarcho-Syndicalism as explained by Rocker is concerned with both structure and methodology. The structure revolves around the two types of organizations:
1. The Labour Cartels, which are the combination of all trade unions within a specific locality/city.
1. The Industrial Alliances, which is the combination of all similar trades across the entire nation.
An important principle within Anarcho-Syndicalism which extends to current strategies is <strong>federalism</strong>. Federalism refers to the affiliation of separate organizations to one organization, with the Anarchist caveat here that the separate organizations retain significant local autonomy and cannot vetoed by any central body. Thus, all Labour Cartels across the nation are allied/federated together into a National Federation of Labour Cartels, and all Industrial Alliances across all trades are federated together into a National Federation of Industrial Alliances. This differs significantly from parliamentary notions of federalism as the Labour Cartels and Industrial Alliances don’t hold any legislative capacity, but are the result of mutual agreements between workers themselves to organize their own production.
There are a three basic questions about revolution which must addressed in this model:
1. How does one organize resistance to the current state of society?
1. How does one disrupt and cause a transformation to the current state of society?
1. How does one organize production and consumption after such a transformation?
These four structures; the Labour Cartels, the Industrial Alliances, the National Federation of Labour Cartels, and the National Federation of Industrial Alliances, are answers to the first and third question. The second question is a concern of methodology, which Rocker addresses on a separate page.
1. During the period of movement building, Labour Cartels are local bodies that educate workers and carry through local resistance. The National Federation of Labour Cartels is the body in which the Labour Cartels collectively form effective strategies for resistance across all localities. Similarly, the Industrial Alliances are specific bodies that educate and agitate within separate trade unions, and the National Federation of Industrial Alliances is the body in which these separate Industrial Alliances collectively form effective strategies for resistance across all trades.
1. There are several methods for resistance which are worth mentioning, such as boycotts, strikes, protests, sit-ins, and so on. But one which is given a particular importance by Rocker and Anarcho-Syndicalists is the general strike, which refers to the withholding of labour from capitalists by the working class as a whole. Subsequently, this results in the collapse of the structures by which statists and capitalists exploit and extract value from workers. It’s common in general strikes to instead redirect labour towards sustaining the needs of communities. An example being agricultural unions producing and distributing food into community-run food stores rather than selling it to capitalists.
1. As this disruption and transformation occurs, the four structures from before now take on transformed functions. The Labour Cartels now assess the consumption needs of their locality, and the National Federation of Labour Cartels can then assess the needs of the entire nation through the co-operation of the Labour Cartels. The Industrial Alliances organize the production of each trade to meet the needs of the localities and nation, and the National Federation of Industrial Alliances then organizes production across all trades through the co-operation of the Industrial Alliances. At the level of worksites/factories/farms, one particular form this has historically taken is councils of workers that manage production through general assembly and rotating managerial positions.
It’s important to note here that Rocker is a synthesist. Meaning that (perhaps out of a sense of practicality), he believes that various forms of socialist economies would co-exist. They may be based on a market economy, a communist economy, or a collectivist economy, or co-existing together in different combinations. The reasoning for this is as he puts it:
<quote>
“Mutualism, Collectivism and Communism are not to be regarded as closed systems permitting no further development, but merely as economic assumptions as to the means of safeguarding a free community.”
</quote>
*** Anarcho-Syndicalist Present and Futures
While the book contains important historical information for contextualizing and understanding Anarcho-Syndicalism, I would briefly like to touch on the current state of Anarcho-Syndicalism to put this book into perspective.
One aspect which has found in modern Anarcho-Syndicalism an important characteristic is that of Internationalism. The international current during the period of the Spanish Civil War was the International Workers Association (IWA), founded in 1922 at a Berlin conference. The IWA is still currently active, with members consisting of Anarchist federations from Australia, Spain, Norway, France, Italy, and Germany (to name a few out of the 21 total affiliated organizations). Something which piqued my interest while reading through the IWA’s May 2023 External Bulletin was the case of 11 workers at an Ansell (an Australian multinational manufacturer) factory in Sri Lanka that were fired for organizing a union at their workplace. [6] Their union tried fighting for compensation through the courts and won, but Ansell appealed the court decision in order to drag the issue on as long as they could. This went on for 10 long years. The sacked workers got into contact with the IWA Asia Pacific Sub-Secretariat, and their call out for assistance was forwarded to the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation (ASF), which is an IWA Section based in Australia. The ASF local unions then organized pickets of the Ansell HQ in Melbourne, and began an international campaign assisted by the Workers’ Solidarity Federation (WSF) in the US and the CNT-AIT in France to get Ansell to concede. This international campaign resulted in all the workers being fully compensated by Ansell for being unjustly fired. [7] Such an international characteristic is now essential, as capitalism is increasingly defined through global markets where corporations place a false antagonism between workers across the arbitrary borders of nation-states. That false antagonism can be broken by creating international solidarity among workers’ organizations.
Another critical feature in the current context of Anarcho-Syndicalism is the emerging radical ecology in syndicalist organizations. This topic is explored in the text “Green Syndicalism” by Jeff Shantz [8] who explores the rising concern of climate crisis among IWW organizers. Jeff Shantz states:
<quote>
“Green syndicalists recognise that ecological crises have only become possible within social relations whose articulation has engendered a weakening of people’s capacities to fight a co-ordinated defence of the planet’s ecological communities.”
</quote>
Here, another issue can be dismantled. There is a false antagonism constructed between environmentalists and industrial labour. When we step outside of the narrow mindset of capitalism and instead view unions as vessels for transforming society rather than simply winning concessions, we can see that the need for ecological living and workplaces organized by workers are are intimately entangled concepts. Both are concerned with the restructuring of society away from private ownership, and towards collective self-management. Green Syndicalism is notably becoming a increasing perspective within international organizations like the IWA. From the report on the recent 28<sup>th</sup> Congress of the IWA in Alcoy, Spain [9]:
<quote>
We were interested to know which organisations are discussing this topic [climate crisis], if they are involved in any activities (and opportunities and obstacles they see), how they view the topic in general and if they are interested in participating further in the activities of the working group… The discussion positively surprised us and was one of the longest at the Congress. While in 2019 this topic was approached in a way that we did not quite like, now the situation was completely different. It turned out that many groups are or would like to be active around this topic.
</quote>
A notable report was from the Workers’ Soldarity Federation (WSF) in Pakistan where workers used direct action and mutual aid with the help of international solidarity to respond to a flooding disaster. These work doubly as a way for Anarchists to be actively vocal and involved in radical ecological practices while simultaneously spreading the influence of Anarchist organizing methodology and structure within ecological movements.
*** Closing Remarks
Overall, I’ve found that reading through “Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice” has reinvigorated my interest in understanding and building models for collective self-management. Not just seeing labour movements as ones that have passed a long time ago, but exploring the forms in which they still exist and are modifying themselves. There are shortcomings to note in this text when it comes to building connections between Anarcho-Syndicalism and writings from other Anarchists. For instance, I’ve found two readings recently that satiate my other curiosities about liberation which receive only a passing mention in this text. One is “Anarchism, and Other Essays” by Emma Goldman that addresses the specific social forms of domination that coincide with economic domination, and the second is “Conquest of Bread” by Peter Kropotkin which centres the satisfying of human needs as the first priority of any revolution. Outside of this criticism, I’m pleasantly surprised by the content and delivery of Rocker’s writing here, and I plan on going through more of his readings.
If there’s one thing that I can take away from this text, it wouldn’t necessarily even be the specifics of Anarcho-Syndicalism as a model (even though it is practically useful to learn). Moreso, what motivated me in reading this text was understanding the resilience of working class struggles and the connections to contemporary working class struggles. After a period of severe repression, working class movements are beginning to reconstruct themselves and asking what it means for the future of society to engage in class struggle.
After the installation of nationalist dictator Franco following the Spanish Civil War, the CNT-FAI disappeared from public life. Yet after decades of a dictatorship hell bent on crushing any remaining forces of resistance, the CNT and FAI both re-emerged in the 1970s after Franco’s death. Still alive. Still breathing. Still fighting. It is that continual reanimation of Anarchism through the collective will and knowledge base of workers, which shows Anarchism to not only be a set of theoretical commitments but a practice which refuses to dissolve in the face of repression and reaction.
{1} Campañà, A. (1936). <em>Ana Garbín Alonso, the militiawoman portrayed by Antoni Campañà in Barcelona in 1936 [photo].</em> El País. https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-06-28/ana-garbin-alonso-identity-of-anarchist-madonna-revealed-87-years-after-iconic-spanish-civil-war-photo.html.
[2] Rocker, R. (1938) Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice. Martin Seeker and Warburg Ltd.
[3] Seebruch, N. (2022, November 4)<em>. Unions rally to support striking education support workers.</em> Rabble.ca.<em></em> https://rabble.ca/labour/unions-support-cupe-strike-for-ed-workers/.
[4] Carson, J. & Siemiatycki, M. (2022, November 15). <em>CUPE education workers defeat a government bully.</em> Rabble.ca. https://rabble.ca/labour/cupe-education-workers-defeat-a-government-bully/.
[5] Seebruch, N. (2022, November 2). <em>CUPE Ontario President says general strike ‘absolutely a possibility’.</em> Rabble.ca.<em></em> https://rabble.ca/labour/cupe-president-strike-a-possibility/.
[6] IWA-AIT. (2023, May). <em>IWA External Bulletin May 2023. (A4 Version).</em> IWA-AIT. https://iwa-ait.org/content/iwa-external-bulletin-may-2023-a4-version.
[7] Lugius. (2023, October 3). <em>Victory! Sacked workers receive compensation at last.</em> ASF-IWA<em>.</em> https://asf-iwa.org.au/victory-sacked-workers-receive-compensation/.
[8] Shantz, J. (2011, April 7). <em>Green Syndicalism — An Alternative Red-Green Vision.</em> IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus. https://ecology.iww.org/texts/JeffShantz/Green%20Syndicalism%20%E2%80%93%20An%20Alternative%20Red-Green%20Vision.
[9] pa. (2022, December 19). <em>Great news from the 28<sup>th</sup> Congress of the International Workers’ Association.</em> IWA-AIT.<em></em> https://www.iwa-ait.org/content/great-news-28<sup>th</sup>-congress-international-workers-association.
|
#title Cuban Anarchists Announce Opening of ABRA Social Center
#author ABRA
#SORTtopics social centres, Cuba
#date May 5, 2018
#source Retrieved on 25<sup>th</sup> February 2021 from [[https://blackrosefed.org/cuban-anarchists-abra/][blackrosefed.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-02-25T17:50:06
On May 5<sup>th</sup> 2018 a new stage in the self-emancipatory process for a group of Cubans begins with the opening of <em>ABRA: Centro Social y Biblioteca Libertaria</em> (Social Center and Libertarian Library).
This effort of the Taller Libertario Alfredo López (an anarchist, anti-authoritarian, and anti-capitalist initiative created in 2012 and which forms a part of the Federación Anarquista del Caribe y Centroamérica [Anarchist Federation of the Caribbean and Central America]) along with the effective and crucial involvement of associated collectives such as Observatorio Crítico Cubano, Guardabosques, and other individual initiatives intends to inaugurate an autonomous and sustainable space in Cuba today.
A space to promote experiences and practice independent of any foreign or national government, or the institutions which represent them, and focused on the capabilities of those involved. From ABRA we will insist on a practice which prefigures the kind of sociability that we dream of and in friendly relations with the environment, which results in minimal consumption and a maximum of non-polluting solutions of our own.
This new effort is essentially anti capitalist given that capitalism promotes utilitarian relationships among people, supremacy, competition, profit, all of which is not conducive towards the type of sociability we aspire to achieve. These forms of relationship that capitalism promotes is sustained by states, businesses and corporations that dominate and pillage the world and our country. For this reason, the Social Center stands diametrically opposed to capitalism.
On the other hand, emancipation is not possible without involvement with the community. That is why ABRA exists within the communities and not alienated from the oppression they suffer or from the victories they achieve through their struggles. ABRA seeks to provide a space for the different forms of sociability, for individuals and affinity groups that aren’t limited by the narrow framework of government vs opposition, and who propose the direct and autonomous approach to issues of everyday life and creation on all aspects of life.
This space actively stands against discrimination by race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, gender identity, territoriality, educational attainment, economic status and any other kind that threatens a person’s dignity. Likewise, this space recognizes the diversity of thoughts (political, ideological, moral, etc.) without ever renouncing to exercise our own.
ABRA is a place for establishing relationships, in the middle of a commercialized and surveillanced city, that can serve as a place for producing information that is not available at a local, national, and international level. It is a space in favor of self-taught training, commemorations, celebrations, encounters; looking to encourage the precarious counter-cultural scene, which is productive and self-sufficient, that currently exists in La Habana and the region of Cuba.
The Social Center constitutes a space of horizontal social communication to give a voice to those national and international experiences which are not in the interests of the hegemonic agencies, but that offer an anti-authoritarian and emancipatory perspective which is in fact in the interests of us who struggle in Cuba.
Here, means and ends are not contradictory: They are horizontal, of free individuals, and the effective participation out of direct involvement.
<strong>#CentroSocialABRA #ABRACuba</strong>
|
#pubdate 2010-12-24 11:03:08 +0100
#author Abraham DeLeon
#SORTauthors Abraham DeLeon
#title Oh No, Not the “A” word! Proposing an “Anarchism” for Education
#lang en
#date 2008
#SORTtopics academy, education, propaganda of the deed, theory
#source Retrieved on December 22<sup>nd</sup>, 2010 from ERIC online database
#notes University of Rochester, New York; Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Anarchist theory has a long-standing history in political theory, sociology, and philosophy. As a radical discourse, anarchist theory pushes educators and researchers towards new conceptualizations of community, theory, and praxis. Early writers, like Joseph Proudhoun and Emma Goldman, to more contemporary anarchists, such as Noam Chomsky, have established anarchist theory as an important school of thought that sits outside the Marxist discourses that have dominated the radical academic scene. Today, anarchists have been responsible for staging effective protests (specifically, Seattle, 1999) and have influenced autonomous groups like the Animal Liberation Front in their organizational and guiding philosophies. Interestingly, anarchism is glaringly absent from the literature in educational theory and research. In this article, I highlight aspects of anarchist theory that are particularly applicable to education, and also establishes specific ways that anarchist theory can inform one’s own educational praxis. Specifically, I employ the anarchist framework of direct action and micro-level strategies, such as <em>sabotage</em>, that challenge people to resist the oppressive practices found in institutions today.
The word anarchy unsettles most people in the Western world; it suggests disorder, violence, and uncertainty. We have good reason for fearing those conditions, because we have been living with them for a long time, not in anarchist societies... but in exactly those societies most fearful of anarchy — the powerful nation-states of modern times. Howard Zinn (1971, ix)
In education, critical scholars and teachers have made significant gains in critical pedagogy that demonstrates the oppressive nature of schooling in contemporary capitalist societies while simultaneously trying to link this with classroom practice or with the building of alternative schooling structures (Anyon 2005; Apple 2000, 2004a; Apple and Beane 2007; Darder, Baltodono, and Torres 2003; Freire 1970, 1985; Giroux 1988; Irwin 1996; Kanpol 1999; Kincheloe 2004; McLaren 2006; Mercogliano 1998; Shor 1992; Spring 1998). However, this theory has not rigorously engaged anarchist critiques, philosophies, and tactics. Although anarchist theory contains a rich history of dissent against institutionalized hierarchies, it remains glaringly absent in the educational literature (DeLeon 2006; Rikowski 2001; Suissa 2006). Judith Suissa (2006), one of the few authors to actively engage anarchist thought in the educational context, asserts that anarchist theory is, “absent from texts on the philosophy and history of educational ideas — even amongst those authors who discuss ‘radical’ or ‘progressive’ education” (1). This absence is extremely problematic and may limit the possibilities in realizing and working towards a new post-capitalist future.
Arising from the idea that collectivities could form without the need of a coercive and hierarchical State, anarchists have envisioned a society based on cooperation, social justice, community participation, and mutual aid. To be explicit, anarchist theory does not represent lawless disorder, violence, oppressive individualism, and chaos, despite attempts by mainstream media outlets and the police to vilify anarchists (See Borum and Tilby 2004 for an example of this characterization). Alexander Berkman (2003), in his early 20<sup>th</sup> century polemical treatise on the nature of anarchism, effectively dispels the myths surrounding anarchist thought and actions.
<quote>
It is not bombs, disorder, or chaos. <br> It is not robbery and murder. <br> It is not a war of each against all. <br> It is not a return to barbarism or to the wild state of man [sic]. <br>
<em>Anarchism is the very opposite of all that</em> (xv, italics original).
</quote>
Anarchism, simply defined, is a body of political thought that seeks to abolish and challenge rigid hierarchies (like the State), rethink and dismantle capitalist ideological structures, disrupt modes of forced coercion, build a society based on communist aspirations, free people’s desires from historically oppressive social norms, and create organic and communal societies based on mutual aid and social justice (Berkman 2003; Bowen and Purkis 2004; Chomsky 2005; Guerin 1970; Rocker 1989; Sheehan 2003). Although there are more individualized forms of anarchist theory, I agree with the late Murray Bookchin (1999), who argued, “unless socialism is an integral part of anarchism, then anarchism becomes selfindulgence” (125) because of its sole focus on individual desires rather than the larger community in which the individual is situated within. Thus, the anarchism I subscribe to is also tied to an agenda for social justice that situates the discourse outside of the individual. According to anarchists, rigid state structures need to be dismantled; people need to reconceptualize how they define community, and also challenge the ideologies that emerge from a profit-based and commercialized society. Thus, I have two main objectives in this article.
The first one is to highlight the larger theoretical issues within anarchism[1] that are applicable to education. These include critiques of the State, hierarchies, institutionalized power structures, illegitimate authority, and the development of autonomous organizations and groups. This article will hopefully begin a dialogue about the applicability of anarchism in education while challenging critical pedagogues to engage anarchist critiques of the State and its various institutions. Second, I highlight anarchist strategies of <em>direct action</em>, defined by Richard Day (2004) as, “communities of various sorts working together in a circulation of struggles that are simultaneously against capitalism and for the construction of alternatives to it” (735). Although direct action will be the guiding framework in my discussion of anarchist praxis, I will also point to more micro-level strategies of resistance that anarchists have historically used, such as <em>sabotage</em>. Sabotage literally means disruption and should be utilized to interrupt the curriculum educators are given, the high-stakes tests their students are subjected to, and a framework for moving their resistance outside of the school walls.
However, sabotage and other anarchist strategies have not been fully theorized in the context of education and classroom practice, as critical pedagogy has been the dominant discourse for radical pedagogies in education. Although steeped in neo-Marxist thought, critical pedagogy can better inform anarchist pedagogies as it has been rooted in schools and classroom practice and anarchist theory adds to this tradition more salient examples of praxis and resistance, a fundamental critique of hierarchical systems like the State, and questions, more radically, the institutions of capitalism and the relationship to these economic, social, and cultural systems. Also, anarchists have been historically involved in many radical political struggles. From the Russian Revolution and the Spanish CivilWar; Paris, 1968; Seattle, 1999; Genoa, 2001; and other direct action initiatives, such as feeding the homeless (Food Not Bombs;www.foodnotbombs.net), reclaiming the streets from racist organizations (Anti-Racist Action; www.antiracistaction.us/pn/), anarchist networking organizations (such as Northeastern Federation of Anarchist-Communist www.nefac.net), and radical autonomous environmental groups (such as the Animal Liberation Front [ALF]; [2] www.animalliberationfront.com), anarchists have pushed for a more humane and just world (Best and Nocella 2004, 2006; Bowen 2004; Chomsky 2005; Day 2004, 2005; Goaman 2004; Rikowski 2001; Rocker 1989). These groups risk incarceration, defamation, and some are even labeled “terrorist” organizations (Best and Nocella 2004, 2006). Despite this, anarchism has gained popularity because of the insistence of anarchists on techniques that challenge the State, capitalism, and oppressive social conditions here and now (Bowen and Purkis 2004; Rikowski 2001). Even with this popularity, there have been few attempts in bringing anarchist theory into the discussion surrounding education, although there have been successful examples of anarchist-inspired schooling projects and pedagogies (Antliff 2007; Gribble 2004; Suissa 2006). Despite this, “anarchism is rarely taken seriously by academics, and its advocates in the political arena are generally regarded as a well-meaning but, at worst, violent and at best a naïve bunch” (Suissa 2006, 1).
Although my own radical “roots” lie in a neo-Marxist framework of economic and cultural critique, I find anarchist conceptions of direct action, autonomous organization, and commitment to anticapitalism invigorating in a time when radical theory is relegated mostly to the halls of academia (Day 2004, 2005; Morland 2004; Rikowski 2001). Also, neo-Marxist theory has very little applicability in the context of street politics and social protest because of its privileged nature in academia. Its often “detached” way of observing and critiquing capitalist economic, social, and cultural forms does not resonate with activists who are risking bodily injury and incarceration in challenging these same structures. Anarchism is not only philosophically rooted in anticapitalist direct action, but it also provides ideas and inspiration for groups looking to challenge hegemonic practices in these hierarchical systems. Thus its applicability for education is timely in the current neo-liberal order of high-stakes testing and <em>No Child Left Behind</em> (NCLB; Apple 2004b; Hursh 2007, 2008; Leistyna 2007).
*** What Do I Mean by Anarchist Theory? A Brief Introduction and Summary
Anarchists and anarchism are widely misrepresented by the popular media and mainstream research. Anarchism and being labeled an anarchist carries with it serious implications. As mentioned earlier, <em>violent</em>, <em>destructive</em>, <em>dangerous</em>, and
<em>chaotic</em> are some of the descriptors that have been used to describe and categorize anarchist actions historically (Berkman 2003; Borum and Tilby 2004; Bowen 2004; Chomsky 2005; Day 2004; Goaman 2004; Sheehan 2003). Although some of the methods that anarchists use may startle or alarm people (destroying corporate property responsible for environmental destruction or confronting police brutality at protests), they have been quite effective in calling attention to their causes (Day 2005). What separates anarchist theory from other radical theories of liberation?
Anarchists contend that the State, in any form, inhibits the ability for people to build communities centered on social justice and mutual aid. The State, with its official discourses, apparatuses, punitive measures, and hierarchical organization, does not allow human beings the ability to coexist peacefully with their environment or participate in how they are governed in material ways (Berkman 2003; Chomsky 2005; Guerin 1970). States and their protective measures (such as the military or police) are structured to oppress and subvert individual and group rights, especially those from nondominant groups. As Joseph Proudhon argued, the State functions to, “limit, control, [and] subordinate the individual and subject him [sic] to the general purpose ... through its censorship, its supervision, and its police the State tries to obstruct all free activity and sees this repression as its duty” (quoted in Guerin 1970, 15). The State orders, corrects, judges, assesses, assimilates, coopts, indoctrinates, executes, authorizes, and conducts a number of other functions that are in direct contrast to equality and community.
Historically, actions in the name of the State (combined with a capitalist ethos) have subjected people to horrific surveillance mechanisms (the U.S. prison/industrial complex as an example), domesticated our political aspirations, and have been responsible for mass murder and genocide (Native American genocide, the Atlantic slave trade, or the Holocaust are good examples). According to anarchists, the State rests upon illegitimate authority and should be dismantled and remade according to more localized and autonomous free associations centered upon social justice, nonviolence, shared responsibility, and mutual aid. As Noam Chomsky (2005) argued,
<quote>
I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom. That includes political power, ownership and management, relations among men and women, parents and children... (178)
</quote>
Chomsky’s arguments speak well to the historical and current projects of anarchist movements. This insistence upon dismantling, critiquing, and challenging authority is a common thread within anarchist theory.
We can turn to earlier writings to further contextualize anarchist objections to hierarchical State structures. Kropotkin (2002), writing in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century, argued that, instead of a State, people could form voluntary associations that were localized and noncoercive:
<quote>
[A] society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements ... [that] ... would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international — temporary or more or less permanent — for all possible purposes. (284)
</quote>
Although, historically, many Marxists argued that a new socialist State would replace the capitalist State and eventually “wither away,” anarchists have argued that networks, temporary and autonomous, could replace rigid hierarchical State structures much more quickly because they can address the needs of communities more efficiently in solving their own localized problems. For example, during the large protests of Seattle in 1999, the police and media were baffled that the movement did not contain a centralized leadership structure, instead relying on autonomous groups fulfilling different protest objectives (Borum and Tilby 2004; Morland 2004; Rikowski 2001). Worker unions, antiglobalization groups, “Black Bloc” anarchists, and other affinity groups attacked corporate headquarters, marched peacefully through downtown Seattle, and confronted the police directly. Like the temporary nature of organizations that Kropotkin envisioned, anarchist groups like “Black Bloc” represent a spontaneous and anonymous organizational structure (Morland 2004). Not always welcomed by protest movements because of the use of violence when they see it necessary, “Black Bloc” anarchists signify to Morland (2004), “the absence of an obvious and hierarchical structure” (33). “Black Bloc” has adopted anarchist strategies of organization that are free, open, autonomous, and temporary. This runs counter to many still rooted in neo-Marxist thought.
Because the theoretical and scholarly lineage of critical pedagogy is rooted in Marxist politics, this proves to be an important tension between anarchist theory and critical pedagogy. In the literature on critical pedagogy, some scholars envision a socialist and democratic State to emerge in a post-capitalist world or utilize a framework steeped in Marxist politics and praxis (Apple 2003; Cole 2008; Kincheloe 2005; Martin 2002; McLaren 2002, 2005, 2006; McLaren and Kincheloe 2007). Or, as McLaren (2002) argued, “revolutionary Marxists believe that the best way to transcend the brutal and barbaric limits to human liberation set by capital is through practical movements centered around class struggle” (38). Although class struggle is a key component to anarchist praxis and the history of its development, class struggle, and labor (theorized from a Marxist perspective) is not the only place to locate revolutionary political action. Instead, anarchists contend that attacks against capitalism, and inevitably the State, must occur through other means as well, because of how capitalism is not only invested in material economic conditions, but also through symbolic and cultural forms (Sheehan 2003). This means rethinking how people’s lifestyles add to the oppressive regimes of capitalism and the State, organizing around nonhierarchical affinity groups, and a more direct and sustained attack against capitalism and State structures.
Thus, anarchism moves adherents beyond rhetorical analysis towards more autonomous and direct actions against capitalism and the State. Although this is apparent in McLaren’s (2002) call for a critical pedagogy rooted in class struggle or Marx’s “positive humanism,” he does not address enough his vision of what will emerge once this class struggle is realized (37). The State (and the ideologies that give rise to hierarchical systems) must be destroyed along with capitalist means of production or one oppressive State will replace another. As McLaren (2002) acknowledged, “I am not arguing that people should not have concerns about socialism or communism. After all, much horror has occurred under regimes that called themselves communist” (39). Before radical Marxists and neo-Marxists call for my head in my apparent disrespect for Marx, I argue, as May (1994) did, that “questions of the status and import of Marx’s writings are as notorious as they are important [and] it is Marxism, <em>rather than</em> Marx, that we must address (18; emphasis added). But, society cannot move towards a post-capitalist future unless people attack the systemic nature of hierarchized thinking that current Marxists do not fully address (Cole 2008; Sheehan 2003).
For further contextualization, anarchists contend that replacing one State structure with another will not bring about radical change (Berkman 2003; Guerin 1970; Sheehan 2003). This tension moves people towards recognizing that small cooperatives and communities are better equipped to solve problems communally without rigid hierarchical State structures. This is not to say that some anarchist groups do not form hierarchical leadership systems in times of need, but these are temporary and organic, dismantling them once the project or direct action is completed. Thus, anarchism remains committed to <em>temporary</em> autonomous, localized, and organic organizational structures and has allowed anarchist groups to conduct clandestine operations despite heavy police surveillance (Borum and Tilby 2004).
Although neo-Marxists are much more radical than their liberal counterparts, many still fetishize the State, as Sheehan (2003) aptly pointed out:
<quote>
Liberals, including socialists, like to imagine that piecemeal changes, albeit radical ones when necessary, can put the machinery of state on a sane basis. Exploitation can be reduced and minimized through enlightened legislation by way of political parties with the necessary will to realize their progressive agendas. (121)
</quote>
Instead, anarchists understand that social, cultural, psychological, moral, and educational norms are enveloped in State structures and within the capitalist ideologies that sustain modern-day States. As Sheehan (2003) further argued, “It is especially clear to anarchists that the existing order is rooted in the control of social life and that the acceptance of certain attitudes, reinforced through structures of authority and obedience, makes up a state of intellectual imprisonment” (122). Attacking these mechanisms of control will help alleviate class, racial, and gendered oppression (Sheehan 2003). However, work needs to be done to challenge hierarchies that have become a common feature of the current capitalist order.
Hierarchical systems, to anarchists, do not allow for true participation, are coercive, and sustain historically oppressive social practices. These types of top-down social structures have been responsible for subverting individual and group rights. For example, the creation of racial hierarchies (with Europeans at the top and the “Other” at the bottom) was responsible for one of the many justifications of African slavery and Native American genocide. Although there have been successful social movements that have utilized hierarchical organization (the Civil Rights movement in the United States, for example), these have not kept their radical character, instead being engulfed into the existing social order and further domesticated (McLaren 1997). One does not have to look too far to examine how activists like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other radical figures have been domesticated into the current neo-liberal order (Kohl 2005; Loewen 2005). Unless a movement is organic, autonomous, and temporary, it runs the risk of cooptation and recreating new forms of oppression. As May (1994) argued, “Anarchist struggle is conceived not in terms of substituting new and better hierarchies for the old ones, but in terms of getting rid of hierarchic thinking and action altogether” (51). Other theories, such as feminism and eco-justice, also point to the inherent problems in hierarchies (Ferguson 2000; Goldman 1969; Riley-Taylor 2002; Tong 1998). Anarchists contend that human beings need to have the freedom to make decisions, participate in the political process, and have opportunities to build community through activism and participation, all of which are limited by hierarchical systems (Bowen 2004; Bowen and Purkis 2004; Guerin 1970).
Although not always mentioned directly, but a vital point in anarchist critiques, are the notions of power and its reproduction. Michel Foucault (2000) viewed power in a much different way than it had been historically conceived and has influenced anarchist conceptions of power as well (May 1994). Before Foucault, many scholars conceptualized power in a one-dimensional way, in which power was reduced to something that a person, organization, or State wields. Stepping away from the notion of <em>power over</em>, Foucault introduced the concept of the <em>fluidity</em> of power. Power is not something that we posses per se, but works through us. In this way, power is not always a commodity, but instead, power is productive. As Foucault (1995) wrote, “Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up” (70). In this way, power is not just in a single person but is present within the entire operation of an institution. Schools, within this analogy, then become a site of power production, in which the entire schooling system (personal interactions, curricula, spatial arrangements, relationships, etc.) exerts the productive nature of power. Whatever the context, there is a power relationship that exists (Foucault 2000).
For many anarchist groups, power is at the heart of their critiques of capitalism and strategies in resisting State power. Power is diffused within anarchist groups, such as the organic and temporary nature of anarchist affinity groups or towards the autonomous organizational structure that many anarchist groups assume (Best and Nocella 2006; Crimethinc 2001, 2005). The previous discussion of “Black Bloc” groups is a good example of organic and temporary organization that comes together only at a specific time to confront police brutality (Morland 2004).Also, as Suissa (2006) argued, anarchists not only attack capitalism and its manifestations, but also recognize, “a far more tactical, multi-dimensional understanding” of capitalism and its reproduction (136). Because of the highly symbolic nature of late capitalism, many anarchists refuse to participate in common social norms, thus promote and live more communally, participate in open relationships, and provide a system of support through free trade or through strategies like dumpster diving. Thus, anarchists have assumed radical and original ways of combining activism with lifestyle strategies that mock authority or that challenge bourgeois social norms.
For example, at many of the larger protests against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, some anarchist groups dressed themselves as clowns to mock authority and social norms, diffuse tensions, and cause disorder to the police dispatched to subvert protestors (Routledge 2005, in press). Routledge (2005, in press) pointed to an example where a police blockade had surrounded a group of anarchist protestors. When they were fully encircled, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (or CIRCA), dressed in full clown costumes, surrounded the police in a larger circle. Thus, it not only diffused the tension, but also mocked authority figures that represented State power. The lively nature of anticapitalist protests, with clowns, large puppets, and drumming, are all examples of how anarchist affinity groups are rethinking and reimagining how power is diffused and subverted through play, ridicule, and mockery. This reflects anarchist engagement with poststructural conceptions of the productive and repressive nature of power (May 1994). Rethinking and reimagining institutions that perpetuate unequal power relationships are concerns for anarchists that want to confront power and its manifestations.
Anarchists also insist that human beings need to have the capability of managing their own affairs without the need of top-down social structures. This rests upon the belief that people should govern every aspect of their lives and this should be done in a way that is as cooperative and noncoercive as possible. Anarchists contend that people are naturally cooperative and that social systems, such as capitalism, have conditioned them to be selfish. Instead of relying on the traditional dichotomous system of ruler/ruled, anarchists insist on building new forms of organization that account for self-governing that are nonhierarchical. Colin Ward (1982) argued that “we have to build networks instead of pyramids. [Anarchism] advocates an extended network of individuals and groups, making their own decisions, controlling their own destiny’s” (22). Because modern Americans live in a multiracial and linguistically diverse society, many would point to the inherent problems in forming network affinities across such diverse populations. But, this is where anarchist theory again proves to be useful. Anarchists recognize that divisions between communities are false and artificial and argue for weaving together these identities into a new fabric that works towards constructing postcapitalist identities that are situated outside of identity politics. Despite cultural, racial, gender, and linguistic diversity, there are groups that have been successful in overcoming these socially constructed identities that follow networked organizational structures. A good example of an autonomous network that is nonhierarchical and dispersed has surfaced in the animal liberation movement, spearheaded by the ALF.
The ALF have been very effective in calling attention to the destruction that corporations and animal research facilities have been responsible for towards nonhuman animals. Although they release communiques that cover their visions and justification for their actions, their importance is in their direct action techniques, such as freeing animals from cages or conducting clandestine sabotage methods against animal research facilities (Best and Nocella 2004, 2006). The ALF is a decentralized, autonomous and a nonhierarchical network that provides a clear and compelling critique of corporate capitalist society. The ALF is any individual or group that decides to strike against animal exploitation while following ALF Guidelines. Although the ALF deals primarily with nonhuman animals, the focus for my purposes is not on the oppressive system they choose to resist (in this case, anthropocentrism), but their organizational structure, their willingness to risk their own safety for a project rooted in justice for life, and their use of tactics that fall outside socially sanctioned forms of social protest. In my own work, this proves to be highly inspirational because they not only produce tangible results, but also form autonomous networks that reflect my own commitments as an anarchist. Linked to both the state and hierarchical structures, anarchists have also contended with illegitimate authority.
Illegitimate authority has been responsible for bureaucratic States and has limited the capacity of human beings in making their own decisions. As Berkman (2003) argued polemically,
<quote>
OBEY! For if you will cease obedience to authority you might begin to think for yourself! That would be most dangerous to “law and order,” the greatest misfortune for church and school. For then you would find out that everything they taught you was a lie, and was only for the purpose of keeping you enslaved, in mind and body, so that you should continue to toil and suffer and keep quiet. (40–41)
</quote>
This resistance to authority has come in many forms besides just vehement protests against the State. Some anarchists have also tried to change their daily lives. Polyamorous relationships, the anarchist traditions of “squatting,” spontaneous “guerrilla theater,” or other creative lifestyle choices and actions are all conducted to resist hegemonic social norms, such as middle class consumerism and heteronormative assumptions of monogamous relationships. As Morland (2004) pointed out,
<quote>
anarchism has sought out alternative modes of opposition. Establishing communes, building free schools, publishing radical tracts, writing anti-hierarchical lyrics, planting flowers, living in trees, growing organic food, squatting in unused properties, and recycling cooking oil into green diesel are evidence of how resistance within anarchist circles assumes symbolic and cultural forms. (35)
</quote>
It is important to stress that these are only suggestions and the decisions must come from the community because outlining all of the possibilities for resistance in this article is unrealistic. Anarchism is not simply lifestyle politics, but instead anarchism rests upon the assumption that people can and should make decisions for themselves that work towards dismantling the State and ushering in a new postcapitalist era (Bookchin 1999; Guerin 1970; Morland 2004). How, then, do we move towards strategic action? This question is addressed in the next section, where I discuss anarchist strategies for resistance and their applicability in the context of education within the United States.
*** Anarchist Strategies: Direct Action and Sabotage in the Educational Context
Unfortunately, in the current ideological climate in the United States, <em>NCLB</em> has effectively restructured curriculum so that schools are not only preparing students for tests at a much earlier age (kindergarten in some public school districts!), but also shapes what will be taught in schools (Crocco and Costigan 2007; Hursh 2007, 2008). Stressing the sciences, math, and a narrow definition of reading places schools in a difficult position, as they are judged based on student’s scores in these content areas. Despite the work of progressive and radical teaching, this has not moved the conversation forward in a meaningful and substantial way amidst the neo-liberal assaults on public schools and higher education (Apple 2004b; Giroux 2004; Giroux and Searls Giroux 2004; Hursh 2007, 2008; Leistyna 2007). This is where I believe that teachers and scholars in education can look to more radical theories for new ideas and inspiration.
As already noted, anarchists contend that the State is illegitimate, created to sustain the privileges of wealthy social elites, while also maintaining strict social control over subordinated groups (Berkman 2003; Chomsky 2005; Guerin 1970). Although other “critical” traditions have also argued about the problems of States and hierarchies, the neo-Marxist lineage of critical pedagogy does not leave room for challenging the State directly. In the past, Marxism included calls for social change and protest, but unfortunately, it appears that institutional acceptance of Marx has domesticated its message, much like what has happened to multicultural education in the academy (McLaren and Kincheloe, 2007). Although anarchism, too, runs the risk of domestication, anarchist principles of direct action and sabotage of oppressive structures keeps it well rooted in radical street politics, but people must remain constantly vigilant and reflective as to how institutions coerce and domesticate their theories and political actions (Shannon, in press). Unlike previous radical theories in education, anarchists directly confront institutional coercion, but also develop sophisticated techniques of sabotage that groups like the ALF utilize. People must look to historical and contemporary examples that demonstrate the importance of more direct forms of resistance and the role they have played in social movements to help resist these domesticating practices.
Various forms of protest have been effective in bringing about social change, and groups have outlined effective strategies. Those interested in these tactics should explore the literature (Best and Nocella 2004, 2006; Cot´e, Day, and de Peuter 2007; Crimethinc 2001, 2005; Day 2004; Ferguson 2000; Goaman 2004; Goodwin and Jasper 2003; Kohl 2005; Naples and Desai 2003). Traditionally, “critical” methods in education have meant pedagogical practices specifically applicable to the classroom. A vital component to critical pedagogy happens in the classroom, but educators must also do actions outside of the school if they are serious about social change. This means examining successful strategies and employing them against oppressive institutions and structures. Anarchist modes of direct action are useful here in moving society towards social change, rather than just critique, because direct action demands and means working towards active participation in alleviating social problems. Educators can utilize anarchist praxis in the classroom, but also larger projects need to occur outside the school walls. Direct action techniques can be modified to address classroom praxis, such as clothing drives that provide jackets for students for the cold winter months, food drives that allows students and their families to feed themselves, forming neighborhood committees that discuss how to address concerns in their local schools, or ways to resist federal and state mandated standardized testing. Whatever the case or scenario that the community is addressing, direct action has a wide variety of uses.
For example, if one looks at anarchist affinity groups that utilize direct action, one can more fully explore how anarchist groups seek social change outside institutional structures. The anarchist group Food Not Bombs utilizes a direct action strategy in feeding the homeless, despite recent attempts by law enforcement agencies aimed at shutting down their operations (Borum and Tilby 2004). Food Not Bombs in Hartford, Connecticut, for example, utilized a public park to provide hot meals for the poor and homeless, using donated or discarded food from corporate and local restaurants and from the activists themselves. By not seeking “permission” from state structures, anarchists are able to feed the homeless and working poor directly. Direct action is most viable when communities decide that institutional structures can no longer serve them and actions must be done now to alleviate the problem. Along with this, anarchist groups like Food Not Bombs do not have traditional hierarchical structures, meaning that one person is not the “leader,” making the groups highly autonomous and difficult for authorities to disrupt and infiltrate. This should inspire teachers and educators to look to techniques and strategies that are not socially sanctioned because of the ability to solve pressing problems as quickly as possible.
Other anarchist strategies of direct action, like Critical Mass, are also effective and further demonstrate actions that fall outside of socially sanctioned resistance. In short, Critical Mass includes a large group of people on bicycles that converge in one area and take over the public street, highlighting the need for alternative forms of transportation. Or as Sheehan (2003) described,
<quote>
Critical Mass has spread around the world from its 1992 origins in the US, and what started ... as a local attempt to oppose car junkies and SUVs in the Bay Area has grown to embody one of the central strategies of the anti-capitalist movement: the physicist’s notion of critical mass becoming a political metaphor for the possibility of leaderless, mass action precipitating a direct action dynamic of explosive social power. (127)
</quote>
As the foundation of consumer culture, attacking cars and SUVs holds both practical and symbolic value, as these vehicles embody environmental destruction, alienation, and consumer and class desires. Critical Mass is a good example of how direct action is not only conducting the operation, but also how it addresses the highly symbolic nature of modern capitalism.
Although direct action for teachers would look much different than Food Not Bombs or Critical Mass would, in schools it can be utilized to achieve certain goals. With the conditions that now exist because of statewide high-stakes testing, it is even more imperative to challenge the conditions that give rise to these tests (Hursh 2008). Teachers, dogged by pedantic and scripted curriculum, will find their time limited in classrooms to only material covered in these tests. By necessity, teachers will have to “break the rules” to even include opportunities for outside learning experiences. To sabotage NCLB means learning the history of testing, the role of early racist beliefs of IQ and eugenics (Gould 1996), to the cult of measurement proposed by neo-liberal educational reforms (Cot´e et al. 2007; Giroux 2004; Giroux and Searls Giroux 2004; Hursh 2008). These small steps can lead to further larger protest projects, such as gaining supporters from other schools in the district to support resistance towards high-stakes testing, an urgent issue facing public schools today. Scholarship on preservice teachers in schools and through my own informal observations has demonstrated that high-stakes tests dominate the time and energy of most teachers and administrators (Borg, Plumlee, and Stranahan 2007; Hursh 2007, 2008; Leistyna 2007; Romanowski 2008). Significant amount of classroom instructional time is dedicated to “preparing” for these exams. This is especially true for urban education (Anyon 2005; Crocco and Costigan 2007). Direct action against <em>NCLB</em> and other high-stakes tests can be a successful strategy in resisting standardized curriculum and sabotaging these tests is a positive step in the right direction.
Critical pedagogy has included calls for teachers to resist; however, sabotage is more urgent than similar positions in critical pedagogy, and also gives students and teachers more of an activist framework for direct action. Using the discourse of “street” activists will also introduce these concepts to students in a much more open way, instead of depending on mainstreamed news outlets or other hegemonic discourses. For example, teachers that begin to explore language and topics like sit-ins, resistance, insurgency, or direct action can model activities that allow students to explore what these mean in the context of anticapitalist struggle, thus bringing the discourse of social protest to the institutionalized classroom. This also supports the notion that social change will have to occur both within and outside of established educational structures, echoing Anyon’s (2005) call for economic change to accompany urban educational revitalization. Sabotage (as a conceptual framework) allows teachers to model direct action strategies in their classrooms, and using the discourses created in radical circles also allows students to become familiar with key concepts and strategies used by radical groups, a fact often overlooked or omitted in critical educational discourses.
For further contextualization, sabotage has historically taken many forms in the context of education and schooling. For example, Miles Horton’s Highlander School demonstrated the importance that education and teaching can have towards social movements (Horton and Freire 1990). In his school, civil rights leaders attended Highlander, where they learned strategies for resistance and organizational techniques. These techniques included learning about the law in relation to voting rights, but also included social protest techniques, such as sit-ins, marching, and boycotts. In a conversation between Miles Horton and Paulo Freire (1990), Horton argued ...
<quote>
I think the problem is that most people don’t allow themselves to experiment with ideas, because they assume that they have to fit into the system... I just think most people can’t think outside the socially approved way of doing things and consequently don’t open up their minds to making any kind of discoveries. I think you have to think outside the conventional framework. (44)
</quote>
These “conventional frameworks” that Horton mentions have seriously impeded human ability in producing a new society, as people are dogged by hegemonic discourses about what are “acceptable” forms of social protest. Although Highlander is a very specific example (and Horton never uses the term <em>sabotage</em>), this can have important implications for classroom teachers. Returning to the earlier discussion of the ALF, they have staged successful actions against corporations and other organizations that benefit directly from the exploitation and misery of nonhuman animals. Their form of sabotage (freeing nonhuman animals from cages or destroying corporate property that benefits from exploitation) has led to a wider understanding of the suffering that nonhuman animals experience in research facilities while also highlighting the effects that autonomous organization can have and the effectiveness of sabotage as a protest strategy (Best and Nocella 2006). Thus, more embedded ethnographic work needs to be done to better understand how radical groups can inform our own classroom practice.
Anarchists have advocated for direct action against organizations and corporations that subscribe to capitalist or other oppressive practices. Direct action, in the form of protests, marches, or even clashes with the police, has been an anarchist trademark, especially recently, after the successful 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization, or WTO, and is conducted to bring about social change (Rikowski 2001). Direct action can involve confrontation with authority figures, but can also mean working with a community, like the actions of Food Not Bombs, opening up a woman’s shelter, attending an antiwar rally, participating in Critical Mass, or finding new ways of communal living. The main point is that direct action does not always mean confrontation or violence (Bowen 2004). Although radical educational experiences may eventually bring about the destruction of capitalism, teachers and students can begin to make small steps in making their education more empowering and see results that are meaningful. Taking cues from critical pedagogy, direct action can involve students and teachers fighting for the expulsion of a corporate influence in their schools (like Coca Cola), or allowing students to have more control of the curriculum that is taught.
Like critical pedagogy’s insistence on social change, anarchist strategies of direct action speak to the needs of activist educators who want to solve problems in their communities and the schools in which they work. Critical pedagogues and anarchists have always stressed the need for an activist approach to solving social problems. Most anarchist action, however, is always direct, such as the previous examples of Food Not Bombs, Critical Mass, CIRCA, “Black Bloc,” and the ALF. Most anarchists support getting the issue resolved now, with whatever means will be most productive (Antliff 2007; Bowen 2004). As James Bowen (2004) argued, it is,
<quote>
more useful if we think about anarchism as not simply being about the redistribution of wealth (by certain historical forces at particular times) but also involving a change in our relationships with each other, institutions, technology, and our environment. This is therefore where I believe the anarchist project begins, with the boring, small scale, mundane business of making positive, non-alienated relationships with our friends and neighbors and remaining open to new people and ideas. (119)
</quote>
This “boring, small-scale, mundane business” of the “everyday” is where I believe that anarchism and critical pedagogy become a powerful force together that can help move people from theoretical discussions about oppression to acting towards anticapitalist actions.
*** Where Do We Go From Here? Bridging Anarchist Theory and Education for the Future
This article covered only a small portion of what anarchist theory can offer educators, and I urge teachers and researchers to form their own affinity groups to further explore anarchist theory. Anarchism is a powerful form of resistance that can provide the theoretical and guiding framework for establishing a new movement in education towards rebuilding community and resisting the corporatized and neo-liberal agenda that dominates the discourses surrounding public schooling within the United States today. Although there are tensions that exist between anarchism and critical pedagogy because of their academic and theoretical lineage, these theories move individuals towards action and social change. However, my argument is that anarchist concerns with the State, their autonomous organizational structures, recognition of the complexities of power, subversion of authority, and direct action better equip radical teachers and educators with tools to combat the assault of neo-liberalism and oppressive capitalist practices. Also, this allows people to be vigilant about the cooptation of their radical projects by the academy, especially because anarchists demand political and social action. This means rethinking teaching towards direct action. Anarchism is gaining popularity everyday, and educators must begin to find new ways of integrating anarchism into their praxis and research.
Anarchist theory brings a sense of urgency and faith in individual and cooperative direct action that is lacking in many of the radical discourses surrounding schooling and the educational experiences in the United States. If educators want to enact real change, it is their job as academics to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and make radical discourses accessible to those people who need to understand how systems of oppression work. This is not going to be an easy task, but it is becoming alarmingly urgent. Conservative, neo-conservative, and neoliberal educational reforms are gaining momentum and have been quite successful in making their arguments clear and concise. Although there are outlets that make it easier for their voices to be heard because of who benefits from their policies, people must work more cooperatively and harder to make sure that teachers, students, and communities hear their critiques and visions for social change. It is everyone’s job to highlight effective strategies of resistance and further explore through research how and why they are working. Only then will teachers uncover new modes of teaching, learning, and the ways in which they “do” schooling that their practices will be truly empowering and revolutionary.
*** Acknowledgments
I thank William T. Armaline, Deric Shannon, Nancy Ares, David Hursh, Stephanie Waterman, Christine Clark, E. Wayne Ross, Alfred Vitale, and all of my family and friends that were present for their helpful and invaluable advice during the preparation of this article.
*** References
Antliff, Allan. 2007. “Breaking free: Anarchist pedagogy.” In <em>Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization</em>, edited by Michael Cot´e, Richard Day, R., and Greig de Peuter, 248–265. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
Anyon, Jean. 2005. <em>Radical Possibilities: Public Policy,Urban Education, and A New Social Movement</em>. New York: Routledge.
Apple, Michael. 2000. <em>Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a Conservative Age, 2<sup>nd</sup> Ed.</em> New York: Routledge.
— . 2003. <em>The State and the Politics of Knowledge</em>. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
— . 2004a. <em>Ideology and Curriculum, 3<sup>rd</sup> Ed</em>. New York: Routledge.
— . 2004b. “Creating difference: Neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism and the politics of educational reform.” <em>Educational Policy</em>. 18: 12–44.
Apple, Michael and Beane, James. (2007). <em>Democratic Schools: Lessons in Powerful Education, 2<sup>nd</sup> ed.</em> Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Berkman, Alexander. 2003. <em>What is Anarchism?</em> Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Best, Steven and Nocella, Anthony J. 2004. <em>Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals.</em> New York: Lantern Books.
— . 2006. <em>Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth</em>. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Bookchin, Murray. 1999. <em>Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left: Interviews and Essays, 1993–1998</em>. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Borg,Mary O’Malley, Plumlee, Patrick and Stranahan, Harriet. 2007. “Plenty of Children Left Behind: High-Stakes Testing and Graduation Rates in Duval County, Florida.” <em>Educational Policy</em>, 21: 695 — 716.
Borum, Randy and Tilby, Chuck. 2004. “Anarchist Direct Actions: A Challenge for Law Enforcement.”
<em>Studies in Conflict and Terrorism</em>, 28: 201–223.
Bowen, James. 2004. “Moving Targets: Rethinking Anarchist Strategies.” In <em>Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age</em> edited John Purkis and James Bowen, 117–128. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.
Bowen, James, and Purkis, John. 2004. “Introduction: Why Anarchism Still Matters.” In <em>Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age</em>, edited by John Purkis and James Bowen, 1–19. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 2005. <em>Chomsky on Anarchism</em>. Oakland, CA: AK Press. Cole, Mike. 2008. <em>Marxism and Educational Theory: Origins and Issues</em>. London: Routledge.
Cot´e, Michael, Day, Richard, and de Peuter, Greig, eds. 2007. <em>Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization</em>. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
Crimethinc. 2001. <em>Days of War, Nights of Love: Crimethink for Beginners</em>. Salem, OR: CrimethInc.
— . 2005. <em>Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook</em>. Salem, OR: CrimethInc.
Crocco, Margaret and Costigan, Arthur. 2007. “The Narrowing of Curriculum and Pedagogy in the Age of Accountability: Urban Educators Speak Out.” <em>Urban Education</em>. 42: 512–535.
Darder, Antonia, Baltodono, Mario, and Torres, Roberto. 2003. <em>The Critical Pedagogy Reader</em>. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Day, Richard. 2004. “From Hegemony to Affinity: The Political Logic of the Newest Social Movements.”
<em>Cultural Studies</em>. 18: 716–748.
— . 2005. <em>Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements</em>. London: Pluto Press.
DeLeon, Abraham. 2006. “The Time for Action is Now! Anarchist Theory, Critical Pedagogy, and Radical Possibilities.” <em>The Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies</em>, 4. Accessed 1.25.2008. Ferguson, Ann. 2000. “Resisting the Veil of Privilege: Building Bridge Identities as an Ethico-Politics of Global Feminisms.” In <em>Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World</em>, edited by Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding, 189–207. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1995. <em>Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison</em>. New York: Random House.
— . 2000. Power: <em>Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984</em>, edited by Paul Rabinow. New York: The New Press.
Freire, Paulo. 1970. <em>Pedagogy of the Oppressed</em>. New York: Herder and Herder.
— . 1985. <em>The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation</em>. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
Giroux, Henry. 1988. Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
— . 2004. <em>The Terror of Neoliberalism: Authoritarianism and the Eclipse of Democracy</em>. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Giroux, Henry and Searls Giroux, Susan. 2004. <em>Take Back Higher Education: Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Era</em>. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Goaman, Karen. 2004. “The Anarchist Traveling Circus: Reflections on Contemporary Anarchism, Anti-Capitalism, and the International Scene.” In <em>Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age</em> edited by Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen, 163–180 eds. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.
Goldman, Emma. 1969. <em>Anarchism and Other Essays</em>. New York: Dover Publications.
Goodwin, Jeff and Jasper, James. 2003. <em>The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts</em>. New York: Blackwell Publishing.
Gould, Stephen. 1996. <em>The Mismeasure of Man</em>. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Gribble, David. 2004. “Good News for Francisco Ferrer — How Anarchist Ideals in Education Have Survived Around the World.” In <em>Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age</em> edited by Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen, 181–198. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.
Guerin, Daniel. 1970. <em>Anarchism</em>. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Horton, Miles, and Freire, Paulo. 1990. <em>We Make the Road By Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change</em>. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Hursh, David. 2007. “Assessing No Child Left Behind and the Rise of Neoliberal Education Policies.”
<em>American Educational Research Journal</em>. 44: 493–518.
— . 2008. <em>High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning: The Real Crisis in Education</em>. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Irwin, Judith. 1996. <em>Empowering Ourselves and Transforming Schools: Educators Making a Difference</em>. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Kanpol, Barry. 1999. <em>Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction</em>, 2<sup>nd</sup> ed.Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Kincheloe, Joe. 2005. <em>Critical Pedagogy Primer</em>. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Kohl, Herbert. 2005. <em>She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott</em>. New York: New Press.
Kropotkin, Peter. 2002. <em>Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings</em>. New York: Dover Publications.
Leistyna, Pepi. 2007. “Neoliberal Nonsense.” In <em>Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now?</em> edited by Peter McLaren, and Joe Kincheloe, 97–126. New York: Peter Lang.
Loewen, James W. 2005. <em>Lies My Teacher Told Me</em>, 2<sup>nd</sup> ed. New York: The New Press.
Martin, Gregory. 2002. “What Is To Be Done? Toward a Revolutionary Praxis.” <em>Journal of Critical Inquiry Into Curriculum and Instruction</em>. 3: 42–45.
May, Todd. 1994. <em>The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism</em>. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
McLaren, Peter. 1997. <em>Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millennium</em>. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
— . 2002. “Marxist Revolutionary Praxis: A Curriculum of Transgression.” <em>Journal of Critical Inquiry Into Curriculum and Instruction</em>. 3: 36–41.
— . 2005. <em>Capitalists and Conquerors: A Critical Pedagogy Against Empire</em>. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
— . 2006. <em>Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education, 5<sup>th</sup> ed</em>. New York: Longman.
McLaren, Peter, and Kincheloe, Joe, eds. 2007. <em>Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now?</em> New York: Peter Lang.
Mercogliano, Carolyn. 1998. <em>Making It Up as We Go Along: The Story of the Albany Free School.</em> Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Morland, David. 2004. “Anti-Capitalism and Poststructuralist Anarchism.” in <em>Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age</em>, edited by Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen, 23–39. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.
Naples, Nancy, and Desai, Manisha, eds. 2003. <em>Women’s Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics</em>. New York: Routledge.
Rikowski, Glen. 2001. <em>The Battle in Seattle: Its Significance for Education</em>. London: Tufnell Press.
Riley-Taylor, Elaine. 2002. <em>Ecology, Spirituality & Education: Curriculum for Relational Knowing.</em> New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Rocker, Rudolph. 1989. <em>Anarcho-Syndicalism</em>. London: Pluto Press.
Romanowski, Michael. 2008. “Endangering Democracy with High-Stakes Testing.” <em>School Administrator.</em> 65: 48–49.
Routledge, Paul. 2005. “Reflections on the G8: An Interview with General Unrest of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Army (CIRCA).” <em>ACME: An international E — journal for critical geography</em>. 3: 112–120.
— .in press. “A Relational Ethics of Struggle: Embodiment,Affinity, and Affect.” In <em>Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the Academy</em>, edited by Randall Amster, Abraham P.DeLeon, Luis Fernandez, Anthony J.Nocella, and Deric Shannon. New York: Routledge.
Shannon, Deric. in press. “As Beautiful as a Brick Through a Bank Window: Anarchism, the Academy, and Resisting Domestication.” In <em>Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the Academy</em>, edited by Randall Amster, Abraham P. DeLeon, Luis Fernandez, Anthony J. Nocella, and Deric Shannon. New York: Routledge.
Sheehan, S´ean. 2003. <em>Anarchism</em>. London: Reaktion Books.
Shor, Ira. 1992. <em>Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change</em>. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Spring, Joel. 1998. <em>A Primer of Libertarian Education</em>. Montreal, Canada: Black Rose Books.
Suissa, Judith. 2006. <em>Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective</em>. London: Routledge.
Tong, Rosemarie Putman. 1998. <em>Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction</em>, 2<sup>nd</sup> ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Ward, Colin. 1982. <em>Anarchy in Action</em>. London: Freedom Press.
Zinn, Howard. 1971. “Introduction: The Art of Revolution.” In Read,Herbert. <em>Anarchy & order: Essays in politics</em>, edited by Herbert Read, ix — xxii. Boston: Beacon Press.
[1] Because of the diversity of anarchist thought, when I refer to <em>anarchism</em>, I actually mean
<em>anarchisms</em>, and this better represents the diverse theoretical traditions that anarchist theory encompasses.
[2] [[http://www.animalliberationfron.com/ALFront/WhatisALF.htm][www.animalliberationfron.com]]
|
#title Principles of Libertarian Economics
#author Abraham Guillen
#SORTauthors Abraham Guillen, Jeff Stein
#SORTtopics libertarianism, economics, Libertarian Labor Review
#date 1993
#source Retrieved on 27<sup>th</sup> January 2021 from [[https://syndicalist.us/2020/07/02/principles-of-libertarian-economics-part-i/][syndicalist.us]], [[https://syndicalist.us/2013/10/23/principles-of-libertarian-economics-pt-2/][syndicalist.us]] and [[https://syndicalist.us/2016/11/03/principles-of-libertarian-economics-part-3/][syndicalist.us]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-01-27T14:13:31
#notes From Libertarian Labor Review #14, 15 and 16. Translated by Jeff Stein.
*** <strong>Introduction</strong>
<em>As part of our continuing efforts to present anarchist economic theory, we offer this translation from Abraham Guillen’s book,</em> Economia Libertaria. <em>The author of over fifty books and essays, Guillen is probably best known to English readers for his book,</em> Philosophy of the Urban Guerilla <em>(New York, 1973). A veteran of the Spanish Revolution, member of the CNT and FAI, Guillen spent most of his life in exile in South America. He has worked as a journalist and economist in Argentina, Uruguay and Peru. Presently he lives in Madrid, where he teaches at the International Institute for Self-Management and Communal Action, which is part of the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain.</em>
<em>For U.S. readers some of Guillen’s terms may be confusing. His use of the term “libertarian” should not be confused with the right-wing laissez faire ideas of the so-called “Libertarian Party.” Although he does refer to “markets” as part of a revolutionary society, it is clear from the context that he is speaking of a system of federalist or collectivist exchange of products at their labor value – not of capitalist markets.</em>
<em>We do not necessarily agree with everything Guillen has to say, particularly his assessment of anti-Soviet marxism. We think it is possible to make an economic critique of marxism without giving in to the temptation of ascribing its failures to original sin or the fall from grace. Despite this and other disagreements, we think this a useful contribution to anarcho-syndicalist economics.</em>
** Part I
<em>This is the first installment of Guillen’s article. The second part will run next issue.</em>
*** <strong>Self-Management, Planning, Federalism</strong>
The principles of libertarian economy were put into practice – more by intuition than by design, without grand theories – by the libertarian collectives in Spain during the revolution of 1936–39. Here the “praxis,” more than any “a priori” theory, demonstrated that an economy inspired by federalist principles and self-managed, with a self-managed market, could work well and avoid the central-planning which always leads to the totalitarian, bureaucratic State, owner of each and everything.
In this article, we are not going to introduce all the self-regulating objective economic laws, although the most important of these, the law of labor value, self-regulates the exchange of goods and services at their just value in order to fulfill the others: the law of economic equity; the law of cooperation, between the distinct integrated federations of the libertarian economy; the law of exchange equivalence. In a market liberated from the capitalists and the opprobrious tutelage of the State, they will self-regulate, almost cybernetically, the economic processes of production, exchange, distribution and consumption. I study these laws and social-economic categories more profoundly in my <em>Economia Autogestionara</em> [Self-managed Economics], particularly, and to some extent in my three other books.
We are not going to deal, in this chapter, which is really an introduction to self-managed economics), with the development of libertarian socialism. Libertarian socialism I define as synonymous with self-managed socialism.
*** <strong>Anarchism and Marxism</strong>
From a semantic point of view, libertarian socialism is disposed to unite according to the concept of true socialism (without bureaucracy and with liberty) all well-intentioned socialists. However, the adjective libertarian has an anarchist connotation.
On the other hand the adjective self-managed tends to suggest an even broader front of socialist ideologies, some more bureaucratic than revolutionary, which might be unified, in thought and deed, into a self-managed socialism: the broadest alliance of popular and workers’ struggle, against the technocracies and bureaucracies, both West and East, and against the bourgeois pseudo-democracies of the West.
I would contend that in spite of light shades of ideological differences, the anarchist theory of liberty, federalism and socialism coincides, if not totally then in part, with the best of revolutionary humanism. In this I would include the Marxism thrown away as scrap by the State under the form of “the dictatorship of the proletariat, in the transition from capitalism to socialism,” which showed itself to be in the U.S.S.R. the dictatorship of the Party-State bureaucracy, and was under Stalin just as cruel as nazi-fascist dictators.
So, with the State acting as the revolutionary protagonist, instead of the people self-organized in self-managed enterprises and in libertarian collectives, marxist-leninism leads, not to socialism or even less to communism. Instead it perpetuates, as in the U.S.S.R. and its “satellites,” a capitalism of the State, a worse capitalism, closer to nazi-fascism, than to true socialism.
Marxism, separated from leninism, is a theory of capitalist development, its economic laws and contradictions. It is thus a continuation of capitalist economics, since without a self-managed socialism all the rest is capitalism or neo-capitalism.
Marx, in <em>Capital</em>, his greatest work, does not say what socialism would be like, only what capitalism is like. This title merits serious study, without satanizing it like many anarchists have done without recognizing that Marx was an investigator of capitalism whose contribution to socialism is very limited. It is for us, those who live in the 20<sup>th</sup> century, to explain our prodigious, revolutionary and changing century, not by the ideologies of the 19<sup>th</sup> century which explained very well their own times, but cannot be explanations for us today. And this is not to say, in any manner, that we want to break with the past, since by knowing the past we can understand the present and go with certainty to win a future of peace, prosperity, liberty and equality for all, liberated from the bureaucracies of capitalism and the technocracies risen to State power to exploit Society.
*** <strong>The Libertarian Economy</strong>
The libertarian economy, going beyond the marxist-leninist economic doctrine of State capitalism, rejects the State in the name of political and economic liberty. This is because the State protects the capitalists’ private property and the state property of the communist bureaucrats. In this school of thought, Bakunin asserted socialism and liberty at the same time, since he could not conceive that socialism could be less free than the bourgeois democracy described by the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man from the French Revolution of 1789–93. Thus denouncing the political bureaucracy of the “socialists of the cathedral” (the ideologues who spoke like workers, but wanted to govern like bourgeois), Bakunin exclaimed:
<quote>
“Liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice, and socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.” (Obras, vol. 1, p. 59)
</quote>
For the libertarians, blind obedience to the State is an abdication of Society, since the freedom of each individual must not be limited by a ruling class, either by a class whose power is based on private property, as in the bourgeois State, or on State property, as in the despotic, bureaucratic State-both employer and police at the same time. According to libertarian thinkers, the biggest error of all revolutions rests in the absurd politics of demolishing a government in order to put another in its place which could be worse. Consequently the only true social revolution would be that which destroys the principle of authority, replacing it by self-government of the people – without political parties, without a class of professional politicians, without those who arbitrarily command and others who passively obey.
For Kropotkin, laws could be grouped in three categories: those that protect the persons of privilege, those that protect the governments, and those that protect private property, but that, in reality, disprotect the impoverished working people.
In the conventional capitalist mode of production, the bourgeois State is a committee in the service of the capitalists guaranteeing them the private ownership of the means of production and exchange and the realization; without the intervention of labor, of the surplus value usurped from the wage workers, as much in a parliamentary democracy as in a dictatorship, according to the situation. Under the statist mode of production, whose real expression is the soviet model, the State, a monopoly of the totalitarian bureaucracy, imposes state ownership; dictates wage and price policy; is employer, merchant, banker, police, making laws according to the convenience and interests of the totalitarian bureaucracy. In either case, with a conventional capitalist regime or with State capitalism, whether in the West or in the East, the worker remains a wage worker, producer of an economic surplus for the western bourgeoisie or for the eastern bureaucrats. Thus, by changing only one government for another the workers remain oppressed and exploited, in reality, by capitalism, whether private or of the State.
The fact is that the soviet regime perpetuates capitalism, but in another form, with state ownership and bureaucratic State. It should, according to marxist-leninism, but hasn’t, made socialism except semantically – purely in words, not in reality.
Thus, for example, Marx in his main doctrinal work, <em>Capital</em>, exposed the laws of development of capitalism, but not those of socialism; since <em>Capital</em> is a body of economic doctrine mostly about capitalism which contributes no well-defined socio-economic laws of socialism. On the other hand, Lenin, in <em>State and Revolution,</em> contributes no materials for the building of a socialist society, but takes from Marx the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitional step between capitalism and socialism, in order to apply it to the soviet model, where, in time, this transition in the form of a dictatorial State becomes the permanent dictatorship of the communist bureaucracy over the wage workers, who are the producers of State surplus value, for the totalitarian “Nomenklatura.” In sum, then, socialism has not been realized anywhere, as such and as intended by the utopian and libertarian socialists of the 19<sup>th</sup> century, since the soviet model was a new capitalism of the bureaucratic State. But the fact of having prestige has enabled marxist-leninism, to a great extent, to present itself as the economic science, the dialectical philosophy, the sociology of class struggle and its solution, the materialist interpretation of history and the State form necessary for the transition from capitalism to socialism. All this body of doctrine penetrated the universities capturing the minds of many students and professors, the “intelligentsia” above all, in pre-revolutionary Russia, where leninism was established as the active political practice of marxism. In the West, marxism never really reached the workers – neither in its most simplified form, The Communist Manifesto and less still of Capital – but many professors, intellectuals, ideologues adopted Marxism as reformism, “socialism of the cathedral” or an ingredient of social democracy; although in recent times the economic ideal of the “socialists of the cathedral,” of the technocracy and of the bureaucracy, was not Marx but better still Keynes, who contributed the economic theory of a neo-capitalism, more a monopoly of the social-democratic political class or of the labor parties than of the bourgeoisie properly speaking.
The failing welfare-State in the West, squeezed by the abuse of inflation and of exorbitant taxes, and the State-owner in the East of the soviet bureaucracy, were established as an alternative to capitalism, as a “velvet socialism” in the West and as totalitarian communism in the East (which in reality is not communism, but a capitalism of the State: the most total of all dictatorships, without precedent in the ancient and modern world, and which has fallen into chaos from the “perestroika” of Gorbachev to the “catastroika” of Yeltsin).
It is necessary, therefore, to redefine what has semantically called itself socialism and is nothing more than State capitalism, investigating and proposing a libertarian economy, whose laws of development-economic, social, political, cultural, scientific and technological-are enunciated as a replacement and alternative to western welfare Statism and to Soviet State-ownership. For this libertarian socialism needs a little more scientific rigor and a little less utopianism, although it is necessary to take the adjective “scientific” with a grain of salt, as it has been depreciated enough by the soviets. Utopia is beautiful, but it must bring something of economy, of reality, of objectivity to the goal of libertarian socialism for it to be an alternative, at the same time, to western monopoly capitalism and to State capitalism, according to the soviet model.
*** <strong>False Democracy</strong>
In our epoch the exhaustion of statist politics emerges; so it is with the social-democratic regimes under the control of the parasitical middle classes (in the west); so it is with the totalitarian bureaucracies of the one-party and State-employer; whether under the welfare-State (in the West), or the total State (in the East) and of failed nazi-fascism, the people have understood that they must organize themselves into industrial democracy (self-managed enterprises) and into federated self-government (direct democracy), overthrowing the economic power of the industrial, mercantile and financial bourgeoisie, and the political power of the radical, social-democratic, christian democratic, socialist and neoliberal petty bourgeoisie who, with their various parties, take turns in Power.
Marxism and Keynesianism have contributed equally to the development of statist economics; so it is with the marxist-leninists and petty bourgeois socialists; so it is with the technocrats and bureaucrats of every type, partisans of managed economies with the goal of controlling the national economies and the organs of the world economy, imperialist or hegemonist, like the IMF, the GATT, the U.N. Security Council, instruments of the “new world order” of ex-president Bush.
But from these techno-bureaucratic experiences, with the proliferation of well-paid functionaries, of UN-ocrats, eurocrats, comeconorats, of central planners of every type, we can deduce that when the parasitic classes are augmented at the expense of productive workers, the poorer are the working people and consumers.
The moment arrives, then, when it is necessary to vindicate the restoration of a self-managed economy, debureaucratized and debourgeoisfied, liberated from both marxist-leninist totalitarianism and bureaucracy, and from western keynesian planning, which was based on the extravagant growth of taxes, monetary inflation, government budgetary deficit and full employment from above for the bureaucrats and technocrats, and maximum unemployment below for the productive workers underneath. An aberrant economy of this kind has to lead to the total failure of the welfare-State as long as it consumes unproductively more than it produces positively, in actuality in agriculture, industry, mining and goods production.
One thing is politically and economically evident in our time; the stronger and richer is the State than the more weak and poor are its subjects. In consequence, it can be seen on the political horizon and in immediate society, as much in the West as in the East, there are two great antagonistic human groups: those that order and those that obey; those that work and live poorly and those who don’t work and live well; the authoritarians, who seek to maintain their privileges, and the libertarians, who defend their rights and essential liberties. Thus we behold from the historical perspective, at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first, the crisis of the USA and the ex-USSR.
In regimes of the soviet-type, in which the State possesses all wealth and all power, it has created two great antagonistic classes, the totalitarian government bureaucracy and the working people forced to submit to a savage capitalism of the State. The dialectic of class struggle in bureaucratic socialist countries, by its essence, is transformed into a struggle between oppressed Society and the State oppressor, having thus an anarchist character, since it is the proletariat, paid by the State-employer, that has to overthrow the power of the totalitarian bureaucracy in order to build an economy based on self-management, de-bureaucratized, functioning through federations in production and social and public services, converging in a National Economic Council.
Since the quantification and accounting of the economy must be done federally, by agreement of all and the parts (without central planning by bureaucrats, according to central and final orders), there comes a moment in which the libertarian economy makes it scientifically possible as the best possible administration of economic matters creating thus the conditions to abolish the State, oppressor and exploiter of men, converting to decentralized self-government. In this manner an economic federalism (production of goods and service) and an administrative federalism – one as the self-management of workplaces; the other as local, regional and national self-government – creates a self-power of direct participation of people organized in their own interest; not requiring, therefore, a political governing class, nor a bourgeoisie nor techno-bureaucracy, managing industry in order to usurp the economic surplus produced by the labor of others without paying, usurping by surplus-value for the bourgeoisie of the State-owner, now failing in Russia and China, but which they want to perpetuate as capitalism pure and hard in the ex-COMECON countries.
*** <strong>The Management of Social Capital</strong>
The libertarian economy has to assume the increased reproduction of social capital, in such a way that the development of productive forces will not be inferior to that under private or State capitalism. Only then will anew economic regime be justified, historically, socially and politically, if it creates more well-being, a better standard of living, more production with less manual labor than under the old overthrown regime. To not do this would produce over time the conditions for a counter-revolution as long as humanity can not lose productive forces, without earning them constantly until living labor (human productivity) has enough capital (accumulated past labor) that enables one hour of automated labor to produce more than many hours of simple or rudimentary labor based upon the muscular efforts of man.
Accordingly, as workers’ productivity increases, with everyone working scientifically, it half productive and half educational, with the goal of giving everyone equal time for labor and studies, equal scientific, technical and cultural preparation. In this way, all will be capable of doing all, and with the help of the computer revolution, to abolish the traditional division of labor, so that the revolution is not overcome by classes or social estates from dividing labor into manual or intellectual.
The self-managed economy, libertarian in the greatest sense of the word, will have to completely master the basic industries-the creation of new products; the complete utilization of scientific-technological research, bringing it from the universities to the workplaces and institutes; the creation of an agro-industry that will erase the differences in cultural, economic, and technological development between city and country; the constitution of a libertarian society that will balance economics, society, ecology, population and harmonize natural resources and humans, guaranteeing all the right to work, education and leisure; the integral assimilation of the computer revolution in order to liberate (painful) manual labor from material production. Since the automation of labor, plus self-management of social capital at the same time, will create all the technical, economic, cultural and scientific conditions to attain a harmonious society, without social conflicts nor economic contradictions; then self-management plus automation equals libertarian communism.
But prior to attaining the “golden age” of self-government, of equality in education and social conditions for all, where each receives according to their needs and the economic possibilities of society, transcending social hierarchies and the antagonism between wage labor and private or State capital. Prior to this, it will be necessary to transcend political economy as a science of administration of scarce resources and distribution of goods and services according to quantity and quality of labor, abolishing at the same time the division of labor into professions or corporations, by virtue of which some consume more than others, using money and unequal incomes in order to perpetuate the inequality among people.
The spontaneous natural riches, the fruits and wild berries, the water and air to be in reach of all humans, without appropriation, can not be distributed in the mercantile sense of the realization of the law of exchange value since they do not pass in the form of money; price and market-seeking profit, not being the objective of political economy. In libertarian communism, for humanity to attain an economy of abundance a high productivity of automated labor will have to go beyond the laws of exchange value, wages, money, merchandise, unequal incomes, the State (formed in order to impose a unequal division by classes); the political parties and the ideologies peculiar to the political alienation of a competitive society; the division of labor between managers and subordinates.
These can not be economically, politically, socially or culturally transcended, however, by bureaucratic socialism – a neo-bourgeois political economy of usufruct, which is followed by a system of distribution as unequal as capitalism.
The libertarian economy, initially, as happened in Spain during the Revolution of1936-39, the “praxis” set itself problems that had to be the resolved, totally or partially, by bypassing political ideology, creating libertarian collectives, enterprises managed directly by workers without techno-bureaucratic directors; but having to demonstrate by means of self-organized labor that the forces of production would not be wasted. Seeing in practice the human, solidaric and productive labor advantages of the libertarian collectives, the small private property owners associated with them voluntarily. On the other hand, Stalin decreed the forced collectivization of the land into kolkhozes [co-operatives] and sovkhozes [state farms], repressing those peasants who did not want to join them except by pressure of the political police.
<quote>
The good from the moment it is forced … is converted into evil. Liberty, morality, human dignity, consists precisely in that man does good, not because he is ordered to do it, but because he conceived it, desired it, and loved it. (Bakunin, Obras, Volume 1, p. 280).
</quote>
In reality, people are neither good nor evil, but products of the societies where they live, conditioned by their economic, political, social, and cultural circumstances. Thus in societies where private or state property holds sway, each individual appears as an enemy of the other, competing with the other, oppressed by the other, limited by the other in rights and duties.
The causes of injustice, in the socio-economic sense, do not reside so much in human conscience as in the inhuman essence of societies of conflicting classes and in the State which perpetuates them throughout history, as if humanity was incapable of overcoming the prehistory of unjust society, with even less equality than primitive society from the paleolithic to the neolithic.
An economist so little suspected of being an anarchist as Adam Smith, but a sincere intellectual and friend of the truth concerning social injustice between people, having as a principal cause the governments of class, said:
Civil government … is in reality established for the defense of those who possess something against those others who possess nothing. The International Workers Association (AIT), in the past century, was more clear about the emancipation of working people than all the later internationals where the union bureaucracies, politicians, and technocrats, allies of each other, had corrupted communist and socialist ideals; whether this corruption was, by favoring the welfare-State, more Keynesian than marxist, in the West, or the totalitarian State, the administrative socialism in the East, which produced plenty of armaments but failed to produce food.
<quote>
“The three great causes of human immorality are: inequality as much political as economic and social; ignorance, that is the natural result of the former; and, finally, the necessary consequence of both, that is slavery.” (Program of the AIT).
</quote>
The deeds of the political parties, of the so-called left, and the labor union organizations, with the development of monopoly capitalism (West) and with administrative socialism, East having fallen into the hands of political and union bureaucracies and into those of technocrats, with the words of the left and the deeds of the right – has been to confound, in our epoch, all the values of the popular revolutionary struggle, making the communist and socialist parties, and their union organizations, into transmission belts for the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie of the left which, by the means of political power, aspires to become a “new bourgeoisie.” Thus they adulate the workers, promoting to them a “socialist paradise,” in order to sacrifice them to the capitalist inferno – so it is whether under the laborist or social-democratic model, or under soviet totalitarianism.
<br>
** Part II
<em>As part of our continuing efforts to present anarchist economic theory, we offer this translation from Abraham Guillen’s book,</em> Economia Libertaria. <em>Because of its length, we are publishing it in three parts. The first part was in LLR #14, the conclusion will be in LLR #16.</em>
*** <strong>The Demystification of Politics</strong>
The experience of more than half a century of “velvet socialist” [ie. social democrat], Christian democrat and liberal governments practicing Keynesian economics in the West, as well as the totalitarian communist governments of the East with centralized planning, has been that the workers remain wage slaves either way, building up surplus value for the private or State owner. They are exploited as much on one side of the world as another, whether under the governments of Olaf Palme, of Kohl or Honecker, of Thatcher or Reagan, of Gorbachev or Yeltsin.
From this it can be deduced that “state socialism” is neither socialism nor communism, but is instead the collective ownership, usufruct, of the totalitarian bureaucracy over the surplus value extracted by the State. This bureaucratic socialism is the formal critic of private capitalism, but allows it to be transformed in the West into multinational capitalism, and in the East allows capitalism to be restored. Consequently, this leaves “libertarian socialism,” essentially anarchism, as the rational and necessary critic of both private capitalism and of state socialism as bourgeois socialism.
But if libertarian socialism wants to be an alternative to the bourgeois socialism of the West and the social-economic chaos of the East, it must be able to make the beauty and seduction of anarchist utopia compatible with a realistic economic, social and scientific vision of the world, consistent with our time. It must present a social-economic program which overcomes the crises in economy, society, politics, ecology, demographics, energy, of moral and intellectual value. It must seek to harmonize natural resources and human resources in a new social-economic order in which all people have the right to labor and education, in a way that overcomes definitively the old division of manual and intellectual work.
“Is it necessary,” asked Bakunin, “to repeat the irrefutable arguments of socialism, which no bourgeois economist has yet succeeded in disproving? What is property, what is capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilized by labor, that means the power and the right to live by exploiting the work of someone else, the right to exploit the work of those who possess neither property nor capital and who are thus forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of one or the other.” (<em>Obras</em>. Volume III, p.191)
But let us again insist that the workers, within a self-managed economy where the means of production and exchange are socialized, without either bourgeois owners, or technocrats and bureaucrats of centralized state economic planning, would be capable of conducting the economy themselves.
Now then, a libertarian economy of the self-managed type has to be capable of producing an economic surplus greater than under private or state capitalism; of converting a large part of this surplus to the reproduction of social capital, improving the productivity of labor. Therefore the workers will achieve a higher rate of growth in productive forces than private or state capitalism. There will be, thus, better and greater production with less expense of human effort and greater and better use of automated machinery. This is because only the automation of labor makes it possible to create the technical basis for libertarian communism. Socialism or communism can be justified neither economically, politically nor socially as popular misery. A dominant class backlash would be justified as necessary if the workers eat all their capital without replacing it, or without increasing it more than the soviet bureaucracy or the western bourgeoisie.
Proudhon, quoted by Guerin, concerning the self-managed economic regime, said: “The classes…must merge into one and the same association of producers.” [Would self-management succeed?] “On the reply to this …depends the whole future of the workers. If it is affirmative an entire new world will open up for humanity; if it is negative the proletarian can take it as certain….There is no hope for him in this poor world.” (Daniel Guerin, <em>Anarchism</em>, p.48)
In sum, there is no need to lament, there is a need to educate, to become the protagonist of the future; to prepare oneself to improve things and to make revolutionary changes; to understand the sciences, sociology, economy, and revolutionary strategy; since without a successful revolution, there can be no liberation of the workers, an outcome which cannot delegated to others but must come from the exertion of their own self-powers.
*** <strong>Planning and Self-Management</strong>
The planned economy has been praised by the technocrats and bureaucrats of socialism, East and West, as the rationalization and codification of national economies, with the goal of giving them a harmonious law of development, both economic and technological. According to this scheme, all the sectors of production and services will be coordinated so that none of them advances ahead or falls behind so much that it causes a crisis of disproportional development between the branches of industry, agriculture and services. However this supposed “law of harmonious development of national economies” directed by an army of bureaucrats and technocrats has in reality only introduced alongside private capitalism the capitalism of the State, leaving the workers, as always, as dependent wage workers. In both cases the workers are wage slaves that produce surplus value for the capitalist enterprenuers or the State-enterprenuer.
Apologizing for the planned economy, as the scientific economy par excellence which can predict the future with rigorous calculations, able to conduct national economies according to prior objectives based upon macroeconomic calculations, to guide the desired economic development with the help of “control equations” for the month, year, four-year, five-year, all the economic science which was the hallmark of central-planning, was declared as vulgar economic science. Particularly has this been the case in the Soviet Union, although now Yeltsin under the IMF has discovered capitalism, pure and simple, as a new “democratic” economy, even though it impoverishes the workers.
But after many years of centralized planning the national economies have revealed a crisis of underproduction, or undersupply of the market and a crisis of disproportional and unequal development between industry and agriculture, in the USSR and all the countries of the ruble zone. Indicative planning, as advocated in the West by the techno-bureaucratic thought of Keynes, Schumpeter, Galbraith and Burnham, was an economic doctrine, of center and left and including some of the right, taken up by the parties of the social-democrats, socialists, christian-democrats and neo-liberals. These parties mobilize the politicians of the middle class professionals, who aspire to a State-benefactor where, as the first enterprise of all, the technocrats are the directors more than the capitalists properly speaking.
By means of the welfare-State the reformist middle class, from right to left, comes robbing the usufruct of the government. Thanks to the sector of nationalized enterprises, of social security insurance, of public services, and the nationalization of many banks, a “bureaucratic-technocratic bourgeoisie” is created, more solid, if possible, than the old bourgeoisie. Thereafter, if their businesses register a deficit, there is no one who will cancel it, or even less keep account of credits and debtsor if things go bad force the enterprise into bankruptcy. On the contrary, the abundant existence of nationalized enterprises in the West has created a whole series of directors, executives and “businessmen” with inflated salaries, regardless of whether their enterprises can show benefits greater than losses. This “bourgeoisie of the State” is shoving aside the classic bourgeoisie, since the former has political parties monopolizing the State, the nationalized banks, the machinery to print inflated money and to tax with discretion. The only beneficiary from the growing productivity of labor, growing like a foam on the waves, is not a private owning class, but those who indirectly own public property in the form of State property, as a political class.
Accordingly, indicative planning or centralized planning, which aspires to impose a balanced national economic development, has distorted the law of harmonious social division of labor. The welfare State expands the unproductive sector (middle class functionaries, bureaucrats and technocrats), while increasing the productivity of labor in industry and agriculture. This creates an aberrant economy of inflation of the unproductive population which sterilely devours the wealth of societies and nations. It can lead to a total economic crisis, of systematic nature, since in order to resolve it requires more than simply changing leaders. Instead a corrupt, contradictory and antagonistic socio-economic regime of multi-national capitalist monopolies opposed to the general interest must be replaced with universal libertarian socialism.
The economists and politicians of the middle class parties, including in their ranks the reformist union bureaucrats, the professional politicians, the phoney savants (political, economic, and technical), would submit to a social economy, as much in the East as in the West, of a dictatorship of the techno-bureaucracy as “new dominant class.” The bourgeoisie, due to the centralization of capital in both large and small enterprises, diminishes in statistical number, according to the law of mercantile competition, liquidating in the market those capitalists who are smaller and thus equipped with less productive machines which produce at a higher cost. But, in contrast, the bureaucracy, the technocracy, the professional of all types, are augmented more by the very same thing that diminishes the bourgeoisie annihilated by economic competition, the centralization of capital in the multinationals.
*** <strong>The Totalitarian State</strong>
In this sense, the State tends to convert itself into the largest of all business enterprises in the West, and as the only business in the East, that is to say, the enterprise which owns all the nationalized enterprises. And thus, under these conditions, the State which owns everything also is the master of all persons who by virtue of their political alienation see the State as God- protector, although the State as sole protector of Society takes from them by taxes, charges or low salaries more than it gives in return. Meanwhile the poor people are hoping that the State is a benefactor, and that a middle class political party will offer to save them in return for their votes. Each day things go from bad to worse, because the countless bureaucrats consume from above the capital which is needed below to maintain full employment in industry and agriculture.
Without debureaucratization and debourgeoisfication there is no way out of the growing economic and social crisis which is caused by the excessive economic waste involved in the sterile consumption of the parasitic classes: the bureaucratic apparatus of the State, the superfluous institutions filled with supernumerous personnel, the administrations of enterprises which have begun to have more “white collars” than productive workers, and finally, a whole series of “tertiary” and “quaternary” services that spend without contributing much to the social wealth. And we are not saying that this happens only in the capitalist countries, but that this affects equally badly the so-called “socialist” countries. By means of centralized bureaucratic planning of their economies, all social capital, labor, national income and economic power is placed in the hands of a techno-bureaucracy of planning, for whom workers and their products are only ciphers in five-year plans.
In this way they create social relations between those who have Power and those who suffer as wage workers not essentially different than those existing in the capitalist countries. So it is that the worker continues as the producer of surplus value, whether for the State or private businesses. Meanwhile the workers do not have the right to self-manage their own workplaces, to democratically decide its organization and the economic surplus produced, nor to elect their own workplace councils by direct and secret vote. Without these rights, centralized planning creates a bureaucracy based upon state property instead of social property, and endeavors to substitute State capitalism for private capitalism. Thus eventually it ends up by alienating into an external power outside of the wage workers, whether under the western capitalist or the soviet model.
The large western capitalist enterprise, national or multi- national, when it concentrates multi-millions in capital and exploits monopolies in production and thousands of workers (for example Fiat, Siemens, I.C.I., General Motors, Unilever, Nestle, Hitachi, or nationalized industrial complexes like IRI, British Steel and INI) leads to a bureaucratic and totalitarian condition within the enterprise. The workers neither know nor elect the administrative councils of these gigantic corporations, anymore than the workers in the former USSR. The directors are forced upon them from above, just as in other ages the mandarins and satraps were designated in the regimes of Asian despotism.
For the Soviet regime to have qualified as socialist, not just semantically but in reality, it would have had as its economic basis the social ownership of the means of production and exchange, the direct democracy of the people instead of the bureaucratic dictatorship of the single Party, the decentralization of power (economic, political and administrative) by the means of a federalism which would have assured the popular participation at all levels of decision-making, political, economic, social, cultural, informational and self-defense. In this way a self- managed, libertarian, self-organized society, would have replaced the dictatorship of the bureaucracy, in which society was regimented and watched-over by the State-employer, all-powerful permanent leaders and the political police of the KGB.
It could be argued that a vision of such nature is utopian or too good to be true, but historical experience shows that centralism cannot create more productive forces than can decentralization and federalism. Centralism is always bureaucratism and consequently consumes unproductively in the salaries of supernumerous personnel. In our epoch computer networks–if they are well programmed, if their memory is updated and constantly renewed, if they register all the fundamental data of a country, a society, an enterprise, a locality, district and region–are more efficient and cheaper for the management of the enterprise or society than the professional politicians or technocrats and bureaucrats of all types.
If the State is given too much power, as under the Soviet model or under the western welfare-State, it will tend towards state control over capital, labor, technology, science, information, industry, of social security and public services. Therefore this absolute power will create a totalitarian State, even though disguised as a parliamentary regime, symbolically under the Soviet model and rhetorically but not in practice in the West. In either case, the totalitarian bureaucracy or the pseudo- democratic political class collectively controls the business of the State as its business, but parasitically as a cancer on Society.
*** <strong>Popular Self-Government</strong>
In our school of thought, economic growth, the right of work for all, economic, cultural and technological progress, are developed with fewer obstacles in a libertarian society than in a society under the totalitarian dictatorship of large capitalist monopolies or the capitalism of the State. In both cases, given the great progress realized by our society, the dictatorships of private capital or State capital can be overcome. A self-managed society can be established with social ownership of the means of production and exchange, uniting capital, labor and technology without antagonism over classes or forms of property. This would create an egalitarian society in culture, economics and technology, thanks to an economy of abundance.
It is possible to the give power of self-government to the local communities, districts, provinces and regions, by means of an economic federalism and self-administration which would be integrated into a Supreme Economic Council. This would not be a Gosplan as in the former USSR, but a co-government of things by means of federations of production and services. These federations would function democratically and be self-managed, with the goal of the total process having a law of harmony of development without economic crises of disproportionality between all the branches of production and services. In other words, they would function without relative crises of underproduction or overproduction as occurs, respectively, under State capitalism or private capitalism.
For this to happen, it is necessary to have democracy and economic growth, with an increased productivity of labor. This would also require the full employment of the active population, along with the full participation of all in the decisions and the knowledge for this within reach of everyone. It is necessary to create a libertarian society, in which the elites of power and knowledge and social estates of every type, would be transcended in work, science, capital and technology, by means of effective self- management, the real participation of the people. Thus it would be possible to abolish all class domination, whether that of the bourgeois State and its capitalist economy or that of the bureaucratic, totalitarian State and its centrally planned economy. It is necessary, therefore, to liberate oneself ideologically from parliamentary socialism, from totalitarian communism, from bourgeois democracy which is economic dictatorship, from corporatism of every type–and establishing in their place a democracy of association, self-managed and libertarian, where everyone would be equal in rights and responsibilities, with privileges for no one. Only this type of self-government is government of the people, by the people and for the people.
*** <strong>Federations of Production and Services</strong>
The planning of economic, cultural and technological development must arise from the putting of social wealth in common and not under the domination of the State and its techno- bureaucracy. The first case involves a program of harmonizing the proportion of growth of the branches of production and services with full participation from bottom to top, based on a libertarian and federative socialism. The second, the concentration of all power in the hands of the State, leads to centralized planning from top to bottom, without popular participation, so that the workers are more objects than subjects, so many ciphers in the Gosplan, according to the soviet model.
If the worker remains separated from worker by means of private property or State property, there must be between capital and labor a power of domination over those who labor for a wage. The working people can never be emancipated within this mode. Emancipation can not be won individually but only collectively, although each may have free will. The realization of full liberty and personality for the worker requires a self-organized society without the need for State oppression, whether it is called right or left, bourgeois or bureaucratic, conservative or revolutionary. Without self-managed socialism, social property and self- government, all systems are the same.
The salvation of humanity is collective and not individual, because the human is a social being, solidaric, with the aim of self-defense from other species since the paleolithic period. It is the class division of humanity, in the wake of private property and the State, which makes possible the exploitation of man by man, of the proletarian by the proprietor. Along these lines, Bakunin said to his friend Reichel:
<quote>
“All our philosophy starts from a false premise. This is that it begins by always considering man as an individual and not, as it must, as a being who belongs to a collective.” (Oeuvres, Volume II, p.60)
</quote>
On this sentiment, Proudhon agreed with Bakunin to the extent that man is a social being, needing community and solidarity:
<quote>
“All that reason knows and affirms–leads us to say–that the human being, just the same as an idea, is part of a group… All that exists is in groups; all that form the group are one, and consequently, what is …Outside the group are no more than abstractions, phantasms. By this concept, the human being in general…is from that which I am able to prove positive reality.” (Philosophie du progress, <em>Obras</em>, Volume XX, pp. 36–38)
</quote>
The human being, in reality, does not exist outside the society from which he/she has appeared as a free subject; but at the same time solidarity with others in daily life, at work, in education, in self-defense, particularly at the beginning of humanity, “mutual aid” was the basis of existence of man associated to man, even though under capitalism man is possessed by an appetite for wealth and the cult of the money-god.
Developing the doctrine of “mutual aid,” Kropotkin, who studied the behavior of many animal species, predicted that this would evolve in a future society:
<quote>
Society would be composed of a multitude of associations united among themselves for everything which would require their common effort: federations of producers in all branches of production, agricultural, industrial, intellectual, artistic; communities for consumption, entrusted to provide to all everything related to housing, lighting, heating, nutrition, sanitation, etc.; federations of communities between themselves; federations of communities of production groups; groupings even wider still, which would encompass a whole country or including various countries; groupings of people dedicated to work in common for the satisfaction of their economic, intellectual, artistic needs, which are not limited by territorial boundaries. All these associated groups would combine freely their efforts by means of a reciprocal alliance (…); and a complete liberty would preside over the unfolding of new forms of production, of research and of self- organization; individual initiative, not withstanding, would be encouraged and all tendencies towards uniformity and centralization, combatted. (<em>Alrededor de una vida,</em> p. 140)
</quote>
By means of this federalism based upon libertarian socialism, the economy, the natural and human resources, the balance of natural ecosystems, the full employment of available labor, the leisure and education time at all levels of knowledge, the social- economic and cultural life of locality, district, province, region, nation or the world, can be programmed with the participation of everyone in everything, without creating a great deal of confusion. On the contrary, the local and the universal, the individual and the society, the particular and the general, would be understood perfectly by reason of complete information from computer networks which would register all the important data to accomplish at the end a perfect database. By virtue of this, everyone would know all, avoiding thus a condition in which those with knowledge have the power, as occurs in the totalitarian, bureaucratic, centrally planned countries, where the people are ignored.
The federations of production and services, dividing into natural associations, from the bottom to the top, create the democratic conditions for a planning with liberty. Unlike what happened in soviet Russia, the economic planning would not be entrusted to a dictatorship of technocrats who want to substitute themselves for the old bourgeoisie. To be employed by the total State instead of by an individual boss does not change the condition of dependency and alienation for the worker, except to make the situation worse; since this makes the law into a fraud, a law that does not limit the absolute powers of the State, which corrupts absolutely the few who govern absolutely, the few oppressors and exploiters written in the lists of the “Nomenclature.” To change, therefore, private capitalism for State capitalism from a western pseudo-democratic bourgeoisie to a totalitarian bureaucracy is a poor trade for the wage workers since they do not cease to be what they are, the producers of surplus value for the bourgeoisie or bureaucracy, for the private boss or for the State.
In consequence, as the founders of the IWA put it, “the emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves.” From this point of view, working people can only emancipate themselves by the means of a libertarian socialism of self- management where “the chaos of production would not reign,” but instead there would prevail a planning with liberty, with the participation of workers and citizens at all levels of political and economic decision-making; of information, culture, science and technology; of information processing, gathering, classification, and computerization of data, economic, demographic, political, social, scientific, technical, natural resources, etc.
A social-economic program, with continual popular participation (not indirectly through municipal, regional or national elections), must be by the means of federations in industry, agriculture, and services, integrated into a Federative Council of the Economy, in which all the federations producing goods and services must be represented. By way of example, this “Federative Council of the Economy” would have to integrate, among others, the following federations: Fruits and horticultural products; Cereals; Feed for livestock; Food industry, including imports; Hostelry and Tourism; Wine, beer, and alcoholic beverages; Oils and greases from vegetable and animals; Fishing: boats and canning; Textiles; Furs and leather; Timber and cork; Paper and graphic arts; Chemicals; Construction; Glass and ceramics; Metal machining; Steel; Non-ferrous minerals: metals and alloys; Energy: petroleum, coal, gas, electricity, and atomic energy; Information and the construction of computers, integrated micro-circuits, and semi-conductors; Electronics: numerical controlled machines; Biotechnology; Aero-space; Research and Development, uniting technology with work.
This list of industrial federations does not include all the social and public services, which would be too tedious to number but would have to be represented in the Federative Council of the Economy as well. By example, commerce, banking, sanitation, security and social security, which are enormous, would have to be reorganized, since these entail much unproductive work that would have to be reduced. The goal must be that concrete production is not exceeded by unproductive work, since this would restrain or slow real economic growth. In other words, there must be no false increase in the Gross Internal Product, which occurs when it is incremented solely by services and not in the branches of industry, in either the primary sector (agriculture, fishing, livestock, lumber, minerals, etc.) or the secondary sector (industry of diverse types).
<br>
** Part III
<em>This is the final installment in this three-part series. Part I ran in LLR #14, Part II in LLR #15.</em>
*** <strong>Information and Self-government</strong>
A self-managed economy will have to rationally organize the branches of industry and, within each one, integrate the small and medium enterprises with the big enterprises to constitute a unified whole. For example, in the branch of industry of domestic electronics, which seems to have no relationship with the construction industry, it may be suitable to control home heating and cooling not with individual refrigeration and individual furnaces but centrally, with the goal of saving energy. In this sense, the construction industry, to construct new housings, would build them to work in the manner of hotels, with all included services, so the worker would live similar to a present day bourgeois in a great hotel. For this to happen it would be necessary to increase the productivity of labor in the primary and secondary sectors, so that each worker in agriculture and in industry would be capable of producing for many people so that, in compensation, they would proportion him the necessary services of a sort of social hotel, as we have indicated. But for this to happen will require a great revolution in culture and technology, investing much in Research and Development.
The self-managed economy will have to invest a good portion of the national income in the production of both consumer and capital goods, particularly in its first years of operation, so that the productivity of the labor is increased to unprecedented levels. In this order of ideas, economic growth, with libertarian socialism, would be greater than with private capitalism or State capitalism, since the surplus-value wasted on the parasitic classes under capitalism would be invested instead. Consequently, it wouldn’t be necessary to harshly tighten the belts of the workers, as did Stalin; instead the gross national or social income would increase annually in greater proportion than under industrialized capitalism or bureaucratic socialism (which wastes too much in armaments, in salaries of unproductive officials, and slows economic growth to no greater a pace than that of the developing capitalist countries).
By means of the application of information and of computer networks, well supplied with all types of data, the Federative Council of the Economy would have the actual information for each branch of production or of services. Therefore, the economic integration of branches of production and of service would be a positive science, which would know everything necessary in order to avoid crisis of disproportional of growth in those branches, without the production of excesses of personal, of goods not sold, or of raw materials, since it would be known, at each moment, the amount necessary to produce, to distribute or invest so that the social economy has a law of harmonious development.
For example, the central computers of the Federative Council of Economy, with informative contributions of the computer terminals in local factories, provincial and regional, would make known what was everyone’s production, reserves and shipments to the self-managed market. In the case of the industry for manufacturing of paper containers, the central computer would register the number of establishments, the personnel employed in each one of them, total of work-hours, cost of the personnel in stable monetary units, electric power consumed in the process of production, value of the fuels and gas used, value of the consumed raw materials, general expenses, taxes, value of the total production, value of the employed labor, amounts destined to pay debts and for new investments. In sum: programming the economy would be simple, without need of bureaucrats, of capitalist managers or of technocrats.
When we speak of taxes we don’t refer to the tribute of the western capitalist type nor to the business taxes (mainly figured as a business expense usurped from the enterprises by the State in the USSR and in the “popular republics that made up the COMECON), but to the delivery of a pre-determined quota of the economic surplus, extracted by the self-managed enterprises, transferred to the self-governments, responsible for returning those transfers to society in social and public services according to their ability: sanitation, hygiene, paving of streets, highways, roads, ports, railroads, education, public health and other responsibilities of the self-governments which would be too great to enumerate.
*** <strong>Labor-Value Money</strong>
In this case we would attempt to strengthen the economy of the free self-managed municipality, not in the traditionally Roman [state-citizen] nor modern bureaucratic sense, but as the social and public enterprise of the citizens; as well as the industrial, agricultural, of research enterprise or certain global services which would constitute the task of the associated workers with their means of production, self-organized into Worker Councils of Self-Management and in Basic Units of Associated Labor, where the economic accounting should be automated by means of computers and take as their unit of calculation, the labor-hour (LH). It would have thus a monetary equivalence of the same value, if the money is intended to remain stable. The LH would circulate monetarily in the form of ticket which would give the right to consume reasonably, always leaving an important portion in order to invest more capital than wornout during a year, so that libertarian socialism would enlarge the social capital, with the goal of progressing more with self-management than under the dominance of capitalists or of bureaucrats.
The LH, as labor-money, wouldn’t lead to monetary inflation like capitalist money or like the soviet ruble, which conceal by being the money of cass, the parasitical incomes of the western bourgeoisie, or of the eastern bureaucracy, inflating the growth of the gross national product (GNP), with salaries of officials or unproductive technocrats, or with dividends, interests, rents and surplus values received by the capitalists, according to the western economic model, where each day there exist a growing parasitical class at the expense of productive workers. Every project of investment would be calculated in hours of labor (LH), as well as in terms of personal and public consumption required. It would be monitored that neither would be excessive in the carrying on of a libertarian, self-managed society, of direct associative democracy, so that a part of the global economic surplus would be invested in achieving a greater automation of industrial production and of agricultural production. It would thus be possible to continue reducing the working day to a range which would allow a more leisure time, so that all the citizens could occupy their time in more relaxation and, above all, in better scientific, cultural and technological preparation.
The LH, as labor-money and as a quantification of the economy, having a stable monetary value would program the economy: to account it; to establish the costs of the goods and services; programming the integrated branches of the division of the labor and correct disharmonies between them; quantifying in the products the cost of raw, energy, amortization of the capital, value of the work, economic contributions to the local self-governments and to the national co-government, etc. All of this would function within a libertarian socialism of a self-managed market, without speculators, hoarders or merchants, in order that competition benefit the workers and the consumers, the cooperative groups and self-managed enterprises, in the manner similar to the way the market functioned in the Spanish libertarian collectives during the Spanish Revolution of 1936–39. The goal would be to avoid the bureaucracy of a centrally planned economy, such as occurred in the USSR and China, where the officials decided everything and the people participated in nothing. As if that were socialism, however much they try to introduce it thus by means of a totalitarian propaganda, as if lies could be converted into truths by force of repeating them as the only truth, thanks to the state monopoly of the radio, the press, the television, the universities, the schools, so that Power regulates knowledge according to their political convenience.
In a libertarian economy, labor-money wouldn’t be money in the capitalist sense such as we understand it and need it today, since it wouldn’t allow the individual accumulation of capital in order to exploit the labor of other people and obtain a surplus value. Rather it would be intended to facilitate the exchange of goods and service, in a self-managed market, where these exchange at their true labor value, so that it fulfill economically the law of equal exchange in equality of condition for all the integrated branches of the social division of the labor and the law of the cooperation of those same branches or federations of production and of service. If, on the other hand, there were no free operation of the self-managed market, things would fall into economic chaos, by trying to centrally plan everything. Prices and their economic calculation, as well as the market that really forms them (without maintaining bureaucratic costs) are only possible within an indicative global programming, but which leave the day-to-day market free, so that all the enterprises are able to produce the best and most economically, about which the consumers must ultimately decide. From this method, there is an invisible hand which self-regulates the social economy, better than thousands of officials and technocrats equipped with thousands of computers who without liberty, order disorganization by being poorly informed or because of the self-interests of the totalitarian bureaucracy, who manage more like inquisitors or cruel police (as happened in the USSR and China).
If the LH, the unit of labor-money, would have, for example, an purchasing power of 1 hour of average social-labor and this were equivalent, roughly speaking, to one dollar, one could establish, among others, the following calculation of economic-accounts:
*** <strong>Calculation in (LH) of an Industrial Enterprise</strong>
- Costs of machinery = $1000 = 1000 LH
- Raw materials, energy, etc. = $50,000 = 50,000 LH
- Hours worked in production = 50,000 LH
- Total of LH = 101,000 LH
- Units produced during the period of work = 100
Dividing the total number of LH, spent in the process of production, and the total of units produced in that time of work which could be daily, monthly, or yearly, we would have an average of labor value for unit produced of 1.010 of LH or of labor-money.
Now then, as no money could be absolutely stable, since if the productivity of the labor increases, due to improvements in machines, education of the workers and more efficient methods, it would result that the LH will end up having less value of exchange, increasing its value of use, driving this economic process toward an economy of abundance where, overcoming venal value, the value of use would only remain. Consequently, having reached this stage in the economy and technology, with most of the work automated, the value of the produced goods wouldn’t be based much on living labor, but almost everything would be labor of the past (accumulated capital), which would determine thereby a self-regulated production of abundance. Then the wonderful time will have arrived of overcoming finally both money and the commodity, each man receiving according to his necessity, although he only contributes according to his unequal capacity, or in other words, that it would make possible the economic equality between the men: libertarian communism, rationally and scientifically, economically possible, without which it must considered as a beautiful utopia.
Only a self-managed economy, rational and objective, based on scientific laws, from the commencement of the establishment of libertarian socialism, avoiding the fall into one phase or another, into either the socialism of group property, into forms of corporatism or of narrow syndicalism, but towards a condition of always placing the general interest above the particular interest of the professional or work groups.
*** <strong>The Libertarian Society</strong>
On the subject of the future of a libertarian and self-managed society, Kropotkin warned and advised:
<quote>
We are convinced that the mitigated individualism of the collectivist system will not exist alongside the partial communism of possession of all of the soil and of the instruments of labor. A new form of production will not maintain the old form of redistribution. A new form of production will not maintain the old form of consumption, just as it will not accommodate the old forms of political organization.
</quote>
In this order of ideas, explains Kropotkin, the private ownership the capital and of the earth are attributes of capitalism. Those conditions were consistent with the bourgeoisie as a dominant class, although the public [state] ownership of capital and of the earth is consistent with the capitalism of the soviet-State, which elevates the totalitarian bureaucracy as a new dominant class.
The private ownership of the means of production and of exchange created capitalism as a mode of production and the bourgeoisie as dominant class.
“They were”, says Kropotkin, “the necessary condition for the development of the capitalist production; it will die with her, although some may try disguising it under form of a ‘labor bonus’. The common possession of the instruments of labor will bring necessarily the common enjoyment of the fruits of the common labor.” (The Conquest of Bread, p.28)
If upon changing the mode of production and of distribution, daily life doesn’t change, including distribution, consumption, education, the political system, the legal and social, in the sense that one dominant classes are not substituted by other, then, really, nothing essentially has changed. Thus it happened in the Soviet Union, where the economic categories and the economic laws of the capitalism were hardly modified, with the result that the economic dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was replaced with the political and economic dictatorship of the bureaucracy and, in consequence, private or anonymous capitalism for the capitalism of State. A revolution like this, although it is called socialist, constitutes a great swindle to the detriment of working people, for whom in the majority of cases, it has not meant more than a change of master or of a saddle, to the unfortunate beast of burden. So instead of being the proletarian of the bourgeois, they have a new Patron, that is to say, the technocrat and the bureaucrat. In our way of thinking, the alternative to capitalism is not Marxism Leninism, but libertarian socialism.
*** <strong>The True Social Revolution</strong>
For a revolution to be true, in the sense of emancipating working people from the oppression and exploitation of the dominant classes, it has to establish a new mode of production, exchange, distribution and consumption and create new social relationships; new and more powerful productive forces; new political forms of popular direct participation; new legal institutions having as their basis the popular jury, new universities and technical schools integrated with industries, agriculture, mining, energy, fishing, the forests and other sectors; new philosophic, political,social, artistic, and cultural doctrines; new conceptions of national and social defense based more on the people in arms (than on a bureaucratic professional army, expensive and wasteful) in order to defend the society, as much inside as outside of it. It is necessary to affirm the system of popular self-defense, since without which there couldn’t be a guarantee that self-management will be accepted by a professional army, the latter always having tendencies to stage a “coup” in order to take Power.
On the other hand, in order to avoid the coming to power of a one-Party-state, which is the worst and greatest single political wrong, as happened in the USSR, there will need to be created a participatory socialism. This would entail a respect for the free personality within the collective, the self-determination of the local governments within a federalism which coherently maintains a unified market, the social and national self-defense, diplomatic relations with the exterior, the socio-economic system as a relatively homogeneous regime. A federalism which keeps a national and social accounting system in order to estimate and program the authentic valuation of the national or social global income, making it possible to know where we have been and toward where we are going economically, socially, politically, scientifically and technologically.
But a new economic system, based on self-managed socialism, will have to have another way of estimating the annual economic growth on the basis of short, medium and long term plans, constructing a macro-economic picture of the national and social economy, departing from the known figures and projecting toward figures to be attained in the next trimesters, semesters, years. Thus the future, in certain manner, will be anticipated by having a Federative Council of the Economy, where each federation of production or of services knows that which it has and that which it wants, in accordance with the effective demand of the self-managed market. Libertarian socialism, if it wants to distinguish itself from authoritarian soviet communism, must respect the law of the supply and demand, without falling into bourgeois liberalism, since in the self-managed market the federations of production and of social and public services act competitively. Because if the market is suppressed, and with it the law of labor-value, the law of economic competition, the law of formation of just prices in the market, it would not be possible establish a rational economy of costs and prices, necessary investments and appropriate consumption. In its place would be a centralized and bureaucratic planning which places the total-State above the oppressed, exploited Society, as happened in the USSR under a planning of economic decrees, without respect for objective economic laws.
On the other hand, libertarian socialism has to respect the pluralism of ideas, although it wouldn’t provide a space for byzantine struggles. People would be self-organized in their own interest in self-managed enterprises, mutual cooperatives, local self-governments and all types of socio-economic and political forms of direct participation. Politics would be deprofessionalized, abolishing the political class and the political parties as expression of antagonistic interests, since each citizen or worker will participate in their enterprise, local self-government, federation, daily, without falling into the trap of electoralism, where they only participate for a day to elect a government worse than another.
*** <strong>Traps of Bourgeois Economics</strong>
Libertarian socialism will have to create a new economic doctrine and a new system of estimating the national or social income. Actually, the concept of gross national product (GNP), of which there is so much talk and is so little understood, counts in unstable monetary units, the total of the goods and services obtained by economic activity: agriculture, industry, services, as large integrated sectors of the national economy.
If the GNP, the way it is constituted in the bourgeois economy, were estimated in monetary units of constant purchasing power, thus deflating the official figures, it is possible that it actually diminishes instead of increasing. On the other hand, the GNP, in its bourgeois form, includes the economic participation of the unproductive “tertiary” and “quaternary” sectors, in the sense not that this should be concealed, but that the GNP shows “growth” when it may have diminished materially, in effective production. Thus, for example, in many countries which are diminishing their industrial and agricultural production during some years, but if salaries increase and the number of tertiaries in the state bureaucracy, commerce, the banks, and in social and public services grow, it is said that the GNP has grown, for example, an annual 3%, when the reality is that this macro-economic figure only represents salaries, incomes without effective work, surplus values taken, parasitic income , etc.
Libertarian socialism, creating a social economy based on truthful figures, would have to estimate the GNP in a different manner than the capitalists. It is necessary to give to the concept of social income, units which are measured or concrete and in constant money based on material output: agriculture, cattle raising, forests, fishing, energy, mining, industry, or whatever is actual production. As for the “services”, only transportation, railroads, trucking, marine and air would be included in the concrete estimate of the effective or material income, since although transportation doesn’t add production, it transports it from one side to another and, in consequence, it should be included in the concrete income of one year to another.
Adding the concrete income alongside gross income (administrative “services”, commerce, banks and other social and public services), it would be seen if these take too great a percentage in the total income by having too many unproductive personal who, in order to not drain the social economy, would have to be recycled as productive personnel. Now then, in the “services” which could be considered as productive, would be included the personnel destined for Research and Development (R &D), without whose presence an economy will stagnate for lack of economic and technological progress; but the personnel of R&D should be, besides in the Institutes or Centers (which tend to be bureaucratic and technocratic), directly in the industrial enterprises, agricultural, energy, forests, mining, fishing, etc., since science and technique should be united directly to labor as immediate factors of production and not as though the ostentation of an academic title should make one a technocrat.
In sum, the net income of a country would have to be estimated, in a libertarian socialism, at costs determined in relatively stable physical and monetary units which don’t mislead, deducting the necessary investments of social capital in order to enlarge production and not simple reproduction as happens to the bourgeois economy in a crisis.
The estimate of the national and social income must be transparent: from the total of the wealth created in a year must be deducted the material consumption of people and that of self-administration (where there should not be much bureaucracy, by reason of better information) and to deduct, set aside or remove the social or national saving destined for investment in order to increase the reproduction of effective wealth, create new enterprises, design improved and more productive machines, carry on scientific investigation, automate industrial production and public services, and mechanize and electrify agriculture.
*** <strong>Liberation of the Working People</strong>
In sum, the libertarian economy should liberate the worker from their old employers, either private managers or from the State as Manager, to end that the workers, by means of their Self-Management Enterprise Councils, direct the economy which they create with their labor upon the means of production associated, from the bottom up, by means of the federations of production and of social services composed in a Federative Council of the Economy; only thus could there be planning and liberty, an associative democracy of full participation of the working people, a self-managed socialist society, avoiding any form of totalitarian communism (which, as a matter of fact, is capitalism of the State).
Without economic liberty there can’t be political liberty; since with capitalism there is an economic dictatorship of a plutocratic minority over the majority of working people; and with capitalism of the State, in the soviet manner, the State exploits and oppresses Society by means of the one-Party which is a bad one for the majority and a good one for the bureaucratic, oppressive and exploitive minority. The solution is: neither totalitarian communism nor capitalism but self-management, direct democracy, federalism and socialism.
<br>
*** An Afterword by the Translator
by Jeff Stein
Abraham Guillen has given us some useful concepts for analyzing the economic systems of state-socialist and corporate capitalist countries. Although these economies are no longer dominated by individual capitalist owner-managers, they remain exploitive, class systems. According to Guillen, ownership of the means of production is now collective, spread across a stratum of “techno-bureaucrats.” These techno-bureaucrats are just as much concerned with accumulating capital through exploitation of workers, as the old “robber baron” capitalists. However, the surplus of the system is shared (although not on an equal basis) within the techno-bureaucratic class. Under these systems, legal ownership means less than one’s position in the state or corporate hierarchy. Only a system of worker self-management of their own workplaces, can eliminate this exploitation by the techno-bureaucracy.
This does not mean Guillen’s theory is without problems. His proposals for a “market without capitalists” and the establishment of “labor-money” are built open the assumption that the labor theory of value can provide the basis for a libertarian socialist economy. The labor theory of value provides a powerful argument for the elimination of capitalists and bureaucrats, since their incomes represent an unnecessary drag on the economy. However, in a self-managed economy inequalities having nothing to do with labor productivity would arise between self-managed enterprises, giving some a competitive advantage over others. For instance, the size of the enterprise, the availability of scarce raw materials, the presence or absence of strict environmental regulation by the local municipality, etc., would all come into play, and these are not always factors which are easily calculated in labor-hours.
Augustin Souchy, another anarcho-syndicalist who made extensive studies of various attempts at establishing workers self- management, observed that:
<quote>
working hours as the only value determinant is unrealistic. Experience shows that the lack of raw material, rarity of quality, differences of consumer goods, highly qualified services, etc. are equally vague determinants. These factors will not change in a socialist economy.” <em>(Beware! Anarchist!, Chicago, 1992. p.42)</em>
</quote>
One factor which is becoming increasingly important in determining production costs is energy. As the amount of labor decreases due to automation, the amount of energy in terms of fossil fuels, electricity required, etc., increases. This means that while the labor value of many products is going down, their energy value is going up. As long as energy is cheap and abundant, this does not necessarily present a problem. However, in the future, as the southern hemisphere becomes increasingly industrialized and there is a greater demand for energy, and as fossil fuel supplies dwindle, a purely labor-based system of economic accounting would collapse. Energy would either have to be rationed, or some sort of global federation would have to set a tax on energy. Either way, the labor-exchange economy would be forced away from an unregulated market system. On the other hand, the sort of energy accounting based system proposed by some “green” economists is not adequate either, since the energy theory of value does not take into account the qualitative difference between human energy (labor) and non-human energy.
There is no such thing as a perfectly, objective theory of economic value. Each theory has its own hidden biases which will tend to skew the results of any accounting system (this includes the bourgeois scarcity-value system, which favors those who own capital and scarce resources). The best a labor theory of value can do is identify that part of a thing’s (a good or service) value, which is the result of social production. The rest of a thing’s value is contributed by energy, nature, the social infrastructure, and a host of other variables. In a libertarian, self-managed economy, the accounting of these non-labor costs and the distribution of these benefits, therefore needs to go beyond the individual workplaces and their labor accounts. An economic role must be played by the free municipalities (communes), who must set democratic controls over energy, environmental standards, and scarce resources, in order to make sure that those exchanges which take place do not undermine social equality or the capacity of the earth to sustain itself. Therefore, contrary to Guillen, we should insist that whatever exchange or currency system exists in the future, it provide for greater community control and allow all citizens a voice as to how value should be determined.
|
#title Anarchism and Education
#author Abraham P. DeLeon
#SORTauthors Abraham P. DeLeon
#SORTtopics education, history
#date 2009
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-06-23T10:08:35
#source Deleon, Abraham P. “Anarchism and Education.” In <em>The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest</em>: <em>1500 to the Present</em>, edited by Immanuel Ness, 117–118. Vol. 1. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Although many activists have embraced anarchist theory, anarchism has been present in a variety of different academic areas as well. Anarchist sociology has been argued for (Purkis 2004), as well as the beginning sketches of an anarchist anthropology (Graeber 2004). But, often overlooked is the field of education, which has had an interesting relationship with anarchism and other radical theories of liberation. Anarchist theory is absent in educational literature and this gap exists in even more radical theories of education.
Anarchist theory in the context of education has influenced several key areas, such as organizational structure, political action for teachers, and rethinking the institution of schooling and the purposes that it serves. Anarchism for education means embracing some key factors about schooling. Anarchists contend that the various institutions of schooling help to reproduce racial, class, sexual orientation, and gender divisions sustaining classist practices that weaken working class and poor students. Paul Goodman, in his famous 1964 tract on <em>Compulsory Miseducation</em>, argued that schools benefit the rich and powerful and serve to indoctrinate students into an ideological system rather than serving as places of enlightenment and critical dialogue. Anarchists contend that teachers and students should be co-creators of knowledge and the divisions between “teacher,” “student,” and “principal” should be restructured.
Anarchist theory in education seeks to build schools that are not organized around rigid hierarchies and that each school should be as free and open as possible, allowing individuals to explore their identities, free their desires from historically oppressive social norms, and each school should be autonomous so that it better meets the needs of the community. Schools and the communities that they are located in should be in a symbiotic relationship based on mutual aid, community building, and non-coercive practices. Anarchists have played a historic role in education and educational theory, even if a limited one. They have created schools that resemble anarchist conceptions and critiqued the institution of schooling itself. Francisco Ferrer, for example, instituted a “modern school” in Spain that incorporated vastly different ideological frameworks than schools of the time. Children were not exposed to a dogmatic curriculum or a slew of standardized tests that we now find in US schools; instead, the curriculum and the guiding philosophy that Ferrer argued for was the freedom of the individual child to pursue her/his intellectual interests in a non-hierarchical environment. Ferrer argued that schools had to be restructured in completely different ways to escape the colonizing and oppressive role that schools play in indoctrinating students into the status quo. Ferrer wanted teachers to have complete autonomy from state mechanisms so that they could encourage students to pursue educational interests of their choosing.
Other non-authoritarian and democratic schooling projects have existed that have been guided by some of the values and ideas expressed by Ferrer. A. S. Neill, one of the best-known proponents of alternative schooling, created Summerhill, a school that stressed educational growth based solely on the child’s interests. At Summerhill “lessons” arise from the students themselves and children are encouraged to explore their own interests. Although Neill’s ideas have been adopted and reformulated from their original inception, they continue to influence schools that wish to create educational experiences that allow the child an open, free, and non-coercive learning environment. Although not technically “anarchist,” Neill structured Summerhill without a rigid curriculum or a formal timetable for learning. He recognized the freedom of the individual child, and he rejected traditional teacher authority (Suissa 2006: 93). Other schools have been influenced by Neill’s ideas. In Albany, New York, the Albany Free School allows students to explore their own interests in a non-hierarchical way by including guest speakers and teachers in accordance with the students’ interests. At Albany, the students are an integral part of the community around them, while the school serves as a center for learning and community action. Students learn to manage their own learning experiences and participate in the school community.
Although many “free schools” do not directly attribute anarchist theory to their ideological mission, they are comparable to what anarchists argue is necessary for building community and inculcating the natural spirit of learning that is non-coercive. Unlike traditional public education, “free schools” allow students the freedom to control their learning experiences and shape their educational goals. In traditional education schools, curriculum, activities, and learning experiences have been scripted, giving students limited choices in shaping their goals and objectives. These schools are structured in a rigid and hierarchical manner. “Free schools,” on the other hand, are the polar opposite as they tend not to have a school-wide curriculum. They promote a community based philosophy reflecting individual experience. Attendance is not always mandatory and classes often emerge organically through the inquiry and interests of the students. Student and teacher collaborate in order to pursue individualized academic and intellectual interests.
Besides just building on the concerns of the individual students, anarchist conceptions of schooling view community building as an integral role in the development of children. Students must feel part of a school community to further engage their creative and intellectual pursuits. The main point is that the education of students should rest in the hands of the individual, with the schools guiding that process by providing activities and instruction which meet the goals of the students and the community.
SEE ALSO: Anarchism ; Escuela Moderna Movement (The Modern School) ; Goldman, Emma (1869–1940)
*** References And Suggested Readings
<biblio>
Antliff, A. (2007) Breaking Free: Anarchist Pedagogy. In M. Coté, R. Day, & G. de Peuter (Eds.), <em>Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization</em>. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Chomsky, N. & Macedo, D. (2000) <em>Chomsky on Mis-education</em>. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
DeLeon, A. (2006) The Time for Action is Now! Anarchist Theory, Critical Pedagogy, and Radical Possibilities. <em>Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies</em> 4, 2 (November).
Goodman, P. (1971) Children Should Be Anarchists. <em>New Schools Exchange Newsletter</em> 58: 5.
Graeber, D. (2004) <em>Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology</em>. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Illich, I. (1983) <em>Deschooling Society</em>. New York: Harper & Row.
Purkis, J. (2004) Towards an Anarchist Sociology. In J. Purkis & J. Bowen (Eds.), <em>Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age</em>. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Sheehan, S. (2003) <em>Anarchism</em>. London: Reaktion Books.
Spring, J. (1998) <em>A Primer of Libertarian Education</em>. Montreal: Black Rose Books.
Suissa, J. (2006) <em>Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective</em>. London: Routledge
</biblio>
|
#title Abusing Resilience
#author APS
#SORTauthors APS
#LISTtitle Abusing Resilience
#subtitle The Filipino in the face of Disaster
#SORTtopics anti-work, natural disasters, disaster, Bandilang Itim, Philippines
#date February 2020
#source [[http://libcom.org/blog/abusing-resilience-filipino-face-disaster-01032020][libcom.org]]
On the afternoon of January 12 the Taal Volcano began spewing ash and smoke from its ancient caldera. Within hours a massive evacuation effort was launched to get people out of harm’s way. A comrade was among the people fleeing the scene. Government offices and schools were understandably closed due to the disaster, but BPO centers around the areas most affected by the ensuing ashfall had the gall to call their workers back to work.
We’ve seen this story before:
A calamity or some other misfortune affects a large area of the nation and we get reports of people calling in to work being praised for “their dedication to their jobs” despite the obvious risks. The true story is most likely that they literally couldn’t afford to be gone that shift. They might not get administrative sanctions or attendance memos for being absent, thought that still happens, but they still won’t be paid for that workday. No work, no pay, right? But, this isn’t to say that the supervisors and managers frantically calling their employees to work are bad people. This is bigger than any one person.
When you have someone who lives completely on what they make per hour worked, they have little choice but to show up for work. This is the greatest triumph of modern capitalism over the human spirit. I remember someone calling money “survival notes” because it literally does mean whether or not you survive in this society. Because we live inside it! It’s become a very efficient way for the rich business owner and investor to value profits over human lives.
With slavery, you own the person, end of discussion. In feudalism, you own the land, you get part of the produce of that land. But with capitalism? Oh, boy, you not only own the place where they work, you also own the places where they spend their hard-earned survival-notes at!
That’s how you get people to show up at work soaking in rainwater after braving the elements for two hours to get to a job that pays less than a hundred pesos an hour. That’s how you get people to stay to watch over what little property they have in the face of a raging volcano. That’s how you get people to value profit over human lives, most especially if that life is their own.
So no, it isn’t surprising that there’d be people who’d come to work on the apocalypse. Capitalism has made our world so absurd that it would actually make sense.
So here’s to the working-class heroes who instead of going to work went out to help in whatever way they could, even if it’s something as natural as getting your family to safety.
|
#title There is no “Natural Balance”
#author APS
#LISTtitle There is no “Natural Balance”
#SORTauthors APS
#SORTtopics social ecology, Philippines, Bandilang Itim, ecology
#date February 2020
#source [[http://libcom.org/blog/there-no-natural-balance-01032020][libcom.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-03-01T07:31:01
On social media, I usually see people moan over how we’re “Destroying Nature”, and that “Mother Nature is dying.” No, my sweet summer child. Mother Nature ain’t dying. Mother Nature is just grabbing the slippers she’s gon’ use to spank our collective asses with. Natural processes that lead to life are going to remain well after we are gone. We just won’t be in it.
What we’re really calling “Mother Nature” is the specific set of material conditions found in nature that is conducive to life as we know it. And more importantly, to <em>human life</em> as we know it. Studies in catastrophe theory and chaos theory have all discussed at length how this works.
What we’re here to talk about though, is how this “enduring myth” of a “Balance of Nature” reveals about how the Filipino thinks about the world around them.
Essentialism is the view that for every entity or object, there lies certain attributes or substances that are critical for what it does. That there are things that make things what they are. This has been explored in Plato’s Theory of Forms, that everything is an imperfect embodiment of a perfect, abstract Form. Following this logic, certain characteristics make “Nature” what it is. “Men” and “Women” would also have not only defining, but <em>essential</em> characteristics. Not having certain characteristics disqualifies something from being something.
I hope you can see how this kind of thinking is problematic.
Not only does this kind of thinking removes an entity, in this case, Nature, out of its historical context, but it also ignores the variety and breadth of human experience tied to the entity. A semi-essential view of nature was found in the Animism of the natives of the pre-colonial Philippines. It was a living and present force in their lives, something that could be bargained and negotiated with. Offerings could be made to placate their anger, while feasts were held to thank them for a bountiful harvest. Recognizing the role that the environment, and “Nature”, in general, plays in their lives.
Although this isn’t to say that the natives were this “in-tune with nature” collective of hippies that they’re sometimes made out to be. Muro-Ami is the practice of using rocks to destroy corals in order to catch them in dragnets. This not only leads to overfishing, but also depletes the ocean biome’s ability to replenish fish populations.
But it gets worse with the eventual arrival of the Spanish conquistadors and the wide-scale feudalization of the islands. The old gods were demonized and “Nature” just became God’s gift to mankind. Which the colonized laborers were obliged to hand over to their conquerors. The theocratic ideology of the Church caused a greater split between the inhabitants of the archipelago and their environment, with the building of the oldest cities.
With the arrival of the American “Benevolent Assimilators”, almost all sectors experience some form of industrialization. The relationship of Society and Nature was then made into a purely economic one. It is here that Alienation from Nature is made complete.
Observe how at each stage, Nature was assigned a different “Essence” and contextualizes society’s relationship with it. We are not saying that all of these changes happened overnight, and that these are complete, sweeping changes, either. Reality is a lot more messy than that. What does though, is unconsciously make us ignore nature’s role in the context of our material conditions. It’s just somewhere you get all that wood from. It downplays the fact that we affect it as much as it affects us. As living creatures, we need to realize our interdependence with nature. And this indifference to the role that large-scale human activity, of which large corporate and military entities are the most at fault for, has resulted in the crisis we are seeing today with global warming.
We must learn that Nature is not a great, monolithic entity. Nature is an inconceivably large and interconnected network of systems, of which animal life, and specifically human life, is merely just a part of. The contradiction between Nature and the needs of human social production, is something that Marx calls <em>The Metabolic Rift</em>, and we can see how that is creating a global crisis and pushing us head-first into what is likely going to be a 6<sup>th</sup> extinction event the world has ever seen.
We must learn how to resolve this dialectical contradiction, or pay the price in countless lives.
|
#title Torture and prison experience of the anarchists in Iran
#author Abtin Parsa, Anarchist Union of Afghanistan and Iran
#SORTauthors Abtin Parsa, Anarchist Union of Afghanistan and Iran
#SORTtopics Iran, torture, prison
#date 2018
#source Retrieved on 21/12/2020 from [[https://asranarshism.com][asranarshism.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-12-22T01:36:31
#notes The volume of articles is not large, and can be prepared as a small booklet in different languages. Comrades who have a will to take initiative to translate them into their language and publish it as a booklet, feel free to do it. The Federation of Anarchism Era <br> www.AsrAnarshism.com <br> Info@asranarshism.com
<em>Torture and prison experience of the anarchists in Iran, is the series of articles written in 2018 by former political prisoner, anarchist Abtin Parsa about his prison time and struggles in Iran. Since 2018, this series of articles has been published in 6 sections by the Union of Anarchists of Iran and Afghanistan in different languages.</em>
*** First course
For hours, they pushed my head onto an iron table. In that room, there was a barrel of water hanging from the ceiling. From the barrel, small drops of water dripped onto the iron table. I had to be silent and just listen to the water drops with agony
At the time, I was a 16 year-old with anarchist views and atheist beliefs. I was tortured because of my atheist views and my anti- government stance while a student at the Shahid Chamran School in Zarghan, Iran.
The name of the person who tortured me was Seyed Jaáfari; at least, that’s what they called him.
During the interrogation, most of the time, an empty glass bottle was on the table; I didn’t have another choice, I had to accept everything, even something that I never did; they told me if you don’t accept anything that we are telling you, we will rape you with this empty bottle We fought for freedom, for equality, we were tortured, under tthreat. I was just sixteen years old as an anarchist political prisoner in Iran There were many people in there that some of them were girls, The Revolutionary Guards officials raped them every day; When I was in the detention center, my room was near the torture chamber, I could heard their voices and groans; my morale was totally destroy, I wanted to commit suicide several times, But I was thinking that I had to survive for saying that what happened there; I had to survive for revenge Now I am in Greece but I will not forget and I will not forgive
<right>
— Abtin Parsa /October/06/2018
</right>
*** Second course
Although they allowed me to continue the schooling because of my age, I was constantly under control at the school, even sometimes some people attacked me in the school, beat me and threatened to rape me and my family.
After about a year and a half and after many kinds of mental and physical torture, when I was about 17 and a half years, It seemed like my period of conviction had expired; I really wanted to leave from Zarghan because I was sick of that city; even though they allowed me to leave, they warned and threatened me about many things Including disclosing what happened to me. Anyway as soon as possible, I left Zarghan to Shiraz to live in a new city, in fact it was like exile.
I started a new life in Shiraz with fake names Dariush and Yashar, Although I knew they will not miss me by changing the name While I was severely suffering from mental illness as a result of torture in the past. After a while I entered a new school in Shiraz for a short time, but in fact my thoughts were very far from what the system wrote in the school’s books. All that existed in my mind was struggle and revolution for freedom and equality. In Shiraz as fast as possible I tried to find new comrades who had interest for the struggle. Finally we created a political group with five people (mobarezaneh shiraz), but it didn’t work well. Adding to that, due to security concerns of the comrades, we dissolved the group, after some activities, including the publication of an anti-government declaration.
This bad experience of doing political activity with the collective in the practical situation, forced me to do some political activity on the internet but I, as an anarchist, preferred the practical situation. So I was thinking of burning one of the government centers, one of the ideas was bombing in the Imam jomeh headquarters which was in the karimkhan zand street.
<right>
— Abtin Parsa /October/16/2018
</right>
*** Third course
The summer of 2016, the municipality had fenced the square opposite the headquarters of Imam jomeh, The work had become much more difficult because the fence takes the space to move for bombing; in fact There was no choice except attacking with Molotov, but it woulf not make any damage so Inevitably the operation was stopped.
The lesson I learned that day was the power of patience. Sometimes you have to wait for years and watching the target
Almost every weeks, I checked the goal to make the coordinates updated in my mind
In one of the days that I was checking my targets, In the vicinity of one of the targets that a fascist shop was, I found a person who selling some books in Karimkhan zand square.
After more attention, I understand that most of the books were books that were forbidden in Iran for sale and maintenance, I passed without care, but tomorrow I was come back at this point for talking with him and buy some books.
After a few weeks, we became friends, and he told me that he has more books which he could not bring here because they were more illegal.
At this time, when I had a small shop in front of the Shiraz registry office, I thought I would sell books there because I needed money to do more serious things; Now that I think of it, it was one of my biggest mistakes because this was the beginning of a banned book’s shop, which later forced me to escape from Iran.
On the other hand, the activity I had on the Internet made me get acquainted with a communist-feminist girl who was living in Tehran, After a while, we realized that we were interested in one another, but we really did not have much information about each other except some political discussions.
<right>
— Abtin Parsa /October/16/2018
</right>
*** Fourth course
Meeting with a Revolutionary comrade in Shiraz. Since he is still in Iran, we will not publish any personal information from a common comrade, I goy acquainted with him, and I requested of him a face-to-face meeting to talk.
But for such a meeting and escape from the intelligence forces of the Iranian regime, there was a need for an anti-intelligence operation So, after he accepted the invitation to meet, I designed two different times and places; First time and place for the first meet, and second place and time for that if we could not meet in the first meet for any reason, we would meet each other in the second place and time (Azadi park in center of shiraz at 16:00)
I gave one of my photos to our common friend and asked him to send me a photo of himself because It was very important for us to easily identify each other.
Then I sent the details of the meeting to him, by our common friend.
The person who arrived first at the point of meeting should not be fixed in the same place; he must move.
After seeing each other, we have to make eye contact.
We will never get very close to each other.
We have to make sure nobody is chasing us, so he should start walking and I will follow him away after I made sure nobody chased him, I will touch my clothes a few times as a sign of warmth, then he must do, what I did.
If there is any danger, the meeting will be canceled and we will meet in the second place and time.
The meeting was well done, but my forced escape from Shiraz to Tehran never allowed us to have a joint project.
<right>
— Abtin Parsa 2018/10/17
</right>
*** Fifth course
Escape from shiraz to tehran.
The issue has always existed in my mind that why those who call themselves peaceful persons, do not call the violence of the system against people as terrorist attacks, but if we turn the violence back onto the system, they called us terrorists.
In fact they are part of this system, also the system speaking about peace because it wants the use of violence be only its monopoly.
Yes my revolutionary comrades that i do not know many of you, when we did robbery from rich persons to get money to continue the struggle of the guerrillas, they called us violent and thieves but they never said that the real thieves are those who have property and doed not shsre it with people who are in need, they never say that the real violent ones are banks that are raping our community with money every day, when the fascists and the authorities of the iranian regime were killed, they called us terrorist but they never said that the real terrorists are those who killed our freedom and equality, so let it go on until there is no authority anymore.
In order to carry out more serious operations i needed more money, I was thinking of robbing one of the shops in the mali abad region of shiraz which is a Bourgeois region, but the illness during the last month of my presence in Shiraz prevented me from any operation, even i could not be selling the banned books anymore.
And in those circumstances I noticed some movements around me that the beginning of them was a night that i was came back home from my small shop on Koye Zahra Street in Shiraz when I realized that I am chased by an intangible person, I guess it was an intelligence force, so i wanted to be sure about it, also if it was necessary, have the strategic ability to attack, for this reason i quickly changed my way to some other streets, The person concerned continued my deviation, but because of my illness I preferred to escape than have the conflict, then, as soon as possible, by a familiar cellphone. I contacted one of the Revolutionary comrades in Tehran and as much as possible i explained to her about my conditions, very fast to protect the information i destroyed my noted and on a bus i went tehran, We met each other in Tehran with security considerations and it was decided to leave Iran together.
<right>
— Abtin Parsa 2018/11/11
</right>
*** Sixth course
After a few days of wandering across the border between Iran and Turkey, we finally managed to escape in a cold night. We were sure that if we could not escape quickly, they would find us
The political situation in Turkey, was not better than Iran with a stupid dictator like Erdogan, I did not prefer to do political activity there, so we decided to run away to Greece
Finally, we reached the small island of Samos in Greece in the vicinity of Izmir
During the staying in the camp of Samos, the Iranian regime, who was informed of my escape, issued a claimed that they arrested my two struggler comrades
They said that i am responsible for them, in fact, they were indirectly planning to bring me back to Iran by putting pressure on me
even they released some of my comrades’ information to prove to me
But I decided to do not return to Iran because I knew that my return would not help them, and I would only hand over myself to the Iranian regime
Eventually they issued my fatwa (murder), which means that everyone who kills me will go to Paradise. Soon after, we were attacked at the camp, my comrade was wounded by a knife and I was beaten
We asked for help from the UNHCR. Eventually, after receiving the seriousness of the matter, the UNHCR introduced me to speak with the interpol. But no answer was given to me except that Greece is a safe country
<right>
— Abtin Parsa 2019/1/17
</right>
|
#title The Urgency of Police Abolition
#subtitle And a Note on Moral Anti-Racism
#author Acacio Augusto
#LISTtitle Urgency of Police Abolition
#date April 3rd, 2021
#source https://spectrejournal.com/the-urgency-of-police-abolition/
#lang en
#topics police abolition, anti-racism
#notes Original tittle: A Urgencia da Abolicao da Policia e uma nota sobre Antirracismo Moral. Translated into English by Amos Caldeira.
It was on May 25, 2020 in the US, and with COVID-19 infections at their initial peak globally, that an occurrence of police brutality caused an important shift in the struggle against <em>security dispositifs</em>. A Black man, George Floyd, was killed by a white police officer who pinned him down and kneeled on his neck for over nine minutes. As had happened in previous years with similar police murders, there were strong reactions by many sectors of the Black movement, with protests gathered around the motto that became a movement: <em>Black Lives Matter</em>. But the shift occurred with the emergence, from within the protests, of a concrete, specific, and immediate demand: Police Abolition.
On the one hand, this wasn’t a very popular demand in the movement as a whole, in the sense that there were more reformist demands that were more vocalized. On the other hand, this renewed demand for police abolition managed to surpass a reliance on the criminal justice system for the case of George Floyd. This new situation triggered riots that precipitated the burning of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis, and spread the demand for police abolition across the globe. The global reach of the demand for police abolition was evident when, about a month after the burning of the Third Precinct, the June issue of the French journal <em>LundiMatin</em> published the <em>Manifeste Pour La Suppression Générale De La Police Nationale</em>, an abolitionist manifesto that directly mentioned the US protests. This manifesto was also a reaction to the constant violence against <em>Yellow Jackets</em> protesters, and the police violence in the <em>banlieues</em> of Paris against racialized people.
The <em>8 To Abolition</em> debate reached Brazil, where the demands were being discussed in some abolitionist circles and academic research groups. The urgency of police abolition in Brazil is undeniable. Globally, the Brazilian police is the most deadly, and Brazilian police officers have the highest mortality rate. This piece aims to put forward some ideas for how to elaborate an analysis of the police without yielding to reformist arguments that always leave intact the functions and the existence of the police.
In order to do so, we suggest, borrowing from Michel Foucault’s <em>Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-78</em>, that we need to understand that the police are more than an institution. The police are, first and foremost, a technology of government. As such, the history of the police is inextricably linked to the formation of the modern state and the means to administer and control the population. We must also shed light on the fact that the average police officers in their ordinary functions are practitioners of violence, and bureaucrats with weapons.1 If our point of departure is the police as a technology of government, we are able to widen our sphere of action to include its abolition. Why? Because this perspective encompasses the police not only as a technology of control, but also as part of the subjective construct of contemporary citizenship, in other words, the ways of making, thinking, and imagining of the subject of today’s <em>security democracy</em>: the <em>citizen-cop</em>.
*** <strong>Police as technology of government</strong>
We need to examine the police beyond the institution and the uniform. First, because the media and the entertainment industry constructs a particular discourse on the police and its functions. It is a discourse that always describes police officers as individuals capable of the most outstanding deeds, and enmeshed in moral dilemmas of duty and law. For this reason, when the institution of the police is criticized, there is always the pitfall of focusing on its excesses as exceptions. For example, in the movie <em>Elite Squad</em>, Captain Nascimento is a police officer riddled with personal dilemmas; he is extremely violent, but with a conscience that must be restored, and a sense of justice that, albeit objectionable, grants him a bit of “humanity.”
Thus, the excesses of some police officers or a group considered a “bad batch” is criticized, but in the name of the pursuit of an honest, democratic police that respects human rights, and that shouldn’t commit brutalities. The reformist discourse is renewed by representations of police officers—and the police—that are far-fetched, or simply projects a reformist ideal that is unreachable. This “reform package,” and this image of the police, ignores—or tries to conceal—that the police’s core activity is the asymmetrical, unequal, and legitimized deployment of violence throughout the whole social body, and especially against those considered <em>dangerous</em>.
A critique of the police that tries to differentiate the good officer from the bad reproduces the normal logic of policing. This logic is disseminated by the entertainment industry through crime movies and television shows that are based on the shallow binarism of <em>good cop vs. bad cop</em>. Like in the movies, these images of good and evil are complementary and exist for the permanence of the police as an institution and a predominant political form of persuasion.
The police are a conjuncture of practices and technologies of administration, control, and repression of the population. The most precious technology of the modern arts of government, it is capable of being both individualistic and totalitarian, systemic and localized, reaching each and every person. Its emergence is related to the formation of the state’s sovereignty, as a tool of the <em>Raison d’État</em>. Later, the police developed into an internal <em>security dispositif</em> of liberal governmentality that aims to assure the good governance of affairs and people in favor of the preservation and expansion of the state’s government.
It is with this development that today’s police practices emerged as a means to reinforce security in favor of the production of an unequal and asymmetrical order in capitalist societies based on the protection of private and/or state property. These practices comprise a very complex and heterogeneous set of strategies that articulate ways of reinforcing public health (social medicine), interventions in urban reforms (city planning), and tools for the discipline of the labor force (forms of control and administration of workers, aiming at an increase in productivity).
Therefore, the history of the police is the history of technologies of government that goes far beyond their contemporary form; a form usually only recognized by the police’s role as a repressive state apparatus, the image of the armed man in uniform on the streets or a police team repressing a protest. Actually, the history of the police is intertwined with fields of knowledge such as sociology, political science, and political economy.
In his 1977-78 course, Foucault tells us that “from the seventeenth century, ‘police’ begins to refer to the set of means by which the state’s forces can be increased while preserving the state in good order. In other words, police will be the calculation and technique that will make it possible to establish a mobile, yet stable and controllable relationship between the state’s internal order and the development of its forces.”2 In short, the police, which emerges in Europe linked to the sovereign state, will have as its primary objective the good use of state forces inside its territory for the realization of the splendor of the state.
The police are the direct instrument of the <em>Raison d’État</em>. Its operational tool is statistics: the knowledge of the state about itself. But this emergence of the police-form, or of the techniques of the sovereign police, will mutate, with particularities and different knowledges coming together in different European countries. Nonetheless, all these particularities will become the form and functions of the modern police, or the associated forms of state intervention in societies like we have today. In the territories colonized by the European nation-states, the particularity of the police will be, in a complementary manner, related to flogging, brutality and mass killing, for the splendor of the colonial state.
Following Foucault’s genealogy of the state in this same lecture series, in calling attention to the police as the decisive element in the operation of modern government practices, we will notice that the formation of police technologies will bring together specific knowledges and various institutional practices. Foucault shows that in Germany, at the time not yet a unified territory, the police was a creation of the university, the <em>locus</em> of a police science.
Foucault identifies, in his writings dedicated to the forms of governance, something that in German was called “<em>Polizeiwissenschaft</em>, the science of police, which from the middle or end of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century is an absolutely German specialty that spreads throughout Europe and exerts a crucial influence.”3 Parallel to this theory of the police as a political science produced in Germany, in France–already a centralized administrative state with a demarcated territory–the police at the time were conceived and operated by the emergent state bureaucracy. The police would work by means of decrees and regulations intended to control and circulate commodities in the emergent cities. If in Germany the police was a creation of the university, in France it was a creation of the state bureaucracy with the purpose of regulating goods, people, and wealth.
What is essential from these references gathered by Foucault is not the compilation of facts that comprise the history of the modern police. The reason to put together these references is to understand, genealogically, how the formation of the police comes from within the relations of knowledge-power that shaped modernity. That is to say, the police is related to the arts of governing, <em>i.e.</em>, the means to know and control subjects, which is not limited to a judicial instrument or a set of state apparatuses. This genealogy shows the positivity of the police-form in the formation of the modern state. The police is a <em>dispositif</em> with specific functions, objects, and well-defined objectives for the production of an order, the regulation of commerce, the administration of cities, and the disciplining of the subjects.
In short, the positivity of the police, back to the origins of what would become the modern police, is the production of the bourgeois society in the historical sense of the term. This is the positivity of the newborn police: to produce the bourgeois order rooted on property. Parallel to these practices, in the European colonies, this art of governing and producing order would have more functions, namely the hunting down of the non-subjects: the savages of the earth, and the people brought there as slaves.
As Foucault summarizes, the police will have a specificity of functions detached from the law: the police deals with the ordinary, the minute, while the law must deal with the important tasks of the state. “In other words, police is the direct governmentality of the sovereign qua sovereign. Or again, let’s say that police is the permanent <em>coup d’État</em>. It is the permanent <em>coup d’État</em> that is exercised and functions in the name of and in terms of the principles of its own rationality, without having to mold or model itself on the otherwise given rules of justice.”4
This definition is important today for an analysis of the police as a technology of government. Even if this sovereign form of the police has changed in the centuries that followed to become what we know today as the repressive police, this independence or autonomy from the law would endure. This endurance is justified by the necessity of the police as a form of intervention to deal with a set of urgent matters that the law is incapable of predicting. The consequence is that police officers see themselves as citizens from a different category, free from abiding by the law, subjected to special rules and regulations that other citizens are not. In the face of the law’s rigidity, police control remains elastic.
Nonetheless, this form of sovereign police was subjected to criticism at the end of the eighteenth century, altering its form, dismantling its functions into other fields of action. This critique came from an emergent knowledge that opposed the artificiality of sovereign intervention through the police <em>dispositif</em>. This perspective argued for a “natural environment” susceptible to regulation, and opposed to a police state (<em>Polizeistaat).</em>
A group related to this emergent knowledge was responsible for making this critique–a group that, as Foucault said, is almost a sect: the economists. This knowledge, <em>Political Economy</em>, would address an object of government that is no longer a group of heterogenous subjects, but a common field, almost a natural environment, that would become society, or what today we call civil society–in opposition to a political society (the state). This division was made possible by the emergence of a measurable field of intervention, one produced by the statistical knowledge of the state. This field of intervention would be the population itself, a field made possible by statistical knowledge and by a political economy dealing with society as a population, a “species-body”, capable of subjection to biopolitical control and administration.
Therefore it is through the articulation of the knowledge of political economy and the practices of management of the population that a dynamic relationship would develop within the mechanisms of security. This articulation would produce the modern definition of liberty, setting the transition from a sovereign governmentality, through the sovereign police, to a liberal governmentality that would shape the modern police.
In fact, the emergent governmentality at the end of the eighteenth century would dismantle sovereign police functions. On the one hand, the management of the population would be exercised through urban policies and social medicine, while on the other, forms of direct intervention and repression emerged to prevent disorder: the repressive police that we know today.5 “Economic practice, population management, a public law constructed on the respect of freedom and freedoms, and a police with a repressive function: you can see that the old police project, as it appeared in correlation with <em>raison d’État</em>, is dismantled, or rather broken up into four elements—economic practice, population management, law and respect for freedoms, police—which are added to the great diplomatic-military apparatus (<em>dispositif</em>) that has hardly changed since the eighteenth century.”6 So we have, briefly, the range of functions of the modern state through political technologies that function well beyond direct state intervention.
That is why—when we demand the abolition of the police—we need to understand it beyond the institution, and beyond the uniform and the individuals in it. To understand the police as a technology of government, and to follow its changes through history, is to be aware of reformist discourses and critics of only certain police behavior considered excessive or abusive. They only argue for a new police, and the renewal of administration and control.
This critique perpetuates the play of practices and counter-practices that changed the sovereign police into a set of practices of biopolitical government, with the repressive police as <em>security dispositif</em> for the preservation of the internal order. Police abolition must be a fight against governmental reason, against the state as a way of doing and thinking, the state as a category of reading reality. The anti-police movement must also be <em>anti-political</em>, understanding politics as a set of techniques of government of some over others. Otherwise, any critique of the police will be only an announcement of a new police or of the dismantling of the practices of containment with different names.
*** <strong>The modern cop and a brief comment on moral anti-racism</strong>
Jumping forward in time and space, let us focus on the figure of the police officer today. Whenever something is written or said about the police, only the legal functions of the police, as established by law, are considered. This is largely due to the influence of media discourse and falsifications. Nonetheless, the police, as an institution, a function, or even a form of behavior, have multiplied in ways never imagined before. There is no place where you cannot find some modality of police or police behavior of the most varied kinds. At the same time, the police mentality is so ingrained that the first solution that we can think of in the face of a new problem is to create a new police, even if the problem is the police itself. So, today we even have a “police” for the police.
Let us demonstrate the large presence of the police in the life of every citizen in Brazil. In the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, Article 144, from Chapter III, deals with public security, its environments and functions. In the Article, there is a list of different kinds of police: “I – federal police; II – federal highway police; III – federal railway police; IV – civil police; V – military police and military fire brigades.” Many regulations, functions, protocols, recommendations, codes of ethics and conducts stem from this Article of the constitution.
Add to that list the private police, security companies, and extra-legal police. We can also mention the illegal enterprises for the defense of property that are a part of this <em>regime of illegality</em>, the so-called <em>militias</em> or criminal organizations. There exists an infinite variety of police, and even then, nobody is safe; quite the contrary, each and every person is a suspect and we are all called to police the conduct of others and of ourselves. So, the <em>citizen-policemen</em> is disseminated, with its form of political being and public life linked to police practices and control. And even with so much police, the so-called “crimes” or “conflicts with the law” keep happening frequently. But not only that, these varieties of police protect the agents of lethal violence. When this violence becomes unmanageable, the first solution is to create the police of the police or other forms of judicialization of conduct and life.
Finally, there are also institutions, NGOs, research groups, and even human rights movements that, when confronted with police violence, not only deny this violence as inherent to the police, but even create ways to fight this violence that imitates police technologies: action plans, regulations, and surveillance practices.
Those are actions that not only renew faith in police controls, but become a tenet for the expansion of the police and <em>security</em> <em>dispositif</em>. That is why we must put forward the question of police abolition, and refuse the step-by-step or reformist solutions. It is not a mere issue of a political or ideological stance, but a tactical decision that demonstrates our resolution to see a definitive end to police violence. To choose the lesser of two evils became the condition of preservation and expansion of the <em>security</em> <em>dispositif</em>, and the continuity of the criminal justice system.
There is one question left: how does this technological ensemble of administration, control, and repression produce so much death? It is the question Foucault asked when dealing with bio-power as a technology that “makes live and lets die.” The answer is unequivocally the same: what allows a power that makes life to produce death is <em>state racism</em>. The latter produces the subjects that, in the name of life and production of order, must be eliminated or slowly killed, as they are always in conflict with this established order. In this sense, it is not by chance that, for example, <em>8 To Abolition</em> became such an important campaign in the wake of the George Floyd protests. The police is the direct operator of this <em>dispositif</em> of fatal intervention over racialized targets.
It is not a matter of misconduct or excessive use of force, it is how the <em>dispositif</em> works. Any anti-racist discourse that ignores this fact is a mere moral objection that describes racism as a kind of ethical misconduct that can be corrected by a moral ideal that condemns racism. That is why this stance usually refers to racist behavior as some prejudice to be remedied by some kind of moralizing awareness-raising or sanction (penal or social).
Historically, the police is a modern political technology that operates simultaneously as the sovereign power to kill, and the bio-political management of life of the population and its citizens. Since its emergence in the 1970s, the sovereign face of death of <em>neoliberal rationality</em> has been increasing. This is manifested in processes like <em>militarization, hyper-incarceration, judicialization of life, pacification</em> of impoverished urban territories like the <em>favelas</em>, or even in entire countries like Haiti and Syria. Once again, biopolitics, the management of life, leads to its paroxysm, death at a large scale. However, unlike in the mid-twentieth century, which saw its paroxysms in the forms of authoritarian and genocidal regimes like Nazi Germany and Italian Fascism, today, the sovereign power to kill—by means of state racism—has learned to be democratic. It operates, in democracies, through the police <em>security</em> <em>dispositif</em> turned international by its merging with the military—diplomatic <em>dispositif</em>. This colonization of politics by security—which does not need to be manifested in an authoritarian dictatorship—is present in governments throughout the whole planet. We call this process <em>security democracy</em>.
Thus, as a <em>security</em> <em>dispositif</em> in <em>security democracies</em>, the police operates its policies of control and death beyond the institution and its officers. The police produces order as security of the living beings on the planet, an <em>ecopolitics</em>. Living beings in this case are not just humans, but every living thing that is useful and a producer of obedience and order, everything that can be considered good and orderly. As for the living beings that do not correspond to this orderly productivity, state racism acts with its murderous cut, and kills or lets die.
In today’s democracies, there is no anti-racism without police abolition. This is the shift that is spreading to the whole planet. This affirmation of liberated life emerged in the protests against the execution of George Floyd. But a closer look will reveal that across the globe, the vast majority of people hate the murderous police. Outside the vital struggle that aims to dismantle the <em>security dispositif</em>, the diplomatic-police <em>dispositif</em>, we are left with a moral rhetoric of racism as prejudice and misconduct. We have to go beyond that if we want to stop counting the bodies of racialized people, no matter where the counting is being done. From the ghettos of Sao Paulo, the <em>favelas</em> of Rio de Janeiro to somewhere in the streets of Soweto, Johannesburg; from the <em>banlieues</em> in Paris to the streets of Minneapolis or the Gaza Strip, in Palestine.
The urgency to abolish the police is in the urgency to be alive! The urgency of the affirmation of life as <em>anti-politics</em> in the struggle against state racism’s sovereign politics of death.
<strong>We don’t want the damn police anymore!</strong>
|
#title A Philosophy of Escape
#author Acid Horizon
#LISTtitle Philosophy of Escape
#date August 28th, 2023
#source Retrieved from [[https://illwill.com/anti-oculus][illwill.com]] on February 15th, 2024
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-02-15T23:31:59
#authors Acid Horizon
#topics biopolitics, philosophy, Michel Foucault, Ill Will
#notes <em>Anti-Oculus. A Philosophy of Escape</em> will appear with Repeater Books October 10, 2023.
Below is an excerpt from <em>Anti-Oculus — A Philosophy of Escape</em><em>,</em> a new book by the Acid Horizon collective due to appear with Repeater Books this October. Part “psychedelic trip through the eyes of power,” part operation of conceptual espionage, <em>Anti-Oculus</em> aims to produce a cartography of escape routes from the control systems of cyber-capitalism.
In the following selections, the authors highlight the perilous moment in 19<sup>th</sup> century medical discourse around “unmanageable” youth where ability and <em>govern</em>-ability were finally made to coincide. Wherever disability continues to be rendered intelligible through disciplinary apparatuses, the disabled child will tend to be approached first and foremost as a problem of governance, a victim of the “anarchy of their will and body,” which power encounters as an adversary needing to be crushed. As the authors show, a similar — albeit even more bellicose — discourse had already emerged around vagabonds and drifters, layabouts and ex-workers, whose “moral nomadism” threatened to hamper the spiritual regiment of capitalist work-discipline in its efforts to format the soul of the laborer. In each case, Acid Horizon identifies a common lesson about the trajectory of subversive forces. If power must always react to something it finds “entirely enigmatic,” this is because such threats “expose the emptiness of its supposed relation to necessity.” What power is most at war with, and is most threatened by, is the truth of its own superfluity.
Against today’s newfangled optimizers of life, who promise new utopias of automation and space conquest, it is the centrifugal flight of the pleb, with its “illegalism of dissipation,” its uncompromising yet undefined errancy, who appears as the true figure of human freedom.
------
*** The anarchy of abnormality and the abnormality of anarchy
Édouard Séguin, the French physician who was acclaimed for his work with institutionalized disabled children, wrote a clinical text in 1846 that was widely disseminated across Europe and the United States, <em>The Moral Treatment, Hygiene, and Education of Idiots and Other Backward Children</em>. European physicians lauded it as “the Magna Charta of the emancipation of the imbecile class!” J.E. Wallace Wallin, an American physician, seemingly no less impassioned, identified Séguin as a “prophet,” and described his book as “the best work done since his day for the amelioration of the feeble-minded.” The teachers following Séguin’s didactic methodology must “call out to the soul of the child.”[1] For children diagnosed with “idiocy” possess an instinct that is in a “wild state without being integrated.” This does not just mean that the child’s instinct is not properly integrated within their “organs and faculties,” it is also a fundamental lack of integration with this very world and all of its precious moral expectations.
Séguin describes the disabled child as one with a mode of being that “removes him from the moral world.”[2] Within the norm sits an assertion about one’s own moral position in the world. A violent moral condemnation sits at the center of the identification of abnormality in this new institutional pedagogy. There is a political distinction as well. The abnormal child’s diagnosed disposition is one that expresses not symptoms, but rather “natural and anarchical elements.”[3] Séguin’s method always first sets its sights on the child’s will. The abnormal child is described as possessing “a certain anarchic form of will.” The normal, “desirable,” adult will is “a will that can obey.” The will of the “idiot” is one that “anarchically and stubbornly says ‘no’.” Séguin’s recommendation is one that places the instructor in a position of complete control. The instructor’s intervention must result in a physical apprehension of the body that can allow for its mastery. It remains a mystery as to how psychiatrists struggled with why a child may become “anarchic” with such instructors. However, for the moral and physiological method of institutionalized treatment, the stakes are very high. This child, for Séguin, can only be returned to the moral world and safely within the “law” of production through institutional moral and physiological treatment.[4] The prevention of “degeneration” of the condition of a disabled child is generalized to the security of the population and intertwined with a form of social defense when Séguin provides a brief, but important, account of “imbecility.”
In his 1866 text, <em>Idiocy: And Its Treatment by the Physiological Method</em>, Séguin attempts to make an explicitly socio-political distinction between the “harmless idiot” and “imbeciles, insanes, epileptics, etc.,” whose “rights upon society are different from [theirs].”[5] While the child diagnosed with idiocy possesses an anarchic will, this will can be redirected and molded into one that can obey. Central to this moral treatment is the “enforcing of the moral and social duty of working.”[6] For Séguin, introducing the child diagnosed with idiocy into an institution can reach out to the weakened “moral powers” of the child and return them to the moral world. This physiological and moral intervention “restores the harmony” of the trinity of “activity,” “intelligence,” and “will.”[7] The management and reorientation of the will of the patient is as crucial to Séguin as any other element of the moral treatment of the “idiot.” When institutionalized, idiocy can be placed under the gaze of the Superintendent of the institution. The Superintendent is tasked with “measuring [...] the vitality of the children by the physiological standard of their activity.” If the superintendent identifies problems in what the child wills themselves “to do or refuse to do,” they must “call for due hygienic interference and instant modifications in the training.”[8] Séguin fascinatingly even laments that, in the United States, state governors are tasked with being “the guardian of the idiot.” In a move completely in line with the emergence of the disciplinary society, Séguin recommends that the Governor, and in “England the Sovereign,” should “delegate [their] guardianship to the Superintendent of the State institution” because they alone are competent to “advise about what might profitably be expended for the improvement of the child.”[9] The child deemed an “idiot” can be saved only if its disharmonious will is rendered docile, governed, and governable. No such salvation is possible for the imbecile. The “idiot child” is sensible to “reproach, command, menace, even to imaginary punishment [...] his egotism is moderate.” The “imbecile” does not have that same moderation.
The anarchy of Séguin’s institutionalized child can, with a strict regimen and the complete authority of the Superintendent, be quelled; but if imbecility takes root in a child, the “moral nature” is completely vanquished. The “imbecile [is] self-confident, half-witted, and ready to receive immoral impressions, satisfactory to his intense egotism.”[10] Séguin’s “idiot child” is depicted, in a very specific sense, as a victim of the anarchy of their will and body, such that pity does not extend to those diagnosed as “imbeciles.” Séguin generalizes the condition this way: “today he is an imbecile, tomorrow he may be a criminal.”[11] Far from “emancipated,” these pathologized children are rendered anarchic risks to the security of the social well-being and, in the case of Séguin’s articulation of “imbecility,” asocial enemies.
Unsurprisingly, Séguin’s recommendations became the model and “inspiration” for “publicly and privately supported institutions” tasked with the education, confinement, and sequestration of disabled children in America in the early twentieth century.[12] For Séguin, and his subsequent adherents, ability and governability coincide. The disabled child is considered a problem of governance, both of themselves and of others. Disability is a problem produced and rendered intelligible through disciplinary apparatuses. Disability is conceived as a problem of governance and governability.
This relationship between anarchy and abnormality also functions in the opposite direction. Cesare Lombroso, an Italian eugenicist criminologist, famously argued that “biological, anatomical, psychological, and psychiatric science” could provide “a way of distinguishing the genuine, fruitful, and useful revolution from the always sterile rot and revolt.” Lombroso describes revolutionaries such as Karl Marx and Charlotte Corday as possessing “wonderfully harmonious physiognomies.” Contrarily, in his analysis of a photo of forty-one anarchists arrested in Paris, “31 percent of them had serious physical defects. Of one hundred anarchists arrested in Turin, thirty-four lacked the wonderfully harmonious figure of Charlotte Corday or Karl Marx.”[13] Those stray bodies, those who wander outside the immediate register of the norm, through their anarchic disruption of biopolitical salvation, expose the brutality of the regime that promises the elimination of all that is deemed errant in life. This is where the normalizing power of the governing of disability becomes explicitly thanatopolitical; it is where the “right to let die” becomes the defining imperative of the sovereign in modernity. The defense against abnormality is, ultimately, established through its identification with the anarchic. <em>In abnormality, there is a thread that runs through to a political assertion of anarchy; and in anarchy, there is a thread that runs through to a medico-juridical assertion of abnormality.</em>
*** Wandering deviance
It is in these acts of error, of going astray, that an opposition to an arrangement — even if momentary — can be put forward. One way this errancy manifests is by wandering astray through the ethical-political rejection of the subject-function that has been ascribed to them, namely the worker or the serf. The vagabond is among these figures who slip to the edges of these formative processes of subjectivation and present a material problem to the political and economic forces of cohesion.
In <em>The Punitive Society,</em> Foucault follows the work of the French physiocrat and jurist Guillaume-François Le Trosne, and his policy prescriptions for vagabondage and begging. The vagabond has a peculiar position in the social body. They are not described “in relation to consumption, to the mass of goods available, but in relation to the mechanisms and processes of production.”[14] Foucault finds in the physiocrat’s depiction a vagabond who is not to be decried because they attack items of consumption — theft had existed long before this problematization of nomadic vagrancy in the French countryside. The vagabond is not simply a thief. The vagabond instead must be dealt with and penalized because they attack the ethical mechanisms of production. It is in the vagabond’s refusal to work and their vagrancy that the crime is found; not in any one particular action that can be juridically singled out in time, but in going astray as such. Le Trosne believes them to be an enemy comparable to a foreign army: “they live in a real state of war with all citizens.”[15] In <em>Madness and Civilization</em>, vagabondage is likewise a target of interception by corrective apparatuses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. “For a long time, the houses of correction or the premises of the Hôpital Général would serve to contain the unemployed, the idle, and vagabonds.”[16] The actual governmental issue lies in their strange positionality; the vagabond is corporeally among the honest workshop attendants, and yet, they are ambling elsewhere. The vagabond dwells in the same world and space as the society, yet they have nothing to do with it. They are certainly <em>in</em> society, yet, as Foucault notes, they do not <em>belong</em> to it. These nomadic vagrants would also be directed to workhouses, but in England even this largely punitive action faced opposition. Daniel Defoe argued that such an action was “putting a vagabond in an honest man’s employment.”[17] Their activity and their existence become inseparable in their identification as a social enemy.
Le Tronse’s warlike position towards these bodies indicates that they are an internal, hostile, and foreign world; one that must be eliminated. It is not simply an action but a modality of existence that is identified as the problem. And considering that, at the advent of each economic crisis, vagabondage increased, everything must be done to capture or hide these escapees of the productive cycle. “There are aspects of evil that have such a power of contagion, such a force of scandal that any publicity multiplies them infinitely.”[18] They are just beyond the immediate grasp of the apparatus, and always at risk of contaminating the productive process with the viral intensity of a different world and a different form-of- life. The ontological status of the astray is at stake in every instance of their activity. Those who go astray are always deemed to be on a warpath. “[B]etween the two worlds there can be only war, hatred, and fundamental hostility.”[19]
However, one finds that even the fully employed exist in a shadow of an ever-present inward-facing delinquency. Through the eighteenth century, a shift took place regarding the various illegalisms the upper class could tolerate from the working population. As the emergent bourgeois class took control of the juridical and police apparatuses, the illegalisms of this new working class became the central target of repression and control. The prison, the army, the police: these all develop into means of breaking up lower-class illegalisms — some of which the bourgeois and feudal orders were party to. With these systems in place, theft, machine-breaking, rioting, and the formation of clandestine associations will all be targeted and fundamentally suppressed. With fraud and smuggling quelled and largely controlled, both by these forms of policing and new processes of production, a new need arises: the “need to set up an apparatus that is sufficiently discriminating and far-reaching to affect the very source of this illegalism: the worker’s body, desire, need.”[20] This illegalism deprives the owner not of his physical wealth, machines, buildings, or commodities. The dissipater “is someone that undermines, not capital, not riches, but his own labor-power.” It is “no longer a bad way of managing one’s capital, but a bad way of managing one’s life, time, and body.”[21] Dissipation is not an event, like the destruction of a machine, but a mode of existence. It is an ethos ultimately at odds with the espoused productivist morality of the disciplinary society. It is one that strays from the moral expectation and framework of labor itself. It is a relationship with oneself that deprives the factory owner of one’s own labor-power. The dissipater is one who lives outside of the norm, which is an affront to the system of “ethical and political coercion that is necessary for the body, time, life, and men to be integrated, in the form of labor, in the interplay of productive forces.”[22] The illegalist of dissipation is, at once, the enemy of both the capitalist owner of the means of production and the “sad militant” who can only identify the specter of revolution in the leveraging of labor-power.
This dissipation is a thread that can be traced through so many newly securitized apparatuses of production. Foucault himself saw it echoing among the Parisian youth post-1968. In a roundtable discussion, Paul Virilio — seemingly worried about the proletariat becoming “marginal” in the post-industrial world — asks, “what happens if this marginalization becomes a mass phenomenon? [...] In the nineteenth century it was a tiny segment of society; now let’s admit that now these characteristics apply to millions of people in the suburbs.” Foucault’s response flips the premise of the question when he replies:
<quote>
What if it is the mass that marginalizes itself? That is, if it is precisely the proletariat and the young proletarians that refuse the ideology of the proletariat? [...] They are the young workers who say: why should I sweat my whole life for $2000 a month when I could... At that point, it’s the mass that is becoming marginal.[23]
</quote>
These are all modes of wandering outside the imposed regime of the norm. These are all methods of going astray, of entering into a zone of abnormality. It is for this reason that, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and possibly still today, the moral nomadism of the dissipator, whose mode of being is one perpetually in error, strikes such a unique fear.
Children fall through the stockades of the disciplinary apparatus and the circuitry of the biopolitical regime as well. In many ways, children are the most precious target of disciplinary and biopolitical management. A utopian socialist publication in nineteenth-century France retells an interaction between a judge and a boy charged with criminal vagrancy:
<quote>
The judge: One must sleep at home. — Béasse: Have I got a home? — You live in perpetual vagabondage. — I work to earn my living. — What is your station in life? — My station: to begin with, I’m thirty-six at least; I don’t work for anybody. I’ve worked for myself for a long time now. [...] I’ve plenty to do. — It would be better for you to be put into a good house as an apprentice and learn a trade. — Oh, a good house, an apprenticeship, it’s too much trouble. And anyway the bourgeois ... always grumbling, no freedom. — Does not your father wish to reclaim you? — Haven’t got no father. — And your mother? — No mother neither, no parents, no friends, free and independent.” Hearing his sentence of two years in a reformatory, Béasse pulled an ugly face, then, recovering his good humor, remarked: “Two years, that’s never more than twenty-four months. Let’s be off, then![24]
</quote>
His reaction seems rather strange, or comically absurd, especially in the face of the horror that is incarceration. However, here one ought to heed the words of Bataille: “When we laugh at childish absurdity, the laugh disguises the shame that we feel, seeing to what we reduce life.”[25] This errant motion is not to be understood through the framework of basic transgression, however. No matter how helpful Bataille may be in this moment of reflection on the shame we carry as life becomes only the unfolding of its control, there is also a necessary break with such an understanding of childishness. To see transgression in the life of Béasse is to take the lens of legal authority; it is to peer into this life only by passing through the word of the law. For transgression remains entirely bound to law and to the doctrine of exclusion. The boy is asked for an account of himself; it is given, and immediately the punitive matrix works towards reintegration. The simple matrix of transgression and exclusion is inadequate here.
The moral nomadism that remains so thoroughly feared has to be understood through its centrifugal motion, and not simply a direct negation or a reversal of terms. Passing over to the other side of an apparatus that distinguishes between the “good boys” and the Béasses or the vagrant remains insufficient, and only serves to reproduce the assumptions that uphold the apparatus itself. Flipping the apparatus leaves it intact. Pushing beyond its boundary, in the name of transgression, only ensures that the boundary functions properly in its distinguishing of life that is proper or life that is astray, in error, and to be dealt with. Those who primarily approach the question of power critically through the frame of transgression “remain pegged to the general system of representation against which they were turned.”[26] To stray is not to simply transgress. It is here where the figure of the pleb becomes the necessary compliment to the vagabond and a conception of straying. The measure of the pleb is a “counter-stroke”; it is “that which responds to every advance of power by a move of disengagement.”[27] The plebian intensity is one of flight; it finds itself elsewhere. This disengagement is perhaps the most crystalized articulation of a destituent gesture in Foucault’s corpus. To disengage from power is not the same as transgressing it. The motion of the pleb is, throughout history, a centrifugal one. This is why power is always reactive. When Foucault tells us resistance precedes power, we must take this assertion seriously. Power must always react to something it finds entirely enigmatic, because such threats expose the emptiness of its supposed relation to necessity.
The utopian managers of life who attest that we must strive towards an “optimization” of everything promise to deliver us a new world. Some of them even promise us entire new planets to lay waste to, like the crypto-accelerationist Nikolai Fedorov and his “common task” to “transform the solar system into a controlled economic entity.”[28] Of course, this “common task” is hindered by “common drunkenness.” The colonization of the stars must itself start with a colonization and total unification of every human body and its functions. Indeed, all techno-accelerationists demand this “multi-unity,” where all are optimally thrown into a completely orchestrated world — a utopia of pure managed existence. They make this promise to deliver a new world, simply because they must foreclose on any other way to <em>live</em>. If only were we to not stray, they tell us, we could live <em>under</em> fully-automated luxury “communism.” Of course, this is nothing other than an intensification of the operation of economy and the management of population. The illegalism of dissipation is the shared enemy of the cybernetician and the physiocrat and their respective “common” tasks. Whenever a utopian program is proposed, it is always penned with the promised blood of those it will seek out and deem suboptimal in the new “rational” organization of life. This is the common assurance voiced of the utopian techno-positivist: that freedom is found on the other side of optimization. But the optimization of life is, by design, an eliminative practice. Going astray is never optimal.
Through this errancy — that straying which the engineers and economizers of life ceaselessly work to render as an error to be corrected or erased — the undefined work of freedom comes into view.
[1] J.E. Wallin, <em>The Education of Handicapped Children</em>, The Riverside Press, 1924, 18.
[2] Michel Foucault, <em>Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the College de France 1973–1974</em>, translated by G. Burchell, Picador, 2006, 210.
[3] Foucault, <em>Psychiatric Power</em>, 212.
[4] Édouard Séguin, <em>Idiocy: And its Treatment by the Physiological Method</em>, New York Printing Company, 1866, 239.
[5] Séguin, <em>Idiocy</em>, 65.
[6] Séguin, <em>Idiocy</em>, 239.
[7] Séguin, <em>Idiocy</em>, 83–84.
[8] Séguin, <em>Idiocy</em>, 287.
[9] Séguin, <em>Idiocy</em>, 73.
[10] Séguin, <em>Idiocy</em>, 69.
[11] Séguin, <em>Idiocy</em>, 70.
[12] Wallin, <em>The Education of Handicapped Children</em>, 19.
[13] Michel Foucault, <em>Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France 1974–1975</em>,<em></em> translated by G. Burchell, Picador, 2003, 154.
[14] Michel Foucault, <em>The Punitive Society: Lectures at the College de France 1972–1973</em>, translated by G. Burchell, Picador, 2015, 45.
[15] Guillaume Le Trosne, <em>Mémoire sur les vagabonds et sur les mendiants</em>, P.G. Simon, 1764, 9. Our translation.
[16] Michel Foucault, <em>Madness & Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason</em>, translated by R. Howard, Pantheon Books, 1965, 50.
[17] Foucault, <em>Madness & Civilization</em>, 52.
[18] Foucault, <em>Madness & Civilization</em>, 67.
[19] Foucault, <em>The Punitive Society,</em> 55.
[20] Foucault, <em>The Punitive Society</em>, 173–174.
[21] Foucault, <em>The Punitive Society</em>, 191.
[22] Foucault, <em>The Punitive Society</em>, 196.
[23] Michel Foucault, <em>Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961–1984</em>, translated by L. Hochroth and J. Johnston, Semiotext(e), 1989, 92–93.
[24] Michel Foucault, <em>Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison</em>, translated by A. Sheridan, Pantheon Books, 1977, 290–291.
[25] Georges Bataille, <em>Inner Experience</em>, translated by S. Kendall, State University of New York Press, 2014, 47.
[26] Foucault, <em>The Punitive Society</em>, 6.
[27] Michel Foucault, <em>Power/Knowledge: Selections and Interviews 1972–1977,</em> translated by C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, K. Soper, Pantheon Books, 1980, 180.
[28] Nikolai Fedorov, “The Common Task,” in <em>#ACCELERATE: The Accelerationist Reader</em>, Urbanomic, 2017, 90.
|
#pubdate 2009-11-17 10:03:59 +0100
#author ACME Collective
#SORTauthors ACME Collective
#title N30 Black Bloc Communiqué
#lang en
#date December 4, 1999
#SORTtopics anti-globalization, black bloc
#source Retrieved on September 1, 2009 from [[http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ACME.html][www.geocities.com]]
<em>A communiqué from one section of the black bloc of N30 in Seattle</em>
On November 30, several groups of individuals in black bloc attacked various corporate targets in downtown Seattle. Among them were (to name just a few): Fidelity Investment (major investor in Occidental Petroleum, the bane of the U’wa tribe in Colombia) Bank of America, US Bancorp, Key Bank and Washington Mutual Bank (financial institutions key in the expansion of corporate repression) Old Navy, Banana Republic and the GAP (as Fisher family businesses, rapers of Northwest forest lands and sweatshop laborers) NikeTown and Levi’s (whose overpriced products are made in sweatshops) McDonald’s (slave-wage fast-food peddlers responsible for destruction of tropical rainforests for grazing land and slaughter of animals) Starbucks (peddlers of an addictive substance whose products are harvested at below-poverty wages by farmers who are forced to destroy their own forests in the process) Warner Bros. (media monopolists) Planet Hollywood (for being Planet Hollywood).
This activity lasted for over 5 hours and involved the breaking of storefront windows and doors and defacing of facades. Slingshots, newspaper boxes, sledge hammers, mallets, crowbars and nail-pullers were used to strategically destroy corporate property and gain access (one of the three targeted Starbucks and Niketown were looted). Eggs filled with glass etching solution, paint-balls and spray-paint were also used.
The black bloc was a loosely organized cluster of affinity groups and individuals who roamed around downtown, pulled this way by a vulnerable and significant storefront and that way by the sight of a police formation. Unlike the vast majority of activists who were pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed and shot at with rubber bullets on several occasions, most of our section of the black bloc escaped serious injury by remaining constantly in motion and avoiding engagement with the police. We buddied up, kept tight and watched each others’ backs.
Those attacked by federal thugs were un-arrested by quick-thinking and organized members of the black bloc. The sense of solidarity was awe-inspiring.
*** The Peace Police
Unfortunately, the presence and persistence of “peace police” was quite disturbing. On at least 6 separate occasions, so-called “non-violent” activists physically attacked individuals who targeted corporate property. Some even went so far as to stand in front of the Niketown super store and tackle and shove the black bloc away. Indeed, such self-described “peace-keepers” posed a much greater threat to individuals in the black bloc than the notoriously violent uniformed “peace-keepers” sanctioned by the state undercover officers have even used the cover of the activist peace-keepers to ambush those who engage in corporate property destruction).
*** Response to the Black Bloc
Response to the black bloc has highlighted some of the contradictions and internal oppressions of the “nonviolent activist” community. Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of those who engaged in violence against black-clad and masked people (many of whom were harassed despite the fact that they never engaged in property destruction), there is the racism of privileged activists who can afford to ignore the violence perpetrated against the bulk of society and the natural world in the name of private property rights. Window-smashing has engaged and inspired many of the most oppressed members of Seattle’s community more than any giant puppets or sea turtle costumes ever could (not to disparage the effectiveness of those tools in other communities).
*** Ten Myths about the Black Bloc
Here’s a little something to dispel the myths that have been circulating about the N30 black bloc:
1. “They are all a bunch of Eugene anarchists.” While a few may be anarchists from Eugene, we hail from all over the United States, including Seattle. In any case, most of us are familiar with local issues in Seattle (for instance, the recent occupation of downtown by some of the most nefarious of multinational retailers).
1. “They are all followers of John Zerzan.” A lot of rumors have been circulating that we are followers of John Zerzan, an anarcho-primitivist author from Eugene who advocates property destruction. While some of us may appreciate his writings and analyses, he is in no sense our leader, directly, indirectly, philosophically or otherwise.
1. “The mass public squat is the headquarters of the anarchists who destroyed property on November 30<sup>th</sup>.” In reality, most of the people in the “Autonomous Zone” squat are residents of Seattle who have spent most of their time since its opening on the 28<sup>th</sup> in the squat. While they may know of one-another, the two groups are not co-extensive and in no case could the squat be considered the headquarters of people who destroyed property.
1. “They escalated situations on the 30<sup>th</sup>, leading to the tear-gassing of passive, non-violent protesters.” To answer this, we need only note that tear-gassing, pepper-spraying and the shooting of rubber bullets all began before the black blocs (as far as we know) started engaging in property destruction. In addition, we must resist the tendency to establish a causal relationship between police repression and protest in any form, whether it involved property destruction or not. The police are charged with protecting the interests of the wealthy few and the blame for the violence cannot be placed upon those who protest those interests.
1. Conversely: “They acted in response to the police repression.” While this might be a more positive representation of the black bloc, it is nevertheless false. We refuse to be misconstrued as a purely reactionary force. While the logic of the black bloc may not make sense to some, it is in any case a pro-active logic.
1. “They are a bunch of angry adolescent boys.” Aside from the fact that it belies a disturbing ageism and sexism, it is false. Property destruction is not merely macho rabble-rousing or testosterone-laden angst release. Nor is it displaced and reactionary anger. It is strategically and specifically targeted direct action against corporate interests.
1. “They just want to fight.” This is pretty absurd, and it conveniently ignores the eagerness of “peace police” to fight us. Of all the groups engaging in direct action, the black bloc was perhaps the least interested in engaging the authorities and we certainly had no interest in fighting with other anti-WTO activists (despite some rather strong disagreements over tactics).
1. “They are a chaotic, disorganized and opportunistic mob.” While many of us could surely spend days arguing over what “chaotic” means, we were certainly not disorganized. The organization may have been fluid and dynamic, but it was tight. As for the charge of opportunism, it would be hard to imagine who of the thousands in attendance didn’t take advantage of the opportunity created in Seattle to advance their agenda. The question becomes, then, whether or not we helped create that opportunity and most of us certainly did (which leads us to the next myth):
1. “They don’t know the issues” or “they aren’t activists who’ve been working on this.” While we may not be professional activists, we’ve all been working on this convergence in Seattle for months. Some of us did work in our home-towns and others came to Seattle months in advance to work on it. To be sure, we were responsible for many hundreds of people who came out on the streets on the 30<sup>th</sup>, only a very small minority of which had anything to do with the black bloc. Most of us have been studying the effects of the global economy, genetic engineering, resource extraction, transportation, labor practices, elimination of indigenous autonomy, animal rights and human rights and we’ve been doing activism on these issues for many years. We are neither ill-informed nor inexperienced.
1. “Masked anarchists are anti-democratic and secretive because they hide their identities.” Let’s face it (with or without a mask) — we aren’t living in a democracy right now. If this week has not made it plain enough, let us remind you — we are living in a police state. People tell us that if we really think that we’re right, we wouldn’t be hiding behind masks. “The truth will prevail” is the assertion. While this is a fine and noble goal, it does not jive with the present reality. Those who pose the greatest threat to the interests of Capital and State will be persecuted. Some pacifists would have us accept this persecution gleefully. Others would tell us that it is a worthy sacrifice. We are not so morose. Nor do we feel we have the privilege to accept persecution as a sacrifice: persecution to us is a daily inevitability and we treasure our few freedoms. To accept incarceration as a form of flattery betrays a large amount of “first world” privilege. We feel that an attack on private property is necessary if we are to rebuild a world which is useful, healthful and joyful for everyone. And this despite the fact that hypertrophied private property rights in this country translate into felony charges for any property destruction over $250.
*** Motivations of the Black Bloc
The primary purpose of this communiqué is to diffuse some of the aura of mystery that surrounds the black bloc and make some of its motivations more transparent, since our masks cannot be.
*** On the Violence of Property
We contend that property destruction is not a violent activity unless it destroys lives or causes pain in the process. By this definition, private property — especially corporate private property — is itself infinitely more violent than any action taken against it.
Private property should be distinguished from personal property. The latter is based upon use while the former is based upon trade. The premise of personal property is that each of us has what s/he needs. The premise of private property is that each of us has something that someone else needs or wants. In a society based on private property rights, those who are able to accrue more of what others need or want have greater power. By extension, they wield greater control over what others perceive as needs and desires, usually in the interest of increasing profit to themselves.
Advocates of “free trade” would like to see this process to its logical conclusion: a network of a few industry monopolists with ultimate control over the lives of the everyone else. Advocates of “fair trade” would like to see this process mitigated by government regulations meant to superficially impose basic humanitarian standards. As anarchists, we despise both positions.
Private property — and capitalism, by extension — is intrinsically violent and repressive and cannot be reformed or mitigated. Whether the power of everyone is concentrated into the hands of a few corporate heads or diverted into a regulatory apparatus charged with mitigating the disasters of the latter, no one can be as free or as powerful as they could be in a non-hierarchical society.
When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds private property rights. At the same time, we exorcise that set of violent and destructive social relationships which has been imbued in almost everything around us. By “destroying” private property, we convert its limited exchange value into an expanded use value. A storefront window becomes a vent to let some fresh air into the oppressive atmosphere of a retail outlet (at least until the police decide to tear-gas a nearby road blockade). A newspaper box becomes a tool for creating such vents or a small blockade for the reclamation of public space or an object to improve one’s vantage point by standing on it. A dumpster becomes an obstruction to a phalanx of rioting cops and a source of heat and light. A building facade becomes a message board to record brainstorm ideas for a better world.
After N30, many people will never see a shop window or a hammer the same way again. The potential uses of an entire cityscape have increased a thousand-fold. The number of broken windows pales in comparison to the number broken spells — spells cast by a corporate hegemony to lull us into forgetfulness of all the violence committed in the name of private property rights and of all the potential of a society without them. Broken windows can be boarded up (with yet more waste of our forests) and eventually replaced, but the shattering of assumptions will hopefully persist for some time to come.
<quote>
Against Capital and State,
the ACME Collective
</quote>
* * *
Disclaimer: these observations and analyses represent only those of the ACME Collective and should not be construed to be representative of the rest of the black bloc on N30 or anyone else who engaged in riot or property destruction that day.
|
#title Taking responsibility – The burning of a SKAI journalist’s car
#author Action Cell/Metropolis Fallen – FAI/IRF
#SORTtopics Greece, direct action, media, Act for Freedom Now!, communique
#date August 2, 2017
#source <[[https://actforfree.nostate.net/?p=27903][actforfree.nostate.net/?p=27903]]>. Retrieved on 03/07/2024 from [[https://lib.anarhija.net/library/action-cell-metropolis-fallen-fai-irf-taking-responsibility-the-burning-of-a-skai-journalist-s][lib.anarhija.net]].
#lang en
#pubdate 2018-11-01T17:31:58
<quote>
“As long as necessity is socially dreamed, dreaming will remain a social necessity. The spectacle is the bad dream of a modern society in chains and ultimately expresses nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of that sleep.” Guy Debord
</quote>
We are taking responsibility for placing an incendiary device on G.Papahristos’ car outside his house at agios dimitrios, at dawn on 18/4.
G.Papahristos is a piece of human garbage of the journalist circles. His career is similar to others of his ilk. A political all-rounder who, in each period, is called upon to offer his services to the relevant authoritarian interests, be they political or economic, as his professional ventures, from the ‘green’ DOL to the neo-liberal SKAI, demonstrate.
<strong>But what is the institutional role of the journalist?</strong>
For us the journalist makes up a crucial part of the ideological mechanism of the media of mass deception, which is called upon to serve the interests of the state and the capital. Their main service to the afore-mentioned interests is given through the cultivation of fear and the embellishment of certain situations, the means to achieve this is through misleading misinformation in order to create their own concept of reality. In greek ‘democracy’ where freedom of speech hypothetically predominates, as if by magic the ‘pluralism of opinions’ seems to be heading towards that of the political and economic elite. As a result ‘public opinion’ is being dictated by the news and information that the criers of the media circles spread, always aimed at the safety of and lethargy towards the power of the state, helping to expand its security regime and more.
<strong>But how does the lie translate to experience and formulate “public opinion”?</strong>
Through the power of the image the media of mass deception create and reproduce a bubble of virtual reality, where damaged ticket machines are combined with common criminal activity, armed revolutionary struggle with jihadist attacks, lifestyle with sub-culture, immigrant solidarity with NGO charity, and fighting antifascism is connected with racist attacks. The result of the aforementioned practice is the establishment of a distorted and counterfeited truth for the masses’ subconscious, providing the backup for slave drivers and the applauders of the state and capital.
<strong>But what is established through the virtual reality bubble that the mass is experiencing?</strong>
We recognize two parallel procedures, one visible, the other invisible. The visible side, based on the directed demand of the mass for wider control and security, creates high security prisons, special conditions, underground prison wings for the anarchist urban guerrillas, cameras everywhere in the city, crowd control bars, immigrant concentration camps, exaggerated prison penalties to anyone that fights against the rotten existent, cops in every neighbourhood and huge malls for the facilitation of trade flows. The invisible part that we recognize is made from the social relations that are reproduced under the state of that virtual reality. Characteristic examples are the modern bourgeois social relationships based on fear, snitching, hyper-consumerism, alienation, self-indulgent behaviour and apathy and the lust for patriotism and religion. All of these make up the society of total control and a state of suffocating graveyard silence that tends to choke the resistance of the ‘invisibles’ and ‘illegals’ of this society. Under these circumstances a vicious circle is created between state/capital, the media of mass deception and ‘public opinion’ that tends to be autonomous and feeds itself.
As enemies of the society of spectacle we are breaking this vicious circle with the anarchist struggle, as we have defined it on our first statement. We take a fighting position, choosing our means for the fight and breaking the barriers of bourgeois legitimacy. We combine open activity with conspiratorial activity, giving out pamphlets with carrying out arson, solidarity meetings with political executions, everyday resistance with lasting revolutionary action, standing against the fake social relations that authority pushes, and creating real relations of affinity and solidarity within the structures of the anarchist struggle. We are getting rid of the spectator-instigator relationship within our counter-information structures and building instant social interactivity through self-managed expression and collective action. We refuse to live as fearful distorted subordinates by choosing the way of attacking the regime and overcome our established social roles through insurrectional procedures. Our basic reason for action is the transfer of fear that the media of mass deception is spreading and its reflection on the state mechanisms.
To close, we observe that the leftist management of the state pursues the classification/limitation of the means of struggle and the depoliticalization/embodiment of practises that cross legal boundaries. This has two different results. First the asylum-ization of the rebel activities in exarchia, with which we are in solidarity emotionally but also against as long as they don’t spread out into the metropolis and act as depressurizing valves. Parallel to this, the second result, is the internalization of fear and repression in those who are supposedly the ones who resist, which results in limitation of means and criticism of actions that surpass the limits of the law, like beating up the lapdogs of the authorities. The desired goal for us is the unity of theory and action, the means of struggle and practises, all embedded within constant revolutionary activity so that as insurrectionaries we can be really dangerous for the ruling class.
Solidarity to all anarchist revolutionaries and to those that materialize their attacks. Attack by all means against the state, capital and authoritarian institutions.
<em><strong>Action Cell/Metropolis Fallen – FAI/IRF</strong></em>
<em><strong><br></strong></em>
<em>PS: With conspiratorial activity, organizing it and the desire for attack you can destroy the plans of the authoritarians with the same ease that you light up a cigarette</em>
|
#title Revolutionary Fetishism
#author Ada Martí
#LISTtitle Revolutionary Fetishism
#date January 1937
#source Retrieved on 4 June 2023 from [[https://libcom.org/article/revolutionary-fetishism-ada-marti-estudios-160-jan-1937][libcom.org]].
#lang en
#pubdate 2023-06-04T22:22:26
#authors Ada Martí
#topics Spanish Civil War, Spanish Revolution, personality cult
#notes An early critique of the fashion for revolutionary images in Civil War Barcelona. The author was a member of the Libertarian Youth and a leading light in the Federación Estudiantil de Conciencias Libres (Student Free Thought Federation). Originally published in <em>Estudios</em> No. 160. Translation by Danny Evans.
For some time now there has been a flowering – and cultivation – in the kiosks, newspapers and similar, of an infinity of badges and medallions, some quite expensive, that bear the effigy of heroes and forebears of the Spanish Revolution.
Lenin and Karl Marx, Sebastian Faure and Anselmo Lorenzo, sit happily alongside Macià, Companys, Ascaso and Durruti – and what would that brave and modest comrade say if he could see it? – and are offered to the public like religious images at Holy Week.
It would seem that the fetishist instinct of the Spanish people, accustomed since childhood to the cult of idols and dominated by an inheritance of multiple generations of religious authority, cannot yet do without it. Indeed, they rise up in irresistible number against those who would wipe it out forever, and thereby destroy the educational and cultural work of those they glorify and degrade the blood they spilled generously in combat. They have formed a new cult out of the images of our men, a new religion, that substitutes the one which has done so much harm to the working class and which has cost us and which still costs us, enormous efforts to dismantle.
And of course, the traders in Revolution have fallen over themselves to take advantage of the occasion presented them by the naïve fetishism of a people who in spite of their proven strength, remain weak in some respects, and have taken up their posts to sell icons in the same way that they once did with images of Saint Teodisfrasia, virgin and martyr, or of his Holiness Pius XI.
Beware new idols! It may be the case that deep, very deep, in our hears we preserve the sweet and grateful memory of those who contributed with the pen or with blood to the triumph of the proletariat; but we must not convert our home into a museum or, more accurately, into a tacky adolescent’s shrine, our walls covered with drawings and photographs of gallant heroes of novels or the silver screen.
A revolution is not made by sentimental, absurd or picaresque idolatry. The future is not made with the eyes fixed on the past, as beautiful and glorious as it may have been. We have to forge ahead, towards the light; and in the past there is always – always! – something of shadow or fog. No one leaves a transparent past behind them…, and even if it were so, time would envelop it in any case with its grey mist… But let us leave aside such digressions and continue with the matter at hand.
We have to face reality. Fetishism, regardless of the character one wants to give it, serves only to stultify the mentality and energy of the people, encouraging them to think that some other being, whether supernatural or human, will get them off the hook. Of course, someone else might step in, but the people will be left hanging in any case.
In the long run, if they persist in such a lamentable and mistaken attitude, this will prove the end of our men. It won’t be long before we see Saint Buenaventura Durruti, Saint Francisco Ascaso or Saint Aida Lafuente, for example, canonised and on some altar – or public monument, which to me, frankly, amounts to the same thing – until a new purifying revolution does to them what we have done with the ancient and moth-eaten idols of the Catholic Church.
No, a revolution isn’t made like this. At least, it’s not how one should be made. To create a new epoch, the first element required is a new spirit, clean, open to new renovating currents, and sunlit, brought to life by the burning and luminous torch of culture.
One is not a revolutionary because at the end of one’s bed, in the place of Christ or a scantily clad pinup, one has put a bust of Stalin or Kropotkin; nor is one a revolutionary who belongs to half a dozen committees and libertarian athenaeums; nor does it depend on the authors on your bookshelves or, as some would have it, attending innumerable rallies and reading the Confederal press from cover to cover every day. No. The revolutionary – and I make no mention here of parties or ideologies – is, like the poet, born. Whether they are able to develop or not, whether, like so many young authors, they languish and die before reaching full maturity, is the least of it. One can be a revolutionary born of aristocrats or bourgeois. The most important thing is that the spirit is there. Then, the circumstances will determine whether or not it bears fruit.
It is true that a revolution may come about – and generally does – as a result of hunger, or contagion, or environmental factors. But for it to continue existing in its pure state, it first requires an ideal – if not, look at what occurred in Russia; and second it needs vigour, to develop fully.
If we don’t take care, the same thing will happen in Spain. There are too many two-faced revolutionaries and more still who have become revolutionaries to satisfy the demands of their stomach. And that is most dangerous, because if we continue like this, it will lead us to failure, or what is still worse, to fall headlong into a statist dictatorship.
|
#title The Decalogue as Revised
#author Adam Anarchist
#SORTtopics manifesto, christianity, religion
#date June 30, 1894
#source https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/catechisms-and-dialogues/adam-anarchist-the-decalogue-as-revised-1894/
#lang en
#notes <em>Liberty</em> 10 no. 4 (June 30, 1894): 8.
I. Thou shalt have no gods save Liberty, Reason, and Justice.
II. Thou shalt not take unto thee any legal image, for instance, a wife.
III. Thou shalt pay no taxes, nor collect them.
IV. The Sabbath exists for thee, not thou for it, therefore thou shalt on that as on all other days follow faithfully thy ego’s promptings.
V. Honor render to all to whom it is due—mayhap to thy parents. But let not filial affection blind thee to the fact that the vast majority of the race are strangers to Reason, without ability to perceive or strength to practise any rational policy. While thou mayest not relish declaring to thy parents’ faces that they are fools, yet thou shouldst learn from their folly so to act that thy child may not brand thee “fool.”
VI. Thou shalt not kill aught save superstition, error, and privilege.
VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Adultery is the sexual union of two persons, either of whom is repulsive to the other.
VIII. Thou shalt not permit others to steal from thee, nor shalt thou steal from others.
IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness respecting things of the earth which thou understandest, nor respecting things above the earth of which thou knowest nothing.
X. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, unless she also covet thee.
|
#title NO! Against Adult Supremacy Vol. 4
#author Various Authors
#SORTauthors Adam Fletcher; Benjamin Fife; John Taylor Gatto
#SORTtopics adult supremacy, parenting, child rights, child liberation, anti-oppression, unschooling, youth liberation, ageism, youth, kids, adolescence, play, games, school, education, NO! Against Adult Supremacy
#source Retrieved on february 29, 2019 from https://stinneydistro.wordpress.com/index/
#lang en
#seriesname NO! Against Adult Supremacy
#seriesnumber 4
*** Why We Can’t Wait, by Adam Fletcher
<verse>
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor;
it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
I look at the people around me
and see the prisons and traps
we are all stuck.
From an early age we are taught and trained:
sit still, hold on, walk (don’t run),
and be quiet.
Whatever you do, be quiet.
</verse>
<verse>
So we do. We go to polite schools or content jobs.
We type and read and feel nice.
Our hair is nice and our hearts are nice.
We live nice lives.
</verse>
<verse>
But what if…
what if we were shown the whole picture
from the first day?
What if they said
“Hey, when you’re poor, you’re screwed.
If you’re black, you’re facing an uphill road.
If you’re female, you’re up a creek.
Oh, yeah, and you’ll be young too!
Let’s not even go there!“
</verse>
<verse>
What if we could awaken all people to the chains that tie them
down?
What if everyone saw that
we are responsible for holding ourselves down?
What if the message of systematic and deliberate oppression
was exposed and the entire society
– everyone everywhere - saw that young people are
looked down upon,
frowned upon,
sat upon
and shat upon?
</verse>
<verse>
Then they become adults.
The world turns.
They start pooping on youth…
and the cycle continues.
</verse>
<verse>
We’ve gotta speak up, act up, and quit
putting up, giving up and settling down.
</verse>
<verse>
We cannot wait any longer.
</verse>
<verse>
Its time to get up, stand up, scream out loud and dream out loud.
We’ve gotta break outta the chains that hold us down.
We’ve gotta stand up for what is ours:
Freedom.
To earn, to learn, to speak, to serve.
</verse>
<verse>
We’ve gotta tie people together
instead of tearing them apart.
We’re taught that we’re not the same because we are
young and old
black and white
educated and ignorant
rich and poor.
</verse>
<verse>
But we’re the same.
And that’s why young people have got to be free.
</verse>
<verse>
No one is free until everyone is free.
Free Youth Now.
</verse>
*** On Play and Development, by Benjamin Fife
In 1978 a collection of writings by the Russian psychologist L.S. Vygotsky’s was published in English for the first time. Among these writings was a new translation of an important article he wrote on play and its relationship to development. The 1978 publication offered American psychologists and educators new ways of thinking about child development.
Partly due to the cold war, access to Vygotsky’s ideas had been very limited in the United States. Only one important article of his had been published in English up to that point, and that was in 1962, twenty eight years after his death. In the seventies, Alexander Luria, an influential neuropsychologist and a student of Vygotsky’s convinced a group of American academics to publish a collection of Vygotsky’s essays called Mind In Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.
It is remarkable reading his essays now to think about how well they have held up over time (They were written in the late 1920s and early 1930s). I find chapter 7 of his book, The role of play in development, very useful for thinking about how play relates to cognitive and socio-emotional development.
If there is something in my summary of Vygotsky’s work that you find useful or interesting, consider checking out his wonderful book.
**** Understanding play helps to understand children’s changing relationships to their own needs.
Vygotsky begins his chapter The Role of Play in Development reminding readers that if we see play only as something children are doing for enjoyment, then we miss an important aspect of play - its relationship to development. At the same time we should keep in mind the parts of play that are about children’s needs and motivations - including the need for pleasure and fun. Vygotsky’s goal is to form a complete picture of play, what it makes play possible, and what play allows to happen later in life.
Vygotsky wants to make sure that children’s motivations are fully considered when thinking about play and development. He highlights a constant relationship between need, motivation and development in play. Specific needs that children are motivated to satisfy through play change as a child grows.
**** Play and Development: Developing the capacity to wait.
Part of what changes in children as they grow older is how long they can wait before a need is satisfied. Vygotsky writes “No one has met a child under three who wants to do something a few days in the future.”(p. 93)
When a very young child can’t have something she wants or can’t do something she wants to do she gets upset immediately. Maybe she even tantrums. She might be able to be distracted by a skilled and lucky caregiver, but that is not the same as being able to wait.
As a child gets older she starts to recognize that there are some needs that can’t be satisfied right away. Vygotsky sees play as the first activity that allows a child to hold off on having a need satisfied. For Vygotsky, play is the activity in young children that in older children and adults becomes the experience of having an imagination. To Vygotsky imagination as experienced by older children, adolescents and adults is “play without action.”(p. 93)
**** What is play made of?
Vygotsky argues that two things - imagination and rules - are necessary components to play. Even play that seems to have no rules and seems very connected to reality, has both imagination and rules if you know where to look.
Take for example a pair of siblings playing a game they call “being siblings”. They hold hands, talk the same, dress the same, maybe the older one talks in authoritative ways to the younger one about things that belong to them, and things that belong to other people. It might not seem at first that there are a lot of rules or much imagination - but Vygotsky sees it differently. In this kind of play, the children are distilling rules about what it means to be siblings - they are taking the things that people don’t notice in day to day life, and making them the rules of play. They are also imagining what is different to adults and to others about the relationships siblings have with each other from the relationships they have with the rest of the world. The game allows them to figure out, through the use of imagination, the meaning of being sisters instead of just living the day to day experience of being sisters.
Any play with imagination has rules. Playing house involves rules of how members of the family behave. Whatever the imaginary game, be it cops and robbers, or space explorers or mom and baby, or monsters attacking the town, rules are there. Often these are not rules that the child comes up with ahead of time but rather rules that emerge from the imaginary situation the child presents - rules about who wins and how, rules of how monsters, babies, mommies, and townspeople act.
For Vygotsky games are activities where rules and imagination are always present and where each helps to make the other. Even later games that seem to be all rules and no imagination - games like chess, actually contain both. Accepting the rules of the game, “here we are in a scenario where knights move like this and bishops move like this and the game ends when one of us captures the other’s king,” means entering into a shared imaginary situation.
For Vygotsky what defines something as an imaginary situation is the fact that a person accepts some rules and the rules limit the possibilities for action.
According to this theory developmental progress in play goes from a child having games that look mostly like imaginary situations but have hidden rules to having games with clear rules and a less obvious imaginary situation.
**** When does play in an imaginary situation start?
Play in an imaginary situation usually starts around 3 years old. This is about the time when a child goes from reacting mostly to the environment to being motivated by cognitive factors as well. Of course there is variation in the ages when children start to play - but a huge amount of brain development happens between 2 and 3 that allows for new kinds of thinking to emerge at about 3 years old.
A three year old can plan in a way that a 2 year old simply cannot yet. Vygotsky gives the example of a 2 year old who is facing at a stone. An adult asks him to sit on the stone and he has a very hard time following the directions. The task is difficult because planning the actions required to turn around first and then sit down is cognitively too complex. The stone is right there in front of him and he he’s committed to doing something with it. If he turns around he won’t be able to see it anymore and figuring out the interaction with the stone will be incredibly difficult. Where two year olds are generally motivated by what they see in front of them, three year olds can often begin to hold a plan in mind and figure out the steps needed to make that plan happen.
**** Objects and Motivation
For most children under about three years old objects in the environment contain their own inherent motivation. For an infant, everything is to be explored with every sense. For the toddler, objects in the environment are recognized and are associated with a concrete use. Doors are for opening, stairs are for climbing, bells are for ringing. Everything that the under three year old child perceives in her environment is in itself a motivation to do something; to approach or to avoid - to interact with in a concrete way.
It is usually only at about age three when something a child perceives can start to be used in an imaginary scenario - for example a stick can be ridden as if it were a pony. What is happening when a child starts to play this way is a giant cognitive step from early childhood. Unlike before, a child at play can now see an object in her environment and act based on what she is thinking about rather than based on what she is seeing. This allows children to start taking actions based on meaning rather than perception.
**** What is happening in preschool aged play?
Vygotsky sees something special happening at preschool age - specifically thought and objects become separate allowing children’s actions to begin to come from their ideas instead of their reactions to things.
Little by little objects in the world that have some similarities to things a child is thinking about can be used in play as if they were the things the child is thinking about. So a stick, because a child can swing a leg over it and pretend to ride it can become a play horse, and a piece of wood, because it is about the right size and shape, can become a baby doll.
This is a transitional stage - and it is important to remember that what the child is doing here is at times for the child hard work. It is also important to remember that the object the child picks to stand for the thing she is thinking about has to have some of the same properties as that thing and it has to be able to be used as if it were the thing, not just any object in the environment will do.
**** The Object to Meaning Ratio
Vygotsky has a math-like formula for understanding what is happening here. One of the things that is special about being human, he says, is that we can make meaning out of objects. We can look at a clock and where an animal might see a round thingy with two straight thingies in it, we can distinguish a clock, and know what the parts of it are and its specific uses. He proposes that for people there is an object to meaning ratio. Early in life, when we are infants and toddlers the object value in the ratio is higher and the meaning value is lower. Later in life the meaning value can be higher and the object value is lower. Play is the activity in development that allows for that change to start to happen. Meaning enters into how a child understands her enviornment when the child starts to use objects as if they were something else - when the stick, because of how it is used starts to mean “horse.”
**** The Limits of Play
Where an adult can take a match and put it on a table next to a postcard and say to another adult “OK, so imagine the horse is here and the barn is here” and be understood, that kind of symbolic communication isn’t available to a preschool child. The stick isn’t a sign for horse the way the adult uses the match as a sign for horse. The stick’s meaning comes from the fact that it can be used as if it were a horse. This difference for Vygostsky highlights how play is a transitional activity between the way very young children experience the world in terms of the situations they are in, and the way adults can have abstract thoughts that don’t have anything to do with real-life situations.
**** Play and Later Development
Play also paves the way for later, more complex, relationships children will have to meaning through activities like writing. In play a child makes a thing stand for something else without knowing that is what she is doing. Later activities like reading and writing will be based on doing that same thing with awareness; making one thing (for example the word “tree” written in pencil) call up an idea about another thing (the tree outside my window) with the full knowledge that is what you are doing.
Play allows creative things to happen. It gives young children their first opportunity to take the meaning of something they know about from one environment and put it in a new reality. For example it allows a child to ride her pony in her classroom, even if the pony is a stick, or to be a nurse in her bedroom taking her teddy-bear’s temperature with a crayon. Play also allows a child to both have pleasurable experiences and to delay pleasurable experiences at the same time.
Take for example the child who really wants a pony but can’t have one for the usual reasons of space, money, and everything else that stops us from buying every child a pony. Imaginary play allows her to have the experiences she imagines having if she did have a pony, and to tolerate the fact that she has to operate within a certain set of external rules that doesn’t allow her to have a real pony. She also gets to come up with the rules of play herself that are involved in the experience of having a pony. Where in a lot of childhood experiences following a rule feels like giving up on pleasure, in play coming up with the rules of play and then following them becomes the source of pleasure in itself. Vygotsky sees here the seeds of both self restraint and self determination.
**** What Changes in Play Look Like
A preschool child’s relationship to her own actions changes through play. In the play of a young preschool age child all of the actions the child takes will more or less mirror the activities she is imagining. When she is pretending to eat toy food from toy plates she will usually do all of the things that she would do when eating from real food from real plates. As play progresses, her actions will take on more diversity and things she with her body will start to stand for actions instead of just mimicking them.
Let’s return to the example of the older preschool child playing at riding a pony using a stick. Maybe stomping her feet quickly while standing in place becomes the way she rides the pony very very fast. She isn’t imitating the action here so much as doing something that has elements of how she thinks about “riding a pony” (the loudness of the stomping, the speed of moving her feet). Action in play also has a ratio type relationship to meaning. For the younger child action determined meaning, for the older child meanings were assigned to actions.
**** Play as a Preview
Vygostky sees play as a place where children can experiment with what comes next developmentally. For him play represents a “zone of proximal development,” a time when a child can experience being developmentally older than she is in other parts of her life. In that way play is probably the single most important activity that prepares children for future developmental progress. Actions children take in the imaginative realms of play give them opportunities to set goals, develop plans, and see activities through. Outside of play a child might not be ready to do some of the things she can do inside of play, but once she does them in play she is well on the road to doing them in other areas of her life.
For example, a child with anxiety about sleeping in her own bed may be able to participate in a game where a caregiver plays at putting her to sleep in her own bed and she plays at falling asleep. While intending this as a game, the child may really be able to fall asleep. In such a game she might be able to have her first sense of being able to do something she could not do before. Over time this play skill could transition into becoming a day to day skill she can use.
In another instance a child who cannot yet read may play at reading a book to a friend or stuffed animal. The play may include explaining the pictures, turning pages, checking to make sure the stuffed animal or friend is paying attention, and telling a story in a way that links specific moments with specific feelings. Each of these may be things that the child cannot yet do outside of the play scenario. Play, by the way it provides an imaginary scenario in which a child performs real actions frees a child from some of the constraints of everyday life and allows her to do things she can’t do elsewhere.
Ultimately Vygotsky sees two very important developmental skills emerging from play
1. abstract thought - which he sees as developing from play in imaginary situations
1. and the ability to differentiate work from play and to work creatively within sets of rules - which he sees coming from the development of rules and experimentation with relationships to rules within imaginary scenarios.
In this way it is play that for preschool age children sets the fundamental groundwork for later complex thought and motivated action.
*** Against School, by John Taylor Gatto
I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers’ lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn’t get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?
We all are. My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else’s. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn’t know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainly not to be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever, and here and there over the years I was able to pass on the lesson to some remarkable student. For the most part, however, I found it futile to challenge the official notion that boredom and childishness were the natural state of affairs in the classroom. Often I had to defy custom, and even bend the law, to help kids break out of this trap.
The empire struck back, of course; childish adults regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty. I once returned from a medical leave to discover that all evidence of my having been granted the leave had been purposely destroyed, that my job had been terminated, and that I no longer possessed even a teaching license. After nine months of tormented effort I was able to retrieve the license when a school secretary testified to witnessing the plot unfold. In the meantime my family suffered more than I care to remember. By the time I finally retired in 1991, I had more than enough reason to think of our schools - with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers - as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way, too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight - simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.
But we don’t do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the “problem” of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no “problem” with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would “leave no child behind”? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?
Do we really need school? I don’t mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don’t hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn’t, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelveyear wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever “graduated” from a secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn’t go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry, like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren’t looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.
We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of “success” as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, “schooling,” but historically that isn’t true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons. Why, then, do Americans confuse education with just such a system? What exactly is the purpose of our public schools?
Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold:
1. To make good people.
1. To make good citizens.
1. To make each person his or her personal best.
These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education’s mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling’s true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not
<quote>
“to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim.. . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States . . . and that is its aim everywhere else.”
</quote>
Because of Mencken’s reputation as a satirist, we might be tempted to dismiss this passage as a bit of hyperbolic sarcasm. His article, however, goes on to trace the template for our own educational system back to the now vanished, though never to be forgotten, military state of Prussia. And although he was certainly aware of the irony that we had recently been at war with Germany, the heir to Prussian thought and culture, Mencken was being perfectly serious here. Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern.
The odd fact of a Prussian provenance for our schools pops up again and again once you know to look for it. William James alluded to it many times at the turn of the century. Orestes Brownson, the hero of Christopher Lasch’s 1991 book, The True and Only Heaven, was publicly denouncing the Prussianization of American schools back in the 1840s. Horace Mann’s “Seventh Annual Report” to the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1843 is essentially a paean to the land of Frederick the Great and a call for its schooling to be brought here. That Prussian culture loomed large in America is hardly surprising, given our early association with that utopian state. A Prussian served as Washington’s aide during the Revolutionary War, and so many German- speaking people had settled here by 1795 that Congress considered publishing a German-language edition of the federal laws. But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens - all in order to render the populace “manageable.”
It was from James Bryant Conant - president of Harvard for twenty years, WWI poison-gas specialist, WWII executive on the atomic-bomb project, high commissioner of the American zone in Germany after WWII, and truly one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century - that I first got wind of the real purposes of American schooling. Without Conant, we would probably not have the same style and degree of standardized testing that we enjoy today, nor would we be blessed with gargantuan high schools that warehouse 2,000 to 4,000 students at a time, like the famous Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after I retired from teaching I picked up Conant’s 1959 book-length essay, The Child the Parent and the State, and was more than a little intrigued to see him mention in passing that the modern schools we attend were the result of a “revolution” engineered between 1905 and 1930. A revolution? He declines to elaborate, but he does direct the curious and the uninformed to Alexander Inglis’s 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, in which “one saw this revolution through the eyes of a revolutionary.”
Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever reintegrate into a dangerous whole.
Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:
1. The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can’t test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
1. The integrating function. This might well be called “the conformity function,” because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
1. The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student’s proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in “your permanent record.” Yes, you do have one.
1. The differentiating function. Once their social role has been “diagnosed,” children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
1. The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin’s theory of natural selection as applied to what he called “the favored races.” In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That’s what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
1. The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
There you have it. Now you know. We don’t need Karl Marx’s conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don’t conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” But the motives behind the disgusting decisions that bring about these ends need not be class-based at all. They can stem purely from fear, or from the by now familiar belief that “efficiency” is the paramount virtue, rather than love, liberty, laughter, or hope. Above all, they can stem from simple greed.
There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the small business or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn’t actually need. Mandatory schooling was a godsend on that count. School didn’t have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all. And that left them sitting ducks for another great invention of the modem era - marketing.
Now, you needn’t have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children. School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident. Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to our own Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up. In the 1934 edition of his once well-known book Public Education in the United States, Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and praised the way the strategy of successive school enlargements had extended childhood by two to six years, and forced schooling was at that point still quite new. This same Cubberley - who was dean of Stanford’s School of Education, a textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin, and Conant’s friend and correspondent at Harvard - had written the following in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration: “Our schools are . . . factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned.. . . And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.”
It’s perfectly obvious from our society today what those specifications were. Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we’re upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don’t bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to “be careful what you say,” even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it.
Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they’ll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff school teachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Wellschooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.
First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don’t let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a preteen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there’s no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.
|
#title Beyond Hope
#author Adam Greenfield
#date June 21<sup>st</sup>, 2024
#source Retrieved on January 7, 2025 from https://illwill.com/beyond-hope
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-01-08T02:45:55
#authors Adam Greenfield
#topics Ill Will Editions; mutual aid; climate change; long emergency;
As the real impacts of climate change wreak ever greater havoc on our lives, it is increasingly clear that “climate change” has also become an ideological apparatus meant to entrap us in despair, policy paralysis, and reformist horizons. While North America once again bakes in a record-breaking heat wave this week, the “pragmatic” options in the field of politics are intended to swing us to one of two presidential candidates, each a loyal servant to fossil capital, and each wholly committed to the survival of the economy at the expense of any form of collective flourishing.
Adam Greenfield’s new book <em>Lifehouse</em> offers vital proposals to escape from this trap. Counterposing <em>our</em> pragmatism to that of the system, he uses a designer’s eye to find the correct scale at which we can begin practically building structures for dignified collective survival in the face of what he calls the “Long Emergency,” and perhaps, begin planning a counterattack. The framework of the Long Emergency offers a useful reconceptualization of the entire sequence of climate change. It is vital, he argues, to grasp how “the second- and third-order consequences of global heating” engender a “breach in the ordinary that simultaneously challenges the structures of power we’re familiar with, endangers most everything we hold dear, and furnishes us with a rare opportunity to build something more in line with our deepest values.”
Greenfield’s proposal — the construction of “lifehouses” — is neither a rigid formula nor a panacea. Rather, it proposes a new way of viewing the spaces discarded by our decaying society, and for developing strategic forms of action for their appropriation and collective usage that operate at an appropriate scale and temporality. Such a strategy must be modest in its beginnings, yet capable of pulling us into the real stakes of shared life in our neighborhoods; above all, it must be effective in creating collective power and resilience not just in a hypothetical future crisis, but <em>now</em>. In this way, the Lifehouse may be understood as a contribution to the ongoing debate over the role of autonomous structures in confronting capitalist crisis and social conflict, from Berlin (https://illwill.com/fire-to-the-houseprojects-2) to San Cristóbal (https://illwill.com/zapatista-autonomy).
Lifehouse is available from Verso Books next month. Below are two selections from the chapter “Beyond Hope.”
------
And so we find ourselves at a moment of decision. What can we do now, to make our way through the terrifying set of conditions we’ve inherited? What choices are available to us?
We can buy less, and more locally, in the hope that in aggregating and responding to our purchase signals, the market will commit itself, permanently and worldwide, to a low-carbon production pathway.
We can vote, in the hope of electing legislatures and governments committed to real climate action and able to see their policies enacted as binding law.
We can protest, in the hope that legislators will note and heed the will of their constituents, and that governments and transnational bodies can be pushed toward a more aggressive defense of the planet, whether they were elected or not.
We can engage in civil disobedience, in the hope that we can convince enough of our fellow citizens of the lateness of the hour, and that they, too, will be motivated to <em>do something</em>.
We can engage in the sabotage of extractive industries, in the hope that their calculus of return on investment can be shifted, and that shareholders will tire of plundering the Earth for so little in the way of gain.
We can work toward the revolutionary seizure of power, in the hope that we will succeed in time to take meaningful action on climate, and that our success will inspire other would-be insurgents to undertake and accomplish the same, everywhere.
We can entrust our fate to technical means, in the hope that someone somewhere will invent a way of safely decarbonizing the atmosphere, or reflecting the sun’s heat back to space, or stabilizing the ice sheets where they are, or really all of that.
Each of us is free to commit to any of these courses of action, or — at the risk of some incoherence — even all of them at once. They are all based on a self-consistent theory of change of one sort or another. But despite their superficial differences, all of these strategies share some deep qualities in common. They are all indirect: they leave you moored in your life, standing by, doing nothing to develop your own capacities. They act with delayed effect: however long they take to work, we can be reasonably sure that it is not soon enough. They are wildly contingent on the coordinated efforts of others, depending on the energy, conviction, and incorruptibility of human beings beyond our reach or ability to influence, and their capacity to cooperate with one another at scale.
Finally, there’s no guarantee that any of them will work or even produce any measurable results at all. You could invest every iota of your life energy in any of these strategies for change for the rest of your days on Earth and move the needle on climate not at all.
This leaves us with one final possibility. We can <em>act</em> — directly, immediately, locally, without waiting for the state or any other institution to undertake our defense. What might that look like?
In her wonderful social history of squatting on New York’s Lower East Side, <em>Ours to Lose</em>, Amy Starecheski tells the story of the electricity-generating stationary bicycle set up on the sidewalk outside C-Squat on Avenue C, which supplied power to a bank of phone chargers during the extended outages that followed Superstorm Sandy.[1] The entire community gathered around the chargers, at first simply to top up their phones, but later simply because that’s where the people were. Over these days and weeks, the sidewalk in front of C-Squat was the most obvious place for people experiencing a sharp, sudden disruption of their way of life to seek out useful information, the comfort of fellowship and vital material support.
Here in microcosm is a model for the kind of community infrastructure we will need to see us through the Long Emergency: when the grid goes down or the water from the pipes isn’t safe to drink, there ought to be a place close at hand where we can attend to these material needs ... that is <em>also</em> a place where we might seek the strength, insight, and reassurance of others in the same straits.
As the unfolding reality of Earth system collapse increasingly intersects with the organized abandonment of our communities, and the complex systems we rely upon for the maintenance of everyday life prove to be far more fragile and contingent than we’d ever understood them to be, many of us will have more and more need of settings like this. What I believe our troubled times now ask of us is that we be more conscious and purposive about creating them in our communities — each one provisioned against the hour of maximum need and linked with others in a loose, confederal network. I call them “Lifehouses.”
The fundamental idea of the Lifehouse is that there should be a place in every three- or four-city-block radius where you can charge your phone when the power’s down everywhere else, draw drinking water when the supply from the mains is for whatever reason untrustworthy, gather with your neighbors to discuss matters of common concern, organize reliable childcare, borrow tools it doesn’t make sense for any one household to own individually and so on — and that <em>these can and should be one and the same place</em>. As a foundation for collective resourcefulness, the Lifehouse is a practical implementation of the values we’ve spent this book exploring.
There’s a kind of positive externality that emerges from organizing things in this way, as well. As we’ve seen, one of the problems that always vexes those of us who believe in the assembly, and similar deeply participatory ways of managing our communities, is that these types of deliberation are often a hard sell. Most of us are exhausted, for starters. Our lives already hem us in with obligations and prior commitments, situations that require our presence and undivided attention.
We may not always have the energy or the wherewithal to travel very far to “participate,” even if we’re convinced in the abstract of the value of doing so. If the place of assembly is right in our immediate neighborhood, though? And we happen to be going there <em>anyway</em>, to charge a phone, pick up the kids, return a borrowed dehumidifier, or simply seek shelter from the heat? Then the odds that any one of us will get meaningfully involved in the stewardship of collective services increases considerably.
Just like the phone chargers on the table outside C-Squat, think of the infrastructural provisions as the “killer app”: the compelling proposition that pulls people into the Lifehouse. But the deep value is in the other voices we encounter there.
Lifehouses would be most useful if we thought of them as places to help us ride out the depredations of neoliberal austerity <em>now</em>, as well as the storms to come. This means furnishing every cluster of a hundred or so households with access to a structure that’s been fitted out as a shelter for those displaced from their homes, a storehouse for emergency food stocks and a heating-and-cooling center for the physically vulnerable. It should be able to purify enough drinking water, and generate enough electric power, to support the surrounding neighborhood when the ordinary sources of supply become unreliable. And it should be staffed, on a 24/7 basis, by volunteers who know the neighborhood and its residents well and have a developed sense for the matters that concern them most.
That way, when the moment strikes, there’s no need to organize makeshift distribution sites like the tent in Malik Rahim’s driveway, or hope that the parish church has a rector sympathetic enough to offer up their space. Both the physical facilities and the social networks to support a robust local mutual care effort are already in place. Indeed, that care effort is at this point the merest extension or intensification of what people are already doing in their everyday lives.
The value of such a place extends past the material to the social, psychic and affective. If a Lifehouse can be somewhere to gather and purify rainwater, the nexus of a solar-powered neighborhood microgrid and a place to grow vegetables, it can also be a base for other services and methods of self-provision — a community workshop, a drop-in center for young people or the elderly and a place for peer-to-peer modes of care like the “hologram” Cassie Thornton derived from her experience of the Greek solidarity clinics to latch on. It can be all those things at once, provisioned and run by the people living in its catchment area.
If mutual care needs a site, and so does collective power, then that site should draw out and strengthen the connections between these ways of being in the world.
It is imperative in this that we avoid any suggestion of planning or pre-defining something that must emerge organically from people’s own priorities and decisions. <em>Everything</em> important about this idea must be worked out in practice, in the light of local experiences, local struggles, and local values. But in what follows, I’d nevertheless like to set out some of my own thoughts about the things a Lifehouse ought to do and be.
At the outset, though, I should probably set some expectations about what Lifehouses <em>cannot</em> achieve.
It’s clear even in these early days of the Long Emergency that the scale of devastation involved in many climate-driven events will often be so extreme that no community hub will be able to hold its own. There is no suggestion here that (for example) any facility will help a community survive sustained wet-bulb temperatures above 35°C (95°F) if it is unable to maintain its own cooling, or shelter people from the total destruction of a runaway wildfire, or do anything at all for them if it is submerged beneath rising floodwaters.
Not every community Lifehouse, further, will be able to provide for each and every circumstance it might be confronted with. It’s obviously hard to purify enough rainwater to drink when there hasn’t been a drop of precipitation for months, or to grow anything unaided in soil that’s been depleted of its fertility over decades. However resourceful people may be, there will inevitably be times that they need tools, medicines or equipment that simply cannot be procured or produced locally. In part, this is why we cannot imagine the Lifehouse as something that stands alone. Each one needs to be linked with others in some confederal structure, so they can distribute some of their burdens across the network in moments of acute pressure, and in this way bear up under what might otherwise be an intolerable load.
But even that fails to address the central reservation that some who are otherwise sympathetic to the idea may hold. A Lifehouse, even a large-scale network of Lifehouses, is not the revolution. It cannot directly hold to account any of the actors we know are responsible for our peril. It can do nothing overt to prevent the larger forces of market and state from continuing to dominate the world and in doing so desecrate it. Our commitment to build the Lifehouse may even dovetail uncomfortably with the premise, if not the conclusion, of an argument we know the extractive industries are preparing to foist upon us — that it is too late to stop the planet from heating and therefore that there is little enough sense impeding them in their pursuit of profit. And for this reason alone, the idea will not be acceptable to many who think of themselves as belonging to the progressive tradition. All a Lifehouse can ever do is give people a space in which they might realize a vision of social ecology, tending to themselves and the planet by practicing and experiencing solidarity, mutual care, and self-determination.
In the fullness of time, this may itself prove to be a form of slow repair and, should it propagate widely enough, a healing of the damage done. But in any timeframe we will live to see, any Lifehouse will, at best, remain what scholars of these things call a “heterotopia of resistance”: a space organized outside, apart from, and in opposition to the main currents of a society.[2] Establishing such spaces may or may not help to advance the grander vision of ecological accountability and justice we cherish, but I think we will be very glad to have recourse to them when the moment of need arrives.
It probably does need to be said in so many words, though, that despite the inherently global nature of this crisis, just about everything about the discussion that follows concerns actions we take in our own backyard.
When everything goes sideways, we’re largely compelled to make do with the resources in our immediate vicinity. But there’s a good argument to be made for continuing to organize and work locally, too. At this most granular scale, it ought to be possible for us to reassert at least some control over our conditions and to witness the results of our efforts.
That “witness” is vital in ways that aren’t simply about functionalist assessment. In dark times, we need to be able to see the impact of our actions to keep despair at bay. We need to feel like there’s some more or less direct gearing between the choices we make together and the concrete extension of shelter to those in danger. We need, in other words, to feel our power. That only really becomes possible when the questions we are deciding involve things that are close at hand. [...]
--------
If we want to build ourselves a refuge against the hard times to come, then, at least one way of doing so seems clear. We don’t have to imagine the revolutionary seizure of state power, or some <em>deus ex machina</em> event that wipes the slate clean and allows us to begin anew. All we need to imagine is a meshwork of Lifehouses spanning the land, each one a place where people come to avail themselves of sanctuary, restoration, sustenance, and solace, each one managed and governed by the people who use it. If this is in some ways an ambitious vision, it’s also one that is comparably modest and achievable. Amid all the anguish of our great undoing, it sketches the improbable outlines of something extraordinary: a wildcat infrastructure of care, drawing on the best that is in us, to shelter the most vulnerable among us, at the very moment we need it.
But in order for any of this to come into being, someone still has to be the first to act.
In her great novel of “ambiguous utopia,” <em>The Dispossessed</em>, Ursula K. Le Guin has her protagonist, the heterodox physicist Shevek, form a “syndicate of initiative” with his partner and a few allies at just such a moment of decision.[3] The members of a syndicate of initiative speak for no one else. They act only in their own names, guided solely by their own assessment of the moment and what it requires. They take upon themselves the full responsibility for acting and remain accountable for their choices in the face of opposition that seeks to undermine everything they endeavor to achieve. But what they do redefines the parameters of the situation they contend with.
There is a curious parallel between the choice Shevek and his syndics make and that made by anyone who undertakes some program of mutual care outside the state. The first moments of any project along these lines are always fraught with risk, and in such moments it’s easy to be dissuaded by the daunting weight of all the forces aligned against success.
But here I want to invoke what I earlier described as “the great secret of Occupy Sandy,” a quality that we know from the testimony of people involved is something it shared with Common Ground, the Greek solidarity clinics, and the communes of Rojava above all: taking initiative in this way feels wonderful. Taking concrete action in defense of our communities — <em>doing something</em> about the situation we find ourselves in and exercising collective power over it — is reparative in itself, and in specific for the numbing dread that otherwise gnaws at us in this time of storms. It can even help us manage the helpless, corrosive rage occasioned by the cruelty and injustice of this Emergency, or the terror we feel at the thought of our pending nonexistence.[4]
If we have reason to expect that a surging sense of joy and reconnection is what awaits us at the culmination of our effort, that ought to be enough to see us through the difficulties of its inception. Or enough, anyway, that we’re able to show up for ourselves and for all those who need us.
So let us organize our own syndicates of initiative and together build the Lifehouse. Let’s start with what is closest at hand, build outward from there and link our efforts with those of the others who have set themselves the same task. Let’s let go, finally, gratefully, of all our vain hope for the future and use that energy instead to undertake the work — the necessary work — of care, of repair, of survival.
--------
There is just one final thing to say about the Lifehouse and whatever promise it may hold, which is that the powerful generally cannot tolerate and will not simply let people pursue even the humblest projects of autonomy and self-determination. Across the centuries, popular attempts at self-reliance and self-definition have been assailed wherever and whenever they have appeared, by state and nonstate actors both. But everything history teaches us about the fate of such initiatives since the days of the Paris Commune suggests that the state constitutes by far the greater threat to their existence.[5] What brought the Commune to its abrupt end, after a mere seventy two days, was the same thing that has so often doomed the ventures in self-governance that followed: exogenous state violence. From Vienna’s Karl-Marx-Hof in 1934 to Barcelona in 1939 to Rojava in 2019, in fact, just about any time a space has emerged in which even modest numbers of people have managed to organize the necessities of life on their own initiative, those spaces, those people, and all their hopes have been crushed by force of arms.[6] It may well be that all of these experiments might sooner or later have succumbed to their own internal tensions and contradictions, but we’ll never know that — because what actually cut them short was the armed might of the state.
In our time, of course, most liberatory projects fall well short of any point at which they might even remotely constitute a threat to power or capital of the sort that was posed by Communard Paris, Red Vienna, or revolutionary Barcelona. But to ensure that this remains the case, a thoroughgoing program of preemptive harassment is directed at anything that might constitute a kernel of insurgent counterpower, most especially so if the actors involved are in any way racialized or marked as other.
Nothing is too petty in this respect. No radical effort is too small, local, or unassuming to escape hostile notice, and no activity so self-evidently benign that some attempt will not be made to disrupt it — not even feeding the hungry. FBI agents circulated ginned-up <em>kompromat</em> to San Francisco businesses in a largely successful attempt to “impede their contributions to [the Black Panther Party] Breakfast Program.”[7] City building inspectors, accompanied by police, threatened the volunteer staff of the youth-centered nonprofit Chicago Freedom School with fines of up to $1,000 a day for “preparing and serving large quantities of food without the proper retail food establishment license,” because they bought pizza for teenagers who’d been tear-gassed while protesting the murder of George Floyd.[8] The Houston Police Department continues to cite Food Not Bombs activists, issuing fines amounting to an unsupportable $23,500, for the sin of furnishing free meals to the homeless.[9] The State of Georgia indicted (https://illwill.com/clarifications) activists protesting the “Cop City” police training center in South River Forest under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, characterizing each tranche of reimbursement for kitchen supplies among them as “an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”[10] It probably shouldn’t surprise us when agents of the state harness every institutional, regulatory and legislative means at their disposal to undermine alternative projects and seal off the spaces in which they might grow. But what still retains a capacity to astonish are the spite and psychic smallness with which they so often go about doing it.
When harassment won’t suffice, the state has other means of disruption available. From the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front in the United States to the long infiltrations (https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/08/mark-kennedy-accused-fantasist-french) of activist communities in the UK, it is clear that even the smallest, most ineffectual or harmless radical groupuscules will be penetrated, compromised and seeded with agents provocateurs.[11] This extends to mutual aid initiatives with an overt politics. One of the earliest members of Common Ground — so trusted, indeed, that between January and April 2007, he served as its director of operations — was an FBI informant.[12]
And sometimes, indeed, the means of disruption are raw and lethal. Let a community assert any degree of territorial control or show any sign that it intends to subsist outside capital permanently, and it will swiftly find itself a community marked for elimination in one way or another.
This is neither hyperbole, nor paranoia, nor an inflated sense of the significance of such efforts. More than one Lower East Side squat was set ablaze under mysterious circumstances and allowed to burn to the ground as officers of the city’s department of Housing Preservation and Development stood by.[13] In Philadelphia in May 1985, the Black separatist group known as MOVE was massacred, their whole neighborhood burned down around them. And any student of the Black Panthers can tell you what happened to its emergent generation of leaders: Bunchy Carter was set up for assassination. Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered in their beds.
This will toward elimination is now bolstered by technological capacities the state never had in the time of the Panthers. These include spyware to eavesdrop on a target’s conversations and map their social connections; automated facial recognition that tracks individuals of interest, even amid large crowds; anomaly-detection algorithms that allow an operator to detect and characterize patterns of behavior in similarly large datasets and in this way anticipate the emergence of protests; and the first tentative steps toward deployment of lethal autonomous systems on the borders — all gleefully vended by the grubby NSO Groups and Palantirs of the world.[14]
Much of this technology, inevitably, is hugely overhyped and will never work in the ways touted. But enough of it already does that any state equipped with it will enjoy the prerogative of isolating potential cells of dissent or resistance at the threshold of emergence and either preempting their formation or otherwise disrupting their ability to act effectively. As to what constitutes “dissent or resistance” in the mind of the state, we know that the symbols of Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace, as well as YPG/YPJ insignia and the green-and-black flag of ecoanarchism, have appeared in a visual guide to extremist groups circulated by Counter Terrorism Policing in the UK.[15] Despite later caviling by that organization and attempts to withdraw the materials in question, they undoubtedly represent the way our efforts at mutual care and the development of collective power will be perceived by many within the state security apparatus.[16]
All of this might seem a million miles removed from our talk of Lifehouses, with their humming microgrids and verdant gardens. But as the pressures of the Long Emergency intensify and the competition for resources tightens, I think it’s a fair bet that the attempt to furnish care will itself attract the kind of violence that was previously lavished only on (actual or perceived) threats to the dominant order. And while the state may always constitute the preeminent threat, it’s by no means safe to assume that this violence will be coming from the state alone.
This will particularly be the case wherever someone extends care toward refugees, asylum seekers, or other individuals or communities marked for othering and exclusion. Any gesture in this direction is sure to attract the rage of local fascist or ethnonationalist formations, just as Golden Dawn physically attacked free clinics, social centers and refugee camps during its years of greatest influence in Greece.[17] Some of these formations, like Golden Dawn itself, will even claim that some kind of ecological consciousness justifies their assaults on whatever infrastructure exists to shelter the weakest and most vulnerable.[18]
If a mutual care effort manages to persist for long enough in holding any space at all, the odds are that someone somewhere will eventually be moved to oppose it by force. So long as it confines itself to the more stereotypically feminized aspects of care work and social reproduction, that effort may — <em>may</em> — be tolerated. But even then, there are no guarantees: even something as beloved and broadly supported in the community as Occupy Sandy was attacked, and whoever was responsible in that case was perfectly willing to firebomb a church. If the broader prospect we face is one of grinding twilight wars and unrelenting, wanton cruelty at all the interfaces where the habitable zone meets the world in flight, that cruelty will surely extend to the very spaces, and providers, of shelter. We can already see it happening.
So even in the case that, against all odds, we are actually able to create Lifehouses and in them make common cause against the future bearing down upon us, our efforts can’t end there. The implacable truth is that such communities must organize and prepare to defend themselves, or stand by in helpless acquiescence as they and everything they love are made to perish from the Earth.[19]
Concretely, this is a dreadful, heart-stopping prospect and cannot be regarded with anything remotely like equanimity. But history is uncompromising on this point, and it is something that everyone embarked upon the politics of care must ultimately reckon with. This is the grim thing, the lesson of Golden Dawn and COINTELPRO, of Daesh and the vigilantes of Algiers Point: there is little point in sheltering bodies from the undirected chaos of the storm if you are not also prepared to protect them from those who specifically mean to do them harm.
Adam Greenfield’s <em>Lifehouse. Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire</em> is out July 9<sup>th</sup> with Verso Books.
[1] Amy Starecheski, <em>Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners</em> in New York City, University of Chicago Press, 2016.You can see the actual bike for yourself at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS), at 155 Avenue C between Ninth and Tenth Streets. As MoRUS is co-located with the still very much active C-Squat, hours may, uh, vary (and access to the bike in particular may be subject to negotiation with residents).
[2] Margaret Kohn, “The Power of Place: The House of the People as Counterpublic,” Polity 33, no. 4 (Summer 2001). See also Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias,” trans. Jay Miskowiec, <em>Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité</em> 5 (1984 [1967]).
[3] Ursula K. Le Guin, <em>The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia</em> (New York: HarperCollins, 1974).
[4] Jem Bendell, “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy,” IFLAS Occasional Paper 2, July 27, 2018.
[5] Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, H<em>istory of the Paris Commune of 1871</em>, trans. Eleanor Marx, Verso, 2012.
[6] Wilton A. Gardner, “Cannon Destroy Workers’ Homes,” <em>New York Times</em>, February 13, 1934; “February 1934 — History of Vienna,” City of Vienna, wien.gv.at; Antony Beevor, <em>The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939</em>, Penguin, 2006. Only the ongoing experience of the Municipios Autónomos Rebeldes Zapatistas seems to furnish a genuine exception: in Chiapas a population in excess of 350,000 has continuously self-managed by participatory assembly since December 1994.
[7] Memorandum to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from Charles Bates, Special Agent in Charge, San Francisco Field Office, “COINTELPRO — Black Nationalist Hate Group — Racial Matters,” November 30, 1970.
[8] Justin Laurence, “The Chicago Freedom School Offered Food, Water and Rest to Weary Protesters Trapped Downtown — and the City Cited Them for It,” <em>Block Club Chicago</em>, June 8, 2020.
[9] Amanda Holpuch, “Houston Volunteers Fight Tickets for Serving Meals to Homeless People,” <em>New York Times</em>, August 6, 2023.
[10] State of Georgia v. Beamon, Biederman, Bilodeau et al., Fulton County Superior Court Criminal Indictment 23SC189192, August 29, 2023.
[11] “New Documents Show FBI Targeting Environmental and Animal Rights Groups Activities as ‘Domestic Terrorism,’” American Civil Liberties Union, December 20, 2005, aclu.org; HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, <em>A Review of National Police Units Which Provide Intelligence on Criminality Associated with Protest</em>, HMIC, 2012; <em>Undercover Policing Inquiry: Tranche 1 Interim Report</em>, Undercover Policing Inquiry, June 2023; Gary T. Marx, “Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur and the Informant,” <em>American Journal of Sociology</em> 80, no. 2 (September 1974).
[12] Colin Moynihan, “Activist Unmasks Himself as Federal Informant in G.O.P. Convention Case,” <em>New York Times</em>, January 4, 2009.
[13] Alexander Vasudevan, <em>The Autonomous City: A History of Urban Squatting</em>, Verso, 2017, 225.
[14] Forbidden Stories, “The Pegasus Project,” July 2021, forbiddenstories.org; Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti, “The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon,” <em>New York Times</em>, January 28, 2022; Nicol Turner Lee and Caitlin Chin, “Police Surveillance and Facial Recognition: Why Data Privacy Is Imperative for Communities of Color,” Brookings Institution, April 12, 2022, brookings.edu; Manal Mostafa Ali, “Real-Time Video Anomaly Detection for Smart Surveillance,” <em>IET Image Processing</em>, 17, no. 5 (April 17, 2023); Eleanor Drage and Federica Frabetti, “The Performativity of AI-powered Event Detection,” <em>Science, Technology, and Human Values</em>, March 27, 2023; Kaelynn Narita, “Smart Borders: Silicon Valley and Border Policing,” Political Economy Research Centre, March 27, 2023, perc.org.uk.
[15] Vikram Dodd and Jamie Grierson, “Greenpeace Included with Neo-Nazis on UK Counter-terror List,” <em>Guardian</em>, January 17, 2020; “Terrorism Police List Extinction Rebellion as Extremist Ideology,” <em>Guardian</em>, January 10, 2020.
[16] “Our Focus Is Countering Terrorism, Not Lawful Protest,” Counter Terrorism Policing, January 17, 2020, counterterrorism.police.uk.
[17] Gianluca Mezzofiore ,“Golden Dawn Mob Threatens NGO for Treating Migrants in Perama Clinic,” <em>International Business Times</em>, April 11, 2014; Yannis Palaiologos, “Greece’s NeoNazi Politicians Are Awaiting Trial — and as Popular as Ever,” <em>New Republic</em>, September 23, 2014; “Far-Right Group Attacks Refugee Camp on Greek Island of Chios,” <em>Guardian</em>, November 18, 2016; zb, “Five Injured after Attack on Greek Anti-fascist Center,” <em>Freedom</em>, February 28, 2018, freedomnews.org.uk.
[18] This is perfectly expressed in an April 2013 statement issued by the self-proclaimed “Green Wing” of Golden Dawn. “The leftists and the hippies tried to claim the ecologist movement as their own, but [our] love for nature is different than theirs: The environment is the cradle of our Race, it mirrors our culture and civilization, making it our duty to protect it.” Golden Dawn, “The Green Wing and the Volksland Project,” April 6, 2013.
[19] In this regard, the same community production workshop that pops out wind-turbine blades or supports for aquaponics tanks in relatively peaceful times can be rapidly retooled for the manufacture of increasingly sophisticated weaponry, like the 3D-printed FGC-9 carbines used at scale by the insurgent People’s Defense Forces in Myanmar. (Do note that this is, of course, wildly illegal in many jurisdictions.) Travis Pike, “The FGC-9 in Myanmar: 3D Guns and the Future of Guerrilla Warfare,” <em>Sandboxx</em>, January 7, 2022.
|
#pubdate 2023-08-29T09:24:14
#title The Revolution Will Be Hilarious and Other Essays
#author Adam Krause
#SORTtopics social ecology, post-left, revolution
#date 2018
#source Retrieved on 2020-04-05 from <[[https://libcom.org/library/revolution-will-be-hilarious-other-essays][libcom.org/library/revolution-will-be-hilarious-other-essays]]>
#lang en
** Author’s Introduction
This collection of essays came about when New Compass Press informed me that the tiny pamphlet I had written for them, “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious,” had proven just too tiny to publish economically. Rather than take it out of print, they asked, would I add some essays and let them do The Revolution Will Be Hilarious and Other Essays? My first thought was that this would be impossible. The things I have written since “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious” appeared in 2013 are very different in tone and style, and could seemingly never inhabit the same volume as that earlier essay.
“The Revolution Will Be Hilarious” uses the structure of jokes as an extended metaphor to explain the psychology of democracy. My current work focuses much more on the environmental apocalypse we are now experiencing.
My tone is more urgent and strident—to such an extent that I have even accepted using terms like “environmental apocalypse.” “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious” seemed like a work from a simpler time, back when I thought we had more time.
Why the change in focus? The mistake I made, if it is a mistake, was adopting the habit of reading scientific journals.
And recently, there has been a remarkable shif in tone.
Rather than just saying that we have to do something or our environment will collapse, most scientists now seem to say that we have to do something because our environment is already collapsing. It is a subtle, but terrifying, shif. And there is no shortage of evidence to support it. Ice sheets are collapsing. Species are disappearing. Lakes are evaporating, making agriculture impossible in many places. People starve.
The oceans are losing fish, but are filling with plastic. Tings are not looking good. We are in the midst of something awful and unprecedented. Analyzing jokes to explain how democracy works suddenly seemed like an antiquated concern from a forgotten era.
But as I worked on some newer essays, under the impression that The Revolution Will Be Hilarious and Other Essays would be impossible, those seemingly quaint concerns came rushing back as central ones. In fact, some of the essays I assumed had supplanted “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious” actually precede and prepare the way for it.
The first piece in this volume, “THE END IS NEAR,” was originally released on my own imprint, Red Earth Press. Each copy was hand-made, and there really weren’t that many, so I am very excited for it to appear here, where at least the words can live on even after that limited edition disappears.
“THE END IS NEAR” begins by discussing some of the many prophecies of apocalypse humans have heard in the preceding centuries. And since the world has been declared nearly over so often, why should we believe contemporary warnings of an environmental apocalypse? Well, as I mentioned above, because there is ample evidence that irreversible ecological collapse has already begun.
So if that’s the case, how should we react? Do we panic? Stockpile gold? Build an army? Pray? Mostly, we need to get to work, but we don’t need to panic, provided we get to work. And there are examples among those past prophets of doom who saw an impending apocalypse as a chance for transformation, not just fighting in the streets for the remaining crumbs.
In “THE END IS NEAR,” I quote Naomi Klein’s statement that “Mass uprisings of people—along the lines of the abolition movement and the Civil Rights Movement— represent the likeliest source of ‘friction’ to slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control.”[1] I agree of course. But this statement requires elaboration. Both the abolition movement and the Civil Rights Movement were full of very contentious debates about tactics. If the time has already passed when we should have started a mass movement, the time has also passed when we should know how to proceed. Who are the targets? How do we stop them?
And although these are not topics we typically discuss aloud, is sabotage acceptable? What about violence?
So in “What Is To Be Done?, I analyze issues of ethics and tactics in political actions, with a special focus on the environmental movement. I did not begin writing this essay with a thesis to explain, but rather, a topic to explore. I had no idea what I would conclude, only that I would write. As such, this second essay took on a very different form from “THE END IS NEAR.” In “THE END IS NEAR,” I present short, often impressionistic explorations of various topics, and let the whole piece collectively present an idea. Sections are short. Topics shift. In “What Is To Be Done?” I explore the topic as I go, and the reader can follow my thoughts as I unpack a difficult subject and try to figure out how I really feel about it.
Although I began without a destination in mind, I eventually arrived somewhere, and much to my surprise, it was the idea that the revolution would be hilarious. In “What Is To Be Done?” I conclude that whatever movements we build or tactics we choose, those movements need to be inclusive and broad. So the lessons comedy can teach us about democracy are essential to answering the question of just what is to be done.
And so “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious” not only remains, but has proven itself essential. But for this new context, it was necessary to revise and expand the original text.
I have no problem with that. Walt Whitman, who I refer to as the “patron saint” of “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious,” first published Leaves of Grass in 1855, and then spent the rest of his life expanding and altering it in numerous editions of various lengths. So rewriting and revising previously published works is a practice with an impressive pedigree. Plus, an essay that spends so much time urging us to rethink our ideas and assumptions deserves to be periodically rethought.
In the time since its initial publication, various people have talked or written to me about “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious.” In particular, Molly Shanahan utilized it while working on her doctoral thesis and sent me a number of helpful suggestions and observations. In particular, she suggested that “bisociation,” a term I borrowed from Arthur Koestler, would make much more sense as “multisociation.”
Following “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious” is “Buy The Land and Buy The Light,” an essay originally presented as a paper at the Ecological Challenges Conference at the University of Oslo in 2017. Using businesses that sell the naming rights to stars as a starting point, I discuss changes in land ownership and usage in the capitalist era, with a particular focus on the United States. The notion that one can purchase a piece of property, put up a fence and then tear the earth to bits to extract resources (and no one can stop you because it’s yours) is a very new and very dangerous idea that has somehow become accepted as common sense. The mistreatment of the original inhabitants of North America accelerated along with the development of these new notions of private property, and continue into the present, with battles over pipelines and fracked oil as an especially egregious example.
“The Revolution Will Be Hilarious” dances around various topics I couldn’t actually discuss without making it an unreadable mess. “Time Is Not Money,” acts almost as an appendix to “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious,” clarifying some of the underlying ideas that essay leaves unsaid. And although it was composed from sections I cut from “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious,” it ended up as a surprisingly cohesive piece on its own.
Concluding this volume is “Walking Each Other Home,” another essay I published as a pamphlet on Red Earth Press.
I wrote it after revisiting “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious” and it shows. I guess my writing has changed again. In “Walking Each Other Home,” I explore the idea of “home.”
What is it? Why is it important? What does it mean to be homeless? How can anyone be “illegal”? The demands for openness, acceptance, and universal love made in
“The Revolution Will Be Hilarious” are made again, but perhaps even more strongly and explicitly.
So this collection of essays begins with some rather urgent, occasionally depressing essays about the state of our planet, moves to a revised version of an older essay with comparatively more hope and positivity, and concludes with what I created after editing all that together. Life on Earth remains in incredible danger. I remain alarmed and angry.
But in addition to that continuing rage, I have returned to emphasizing the seemingly simple notion that we must grow as a species, and learn to live in harmony with the natural world and one another. If we fail to do this, the end remains near. But I have returned to stating why and how we can change. And if I end up spending the rest of my life demanding that we treat each other and our shared habitat with love and respect, then I will, but hopefully humanity will wake up to the immense peril we are in very soon.
This seemed like an impossible project. I was ready to reject it. But by bringing it into existence, my writing and focus changed again. Carefully revising an older essay— an essay I thought I had moved beyond—caused various iterations of my writing self to collide and create a new one.
I am very proud of what appears in this book, but I could not have done it alone. A debt of gratitude goes to Eirik Eiglad and everyone else at New Compass Press for continuing to believe in me and my work. Endless thanks go to Marielle Allschwang for allowing me to read almost everything I write aloud to her, giving me more suggestions than I would ever care to count, agreeing to spend her life with me, and bringing me to that Shaker museum. I would also like to thank David Ravel and Richard Newman for taking me to meet Dabls.
That was amazing.
It was a winding journey of exploration, research, and wildly different drafs that brought me to completing this volume. Creating it changed my thinking. Hopefully reading it can have a similar effect. I hope you enjoy it.
** THE END IS NEAR
<quote>
*— And as things fell apart,*
*nobody paid much attention.*
Talking Heads[2]
</quote>
The end of the world has seemingly been upon us for as long as there has been a world, which makes it easy to dismiss and deride prophets of doom. A few thousand years ago, Jesus told his disciples that soon “the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.”[3] And when would this occur? “Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.”[4] Standing before him was the last generation. The end of time was near.
And his followers believed it. The Epistle to the Hebrews, written around 63 or 64 CE, begins, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son.”[5] The First Epistle of John, written about thirty years later, states, “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now there are many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.”[6]
Yet the world did not end.
Maybe Christ had been delayed. In 1806, in a village near Leeds, England, a hen laid an egg inscribed with the words “Christ Is Coming.” Prayers were said. Skies were watched.
There was repentance and panic. But the egg was either a forgery or the hen had been misinformed. Once again, the world did not end.[7]
In 1996, Sheldan Nidle, who claims to have been receiving extraterrestrial communications since he was a child, announced that 16 million spaceships, which is quite a few if you think about it, would arrive on December 17, heralding humanity’s end. But the aliens did not arrive, and humanity carried on.[8]
More recently, a set of cycles in the Mayan’s now-rarely-used calendar were set to cease in 2012, which some people decided meant the world would also end. But temporal units are human inventions, not facts of nature, so why one culture’s means of marking time would impact the physical world is unclear. But a lot of people took this seriously. Once again, the world did not end.
These are just a few examples. An even remotely exhaustive list of apocalyptic predictions would fill volumes.
There are always people who hope or fear they will be the last. Mostly hope. After all, it can be hard to pass the Earth on to the next generation and accept death and irrelevance.
How much better it would be to stand at the end of history as the final generation—with gods, angels, or extraterrestrials on their way to let us know that there shall (of course) be none after us. But these portents of doom never show, and the world moves on. We are buried and forgotten.
The end of humanity is being predicted again. But this time, we probably shouldn’t scoff. The reasons are more scientific, less supernatural, and for once, pretty convincing. We are destroying—or perhaps have already destroyed—the environment that sustains us. We are not near the end of humanity because gods or aliens have deemed us special, but because we’re the idiots who couldn’t figure out how to maintain our own habitat. And that shouldn’t fuel anyone’s hubris.
Here is a tiny sample of the current crop of prophets of doom. Linguist and political theorist Noam Chomsky writes that due to our terrifying combination of environmental destruction and rampant militarism, human civilization “may now be approaching its inglorious end.”[9] The film director Werner Herzog stated in an interview, “I’m convinced that our presence on this planet is not sustainable, so we will be extinct fairly soon.”[10] Journalist and environmentalist Bill McKibben writes, “We remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.”[11] In his encyclical on the environment, Pope Francis writes, “Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation, and filth.”[12]
*** You Must Go On, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On
<quote>
*— Seems there’s always more duty.*
*Maybe that’s the beauty.*
Mike Watt[13]
</quote>
Rather than emanating from Pat Robertson or castrated cult members committing mass suicide in matching shoes, these recent apocalyptic predictions are different. Arctic ice is melting at increasing rates, giving us easier access to once-inaccessible fossil fuels. The irony of this would be hilarious if it weren’t terrifying. Ice shelves in the Antarctic that were not expected to collapse for decades are already collapsing.
Heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires are occurring with alarming frequency. And there are already more fossil fuels ready for use—claimed and accounted for by oil companies—than we can safely burn without experiencing total cataclysm. This is not narcissism. Humanity is approaching its end.
In an article about despair among climate scientists— people whose job it is to discover and explain all the bad news about our planet—Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas states:
<quote>
To be honest, I panicked fifeen years ago—that was when the first studies came out showing that Arctic tundras were shifing from being a net sink to being a net source of CO2. That along with the fact this butterfly I was studying shifed its entire range across half a continent—I said this is big, this is big. Everything since then has just confirmed it.[14]
</quote>
She continues, “Do I think it likely that the nations of the world will take sufficient action to stabilize climate in the next fify years? No, I don’t think it likely.”[15] Which would of course be a rather problematic bit of inaction. As John H. Richardson states earlier in the article:
<quote>
Arctic air temperatures are increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the world—a study by the U. S. Navy says that the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice by next year, eighty-four years ahead of the models—and evidence little more than a year old suggests the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is doomed, which will add between twenty and twenty-five feet to ocean levels. The one hundred million people in Bangladesh will need another place to live and coastal cities globally will be forced to relocate, a task complicated by economic crisis and famine—with continental interiors drying out, the chief scientist at the U. S. State Department in 2009 predicted a billion people will suffer famine within twenty or thirty years.[16]
</quote>
What can we do to stop the destruction? The fossil fuel industry has an immense amount of power and money, and would love nothing more than to continue wielding power and amassing money. Politicians are bought. Disinformation campaigns are funded. What can we, with so much less power and money, do to stop them? After all, global capitalism is designed to generate the most profit for the fewest people in the shortest time. The Earth and most of its inhabitants are merely means to these ends. Resources are plundered indiscriminately, and the people living on top of those resources usually have too little power to stop the plunder. Landscapes become moonscapes. The rich get richer and the poor suffer. The rest of us remain largely indifferent for no reason whatsoever.
And we have prepared ourselves in the worst possible way to handle our coming catastrophes humanely. We just lived through the bloodiest and most genocidal century in history. As a point of comparison, somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people died in the Spanish Inquisition. That was pretty bad, but in the twentieth century, Stalin alone was responsible for ordering tens of millions of deaths. And that was just one bit of genocide in a century of genocide after genocide. Something has gone horribly wrong with humanity. We are not ready to handle our impending ecological disasters in ways that won’t involve massive bloodshed, suffering, and despair. And the weapons we have now could kill every living thing on Earth. If that’s really where we’ve gotten ourselves, our situation seems hopeless.
So what can we do?
The interview in which Werner Herzog stated that “we will be extinct fairly soon” ends with the following exchange:
<quote>
Q: Does our impending extinction worry you?
A: It doesn’t make me nervous that we’ll become extinct, it doesn’t frighten me at all. There is a wonderful thing that Martin Luther the reformer said when he was asked, “What would you do if the world would disappear tomorrow in the apocalypse?” And Luther said, “Today, I would plant an apple tree.”
Q: Do you believe in a superior being?
A: Oh, don’t ask that—but if I knew that tomorrow a meteorite would destroy our planet, I would start shooting a new film today.[17]
</quote>
Like Luther planting a tree whose fruit he knows he will never see, we ought to start that film, stop the fossil fuel industry from existing, end factory farming, ban nuclear weapons and nuclear power—so we don’t kill ourselves by other means before we get the chance to save ourselves—and destroy militarism, nationalism, and borders. In spite of our apparently hopeless situation, we should not lose hope or stop trying.
Intense action now is our only hope. As individuals and as a species, we ought to follow the advice Miguel de Unamuno draws from Don Quixote: “Redress whatever wrong comes your way. Do now what must be done now and do here what must be done here.”[18] As Naomi Klein writes, “Mass uprisings of people—along the lines of the abolition movement and the Civil Rights Movement—represent the likeliest source of ‘friction’ to slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control.”[19]
*** The End Was Here
<quote>
*— Yeah it’s all coming back to me now,*
*my apocalypse, my apocalypse.*
Bill Callahan[20]
</quote>
Our economy and our world are not only careening out of control, but veering in the path of apocalypse. Or perhaps we’ve already smashed into it. Several years ago, I was riding in a van to a city I had never been. I was engrossed in a book.
I looked up. We had entered the city. I was in one of many vehicles on the highway. The overpasses and underpasses were filled with cars reflecting the sun. It was a beautiful day. I felt perhaps the same exhilaration of movement and machines as Marinetti. It was the Kantian sublime, triggered by cars and concrete. I was overwhelmed with beauty and horror. Then it hit me. The world had already ended. We had poisoned the Earth. There was no hope. Our planet lay on its deathbed, drifting into oblivion, and we were driving on it. The apocalypse had passed with little notice, and we had entered the long, hard dénouement of human civilization. It was a strong, strange feeling, and it stuck with me.
In Alan Moore’s comic book Promethea, there is an apocalypse. The story and the world, though transformed, continue. As one character says, “We all woke up, the day after the world ended, and we still had to feed ourselves and keep a roof over our heads. Life goes on, y’know? Life goes on.”[21] The idea that an apocalypse is not necessarily an end makes etymological sense. “Apocalypse” comes from the Greek for an uncovering or revelation. It is less destruction than disclosure. So maybe I was right. Maybe we’ve passed the apocalypse. But maybe life goes on after the world ends.
And maybe there’s still hope.
If we continue on our current path, we will doom billions of future humans to famines and wars. To quote Pope Francis again:
<quote>
The natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone. If we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good of all. If we do not, we burden our consciences with the weight of having denied the existence of others. That is why the New Zealand bishops asked what the commandment “Thou shall not kill” means when “twenty percent of the world’s population consumes resources at a rate that robs the poor nations and future generations of what they need to survive.”[22]
</quote>
Our environmental crisis is also an ethical crisis. Our lifestyles are based on the exploitation and destruction of the natural world and the world’s poor. The people of the first world denude and degrade the land on which far less politically powerful people live. All that death and destruction usually takes place far from us, so we don’t have to watch. And we don’t. But if we want to do anything even remotely close to the right thing, we will stop living as we do. The notion that our lifestyles won’t need to change that much to save the Earth is nonsense. We don’t just need to use better lightbulbs or something. Our lifestyles need to change. We cannot continue taking part in the murder of the Earth and its inhabitants.
*** Endgame Strategies
<quote>
*— It’s after the end of the world!*
*Don’t you know that yet?*
Sun Ra[23]
</quote>
This is humanity’s endgame. In chess, endgames occur when very few pieces remain on the board. Exactly when the middlegame ends and the endgame begins is ofen unclear, but endgames are distinct. Pawns become more important.
Kings enter the open and attack. Poor endgame tactics can destroy a once-overwhelming advantage, while a cleverly waged endgame can turn a hopeless situation into a victory.
Of course, not all games even get that far.
In Samuel Beckett’s 1957 play Endgame, there is one act in one room. Hamm sits dying in his chair, unable to stand.
Clov, limping and unable to sit, waits on him. There are also two trash cans on stage where Nell and Nagg live. There is a window stage lef, and another stage right, but there is no light or life outside.
<quote>
Hamm: Nature has forgotten us.
Clov: There’s no more nature.
Hamm: No more nature! You exaggerate.
Clov: In the vicinity.
Hamm: But we breathe, we change! We lose our hair, our teeth!
Our bloom! Our ideals!
Clov: Then she hasn’t forgotten us.[24]
</quote>
Nature only remains as rot, decay, and death. The other end of the life cycle has ceased. Nothing is born. Nothing is new.
<quote>
Hamm: Did your seeds come up?
Clov: No.
Hamm: Did you scratch round them to see if they had
sprouted?
Clov: They haven’t sprouted.
Hamm: Perhaps it’s too early.
Clov: If they were going to sprout they would have sprouted.
(Violently.) They’ll never sprout![25]
</quote>
Throughout the play, the characters remain stuck in patterns.
Hamm asks for his painkillers. Nell and Nagg reminisce. Clov walks from window to window, moving like a chess piece, limited by the rules of play and positions of pieces.
But there is a glimmer of hope near the end of the play.
With Nagg and Nell dead, and Hamm about to die, Clov either sees or hallucinates a small boy outside in the distance. Hamm is unmoved. “If he exists he’ll die there or he’ll come here. And if he doesn’t…”[26] Clov gets dressed and packed.
He’s leaving. But he might stay. The curtain closes. We don’t know if he ever moves.
People rarely change until circumstances force them. And even then, people rarely change. Will we ever even try to save our habitat, or will we wait until there is no light, life, or love left, and then just stand there, still not quite sure if we should do something or not?
Do something.
Do something.
Do something.
*** Shaking Toward the Millennium
<quote>
*Hark! What means this dreadful sound?*
*Hear the rumor all around!*
*Wars and tumults greet our ears;*
*Lo! The latter day appears.*
Shaker Hymn
</quote>
We certainly need to do something, do something, do something, but what should we do? Action and hope, not fear and worry, are the answers. Christianity, a belief system obsessed with the end of the world, has dominated and shaped Western culture for thousands of years. We can learn a lot from the ways humans have reacted to all those regularly promised apocalypses. Terror and panic have not been the only reactions. Repentance and radical transformations have also occurred.
The Shakers, a millennial Christian group formed in the late 1700s, are of particular interest. Millennial movements are focused on the end of the world, with the idea of the millennium coming from the Book of Revelation, where it states:
<quote>
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years. […] And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.[27]
</quote>
Millennial movements believe the just will rule with Jesus for a thousand years, and there will be peace, prosperity, and plenty. Then the Devil will be released, and the final judgement will take place.
In the still nascent United States of the eighteenth century, the millennium was frequently declared imminent or already underway. In the 1740s, Jonathan Edwards sparked the Great Awakening, a millennial movement fueled by fears of hell fire. But the world never ended, and enthusiasm waned. Then in the 1770s, the New Light Stir revived millennial beliefs. Concurrent with the American Revolution, political upheaval added credence to the coming of a spiritual revolution.
The Revolutionary War happened, but the devil was never chained, and Christ never came.
Or perhaps he did. And maybe he was a she. In 1747, John and Jane Wardley of Manchester, England broke from the Quakers and founded the Shakers in an attempt to recover the excitement and ecstatic millenarianism of the Quakers’ early years.[28] A woman named Ann Lee joined them in 1758. She was soon declared the female manifestation of Christ, a unity of gender manifestations that completed the appearance of Christ on Earth, and thus heralded the millennium. In 1774, Ann Lee and a small band of Shakers left Manchester for a United States on the brink of rebellion.[29]
The Shakers were a millennial movement, but they had a peculiar notion of the second coming of Christ. For the Shakers, the millennium would be built by creating a critical mass of manifested Christs. The messiah would be a collective creation. Ann Lee’s transformation was not only possible for everyone, but required of everyone. She was just the first to make the metamorphosis.
Ann Lee presented herself as a first among equals, not a special human fit for worship. “She refused to be deified.
If her followers kneeled to her, she would kneel with them, saying, ‘It is not me you love, but it is God in me.’”[30] She simply pointed the way toward perfection for everyone. And like their “Mother Ann,” Shakers renounced family and sexual intercourse, so Christ could be manifested in humanity and the millennium could get underway. There would be peace, prosperity, and plenty.
In our present situation, the onset of the millennium is less a concern than the disappearance of the natural world.
But whether we’re Shakers in the eighteenth century or environmentally endangered beings in the twenty-first, a critical mass of changed minds is necessary. Radically new ways of seeing and being—total metamorphoses that overturn everything, manifested in everyone—are our only hope.
There is another lesson we can learn from the Shakers.
They are remembered today, not for the end-time religion of Ann Lee, but for building Utopian communities and thoughtfully constructed furniture. Just as Jesus predicted an imminent end that never came, causing his followers to eventually give in and create structured organizations that could survive centuries, the Shakers made some of the longest lasting Utopian communities in modern history, an achievement “Ann Lee knew nothing of, and in which she would have taken no interest.”[31]
Changed minds can be powerful and transformative. But changed minds that work together can reshape the world. To quote an essay entitled “‘What Must I Do?’ at the End of the World,”
<quote>
Faced with the catastrophe, there are those who get indignant, those who take note, those who denounce, and those who get organized. History depends on those who get organized.[32]
</quote>
If our stories will be written in anything other than the fossil record, we can’t just individually manifest new modes of thinking. We’ll need to harmoniously orchestrate our actions—not as a single, rigid being, but as a beautiful array of illuminated minds, attacking our problems from every angle.
Humans made this mess, and we can unmake it. Revolutions are required, but they’ll differ from those of centuries past.
Rather than dethroning kings from solitary seats of power so we can take their place, we need to dethrone everyone, then destroy the thrones, share our power, and work together.
The end is near. But it doesn’t have to be.
** What is to be Done?
<quote>
*— I might be ready to embrace a snake, but, if one comes*
*to bite you, I should kill it and protect you.*
Mohandas Gandhi[33]
</quote>
Roughly two years before the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, the abolitionist John Brown raided a federal armory in Virginia, in the hopes of provoking the violent destruction of slavery. His raid failed and he was hanged.
A small segment of the Northern population saw him as a martyr. Most called him insane. Southerners almost unanimously declared him a terrorist. And Insane. The Richmond Whig, in a typical statement, declared that “the murderous old traitor and murderer belongs to the gallows, and the gallows will have its own.”[34]
In the time between John Brown’s arrest and execution, Henry David Thoreau delivered a lecture entitled “A Plea For Captain John Brown” in Concord, Massachusetts. Usually the town bell would ring when a lecture was about to begin, but Thoreau’s topic was so controversial that no one was willing to ring it. So Thoreau rang it himself. Upon returning to the lectern, he said it was John Brown’s “peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him.”[35]
John Brown was very violent. Praise for him may sound strange coming from the same Thoreau who helped inspire Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. to utilize nonviolent civil disobedience in their struggles—the same Thoreau of whom King writes, “During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau’s ‘On Civil Disobedience’ for the first time. Here, in this courageous New Englander’s refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery’s territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance.”[36] And Gandhi states that “Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practice in himself. He was one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced.”[37]
Rather than pay a tax to support an imperialist war to expand slave territory, Thoreau went to jail. He was only there one night, but the essay he wrote about it, “On Civil Disobedience,” had a monumental impact. In it, he writes,
<quote>
“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”[38] Like Thoreau refusing to pay his tax, King and Gandhi disobeyed bad laws. Both did so nonviolently. The one time we know Thoreau performed civil disobedience, it was nonviolent, yet in “A Plea For Captain John Brown,” he writes, “I do not wish to kill or be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable.”[39]
</quote>
King and Gandhi, and Gandhi in particular, took the nonviolent part of nonviolent resistance pretty seriously.
Shortly before the Second World War, Gandhi wrote an open letter to Nazi Germany’s Jewish citizens. “If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be justified. But I do not believe in any war.”[40] So what would he do instead? “If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon.”[41]
As Saul Alinsky writes in Rules for Radicals, “Gandhi’s passive resistance would never have had a chance against a totalitarian state such as that of the Nazis. It is dubious whether under those circumstances the idea of passive resistance would even have occurred to Gandhi.”[42] In totalitarian states, members of the opposition have a strange tendency to disappear in the middle of the night. Getting arrested or shot to call attention to injustice is not going to be a particularly effective tactic.
So Gandhi’s advice seems pretty terrible. But does it seem terrible because we know from history just how ruthless Germany’s genocidal war machine was? Or do we simply feel that violence is justified when someone seeks to destroy us? If someone tries to kill you, you probably feel warranted fighting back. And if I am standing nearby and can prevent your death, you probably won’t mind if I use whatever level of violence proves necessary to save you. Similarly, if some government or group of people seeks to exterminate you and everyone else of your race or religion, violent self-defense seems reasonable. And if I had an army and could prevent your genocide, you might not mind if we did what armies do. So most of us are willing to accept violence in cases of legitimate self-defense.
*** Just What Is Self-Defense?
But once we accept violence for self-defense, things get quite complicated. When is something so threatening that violence becomes admissible? When are we fighting for our lives, and when are we just fighting? Most of history’s truly heinous acts were performed in the name of self-defense. No one goes around thinking, “I’m an unjust aggressor.” Rather, we assume we are on the side of right and good, and then rationalize our violent actions by expanding “self-defense” to cover whatever we have done or are about to do.
During the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik Party found itself embroiled in a brutal civil war. Communism, which they aimed to create, would generate wealth rationally and distribute it equally. But poverty was becoming universal instead. They had promised peace, land, and bread, but this was proving difficult. They figured a new world could still result from the revolution, but if they failed, the future would be as bleak as the past. You see, they were defending humanity.
So Leon Trotsky, the People’s Commissar of War, used the Bolshevik’s Red Army to destroy rival parties and consolidate power. The Bolsheviks were the vanguard of the revolution, after all. To maintain discipline in his ranks, he executed his own retreating troops.[43] Then, as the civil war wound down, work became compulsory and “deserters from labor” were sent to concentration camps.[44] And in March 1921, sailors at Kronstadt, whom Trotsky had previously called “the pride and glory of the revolution,” demanded the rights and freedoms the Bolsheviks had promised. So Trotsky took his troops and massacred the sailors.[45]
Of course, all that violence never produced a free and equal society, but one of history’s most brutal and repressive regimes. That regime, the Soviet Union, not only survived the civil war, but spent much of the twentieth century spreading its system across the globe, largely through violence, and largely in the name of creating Utopia. But Utopia never arrived. Just more bloodshed and repression.
There were inevitable clashes and proxy wars between the Soviet Union and the United States, which was simultaneously spreading its system across the globe, also largely through violence, but in the name of bringing free-market capitalism to every nation on Earth. By obstructing Communist advances, they too were defending humanity.
This also tended to create bloodshed and repression.
To take just one example, in September 1970, Salvador Allende of Chile became the first Marxist elected president anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Pepsi-Cola and ITT, two U.S. corporations operating in Chile, mentioned to Richard Nixon that they were worried what an Allende presidency would mean for them. Ascendant socialism endangered capitalism. So Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used the CIA to orchestrate Allende’s overthrow. On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet, with the U.S. Government’s funding and assistance, staged a military coup. Salvador Allende was shot in his office. But he was hardly the only person murdered. Two sports stadiums were turned into camps for interrogation, torture, and execution. And atrocities continued throughout the nearly two decades of Pinochet’s rule. Tousands of Chileans were murdered by their own government. And all of this was set in motion to keep the free-market free by keeping a legally elected Marxist out of office. But communism is dangerous, and the market is good, so all that death was justified. You see, it was self-defense.
Since it is very easy to tell ourselves we are acting in self-defense when we are actually the aggressors, we need to be careful just what we call self-defense. Humans have successfully rationalized terrible acts in its name. Caution is required.
*** Defending Ourselves
And caution is required because the planet and its inhabitants are under attack, and we need to determine what we can do.
As Rebecca Solnit points out, climate change is inherently violent. Businesses and governments that “continue to profit off the rapid, violent, and intentional destruction of the Earth” are committing “extreme, horrific, longterm, widespread violence.”[46] Or as Adrian Parr stated in an interview with the New York Times, “The human species is the agent of a terrible injustice being perpetrated against other species, future generations, ecosystems, and our fellow human beings.”[47]
There are already crop failures and droughts, heat waves that kill thousands, undrinkable water, and acidified oceans where shellfish can no longer form shells. In India, heatstroke deaths have increased by 61% in the last decade.[48] The heat there can be so intense that just going outdoors can mean death.[49] And the subsequent drought is so extreme that suicides among farmers have risen dramatically.[50] And that’s just India. In Africa, droughts and water shortages due to rapid changes in climate have already placed more than 31 million people at risk of death from starvation and malnutrition.[51] One person starving to death is a tragedy. 31 million is a tragedy of such magnitude that it’s almost impossible to comprehend. We can no longer talk about a looming environmental crisis. The crisis has begun. The Earth and its inhabitants are under attack. But by whom? All of us? Some of us? If it’s all of us, then maybe we should get together and stop doing what we’re doing.
Of course, it’s not that simple. There is not some undifferentiated and abstracted “humanity” destroying the world. It is those who profit most from the “rapid, violent, and intentional destruction of the Earth” who bear the most responsibility. The world’s poor, whose lives and livelihoods these profiteers destroy, should not share equally in the blame. The poor should be defended. The profiteers should be stopped. We should not blame “humanity,” but a specific segment of humans. So if the Earth is under violent attack by certain humans, can we feel justified if we fight back? This planet sustains us and we have nowhere else to go.
Just imagine if the source of all this destruction were a more obvious enemy. Imagine a malevolent alien race just landed, started removing and destroying our resources, killing the oceans, causing an unprecedented rate of species extinction, pouring pollutants into rivers, cutting the tops off mountains, and warming our atmosphere to dangerous levels. If that were the case, any human who didn’t take up arms to defend our common home would be branded a coward. But because other humans perform precisely that same list of atrocities upon our planet, the path to stopping that destruction is much less clear. The strict lines of demarcation between “us” and “them” that would exist if those malevolent aliens had landed are hazy. So we can’t just take up arms and start shooting. The enemy is everywhere.
The enemy is not only within our societies, but ofen runs them. The army and police are employees of the polluters.
So how do we proceed?
*** Singing Songs and Carrying Signs
It has proven rather difficult to stop environmental degradation by passing laws. For example, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves pumping wastewater into subterranean rocks to release fossil fuels. Artificially induced earthquakes are among the many environmental dangers fracking produces. Natural and artificial earthquakes differ in several respects, allowing researchers to quantify the instance of each. Induced earthquakes occur at shallower average depths, causing greater ground-shaking, and more ofen occur in swarms. In Oklahoma, where fracking has been on the rise, an average of 1.5 earthquakes with a magnitude of 3.0 or greater occurred annually between 1950 and 2005.
Between 2005 and 2015, a period that coincides with the introduction of increased fracking to the area, that number jumped to several hundred per year, “many of which are thought to be related to wastewater injection.”[52]
Fracking is terribly dangerous and damaging to the Earth. So in November 2014, nearly 60% of Denton, Texas voted to ban fracking within city limits. Lawsuits against the decision were filed within hours, and state representative Drew Darby introduced House Bill 40, which is designed to take oil and gas extraction out of municipal hands. It declares that:
<quote>
A municipality or other political subdivision may not enact or enforce an ordinance or other measure, or an amendment or revision of an existing ordinance or other measure, that bans, limits, or otherwise regulates an oil and gas operation within its boundaries or extraterritorial jurisdiction.[53]
</quote>
Under HB40, which was passed into law, the State of Texas, rather than the cities in question, can say what oil and gas companies may do. Furthermore, all decisions need to be “commercially reasonable”—“a condition that permits a reasonably prudent operator to fully, effectively, and economically exploit, develop, produce, process, and transport oil and gas.”[54] Similarly, in May 2016, the Colorado State Supreme Court declared a series of municipal fracking bans invalid, while also using the court’s written opinion to block any future efforts to ban fracking anywhere else in the state.[55] One of the decisions declares that any fracking ban is unacceptable, as it “materially impedes the effectuation of the state’s interest in the efficient and responsible development of oil and gas resources.”[56] These are all clear moves to take power away from those fracking harms the most while keeping it in the hands of those doing the harm and reaping the profits.
In a much more violent example, Berta Cáceres—a Honduran indigenous rights activist, environmentalist, and one of the main members of the opposition to the regime running Honduras at the time of her death—was murdered in her home in 2016. She had spent years fighting the construction of the Agua Zarca Dam, an environmentally destructive project that not only uses land belonging to the Lenca people, but jeopardizes their access to water. According to international law, they should have been consulted. But that never happened.
Many assume that Cáceres’ death was a political execution. Her nephew stated that “Everyone is saying that the government or the company did it, but you’ll never know. It’s the art of obfuscation.”[57] The government her nephew sees as a chief suspect arose from a 2009 coup that forcibly deposed President Manuel Zelaya. Almost every nation in the Organization of American Sates pushed for his return and for elections not run by the de facto coup regime. But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped prevent his return, in order to “render the question of Zelaya moot,”[58] a statement she makes in the hardcover edition of her book, Hard Choices, that was subsequently removed from the paperback, along with everything else pertaining to the Honduran coup. (An email sent by the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras in the immediate aftermath of the coup had informed Clinton that “there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch.”[59] She later rewrote history in an attempt to defend her actions, stating that “the legislature in Honduras and the national judiciary actually followed the law in removing President Zeleya.”[60]) Elections were held, but every organization monitoring them refused to stay. Every organization, that is, except the U.S. Republican Party. The coup regime, to no one’s surprise, won. Violence and repression rose, and Berta Cáceres was eventually murdered in her home for opposing a dam being built illegally.
“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”[61] In all these cases, making and amending laws failed. You can fight for laws banning fracking, but those laws will be overturned.
You can pass laws protecting indigenous people and their land, but those laws will be ignored. You can protest, but depending where you live, that might get you killed. And representatives of the most powerful government on Earth will lie and rewrite history, just to make sure that transnational capital can do whatever it pleases. Passing laws in defense of the Earth has either become impossible, or when possible, pointless.
So is nonviolent civil disobedience still a viable answer?
Or has this, like laws protecting the environment, become something industrial capitalists and the politicians that support them have learned to accept and ignore? As Derrick Jensen writes in Endgame, there are many protests in which
<quote>
Protest organizers provide police with estimates of the numbers of people who have volunteered to be arrested (so police can schedule the right number of paddy wagons), and also provide police with potential arrestee’s IDs so the process of arrest will be smooth and easy on everyone involved. It’s a great system, guaranteed to make all parties feel good. The police feel good because they’ve kept the barbarians from the gates, the activists feel good because they’ve made a stand—I got arrested for what I believe in—and those in power feel good because nothing much has changed.[62]
</quote>
And since nothing much has changed, the existing system remains in place, and the violence against the Earth and the world’s poor continues. A game is played and nothing is accomplished.
Nonviolent civil disobedience certainly seems less effective now than it did during the Civil Rights Movement.
In Direct Action: An Ethnography, David Graeber writes:
<quote>
Fifty years ago, during the Civil Rights Movement, there was a brief moment in American history where Gandhian tactics worked: the violence lying behind racial segregation was laid bare across America in terrifying images of racist sheriffs with police dogs. Perhaps this was a very particular set of circumstances: for instance, the fact that so many northern reporters saw the South as an alien country anyway. Or perhaps in the intervening half-century something has changed about the American media. Whatever the reason, this feat has not been repeated; largely, it would seem, because those making the editorial decisions feel their ultimate loyalties are to the very larger structure of power Gandhian strategies mean to expose.[63]
</quote>
Furthermore, as Nicholas Mirzoeff stated in an interview, “Today, if police dogs attack demonstrators, it is no longer national news. Ironically, the example of King himself, so often vilified as a traitor and a Communist in his lifetime, is used to berate today’s protesters with the demand for nonviolence, meaning compliance with police instructions.
King never intended nonviolence to mean compliance with the state.”[64] The state determines who may occupy a public space and what they may do there. And the state has given itself the sole right to utilize force. Only the police can bring dogs or weapons to protests. When anyone else does, it’s a downright abomination. Violence must always come from above. When it comes from below, our outrage is expected.
Just how we can make our actions effective is not obvious.
As Daniel McGowan, who was convicted of terrorism for performing two arsons with the Earth Liberation Front, states in the documentary If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front:
<quote>
The situation with the environment is not getting better, it’s getting worse. And I’m not saying the path of destruction or destroying everything is the right path. But I didn’t know what to do. It’s like when you’re screaming at the top of your lungs and no one hears you, like, what the hell are you supposed to say?[65]
</quote>
The planet that sustains us is in grave danger. But getting much of anyone to recognize this very simple and frightening fact is proving quite difficult. Laws are ignored. Protests are theatre. Sabotage and violence discredit.
*** Fighting Back
But one thing is certain. We can no longer wait patiently while nation-states spend decades debating non-binding environmental agreements that accomplish nothing. It is increasingly obvious that increasingly intense and disruptive actions are required. That’s easy enough to say. But this seemingly simple statement raises some complex ethical issues. What is permissible in defense of the Earth? Elsewhere, I have quoted Naomi Klein’s statement that “Mass uprisings of people—along the lines of the abolition movement and the Civil Rights Movement—represent the likeliest source of ‘friction’ to slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control.”[66] She makes this claim and fails to elaborate.
When I quoted it, I also failed to elaborate. But this statement requires elaboration. Within both the abolition movement and the Civil Rights Movement, the choice between violence and nonviolence was incredibly contentious. William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Black Panthers, all adopted widely divergent tactics in pursuit of many of the same goals. If there is going to be a mass movement in defense of the Earth, and there absolutely needs to be, similar controversies will certainly arise. We cannot ignore them.
The arguments for getting belligerent are compelling. If the contemporary ruling classes are among the most destructive people in the history of the planet, and have deemed just about anything permissible in pursuit of their aims, why should we act in collusion with their police forces to act out almost entirely ineffectual forms of protest? Why should we push for legislation that will be ignored or repealed? How can we become actual agents of social change, rather than players of a rigged game?
In recent decades, more confrontational tactics for defending the environment were utilized by Earth First!, co-founded by Dave Foreman and three others in 1980. Foreman had worked for the Wilderness Society and the Nature Conservancy, but became disillusioned when he saw that such mainstream environmental organizations could only achieve token gestures and symbolic successes. As he wrote in 1982, “The Forest Service is Louisiana-Pacific’s. Interior is Exxon’s. The Environmental Protection Agency is Dow’s.”[67]
Earth First! declared extralegal tactics necessary in defense of wilderness. One of their earliest newsletters states that “Lobbying, lawsuits, magazines, press releases, outings, and research papers are fine. But they are not enough. EARTH FIRST will use them, but we will also use demonstrations, confrontations, and more creative tactics and rhetoric.”[68]
Those actions were, and are, largely nonviolent, although one of their slogans, “No compromise in defense of Mother Earth,” seems to imply an acceptance of whatever proves necessary. They popularized tree-spiking, which involves hiding large nails, or “spikes,” in trees. These spikes can destroy equipment and injure whoever hits one with a chainsaw. But lumber companies are usually informed once the spikes are in place, and the trees are usually spared.
Although there have been injuries, it is most ofen only a potentially violent act. Beyond tree-spiking, there were other acts of sabotage and attempted sabotage. In 1989, Foreman and three others were arrested for intent to damage power lines leading to the Rock Flats nuclear weapons facility in Colorado.[69] Can we accept sabotage, especially when it obstructs the destruction of the planet that sustains us? Is that legitimate self-defense?
In a book about the dangers of suburban sprawl, Oliver Gillham writes about another group and another bit of sabotage.
<quote>
One of the most extreme expressions of anti-sprawl sentiment occurred in December 2000, when the Earth Liberation Front (an ecoterrorist group) went so far as to set fire to several houses being built in a new subdivision in Suffolk County, New York. Spray painted messages on the houses read “Stop Urban Sprawl” and “If You Build It We Will Burn It.” While no one on either side of the sprawl debate condones such violent action, the incident does demonstrate how inflammatory the subject has become.[70]
</quote>
It seems mistaken to both make that “inflammatory” pun, and to say that “no one on either side of the sprawl debate condones such violent action.” The ELF placed themselves so emphatically in the debate that someone writing a book on the subject would feel the need to mention them in the introduction. In fact, it seems important to ask: can we countenance the destruction of unsold and unfinished houses whose construction destroys our planet? Is that kind of arson legitimate self-defense? If developers’ idea of “development” is destroying every remaining inch of the natural world, shouldn’t we stop them? Is arson an acceptable answer?
In the over 1,200 actions attributed to the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, no one has ever been killed or injured. Yet those who have been caught are ofen tried as terrorists. As Bill Barton of the Native Forest Council states in If A Tree Falls:
<quote>
The industry tends to call the environmentalists “radical.” The reality is that 95% of the standing native forests in the United States have been cut down. It’s not radical to try and save the last 5%. What’s radical is logging 95%.[71]
</quote>
The people behind oil spills and other environmental disasters get fines. The people who try to stop them get prison time.
Something is very wrong with this.
In the early 1980s, about a decade before the formation of the ELF, a Canadian group called Direct Action bombed a power plant substation on Vancouver Island and a factory in Toronto where guidance systems for cruise missiles were produced. The power plant Direct Action bombed was being built in an area that didn’t really need it. The whole project had been approved without community oversight, and it was rumored that the plant’s real purpose was to sell excess energy to the United States, which ended up looking like the truth once it was up, running, and sending much of its power to California. Direct Action bombed the plant while it was still under construction—after the most expensive equipment was in place, but before it was providing power. This was meant to hurt the project financially, but not alienate the public with a blackout. No one was injured, and the project was delayed.
If no one was hurt, was this action violent? Is destruction justified if it aims to stop even greater destruction? Is violence just one thing, or are there many types, differentiated by target, intent, and severity? Or, to quote the Dalai Lama, perhaps “the distinction between violence and non-violence lies less in the nature of the action and more in the motivation with which it is done.”[72]
Compared to that first action, the subsequent bombing of the weapons plant in Toronto went much less smoothly.
Direct Action parked a van filled with explosives next to one of the buildings and called in a warning. But the timer went off early, the building had not been vacated, and although no one died, many were severely injured. Juliet Belmas, who made the phone call, later stated that “to this day I believe it was a miracle no one was killed, we should never have attacked a civilian target (a place where people worked) with 550 pounds of dynamite; it was wacko crazy.”[73] Watching the aftermath on television, and seeing paramedics carrying people out on stretchers, Ann Hansen, another member of Direct Action responsible for the bombing, writes that she felt “the inescapable guilt of having seriously injured innocent people.”[74] She considered suicide.
In her memoirs, Hansen’s main accomplice in the bombing, Brent Taylor, states,
<quote>
“If people are building weapons of destruction to maintain their wealth and power, I see nothing wrong with destroying those weapons.”[75] So is obstructing the construction of weapons capable of destroying all life on Earth self-defense? Or had Direct Action, like Nixon and Trotsky, used the notion of self-defense to defend the indefensible? Maybe they had taken it too far? In an interview with prisontv. net, Taylor stated, “We always took it a little farther, sort of to a Unabomber level, really.”[76]
</quote>
*** Acting in Isolation
The Unabomber is the name the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation gave Ted Kaczynski as they sought to determine his identity and arrest him for killing three people and injuring 23 others with homemade bombs over the course of 17 years. Kaczynski was a mathematics prodigy, who was admitted to Harvard at 16 and earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan at 24. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley for two years, but abruptly resigned, moving to a cabin in Montana, where he hoped to live off the land. But “developers” were destroying the land.
As he stated in an interview:
<quote>
The best place, to me, was the largest remnant of this plateau that dates from the tertiary age. It’s kind of rolling country, not flat, and when you get to the edge of it you find these ravines that cut very steeply in to cliff-like drop-offs and there was even a waterfall there. It was about a two days hike from my cabin. That was the best spot until the summer of 1983. That summer there were too many people around my cabin so I decided I needed some peace. I went back to the plateau and when I got there I found they had put a road right through the middle of it. You just can’t imagine how upset I was. It was from that point on I decided that, rather than trying to acquire further wilderness skills, I would work on getting back at the system. Revenge.[77]
</quote>
He initially performed small acts of sabotage on those nearby developments, but soon started mailing bombs to university professors and airlines in a rather misguided attempt to destroy the entire system that had made so much destruction possible.
In 1995, Kaczynski promised to stop his bombings if a major newspaper or magazine would publish his manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future.” The New York Times and The Washington Post both did. His brother recognized the prose and ideas, the FBI had its first real lead, and Kaczynski was soon arrested.
Although the preservation of wilderness was his main concern, his manifesto rarely addresses it. Writing in the first person plural, either to hide his numbers, or perhaps as a tacit admission that a lone murderer is easily dismissed as insane while groups are worth taking seriously, he writes, “Since there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.”[78] Instead, he lashes out at “lefism,” “technology,” “political correctness,” and “oversocialization.”
For Kaczynski, “oversocialization” involves total adaptation to the existing social order and its values. And although becoming a productive member of a society dedicated to demolishing the Earth is certainly something to avoid, Kaczynski’s violent, antisocial response is not the right one. Humans are social creatures. We live, work, and develop together. Social transformations come from collective endeavors. The best way to replace our dominant paradigm is to create and inhabit institutions that actually embody freedom, justice, and environmentally harmonious modes of being. This requires movements, which require groups of people. Of course, these will ofen be small. Truly radical change is rarely popular at the outset. Abolitionists constituted a very small, marginalized group. Yet slavery was still evil. Real social change, maybe without exception, starts small. But as groups become smaller, amoral measures become more likely. Kaczynski acted alone. Direct Action had five members and acted in isolation. Cut off from wider social movements, ethical oversight can disappear. Small may be beautiful, but too small can be a real problem.
In If A Tree Falls, activist and filmmaker Tim Lewis discusses the collapse of the environmental movement in Eugene, Oregon in the wake of the ELF arsons:
<quote>
I think people were self-righteous, I think people thought they had the answer, weren’t willing to listen to other points of view, because their view was more radical than that point of view. All of that came into play, I think, to help narrow the amount of people that were connected within the movement to the point where it just went—poof—doesn’t exist anymore.[79]
</quote>
In addition, groups and individuals utilizing more violent methods cannot collaborate with those acting in open opposition. On simple, tactical grounds, legal and extralegal groups cannot know what one another are up to. Those who need secrecy will blow their cover, while those acting in the open will be discredited by association. Extralegal activity almost unavoidably entails isolation. And once stripped of the social, ethics can become irrelevant.
In a letter to Earth First!, Kaczynski writes, “Concerning EF!, my suggestion is that the real revolutionaries among them should withdraw from the existing EF! movement, which would exclude mere reformers, liberals, leftists, etc. who are afraid of ‘alienating the middle class.’”[80] Given the histories of previous movements, this seems somewhat logical. Small bands of inspired minorities tend to have the greatest impact. But if the “real revolutionaries” take on everyone else, then everyone else becomes the enemy, and anything becomes possible.
*** Acting Together
Since none of us can dismantle our existing systems on our own, to change our social order, we must remain social. But this is not to say that larger groups, like nations or armies or mobs, have not marched off and committed any heinous acts. That’s pretty much what “history” is. War after war after genocide. Large groups are not somehow more moral than individuals. The opposite is usually the case. But if we wish to mount any political resistance against the existing order, acting alone is almost always going to be a bad idea. But working together can go pretty poorly too.
In Stanley Milgram’s controversial experiments at Yale University, two subjects, a “teacher” and a “learner,” were led into a room. The “learner” was strapped to a chair, and an electrode was placed on one wrist. The “teacher” was told the experiment was meant to measure the effects of punishment on learning. Then the “teacher” quizzed the “learner” on a series of word pairs. Every time an error was made, the “teacher” administered an increasing level of shock.
Except the “learner” was an actor, the electrode was a prop, and the real object of the experiment was how much pain the average person would inflict just because a scientist at a prestigious university told them to.
<quote>
At 75 volts, the “learner” grunts. At 120 volts he complains verbally; at 150 he demands to be released from the experiment. His protests continue as the shocks escalate, growing increasingly vehement and emotional. At 285 volts, his response can only be described as an agonizing scream.[81]
</quote>
At each point, the scientist urges the “teacher” to continue.
The assumption that only a sadistic fringe would shock the “learner” at the most extreme level would make roughly two-thirds of humanity part of that sadistic fringe. Which is not exactly a “fringe.” And since people are so easily led to bad behavior, the ways we act together, and what we demand of each other, are incredibly important.
*** What Is To Be Done?
There may be no universally appropriate tactics for undermining our existing systems. Time, place, context, and endless experimentation will determine what is to be done.
In totalitarian states, volunteering to get arrested as a form of protest isn’t actually protest, but suicide. So the more oppressive the state, the more likely it is that opposition to it will be a militia with guns and not a nonprofit with picket signs. But in a more open society, immediately adopting violent tactics can discredit entire movements.
Right now, it is necessary to stand in the way of those who would destroy the planet to maintain power and profit.
Tactics will vary by location and political climate. But in every case, this needs to be both a social movement and an ethical movement. Actions enacted in anger and isolation, as well as actions enacted by larger groups, can all be problematic.
No path is perfect. Means and methods will always shif. We should never get stuck in patterns or stop analyzing what we do, and should always be wary of the voice that urges us to continue with an act we may regret.
Whether we are prepared or not, we are entering a new epoch. Taking some sort of action will soon become unavoidable. Fossil fuels, which power global capitalism’s destruction of the Earth, are going to disappear or become too expensive to extract profitably. By some accounts, we have already passed peak oil. Cars, trucks, airplanes, global shipping, plastics, and many other now-ubiquitous facts of life will become relics of an unrecoverable past. We can always return to the Stone Age, but the Oil Age is only going to happen once. And it’s almost over. Without fossil fuels, industrial capitalism will become impossible. Will it be a sad ending for everyone but the insects, or a transition to a better future? The current status quo is already doomed. Their doom will be our demise if we don’t hasten their downfall.
But how do we do that? What is permissible?
We ought to recognize that humans are more easily moved to extreme actions than we are usually willing to admit. Robespierre didn’t need to do all that much to produce his terror. A few impassioned speeches, and the lines for the guillotine stretched around the block. As our situation grows increasingly dire, just what methods we can adopt needs to be clear. If there is to be a mass movement that confronts and disrupts the entrenched powers destroying our planet, there will certainly be debates about tactics. We don’t necessarily need definitive answers in place before we begin. After all, it’s already past time to act. But we need to be ready to apply constant vigilance to those actions. We need to get organized. But we need to make intelligent and effective organizations. We have to get it right this time. It might be our last chance.
** The Revolution Will Be Hilarious
<quote>
*I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas.*
*I’m frightened of the old ones.*
John Cage[82]
</quote>
The acts of thinking comedically and behaving democratically share enough analogous elements that an extended comparison between the two makes each much clearer. In particular, comedy can help elucidate the type of thinking it will take to create and maintain a free and democratic society, generate new ideas, and foster broad social movements.
The ideas presented here should be useful to anyone. My intended audience is not simply comedians or even fans of comedy. It is not even written for funny people. Just people.
Wherever they might be.
As will be shown, comedy can teach us a great deal about the type of thinking it will take to create a better world. Just as jokes require understanding and utilizing concealed connections for comedic effect, free societies require comprehending, tolerating, and putting those same connections to use. A mind that only perceives one correct mode of being is both inherently undemocratic and invariably humorless. In order to make jokes or communicate effectively with people outside one’s immediate circle, one must have knowledge of, and an ability to move between, various modes of speaking and being. If we wish to positively transform our world, we will need to work with a wide variety of people, even those who seem incredibly different from ourselves. Barriers need to be broken. And the type of thinking modeled by comedy can help.
A rigid insistence on a single viewpoint can block the more expansive perspective that both jokes and free societies require. Greek, Shakespearian, and other classical tragedies have repeatedly attempted to teach us the dangers of hubristic myopia, yet we refuse to learn. As the poet Frank Bidart said of King Lear in an interview:
<quote>
King Lear, when he’s in power, can’t see a damn thing. Everybody sucks up to him, and when people don’t suck up to him—when Cordelia doesn’t suck up to him—he can’t stand it. It’s very hard to see anything when you’re on top. People who can see how things are really ordered—they’re perhaps always a little outside it, or started as its victim; they can see the grinding beneath what may appear a smooth surface.[83]
</quote>
In King Lear, the Fool criticizes the King when no one else is able. After the elderly Lear banishes Cordelia, the only daughter he should have trusted, and divides his kingdom between the other two, he finds himself a disempowered figurehead. No one but the Fool is willing or able to call the King foolish. When he does, Lear is stunned by the Fool’s bluntness. Lear asks, “Does thou call me a fool, boy?” The Fool responds, “All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.”[84]
But we are not necessarily doomed to the type of foolishness Lear commits and the Fool criticizes. A comedic mindset can help us move from self-centered to multi-centered worldviews, can increase our understanding and tolerance for one another, and can teach us to develop and accept the widest possible range of non-harmful behaviors.
Comedy can increase our sensitivity to the plights and pains of unfamiliar people, make it ever more difficult to marginalize and persecute other human beings, and allow us all to work together more effectively. A little more “foolishness” could make us all a lot wiser.
In addition, and as will be shown in more detail later, comedy is the purest example of how human creativity works.
When two seemingly unrelated planes of thought are shown to intersect at an unforeseen point, the result could just as easily be laughter as insight. Comedic thinking can generate new ideas or even complete paradigm shifs with just a few well-chosen words. We can play various modes of being off one another, generating new ideas like a comedian creates punch lines—finding unforeseen points of intersection between seemingly unrelated things.
*** A Few Important Rejoinders
**** 1. Wait, what do we mean by “democracy”?
Before we move into our actual discussion about comedy, democracy, and the creation of a free society, there are a few caveats to cover. First, it seems important to mention that the “democracy” alluded to throughout this essay is much more than just acting as “constituents” within a representative framework. The democracy this essay champions is not the democracy we currently have, but the democracy of as-yet-non-existent political arrangements that will facilitate ever-greater freedom, and will actually respect the diversity of human needs, experiences, and abilities.
Truly free institutions are peopled institutions, in which unique individuals share common ground on a person-to-person basis. There is no state, law, proclamation, or decree that could grant us this type of democracy. It can only be collectively constructed through arduous political processes and difficult dialogues. We can put the process in motion, but the end result will emerge and evolve in unexpected ways— like a good joke on its way to the punchline.
Democracy was not established once and for all in the late 1700s. It is an ongoing experiment under continual development. Utopia is a moving target. Perhaps surprisingly, some would disagree. In the United States, there exists a segment of the judiciary referred to as “strict constructionists.” Most often associated with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, strict constructionists espouse total fidelity to the original intended meanings of constitutions and laws, in his case, the U.S. Constitution. In a way, strict constructionists seek to freeze our political practices at the moment they were imagined. But throughout history, this rigid stance has been questioned by more progressive politicians. Most famously, in the midst of the U.S. Civil War, Abraham Lincoln delivered his “Gettysburg Address.” Compromises written into the U.S. Constitution, such as making legal determinations as to what fraction of a human being a slave should count— not to mention even allowing slavery in the first place—had resulted in the sectional strife that led to the Civil War. With his “Gettysburg Address,” claims Garry Wills:
<quote>
[Lincoln] performed one of the most daring acts of open-air sleight-of-hand ever witnessed by the unsuspecting. Everyone in that vast throng of thousands was having his or her intellectual pocket picked. The crowd departed with a new thing in its ideological luggage, that new constitution Lincoln had substituted for the one they brought with them.[85]
</quote>
Lincoln “altered the document from within, by appeal from its letter to its spirit, subtly changing the recalcitrant stuff of that legal compromise, bringing it to its own indictment.”[86]
And he did so in a mere 272 words.
In the “Gettysburg Address,” Lincoln declares that the United States had been founded on the notion that “all men are created equal”—here actually harkening back to the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution itself. He then goes on to state that the living must carry on the “unfinished work” of those being buried at Gettysburg, and see to it that the nation shall have a “new birth of freedom.”
Lincoln recognized that democracy is an ongoing experiment. Slavish dedication to dated documents will do us little good. We must always be prepared, like Lincoln, to rethink our political practices. And just as Lincoln saw in the 1860s that the political practices of the 1770s needed revising, we too can forge ahead into further births of freedom by continually developing the unfinished work of democracy.
As Walt Whitman (in a way, the patron saint of these pages) wrote of democracy in 1871:
<quote>
It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.[87]
</quote>
And although over a century has passed since Whitman wrote these words, true democracy does not yet exist. And it may be many more centuries in the making. But working toward its realization is among the most important tasks we face.
**** 2. Wait, what’s a “revolution” and why should it be “hilarious”?
Here’s our second rejoinder. Although this essay is entitled “The Revolution Will Be Hilarious,” just what a “revolution” can be, and who might be a revolutionary, should be clarified. The somewhat clichéd image of the bomb-wielding revolutionary with a furrowed brow is not the image of someone who thinks much of anything is “hilarious.” To this person, the revolution is most definitely a sober and unsmiling affair. But any new social order worth inhabiting will be built on increased joy and happiness. The revolution will be full of laughs and smiles or we should not bother having it at all. Or, to quote a popular misquotation of Emma Goldman, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.”[88]
Even our most serious problems (or especially our most serious problems) can best be solved by implementing the attitude of openness humor makes possible. An insistence on seriousness and solemnity almost always serves pretension and pomposity, and narrows the wider perspective that comedy and free societies require. It always seems to be those whose authority is the most arbitrary and absurd who insist on being surrounded by seriousness. They fear a joke may puncture the aura of importance they have created. Distrust anyone who distrusts laughter.
In addition, relinquishing our self-serious pomposity can, perhaps surprisingly, facilitate truly serious work. As Vaclav Havel stated:
<quote>
If you don’t want to dissolve in your own seriousness to the point where you become ridiculous to everyone, you must have a healthy awareness of your own human ridiculousness and nothingness. As a matter of fact, the more serious what you are doing is, the more important it becomes not to lose this awareness. If you lose this, your own actions—paradoxically— lose their seriousness. A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear sighted awareness of the temporality and ephemerality of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.[89]
</quote>
Moreover, our imagined revolutionary with all the bombs is not only acting out of self-serious anger, but perhaps angry isolation as well. Closed cells of revolutionaries publishing pamphlets to one another in their own special jargon are in a poor position to produce truly broad and effective change.
We need movements that continuously grow. This will require removing the barriers between our small, isolated worlds, so we can get together and work together. Comedic thinking is essential for this task. The revolution will certainly be hilarious. Otherwise, it will be a total joke.
**** 3. Wait, aren’t jokes cruel sometimes?
And this brings us to our final rejoinder. Although the psychology of comedic thought is essentially the same as the psychology of democratic thought, humor, in its application, can be used positively or negatively. Comedic thinking may be quite similar to democratic thinking, but comedy is not inherently democratic. Insults, mean-spirited mockery, misogynistic and racist humor can all reinforce many narrow-minded notions and make others feel less welcome.
Jokes are ofen directed at someone, and are commonly used to exert or gain power in a social hierarchy.
But comedy can just as easily make others feel less alone, whether by helping us see one another from new perspectives, or helping us laugh at the absurdities of our common plight.
There is humor that unifies and humor that tears apart. There is humor that exposes hypocrisy and humor that mocks the marginalized. Humor is not always a force for progress. It matters how we use it.
As Garry Trudeau writes in “The Abuse of Satire”:
<quote>
Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny—it’s just mean.[90]
</quote>
Trudeau made these remarks in reaction to the January 2015 mass shooting at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The magazine had angered a large swath of the Islamic world by publishing cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Or that’s the popular narrative. But a quick perusal of the issues of Charlie Hebdo from the months preceding the attack show far fewer instances of actual religious satire in comparison to mean-spirited caricatures of Muslim immigrants. For the most part, Charlie Hebdo punched down, and mocked the already marginalized.
Although this mass shooting was (obviously) horrific, Charlie Hebdo is not exactly the noblest use of free speech. Just because you’re a martyr doesn’t mean you were right. And just because your jokes are pissing people off, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re pushing hard truths or something.
Je ne suis pas Charlie.
While Charlie Hebdo definitely punched downward, antisemitism, which also isn’t funny, is based on a perceived upward punch. Since Jews are rumored to run the banks, the media, and Hollywood, it is assumed that they secretly run the world. These sorts of conspiracies have roots older than movies or any currently bankable currency—contemporary antisemitism is just new seeds sprouting from the same old shit. So antisemetic punches aren’t actually aimed up or down. They’re more like punches thrown by a blind guy on LSD trying to hit his hallucinations. It would almost be sad if it didn’t cause so much harm.
Satire and other kinds of comedy are best when they attack the citadels of power. When the powerless are attacked, or when punches are thrown randomly based on erroneous information, jokes can be destructive and awful. Luckily, it’s not really the practice of comedy, but the psychology of comedy with which this essay is concerned. But because we will need to at least periodically touch on the practice of comedy, for the sake of clarity, I will call comedy that mocks the pompous and encourages creative thinking and increased understanding progressive humor, and comedy that attacks the marginalized or reinforces stereotypes and ossified thinking regressive humor.
Alright, we’re ready to discuss how comedy works.
*** So Here’s How Comedy Works
In The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler analyzes creativity, and demonstrates that the same principles of creation apply for everyone from the Jester, to the Scientist and the Sage.[91] He claims that his book “proposes a theory of the act of creation—of the conscious and unconscious processes underlying scientific discovery, artistic originality, and comic inspiration. It endeavors to show that all creative activities have a basic pattern in common, and to outline that pattern.”[92]
He begins with humor, and shows that it is the bisociation of two seemingly separate planes of thought or matrices of action at an unexpected point that makes jokes (and other “eureka!” moments) work. As Koestler states, “I have coined the term ‘bisociation’ in order to make a distinction between the routine skills of thinking on a single ‘plane,’ as it were, and the creative act, which, as I shall try to show, always operates on more than one plane.”[93] Bisociative acts, found most obviously in humor, are present in all acts of creation.
How does bisociation function? Not much makes a joke unfunny quite like explaining it, but here are some examples and explanations anyway.
<quote>
A ham sandwich walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, we don’t serve food here!”
</quote>
In this joke, two senses of the word “serve” are played off one another.
Then there’s this:
<quote>
Q: What’s the difference between space pirates and clinical depression?
A: I don’t battle space pirates every day!
</quote>
Or here’s one from Groucho Marx:
<quote>
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.
</quote>
Each of these jokes works when an unexpected point of connection is created between two seemingly distinct ideas— what Koestler would call a “bisociation.”
What is going on in these moments of bisociation? In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein—a notoriously humorless man who once claimed that a very good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes—discusses our perception of indefinite drawings like this duck-rabbit:
At one moment, we may perceive this picture as a duck, but a moment later, see it as a rabbit. What happens in these instants when the duck becomes a rabbit or the rabbit becomes a duck? The picture does not change, but our perception of it does. And our perception shifts in a very similar manner when “in my pajamas” becomes “in my pajamas.”
So that’s “bisociation.” And although it is a useful term, it requires some expansion. The binary logic of bisociation oversimplifies the true complexities of many jokes and other creative thoughts.
“Multisociation” is preferable. Moshé Feldenkrais argued that any actual choice requires more than two options. Rather than going back and forth between just this or that, a third option (or more) introduces a higher level of nuance, and truly choosing becomes a possibility.
Similarly, both rich experiences and funny jokes usually operate on more than two levels. Increased elements yield increased nuance, which yields increased usefulness.
We can clarify and expand on multisociation by bringing in the Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin’s related notions of “heteroglossia” and the “hybrid construction,” although he, like Koestler, usually writes of binaries between just two elements. Heteroglossia, as defined by Bakhtin, is the coexistence of various sub-vocabularies within a single linguistic code. Heteroglossia is all about the importance of context over text. Every utterance any human ever makes bears the mark of a time, place, social class, generation, or ideology. Language cannot be neutral.
Heteroglossia comes into comedy in “hybrid constructions.” These occur in passages and utterances that employ a single speaker, but multiple vocabularies simultaneously. As Bakhtin states:
<quote>
What we are calling a hybrid construction is an utterance that belongs, by its grammatical (syntactic) and compositional markers, to a single speaker, but that actually contains mixed within it two utterances, two speech manners, two styles, two “languages,” two semantic and axiological belief systems. We repeat, there is no formal—compositional and syntactic— boundary between these utterances, styles, languages, belief systems; the division of voices and languages takes place within the limits of a single syntactic whole, ofen within the limits of a simple sentence.[94]
</quote>
In other words, a single word or statement can be a duck, a rabbit, or just some lines on paper, depending on how we look at it. Or, to combine Koestler and Bakhtin, it is the multisociation of multiple non-neutral linguistic codes that yields hybrid constructions—and comedy. In humor, two or more self-consistent and seemingly incompatible planes of thought intersect at an unforeseen point. Effective punch lines are logical, but unexpected.
*** What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding?
Humor and creativity require the ability to see the world from multiple perspectives—a skill equally important in behaving democratically. In order to either make jokes or communicate effectively with people outside one’s immediate circle, one must have an understanding of, and an ability to move between, various modes of speaking and being. Jokes require understanding and utilizing difference for comedic effect. Democracies require understanding, coexisting, and cooperating with that same difference. (And although we should never cease attempting to understand others, we should also recognize that others will always remain others. Actual experience is nontransferable.)
In order to effectively explore the corollaries between comedy and democracy, we will need to do some hopefully not too confusing hopping between the related issues of self-perception, other-perception, stereotypes, outsider-hood, and language. I am going to try to keep it all concise and organized, but sadly, we have officially reached the part of this essay where the complexities of the world slam into the attempted tidiness of the printed page and make maintaining clarity increasingly difficult. So keep rooting for me and we’ll get through this together.
On his WTF Podcast, Marc Maron interviews various comedians about their lives, their craf, and the social functions of funniness. In episode 224 of the WTF Podcast, Maron interviewed the black comedian and actor Chris Rock, who discussed pitching sketch ideas to the white writers at Saturday Night Live. White comedians, he argued, had a distinct advantage.
<quote>
Because they share a culture—they have kinda the same moms, kinda the same dads, they grew up in the same environment— there’s a shorthand that happens. They get the little things about you that make you funny. And when you’re the black guy, no one gets the little things. They just get the hits.[95]
</quote>
The details of black culture escaped Saturday Night Live’s white writers. It made them miss the nuances of Rock’s jokes—the sorts of subtleties they would be able to perceive in white comedians.
This does not make them racist. It simply means that the details of black culture were not part of their mental makeup.
The process for better comprehending Rock’s jokes and the process for rendering him less of an “other” are basically the same. Learning why someone is funny happens through learning why that someone is also a fellow, suffering human being. The path to tolerance and the path to laughter are identical. Discovering the details of an unfamiliar someone’s plight and pain will reveal the reasons for their laughter. And make it harder to add to their pain.
Comedy requires the simultaneous use of various vocabularies. We don’t just need to understand the nuances of various cultures, we need to do something interesting with those nuances. Here’s an example: Comedy Central named Richard Pryor the greatest stand-up comedian of all time. Besides his obvious skills as a comedian and his ability to present his immense personal pain and suffering honestly and universally, the perspective he had as a member of a marginalized minority in the United States who simultaneously operated within the context of mainstream culture gave him a unique frame of reference, allowing him to play black and white culture off one another in interesting and unexpected ways. Someone who exists solely as a member of a single culture is less likely to see that culture from the outside and realize what’s so funny about it. Its practices are likely to remain unquestioned, while those of other cultures will seem strange or unnatural. The smooth surface is visible, but not the grinding beneath it.
Pryor’s simultaneous existence in two cultures gave him distance on both, making him particularly demonstrative of W.E.B. Dubois’ notion of African American double consciousness—a split caused by living the American experience with an African heritage. Pryor’s dual cultural consciousness, coupled with his ability to find funny connections between these cultures, contributed immensely to his success.
Although Pryor pointed out difference, his work was not divisive. Instead, he emphasized the common humanity that transcends difference. As he states,
<quote>
My comedy was colorblind. None of it would’ve worked if the world was all one color. I mean, even black ain’t beautiful if it’s the only color you look at every day. Life’s richness, its beauty and excitement, comes from the diversity of things.[96]
</quote>
Why play up difference to be divisive? “We’re all people, you know? That’s hard enough.”[97]
Even when skilled comedians are not members of minority groups, they still tend to be marginalized outsiders.
The beautiful and popular kids rarely grow up to be professional comedians. Or even funny for that matter. And this is most likely due to the lack of an outside perspective that comes from one’s easy acceptance into a dominant culture. In episode 163 of the WTF Podcast, Maron spoke with the late-night talk-show host Conan O’Brien. O’Brien, after discussing his nerdy, awkward childhood, stated,
<quote>
I’m always suspicious if I think a comedian’s too good looking, and they were a great athlete when they were young. I almost can’t believe that they’re going to be any good. […] I’ll have some really good looking intern on the show, who tells me that he’s also a great athlete or something, and he’ll say, “Yeah, I’m thinking of going into stand-up.” And I just want to say, “No, no, no. This is for us. This is our consolation prize.”[98]
</quote>
Ostracized outcasts usually create the best comedy. They spend most of their lives seeing the world from the outside, viewing it from a perspective that those wrapped comfortably in its machinations cannot. It is impossible to comment on a system one cannot even perceive as a system, that one simply perceives as “reality.” But when a dominant culture makes you an “other,” it becomes possible to see it for what it actually is—just another historically contingent culture in the shifing tapestry of time. We all need to step outside the machinations of our ingrained patterns of thought and action and see where our various self-consistent (or inconsistent) modes of being do (or don’t) intersect, so that we can be more tolerant, less cruel, and increasingly democratic.
*** On Funny Women
Of course, the long-standing lack of women comedians complicates my argument about outside perspectives and the creation of comedy. The notion that existing as an outsider within a dominant culture gives one an advantage in being funny should make women comedians incredibly common.
This finally seems to be changing, or at least starting to change, but women comedians remain both rare and distinctly women comedians.
Perhaps surprisingly, “Why aren’t women funny?” is an even older question than the people who usually pose it. In an essay entitled “Why Aren’t Women Funny?,” Christopher Hitchens attempts to explain this startlingly common sentiment. Although he sets out to prove that there is something inherently unfunny about women, his evidence and his thesis never quite come together. By failing, his essay inadvertently uncovers some interesting points. What he actually demonstrates is not that women are somehow congenitally less funny than men, but that many men are threatened by funny women, creating an unspoken social practice wherein most women keep their jokes to themselves in the company of other genders.
Because humor requires exceptional intelligence and the ability to stay ahead of an audience, a woman who is funnier than a man also seems smarter. This can be threatening to many men. They do, after all, believe it’s their world. James Brown told them so. As Hitchens writes, “Precisely because humor is a sign of intelligence (and many women believe, or were taught by their mothers, that they become threatening to men if they appear too bright), it could be that in some way men do not want women to be funny. They want them as an audience, not as rivals.”[99]
But beyond the subtle social practices that make it difficult for women to be funny around men, the standard stereotypes and stock characters that comprise much of comedy’s (and the world’s) content typically come from a very male perspective. As the female cartoonist Betty Swords—who began publishing her cartoons in the mid-1950s—said of the depiction of women in most comics:
<quote>
Women were dumb about money, dumb about driving, dumb about anything that happened in the real world. And that began my trip into feminism. I began to see how humor treated women. Dumb, dumb, dumb.[100]
</quote>
In other words, women usually are the joke, not the makers of jokes. In his essay “Feminism and Pragmatism,” Richard Rorty states that “most oppressors have had the wit to teach the oppressed a language in which the oppressed will sound crazy—even to themselves—if they describe themselves as oppressed.”[101]
Progressive humor can make us see things in new ways, while regressive humor can make us see things in the same over-simplified ways again and again. We need to expand the depth and breadth of materials we use. In her book Humor Power, Swords states:
<quote>
The male images of women created by cartoonists were accepted as the truth about women. For example: The woman driver is the safest driver, according to the National Safety Council—but not to the National Cartoonists Society. To them, she’s the quintessential “dumb driver,” an idea so set in the concrete of comic tradition that it’s become humor shorthand: when we see a cartoon of a woman driver, we know automatically that she’s a dumb driver. Just ask a man which he believes, the Cartoonists Society or the Safety Council?[102]
</quote>
Humor can reinforce ugly and regressive stereotypes or it can subvert them. So we don’t just need to tell funnier jokes. We also need to pay attention to the sorts of jokes we tell. We need progressive, not regressive humor.
It’s worth pointing out that there are interesting examples of women who attacked standard misogynistic stereotypes with a form of comedic jujitsu—using the weight of our culture’s asinine assumptions to topple those very assumptions—and achieved mass cultural success in the process. On I Love Lucy, still one of the funniest shows in the history of television, Lucille Ball played “Lucy Ricardo,” a ditzy housewife who— as cultural expectations would dictate—kept her real age and hair color a secret, and was (of course) terrible with money.
By performing as what we expected to see, Ball was able to play with our expectations. She overplayed Lucy Ricardo’s stereotyped characteristics to such an extent that she revealed them to be the hollow absurdities they are. So although stereotypes typically fuel reactionary thinking, they can sometimes be used to undercut themselves.
However useful and interesting such cultural practicesmay be, simply exposing sexist suppositions is just a preliminary step in the liberation of women. A society’s dominant voices determine that society’s terms of engagement, and female perspectives have been marginalized. As Simone de Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex, woman currently “knows and chooses herself not as she exists for herself but as man defines her.”[103] Women’s (and other dominated or marginalized groups’) languages, vocabularies, and modes of being are ofen prevented from fully developing. To quote Beauvoir again,
<quote>
Woman is not a fixed reality but a becoming; she has to be compared with man in her becoming; that is, her possibilities have to be defined: what skews the issues so much is that she is being reduced to what she was, to what she is today, while the question concerns her capacities; the fact is that her capacities manifest themselves clearly only when they have been realized.[104]
</quote>
The realization of a still-nascent truth can counter a dominant truth, give us new ways to interact, and new jokes to tell.
The creation and de-marginalization of a truly feminine vocabulary is needed for women to have a real voice—comic or otherwise—in society. A dominated culture does not have the freedom to be itself. So in a weird sort of way, “woman” is not yet the name of an actualized entity. Only when the yoke of cultural dominance has been sloughed off once and for all can “woman” become the name of a being with a distinct and recognizable vocabulary—a vocabulary defined by what it is, rather than what it is not.
*** Hysterical Contingencies and Comedic Vistas
Obviously, based on much of what has been said above, understanding language is essential for understanding democracy. Jokes regularly require subtle (and-not-so-subtle) manipulations of language and vocabularies, while democracies require the ability to understand and communicate effectively with “others.”
In his essay “Authority and American Usage,” David Foster Wallace points out that a child who can only speak “correct” English is
<quote>
actually in the same dialectical position as the class’s “slow” kid who can’t learn to stop using ain’t and bringed. Exactly the same position. One is punished in class, the other on the playground, but both are deficient in the same linguistic skill— viz., the ability to move between various dialects and levels of “correctness,” the ability to communicate one way with peers and another way with teachers and another with families and another with T-ball coaches and so on.[105]
</quote>
Or, as Mikhail Bakhtin states a little less informally in “Discourse in the Novel,”
<quote>
Consciousness finds itself inevitably facing the necessity of having to choose a language. With each literary-verbal performance, consciousness must actively orient itself amidst heteroglossia, it must move in and occupy a position for itself within it, it chooses, in other words, a “language.”[106]
</quote>
Behaving democratically and making jokes ofen require the ability to simultaneously utilize several systems of discourse.
If one doesn’t understand the differences in communication styles between peers, parents, and T-ball coaches, one will not be able to crack jokes about or between these groups. Nor will one be able to comfortably coexist with them. Comedy, democracy, and language are all closely related.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, whom you may remember from the duck-rabbit drawing, managed to revolutionize the philosophy of language not just once, but twice in the twentieth century.
And when he did it the second time, he was definitely on to something. The first time Wittgenstein revolutionized the philosophy of language, he worked within the parameters set by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Like these thinkers, the young Wittgenstein sought foundations for language and mathematics. His Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the only philosophical work he published in his lifetime, analyzes true/false assertoric statements, and declares, among other things, that only these types of statements have sense. A statement that cannot be declared true or false is senseless, and the subject should be passed over in silence.
But over the course of the next several decades, Wittgenstein came to reject just about everything Frege, Russell, and his younger self had said. Wittgenstein’s later work entirely jettisons the notion that language and math have foundations at all. Rather, he suggests, humans develop various systems of rules, and then follow, ignore, or change those rules. Meaning is determined by use. Our languages and mathematical systems are not descriptions of reality, but tools for navigating the world.
If we teach a child the name of an object, maybe a car or a desk, and then say the name of that object to the child, who in turn brings it to us, has the child learned a proposition that can be true or false? No. The child has learned a system of rules for a specific linguistic situation. This system of rules is not made meaningful by the truth or falsity of its propositions, but by the use to which it can be put. The way a vocabulary operates in the world is what makes it meaningful.
Frege, Russell, and the young Wittgenstein all declared logic to be language’s quasi-metaphysical foundation, and then attempted to use logic to explain language. But logic is not an explanation of language, just a re-description of it in different terms. In fact, there are no meta-theories of language, just accounts of the various ways languages are used.
Wittgenstein’s earlier work only analyzed text, but with his later work, he came to accept (and emphasize) the incredible importance of context. Meaning is not “discovered” by finding a language that corresponds to reality, but by creating better tools for navigating the world. And just as we wouldn’t argue whether a hammer or some other tool is “true” or “corresponds to reality,” we should evaluate vocabularies by their function and usefulness. Do they allow us to deal with the world effectively? If they do, they are useful and worth keeping. If not, we should abandon them.
The Western capitalist description of the world is a worn-out tool that needs to be replaced. It describes the world as one of endless competition, and encourages the current rage for selfishness that, if left unchecked, will be our undoing.
The apostles of this worldview not only demand compliance with their commands, but total adoption of their values. As Tomas Merton writes of the young Gandhi:
<quote>
He had to a great extent renounced the beliefs, the traditions, the habits of thought, of India. He spoke, thought, and acted like an Englishman, except of course that an Englishman was precisely what he could never, by any miracle, become. He was an alienated Asian whose sole function in life was to be perfectly English without being English at all: to prove the superiority of the West by betraying his own heritage and his own self, thinking as a white man without ceasing to be “a Nigger.”[107]
</quote>
Compliance with capitalism is ofen made necessary for survival. In South Africa in the late 1800s, the English faced a labor shortage in the mines, mainly because the natives preferred not to perform such miserable work, and stayed on their farms instead. So in 1894, the English government passed the Glen Grey Act, creating a labor tax that had to be paid in shillings. And those shillings had to be earned.
Either work in the mines or go to jail. Most coercion into the economic system is less overt than this, but it is no less coercive.
The imperialist West adopted the hubristic attitude that the non-European cultures that conquest crushed had been stalled societies awaiting the blessings of “civilization” and “free markets.” Victory appeared to bring vindication. But with germ warfare, nuclear weapons, and the total degradation of the planet through institutionalized selfishness as the West’s most notable “achievements,” it may be time to accept that many of the cultures that have been destroyed and dispatched to the academic ghetto of anthropology journals ofen offer more elegant social forms, sensibilities, and ways of being.
In Detroit, Michigan, an African American artist named Dabls has built an enormous outdoor installation entitled “Iron Teaching Rocks How To Rust.” Old paint cans and piles of rebar try to teach rocks and chunks of concrete how to rust like them. It looks like a classroom—the iron up front, the rocks lined up in chairs. The iron embodies Western imperialist attempts to bring the glories of rapid self-destruction to those who could actually sustain themselves.
In the film Embrace of the Serpent, a shaman from a nearly-vanished tribe in Colombia leads two separate Western explorers on two separate trips to find one medicinal plant. Antonio Bolívar Salvador plays the shaman Karamakate, the last of his tribe. But the reality is not very different from the fiction. Ninety percent of the indigenous
people of Colombia have been wiped out. The herbicide glyphosate, applied liberally to coca crops, is causing cancer and birth defects. Environmental degradation and violent imperialism are making life impossible. As the film’s director, Ciro Guerra, stated, “These are people who have managed to live in the same place for 10,000 years without overpopulating it, without polluting it, without destroying its resources.”[108] Then the lessons of just how to rust were taught with all the force that could be brought to bear. Now the classroom is a mess and the school is burning down.
The worldview this essay espouses is so different from the currently dominant capitalist one that it is alarming. Free societies require tolerance, understanding, cooperation, and mutual aid—not the competitive, accumulative, and commercial values encouraged by the market economy.
Without radical change—both personally and politically— the only future we can look forward to is one of ever-mounting credit card debt and oceans at a rolling boil. We cannot go on wasting resources and destroying land. We need to maintain what we have so that life on Earth can continue.
At this point in history, it almost seems beyond debate that our social, political, and economic systems are fueling the destruction of our planet. The capitalist demand for endless growth and ever-increasing consumption in a world with finite resources is quite obviously suicidal. And the governmental defense of this economic system—creating laws that make capitalist economic practices ever more official and entrenched—institutionalizes and perpetuates our self-destructive greed.
*** Comedy, Creativity, and the Shock of the New
It is important that we synthesize, bisociate, and multisociate all our assorted worldviews together to create new vocabularies and new ideas. The old ideas have failed us, but a comedic mindset can help us create new ones. As has been mentioned, comedy is creativity in its purest form.
Comedy not only requires seeing from multiple perspectives, but doing something clever with those perspectives. Punch lines possess the same structure as both artistic creation and scientific discovery. This is probably why Wittgenstein thought a book of philosophy could be written consisting entirely of jokes. Humor works through the multisociation of seemingly separate planes at unforeseen points. A punch line is only funny if it is surprising. If people “see it coming,” the joke will fail.
This is why humor often ages poorly. As David Berman writes in his collection of poems, Actual Air:
<quote>
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare’s jokes,
I hope you won’t be insulted
if I say you’re trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow witted and obvious now.[109]
</quote>
Once a new way of seeing has been introduced, the surprise needed to generate laughter is gone. In both humor and scientific discovery, two seemingly unrelated planes are found to intersect at an unexpected point. And just as the Copernican revolution has ceased to be mind-blowing, most older humor now seems stilted and predictable. Comedy perpetually requires new multisociations to stay surprising and funny.
Humor tends toward newness, just as our ideas should.
Moreover, just being exposed to comedy can increase our creativity. The psychologist Alice M. Isen conducted a study in which college students were given a book of matches, a box of tacks, and a candle. They were then asked to affix the candle to a corkboard in such a way that the candle would burn without dripping wax on the floor. Students who were shown a comedy film beforehand had a 75% success rate.
Those who were shown a film about mathematics figured it out 20% of the time, while those who watched nothing had a 13% success rate.[110]
Isen then conducted a supplementary experiment in which an additional group were given candy bars before attempting the challenge. Comedy still conquered all. As Isen states, “Contrary to expectation, subjects in the gif condition did not show improved performance as those in the comedy-film condition did. Thus it may be specifically humor, and not positive affect more generally, that gives rise to improved creative problem solving.”[111] In short, comedy can prepare our minds for creative thinking and seeing things from fresh perspectives.
This makes etymological sense as well. The word “humor” comes from the Latin umor, for bodily fluid, which entered Old French (still meaning bodily fluid) as humor. In English, the word retains implications of fluidity and the ability to flow with changing circumstances, with the shif in meaning from bodily fluids to jokes pivoting on the medieval and Renaissance belief that shifing “humors” are responsible for shifs in temperament.[112]
*** Creating the Future
Comedic thinking involves flowing and changing creatively in relation to obstacles and encounters, and this fluidity of being can help us create a better world. The future remains unwritten. No template from the past can tell us what we ought to do. We can look back and find inspiration, but what we really need are new social forms and new individuals of never-before-seen varieties. Our ossified and outmoded forms need to be disassembled and reconfigured.
Although we cannot just will the unforeseen into existence, we can create the circumstances where it can emerge. If we guarantee collective, free inquiry, we create the possibility for beliefs and worldviews to collide and combine. There are no rules for this collision and combination beyond simply guaranteeing that freedom.
Just as good punchlines are surprising, new ideas arise from unforeseen combinations. Nothing new comes from thinking old thoughts over and over again.
But, sadly enough, not everyone wants wide varieties of worldviews inhabiting the same spaces. Jared Taylor, a Yale-educated white supremacist who prefers being called a “racial realist,” argues that monolithic cultures of single races are more stable, and therefore preferable, to multicultural societies, with Japan as his prime example. “Stability” may sound good, but in Taylor’s case, “stability” is both a cover for racism and the manifestation of an intense fear of change.
New ideas and new forms will not arise if separate cultures separately maintain their separate ways. By wearing a suit and hosting conferences, he and his followers present a slightly more respectable version of racist thought than a bunch of drunken skinheads, but the ideas motivating them aren’t much different.
In January 2016, as Donald Trump launched his campaign for the U.S. Presidency by demanding a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and threatening to ban Muslims from entering the United States, Taylor helped make a pre-recorded “robocall” urging the people of Iowa to support Trump. He closed his statement by saying, “We don’t need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump.”[113] But we don’t need assimilation. We need interpenetration.
It is only through total freedom of thought and the acceptance of all non-harmful behaviors that we can create the circumstances for a better world to emerge. Of course, the sort of optimism that would believe a better world is even possible has gone horribly out of style. The future is not what it used to be. The Utopian visions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given way to dystopian dread. In the Middle Ages, the world was seen as a temporary stopping place where humanity suffered for a bit while awaiting final judgment. To the medieval mind, perfection existed before the fall and would only come again after the apocalypse. But following the Enlightenment, and particularly for many nineteenth and twentieth century artists and radicals, perfection became an Earthly possibility.
Marxist and Modernist thought, as well as Utopian novels like William Morris’ News from Nowhere, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, and Upton Sinclair’s The Millenium, all exemplify the once-common belief in the possibility of a better future. But as we made our way into a new millennium, we forgot to bring such hopes with us. If the future is imagined at all, it is almost invariably a bleak one, with films like Blade Runner, Mad Max, Wall-E, and The Road exemplifying the common notion that the future, if we have one, will not be pretty. We are now lef with neither God nor Utopia—stalled in place as we await our inevitable collapse.
We can no longer afford to do without Utopian thinking.
If we don’t dream big now, there won’t be anyone lef to dream at all. To do so, we must first learn to embrace complexity, rather than taking the easy path and mentally foisting a false homogeneity onto an intricate and multifaceted world. A free society functions when unique individuals share common ground. The type of thinking exemplified by comedy is exactly the type of thinking we need to master if we wish to reimagine the future. Comedy can help us see how to think and speak on multiple planes simultaneously, and to multisociate and synthesize all our various worldviews together to create new ideas and new vocabularies—which we could then multisociate, on and on, into a future we cannot yet imagine.
We should respect—and even revel in—our incredible diversity of individual needs and skills, while still cooperating and functioning as communities. In The Ecology of Freedom, Murray Bookchin calls for an “ethics of complementarity.”
He points out that a self is “nourished by variety,” and cannot thrive if it guards itself against “threatening, invasive otherness.”[114] The freedom afforded by such an “equality of unequals” would help us respect—and even revel in—our incredible diversity of needs and skills.
In the first paragraph of Democratic Vistas, Walt Whitman claims that what is needed for true liberty is first, “a large variety of character,” and second, “full play for human nature to expand itself in numberless and even conflicting directions.”[115] I italicized “conflicting” for a reason. Whitman is demanding much more than diversity through preservation and protection. It seems essential to emphasize that this essay is not a call for the kind, gentle acceptance of every imaginable idea. Truth may be historically contingent, and our vocabularies may “merely” be tools, but there are better and worse ways to describe the world. Some vocabularies are actually quite harmful, and, as has been pointed out, the currently dominant one is particularly so.
But this “conflict” between worldviews does not need to involve bashing heads to beat new ideas into them. Rather, we can create and actualize better ways of being that will turn our world based on greed into another embarrassing relic of the past. Writing and whining about it like this is not enough. We shouldn’t be content to simply complain that the capitalist class is raping and pillaging our planet. Why should we expect them to stop if we can’t present something better?
The problem isn’t so much their success as it is our failure.
In order to supplant what is, we will need new vocabularies, and the type of thinking modeled by comedy can help. An act of quasi-comedic multisociation can produce an idea or object that has no place in the world. By introducing something that doesn’t belong within our existing systems, moments of multisociative insight can disrupt the machinations of the given and expand the scope of the possible. There is a war of vocabularies to be waged, and for now, the capitalist notion of life as a quest for profit has set our terms of engagement.
But these terms can be called into question in radical and fundamental ways.
It may be difficult, but we can multisociatively recreate the spaces we inhabit, whether they are physical, mental, literary, or even dream space. Like our languages, our methods of dissecting, dividing, and dealing with reality are just tools for navigating the world. We can reinvent any of them.
Actually, we must reinvent them. Nothing less than the future of humanity is incumbent on these acts of multisociative re-creation. Upon undertaking this task, we will find ourselves confronted with problems like creation and resistance in the face of subtle and often hidden forces of social control.
Distancing ourselves from what is and moving toward what could be will require numerous acts of creation, incalculable acts of will, and the determined rejection of habit.
Space and time are necessary categories, but the shape they take is ultimately our own creation. Every social structure— past, present, and future—is a historically contingent artifice.
The political and economic structures we inhabit, the divisions between spaces for work, leisure, privacy, and socializing, as well as the modes and methods available for moving between these spaces, determine the apparent limits of the possible.
And the time we perceive is determined by the ways we navigate these constructed spaces. Schools, jobs, prisons, asylums, and hospitals all mold us to the machinations of capitalism. They are all part of a single system—a system set to the rhythms of the marketplace, which in turn sets us to the rhythms of the marketplace.
Capitalism forces humans to act as players in the game of commerce. What business wants, business gets. And what business wants are citizens whose survival is dependent on successfully playing the capitalist game—to be marketable beings who appeal to employers. We have been shaped by and for this reality. Freeing ourselves from it will not be easy.
*** How to Begin?
As should be obvious by now, comedy can help. We can create quasi-comedic fissures in the given by multisociating what is with what could be, using punch line-like moments of insight to punch holes in the present. We need to destroy all our archetypes, stereotypes, and other ossified symbols. They are not engaged with creatively—they just sit there, waiting to be understood. Or they are used in the same predictable ways, again and again. Their meaning already exists. They are almost always part of the given we should refuse to take.
(Not coincidentally, stereotypes and archetypes typically constitute the content of the most hackneyed and predictable humor.) Truly creative multisociations, on the other hand, evoke something new.
Moments of quasi-comedic creativity can offer ruptures in reality where something truly unique and unforeseen can enter. When we comprehend where two self-consistent and apparently incompatible planes do in fact intersect, we help reshape our world.
Not everything that’s funny is necessarily a joke. We need to wage, and win, a war of vocabularies.
In Humor Power, Betty Swords states:
<quote>
If humor has the power to shape society—and given that our society is one of growing violence and alienation—can we not alter and improve society, at least our corner of it, by changing our humor? Only when we recognize humor’s power—for good as well as evil—can we control that power for positive purposes in both our personal and professional lives.[116]
</quote>
Comedy can reinforce old ideas or it can create new ones.
The lessons of comedy are powerful and useful. We just need to take the right lessons and use them in the right ways.
As funny as it may sound, if we take the lessons of comedy seriously, our species may have a shot at survival.
The revolution will be hilarious.
Seriously.
92
** Buy the Land and Buy the Light
In 1603, Johann Bayer introduced one of the oldest star naming systems still in use. In Bayer’s system, the visibly brightest star in each constellation is named Alpha, the second Beta, and so on through the Greek alphabet, giving us names like Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri. There are other systems, such as the Henry Draper Catalog, which identifies over 300,000 stars by number. For instance, Alpha Centauri is known there as HD 125823. Betelgeuse, or Alpha Orionis, is HD 39801.
Like Betelgeuse and Alpha Centauri, many stars have multiple names. And although the International Astronomical Union recognizes most star names, even they have their limits. Their website states, “The IAU frequently receives requests from individuals who want to buy stars or name stars after other persons. Some commercial enterprises purport to offer such services for a fee. However, such ‘names’ have no formal or official validity whatsoever.”[117]
The most well-known of the star-selling enterprises that so irks the International Astronomical Union is the International Star Registry. Founded in 1979, the Star Registry allows people to pay to name a star whatever they want. In addition to a star name, customers also receive a parchment certificate and a map with coordinates. It’s quite the deal.
The Star Registry’s website admits that “International Star Registry star naming is not recognized by the scientific community.”[118] But the thing is, stars don’t care what we call them. They don’t recognize the Star Registry or the scientific community. There’s a star in the Andromeda Constellation we could either call HD 10307 or Margaret Thatcher. It was burning back when our most advanced ancestors were single-celled organisms. It will still be burning when cockroaches inherit the Earth. And it is very, very far away. We are entirely irrelevant to this star. Beyond the bounds of Earth, neither name has any more validity than the other.
So my problem is not that the people at the International Star Registry think they can, like the International Astronomical Union, name stars. Of course they can name stars. They do it all the time. What bothers me is that they can make a successful business out of it. A world where purchasing points of light makes perfect sense, and where the International Astronomical Union “frequently receives requests from individuals who want to buy stars,” is a world with its goals and values wildly misaligned. Now may be the only moment in human history when selling stars would sound anything but absurd. But what has changed? How could a business, inconceivable in any other era, survive for decades?
To answer that, we need to pivot from purchasing stars to purchasing land. Given what follows, using the Star Registry as a set-up may seem unfair. New notions of ownership that emerged in the last few centuries made the International Star Registry possible. These notions were instated through destruction and genocide, and were then used to justify further destruction and genocide. But however unfair it may seem, it was a chance encounter with the Star Registry’s website that led to the rest of this research. And that initial question remains interesting. Just what happened to make such a business even possible?
The development of exclusive private property provided the context in which the Star Registry could come into being. Exclusive private property is a surprisingly recent phenomenon that emerged as Europeans, particularly the English, colonized North America. The practices that emerged as they divided and sold an entire continent—empty except for all the people living on it—ushered private property into existence, along with the new idea that anything we survey can become our own personal possession.
And as those colonizers divided that not-so-empty continent, a whole lot of surveying went on. It was a very popular profession. For example, three of the four U.S. presidents whose faces are carved into Mount Rushmore worked as surveyors. George Washington was sixteen when he accompanied George William Fairfax on a surveying expedition in the Shenandoah Valley, becoming one of the continent’s youngest professional surveyors. Thomas Jefferson served as the county surveyor of Albemarle County in 1773.
His father, Peter Jefferson, had also been a surveyor. Later, after the frontier shifted from Virginia to Illinois, a young Abraham Lincoln took up the profession. “New Boston, Bath, Petersburg, and Huron were among the towns that he laid out.”[119] And even if Theodore Roosevelt, that fourth face carved into Mount Rushmore, never worked as a surveyor, he still loved to see land divided and sold. He claimed that “civilization” ought to be spread by “the order-loving races of the earth doing their duty” and acquiring “the world’s waste spaces.”[120]
There are reasons why there were suddenly so many surveyors once the English started colonizing North America. In 1620, the same year the Mayflower set sail with some of England’s earliest committed colonizers, the mathematician, geometer, and astronomer Edmund Gunter introduced Gunter’s chain. Sixty-six feet long, ten of his chains by ten of his chains mark ten acres. Together with his new triangulation methods, surveying became a science. This made strict property lines possible, and allowed land to be more accurately quantified and commodified. Trespassing became an enforceable offense. In tandem with the new notions of ownership that appeared as the United States became a nation, a world emerged in which any land could become exclusively held and forcefully defended.
Exclusive private property was a new development.
Although many of the English colonizers immediately and irrevocably perceived the indigenous as “savages,” tribal land management along the East Coast was not remarkably different from the English feudal-era methods the colonists brought with them. Among natives along the East Coast, land was ultimately held and managed by a chief or other powerful figure, but this did not constitute “ownership” by that person, just the power to allocate resources. This person granted tribe members access to certain things at certain times of the year.
Yet this was still not “ownership.” Land was not “owned,” just used. In addition to this rotating access to resources, there were also common areas and shared supplies.
In the English system, everything was ultimately held by the crown, and a lord or earl granted land and materials as needed.
There were common areas and shared resources here as well.
The English had much more of a tendency to stay put for centuries, but the indigenous people and the colonists managed their land similarly. Early New England settlements had a village green, or common area, usually just a few acres, in the center of town. There was rarely enough space for all the village livestock to graze there, but there were common pastures outside of town. “Children brought their family cow or horse to the green and left the animal in care of the town herdsman, who then led the herd to a distant piece of common ground. Late in the afternoon the herdsman returned with the livestock, and the children came to the green to fetch home their own animals.”[121] Gristmills and sawmills operated as public utilities, not private businesses. Besides some common-field agriculture, there were also shared woodlands for lumber and hunting.
But when the United States seceded from England, the crown no longer owned the land. It could become anyone’s. Everyone could be their own earl. This was part of an understandable attempt to undermine centuries of aristocratic control exerted by a few families. But combined with Gunter’s new systems of surveying, exclusive private property came rushing into history. Lines were drawn.
Trespassers were prosecuted. The commons disappeared and were soon forgotten. Rather than a shared resource outside of town, land became a commodity—one person’s private possession to be bought and disposed of in any way.
And when the Fifh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1791, the change became complete. The “takings clause” of that amendment stipulates that the government will give “just compensation” if private land is taken for public use. By making a law about how a government purchases land from its citizens, exclusive private property rights became official. The indigenous people, now more than ever, could be portrayed as outliers to civilization. They had no fences.
They shared their resources. It was all suddenly unthinkable.
The United States, with a new relationship to land, created new arguments to justify grabbing every bit of soil on which the original occupants stood. In 1823, the case of Johnson v. M’Intosh came before the U.S. Supreme Court. Tomas Johnson had bought land from the Piankeshaw Tribe. William M’Intosh had supposedly received a land grant for some of the same land from the Federal Government, although it turns out that the two parcels did not actually overlap. But the facts were accepted as presented and the ruling stands. Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for a unanimous court, declared that, “While the different nations of Europe respected the rights of the natives as occupants, they asserted the ultimate dominion to be in themselves, and claimed and exercised, as a consequence of this ultimate dominion, a power to grant the soil while yet in the possession of the natives.”[122]
The indigenous people were suddenly subsumed and consumed by a legal system that enshrined private property, especially if any white people wanted their land. They soon found themselves dispossessed with increasing frequency and violence. In 1864, to mention an especially egregious example, the U.S. Army descended on a Cheyenne and Arapaho village at Sand Creek, Colorado, killing and mutilating as many as 150, most of whom were women and children. The mistake the Cheyenne and Arapaho made was signing a treaty for land that turned out to have gold in it.
It seems like colonizers love gold. An 1868 treaty had given the seemingly worthless Black Hills to the natives in perpetuity. But in the mid-1870s, with the discovery of gold, perpetuity lost its meaning. As the Sioux holy man Black Elk said, white people “had found much of the yellow metal that they worship and that makes them crazy, and they wanted to have a road up through our country to where the yellow metal was.”[123] The Sioux and Cheyenne refused to sell any land or lease mineral rights. They were deemed “hostile” by the government, and the army moved in to make the land safe for gold-miners.
In June 1876, General Custer and his cavalry attacked a native encampment, but neither Custer nor any of his soldiers survived the attack. For the natives, it was a successful act of self-defense. For the U.S. Government, it was an unconscionable massacre of their troops. Secretary of War William Tecumseh Sherman declared that the tribes had violated the treaty of 1868 by going to war with the United States. The Cheyenne and Sioux, having been invaded, were justifiably confused. But with the treaty supposedly broken, the army really poured in. Everyone was disarmed and forced onto reservations. Fugitive bands were hunted down, slaughtered, or arrested. Sitting Bull fled to Canada. Crazy Horse was caught and stabbed with a bayonet while in captivity and died. Then the U.S. Government carved the faces of some of its most powerful surveyors into a mountain.
More than a century later, dispossession and disregard continue apace, but now it’s not just gold driving injustices against the indigenous, but fracked oil as well. And private property laws are one of the main tools used to make this happen. The Dakota Access Pipeline, designed to move crude oil from the Bakken Formation in western North Dakota, through both Dakotas, Iowa, and into Illinois where it might become less crude and more refined, was going to cross under the Missouri River north of the mostly white city of Bismarck.
But the citizens complained that this could destroy their drinking water. The route was changed so that it passed under the river a half-mile north of the Standing Rock Reservation through land and under water that had been seized against the tribe’s will in September 1958, through legislation passed by Congress that stated, “Any interest Indians may have in the bed of the Missouri River so far as it is within the boundaries of the Standing Rock Reservation, are hereby taken by the United States for the Oahe Project on the Missouri River.”[124]
When the Dakota Access Pipeline was rerouted through land that was “hereby taken,” the people on the reservation, like the people of Bismarck, complained about threats to their water. But rather than another rerouting, they were met with pepper spray, rubber bullets, and attack dogs.
In September 2016, Judge James Boasberg ruled that the tribe had been sufficiently consulted and the pipeline could proceed. His statement claims that “A project of this magnitude ofen necessitates an extensive federal appraisal and permitting process. Not so here. Domestic oil pipelines, unlike natural-gas pipelines, require no general approval from the federal government. In fact, DAPL needs almost no federal permitting of any kind because 99% of its route traverses private land.”[125] So if you own a piece of land, pretty much as long as you’re not sacrificing children or making methamphetamines, you can do whatever you want and no one can stop you. James Boasberg is a judge. It’s his job to interpret the law. He ruled that “the Tribe has not shown it will suffer injury that would be prevented by any injunction the Court could issue.”[126] In a technical, lawyerly sense, he may be correct. Put a pipeline through private land, and no one can legally complain. But from the perspective of the Earth and its inhabitants’ common interests, he is completely wrong— especially since the laws and precedents he is interpreting were made in the aftermath of atrocious and embarrassing cases like Johnson v. M’Intosh. As Kiana Heron writes, the “protests at Standing Rock today can only be fully understood in light of this colonial legacy, which from the beginning proclaimed that native lands were empty, and that native people, were, in effect, nothing more than the rocks, the trees, the water that they now so valiantly strive to protect.”[127]
The very same day Judge Boasberg issued his ruling, a pipeline in Alabama broke and spilled 250,000 gallons of oil.
The governor declared a state of emergency.[128] The very next day, a pipeline in Texas leaked about 33,000 gallons of oil.[129]
And this is not just some strange coincidence. Angry gnomes were not trying to make this judge look foolish. Pipelines fail almost constantly. According to the United States’ Pipelines and Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration, there have been more than 10,000 pipeline failures already this century. Pipelines are a terrible invention, even exempting the fracking that fills them or the fossil fuels they bring us to burn. They just break all the time. But if they’re built on private property, no one can complain. Private property is sacrosanct. It’s your land, do as you will. But maybe instead of worrying about one person’s supposed right to profit off private land, maybe we should worry about how we can all continue to live on our shared planet. To quote Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network,
<quote>
“Our spiritual leaders are opposed to the privatization of our lands, which means the commoditization of the nature, water, air we hold sacred.”[130]
</quote>
I was at the Oceti Sakowin Camp in Standing Rock in November 2016, which is situated on the disputed land “hereby taken” in 1958, and meant to obstruct the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The very same day The Army Corps of Engineers issued the camp an eviction notice, one of the water protectors pointed out to me the ways the government had closed roads and seized hills so that “They are leaving us with no option but to trespass.”[131] Police and National Guard stood along arbitrary and debatable boundary lines. Behind those police, the pipeline was being laid. Anyone who crossed onto that land could be arrested for trespassing. No other crimes were required.
The sheer volume of law enforcement brought in to protect a pipeline by enforcing trespassing laws was outlandish. The night we arrived, it was too late and too dark to drive to the camp and set up a tent without being a nuisance to people trying to sleep off the sting of rubber bullets. We stopped in Bismarck, pulled into a hotel, and saw more than half the parking lot was filled with police vehicles. Scared, we went to another hotel. This one was better. Instead of more than half, slightly less than half the parking lot was cop cars. It seemed marginally safer. We stayed there. The next day, trying to get to Standing Rock, we encountered a roadblock, turned around, and took a different route. Trucks heading toward the camp were pulled over and searched. Military helicopters flew above. Trespassers beware.
An entire continent has been surveyed, sold, and turned into private property that can be ripped up and turned into rubble. If anyone objects, the police turn up to protect the right to make rubble. Our collective needs don’t matter. The commons have become a piece of the past, receding from lived experience and into the history books. Need, intent, and collective interest have become irrelevant to land use. Who bought it? That’s all anyone needs to know.
We’re told this is normal. This is reality and we had better get used to it. But now is the aberration. The commons existed for millennia. Private property has existed for a few centuries. Our current system is the anomaly. We do not need to live this way.
So it is perhaps only now that someone could sell the stars and no one would think it’s all that weird, when the Earth is no longer our common inheritance, but a conglomerate of commodities circling the sun. We divide it up and do as we will. And at night, we look into the sky and watch distant products twinkle. But why not? If we can buy and sell almost any piece of the Earth, why not buy the rest of the Universe?
Of course, what the International Star Registry does is pretty harmless, especially compared to buying land to put in a leaky pipeline. People don’t destroy their stars after purchasing them. They just show their friends their parchment proofs of purchase and their maps of coordinates.
But the very fact that the International Star Registry could be created and continue to exist says a great deal about how far we are from having a reasonable approach to living.
If we don’t eradicate the mentality that makes the International Star Registry possible, if we continue to slice up our planet, and declare this chunk yours and that chunk mine, we’ll just slice it up until there’s nothing left but dust.
We certainly don’t need to return to feudal or tribal systems of land management. The future will be different from any past or present. But we don’t need to accept what we have. A planet composed of private land, surrounded by stars for sale, is not one we have to tolerate. Exclusive private property is relatively new. We can make it history.
** Time is Not Money
Time is money. But time is a human construct. And so is money. But this does not mean these things are not real.
Many human constructs are real. Buildings are real. Cars are real. Even hatred is real. Time and money are real. We just made them up.
So time is money. A simple enough sentence. An equivalence. Just like two and two is four, the items on either side of “is” are equal. Because each side is equivalent, we can and do sell our time for money. But the only transferable time is the highly artificial and contrived kind kept by our clocks and calendars. We do this because we need money—exchangeable units of value—to survive, pay our debts, and stay out of trouble with the authorities. Money is a social relation. The only reality it has is the reality we choose to give it.
Money arose as an intermediary between goods and as a means to tabulate debt. Rather than determining the relative value between every two bartered items, each is judged against a third. Initially, it was something like goats, cloth, stones, or whatever easily attained, non-monopolized commodity had become the mediator of exchange. But such items may be perishable or non-standard. They may fluctuate in value due to scarcity or production costs.
Precious metals can be minted in standard sizes and shapes and won’t rot, and so they entered into common— but not universal—use. But even precious metals are a commodity among commodities, and this can cause confusion. In England in the late 1600s, raw silver and gold had a higher value than these same materials as minted money. Clever crooks began clipping coins, melting the clippings, selling these melted clippings for more coins, and then starting the whole process over again. Clipped and unclipped coins circulated together. Perhaps not surprisingly, the clipped coins were treated exactly the same as the untouched ones. A shilling was still a shilling, no matter what it weighed.
The philosopher John Locke entered the ensuing debate and declared that gold and silver possess a “natural” value that predates the state. According to Locke, it was time to pull the ruined coins and mint new ones that matched their “natural” value. But the rampant practice of recognizing any shilling as a shilling shows Locke’s error. Money is carried for its purchasing power. If that power remains unchanged, the weight and shape of the money doesn’t matter. Values are assessed and exchanges are made by social practice. Humans may ascribe value to bits and pieces of the natural world, but this is done without nature’s consent. There are no “natural” values.
We now use fiat money—money disconnected from any commodity. But however value is assessed, all forms of money are arbitrary. It’s not like people print money based on how much value there is “out there in the world. Value does not exist independent of social practice. We just print money.
And then it exists, and has a value. We can choose or refuse to recognize it. Of course, we are compelled and coerced to recognize it.
And so we sell our time. But this time, like our money, is a purely social product. Time can be bisected, divided, and measured in any number of ways. It is gauged in relation to physical events. The tick of a clock. The swing of a pendulum.
The vibration of an atom. The rotation of the Earth. Years, minutes, and seconds are not part of the Universe. We may create these units in relation to natural phenomena, but we are not required to do so. It’s a lot like placing a political boundary along a river or a mountain range. In both cases, we apply an element of nature to a social practice, but there is really nothing natural about it.
Time is a confounding subject. Is it even real? Does it exist independent of our minds? As Saint Augustine writes in his Confessions, “What is time? Who can explain this easily and briefly? Who can comprehend this even in thought so as to articulate the answer in words? Yet what do we speak of, in our familiar everyday conversation, more than of time? We surely know what we mean when we speak of it. We also know what we mean when we hear someone else talking about it. What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know.”[132]
Some have argued that time is unreal by portraying it as a series of points. The argument goes something like the following. Since the past is gone, lost to all but memory, and the future hasn’t arrived yet, the present is the only time we have. And how long is that? An instant? And how long is an instant? A nanosecond? The blink of an eye? It turns out that the present conceived as a point cannot have a duration. If it did, we could then divide that duration into a past, present and future, and then that present could be further divided, on and on forever. So is that it? Is time unreal because the present is the only time we have and that is no time at all?
Much like Zeno’s similar arguments against motion, such allegations of the unreality of time fail because they have no relation to our experience. Time, like motion, is perceived as a continuum. The ticking of a clock marks time because we remember the previous tick and anticipate the impending tock. There is a mental retention of the past that is linked to our experience of the present and an expected future. A series of perceptions does not yield temporal passage. Perceptions need to be unified into a sequence.
This temporal passage is constructed in our minds, after events occur. Separate neural pathways receive distinct signals—sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations— which then travel to the brain at various finite velocities.
These signals arrive at different moments, leaving the brain the difficult task of reassembling all this information to try to figure out what just happened. We live in reality’s wake. So is time purely mental? Does it exist in the Universe or only after our minds put it together?
Although it may remain beyond our grasp, there does seem to be a form of temporality we perceive but do not create. Rivers run to the sea, and stones turn to sand, but not because we will the future into the present. But what is this external temporality, and how do experience it? How do we perceive the Universe as it flows around and through us?
Before relativity, when Newtonian mechanics dominated our understanding of the physical world, space and time were treated as separate entities, both of which were universal, absolute, and independent of perspective. Time flowed equably. Space had verifiable positions. But Einstein showed that there is no difference between space and time. There is only spacetime, and there is nothing universal about it. Only relationships between aspects of the Universe are observable. If you found yourself floating through space, you would have no way to judge your velocity. You would first need to determine what you were moving in relation to. Is it that planet? That star over there? Or maybe that galaxy? Being based on matter in relative motion, time has no verifiability beyond a single frame of reference, and each of these questions will produce a different answer.
Einstein asks us to imagine one person riding on a train and another standing on the ground as the train passes.
Two flashes of lightning occur. One is in front of the train.
The other is behind it. The person on the ground perceives these flashes as simultaneous. The person on the train, moving toward one flash and away from the other, sees the flash the train is approaching first. Simultaneity is only ever apparent simultaneity. There is no way to know what really happened when.
In his Confessions, besides addressing just how baffling time is, Saint Augustine discusses the theological problem of just what God did in all that time before creation. After all, isn’t the sudden decision to make a Universe a bit out of character for an eternally constant being? Augustine astutely points out, centuries before Einstein, that time requires matter. The question of what God did “then” misses the point since there was no “then” when there were no things. Time is dependent on matter in motion. There is not space and time.
There is only spacetime. This is much more than a semantic distinction, as it impacts our understanding of what the Universe is and how we perceive it.
So there are not many things more artificial than the time kept by our clocks and calendars. Yet this socially constructed time is not only accepted, it has become one of the main tools we use to dominate and control one another. We are told that time is money, and we dutifully sell carefully measured pieces of our lives to the highest bidder in exchange for the means to stay alive. Time is money. And like the time kept by clocks and calendars, money is also a human creation, only even more obviously so.
In Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, a spy embedded in London’s anarchist underworld is threatened with dismissal unless he fulfills his role as an agent provocateur and does some actual provoking. He is assigned the task of blowing up the Greenwich Observatory, the site of the prime meridian, the basis for the world’s time zones, and a symbol of officially standardized time. Joseph Conrad was not sympathetic to anarchism, and the Secret Agent is filled with irony and satire. But despite that satire, an element of satori still shines through. The time kept by our clocks and the money kept by our banks are a product of socially constructed spacetime. This spacetime is much more than a medium of movement. Its logic and structure determine the limits of the possible. Changing the world will involve changing the ways we navigate spacetime. Clocks are a worthy target.
Because we have made time and money equivalent, money permeates all our time, as well as our space. It is spacetime, after all. Before the capitalist era, wealth was created and maintained mainly through land ownership.
Money and merchants were relegated to the ports and periphery. The wealthy were the landed aristocracy, and they did not sully their good names by engaging in trade.
The transition from wealth through land ownership to wealth through the investment in marketable goods brought commerce from the periphery and into everyday life. As time spent producing these goods became increasingly important, clock towers replaced cathedrals. The overland trade routes traversed mostly by merchants became less unique, as every stretch of road became a trade route and every citizen a merchant.
The logic of commerce produced and produces our spacetime. Our bodies extend into it, and we become tied to its rhythms. Through this interaction, we create an identity.
We value, prize, and defend it. But it is produced by a constellation of historically situated forces. A constructed self in a constructed reality. From birth, we are educated and molded to “properly” navigate produced spacetime. We are conditioned and encased. We are like machines, designed and capable of amazing tasks, but only within the limits of that design. Without a rebellion from the given, there can be no true creativity. One of our most debilitating notions is the belief that what exists must exist. We can and should disconnect from the given. This will entail the total rejection of habit, a complete mental revolt, and the refusal of all ideological conditioning.
Now everybody—
** Walking Each Other Home
<quote>
*We’re all just walking each other home.* Ram Dass
</quote>
He was young and he was lost. But the nameless narrator in Alejandro Zambra’s Ways of Going Home found his house all by himself. His parents looked all over for him. But when they got home, he was already there.
“You went a different way,” my mother said later, angry, her eyes still swollen.
You were the one who went a different way, I thought, but I didn’t say it.[133]
There are many ways of going home.
------
In “This Must Be the Place” by the Talking Heads, David Byrne sings, “Home is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there.”[134] He has described this song as a “series of non sequiturs, phrases that may have strong emotional resonance but don’t have any narrative qualities.”[135] Yet even adrift in this sea of non-narrative non sequiturs, the word “home” still retains its powers. Just speaking or singing the word can act as a potent, even magical, incantation.
------
“Home. Everybody wants to go home. Even when they’re old. Even when they’re small.”[136] These constitute all the lyrics to the song “Home” by the band Low. It may seem brief, but there’s really no need to elaborate. We all know what it means. After all, everybody wants to go home.
------
I spent the first part of my childhood living in a house at the end of a gravel road. Our backyard led directly into a large cluster of trees containing dirt paths and secret forts.
Beyond those trees, a field filled with wild strawberries led to another group of trees and an old, rusting truck. These are the places the word “home” conjures for me. Not just the house, but the land around it, the places where the area children would gather, play, and explore.
Once, I knocked on my neighbor’s door to see if he wanted to come outside, but he told me he would rather watch Star Trek. I slammed the door on his head. His parents were very upset. My parents grounded me. But I think I had a point.
------
They still air Star Trek reruns, but the woods are gone. The gravel road is paved. It no longer dead ends, but extends into the new subdivision that has supplanted the woods, the field, and the abandoned truck. Enclosed spaces with lockable doors have replaced the open spaces I still think of as my first home.
------
A home is not simply four walls or a fixed residence. It is a widely variable set of circumstances in which self, society, and nature can sit in a dynamic, collaborative relationship.
The materials of home flow in and out, forever in flux, creating a place where our ever-shifing selves can develop and thrive. We have a physical home, a cultural home, a geographic home. We may be at home in the countryside, at home in the city, or we may not even feel at home in our own skin. But a home is where we can be or become ourselves. It doesn’t matter if we’ve ever even been there. Just imagining its outline is enough to inspire longing.
------
The place I think of as my first home no longer exists in any meaningful sense. All my favorite parts have been bulldozed. I cannot return.
But it was only ever an abstraction in a child’s mind. Now it’s an adult’s memory of a child’s abstraction. Of course I cannot return. Just where would I go? A home is only ever an idea. It is imaginary. But it is real.
------
As Ursula K. Le Guin writes,
<quote>
Home, imagined, comes to be. It is real, realer than any other place, but you can’t get to it unless your people show you how to imagine it—whoever your people are. They may not be your relatives. They may never have spoken your language. They may have been dead for a thousand years. They may be nothing but words printed on paper, ghosts of voices, shadows of minds. But they can guide you home.[137]
</quote>
------
If external conditions make a home unimaginable, it can’t exist.
When you have no ground on which to stand, your imagination can’t take you very far.
------
Humans arose in what is now called Ethiopia. Since then, seeking home, we have covered the globe.
------
If we say we are sending refugees escaping famines or wars back to their “homes,” it is a misuse of the word. They can hopefully find a home, but it probably won’t be found at their place of origin.
And when teenagers leave abusive families, they may be running away, but they are not running away from home. A home is their goal, not their point of departure.
This is why “homeless” describes the state of “homelessness” so well. Renaming the homeless “street people” or something misses the point.The street is not the problem. Homelessness— the lack of a multifaceted, sustaining environment—is. And many more of us are homeless than we might like to imagine.
------
In The Wizard of Oz, both the novel from 1900 and the film from 1938, a tornado blows Dorothy Gale from Kansas to the Land of Oz. She seeks the aid of a wizard to help her return, but the wizard accidently flies away without her. She appears to be stranded forever. In the film version, Glinda the Good Witch of the North finally informs Dorothy that “You’ve always had the power to go home.”[138] The magic slippers she has been wearing can take her there. Dorothy’s face is then lit unlike any other moment in the movie.
Through the power of film, we see that she is enlightened.
She has always had the power to get home, but external forces were making this simple task seem impossible.
------
Dorothy Gale was uprooted by a natural disaster. Another Dorothy, Dorothy Day, was eight years old and living in Oakland when the great earthquake of 1906 struck. As she later wrote of the earthquake’s aftermath:
<quote>
What I remember most plainly about the earthquake was the human warmth and kindness of everyone afterward. For days refugees poured out of burning San Francisco and camped in Idora Park and the race track in Oakland. … Mother and all our neighbors were busy from morning to night cooking hot meals. They gave away every extra garment they possessed. They stripped themselves to the bone in giving, forgetful of the morrow. While the crisis lasted, people loved each other.[139]
</quote>
Disasters can quite literally tear down the walls around us, take away our isolated atomism, and necessitate new ways of interacting. When the existing order crumbles, new systems can arise spontaneously, ones ofen based on care and compassion. We can learn to love each other. A home made invisible and impossible by our collective isolation suddenly becomes visible and inhabitable.
------
Every being, every bit of matter, is at the center of its universe. An endless plurality of centers overlap and interact. We travel like turtles, our homes on our backs, pulling a universe along with us.
When I enter your home, I bring mine in with me.
Treat everyone like an invited guest. Behave like an invited guest. Help others meet their needs. Provide them with comfort. Enter others’ spaces politely and respectfully.
Remove your shoes if asked. Help with the dishes. Play with the children.
Wherever you are, remember, you are in someone’s home.
------
A few years after the nameless narrator in Ways of Going Home found his own way home, there was an earthquake.
“The night of the earthquake was the first time that I realized everything could come tumbling down. Now I think it’s a good thing to know. It’s necessary to remember it every second.”[140]
The existing institutions that keep so many of us incapable of creating a home could crumble at any moment. When they crumble, we could live in better, more benevolent ways.
We could learn to love each other. We could learn to live as neighbors. But do we really need to wait for total collapse?
Or can we just make sure everyone gets home safely? Can we start living in ways that make sense? Can we find our own way home?
Everyone, please, make yourselves at home.
[1] Naomi Klein, “Can Climate Change Unite the Left?” In These Times, October 13, 2014.
[2] Talking Heads, “(Nothing But) Flowers,” Naked. Warner Bros., LP. Released March 1988.
[3] Mark 13:24–25 (King James).
[4] Mark 13:30.
[5] Heb. 1:1–2.
[6] 1 John 2:18.
[7] Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841: New York: Tree Rivers Press, 1980), 269–70.
[8] See [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sheldan_nidle./][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldan_Nidle.]]
[9] Noam Chomsky, “The End of History?” In These Times, September 4, 2014.
[10] “Werner Herzog: Trust in My Wild Fantasies,” The Talks, January 30, 2013.
[11] Bill McKibben, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” Rolling Stone, July 19, 2012.
[12] Francis. Laudato Si: Praise Be To You; On Care for Our Common Home (Vatican City, Italy: Libreria Editrice Vatanica, 2015), [161].
[13] Mike Watt, “Shore Duty,” Contemplating the Engine Room. Columbia, LP. Released 1997.
[14] John H. Richardson, “When the End of Human Civilization is Your Day Job,” Esquire, July 7, 2015.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] “Werner Herzog: Trust In My Wild Fantasies.”
[18] Miguel de Unamuno, Our Lord Don Quixote, (1905: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 16.
[19] Klein, “Can Climate Change Unite the Left?”
[20] Bill Callahan, “One Fine Morning,” Apocalypse. Drag City, LP. Released 2011.
[21] Alan Moore, Promethea: Collected Edition; Book 5, (New York: DC Comics, 2003).
[22] Francis, Laudato Si, [95].
[23] Sun Ra, It’s After the End of the World. BASF, LP. Released 1972.
[24] Samuel Beckett, Endgame: A Play in One Act (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 11.
[25] Ibid., 13.
[26] Ibid., 78.
[27] Revelation 20: 1–2, 4.
[28] Richard Francis, Ann the Word: The Story of Ann Lee, Female Messiah, Mother of the Shakers, The Woman Clothed with the Sun (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2013), 25.
[29] Ibid., 71.
[30] Deborah E. Burns, Shaker Cities of Peace, Love, and Union: A History of the Hancock Bishopric (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1993), 14.
[31] Francis, Ann the Word, 336.
[32] “‘What Must I Do?’ at the End of the World,” Woodbine, May 16, 2014.
[33] Mohandas Gandhi, The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi (1930: Berkeley: Berkeley Hills Books, 2000), 37.
[34] The Richmond Whig, November 10, 1859.
[35] Henry David Thoreau, “A Plea For Captain John Brown,” October 1859.
[36] Martin Luther King, Jr. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2001), 14.
[37] Mohandas Gandhi, “For Passive Resisters,” Indian Opinion, October 26, 1907.
[38] Henry David Thoreau, “On Civil Disobedience,” 1849.
[39] Thoreau, “A Plea For Captain Brown.”
[40] Mohandas Gandhi, “The Jews,” Harijan, November 26, 1938.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971: New York, Vantage, 1989), 41.
[43] Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879–1921 (1954: New York: Verso, 2003), 349.
[44] Ibid., 417.
[45] Ibid., 428.
[46] Rebecca Solnit, “Call climate change what it is: violence,” The Guardian, April 7, 2014.
[47] Natasha Lennard and Adrian Parr, “Our Crime Against the Planet, and Ourselves,” The New York Times, May 18, 2016.
[48] Chaitanya Mallapur, “61% Rise In Heat-Stroke Deaths Over Decade,” India Spend, May 27, 2015.
[49] Nida Najar and Hari Kumar, “Pray for Shade: Heat Wave Sets a Record in India,” The New York Times, May 20, 2016.
[50] Ian Johnston, “Farmer Suicides Soar in India as Deadly Heatwave Hits 51 Degrees Celsius,” The Independent, May 20, 2016.
[51] John Vidal, “Across Africa, The Worst Food Crisis Since 1985 looms for 50 Million,” The Guardian, May 22, 2016.
[52] Mark Petersen et al, “2016 One-Year Seismic Hazard Forecast for the Central and Eastern United States from Induced and Natural Earthquakes,” (2016: U.S. Geologic Survey), 14.
[53] [[http://www.legis.state.tx.us/billlookup/text./][http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegSess=84R&Bill=HB40]]
[54] Ibid.
[55] Michael Wines, “Colorado Court Strikes Down Local Bans on Fracking,” The New York Times, May 2, 2016.
[56] “City of Fort Collins vs. Colorado Oil and Gas Association,” [[http://www.courts.state.co.us./][http://www.courts.state.co.us.]] May 2, 2016.
[57] Elisabeth Malkin and Alberto Arce, “Berta Cáceres, Indigenous Activist, Is Killed in Honduras,” The New York Times, March 3, 2016.
[58] Hillary Clinton, Hard Choices (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 266.
[59] Ambassador Hugo Llorens, “TFHO1: OPEN AND SHUT: THE CASE OF THE HONDURAN COUP,” July 24, 2009, Wikileaks.
[60] “Hear Hillary Clinton Defend Her Role in Honduras Coup When Questioned by Juan González,” Democracy Now, April 13, 2016.
[61] Thoreau, “On Civil Disobedience.”
[62] Derrick Jensen, Endgame: Volume I: The Problem of Civilization (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006), 81.
[63] David Graeber, Direct Action: An Anthology (Oakland: AK Press, 2009), 456–7.
[64] Natasha Lennard and Nicholas Mirzoeff, “What Protest Looks Like,” The New York Times, August 3, 2016.
[65] If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, directed by Marshall Curry (2011, Oscilloscope), DVD.
[66] Klein, “Can Climate Change Unite the Left?”
[67] Dave Foreman, “Earth First!,” Earth First!, February 1982.
[68] Dave Foreman et al, eds., Earth First, November 1980.
[69] “4 Accused of Sabotage Plot,” The New York Times, June 1, 1989.
[70] Oliver Gillham, The Limitless City: A Primer on the Urban Sprawl Debate (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002), xv.
[71] If A Tree Falls, Marshall Curry.
[72] Dalai Lama, Twitter Post, April 1, 2016, 2:30 a.m., [[https://twitter./][https://twitter.]] com/DalaiLama.
[73] “Militant Feminism: An Explosive Interview With a KKKanadian Urban Guerrilla,” Earth First!, March 2010.
[74] Ann Hansen, Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla (Oakland: AK Press, 2002), 273.
[75] Ibid., 147.
[76] [[http://www.prisontv.net/blog-about-prison-issues-crime-/][http://www.prisontv.net/blog-about-prison-issues-crime-and-punishment/8/2011-Feb-05/squamish-5-and-the-litton-bombing]]
[77] See, [[http://primitivism.com/kaczynski.htm][http://primitivism.com/kaczynski.htm]]
[78] Theodore Kaczynski, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” 1995, paragraph 5.
[79] If A Tree Falls, Marshall Curry.
[80] Earth First!, May 1999.
[81] Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 4.
[82] Cage quoted in Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists (New York: The Penguin Press, 2012).
[83] Andrew Rathman, Danielle Allen and Frank Bidart, “An Interview with Frank Bidart,”Chicago Review 47, no. 3 (2001), 26.
[84] William Shakespeare, King Lear. (1608: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 131–32.
[85] Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg (New York: Touchstone, 1992), 38.
[86] Ibid.
[87] Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas (1871: Amsterdam: Fredonia Books, 2002), 40.
[88] This is Emma Goldman’s most famous remark, despite the fact that it seems she never said (or wrote) it. This popular misquotation is rumored to have derived from an attempt to fit the following passage from Living My Life on a t-shirt: “At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” See Emma Goldman, Living My Life vol. 1 (1931: New York: Dover, 1970), 56. In its full glory, rather than pithy paraphrase, this passage manages to depict the sober seriousness of most “revolutionaries.” But it’s nice the other way too, and fits much better on a t-shirt.
[89] Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvíždala (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 113.
[90] Garry Trudeau, “The Abuse of Satire,” The Atlantic, April 11, 2015.
[91] See Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (New York: Macmillan,
1964). The terms are his, not mine.
[92] Ibid., 21.
[93] Ibid., 35–36.
[94] Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), 304–5.
[95] Marc Maron and Chris Rock, “WTF Podcast,” Episode 224, November 3, 2011 (Available at [[http://www.wtfpod.com/][www.wtfpod.com]])
[96] Ibid., 176.
[97] Ibid., 154.
[98] Marc Maron and Conan O’Brien, “WTF Podcast,” Episode 163, April 4, 2011 (Available at [[http://www.wtfpod.com/][www.wtfpod.com]])
[99] Christopher Hitchens, Arguably (Twelve: New York, 2011), 392.
[100] R.C. Harvey, “At Swords’ Point: Humor as Weapon,” The Comics Journal, December 19, 2011.
[101] Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge
[102] Swords quoted in Harvey, “At Swords’ Point,” Betty Swords’ Humor Power remains an unpublished manuscript.
[103] Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 2011 [1949]), 156.
[104] Ibid., 45–46.
[105] David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (New York: Back Bay Books, 2006), 104.
[106] Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 295
[107] Thomas Merton, “Gandhi and the One-Eyed Giant,” in Gandhi on Non-Violence, edited by Tomas Merton (New York: New Directions, 1964), 3.
[108] Karl Mathiesen, “Embrace of the Serpent star: ‘My tribe is nearly extinct,’” The Guardian, June 8, 2016.
[109] David Berman, Actual Air (New York: Open City Books, 1999), 58.
[110] Alice M. Isen, “Positive Affect Facilitates Creative Problem Solving,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52, no. 6 (1987), 1123.
[111] Ibid., 1128.
[112] And there aren’t many things funnier than bodily fluids.
[113] Allegra Kirkland, “White Nationalist PAC Blankets Iowa With Robocalls For Trump,” Talking Points Memo, January 9, 2016.
[114] Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Palo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books, 1982), 366.
[115] Whitman, Democratic Vistas, 1, emphasis added.
[116] Swords quoted in Harvey, “At Swords’ Point.”
[117] See [[http://www.iau.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/][www.iau.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/]]
[118] See [[http://www.starregistry.com/][www.starregistry.com]]
[119] David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 52.
[120] Theodore Roosevelt quoted in Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Knopf, 2002), 126.
[121] John R. Stilgoe, Common Landscapes of America, 1580 to 1845 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 48.
[122] Johnson & Grahm’s Lessee v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, 574 (1823).
[123] Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (1932: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 9.
[124] Public Law 85–915, September 2, 1958.
[125] Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, United States District Court for the District of Coulmbia. Civil Action No. 16–1534 (JEB), 2.
[126] Ibid., 1–2.
[127] Kiana Herold, “Terra Nullius and the History of Broken Treaties at Standing Rock,” Intercontinental Cry, November 14, 2016.
[128] “State of emergency declared after crucial oil pipeline leaks 250,000 gallons in Alabama,” KFOR, September 16, 2016.
[129] “U.S. regulator orders inquiry, repairs after Sunoco’s Permian leak,” Reuters, September 15, 2016.
[130] “Trump advisors aim to privatize oil-rich Indian reservations,” Reuters, December 5, 2016.
[131] Personal conversation, recorded November 25, 2016.
[132] Saint Augustine, Confessions (400: Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2008), 230.
[133] Alejandro Zambra, Ways of Going Home (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 3.
[134] Talking Heads, “This Must Be the Place,” Speaking In Tongues. Sire, LP. Released June 1, 1983.
[135] David Gans, Talking Heads: The Band & Their Music (New York: Avon Books, 1985), 113.
[136] Low, “Home,” Secret Name. Kranky, LP. Released November 1998.
[137] Ursula K. Le Guin, Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books 2000–2016 (Easthampton, MA: Small Beer Press, 2016), 5.
[138] The Wizard of Oz (1939), directed by Victor Fleming (MGM 2013).
[139] Dorothy Day, From Union Square to Rome (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 24.
[140] Zambra, Ways of Going Home, 137.
|
#title What would Nestor Makhno do?
#author Adam Lent
#date February 28, 2022
#source Retrieved on 14<sup>th</sup> February 2024 from [[https://medium.com/@adamjlent/what-would-nestor-makhno-do-31ddb3985b96][medium.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-02-14T19:13:55
#topics Nestor Makhno, 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
One hundred years ago the Donbas region of Ukraine was not the bastion of pro-Russian nationalism it is today. By contrast, it was the stronghold of the Makhnovshchina — a radical peasant movement and army led by the remarkable Nestor Makhno. Between 1917 and 1921 Makhno’s forces and anarchist ideas held sway over a population of around seven million. Makhno spent most of that time fighting off a succession of enemies — the First World War army of Germany and its allies, the reactionary Russian White Army, the Kyiv Government and finally the Red Army who vanquished the Makhnovshchina and forced Makhno into permanent exile.
His enemies may appear bizarrely diverse but as far as Makhno was concerned they had one thing in common — a love of hierarchical power. They may have differed in what they regarded as utopia but an ultra-conservative Prussian, a Tsarist aristocrat or a revolutionary Marxist all agreed that they had the right to submit others to their will.
Mahkno and his followers (although he would have hated that term) believed it was up to local communities to determine their own fate free of external authority. He embraced, for example, the Bolshevik fondness for the Soviet — effectively an elected local council made up of workers, soldiers and peasants — but utterly rejected the attempt by Lenin to place the Soviets under the control of the Russian Communist Party. Soviets should represent the genuine will of local people, he argued, not commissars based hundreds of miles away in Moscow.
That hatred of concentrated power extended not just to politics but also economics. The Makhnovschina detested the wealthy landowners that lauded it over the peasantry. Indeed, Makhno’s army spent much of their time seizing land and redistributing it to peasants. They were also deeply suspicious of the new, super-rich industrialists creating cities of polluting factories and impoverished workers. (And unusually for the time and place, Makhno was also extremely hostile to anti-semitism — executing at least two soldiers in his army for harrassing Jews and spreading anti-semitic propaganda.)
It is impossible not to ask, of course, what Makhno might make of Ukraine today. I think he would be unsurprised by Putin. A man no different to the Kaiser, Lenin or Kolchak he battled against — men utterly convinced of their right to exert absolute power to make the world in their own images. He would be deeply shocked though by the way such figures had been able to accrue concentrated power well beyond that held by Makhno’s enemies, notably in the form of weapons of mass destruction.
Most importantly, he would urge us, I think, to view the Ukrainian invasion through a somewhat different lens. While he would undoubtedly have fought furiously alongside the Ukrainian army to expel Putin, he would have been under no illusions about the concentrated power represented by the West. Infinitely preferable to Putin’s autocracy, of course, but still bristling with nuclear weapons, still centred on hugely powerful states, still serving the interests of enormously wealthy corporations rapidly destroying the planet. Makhno would not see Putin and the West quite as the opposites they are presented as today but as different expressions of a global system that is built around a massive over-concentration of power.
I like to think that were Makhno alive today he would eagerly set about destroying the Russian military machine using the clever tactics for which he was well-known while simultaneously trying to carve out a bit of Ukraine guided by radical ideas of decentralised freedom and equality free of the grip of either Russia or the West.
In sad reality, Nestor Makhno died in Paris in 1934 at the age of 45, his body wracked by TB and the numerous wounds he had suffered in battle. His brand of rural anarchism may seem antiquated today. But in a week when we have been reminded of the existential threat to humanity posed by concentrated military power in the form of nuclear weapons and concentrated economic power in the form of climate change, it may be well beyond time to give people like Nestor Makhno a second look.
|
#title Chronicling subversion
#subtitle The Cronaca Sovversiva as both seditious rag and community paper
#author Adam Quinn
#LISTtitle Chronicling subversion The Cronaca Sovversiva as both seditious rag and community paper
#date 30 November 2018
#source <em>Radical Americas</em> Volume 3, Issue 1, DOI:[[https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ra.2018.v3.1.011][10.14324/111.444.ra.2018.v3.1.011]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-04-05T12:01:40.306Z
#authors Adam Quinn
#topics periodicals, Cronaca Sovversiva, Galleanist, Italian immigrants, media
#rights Open access CC BY-NC 4.0
*** Abstract
The Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle) was an anarchist newspaper, known today for the views of editor Luigi Galleani, whose ideas are associated with multiple bombings carried out in the United States throughout the 1910s and 1920s, the First Red Scare and the executed anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. A broad reading of the Cronaca Sovversiva, which focusses on more than its connections to controversy, violence and repression, reveals how a periodical produced by a wide range of artists, writers and activists became central to how many Italian immigrants understood and engaged with industrial capitalism. This paper argues that the Cronaca Sovversiva built an audience over time by incorporating a wide range of perspectives, addressing local and global issues and linking readers with other forms of literature as well as community events and projects. Diverse works of radical literature, art and announcements in the periodical, set within the predictable, repetitious framework of a weekly community paper, allowed a germinating militant movement to develop throughout and outside the Cronaca Sovversiva’s pages.
<strong>Keywords:</strong> anarchism, propaganda, Italian Americans, newspapers, radicalism, Periodical Studies
*** Introduction
In June 1917, Salvatore Zumpano, the owner of an Italian-language bookstore in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, was arrested on suspicion of advocating anarchy.[1] Authorities had discovered that Zumpano was a subscriber to the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> (‘Subversive Chronicle’ or, as investigators in Zumpano’s case called the periodical in one memo, ‘an anarchistic newspaper published in Lynn, Mass., the name of which may be “Italian Anarchist”’.) after they raided the newspaper’s office.[2] Zumpano’s lawyers argued that the <em>Cronaca</em> was a popular publication within the Italian community, so Zumpano naturally stocked it alongside a wide array of works the public had an interest in. His legal defense cited the extensive list of publications seized from his store by authorities, which included not only the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, but also the Bible, <em>Les Misérables</em> and novels by Jules Verne.[3]
Zumpano was one of many who were arrested for connections to the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, which one federal agent described as ‘the most rabid, seditious, and anarchistic sheet ever published in this country’.[4] While exact figures for arrests made specifically in connection to the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> may not be available, there are numerous individual cases on record and it was noted as a focus of federal investigations. For example, Commissioner-General of Immigration Anthony Caminetti noted that Andrea Ciafolo, an admitted anarchist and contributor to the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, was one of ‘a large number of Italians, alleged to be anarchists, whom the investigations by [the Department of Justice] had indicated were more or less actively connected with the anarchistic paper <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’.[5] In June 1917, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was temporarily prohibited and its offices were raided by Bureau of Investigation agents.[6] Shortly after the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> offices were raided, <em>The New York Times</em> reported that its editors ‘Luigi Galleanunni’ (Luigi Galleani) and ‘Raffaeli Schinini’ (Raffaele Schiavina), along several others associated with the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, would be deported for their connections to the periodical.[7] Although Galleani and Schiavina were eventually released after paying a fine, the periodical was permanently outlawed in July 1918, and in 1919 Galleani and at least eight others associated with the periodical were arrested and deported.[8]
As illustrated by Zumpano’s case and the US government’s actions against the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, this was a periodical which was infamous to some, unknown to most and still not entirely out of place in an otherwise general interest Italian-language bookstore. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was paradoxically both notorious and obscure. Association with the periodical could often be grounds for arrest and even deportation, but, as with Zumpano’s investigators, many authorities involved in antiradical investigations did not even know the name of the paper, never mind its contents. Government documents included translations of some <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> articles, providing a useful, if cursory, overview of articles on militarism, patriotism and religion from the periodical’s later years. However, these translations remained incomplete and largely unseen, and to the English-speaking world, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was defined primarily by its seditious reputation.
This fragmentary understanding of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> has persisted in historical scholarship. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> has primarily been studied for its connections with particularly controversial anarchists (like Luigi Galleani, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti) and events (such as bombing campaigns in the late 1910s).[9] In a study of another American anarchist periodical from the same period, <em>Mother Earth</em>, Kathy Ferguson wrote, ‘My goal is to examine the journal’s literary and artistic productions…for traces of politically explosive material’.[10] Ferguson’s examination for ‘traces of politically explosive material’ is also an apt description of how the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> has been treated in historical literature, as scholars seek to understand revolutionary fervour alongside the more literally explosive acts of violence associated with the paper. This focus on the politically explosive is also descriptive of studies on other radical periodicals, which often, naturally, focus on the specific content that makes a periodical ‘radical’, from experimental aesthetics to revolutionary rhetoric. But what might we gain from looking at not only the politically explosive material, but also the seemingly inert material (such as repetitive, weekly content that did not necessarily look like propaganda)? Why did thousands of people read a periodical known today only for its connections to actual explosions? While seeking articles in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> calling for assassination and insurrection, what have scholars overlooked in the rest of its pages?
Central to the question of what has been overlooked due to a focus on the politically explosive is <em>who</em> has been overlooked. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> has been widely described in historical literature as a mouthpiece for the insurrectionary anarchist Luigi Galleani. This framing of the <em>Cronaca</em> is ubiquitous, but is perhaps best captured by Marcella Bencivenni’s description:
<quote>
Newspapers typically expressed the life and ideas of distinct radical groups, unions, or communities, but a large number were ‘one-man papers’, the enterprise of single individuals, who usually supported themselves with their writing, supplemented by lecturing and organising…[One] example is <em>Cronaca Sovversiva,</em> which reflected almost entirely the ideas and program of its editor, the anti-organisational anarchist Luigi Galleani.[11]
</quote>
Echoing Bencivenni’s sentiment, Paul Avrich described the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> as ‘the mouthpiece for [Galleani’s] incendiary doctrines’.[12] This consensus has been woven into the broader narrative of anarchism and terrorism in the United States. In her study of anarchist terrorism, Beverly Gage wrote that Galleani, ‘began to publish <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>… in the pages of [which] Galleani echoed [Johann] Most’s unyielding animosity to the state and to amassers of private property’.[13] Meanwhile, Gage continued, Sacco and Vanzetti ‘subscribed to <em>Cronaca</em>, and with it to Galleani’s brand of class warfare and propaganda by deed’.[14] There may be some truth to the presentation of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> as Galleani’s violent scripture and its readers as his ‘disciples’,[15] but is this the entire truth?
Since the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was published in Italian, Anglophone historians tend to rely on working either from very selectively chosen articles to translate themselves or from previously translated passages, most often found in government archives such as the records of the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Investigation (which, of course, tend to focus on particularly controversial excerpts). This paper analyses the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> using original translations (unless otherwise noted) of a recently digitised run of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> from the Library of Congress. A microfilm run of the periodical from the University of Pittsburgh was also consulted, which is generally very similar to the Library of Congress’s version, but is more complete, as it includes the 1920 and 1933 issues. Archival records on the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> are mostly limited to investigative documents from the government, such as the Records of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, where Salvatore Zumpano’s case is detailed. The practical limitations imposed by the paper’s foreign language and repression has exacerbated the tendency of historians to focus on controversial people and events surrounding a radical periodical, which can be studied effectively from government documents. This approach is understandable and has produced invaluable scholarship on the subjects of ‘Galleanist’ anarchism and political violence. However, it has also left many gaps in how we understand the thousands of pages comprising the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, as most scholarship has only focussed on Galleani and the question of violence.
This article seeks to address some of these gaps by analysing the periodical itself. First, it describes the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s repeated form and contents. Although often studied for its ‘radicalism’ as in extremism, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> fits multiple conceptualisations of radical. It involved radical analyses which sought to get to the root of modern social issues, and it involved networks of readers and contributors who were part of radical social movements which sought to address these issues. As a weekly radical periodical that was not aligned with any single leftist party, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was well-positioned to deliver diverse, informative and compelling weekly news and feature articles that could shape many Italian immigrants’ intellectual and political lives. Moreover, advertisements, a mail-order library, letters to the editor and reports from different readers and affinity groups helped transform the periodical from a collection of articles into a hub for a radical political network.
Approaching the periodical with a distant reading by ‘assembling the different components – articles, advertisements, illustrations, letters to the editor – into an unpredictable, idiosyncratic and ultimately unstable whole’ reveals that the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was much more than Luigi Galleani’s mouthpiece.[16] Instead, it was a large, multifaceted project undertaken by multiple writers, artists, activists and even other editors besides Galleani. Its periodical form was inherently heterogeneous, involving continuously changing authors, editors and artists who contributed individual pieces whose meanings became transformed by the weekly collage of which they had become a part. Further complicating the issue of authorship and editorship, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> fit Ann Ardis’ description of modern periodicals which featured ‘more anonymous, more collabourative, less coherent, and more deliberately performative author environments’ in a literary environment where anonymity was already the dominant form.[17] Many articles and illustrations in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> were unsigned or signed only with initials or pseudonyms and some authors used several pseudonyms in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> alone. Although this precludes making definitive statements on the quality and quantity of contributions each individual made to the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva,</em> this article’s distant reading points to a breadth of perspectives and contributors throughout its pages.
The patchwork community behind the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> produced what became a staple publication of the Italian left in America, not only through the fiery propaganda for which it became infamous, but also through the regular space the periodical provided for readers to learn about current events, network, debate revolutionary ideas and strategies, promote events and protests and foster an immigrant counterculture. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> used its seriality to build an audience over time, connect them with other forms of radical cultural production and introduce them to different, sometimes deeply controversial ideas. Ultimately, much of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> had little to do with Galleani, but the periodical’s broader appeal as an Italian-language resource for news, leftist analysis and community provided him with a sizable and engaged audience when his ideas were featured in the paper. Therefore, its role as a pluralistic, community-oriented paper enabled the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> to also become the notorious, seditious paper it is known as.
*** Ebdomadario anarchico: The anarchist weekly
The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was first published in 1903 in Barre, Vermont, then in Lynn, Massachusetts from 1912 to 1919.[18] Shortly after its founding in 1903, the US Department of State contacted the governor of Vermont, warning him about the ‘revolutionary and anarchistic’ periodical.[19] The governor then instructed the state attorney to ‘take action as the laws warrant and if the laws justify to suppress the sheet’.[20] The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s embattled beginnings would grow further into the 1910s, as the paper became a target of repression in the aftermath of anarchist-associated bombings in the late 1910s. After its offices were raided and it was banned from the mail by the US government, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was published in Washington, DC (according to the location listed in the ni; though some of the literature says these issues were actually printed in Providence, Rhode Island) as well as Turin, Italy in 1919 and 1920, respectively.[21] Apart from a single-issue revival in 1933 published in New Britain, Connecticut, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> ceased production in 1920. It was succeeded by the 1922–71, New York City-based periodical <em>L’Adunata dei Refrattari</em>. <em>L’Adunata dei Refrattari</em> was edited by Raffaele Schiavina throughout most of its lengthy run, initially building off the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s format, audience and contributors.
In his distinctively romantic style, Luigi Galleani wrote that the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was ‘a rag of paper that live[d] on crusts and bits of bread, with the support of pennies of five thousand beggars’.[22] Despite Galleani’s somewhat poetic description of the <em>Cronaca</em>’s funding and readership, the circulation of five thousand is corroborated by other sources.[23] The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was among the most widely read of the various Italian anarchist periodicals based in the United States, with a peak circulation of five thousand,[24] largely concentrated in the US Northeast, but with readers across the Americas and Europe, from major metropolitan centers to small mining towns and camps where Italian immigrants worked and moved between.[25] As one article signed by ‘Tropie’ put it, the paper advocated for a blend of anarchism, ‘having only one rule for the unlimited freedom of all’ and communism, where ‘everyone should receive according to their needs’.[26] Its pages contained economic and political theory, radical history, current events, reports from its readership and advertisements for books, lectures and festivals. To many Italian radicals, the paper was a medium through which they could connect to rigorous intellectual discourse, a vibrant immigrant counterculture and an organised network of radicals.
Of course, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> had to build this audience over time, gaining new subscribers and providing current subscribers with the content and form that they had grown to expect. In an essay on the role of continuity, succession and finality in periodicals, James Mussell argued that ‘Serial publication is a negotiation between sameness and difference.’[27] Sameness in serial publications fulfills a contract with readers concerning what they have demonstrated they want to read, while difference allows interest to be maintained over time by making new issues distinguishable from previous ones.
The idea of reproducing the familiar alongside successive differences was not only descriptive of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> as a serial publication, but also integral to its anarchist philosophy. In a defense of anarchist principles and strategies, Galleani argued that, ‘progress means a continuous succession of phenomena in which energy manifests itself at each stage of evolution with an ever-growing variety and intensity’.[28] Anarchist-communism, he argued, ‘reproduces all the traits of the preceding phases, adding a new trait non-existent in preceding phases, and will be the embryo of a new trait appearing in all subsequent stages’.[29] Propaganda, disagreement and even repetition were also central to this evolutionary process, as he continued to argue that political ‘disagreements…will lead [anarchists] under the sharp spur of experience and necessity to find the appropriate way, the way to revolution, whose initial phase must be the individual act of rebellion, inseparable from propaganda, from the mental preparation which understands it, integrates it, leading to larger and more frequent repetitions through which collective insurrections flow into the social revolution’.[30] The role of repetition and succession (or difference and evolution) in Galleani’s revolutionary vision echoes Mussell’s observations about the periodical form. This could explain why Galleani embraced serial publication in general, but, regardless, the idea of repetition and succession certainly spoke to anarchism’s experimental, spontaneous and evolutionary ethos.
In addition to its general parallels with Mussell’s description of periodicals as a genre, this anarchist philosophy was also especially representative of the form and content of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> used the repetition of typeface, layouts and tone (what Mussell called ‘formal features’) to form continuity and a recognisable identity between issues, while it also emphatically embraced the seriality of the periodical medium.[31] The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> not only presented a variety of opinions and topics throughout its text, but also utilised special formats and shifting aesthetics within its pages and provided readers with avenues to engage outside the periodical (such as ads for pamphlets, events and meetings, and a continuously updated selection in its mail-order library).
Although scholars are trained, as Mussell wrote, ‘to focus on the singular and the exceptional rather than the repetitive and generic’, we may gain new insights into periodicals by doing the inverse. In the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva’s</em> case, this could be understood as past studies 5ocusing on the exceptional calls to violence, leaving a gap in understanding the periodical’s typical, week-to-week format and content.[32] Considering the role that repetition and gradual succession play in periodicals in general and in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> in particular, it is worth examining the repetitious and changing features of this anarchist weekly.
A typical issue of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> consisted of four pages, with a few exceptions (for example, the special ‘Against the War, Against the Peace’ and Umberto I issues discussed below were each eight pages long; even rarer were two-page issues, as on 28 January 1905, and 12-page issues, as on 14 March 1908).[33] Early issues were mostly unembellished and consisted of a plain text nameplate, four columns of text and few, if any, illustrations. Starting on 4 January 1905, each issue typically consisted of four or five columns on each page, with an illustrated nameplate, along with more varied type and more illustrations throughout the periodical (this change likely resulted from new typographical equipment, which was purchased with $355 raised from reader donations).[34] The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> never deviated too much from these formal features, but within this general format it introduced a variety of aesthetics and perspectives over time.
The most visible repeated feature was the nameplate at the top of the first page of each issue. This was joined by an imprint which included a slogan and administrative information such as the editor, address and, in the periodical’s later years, legal disclaimers about translations of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> being submitted to the US Post Office for inspection. The nameplate varied across the life of the periodical, beginning with the simple, plain font mentioned above, but also using different illustrations encompassing a variety of artistic styles. These varying nameplates are worth closer consideration, especially as they are representative of the mix of artistic styles used throughout the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>.
The most repeated illustration used in the nameplate was of a muscled man holding chained hands up, with torches in the background along with Italian-language text reading ‘Anarchist Weekly of Revolutionary Propaganda’ and Latin text reading ‘That fortune may leave the proud and return to the wretched’. The image of the man lifting his chains points to a general state of oppression alongside a struggle for liberation. The generic, almost universal symbolism here allows this nameplate to fit well with almost any issue of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, setting a tone for both its analyses of contemporary capitalism and its visions for a revolutionary future. This nameplate was illustrated by Carlo Abate, an artist and publisher for the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>. It displays Abate’s signature style, in which the labour involved in metal or wood engravings are highlighted through rough linework that echoes the appearance of a hand-drawn sketch, along with ‘<em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’ type that looks as though it was painted with a brush. Historian Andrew Hoyt noted that, through this aesthetic approach, Abate ‘wanted his hand to be seen’ in his artwork, while Kathy Ferguson frames this as a refusal to mimic photographic processes which hide the labour behind images.[35]
Another common nameplate featured the same Italian and Latin slogans, but with an illustration involving the much cleaner lines and naturalistic imagery of art nouveau, showing three women under trees reach out into shining light. This work, signed A. Rizzi, is a stark stylistic contrast to Abate’s nameplate. It echoes earlier artwork from the English-language anarchist monthly <em>Mother Earth</em>, in which the cover art for the first six issues featured a naked man and woman with their arms outstretched toward a sunrise under a similarly drawn tree. This cover art has been characterised as a gesture toward a new, Edenic world, inviting readers to imagine the dawn of a beautiful utopia.[36] Rizzi’s nameplate, with the same subject matter of a beautiful dawn, serves a similar purpose. However, unlike both the <em>Mother Earth</em> cover art and Abate’s nameplate, the bold lines of Rizzi’s nameplate evoke art nouveau poster art rather than an engraving, joined by a characteristically art nouveau typeface. Here, neither the toil of the subject of breaking chains nor the labour of the artist is made visible; instead, the image focusses only on the idea of stimulating a general sense of beauty and imagination in the reader.
A third regularly used nameplate used the same slogans but featured images of workers reading a copy of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> (recursively featuring their own image in its nameplate) with a woman in the background carrying a torch and axe gliding above an industrial cityscape. This was the first illustrated nameplate used in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> and it would periodically reappear throughout the periodical’s run. This nameplate, signed with the letter ‘E’ in the bottom left, blended many styles and art movements of the time, with a realist portrayal of workers and the industrial city intertwined with the naturalistic and symbolic tendencies noted in the other nameplates described above.
In addition to these repeated nameplate, special nameplates were also created for specific issues, such as the top panel in Figure 1 which commemorated the Haymarket martyrs (variations of this nameplate were used for May issues for May Day or November issues on Haymarket).[37] This nameplate, created by Carlo Abate, is more realistic than his chained man illustration, consisting of detailed portraits of the Haymarket martyrs. Other special nameplates exhibited an even wider variety of artistic styles, including photographs of stonework. These repeated but varying nameplates, aesthetically divergent and featuring different artists, echoed the balance of repetition and heterogeneity in the text itself and in the other artwork featured throughout the periodical.
After the nameplate, the first two to three pages usually consisted of feature articles. Although the organisation and presentation of the periodical varied throughout its run, it commonly began with international news, history and analysis (e.g., coverage of the Mexican Revolution, developments in the French syndicalist movement or analysis of US policies in Latin America, which the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> considered to be imperialistic). This international coverage was preceded in many issues with a graphic of a man with a sickle, labelled ‘Subversive Notes of the Two Hemispheres’ (see Figure 2, which shows different illustrations by Carlo Abate which marked the beginning of a section).[38] This section provided readers with news on revolutionary movements and anarchist perspectives on more general current events, with deeper and more sympathetic coverage of radicalism than generally available in the mainstream press. These notes varied in scope, topic and depth, with examples including over a page of coverage on a Vermont granite workers’ strike,[39] periodic updates on the ‘social war in Colorado’ (known today as the Ludlow massacre)[40] and snippets on international news such as updates on World War I.[41] Although the paper was openly a work of propaganda, these articles were carefully researched and placed value on journalistic integrity. For example, the 17 November 1917 issue began with a note on how news about the Russian Revolution would be postponed due to the ‘uncertain and contradictory reports’ coming in.[42] Placing news and reports at the beginning of the periodical set a realist tone for the propaganda, allowing theoretical and even polemical articles thereafter feel reliable and grounded. In short, these subversive notes helped the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> to intimately shape readers’ understandings of the ever-changing Progressive Era world.
[[a-q-adam-quinn-chronicling-subversion-4.png 50][<strong>Figure 1</strong> Repeated nameplates of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>.]]
[[a-q-adam-quinn-chronicling-subversion-2.jpg 50][<strong>Figure 2</strong> Artwork marking the beginning of regular <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> sections.]]
Following this coverage of subversion throughout the world, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> typically featured discussions of political vision, revolutionary strategy and history. Sometimes these features took the form of one-off articles and sometimes appeared in series that would go on for weeks. From week to week, readers could expect content on topics ranging from philosophical articles on religion, freedom and society to discussions on revolutionary strategy. Specific examples of articles include French anarchist Clément Duval’s translated autobiography,[43] an anonymous article making an ‘anarchist statement’ on ‘individuals consuming according to their needs’ as a ‘prime necessity of life’[44] and a history of the Paris Commune.[45]
Rather than only representing the opinions of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s editors, these varied articles provided a diverse set of viewpoints representing different political positions. Many of the articles were written by regular contributors to the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, such as Luigi Galleani and Raffaele Schiavina, but most were anonymous or initialled, written by a plethora of authors with lesser-known names or written by authors outside of the Italian anarchist movement. These included writers from different strains of anarchism (e.g., Peter Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Max Stirner and Emma Goldman) as well as writers outside of the anarchist milieu altogether (e.g., Karl Marx, Emile Zola and Friedrich Nietzsche).
The featured articles in the first two pages would also sometimes take on a special theme for one or more issues of the paper. For example, each year around 1 May (Primo Maggio or May Day) and 11 November (the anniversary of the execution of several anarchists for the Haymarket affair), the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> would have issues dedicated to discussing general strikes, the Haymarket affair and Primo Maggio. The 14 November 1908 issue included articles, a special nameplate and illustrations focussed on the Haymarket martyrs. The middle of the front page even featured an image of a handwritten letter from Albert Parsons, one of the Haymarket martyrs, to his children, dated two days before his 11 November 1887 execution.
As with these 11 November issues, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> would devote several special issues per year to an entire week focussed on one thinker, event or idea associated with the date. For example, on the 31st anniversary of collectivist anarchist Mikhail Bakunin’s death, the <em>Cronaca</em> ran an issue devoted to exploring his ‘life, thought, and work’.[46] Although this issue was entirely devoted to one historical figure, it still approached its subject through a diverse set of authors and angles. The coverage of Bakunin included contributions from authors including Swiss internationalist James Guillaume, Vermont anarchist and stoneworker Antonio Cavalazzi, Italian socialist Filippo Turati, Bakunin’s close ally Carlo Cafiero, Russian collectivist Alexander Herzen, Peter Kropotkin, Luigi Galleani and Bakunin himself. Articles in the issue discussed Bakunin’s involvement in the First International, his debates with Marx and his ideas on the state and revolution. Some of these articles were decades’ old works translated into Italian and others were written for the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, allowing the discussion of Bakunin to be both comprehensive and current. The special issue could therefore be kept by readers as a valuable reference on Bakunin (in fact, several articles within the issue would later be included in edited collections on Bakunin, such as Guillaume’s biography of Bakunin in Sam Dolgoff’s <em>Bakunin on Anarchy</em>),[47] and parts of it were republished on later anniversaries of Bakunin’s death.[48]
The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> would regularly follow this format on many anniversaries; repetition coexisted with succession as the periodical built a pattern for issues that stood out from the typical weekly format. For example, the end of the Bakunin issue above included a note reading, ‘Subscribe for a special illustrated issue of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> that comes out on 29 July [1907], the seventh anniversary of Umberto I’s execution’.[49] Umberto I was the King of Italy, until he was assassinated by New Jersey-based anarchist Gaetano Bresci in 1900. Bresci sought revenge after Umberto I awarded a medal of decoration to a general who ordered a massacre in Milan in 1898. The special issue on this subject, double the length of a typical issue, discussed Umberto I, Gaetano Bresci and Bresci’s death at the hands of the Italian government. It then continued to discuss other martyrs and their respective periods of repression in Russia, France, America and Spain. Writings in the issue included selections by Galleani, Francesco Saverio Merlino,[50] one ‘Effabo Saramelli’ of Navacchio, Italy, Antonio Cavalazzi (signing three articles with three different variations on his name and pseudonym) and many more. It also included posthumous writings or last words from figures such as French anarchists Ravachol and Auguste Vaillaint and Italian anarchist Sante Caserio (who killed the French president in retaliation for the execution of Vaillaint and Émile Henry). Among the 16 illustrations in the special issue were an illustration by French artist René Georges Hermann-Paul of Bresci being hanged in his cell by police, a photograph or drawing accompanying the narrative of each country’s repressive regimes, a portrait by Carlo Abate of Russian socialist Sophia Perovskaya (who was hanged for the assassination of Alexander II) and uncredited illustrations, including a portrait of Caserio.[51] In addition to the diverse subjects, the artwork in this issue encompassed a wide range of themes and styles. Figure 3 highlights the diverse set of artistic styles used in the issue, from art nouveau imagery to Abate’s hand-engraved work to a photograph with a decorative, illustrated frame. The issue ended with a table of over 70 regicides between 1801 and 1907 and an essay by Souvarine on the ‘struggle for the ideal’ experienced by figures from philosopher and astronomer Giordano Bruno (who was burned at the stake in 1600) to anarchist martyrs such as Bresci, Caserio and Czolgosz.[52] Bringing together figures with different ideologies across history, all around the themes of resistance and martyrdom, was a fitting end for the special issue, itself a bricolage of art and writing condemning repression and celebrating regicide.
[[a-q-adam-quinn-chronicling-subversion-1.jpg 50][<strong>Figure 3</strong> Artwork of varied styles included in the 29 July 1907 special issue on Gaetano Bresci, an anarchist who assassinated King Umberto I of Italy.]]
Whether they discussed a philosopher like Bakunin or an assassin like Bresci, these biographical and historical issues were reflective and informative, bringing dozens of sources together to explore a topic from many angles to achieve greater nuance and detail than a single article would have provided. As with the rest of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, these special issues took manifold approaches to speak to certain themes, each article and piece of art saying more together than they would have on their own. Like the diverse features in regular issues, these comprehensive special issues enabled the periodical to become a reliable source of Italian-language information, not just on the ideas of one propagandist, but on a swath of radical thinkers, historical figures and political ideas.
When current events called for it, the paper would also devote a special issue to particularly controversial or exciting news. For example, after the execution of anarchist and educator Francisco Ferrer by the Spanish government, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> ran a full issue on his life and death, adjusting to allow space for exhaustive coverage of the provocative news (aside from half a page of back matter, the entire issue was focussed solely on Ferrer).[53] Exemplifying the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s ability to use thorough reporting as propaganda, the issue on Ferrer included details on his ‘assassination’ at the hands of the ‘Spanish Inquisition’ (a similar inversion to the ‘execution’ of Umberto I quoted above), a biography of Ferrer and a description of some of his educational philosophy and contributions, a list of names of those involved either directly in his death or in the prison where he was executed, graphic descriptions of torture methods used at the prison (including illustrations of testicular contortion and a torture helmet), an incisive critique of the Spanish state and church, and a call for mass protests and a general strike.
Backing up incendiary rhetoric with level-headed reports and philosophy, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s articles could have easily instilled a passionate – and informed – radicalism within each reader. However, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was more than a collection of anarchist thought to be consumed in a one-way relationship between writer and reader. The back matter of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, even if it appeared to be more mundane, allowed these individual readers to become a part of a growing social movement. The end of each regular issue of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> would consist of letters to the editor, reports from affiliated groups, calls to action, advertisements and a selection of mail-order texts in a library section. These sections illustrate the periodical’s role in Italian radical communities and they are worth closer consideration.
A variety of recurring letters to the editor sections, such as a Bulletin, Subversive Notes and Small Mail, allowed readers to write in (either anonymously or with their names, pseudonyms or group names) with announcements/requests, political activity reports and general letters to the editor, respectively. The length of these letters sections varied from week to week, occupying between just a quarter of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s last page to spanning both the third and fourth pages. These sections included correspondence from, in order of frequency, many towns throughout the US Northeast, major cities and industrial centres throughout the US, and major cities in Canada, Europe and Africa. Other Italian-language radical weeklies in the region such as <em>Il Proletario</em> and <em>La Questione Sociale</em> included letters to the editor from many of the same cities. Each of these periodical’s letters tended to cover different topics from different readers, with the exception of general announcements, which covered many of the same topics but with differing details. For example, the 10 January 1914 issue of <em>Il Proletario</em> included an unsigned letter noting a 31 January performance of an ‘anticlerical drama’ (Paolo Giacometti’s ‘La Morte Civile’) at Barre, Vermont’s opera house to benefit striking workers in Carrara, Italy.[54] In contrast, this same play is not mentioned in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> until two weeks later, in a letter signed V. D’Erasmo that included additional details (such as the costs of stall versus gallery seating) and listed a performance date of 24 January.[55]
Although the names of its letters sections changed over time, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> typically labelled announcements like this under the Bulletin section. There, groups and individuals wrote to the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> to make general announcements of, for example, the above opera house performance, news on fundraisers for the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> itself or requests to other readers.[56] One week, these bulletins included a request from a newly formed ‘Circolo di Studi di Sociali’ in Panama, Illinois for regular copies of different ‘subversive newspapers’ for them to discuss.[57] In another issue, bulletins ranged from procedural announcements such as that of a New Jersey group returning money some readers sent them for a special periodical issue on the Paris Commune (they did not receive enough funds to produce the issue) to a statement of solidarity with those involved in the Lawrence Textile Strike, including an announced 10-dollar donation to the Lawrence IWW.[58] Alongside the Bulletin, Subversive Notes would include reports on strike activity, festivals, operas and local cases of state repression, allowing readers to learn from one another and support others in need. The Subversive Notes were often more personal, but indicated readers shared a cause of spreading revolutionary propaganda. These were framed like brief articles, with readers presenting their own contributions to further the periodical’s mission of revolutionary propaganda. One letter, signed G. Sanchini of New Britain, Connecticut, noted the harsh daily work of propaganda, but ended on a positive note: ‘Let us persist with the same enthusiasm in our mission, which consists of impressing on the minds of the workers the spirit of rebellion against the existing order.’[59] After the Bulletin and Subversive Notes came a section titled Small Mail or Communications, which usually consisted of one to three sentences from each reader, allowing for more spontaneous debates, communications and light-hearted correspondence.
Similarly, sections such as ‘Barre e Dintorni’ (‘Barre and its Surroundings’) and ‘Cronaca Locale’ (‘Local Chronicle’) allowed the groups behind the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s publication to publish quick notes on local activities and news from the areas surrounding Barre or Lynn, with a similar breadth of topics including libertarian festivals, radical speeches and community projects in the local area. Not only did this allow readers to interact with the <em>Cronaca</em> on a more concrete level, but it also allowed anarchists to quickly develop and spread ideas for local political activities. Although the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was not a formal union or party, these sections allowed readers to obtain support from, communicate and organise with strangers hundreds of miles away.
At the turn of the century, advertising was a booming industry, witnessing a 128 per cent increase from 1890 to 1904.[60] Some of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s peers were a part of this trend, featuring commercial, general interest advertisements. For example, the New York-based syndicalist weekly <em>Il Proletario</em> advertised for a variety of goods and services, including national brands like cigars as well as doctors, restaurants and an Italian-English vocabulary book.[61] <em>Il Proletario</em>’s ads filled a niche for its Italian immigrant audience, generating revenue for the periodical itself and, potentially, for the organisations with which it was associated, such as the Italian Socialist Federation and the Industrial Workers of the World. <em>The Blast</em>, an Anglophone bimonthly anarchist paper, included similar commercial advertisements for goods and services, though it focussed on more exclusively local offerings, such as a suitcase store, a dentist and a boxing rink.[62] The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, however, took a different approach to advertising.
In 1911, one ad agency defined advertising as, ‘literature which compels Action…[and] changes the mind of millions at will’.[63] If we are to understand advertising as a form of communication which seeks to change consciousness to compel action, then its relationship with propaganda goes beyond revenue generation.[64] Rather than selling ad space for commercial products, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> adapted advertising practices of the time to expand its ability to inform, persuade and keep readers’ attention focussed on topics in the line of anti-capitalism, revolution and anarchism. Advertisements and announcements for booklets, other periodicals, public speeches, concerts, plays, festivals and conferences allowed the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> to serve as a hub around which Italian immigrant counterculture coalesced.
To this end, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> had a dedicated section for radical literature advertisements. This section, titled ‘Tra Libri Riviste e Giornali’ (‘Between Books and Newspapers’), consisted of brief advertisements for other radical periodicals as well as booklets. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> also had its own mail-order library (described below), but ‘Tra Libri Riviste e Giornali’ was separate, with its own selection of works provided by a wide variety of publishers and sold through different addresses. For example, the 14 February 1914 issue advertised ‘Madri d’Italia!’ (‘Mothers of Italy!’) by Mentana (Luigi Galleani), which was an anti-war pamphlet first published in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> itself; ‘Gli Anarchico e Cio’ Che Vogliono’ (‘The Anarchists and What They Want’) by the Gruppo Autonomo di East Boston; and the <em>1914 Revolutionary Almanac</em>. While the first two of these listed an East Boston P.O. box for those who wanted to order a copy (distinct from the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s own Lynn address), the latter advertised the address of Rabelais Presse in New York City.[65] In another issue, the selections included 11 operas by anarchist Pietro Gori, shipped from Spezia, Italy and a book by Peter Kropotkin shipped from Geneva, Switzerland.[66] This section also advertised other anarchist periodicals, such as <em>The Blast</em> and <em>Mother Earth</em>, including information on each issue’s contents and where to send money for a subscription.[67]
Outside of the ‘Tra Libri Riviste e Giornali’ section, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> would sometimes feature advertisements with their own space, type and, sometimes, artwork. For example, some issues of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> included recurring space to showcase annual radical almanacs such as <em>The Revolutionary Almanac</em> and the <em>Cronaca</em>’s own almanac, <em>L’Almanacco Sovversivo</em>.[68] These almanacs served as small radical encyclopaedias, including calendars listing noteworthy dates in radical history, illustrations for different months and historical figures, and essays by different authors on history and theory. In other issues, advertisement space was used for publications such as a translation by Antonio Cavalazzi of secularist anarchist Sébastien Faure’s ‘Twelve Proofs of God’s Inexistence’ (one copy for 10 cents or, if the buyer wanted to distribute it further, 12 copies for a dollar) and an annual subscription to <em>The Blast</em>.[69]
Notably, one advertisement that would reappear periodically was for ‘La Salute è in Voi’, a 25-cent bomb-making manual. ‘La Salute è in Voi’ was described in the paper as ‘An indispensable pamphlet for all comrades who love to educate themselves’, in a subtle advertisement eventually joined by the not-so-subtle correction, ‘On page 15, row 10, instead of “Weigh 200 grams of nitroglycerin…” you must read and correct to “Weigh 1200 grams of nitroglycerin…”’[70] Bomb-making instructions were, of course, unusual for a periodical with thousands of subscribers. This points to the unique roles that difference and progression played in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> as a periodical which aimed to help bring about a revolution. The different content provided in supplemental materials like ‘La Salute è in Voi’ were not merely a means to avoid repetition to maintain reader interest over time, but helped avoid criminal charges, translate some readers’ radical ideas into action and not alienate other readers.
‘La Salute è in Voi’ is also indicative of how the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> used a mixture consisting not only of different headlines, articles and artwork, but also separate texts, to provide both persuasive power to its radical message and evasiveness and plausible deniability to authorities. As Ann Ardis writes of the internal dialogics of the NAACP-associated periodical <em>Crisis</em>, a collage approach was used to create ‘meanings that are not explicitly spelled out in any one of the component parts but instead are “suggested by their conjunction”’.[71] The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> coupled news and analysis on the problems of industrial capitalism with histories of strikes and assassinations, supplemented with calls for meetings of activists and even materials with bomb-making instructions.
Many books and pamphlets, including ‘La Salute è in Voi’, were also sold through a mail-order library listed at the end of the paper each week. The library section of the paper started with the fourth issue and was originally titled ‘Biblioteca del Circolo di Studi Sociali’ and later titled ‘Biblioteca <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’. As the original name implies, the library began as a project of the Circolo di Studi Sociali, a radical study and propaganda group which, along with the Gruppo Autonomo di East Boston in the paper’s later years, was largely responsible for publishing and distributing the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> itself and many of the publications sold through the paper.[72] The Circolo predated the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> and operated a physical library in Barre, the Biblioteca Populare, until it burned down in 1904. The selection of books and pamphlets distributed through the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva’</em>s own mail-order Biblioteca was wide-ranging, and usually cost between five cents and $1.25. In its first appearance, the library consisted of a comprehensive collection of seminal anarchist-communist texts in Italian, including works by Peter Kropotkin, Johann Most, Pietro Gori and Élisée Reclus. The Biblioteca del Circolo di Studi Sociali was joined in the early issues of the periodical by the Libreria Sociologica di Paterson, NJ, which broadened the offerings to include works by social critics including Thomas More, Émile Zola and Guglielmo Ferrero.[73] However, the Biblioteca del Circolo di Studi Sociali soon expanded to offer a breadth of Italian-language books on radical philosophy, including additional anarchist-communist texts, works by philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner, plays and novels, and even portraits and postcards. Notably, the library also offered texts from authors whom Luigi Galleani had significant disagreements with and even wrote polemics against, such as Errico Malatesta, Karl Marx and Francesco Saverio Merlino, an anarchist-turned-socialist who Galleani famously criticised in ‘The End of Anarchism?’.
Moreover, the library section offered serialised features from (or special issues of) the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> consolidated into the form of pamphlets and booklets. These included ‘Against the War, Against the Peace, For the Revolution!’, which was a special issue on World War I, including timely articles criticising nationalism, militarism and pacifism; ‘Face to Face with the Enemy’, which celebrated propaganda by deed as well as famous anarchist assassins and martyrs; and ‘The End of Anarchism?’. These booklets and special issues were also advertised throughout the rest of the periodical. For example, Figure 4 shows various advertisements, including varying artwork, typography and layouts that the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> featured for ‘Face to Face with the Enemy’ and other works that had previously been published as a special issue or as a series of articles.
[[a-q-adam-quinn-chronicling-subversion-3.png 50][<strong>Figure 4</strong> Advertisements featured in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> for a variety of projects, left to right: a booklet of ‘Faccia a Faccia Col Nemico’, the journal <em>Pane e Liberta</em>, Clemente Duval’s autobiography and a booklet of Sébastien Faure’s ‘Twelve Proofs of God’s Inexistence’.]]
‘The End of Anarchism?’ was an interrogative response to Francesco Saverio Merlino’s anti-anarchist article, ‘The End of Anarchism’. Although it started out as a polemic, Galleani’s ‘The End of Anarchism?’ soon became a comprehensive exposition of his own anarchist philosophy. Historian Paul Avrich summarised the piece well, describing it as[74]
<quote>
Galleani’s most fully realised work…[and] a vigorous defense of communist anarchism against socialism and reform, preaching the virtues of spontaneity and variety, of autonomy and independence, of self-determination and direct action, in a world of increasing standardisation and conformity.[75]
</quote>
By arguing against a broad point about anarchism’s lack of relevance and vitality, Galleani articulated the many ways in which he believed anarchism to be not only philosophically sound, but also pertinent to the issues of the times and the needs of a revolutionary future. Fitting for his insurrectionary philosophy, what began as a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment response to one article became Galleani’s most lasting contribution to the anarchist canon (<em>The End of Anarchism?</em> is also Galleani’s only major work available in English in book form). Although Galleani’s ‘virtues of spontaneity and variety’ corresponded well to the serial form and helped define the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, booklet collections like this from the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> ensured longevity and totality for some of the periodical’s most ambitious projects, escaping the fleeting nature of a weekly periodical and allowing some writings to join a broader canon of books on anarchist philosophy.
The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s interplay with other forms of print culture was a part of a larger trend in periodicals linking readers with other forms of texts. These supplementary texts augmented the idea of succession in the periodical, not only providing readers with new kinds of content outside of the periodical’s page, but, as Mark W. Turner described, interrupting the weekly temporal uniformity of the serial publication.[76] These also provided a wider geographical distribution to texts that may have otherwise been fairly inaccessible. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> offered readers access to Italian-language radical texts which would have been unavailable in most towns, allowing, for example, a coal miner in Colorado to purchase and read an Italian translation of Marx. Moreover, Italian-language bookstores that stocked the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> (like Salvatore Zumpano’s discussed in the introduction) transitively provided customers with access to this larger body of radical literature.
This relationship with other forms of counterculture extended beyond linking readers with other texts. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> also advertised art prints, such as portraits of figures like the collectivist anarchist philosopher Mikhail Bakunin and the Paris Commune revolutionary Louise Michele, speaking tours by various anarchists, regional or international conferences of radicals and events hosted by radicals such as picnics, festivals, operas and fundraisers. These provided readers with avenues into a broader counterculture that was outside of texts, but not entirely separate from the literary world. For example, Schiavina wrote in his autobiography that, before becoming an editor of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, ‘During summer 1914, at an Italian-American picnic, I made the acquaintance of a man considerably older than me who told me that he was an anarchist and offered me, to read, a book [by Kropotkin] that he said that he had enjoyed reading’.[77] After becoming interested in anarchism through this book, Schiavina recalled that he ‘went on reading what he lent me and took out a subscription to <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> which, in a very short space of time, had become essential reading for me’.[78] Schiavina’s account displays how public events like picnics allowed participants to exchange printed literature in person. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s promotion of events like this were mutually beneficial; its advertisements brought more attendees to events who, in turn, introduced other attendees to anarchist books and periodicals.
Enabling readers to access a wide spectrum of radical texts and other cultural and political activities helped the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> grow into an intellectual hub of Italian-language anarchism. By incorporating literature and activities across a broad but radical ideological spectrum, rather than being bound to a single political organisation as many socialist and syndicalist papers were, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was well-positioned to reach a wide-ranging set of politically engaged readers in Italian immigrant communities. Rather than being merely a vessel for one editor’s own viewpoints, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s heterogeneous offerings helps to explain how the paper resonated with so many. This fostered a broader intellectual community for Italian immigrants and, in turn, allowed Galleani’s own propaganda (and even calls to violence) to reach a larger regular audience.
In his discussion of succession in periodicals, Mussell wrote that, in order for one issue to assert differences from preceding issues, ‘the editor must introduce enough difference to move the magazine on but not so much that it becomes, in effect, another publication entirely’.[79] To achieve this difference, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> had more than one editor (in contrast to Mussell’s hypothetical phrasing of ‘the editor’) and a diverse array of contributors who shaped the periodical’s direction. Behind the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s heterogeneous content was a similarly heterogeneous network of editors, writers, artists and activists. Many of the people behind the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> did not lead well-documented lives (and many even participated in the periodical anonymously), but it is worth considering some of those besides Galleani who helped create the content within the periodical and build the network behind it.
The first person to be listed as the publisher or editor of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was Carlo Abate, whose name first appears on top of the 12 September 1903 issue. Abate was a respected artist in Barre, Vermont and is often either overlooked in historical literature or framed as a pacifist philosophical anarchist who was only a financial backer of the <em>Cronaca</em>. For example, one article on Galleani and the anarchists of Barre claimed that Abate’s name was merely ‘listed as the publisher of the <em>Cronaca</em>…[as] a ruse to conceal the identity of Galleani, who was still wanted by the police for his radical activities in New Jersey’.[80] However, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> had many other editors listed throughout its lifespan and many highly politicised articles in the periodical are signed ‘C.A’, just as Abate’s propagandistic artwork is autographed, so he may have even written for the periodical. Moreover, Abate’s full name was listed as the publisher, and his initials placed under illustrations and articles, even during periods in which Galleani was openly writing in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva.</em>
It seems likely that Abate was as radical and militant as any other anarchist of Vermont. As historian Andrew Hoyt argued, ‘Galleani and Abate are usually understood as of unequal historical importance – a charismatic leader and a follower…[However,] Carlo Abate…linked the <em>Cronaca</em>…to the migrant community by building and maintaining strong bonds to two different network communities which would otherwise only be connected through weak ties’.[81] Indeed, the respect the community had for Abate and his community projects, such as Abate’s local Drawing School, are not contradictory to the idea of him being a militant anarchist; instead, they highlight how anarchists and the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> gained legitimacy and respect among workers through community projects. As Hoyt continued, ‘Abate’s life in Barre contrasts with the usual depiction of Galleanisti as rabid ideologues…he was a painter and schoolteacher, a community organiser, not bomb thrower or terrorist. Understanding the deep bonds Abate built with the Italian stonecutters in Vermont adds to our appreciation of the deep roots anarchists established in their local communities’.[82] Carlo Abate, more than being a trustworthy figure who could help conceal the identity of Galleani, was an important part of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> and the local anarchist community. Through his artwork, community activism and, at least according to the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> itself, his position as publisher, Abate connected the militant philosophies within the <em>Cronaca</em> to the everyday lives and culture of Italian immigrant workers.
Similarly overlooked is one of the periodical’s later editors. In 1916, Raffaele Schiavina, who was not much older than the periodical itself, became the administrator of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>. In his autobiography, Schiavina writes about his early encounters with the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> after taking out a subscription:
<quote>
The war in Europe was just beginning at the time and there was widespread revulsion at the horrors being perpetrated. I had occasion to hear a few talks given by Galleani and to make the acquaintances of persons of my own age living in the Boston area. In April 1916, with all of the zeal of the convert, I accepted the post of administrator with <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>. Towards the end of 1915 I had even made so bold as to send an article to that weekly paper and it had been published, albeit completely revamped by the editors.[83]
</quote>
Schiavina’s story of his conversion to anarchism and involvement with the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> includes a few minor but telling details, including its connections to Italian immigrant culture, the importance of its consistently critical stance on World War I and even the plural ‘editors’. These details all point to a <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> that was deeply entrenched in Italian immigrant counterculture. Schiavina’s case also reveals how studying the many faces behind radical periodicals can help us better understand how these texts shaped readers and movements. Schiavina, a once-dispassionate socialist, found the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> to be essential to comprehending and responding to the horrors of World War I. The first time Schiavina sent anything with his name on it to the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, he submitted a letter for a column titled ‘From the Trenches and Hearths’ where readers sent in letters from those involved in or affected by, World War I.[84] Inspired by this periodical as a subscriber, Schiavina was able to easily participate in the letters of its back pages before he became deeply involved in its production. Later, Schiavina played a significant role in publishing <em>L’Adunata dei Refrattari</em>, widely considered the successor to the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, which was published from 1922 to 1971.[85]
While Schiavina is overlooked in part because he joined the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> later, others are overlooked because they remain entirely outside of the narrative of violence and repression of the late-1910s. For example, Antonio Cavalazzi, writing under the pseudonym Ursus, is overlooked in part because he passed away before the period of interest for those studying the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s connections to violence. Cavalazzi had perhaps a greater output of <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> articles than Galleani in the early years of the periodical (and he also contributed to both the Bakunin and Bresci special issues described above). However, Cavalazzi’s death in 1915 puts his work before the period of interest for most scholars interested in either the anarchist bombings or the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. Cavalazzi, who moved to Vermont and then to Massachusetts to work on the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, is worth further consideration in future studies. There are many more like Cavalazzi who were very involved in the periodical but whose contributions have gone unremarked by historians.
Luigi Galleani’s role in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was far from minimal, but he was a single piece within a larger ensemble that enabled his ideas to take root in Italian immigrant communities. Although there is a breadth of space for additional research on the many people involved in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, it is at least clear from this brief study that approaching radical periodicals as being led by a single editor can sometimes limit our analyses of these periodicals, the people who produced them, the movements they shaped and the movements that were created within their pages.
Future studies of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> might analyse the changing roles of different authors, artists, editors and other contributors over time, providing further insight into the lives and work behind the periodical, as well as the changes these contributors introduced to the periodical over time. Furthermore, to analyse the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s diverse offerings, this study used scattered selections from throughout the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s run. While this hopefully showed the value in analysing aspects of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> that might not be directly related to violence, future studies might examine specific periods, moments or themes in the periodical more closely than was possible here.
Part of future efforts to study the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> might also look toward the roles that its various contributors played in the periodical’s later years and beyond. James Mussell points to the phrase ‘in our last’ (as in ‘in our last issue’) as representative of the tendency of periodicals to look backward as they move forward.[86] As discussed earlier, this plays a clear role in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, as repetition and succession become central to the process of how the radical periodical built an audience, introduced them to radical ideas and linked them with diverse sets of cultural productions and political activities. However, Mussell also pointed to a third meaning of ‘in our last’ in a periodical: finality. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s eventual illegality, its multiple revivals in Washington, DC, Turin, Italy and (after Galleani’s death) in New Britain, Connecticut, and the role <em>L’Adunata dei Refrattari</em> played as spiritual successor suggest ways in which radical periodicals’ finality were uniquely shaped by repression and resistance. Several issues could be noted as the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s last. Or, perhaps its succession by <em>L’Adunata dei Refrattari</em> and other publications in the wake of repression means that it never had a definitively final issue of its own.
*** Conclusion
In his introduction to a special issue of the <em>Journal of Modern Periodical Studies</em> on ‘Anarchism’s Modernisms’, Allan Antliff wrote, ‘anarchism’s localised epistemologies are complemented by modernisms that are self-reflexive and generative because the strength of their political efficacy depends on their capacity to realise new forms of knowledge and activism through aesthetic experimentation’.[87] Most articles in the ‘Anarchism’s Modernisms’ issue explored the experimental approach that each individual editor and artist employed to effectively advance their radical political ambitions within their respective periodical. For example, Patricia Leighten explored how modernist artists Kees Van Dongen and Juan Gris employed abstract aesthetics in political cartoons in <em>L’assiette au beurre</em> to both challenge the assumptions of academic art and form coded critiques of the social order.[88] Other articles in the issue took analysed multiple periodicals as part of a larger movement, such as Nina Gourianova’s study of avant-garde aesthetics in Moscow anarchist publications. Gourianova argued that anarchism’s position as an ‘open and mutable doctrine’ was central to the ‘plurality, diversity, and eclecticism of Russian avant-garde aesthetics in the era of the Russian revolution’.[89] This study of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> has shown that the same virtues of plurality, diversity and eclecticism gave way to a periodical that wove the traditional and the experimental together.
Ann Ardis and Robert Scholes emphasised how studies of modernism, and of modern periodicals in particular, have ‘privileged abstraction and formal experimentation’ and, in the process, overlooked the wide-ranging approaches that periodicals have taken to portray and engage with modernity.[90] The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> used a familiar and repetitive weekly newspaper format, which would not be considered experimental by most measures. This traditional format, however, provided a framework within which different aesthetic and rhetorical approaches were carried out from page to page and issue to issue. A plurality of art forms in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> were printed alongside what Ardis might characterise as a ‘retro-Victorian, austere, visual “seriousness”’ that became associated with other modernist periodicals into the 1920s.[91] Moreover, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> featured reporting, community networking and advertising, which often exhibited a similar tone of seriousness, all alongside the violent, propagandising and emotionally-charged rhetoric for which it is known. What appeared as a community paper in one section of a page helped provide an attentive audience for what appeared as a ‘seditious sheet’ in the next.
Although there may be many cases where the idea of a one-man paper may be useful and applicable, here the spectre of Galleani and Galleanist violence has worked to eclipse a broader story of intellectual exchange, radical print culture and political resistance among thousands of networked immigrants. Studying this radical periodical holistically, rather than focussing only on articles calling for violence or Galleani’s own contributions, reveals a multifaceted periodical that offered so much more than one propagandist’s rhetoric. These multitudes of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> enabled its more explosive material to be heard and acted upon. Ultimately, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> was not merely Galleani’s mouthpiece, but a literary space where radical counterculture, Italian immigrant culture, anarchist philosophy and insurrectionary propaganda became interconnected and mutually reinforcing.
Histories of periodicals sometimes centre either on a famed editor or, especially in the case of radical periodicals, on articles that may have influenced events outside of its pages, such as protests, uprisings, violence, revolt and repression. In the case of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, studies are typically framed around its calls for violence and its suppression by the US government. While questions surrounding such violence and suppression are worth exploring, this more selective and directed methodology has limited how we understand the periodical itself, the wider social movements it influenced and was shaped by, and even the events and people that many set out to understand to begin with. Rather than being a constant, monotonous call for violent uprising, the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> used its seriality to provide an up-to-date and dynamic stream of news, artwork and advertisements for other forms of literature to build a counterculture and political network. In turn, it gained a wider audience for calls to action than a lone pamphlet may have had been able to achieve, explaining how it ended up on the shelves of even a general interest Italian bookstore like Salvatore Zumpano’s. The <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s seemingly inert material was key to providing an audience and purpose to its politically explosive content. These anarchists advanced a politics of plurality and diversity by embracing these virtues not just in their organising, but in their literary forms.
*** Author biographies
Adam Quinn holds a B.A. in History and Social Theory from Hampshire College and an M.A. in History from the University of Vermont. His undergraduate thesis focussed on how local contexts in Vermont shaped the anarchist politics of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>. His master’s thesis examined the First Red Scare in the United States, arguing that it resulted from longer-term, interrelated projects of exclusion, antiradicalism and public morals. He has also written on anarchism and global history, as well as antiradicalism’s relationship with discourses surrounding gender and the family.
[1] Martin P. Schipper, Robert Lester, Alan M. Kraut and Todd Michael Porter, eds., <em>Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Series A, Subject Correspondence Files, Microfilm Part 6: The Suppression of Radicals</em> (Research Collections in American Immigration. Bethesda: University Publications of America, 1992), Reel 5.
[2] <em>Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Part 6: The Suppression of Radicals</em>, Reel 5.
[3] <em>Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Part 6: The Suppression of Radicals</em>, Reel 5.
[4] Andrew D. Hoyt, ‘Methods for Tracing Radical Networks: Mapping the Print Culture and Propagandists of the Sovversivi,’ in <em>Without Borders or Limits: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Anarchist Studies</em> (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing), 85.
[5] US House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, <em>I.W.W. Deportation Cases</em> (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1920), 52.
[6] Francesco Durante, Robert Viscusi and James J. Periconi, <em>Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880–1943</em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 615.
[7] ‘Anarchists Lose Appeal – New England Group of Italian Reds Will Be Deported,’ <em>The New York Time</em>s, June 5, 1917.
[8] Durante, Viscusi and Periconi, <em>Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880–1943</em>, 615.
[9] See, for example, Paul Avrich’s <em>Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background</em> and Beverly Gage’s <em>The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror</em>, cited below as well, which examine the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> in regards to its connections to the anarchist bombings of the late 1910s and the trials of Sacco and Vanzetti in the 1920s.
[10] Kathy Ferguson, ‘Assemblages of Anarchists: Political Aesthetics in Mother Earth,’ <em>Journal of Modern Periodical Studies</em> 4, no. 2 (2013): 173.
[11] Marcella Bencivenni, <em>Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States</em>, <em>1890–1940</em>, 71.
[12] Paul Avrich, Review of Luigi Galleani’s ‘<em>The End of Anarchism?</em>’ in Black Rose #10 (Winter 1983).
[13] Beverly Gage, <em>The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror</em>, 208.
[14] Gage, <em>The Day Wall Street Exploded</em>, 220.
[15] Gage, <em>The Day Wall Street Exploded</em>, 244.
[16] Faye Hammill, Paul Hjartarson, and Hannah McGregor, ‘Magazines and/as Media: The Aesthetics and Politics of Serial Form,’ <em>ESC: English Studies in Canada</em> 41, no. 1 (1 March 2015): 3.
[17] Ann Ardis, ‘Staging the Public Sphere: Magazine Dialogism and the Prosthetics of Authorship at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,’ in <em>Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880–1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms</em>, ed. Ann Ardis and Patrick Collier (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 42; For a discussion of anonymity, also see Griffin, Robert J., ed., <em>The Faces of Anonymity: Anonymous and Pseudonymous Publications from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century</em>, 1st ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
[18] The reason for the move to Lynn, Massachusetts is not clear from the periodical itself, but according to historian and Cronaca translator Robert D’Attilio, the intent was to move the paper closer to larger activist communities. See Andrew D. Hoyt, ‘Methods for Tracing Radical Networks: Mapping the Print Culture and Propagandists of the Sovversivi,’ in <em>Without Border or Limits: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Anarchist Studies</em>, ed. Jorell A. Meléndez Badillo and Nathan J. (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, June 2013), 75–106.
[19] ‘(Barre, VT),’ <em>Barre Daily Times</em>, August 26, 1903.
[20] <em>Barre Daily Times</em>, August 26, 1903.
[21] Durante, Viscusi and Periconi, <em>Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880–1943</em>, 615
[22] Paul Avrich, <em>Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background</em>, 51.
[23] Kenyon Zimmer, ‘American Anarchist Periodical Circulation Data, 1880–1940,’ [[https://www.academia.edu/7715169/American_Anarchist_Periodical_Circulation_Data_1880-1940][https://www.academia.edu/7715169/American_Anarchist_Periodical_Circulation_Data_1880-1940]].
[24] Kenyon Zimmer, ‘American Anarchist Periodical Circulation Data, 1880–1940,’ [[https://www.academia.edu/7715169/American_Anarchist_Periodical_Circulation_Data_1880-1940][https://www.academia.edu/7715169/American_Anarchist_Periodical_Circulation_Data_1880-1940]].
[25] Andrew Hoyt, ‘Italian Migration Beyond Atlantic Gate-Way Cities: Mapping Italian Anarchist Miners across the Small Towns of North America.’ Paper presented at the Seventh Annual Conference of the Midwest World History Association, Metropolitan State University, Saint Paul, MN, USA, September 23–24th 2016.
[26] C<em>ronaca Sovversiva</em>, May 6, 1905.
[27] James Mussell. ‘Repetition: Or, “In Our Last”,’ <em>Victorian Periodicals Review</em> 48, no. 3 (2015): 355.
[28] Luigi Galleani, <em>The End of Anarchism?</em> trans. M. Sartin and R. D’Attilio, (Orkney: Cienfuegos Press.,1982), [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/luigi-galleani-the-end-of-anarchism][https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/luigi-galleani-the-end-of-anarchism]].
[29] Luigi Galleani, <em>The End of Anarchism?</em>
[30] Luigi Galleani, <em>The End of Anarchism?</em>
[31] James Mussell, ‘Elemental Forms: The Newspaper as Popular Genre in the Nineteenth Century,’ <em>Media History</em> 20, no. 1 (2014): 4–20.
[32] Mussell, <em>In Our Last</em>, 355.
[33] Issues, in order of mention: <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, March 18, 1916, June 29, 1907, January 28, 1905, March 14, 1908.
[34] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, January 28, 1905.
[35] Kathy Ferguson, ‘Anarchist Printers and Presses: Material Circuits of Politics,’ <em>Political Theory</em> 41 (2014): 391–414.
[36] Kathy Ferguson, <em>Assemblages of Anarchists</em>, 178–9.
[37] All Photos Courtesy of the Library of Congress, <em>Chronicling America</em>: Historic American Newspapers Site, [[https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2012271201/][https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2012271201/]].
[38] While this format occurred hundreds of times throughout the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s run, for one example, see the July 8, 1911 issue. At times, this section was instead labeled with a plain text headline reading ‘Subversive Notes,’ or, especially in earlier issues, not labeled at all.
[39] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> (Lynn, MA), June 5, 1915.
[40] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, April 25, 1914, May 23, 1914.
[41] The war is discussed often throughout the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>; for one example, see the May 19, 1917 issue, which begins with an analysis of the US entering the war.
[42] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, November 17, 1917.
[43] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, June 5, 1915.
[44] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, February 24, 1906.
[45] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, March 16, 1918.
[46] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, June 29, 1907.
[47] Sam Dolgoff, <em>Bakunin on Anarchy</em>, 22.
[48] C<em>ronaca Sovversiva</em>, June 30, 1916.
[49] C<em>ronaca Sovversiva</em>, June 29, 1907.
[50] This was weeks after Merlino’s disavowal of anarchism, but weeks before Galleani’s response to Merlino, <em>The End of Anarchism?</em>, discussed below.
[51] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, July 27, 1907 [Note: Despite the wording of the advertisement for this issue quoted above, the issue came out on July 27, not on the exact seventh anniversary of Umberto I’s July 29 assassination.]
[52] This may be the psuedonym of Giosuè Imparato if it is the same as the Souvarine that appeared in Paterson, NJ’s anarchist periodical, <em>L’era Nuova</em>. Souvarine was the name of an anarchist character in Émile Zola’s novel <em>Germinal</em>, so it’s also possible that someone else chose the same pseudonym. Andrea Panaccione, <em>May Day Celebration</em>, 82.
[53] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, October 23, 1909.
[54] <em>Il Proletario</em>, January 10, 1914.
[55] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, January 24, 1914.
[56] <em>C</em>ronaca Sovversiva, January 27, 1917.
[57] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, December 19, 1908.
[58] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva,</em> March 23, 1912.
[59] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, September 15, 1915.
[60] Richard M. Ohmann, <em>Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century</em> (New York: Verso, 1996), 83.
[61] These examples are all from the October 18, 1914 issue of <em>Il Proletario</em>.
[62] <em>The Blast</em>, February 5 1916.
[63] Ohmann, <em>Selling Culture</em>, 109.
[64] Ohmann, <em>Selling Culture</em>, 109.
[65] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, February 14, 1914.
[66] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, March 23, 1912.
[67] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, October 23, 1909
[68] See for example, the April 28 through May 12, 1906 issues of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, which featured a large ad for <em>L’Almanacco Sovversivo</em>, with each week featuring a different example page from the almanac itself in the center of the <em>Cronaca</em>’s third page.
[69] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, January 29, 1916.
[70] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, July 19, 1908.
[71] Ann Ardis discussing Anne E. Carroll’s work on <em>Crisis</em> in Ardis, <em>Staging the Public Sphere</em>, 36. See also Carroll, Anne Elizabeth, <em>Word, Image, and the New Negro: Representation and Identity in the Harlem Renaissance</em> (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).
[72] For further discussion of the interplay between the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> and pamphlets published by the groups behind it, see Andrew D. Hoyt, ‘Hidden Histories and Material Culture: The Provenance of an Anarchist Pamphlet,’ <em>Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict</em> 1 (2014).
[73] See for example, the July 25, 1903 issue of the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>. Note that, while a ‘biblioteca’ and a ‘libreria’ would commonly be translated as a ‘library’ and a ‘bookstore’ respectively, in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s case both involved buying, not borrowing, the writings. The Libreria Sociologica di Paterson, NJ and the Biblioteca del Circolo di Studi Sociali were separate projects which existed together on the page, with the former, of course, based in Paterson, New Jersey, and the latter in Barre, Vermont. The Libreria Sociologica di Paterson, NJ offered books, while the Biblioteca del Circolo di Studi Sociali primarily offered booklets. Later, the Biblioteca ‘<em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’ offered both.
[74] Paul Avrich says in his review of <em>The End of Anarchism?</em> that the work was completed in 1925, when additional parts of it were published in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s spiritual successor, <em>L’Adunata dei Refrattari</em>, then published in booklet form. Avrich does not mention a booklet version of <em>The End of Anarchism?</em> being distributed in the <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>’s time, so, without a copy of both editions, it is uncertain if the version sold through the <em>Cronaca</em> was complete, intended as a work-in-progress, or completed later as Avrich suggests.
[75] Paul Avrich, Review of Luigi Galleani’s ‘The End of Anarchism?’, [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/paul-avrich-review-of-luigi-galleani-s-the-end-of-anarchism][https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/paul-avrich-review-of-luigi-galleani-s-the-end-of-anarchism]].
[76] Mark W. Turner, ‘Companions, Supplements, and the Proliferation of Print in the 1830s,’ <em>Victorian Periodicals Review</em> 43, no. 2 (9 July 2010): 119–32.
[77] Raffaele Schiavina, ‘Autobiographical Notes by Raffaele Schiavina aka Max Sartin,’ Kate Sharpley Library, [[https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/ngf2s6][https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/ngf2s6]].
[78] Schiavina, <em>Autobiographical Notes</em>.
[79] James Mussell, Repetition: Or, ‘In Our Last,’ 351.
[80] Paul Heller, ‘Luigi Galleani and the Anarchists of Barre,’ <em>Times Argus</em>, accessed October 6, 2017, [[http://web.archive.org/web/20150829230705/http://www.timesargus.com/article/20100430/THISJUSTIN/100429957][http://web.archive.org/web/20150829230705/http://www.timesargus.com/article/20100430/THISJUSTIN/100429957]].
[81] Andrew D. Hoyt, ‘Active Centers, Creative Elements, and Bridging Nodes: Applying the Vocabulary of Network Theory to Radical History,’ <em>Journal for the Study of Radicalism</em> 9 (2015): 32–58.
[82] Hoyt, <em>Active Centers, Creative Elements</em>, 32–58.
[83] Schiavina, <em>Autobiographical Notes</em>.
[84] <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, November 20, 1915.
[85] It is, of course, entirely possible that Schiavina’s role in <em>L’Adunata dei Refrattari</em> has been similarly overstated.
[86] Mussell, <em>In Our Last</em>, 351.
[87] Allan Antliff, ‘Introduction: Anarchism’s Modernisms,’ <em>The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies</em> 4 (2013): iii.
[88] Patricia Leighten. ‘The World Turned Upside Down: Modernism and Anarchist Strategies of Inversion in L’Assiette Au Beurre.’ <em>The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies</em> 4, no. 2 (2014): 133–70.
[89] Nina Gurianova, ‘Revolution Is Creativity: Some Aspects of Moscow Anarchist Periodicals in the Context of Avant-Garde Aesthetics (1917–1918),’ <em>The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies</em> 4, no. 2 (2014): 269.
[90] Ardis, <em>Staging the Public Sphere</em>, 35.
[91] Ardis, <em>Staging the Public Sphere</em>, 35.
*** References
<biblio>
Antliff, Allan. (2013). ‘Introduction: Anarchism’s Modernisms.’. <em>The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies</em> 4 (no. 2): iii.
Ardis, Ann. (2008). ‘Staging the Public Sphere: Magazine Dialogism and the Prosthetics of Authorship at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.’. <em>Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880–1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms</em>. Ann, Ardis, Patrick, Collier Collier (eds.), London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 30.
Avrich, Paul. ‘Review of Luigi Galleani’s “The End of Anarchism?”.’. Accessed October 7, 2017 [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/paul-avrich-review-of-luigi-galleani-s-the-end-of-anarchism][https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/paul-avrich-review-of-luigi-galleani-s-the-end-of-anarchism]].
Bencivenni, Marcella. (2011). <em>Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890–1940</em>. New York: NYU Press.
Dolgoff, Sam. (2013). <em>Bakunin on Anarchy</em>. Abingdon: Routledge.
Durante, Francesco; Viscusi, Robert; Periconi, James J.. (2014). <em>Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880–1943</em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ferguson, Kathy E.. (2014). ‘Anarchist Printers and Presses: Material Circuits of Politics.’. <em>Political Theory</em> August 2014 42 (no. 4): 391. DOI: [[https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0090591714531420][https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0090591714531420]]
Ferguson, Kathy E.. (2014). ‘Assemblages of Anarchists: Political Aesthetics in Mother Earth.’. <em>The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies</em> February 21 2014 4 (no. 2): 171.
Gage, Beverly. (2010). <em>The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror</em>. Reprint edition New York: Oxford University Press.
Gurianova, Nina. (2014). ‘Revolution Is Creativity: Some Aspects of Moscow Anarchist Periodicals in the Context of Avant-Garde Aesthetics (1917–1918).’. <em>The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies</em> 4 (no. 2) : 245.
Hammill, Faye; Hjartarson, Paul; McGregor, Hannah. (2015). ‘Magazines and/as Media: The Aesthetics and Politics of Serial Form – Introduction.’. <em>ESC: English Studies in Canada</em> March 1 2015 41 (no. 1): 1. DOI: [[https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/esc.2015.0006][https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/esc.2015.0006]]
Heller, Paul. (2013). ‘Luigi Galleani and the Anarchists of Barre.’. <em>Times Argus</em>, November 23 2013 [[http://web.archive.org/web/20131123195856/http://www.timesargus.com:80/article/20100430/THISJUSTIN/100429957][http://web.archive.org/web/20131123195856/http://www.timesargus.com:80/article/20100430/THISJUSTIN/100429957]].
Heller, Paul. (2014). <em>More Granite City Tales: Writings on the History of Barre, Vermont</em>. Barre: Copy World.
Hoyt, Andrew D.. (2015). ‘Active Centers, Creative Elements, and Bridging Nodes: Applying the Vocabulary of Network Theory to Radical History.’. <em>Journal for the Study of Radicalism</em> 9 (no. 1): 37. DOI: [[https://dx.doi.org/10.14321/jstudradi.9.1.0037][https://dx.doi.org/10.14321/jstudradi.9.1.0037]]
Hoyt, Andrew D.. (2014). ‘Hidden Histories and Material Culture: The Provenance of an Anarchist Pamphlet.’. <em>Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict</em> 1.
Hoyt, Andrew D.. ‘Italian Migration Beyond Atlantic Gate-Way Cities: Mapping Italian Anarchist Miners across the Small Towns of North America.’. <em>Paper presented at the Seventh Annual Conference of the Midwest World History Association</em>, Saint Paul, MN, USA September 23–24th 2016.
Leighten, Patricia. (2014). ‘The World Turned Upside Down: Modernism and Anarchist Strategies of Inversion in L’Assiette Au Beurre.’. <em>The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies</em> 4 (no. 2) : 133.
Ohmann, Richard M.. (1996). <em>Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century</em>. New York: Verso.
Panaccione, Andrea. (1988). <em>May Day Celebration</em>. Padua: Marsilio.
Schiavina, Raffaele. ‘Autobiographical Notes by Raffaele Schiavina Aka Max Sartin.’. Accessed October 7, 2017 [[https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/9ghxkg][https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/9ghxkg]].
Schipper, Martin P.; Lester, Robert; Kraut, Alan M.; and Porter, Todd Michael (eds.). (1992). <em>Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Series A, Subject Correspondence Files, Microfilm Part 6: The Suppression of Radicals</em>. Research Collections in American Immigration. Bethesda: University Publications of America.
Turner, Mark W.. (2010). ‘Companions, Supplements, and the Proliferation of Print in the 1830s.’. <em>Victorian Periodicals Review</em> July 9 2010 43 (no. 2): 119. DOI: [[https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/vpr.0.0116][https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/vpr.0.0116]]
Zimmer, Kenyon. ‘American Anarchist Periodical Circulation Data, 1880–1940.’. Accessed October 7, 2017 [[https://www.academia.edu/7715169/American_Anarchist_Periodical_Circulation_Data_1880-1940][https://www.academia.edu/7715169/American_Anarchist_Periodical_Circulation_Data_1880-1940]].
</biblio>
|
#title Fighting for the Future
#subtitle The Necessity and Possibility of National Political Organization for Our Time
#author Adam Weaver and SN Nappalos
#LISTtitle Fighting for the Future
#SORTauthors Adam Weaver, Scott Nappalos
#SORTtopics Black Rose Anarchist Federation, Especifismo, organization
#date April 2013
#source Retrieved on 2020-04-12 from [[https://blackrosefed.org/necessity-of-national-political-organization/][blackrosefed.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-04-12T09:59:54
<em>This essay is an argument for moving towards national organization in the United States and was published in April 2013 during the opening of the process that led to the founding of what became Black Rose/Rosa Negra. It aims to explore the limitations of political organization today, recent positive experiences, and possible ways to build in the present moment.</em>
----
In the midst of the worst economic crisis in decades, the left stands at a crossroads. Despite widespread anxiety, restructuring, stirrings, and disruptions, the left has been unable to respond or develop bases for movements and revolutionary organization in any meaningful sense. In many ways the eruption of the Occupy movement onto the center stage with all of its weaknesses in politics, structure, and dynamics, was a reflection of this. The events of Wisconsin, Occupy, the Oakland General Strike, and the May 1<sup>st</sup> mobilizations have brought to the fore the nature and potential of combative movements from below as well as the limits of present politics. At the very least since the financial crisis of 2008, social activists are looking for clearer paths towards anti-capitalist alternatives. Many are realizing that something more is needed beyond endless activism, protest politics, and vertical-style union and NGO mobilization. The base level of political education on the left, provided largely by non-profits and liberal university campuses, suddenly seem to have even fewer answers than before. This has left many turning towards political study to deepen their analysis as well as taking up questions around the need for political organization.
We need to ask ourselves, in this time of crisis how can movements be built in an atmosphere of ruling class assaults, disorganization of the popular classes, and sporadic resistance efforts? What are the roles of revolutionaries within movements? What are the strategies to keep ourselves going for the long haul work that radical social change requires? What are the lessons of the past decades in social movements and revolutionary organizations? How do we politically develop the existing revolutionaries and help shape new ones to build a larger milieu of revolutionary organizers, thinkers, and supporters based in popular struggle? How would this milieu and potential political organization relate to broader social movements, other forces on the left, those we share perspectives with, and with those we do not?
*** <strong>The Necessity of Political Organization</strong>
Our starting point for this is recognizing, as others have pointed out, that many, if not most, of those active on the left do not believe in political organization. [1] There are many reasons for this, but the reason voiced most frequently is that they do not see a need for organization. Beyond broad social movements, they view many of today’s groups as being disorganized and irrelevant. Others are put off by the poor internal culture of today’s organizations with their tendencies for personalizing conflicts, being unable to have constructive debates, and the culture of battles in meetings that seems to isolate rather than integrate members into broader society. The closest experience with left political organization is commonly that of the lone leftist selling strange newspapers at rallies. Frequently political organization as a whole is solely viewed through the prism of negative experiences with members of the worst of Leninist organizations with sectarian approaches to debate and relating to other political forces within organizing spaces, attempts to dominate and control leadership of struggles, and a ‘newspaper as transmission belt of political line’ approach to politics. Those on the left broadly adhering to anarchism fare only somewhat better, in our experience mostly falling into the previous three objections or alternatively the turn away from political organization is based on a reaction to the weakness, political immaturity, and lack of experience observed in existing political organization efforts. These experiences though valid, involve a failure to think beyond the present; a failure to consider the possibilities of the future.
We believe that political organization, rather than being a distraction or worse destructive, addresses problems in struggle today. The need for the political organization of militants roughly falls into two categories: immediate and practical needs, and broader political vision and strategy. First we must start with why political organization can address the practical and immediate needs of movement. As resources become more scarce, people are displaced, unemployment takes it’s toll, and communities are dispossessed of their long standing resources, the need for a united and coordinated means of organizing and fighting grows more crucial. Not having political organization means relying on the winds of chance when organizing efforts emerge, to bring together militants under various banners and projects, cobbling together resources for each fight, and then scattering to the wind again once the fight subsides, often leaving behind little analysis of strengths and weakness of the fight that occurred. Further, the relationships and politicization that arise out of fights are often not furthered and maintained in order to continue to build future fights.
This isn’t to say that we can’t try to outlive struggles without capital ‘P’ political organization. We can and should. But a political organization, in one form or another, is a tool, which can help us do that work more systematically. While not a panacea or even the deciding factor necessarily, it does expand what we can do over time. Political organization provides a space for reflection, and deepening of the lessons of struggle amongst like-minded people that wouldn’t otherwise meet together. It can be a place to weave disparate experiences into a coherent whole. Work is divided by issue, location, and the necessary political mix that movement work needs. While it’s possible to try and institutionalize sharing experiences and strategizing across projects, sustaining this systematically is difficult. Similarly, different and higher level conversations are possible amongst militants who share fundamental aims and analysis. Since struggles ebb and flow, gain or lose their libertarian character, political organization can give us extra tools to understand and work in changing conditions. Extrapolating from this, a national political organization creates the widest level of discussion across a broad range of experiences of like-minded militants. With smaller regional or localized groups conversations are often limited to a smaller pool of individuals, with more limited resources, and less experience.
A useful concept is that of the ‘political home’, in which political organization acts as a ‘home base’ creating “a place for discussion and creation of a vision to guide the organizing efforts of revolutionaries, and a place for reflection, development, and growth” of similarly minded militants. [2] The idea of the political home is useful to newly developing anarchists, in providing them with a community they can identify with, and grow their political development with. While for experienced militants, the political home is useful in creating a community of ‘co-thinkers’ to reflect, engage, carry them through the long haul of highs and lows of struggles, and to develop theory with.
Beyond practical issues of coordination and a home base of militants there are more systemic level issues such as: the often uneven levels of political development within movements, incipient small group mentalities, excessive inward focuses that often relies on the social glue of key militants and thereby stymies growth beyond an immediate circle, and the lack of a healthy culture of internal criticism. Unaddressed, these issues together hinder the emergence of a vision around what we call ‘the anarchist project’, which we will speak more on in the discussion around vision and strategy.
The issue of political development and popular education is crucial. Whether we grow as a movement, build and retain individuals, reflect the makeup of the working class, have a movement where people can articulate an anarchist perspective, defines whether or not anarchism is a growing and meaningful force that is rooted in struggle or whether it is a marginal philosophy. Individuals, or sometimes layers of individuals working together, often begin their process of politicization and involvement in social struggles when they begin to question the ‘common sense’ assumptions of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and other power relations. These questions then can give way to deeper systemic questions of how do we understand the system at a deeper level, what we can create beyond the current social order, where does our work fit into the larger picture of reaching a new society, and what language and tools are helpful in describing and thinking about all of the above? Individuals are generally left on their own devices to grapple with these burning questions and reflect on their experience.
Informal mentorship and individual study are currently the norm for political development on the left. Isolation is the default practice. Despite all the emphases on acting collectively on the left, individuals are largely left on their own, to work through the deepest issues. We must ask though: Who receives the mentorship from whom, if at all? Who is able to successfully navigate individual study and the political minefield of facebook posts, blogs, political forums, and websites that are so important in shaping the narrative of radical politics? The answer is that this process is often gendered towards men, and reflects existing class, race, education, and geographical hierarchies. The political isolation of thinking alone reproduces existing negative social relationships. All of these contribute to the entrenchment of activist dynamics, lopsided development, and holds back the building of a rooted, diverse, and more representative left.
Working in isolation, or within frameworks that do not share goals of popular education, collective empowerment, and libertarian values, radicals find themselves struggling both for their own education and to understand how to intervene in their work and lives. Dolores from Miami Autonomy & Solidarity in her piece “Why Women Should Join Political Organizations” puts it this way:
<quote>
“I know so many women that have so much to contribute – their ideas, organizing experience, parenting experience, etc.– and have talked with them about many of their frustrations with nonprofits or with individual activism, and yet they continue to work alone. If we continue like this and don’t come together around a common ideological framework then there will never be an end to patriarchy or oppression.” [3]
</quote>
Here Dolores identifies specifically the isolation related to grappling with work. It isn’t that there aren’t lessons, critiques, or ideas being developed by militants. It is that they have not found a framework for uniting with others to work through political questions and proposals (either those developed by the broader left or by building them themselves). This is where political development and broader popular education efforts can intervene. While the efforts of localized or informal groups can do some of this work, it is far more effectively done drawing from the collective experience, skills, and resources at the national level. Organization is a method for building a common set of references and conversations among wider layers about theory, practices, and methods of organization.
This leads us to the broader issues of vision, strategy and what we call the “anarchist project.” The anarchist project is what we use to describe the cumulative efforts- whether at the level of action, organization, culture or consciousness- that give birth to revolutionary social change and bring the vision of anarchism into reality. No doubt this is a huge endeavor that requires the efforts of many; millions in fact. But this compels us to ask the question: What advances the anarchist project and what hinders it? How do we begin the discussion of a new society with the tens of thousands active in changing the world and then perhaps the millions who are not (yet) active? How do we make the ideas and values of anarchism not just a part of those conversations but a tangible proposal? Certainly political organization is no complete answer for these questions, but it gives us an important tool to put forward our ideas and vision in an amplified way. This is true whether through propaganda and literature, social media content, popular education and political development activities, and importantly through the coordinated organizing work we do and the discussions that are inevitably raised in that work. Political organization can give us additional tools to begin addressing these issues.
One example of this that we can look to is within the anarchists of the Frente de Estudiantes Libertarios (Libertarian Student Front or FEL) involved in the Chilean students movement. Over the last several years in response towards moves to further privatize the education system, students in both higher education and at the high school level have led massive street demonstrations and campus takeovers. Felipe Ramirez, the elected 2011 General Secratary of the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile (University of Chile Student Federation or FECH) and member of the FeL, elaborates in an interview how the organization became a meaningful force within the student movement:
<quote>
“The most crucial thing for the growth of FeL and for the strengthening of the national organization was its political maturity. At first, the FeL was an organization that had very few policy plans. … Faced with these situations [attacks on education and mass mobilizations in opposition], the FeL begins to slowly start building the framework for its political line, its proposal to education and the funding issue and all that somehow congeals in 2011. The mobilization catches us with an organization that is starting to grow along the heightening of the student movement and we see high school students go onto college, and these students come with a history of struggle and mobilization already, and they’re interested in the left and that also allows us to accumulate part of the whole process. The year 2011 forces the organization to throw the muddle, to understand that anarchism can not remain a sum of values, a sum of words of good upbringing or books that were written 140 years ago, nor moral principles, nor ethical ones. Anarchism has to be a policy, and without it being a political policy, it dies. And faced with this dilemma, luckily the organization opted for political discussion, for the creation of concrete proposals to give to the movement, understanding that we are not fighting for the revolution but for the specific conditions that accumulate towards a project of the working class, and that has allowed us to grow and consolidate as a national structure and also carve out a place among the leftist organizations.” [4]
</quote>
Here Ramirez, an anarchist militant of the FeL, is answering how the FeL shifted from a largely ideological political group that numbered in the dozens to a political force in the hundreds at the center of society-wide ruptures. Key to this was not simply their demands nor the time period, but also the framework for developing their struggles and deepening them through ongoing practice and assessment.
*** <strong>Objections to Political Organizations</strong>
Common concerns and objections, raised by the most active and intelligent militants, within our organizations focus on our local strength and our relationship to social movements. If we are too weak locally to function in an effective capacity, how will we build a national organization? If our commitment is to struggle in and to build social movements, and our capacity is limited locally, won’t a national organization take away from those efforts? Perhaps we need such an organization, but with the state of the left and the poverty of our forces is it not a better use of our time to focus on building up the movements and small circles of affinity that will at some point down the road make political organization possible? Is it possible to build an organization that relates to movements and ‘everyday people’ and not just the usual suspects on the left? Moreover, political organizations don’t have much to show for their efforts, so wouldn’t our time be better spent just building up social movements?
To these objections, we would like to state the case that a national organization in our time, in this moment, will not deter from our movement, but in fact is necessary to overcome many of our present limitations and problems. We believe a national organization with a meaningful and thoughtfully built unity and praxis can play a key role in making our desire to move beyond retreat and reform possible. This may not happen right away, and it may be a protracted process of striving towards a goal with steps forward and steps backwards, but we believe this is necessary to become a meaningful political force.
For example, there is a concern that time would be better spent simply building up movement work. This is largely right. There is scarcely enough energy invested in struggle, and often the left squanders its time on self-absorbed activities more than struggles that impact people outside of left subcultures. Yet there’s a problem here too. Mass struggles do not exist nor arise in vacuums. When they do emerge, other political forces intervene. Many times, we are the same ones initiating projects as well as working within them. This is done typically through linking with others and trying to forge a united vision of doing that work. Such projects rely on informal and tacit political links; informality that often reproduces all the problematic behavior and isolation of the left but without clear mechanisms to address it. Moreover, if we allow our work to be defined by personality types and charismatic individuals who tend to begin or seize these projects, our trajectory will tend to reflect those individuals and their passing interests. Organization can allow us to experiment, learn, work together and actually work towards the collectivity so many of us as radicals speak of.
Very often, in our movement work, we work together with others, who do not share our values. Inevitably some of these forces relate to struggles in unprincipled, authoritarian, and co-optive ways. We have seen from experience they do so in organized systematic manners. The organization of anarchists as a political force within struggles is thus a strategic question. In trying to build the world we want to see, we will encounter organized forces that seek to either maintain the status quo or work towards contradictory aims from our own. All the would be vanguards and those pushing to channel movements into institutional and electoral directions will always exist, but can an organized voice of those pushing for horizontal approaches, militancy in tactics, and radicalism in practice be present? An organized anarchist presence is necessary to move us forward and present a libertarian alternative.
Beyond the problems raised above concerning the life cycle of struggles, there are more factors that make going-it-alone a bad option. It is difficult to work inside movements and struggles in a fragmented and often isolated manner. The political environment both within those struggles and all the forces bearing down on us make sustaining struggle in the long run unlikely without some form of unity. History is filled with libertarians failing to organize a coherent opposition until whole periods were torn out from under them. Part of this is taking a longer-term view. We need to begin anticipating problems of our work years in advance so as not to have them crushed by foreseeable political opposition. [5] Political organization provides a field for advancing libertarian alternatives in an otherwise hostile environment, while lack of political organization removes tools that might soften the forces scattering us and causing us only to be reactive to the circumstances of the moment.
Another objection raised is that the work we want to see isn’t happening within the organized anarchist movement, but outside of it. The organizations we happen to have aren’t up to snuff. On the face of this critique it is partially true. It should be noted that groups often don’t talk about what they do, since many long-term campaigns (particularly with workplace organizing) are not easily presented in public without endangering the participants or doing so in a way that distorts the relationship between the organization and the movement. Still, it is correct that the present movement on the whole isn’t doing the work we all want to see. Too often there is comfort amongst the radical left, some of the organized anarchist movement included, to exist as an offshoot of the broader activist subculture or as a historical and political hobby, disconnected from the daily experiences and struggles of the working class. But there is a lot of innovative work being done in the US right now: autonomous workplace organizing independent from the unions and antagonistic to the contractual-NLRB organizing methods, neighborhood organizing seizing homes and defending against foreclosures, collective direct actions against employers, landlords, and state assaults, direct actions against deportation, and countless other examples. Much of this work is carried out by other groups, with different libertarian ideologies (rarely by party oriented Leninists, though broad social changes could make them adopt different methods) and by unorganized radicals in these movements. This isn’t to say there aren’t groups doing great work right now, but those working outside dwarf the organized anarchist milieu.
Where we can work together, we should in general. There should be systematic attempts to unify with people based on shared strategy and objectives wherever this can be done. One tool that allows for this is building networks of tendency within our organizing that has strategy, tactics and broad values as the basis. This is different from political organizations because of the purpose (to build libertarian practice up within struggles) and the degree or level of unity. Members of MAS have written about this in a series of documents that discuss the concept of intermediate level analysis and as well the Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro (Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro or FARJ) in Brazil has described this as the concentric circle model. [6] Not enough is being done to build those networks of practice, and in many ways that is the primary task for libertarian revolutionaries, especially in a time when militant reformism, recuperation, and forms of neo-fascism are being put back on the table by a system chewing on a crisis. [7]
Still, we should look further. The divisions that exist in the broad libertarian milieu are drawn for the wrong reasons. We can’t believe today that people doing the solid work we aspire to are politically divided based on the validity of today’s divisions. In too many ways we have inherited the politics of other time periods that consistently shows itself to be inadequate in our daily practice. Given our historic task of the anarchist project, and creating a politics for our time, we cannot ignore a key responsibility we have– which is to become a pole, that attracts and unifies the forces that seek libertarian revolution, and pushes struggle further, going beyond the walls and limits thrown up by reformism, authoritarians, and the weight of the system on us all. With whatever forces we have, we need to strengthen the work we do, and find a unification that brings together those working outside of organizations and those outside of our milieu behind projects that redefine politics in our time. In other words, we should look skeptically at the existing perceived political divisions, not be held to the limitations of existing projects, and we should refuse the idea that it is not possible to bring together the best of what exists today to transform the current political alignments into a better and higher quality struggle tomorrow.
It should be noted that many of these objections raised about political organization reflect fears, latent or overt, rather than positive proposals. People often are hesitant to build because of their fear that things will go sour or they will look bad. It is not that these fears and reluctances are not based on anything concrete- there are no well-paved roads in the journey of revolutionary work- rather it is that these manifest and hold back our work in a number of ways. Resistance to Occupy, “turfism”, and an unwillingness to engage and build with new militants, are examples of fears getting the better of otherwise solid and experienced militants. Yet we can’t shape our politics around our own fears, reluctance, and sideline criticisms. This is only a recipe for stasis and in the long term these tendencies act as counterweights to the anarchist project. The assumption that doing nothing is better than the potential pitfalls should be questioned. Similarly, experience in failure can make militants scared to take risks, so scared they end up missing opportunities. From a negative politics that is based around fear, waiting and seeing, and trying to tackle collective problems in isolation, we should instead be constructing a positive vision, supported by a thoughtful program of how to begin from where we stand today.
*** <strong>The Pitfalls of Localized Groups and Collectives</strong>
Now we move to discussing the dynamics of where most of the organized and class struggle oriented Anarchist movement, along with those with sympathetic and similar politics, are at currently. Small city-based organizations that function as collectives based out of one city or regional organizations that grow out of larger social, mass organizational, and political networks should be seen as organic and practical starting points. Navigating the dynamics of doing good work on a local level is easier and keeps the scope small enough so that it’s easy for people to see the need and feel that it is possible. From what experience shows though, there are a number of recurring problems that these types of groups pose: they are weaker and more likely to fail, they tend to reproduce local and small-group dynamics, and they fail to develop the skills necessary to intervene on a wider basis.
Local collectives tend to face enormous pressures. Relocation of people creates real problems, especially in highly mobile societies like the US. Having a tiny core as the center of organizations make normal life events that change people’s activity level (illness, family, career changes) into political problems. Replicating infrastructure and administration at a local level places a larger burden on groups, which might otherwise use the same energy in order to organize and do public work that sustains people. Small in-group dynamics, isolation, and social pressures all chip away at these formations, and they face these issues generally alone (often with the same failures repeated every few years by new individuals). This is especially true outside the activist urban centers where there is not enough left presence to tread water by swimming within the existing activist scene. In large sections of the country where little activist infrastructure exists, such groups often have to create everything from nothing, while facing the countercurrent of life under capitalism. Most often these groups fail within a few years.
Though this is true of local or regional groups, the same dynamics exist for national groups that fail to move beyond functioning at a similar level. It’s a natural response to try and perfect one’s work in a single local before tackling further issues. Typically this does not work. In part the thinking is that with will and good organization, you can overcome common problems. While part of the problem is conscious organization, these are lessons that are difficult to confront again in isolation. While organizations tends to correspond to the broader forces of struggle in the time they exist, by limiting attempts to collectivize the problems of our time we end up putting too much time into recycling administrative problems and lose out on collaborative political approaches that we might move forward and grow from; or at least better identify our limitations and weaknesses.
It is sometimes said that national organization would take away from local organizing which often stands on shaky ground. This is an understandable concern given the limited resources, time, and problems we face. Historically though, we have seen the opposite: left to our own devices there can be a steep decline of local work. In the past few decades, a number of local and regional anarchist and not explicitly anarchist organizations have been formed and dissolved in quick succession. While obvious factors might be the shaky political foundations that many groups began with coupled with lack of experience, this also follows a natural trajectory of strain from being isolated locally. Indeed most radical mass organizing projects have similar fates and trajectories. By only drawing locally, we put ourselves into a position where, as we stated previously, members moving, changing careers, having family obligations, etc., strain already limited organizations. A national organization is able to offset this both by absorbing the loss of militants to other areas, as well as building more local contacts through a visible public presence.
Further, having a national organization creates a pole to attract the sharpest militants from around the country that may otherwise be isolated or, as does happens, drift in other directions politically. Allowing developing members to benefit from, dialogue, and work with a larger pool, or in other words a wider milieu, of experienced militants and talent. Numerous times we’ve read of repeated lessons learned by disparate groups. Rather than seeing these pitfalls continue, we are heartened to believe there are perhaps, some trends towards the repetition of advances, that forces are moving closer to one another despite working in parallel.
There is no magic formula to overcoming the real issues both national and local efforts face. National level organizations present their own sets of problems, but we believe that they are better problems to struggle around, than the lower level problems that localized groups face on their own: attrition, stagnation, lack of resources, lower levels of discussion and less political coherence. A more fruitful way to look at these issues is that we ultimately can’t avoid investing in both national and local efforts. The real question though is how based on our needs today?
*** <strong>Organization Today, Organizations of the Immediate Past</strong>
In this segment we will first offer commentary on the current class struggle Anarchist milieu that the authors have been participants in and three other influential groups related to the milieu. The segment within anarchism, in the US, that has dedicated meaningful effort to building political organization over the last decade has been the class struggle anarchist milieu. The groups emerging out of this milieu, while certainly taking steps both forwards and backwards, have in the last decade made strides towards being rooted in and based around organizing activity. Still though, they have been largely localized or regionalized, and fallen victim to many of the issues discussed in the section on small organizations and collectives.
There are some pressures that seem most prevalent within the milieu. First, it’s difficult to solve problems of a changing world, especially in light of the crisis and new struggles in the working class, in isolation. Organizations are running in parallel trying to solve big problems with limited resources. Second, small group dynamics dominate and hold back moving forward. When organizations are centered on personal relationships, often as cliques of sorts, it’s easy for personal tensions to overwhelm the capacity of these groups. Third, there’s excessive administrative effort relative to the amount of people involved, simply by reduplicating things like web maintenance, correspondence, publications, etc. Lastly, if larger structures are not developed for political action, the skills and methods necessary for them will not develop either. Creating a national delegated structure of locals, navigating different ideas, strategies, and methods to implement work is necessary to build capacity to respond and construct alternatives to national issues. Meaningful action needs to be taken towards addressing these issues and not merely delaying them.
There are two more pressing issues that need to be taken up. Existing organization across the revolutionary left has been unable to produce solid popular and political organization, and coordinated strategic work has been limited in implementation. While in general for the anarchist milieu, the past ten years have seen moves towards social struggles as the primary front for radical activity, existing organizations have not been able to integrate and implement a coherent revolutionary approach to this work. Work centers around individuals, projects, and often driven by the winds of change without a coherent anarchist alternative being evident in practice. There is a combination of tailing business unions and NGOs, intellectual tinkering outside of struggle, highly uneven political development, and sloppy issue chasing. This again is a reflection of our time, however it is not inevitable. It is well within our reach to begin thinking and working on how the anarchist movement could have an organized and coherent expression of a movement that confronts capital, the state, and oppression through the struggles of the popular classes. We cannot change the objective situation, invent struggles, or proceed as if we have the militants we need, but we can take strive towards solutions over the long haul.
Similarly, organizations have fought to build conscious political education and to a lesser extent popular education through their mass work. On both fronts, an independent and revolutionary approach to this work has fallen short. If the lessons of the 90s and 2000s were about the central role of mass struggle rather than activism, perhaps the need for a revolutionary alternative and educational work is becoming the lesson of this moment. It is the ability to facilitate creative militants, who can think and act in real time, that is the lifeblood of movements. Perhaps it is an organization’s main task to improve the ability to work through these issues, put heads together, and strategize the best path forward.
There are three helpful reference points that, we believe, are useful to draw upon from political organizations of the immediate past within the libertarian left. The first would be the role of the publication Love and Rage by the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (1993–1998), which emerged out of the protest politics of the 1990s. With a final press run reported at 9,000 their well-produced monthly publication featured a range of debate and was read and respected outside the anarchist milieu. While Love and Rage as an organization had a number of tendencies and practices that coexisted together, their publication stands out as an example of the creation of a visible pole of anarchism within the larger left. With the maturing of the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (2000-Present, now Common Struggle – Libertarian Communist Federation/ Lucha Común – Federación Comunista Libertaria), originally as a bi-national organization in the US and Canada, we saw a concrete reorientation away from the protest politics and summit hopping of the 1990s and early 2000s towards engagement with and commitment to building mass oriented social movements as opposed to activist mobilization. Finally, the organization Bring the Ruckus (2002–2012), in part founded by former members of Love and Rage that included anarchist and non-anarchist members, left a legacy (among many other ideas) of a collective strategy built around a common analysis. What this meant in practice was a set of criteria for their organizing work and regular evaluation of how their local level organizing met or fell short of their political goals. These three examples present starting points which we can build on to create new examples for the current political moment.
*** <strong>Towards a Vision of Political Organization for Today</strong>
The organization of today is not that of 1917, 1936, or even 2001. Our moment in history has its own needs, its own challenges, and potentials. Given the state of the left and of the working class, we can’t expect nor aim to create political organization modeled on previous upheavals. A political organization today is not the vehicle of social revolution. Struggle changes everything, including organization, and we can only try to anticipate and prepare for transformations that we cannot fully understand or control. Part of taking this into account is acknowledging that we cannot lay out the ideal picture of what a political organization should look and act like and expect all the good people to simply “get on board.” This simply won’t happen. Rather than an idealized endpoint, political organization should be seen as a process that must be built conscientiously through on the ground work, the creation of a pole of ideas, meaningful relationships, and political struggle over time.
In this article we’ve attempted to give brief comments on the current political terrain, state the case for a national political organization both on levels of practical needs and that of vision and strategy in relation to the anarchist project. We’ve also attempted to spell out our criticisms of the current state of the organized Anarchist movement that exists as local and regional based collectives. Now, drawing from our discussions above, we now hope to present our vision of political organization that speaks to the needs of here and now. Some of this may repeat previous point of other sections, but we feel the need to present the vision in full and more expanded terms here.
We need a different kind of political organization. Political organization today needs to speak to the needs of drawing out of isolation the current regional and city based groups and taking our efforts to a higher level with national organization. First and foremost is the need to create a common set of reference points, a healthy culture of discussion and debate and political development in all members so as to address the current uneven levels of development across our milieu. This should become an expectation for all incoming members as the political education and development of new militants will be the key site of growing, raising the quality of, and transforming our milieu. In sum these are the key areas for political work: developing militants and creating a healthy culture of debate, building a pole for deepening a libertarian praxis, expanding a coherent libertarian voice within struggle, and working in social struggles at the intermediate level.
The primary work of political organizing right now is developing committed militants who can act with creativity and initiative, rather than the military model of soldiers carrying out orders. The building blocks of this work begins with one on one contact and relationship building, and moves towards integrating militants into collective study and organizing efforts. Any national formation should be working to pool resources, systematize, and develop work aimed at maximizing the potential of building committed revolutionary militants rooted in struggle. Developing internal process and curricula is one part of this. Reading groups and workshops are traditional, however not enough thought has been spent looking at how people actually learn; through practice, reflection, and taking initiative in working through problems that confront them in their work. Beyond the development of the ability to do this work, larger questions confront us.
If we hope to break out of the dynamics of much of the present left where demographics and development are skewed around race, gender, class, formal education, and those from major coastal urban centers, then we need to be committed to, as members of the Furious Five Revolutionary Anarchist Collective called it, “building the new base of anarchism” which is cultivated from and draws from our base within organizing. [8] A developed practice of political education will be one aspect of building a new base and two other useful concepts in our political organization tool kit should be the concept of creating concentric circles and the political home.
Taken from the tradition of the Latin American especifista anarchists, the concept of concentric circles is a recognition of differences in the role and trajectory of struggle in the activity of militants. [9] A concentric circle model involves organized overlapping circles grouped by levels of commitment and activity with their own respective decision making. In MAS this has been reflected by what is called the MAS compas circle, [10] which involves organizing a social space for reflection on struggles, exploration of politics, and collaboration in building social struggle on a broad libertarian basis. Within MAS, there is a circle of integrating militants in the process of building common practice, understanding, and relationships with the organization. The process of integration is one of defining one’s role, but also one’s level of commitment and capacity. Members of the organization are people who have the capacity and initiative to act, understanding of the group’s political analysis and objectives, and are active in social struggles as a militant. Concentric circles gives a model where we can start at the present underdevelopment of left practice, political development and levels of commitment and over time develop and grow and deepen our relationships, ideas, and practice in tandem.
The political home is a concept drawn from Amanecer, who define it as part of making political organization “a place for discussion and creation of a vision to guide the organizing efforts of revolutionaries, and a place for reflection, development, and growth.” [11] In a time in which the left is largely alienated from practice, and often reflects the social ills of isolation and broader society, the political home attempts to build a nurturing environment for experimentation and creating solutions in our communities. At this time, fostering exploration is more important than winning over people to one or another line. We need militants capable of intervening and formulating their own creative approach to their situation. The political home is a place where this growth can occur.
Beyond the relationship of the organization to the militant, a national organization needs to work towards becoming a pole of attraction for libertarian ideas within society. As we said, today a rigid, narrow framework of a tight organization does not fit our capacity or challenges. To believe that the positions we’ve inherited are comprehensively correct is naive and dangerous. Largely our task is to build a politics for our time. Yet, to do so we still need to have an orientation as libertarian revolutionaries. It is not the case that, just putting everyone in the same room will yield anything beneficial. The paralysis that occurs when people declare unity, though an artificial unity without any way to agree on how to proceed, is an unfortunately frequent occurrence of a left that both seeks unity and yet has little experience creating real lived unity.
Against this, we propose that we should build specific projects that put our energy into concrete proposals. We live in a period where experimentation is crucial, and likewise a plurality of experiments is necessary. Organizations then should be organizing around trying out their own conception and ideas. The goal of such efforts should be to provide poles of attraction to their politics, and likewise should be looking at how their experiences play out. Rather than dissolving ourselves into an amorphous mass, the pole of attraction model argues for building our politics through struggle and praxis on the political and social movement terrain, while seeking to draw in energy and individual militants through those experiences.
Realizing these goals requires exerting energy and having the means to work through our thinking, express ourselves, and enter into dialogue with others. Traditional media models, those of the left included, see media as centered around the transmission of ideas. Yet media is as much about social relationships as what we express. The work of creating media draws us into political relationships with the struggles we’re interacting with and in the process of distributing our ideas. Looking at media as a political process of social relationships, organizations should be building a libertarian voice within social struggles.
There are a number of pieces to this. First popular education (understood as a political process of praxis between revolutionaries and people in struggle, yet centered on working through the immediate experiences of those struggles by their protagonists) needs to drive our efforts of media. On top of this we do need libertarian thought and work around developing our analysis of social conditions and struggles. Libertarian thought has been become prominent, perhaps even hegemonic in some aspects, over the past two decades within the US left and many parts of the global left, though it remains a scattered, amorphous, and often incoherent in its content. Recognizing this, there is a need to take up the role of articulating relevant libertarian ideas and building it into a coherent voice throughout society. One part of this may be publications, radio and video programs, and studies. In Latin America, the Colombian based Centro de Investigación Libertaria y Educación Popular (Center for Libertarian Investigation and Popular Education or CILEP) and in Spain the Instituto de Ciencias Económicas y de la Autogestión (Institute of Economics Sciences and Self-Management or ICEA) are possible examples of how broad sections of libertarians can build spaces of collective thinking and dialogue in a non-sectarian manner. In the US the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) is perhaps the closest step in that direction, though one that libertarians have unfortunately not yet taken up on a broad collective level. [12]
In terms of social struggles, we stand in a difficult place. There are limited elements of movements, but these experiences are largely too isolated, fragmented, and insufficient. For these reasons, today an intermediate approach to struggle is the primary method we believe militants should be utilizing. An intermediate approach involves working at the level of militants in struggle united around a practical orientation to their work (unlike the mass or political orientations who target everyone or those united by specific politics respectively). The intermediate approach seeks to build autonomous power through struggle, by those reflecting on their work, taking a libertarian methodology within, and over time creating a force capable of responding to the ups and downs that occur within struggles. Further, it is united by strategic objectives built through experiences and not merely imposed ideologically. Such an intermediate force could be able to push the potential of struggles further in situations where established power breaks down. Yet our experiences in workplaces, communities, and schools has suggested that this kind of work can also give us tools in our time that are not otherwise available. An intermediate approach gives us clear work when we cannot force mass organizations that aren’t in immediate reach, nor political organization where there are no militants.
*** <strong>Political Organization: We Build As We Walk</strong>
We began this piece with questions speaking to the current political period and stating our case for both the need for a national political organization and our criticisms of the localized and small group dynamic that exists for much of the class struggle Anarchist milieu. But in a broader sense these points could in many ways apply just the same to much of the non-party radical left as well, whether they explicitly identify with anarchism, broad anti-authoritarianism or not. In the preceding section, based largely on our own experiences as well as examples by similarly minded anarchist militants in Latin America, we outlined a sketch of what we feel are the most useful tools and practices which speak to the practical needs of political militants and the broader goals of what we call the the anarchist project.
Overall our main stresses are that if we wish to work towards and become the movement we profess to believe in, then we need to think in broader terms fighting not just for today but also for the future. We cannot limit ourselves to being the proverbial frog at the bottom of the well, convinced that the sky is only as wide as the opening of the well. [13] Neither can we wait till social explosions arrive on our doorstep to build the skills and infrastructure we need – it will already be too late. We hope that the criticism and points that we’ve outlined can be a starting point towards this. But importantly we want to be clear that by stating the case for national political organization it does not mean we believe that this is automatically possible or even something immediately desired. Political cohesiveness, development and praxis [14] are not end goals declared that we can find ready made formulas to create, but rather processes that are built qualitatively over time. Examples that we may be able to draw from are the Especifist current within Brazilian anarchism that has spent well over a decade linking together local and regional groups and attempting to develop a coordinated praxis under the network of the Forum of Anarchist Organizations, and most recently in consolidated into the Brazilian Anarchist Coordination. While class struggle Anarchists in North America have spent already more than five years building links and exchanges, this is not to say that ten years of work is the required prerequisite either. Likely a range of experimentation, with pitfalls and disappointments along the path, and perhaps even under various organizational banners, will provide the necessary trial and error. But the journey only begins with a firm understanding of our present limitations coupled with a vision of what we are attempting to create; after this there is only one foot in front of the other.
-----
The authors would like to acknowledge Shambhu Shunya for editorial contributions to this article.
[1] “The Crisis Within the Left: Theory, Program, Organization” by BJ for the Party Building Commission of Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad.
[2] “Mission Statement” by members of Amanecer: For a Popular Anarchism, a California based political organization that existed 2005–2012. The concept of the ‘political home’ is taken from the especifista tradition in Latin America and first put into use in the US by members of Amanecer at their founding conference in 2005. One of the authors was a founding member.
[3] “Why Women Should Join Political Organizations” by Dolores of Miami Autonomy and Solidarity.
[4] “Interview with Felipe Ramirez of FEL-Chile” Interview by Scott Nappolas, translation by Mónica Kostas.
[5] That isn’t to overestimate our powers of prediction. Speculative politics typically is a lottery. With foreseeable problems however we can both practice and prepare. This is different from believing that we can anticipate or build revolution step-by-step, a model which can exacerbate conservative tendencies in politics.
[6] See “Defining Practice: The Intermediate Level of Organization and Struggle” by Scott Nappalos. A follow up commentary piece is “The Intermediate Level and Trajectories of Struggle” by Nate Hawthorne. A helpful collection of documents can also available which includes “Social Anarchism and Organisation: Concentric Circles” by FARJ and “The Problems Posed by the Concrete Class Struggle and the Popular Organization” By José Antonio Gutiérrez.
[7] The term was first coined in a December 2004 statement. Members of the Furious Five later dissolved the collective to found what became Amanecer. For more on the Furious Five see: [[https://machete408.wordpress.com/writings-of-the-furious-five-revolutionary-collective/][machete408.wordpress.com]]
[8] The term was first coined in a December 2004 statement. Members of the Furious Five later dissolved the collective to found what became Amanecer.
[9] The best overviews of the concept which should serve as starting points are “Social Anarchism and Organization: Concentric Circles” which is a translated excerpt from “Anarquismo Social e Organização” by the Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro (FARJ) [this document, known simply as “Social Anarchism and Organisation” is now been fully translated into English] and “How to Participate in the FARJ?” an organizational document of the FARJ translated by Jonathan of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front of South Africa.
[10] Compa is short for compañero in spanish, which has a political connotation to it beyond friend.
[11] “Amanecer Mission Statement.”
[12] Websites with further information on each of the groups are as follows: CELIP ; ICEA ; IAS.
[13] This political parable is often attributed within the left to Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong, but the origins actually lie in 4<sup>th</sup> century BCE Daoist writings by Zhuangzi, Section 17, “Autumn Floods.” For a brief discussion see [[http://ramblingtaoist.blogspot.com/2010/05/liberation-of-well-frog.html][ramblingtaoist.blogspot.com]].
[14] “Brazil: Elements for a Historical Reconstruction of Our Current” by Coordenação Anarquista Brasileira (Brazilian Anarchist Coordination or CAB), translation by Jonathan P.
|
#title Building radical unionism
#subtitle Providing services without creating service unionism
#author Adam Weaver
#SORTtopics syndicalism, the Industrial Worker, Industrial Workers of the World
#date January 2009
#source Retrieved on 10<sup>th</sup> December 2021 from [[https://libcom.org/library/building-radical-unionism-providing-services-without-creating-service-unionism][libcom.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-12-10T15:01:53
#notes This article appeared in the <em>Industrial Worker</em> in January 2009.
In the IWW many of us have a critique of the service unionism of most of the large, mainstream unions. This is where the union is seen as a service that workers pay for with dues. The service the union offers is representation with and protection from the boss.
On the Organizing Department email list a small debate arose over how services relate to our organizing. How do we not become the service unionism we criticize? Opposing service unionism is an important critique about unions and social movements in general, but whatever we may call them, services can play a useful role in building radical unionism and social movements.
We need to understand what service unionism is. It is usually defined as a passive relationship where workers expect union staff, outside representatives or even shop stewards to “fix things” for them. The model is prevalent throughout the US labor movement and can even occur in professed radical unions like the IWW. Unions promote this type of thinking through offering services such as credit cards, discounts or similar benefits. Slogans such as “Union membership pays!” suggest that the benefits of being a union member are like the advantages of signing up with Bank of American instead of Wells Fargo.
The part of service unionism we are trying to avoid is a relationship of expert and worker who needs help or leadership. What we want to create are services that are member to member and build leadership of workers. Such services play a role in integrating members into the larger union and the theory and practice of class struggle. Our consciousness around class struggle provides us with an important contrast to the mostly apolitical service unionism. We are trying to build a different world than the adherents of service unionism are. We try to make a concrete link between our ideas and the way we fight the bosses.
Service unionism creates vertical relationships where workers look to politicians, the government, lawyers, experts and even the bosses to get what they need. What we are trying to create are horizontal relationships between workers where workers look to each other, people in their communities or other workers around the world to address their needs. We often use terms like “solidarity” or “mutual aid” to describe this. This also doesn’t mean we will never use labor lawyers to support our fights. We will use them to support our organizing but we do not rely on a legal strategy and courts to do our work for us. Some of our fellow workers won’t take on leadership or expert roles. We seek to ensure that these roles do not become permanent and try to teach skills to as many people as possible. We want everyone to become a leader.
An example of this is the IWW’s Organizer Training Program, which is somewhat based on an expert-like relationship. What doesn’t make this service unionism is that we encourage participants to share their experiences. We build on those experiences during the trainings. Overall goal is that participants take these tools, put them into practice and they become the future trainers.
There are a number of other examples in the union. Many of our campaigns actively recruit workers sympathetic to our goals and help them with their resume and references to get a job in the industry they are organizing. In New York, Spanish speaking immigrant Mexican members working in food warehouses meet with English speaking members and they learn each others language from one another. Also recognizing that the fight of immigrant workers is the fight of all workers, New York members are referred to local immigration support services. The Chicago Couriers Union has a program that allows members to borrow a loaner bike if their own is suddenly damaged. The defunct South Street Workers Union in Philadelphia would organize clinics where the workers they were organizing. This allowed low wage retail and service workers without health insurance to get health screening and a check up by a nurse. They even had a member who was an accountant showing them how to get a rebate on their taxes many low-income workers do not know about (the Earned Income Tax Credit).
There are countless other examples of these currently throughout the union but also in history. The influence of late nineteenth century anarchist mutualists on the workers movement in Mexico is very strong. North of the US border, small towns made up of Mexican workers were run through various associations. Also practiced throughout the Mexican labor movement are worker run savings programs, banks, discounted food stores and health services. These can be important programs that help workers in the short run, reduce their dependency on capitalist institutions and allow them to gain experience with cooperatively run institutions.
The choice between providing services as a union and not providing them is a false choice. We need to keep the critique of service unionism. But we also need to provide services for our members by developing member-to-member relationships, building leadership and supporting programs that meet our needs. This will integrate workers into the union and connect them to the class struggle.
|
#title Especifismo
#subtitle The anarchist praxis of building popular movements and revolutionary organization in South America
#author Adam Weaver
#SORTtopics Especifismo, platform, platformism, South America, Latin America, Black Rose Anarchist Federation, Northeastern Anarchist
#date 2006
#source Retrieved on 17<sup>th</sup> October 2021 from [[https://libcom.org/library/especifismo-anarchist-praxis-building-popular-movements-revolutionary-organization-south][libcom.org]]
#lang en
#notes This is the final version of the article. A slightly different copy, we regret, appears in the print version of <em>The Northeastern Anarchist</em> Issue #11, Spring 2006, and may also be in electronic circulation. Please refer to this final version in any citations.
Within the broad anarchist movement, we stand in the tradition advocating the need for an organized and disciplined anarchist political organization The “Alliance” in the First International was an early example of this model, but it was one of many such forces. In 1926, Nestor Makhno, Peter Arshinov and others restated this approach in the classic “Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists,”* perhaps the most important text of twentieth century anarchism. In South America — a region with many similarities to southern Africa — this tradition has been developed as Especifismo, and it is for this reason that we carry this important piece.
Throughout the world, anarchist involvement within mass movements, as well as the development of specifically anarchist organizations, is on the upsurge. This trend is helping anarchism regain legitimacy as a dynamic political force within movements and in this light, Especifismo, a concept born out of nearly 50 years of anarchist experiences in South America, is gaining currency world-wide. Though many anarchists may be familiar with many of Especifismo’s ideas, it should be defined as an original contribution to anarchist thought and practice.
The first organization to promote the concept of Especifismo — then more a practice than a developed ideology — was the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU), founded in 1956 by anarchist militants who embraced the idea of an organization which was specifically anarchist. Surviving the dictatorship in Uruguay, the FAU emerged in the mid-1980s to establish contact with and influence other South American anarchist revolutionaries. The FAU’s work helped support the founding of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG), the Federação Anarquista Cabocla (FACA), and the Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro (FARJ) in their respective regions of Brazil, and the Argentinean organization Auca (Rebel).
While the key concepts of Especifismo will be expanded upon further in this article, it can be summarized in three succinct points:
1. The need for specifically anarchist organization built around a unity of ideas and praxis.
2. The use of the specifically anarchist organization to theorize and develop strategic political and organizing work.
3. Active involvement in and building of autonomous and popular social movements, which is described as the process of “social insertion.”
*** A Brief Historical Perspective
While only coming onto the stage of Latin American anarchism within the last few decades, the ideas inherent within Especifismo touch on a historic thread running within the anarchist movement internationally. The most well known would be the Platformist current, which began with the publishing of the “Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists.”* This document was written in 1926 by former peasant army leader Nestor Makhno, Ida Mett and other militants of the Dielo Trouda (Workers’ Cause) group, based around the newspaper of the same name (Skirda, 192–213). Exiles of the Russian revolution, the Paris-based Dielo Trouda criticized the anarchist movement for its lack of organization, which prevented a concerted response to Bolshevik machinations towards turning the workers’ soviets into instruments of one-party rule. The alternative they proposed was a “General Union of Anarchists” based on Anarchist-Communism, which would strive for “theoretical and tactical unity” and focus on class struggle and labor unions.
Other similar occurrences of ideas include “Organizational Dualism,” which is mentioned in historical documents of the 1920’s Italian anarchist movement. Italian anarchists used this term to describe the involvement of anarchists both as members of an anarchist political organization and as militants in the labor movement (FdCA). In Spain, the Friends of Durruti group emerged to oppose the gradual reversal of the Spanish Revolution of 1936 (Guillamon). In “Towards a Fresh Revolution” they emulated some of the ideas of the Platform, critiquing the CNT-FAI’s gradual reformism and collaboration with the Republican government, which they argued contributed to the defeat of the anti-fascist and revolutionary forces. Influential organizations in the Chinese anarchist movement of the 1910’s, such as the Wuzhengfu-Gongchan Zhuyi Tongshi Che (Society of Anarchist-Communist Comrades), advocated similar ideas (Krebs). While these different currents all have specific characteristics that developed from the movements and countries in which they originated, they all share a common thread that crosses movements, eras, and continents.
*** Especifismo Elaborated
The Especifists put forward three main thrusts to their politics, the first two being on the level of organization By raising the need for a specifically anarchist organization built around a unity of ideas and praxis, the Especifists inherently state their objection to the idea of a synthesis organization of revolutionaries or multiple currents of anarchists loosely united. They characterize this form of organization as creating an exacerbated search for the needed unity of anarchists to the point in which unity is preferred at any cost, in the fear of risking positions, ideas and proposals sometimes irreconcilable. The result of these types of union are libertarian collectives without much more in common than considering themselves anarchists. (En La Calle)
While these critiques have been elaborated by the South American Especifistas, North American anarchists have also offered their experiences of synthesis organization as lacking any cohesiveness due to multiple, contradictory political tendencies. Often the basic agreement of the group boils down to a vague, “least-common-denominator” politics, leaving little room for united action or developed political discussion among comrades.
Without a strategy that stems from common political agreement, revolutionary organizations are bound to be an affair of reactivism against the continual manifestations of oppression and injustice and a cycle of fruitless actions to be repeated over and over, with little analysis or understanding of their consequences (Featherstone et al). Further, the Especifists criticize these tendencies for being driven by spontaneity and individualism and for not leading to the serious, systematic work needed to build revolutionary movements. The Latin American revolutionaries put forward that organizations which lack a program which resists any discipline between militants, that refuses to ‘define itself’, or to ‘fit itself’, ... [are a] direct descendant of bourgeois liberalism, [which] only reacts to strong stimulus, joins the struggle only in its heightened moments, denying to work continuously, especially in moments of relative rest between the struggles (En La Calle).
A particular stress of the Especifismo praxis is the role of anarchist organization, formed on the basis of shared politics, as a space for the development of common strategy and reflection on the group’s organizing work. Sustained by collective responsibility to the organizations’ plans and work, a trust within the members and groups is built that allows for a deep, high-level discussion of their action. This allows the organization to create collective analysis, develop immediate and long-term goals, and continually reflect on and change their work based on the lessons gained and circumstances.
From these practices and from the basis of their ideological principles, revolutionary organizations should seek to create a program that defines their short — and intermediate — term goals and will work towards their long-term objectives:
The program must come from a rigorous analysis of society and the correlation of the forces that are part of it. It must have as a foundation the experience of the struggle of the oppressed and their aspirations, and from those elements it must set the goals and the tasks to be followed by the revolutionary organization in order to succeed not only in the final objective but also in the immediate ones. (En La Calle)
The last point, but one that is key within the practice of Especifismo, is the idea of “social insertion.” [1] It stems from the belief that the oppressed are the most revolutionary sector of society, and that the seed of the future revolutionary transformation of society lies already in these classes and social groupings. Social insertion means anarchist involvement in the daily fights of the oppressed and working classes. It does not mean acting within single-issue advocacy campaigns based around the involvement of expected traditional political activists, but rather within movements of people struggling to better their own condition, which come together not always out of exclusively materially based needs, but also socially and historically rooted needs of resisting the attacks of the state and capitalism. These would include rank-and-file-led workers’ movements, immigrant communities’ movements to demand legalized status, neighborhood organizations’ resistance to the brutality and killings by police, working class students’ fights against budget cuts, and poor and unemployed people’s opposition to evictions and service cuts.
Through daily struggles, the oppressed become a conscious force. The class-in-itself, or rather classes in-themselves (defined beyond the class-reductionist vision of the urban industrial proletariat, to include all oppressed groups within society that have a material stake in a new society), are tempered, tested, and recreated through these daily struggles over immediate needs into classes-for-themselves. That is, they change from social classes and groups that exist objectively and by the fact of social relations, to social forces. Brought together by organic methods, and at many times by their own self organizational cohesion, they become self-conscious actors aware of their power, voice and their intrinsic nemeses: ruling elites who wield control over the power structures of the modern social order.
Examples of social insertion that the FAG cites are their work with neighborhood committees in urban villages and slums (called Popular Resistance Committees), building alliances with rank-and-file members of the rural landless workers’ movement of the MST, and among trash and recyclables collectors. Due to high levels of temporary and contingent employment, under-employment, and unemployment in Brazil, a significant portion of the working class does not survive primarily through wage labor, but rather by subsistence work and the informal economy, such as casual construction work, street vending, or the collection of trash and recyclables. Through several years of work, the FAG has built a strong relationship with urban trash collectors, called catadores. Members of the FAG have supported them in forming their own national organization which is working to mobilize trash collectors around their interests nationally and to raise money toward building a collectively operated recycling operation. [2]
Especifismo’s conception of the relation of ideas to the popular movement is that they should not be imposed through a leadership, through “mass line”, or by intellectuals. Anarchist militants should not attempt to move movements into proclaiming an “anarchist” position, but should instead work to preserve their anarchist thrust; that is, their natural tendency to be self-organized and to militantly fight for their own interests. This assumes the perspective that social movements will reach their own logic of creating revolution, not when they as a whole necessarily reach the point of being self-identified “anarchists,” but when as a whole (or at least an overwhelming majority) they reach the consciousness of their own power and exercise this power in their daily lives, in a way consciously adopting the ideas of anarchism. An additional role of the anarchist militant within the social movements, according to the Especifists, is to address the multiple political currents that will exist within movements and to actively combat the opportunistic elements of vanguardism and electoral politics.
*** Especifismo in the Context of North American and Western Anarchism
Within the current strands of organized and revolutionary North American and Western Anarchism, numerous indicators point to the inspiration and influence of the Platform as having the greatest impact in the recent blossoming of class struggle anarchist organizations worldwide. Many see the Platform as a historical document that speaks to the previous century’s organizational failures of anarchism within global revolutionary movements, and are moved to define themselves as acting within the “platformist tradition”. Given this, the currents of Especifismo and Platformism are deserving of comparison and contrast.
The authors of the Platform were veteran partisans of the Russian Revolution. They helped lead a peasant guerrilla war against Western European armies and later the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, whose people had a history independent of the Russian Empire. So the writers of the Platform certainly spoke from a wealth of experience and to the historical context of one of their era’s pivotal struggles. But the document made little headway in its proposal of uniting class struggle anarchists, and is markedly silent in analysis or understanding on numerous key questions that faced revolutionaries at that time, such as the oppression of women, and colonialism.
While most Anarchist-Communist oriented organizations claim influence by the Platform today, in retrospect it can be looked at as a poignant statement that rose from the morass that befell much of anarchism following the Russian Revolution. As a historical project, the Platform’s proposal and basic ideas were largely rejected by individualistic tendencies in the Anarchist movement, were misunderstood because of language barriers as some claim (Skirda, 186), or never reached supportive elements or organizations that would have united around the document. In 1927, the Dielo Trouda group did host a small international conference of supporters in France, but it was quickly disrupted by the authorities.
In comparison, the praxis of Especifismo is a living, developed practice, and arguably a much more relevant and contemporary theory, emerging as it does out of 50 years of anarchist organizing Arising from the southern cone of Latin America, but its influence spreading throughout, the ideas of Especifismo do not spring from any call-out or single document, but have come organically out of the movements of the global south that are leading the fight against international capitalism and setting examples for movements worldwide. On organization, the Especifists call for a far deeper basis of anarchist organization than the Platform’s “theoretical and tactical unity,” but a strategic program based on analysis that guides the actions of revolutionaries. They provide us living examples of revolutionary organization based on the needs for common analysis, shared theory, and firm roots within the social movements.
I believe there is much to take inspiration from within the tradition of Especifismo, not only on a global scale, but particularly for North American class-struggle anarchists and for multi-racial revolutionaries within the US. Whereas the Platform can be easily read as seeing anarchists’ role as narrowly and most centrally within labor unions, Especifismo gives us a living example that we can look towards and which speaks more meaningfully to our work in building a revolutionary movement today. Taking this all into consideration, I also hope that this article can help us more concretely reflect on how we as a movement define and shape our traditions and influences.
[1] While “social insertion” is a term coming directly out of the texts of Especifismo influenced organizations, comrades of mine have taken issue with it. So before there is a rush towards an uncritical embrace of anything, perhaps there could be a discussion of this term.
[2] Eduardo, then Secretary of External Relations for Brazilian FAG. “Saudacoes Libertarias dos E.U.A.” Email to Pedro Ribeiro. 25 Jun 2004
|
#pubdate 2011-07-03 16:51:48 +0200
#author Adeline Champney
#SORTauthors Adeline Champney
#title What Is Worth While?
#lang en
#date 1911
#SORTtopics anti-work, authority, ideology, morality, religion
#source Retrieved on 2 July 2011 from [[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/What_Is_Worth_While%3F][en.wikisource.org]]
#notes (Read before the Cleveland Free Thought Society. Feb. 20, 1910) <br> Mother Earth Publishing Association <br> 55 West 28<sup>th</sup> Street, New York
#subtitle A Study of Conduct, from the Viewpoint of the Man Awake
When we were little we were taught to mind. It used to be the fashion to teach children to mind. Obedience was the <em>sine qua non</em> of childhood. A child with a will of its own was marked for special discipline at the hands — often, literally at the hands — of the alarmed parent. A will of its own was a dangerous possession and must be broken at all costs. So the little will was broken; the costs were too often handed down, even unto the third and fourth generation.
On the whole we learned to mind; learned it so well that most of us have minded ever since, becoming devout Christians and exemplary citizens; following the beaten path, thinking the time worn thoughts, moulding our lives after the antique pattern esteemed by our ancestors. To be “good” was to do as we were told — “ours not to make reply, ours not to reason why” — ours to conform to the adult life around us, and to cause as little inconvenience as possible. This was the ideal of juvenile “goodness,” and to be “good” was the most important thing in life. If it did not so appear to our childish minds, it was made so, very much so. Not only were we inflicted with punishments and enticed with rewards, but to offset the human tendency to concealment which naturally followed such treatment, we were assured that God was watching us, and that not merely every act but indeed every thought was “under the law” and subject to the everlasting wrath of the Almighty, “who slumbers not nor sleeps.” With the sacred ten commandments, the laws of the land, personified by the brass-buttoned policeman, and the arbitrary say-so of parents and teachers and other adults too numerous to mention, our little lives were bounded on the north, south, east and west by Authority, and in the sky above lowered the Awful Presence.
This it was to be a child. I am afraid it has not altogether changed to-day. The home, intrenched in its ancient fastnesses, is slow to feel the influences of progressive tendencies. Fortunately, persons feel and respond to these tendencies before their institutions, individuals in advance of groups. Fortunately, too, we are not all “good” children, or we should all remain on our knees at the feet of Authority, murmuring with submissive lip, “Thy will, not mine, be done.”
As the child grows, he gradually becomes aware of certain principles to which all are expected to conform. If he has been “well trained,” by the time he enters upon his teens he has the habit of obedience, fixed as a trait of character. The persistent “Why?” of his normal mental activity has been silenced. He has become beautifully “teachable” and very satisfactorily tractable. The period of youth is one of the inculcation of principles, social ideals, which have come to be held inviolable, and by which the future conduct of his life is to be gauged when he shall assume direction of his own affairs. Life now grows more complex. Obedience was simple; so very simple, so very easy, that many prefer to abrogate all private judgment, to avoid all perplexities, and to remain always good and obedient children. Hence religion survives — religion, which fosters irresponsibility and automatic morality.
These social ideals — remember I am setting aside peculiarities of time and place, and dealing with averages, the great civilized human averages — these social ideals may be broadly stated as: Honesty, Respectability, Prosperity. On these hang all the essentials of conduct. Failing in these, the individual becomes, more or less according to the measure of his deviation, an undesirable.
These standards of conduct, accepted by religious and irreligious alike, are presented to the youth as things sacred in themselves, not to be questioned. One who should ask: “Why should I be honest?” would be suspected of moral degeneracy. It is true they tell us that honesty is the best policy, but that is given us rather as an assuaging circumstance than as a motive. <em>Of course</em> one must be honest. One must be honest for honesty’s own sake. Money-honest, that is. In a society where Science and Religion walk hand-in-hand one will hardly look for scrupulousness as to intellectual honesty; nor will one expect to find insistence on emotional and social honesty in a society which worships Respectability. For the greatest of these is Respectability, and respectable one must be though the heavens fall.
Close upon Respectability follows Prosperity. He who fails to get on in the world arouses suspicion, but he who prospers glows with justification. However, the element of opportunity being recognized as a factor in business success, and moreover the good Lord having peculiar ways of chastening his children, some measure of social forgiveness may be meted out to him of small means, but the pillars of the Church and the bulwarks of society are honest, well-thought-of, and well-to-do.
The worship of this blessed trinity is called Duty. By the unpremeditated and involuntary act of being born we are supposed to have incurred a three-fold obligation: our duty to God, our duty to man, and our duty to ourselves — named in the order of their importance. Preacher, teacher, poet and sage alike speak to us of Duty. The world’s literature is full of beautiful tributes to Duty, and stirring exhortations of Conscience — a spiritual faculty the function of which is to admonish us of Duty. Conscience is the voice of God in the soul, say the religious. The nonreligious who have dethroned God and set Right in his place will tell us that conscience is man’s innate sense of right and wrong — a newer edition, revised, of the God-explanation. Of course that settles it, settles it about as well, or ill, as the God-explanation usually settles problems. It is not essential that such an explanation be logical, that it be scientific, that it be consistent; it is not essential even that it should explain. So long as repeating it gives one that superior sanctified air, it will stand through the ages, to be fought for and lived for and died for.
As is the history of the individual, so has been the history of the human race. Human knowledge passes through three stages of development: the Supernatural, the Metaphysical, the Scientific, and the science of human conduct follows it. We find primitive man ruled by fear; worshipping power and mystery; easily coming under the authority of a priesthood which claims to interpret for him the unknown. This is the childish age of Bugaboos and Authority, which is succeeded by the Metaphysical period; the worship of entities, ideals, principles; things to be valued in and for themselves. To this age belongs the reign of Conscience, which especially characterizes our own day. And as our knowledge and understanding of the material universe passes from the realms of mystery into the region of exact knowledge, so must the conduct of life take on the scientific method, and, leaving the darkness of tradition and the fogs of metaphysics, become truly rationalized. As yet it lingers on the borderline between the Supernatural and the Metaphysical. The Scientific Era has not dawned.
In the life of each man and woman sooner or later there comes an awakening. I am inclined to think it comes to all, but very many go to sleep again. The stupor of years of acquiescence, the apathy bred of the habit of conformity, overcomes them. And there are many who count the cost and shut their eyes again. It takes a certain sturdy strength to cross the current, to steer for unknown seas.
But some there are who do not shrink when they come face to face with life, and unto these comes experience and knowledge and insight; and through these comes all the progress of the world. Awakened by some crisis, public or private; or cramped into wakefulness by the pressure of antique traditions or institutions; shocked awake, it may be, by contradictions between scientific and conventional standards; or perhaps stirred by some echo from the unanswered “Why?” of their childhood; they boldly challenge the world. “Why are you here?” they demand of every institution. “What have you to offer me?” they ask of Life itself. And to such there is no rest and no peace until they are answered. The Man Awake recognizes nothing which he may not analyze, nothing which he may not weigh in the balance. Though one by one his cherished idols fall and crumble, he must apply the tests of truth.
With the downfall of the God-idol I shall not here concern myself. It is the simplest, the easiest liberation. When one bears the torch of Reason and uses the compass of Science, all roads lead to Freedom. Many have made this journey, but many have stopped here and lain down again and slept. I concern myself with the Man Awake who sees his liberation but begun; for the God-influence does not perish with the belief in God. God is dead, but worship survives, and it is not God but worship which stultifies man’s growth. The Supernatural passes into the Metaphysical — and the Man Awake still questions. The conduct of life, no longer a matter of the relation of man to occult powers, becomes a relation of man to exalted imaginings and deified principles. While our knowledge and use of our material environment is far advanced into the scientific stage of development, our understanding of and our attitude toward our social environment is still in the Metaphysical stage. We have a science of things, but not as yet a science of men. There are many cobwebs to be swept away before the conduct of life takes on the scientific form. Any ideal which becomes an object of worship, which in and for itself compels observance; any principle, obedience to which is forced upon men, either by violence, by legal enactment, or by the coercion of public opinion, becomes a fetish. The air is full of such. This is an age of mental and emotional fetishism. Chief among these and including most of them — all, indeed, which approach universality-stands Duty. From the cradle to the grave one is admonished of Duty. From the lips of parents and teachers, from preachers and judges and kings, from friend and foe alike, comes the magic word. Come joy or come sorrow, in life or unto death, one must follow Duty; and no man knows whence it comes nor why, and few <em>can</em> follow it, but each man says to every other, “Do thy Duty.” Duty, not to be denied, not to be questioned, but potent to guide and to govern a world of men I Of this fetish, then, the Man Awake demands credentials. He has outgrown the theological traditions of his fathers, he has gained a new viewpoint whence everything must be judged anew. He sets about revising his standards. It may be months, it may be years, before he makes the full readjustment, but what matters it? He is free, and growing, and that is very nearly the whole of life — to be free and to grow.
When God vanishes from the skies he takes a great many things with him, some of which are not commonly recognized as pertaining to the God-idea. Not only does his departure into the limbo of past superstition remove the authority of bibles and churches and temples, and the divine authorities of priests and rulers, but it also removes all ultimate authorities whatever, and takes the sanctity from all principles of conduct. The departure of God places man face to face with the material universe, and men face to face with each other. With the abolition of the law-giver all laws disappear. The term “laws of nature” shows how our very language is so tinctured with the teleological conception that we have difficulty in choosing exact terms for our knowledge.
The so-called “laws of nature” are merely the undeviating principles in accordance with which the universe of substance in motion continues its unceasing and eternal change. Forms appear and disappear, phenomena come and go, but in all the universe is found neither beginning nor end, neither first nor last; neither good nor evil, right nor wrong, virtue nor sin, justice nor injustice. To none of these terms is there any absolute meaning whatever. All are man-made distinctions, varying with time and place, differing among races and among individuals. To the history of the human race, then, the Man Awake must go in his search for the meaning of Duty. For development proceeds ever from the simple to the complex, and the basis of sane thinking is found in the study of development. To gain an adequate comprehension of anything one must understand its development. And nothing will so aid in clearing away superstition and traditional prejudice in matters social and ethical as a survey of human history; not merely recorded history but that great story of the prehistoric man which science resurrects for us. What does this history say to us of Duty? Just this: bereft of all theological and metaphysicial sanctities all the human institutions which have demanded obedience from men are seen to rest ultimately on the power to impose themselves on individuals. Religion, government, all property privilege, the marriage institution — all originated in force, and are maintained by force. Back of every “duty” stands a club. Does one “owe” anything to compulsion? Can a “duty” be imposed on one, without one’s own consent? Brought into this world by no act of one’s own, does one inherit the obligations assumed by one’s ancestors, much less those forced upon them? The sole justification of every authority is its power to enforce obedience; and therein lies the justification of every rebellion. Whatever obedience may be exacted, whatever allegiance may be voluntarily rendered, there is no obligation whatsoever. Duty is but a metaphysical cobweb. It has no foundation in fact. “But conscience? Surely I cannot deny the admonition of conscience!” Have you studied the conscience of a savage? Have you made a comparative analysis of conscience among varying peoples and at various periods of history? Have you ever observed the conscience of a very little child? The dictates of conscience are purely and simply a matter of education. Conscience itself is neither more nor less than one’s satisfaction in himself. A clear conscience is the pleasurable sense of self-approval; guilty conscience, the disquieting sense of self-censure. This is the reality of conscience; the grounds for the satisfaction or dissatisfaction lie in our beliefs and principles, and are, largely, a product of our social heredity. They may be well or ill founded. One has only to review the many deeds that have been done “for conscience sake” to perceive how utterly unreliable it is as a “moral” guide. Of the fetish, Duty, with Conscience as its private watchman, investigation leaves not one shred. It follows the gods, the heavens and the hells, and all the spooks that infest intellectual darkness. Not so with conscience as a profound sense of self-judgment. That is an attribute of the mind which is of inestimable value. To the Man Awake it becomes a veritable court of last appeal. There is no greater honor to win than the approval of our own souls. There is no greater faith to keep than faith with ourselves.
There is an idea prevalent among the religious that if once the religious and moral restraints were removed, men would fly off at a tangent, fling open all the hitherto forbidden doors, and plunge into a carnival of crime. If they should do so, what would be to blame, their new-found freedom or their former training? Have all the ages of religion and morality produced no moral sense? The alarmists indict their own institutions! Occasionally one hears of preachers’ sons who “go wrong” — sometimes it is the preacher himself! Sometimes there are children who have been brought up in the sternest and strictest of homes, who, on coming of age, plunge into dissipation, perhaps ruining health and even life. But does any thinking person blame their coming of age? Is it not plain that their religious training has not given them moral stamina, or a rational view of life? That it has weakened their resistage by the constant suggestion of weakness and dependence, and given them only an arbitrary rule of conduct and not a vital purpose in life? Believing themselves “vile worms of the dust,” they act the part!
No. The Man Awake is not going off at a tangent. The conduct of life, now that he no longer gets it ready-made, has become of vastly greater importance to him. It is his own concern, now; he will ask himself as never before — “What is really worth while?” And the answer must be a personal one. Not that out of his inner consciousness he will dig up a set of rules and precepts unrelated to the thought and feeling of the world about him. Not every man is called to blaze a new trail. But he will make sure, when he takes the road, that it leads in his direction, and that he is not merely following in the footsteps of his grandsires. Nor is it needful that he travel alone. He may go hand-in-hand with a comrade, he may join himself to a company, he may even follow a leader; but the comrades must be of his own choosing, related in thought and purpose, and not mere accidents of the wayside; and he will see to it that he is driven by no compulsion save the impulse of his own nature.
Let it not be thought that I disparage ideals. It is not the Ideal but the deification of it that stultifies growth. The leaders of men are always idealists; all the periods of great moral and social uplift have been periods of idealism. If there be any exclusively human characteristic, essentially distinguishing the man from his fellow-animals, it is this power to frame ideal conceptions, to picture better things and to strive toward them. Many of the finest types of manhood which society has produced have been men of vision as well as of insight, ardent dreamers of dreams, with the daring to follow their dreams. These have been strong men, men of striking personality, of resolute self-determination, these idealists. When a man loses himself, when he becomes subservient to an ideal; when he no longer possesses it, but deifies it so that it takes possession of him, then he is no longer a man but a shadow; and his ideal, a spook.
Out of the past have come down to us many maxims and precepts, most of which are so permeated with theology or so befogged with metaphysics as to render them utterly worthless in a modern world. The Man Awake does not despise the Wisdom of the Ages, but there is also a Folly of the Ages, and he reserves the right to make his own selection. He accepts no maxims on say-so, even though the say-so be a repetition of twice ten thousand years. These shreds of old wisdom make an interesting study, revealing, as they do, the stuff of which human conduct has been woven, the woof of the fabric of social custom and usage. But to-day they are mostly rags, rags.
Among them there is one which seems to have an immortal life. It is found in many lands and many tongues, varying but slightly in form; and so general and unquestioned is its acceptance as an efficient guide to social conduct that even an iconoclast hesitates to lay violent hands on the Golden Rule. But we recognize no exemptions; nothing escapes the test. “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them” might be good sense in a world where all men were alike, possessed of identical needs, desires and tastes. If anyone thinks it applicable in a world of individualities, let him try it out in his daily living. If he attempts to apply it literally, he will speedily discover the arrogance of the assumption that other men are like himself, that what pleases him will be acceptable to them. If he endeavors to disregard the letter but carry out the spirit of it, he will soon be engulfed in the fathomless task of determining what others, actuated by the Golden Rule, would do unto him with a view of having him do so even unto them! And at the best it is not so practical as the familiar “Put yourself in his place.” Good suggestions, both of them, but as adequate rules of conduct, such as the Golden Rule is on every hand assumed to be — childish, utterly childish! In the negative form attributed to Confucius it becomes less fraught with danger and discord. “Do not unto others as you would not that they should do unto you.” Where others are involved, to refrain from action has this advantage: at the worst one becomes guilty of neglect, but never of aggression. But the moment one begins to “do things” unto others, he is on dangerous ground. The Golden Rule, lauded as a social panacea, makes a really pretty plaything for babies, but is more innocuous when written in Chinese!
Another idol must be shattered in the course of this inquiry, the ideal of self-sacrifice. Grim and grisly rise the phantoms of its antecedents: living animals torn asunder, human blood poured out, on the altars of the gods; self-tortures, flagellations, loathsome mortifications of the flesh in the cells and hovels of monks and saints — a gruesome crew! Life and love and treasure offered up to please and placate Deity; and the crowning sacrifice of Deity himself in the person of his son to satisfy his own wrath and save a sinning but well-beloved and eternally damned people! It is doubtless this sacrificial atonement of the ancient churches which has passed into the metaphysical concept of self-sacrifice as a laudable and beautiful thing, a holy and righteous thing, a kind of sublimated duty. Self-mutilations, mortifications of the flesh, are not all in the past. The religious frenzy of the old-time saint is rare, and we call it by its right name now. But in its more subtle form sacrifice unto sanctification is not uncommon among high-strung nervous temperaments. No one can estimate the injury to health, the distortions of mind and character, and that among the finer, more highly developed types of men and women, particularly women. No one can know the loss to society of strong sane womanhood and motherhood, from this sacrifice. Moreover, the strong give place to the weak, the efficient spend their strength in ministering to the inefficient, youth sterilizes itself in the service of age, the fit waste themselves to preserve the unfit, until, viewing the social misery of it, one could almost welcome the restraining hand of a stern but wholesome paganism.
For, mark you, for all this sacrifice the world is scarcely the kinder. Indeed, as Oscar Wilde so keenly says, “It takes a thoroughly selfish age like our own to deify self-sacrifice.” “Living for others,” we say, but deliver us from the arrogance, the insufferable despotism of many of those who insist on living for us. I have seen whole families tyrannized over, kept uncomfortable for years, even disrupted, by one member whose whole purpose in life was to “live for” that family. “Living for others,” we say, and we thrill with admiration; but when one really lives for others, what happens? A spoiled life on the one hand, and spoiled character on the other. Who does not know the unselfish, self-forgetful, overworked mother and the utterly selfish, inefficient children? Self-sacrifice is an abnormality, a demoralizing thing. It is not only an injury to self, it is an insult to its object. Who of us has not felt this? Have you never been made the object of a sacrifice? Have you felt “properly” grateful for it? In spite of your appreciation of the kindness of intent, have you not found yourself half-conscious of a sort of sneaking resentment? Have you not forced yourself to be demonstrative and thankful, when you were secretly inclined to go away and sulk? Yet you did not wish to be ungrateful. Ungrateful! “Ingratitude is the independence of the soul.” The object of a sacrifice, like the object of charity, is placed in a position of weakness, of inefficiency and dependence, and every sturdy soul resents this to the core.
On the other hand, have you not been thrilled into grateful responsiveness upon being made the object of some spontaneous act of affection and thoughtfulness of some expression of the real self of that other? It may have cost nothing, it may have been a real pleasure to the other — and that is precisely why you valued it. It was a genuine tribute to some excellence in you which attracted it. It is ever the spontaneous things that count. It does not always seem fair that the utmost endeavor of one person should count for less than the spontaneous, uncalculated action of another; but it does. We appreciate the effort, but it is spontaneity which attracts us and gives us joy. Being is more beautiful than acting; play is more beautiful than work. It is only when work <em>is</em> play that it is beautiful, when the worker enjoys it and puts himself into it. Nothing is beautiful which does not give joy, and all effort that does not tend toward joy is wasted.
We often seem to forget that man is an emotional creature as well as a reasoning being. But in truth our feelings are the important things in life, not our ideas. It is our feelings which impel us to action; our thoughts merely restrain. Even our judgments ultimately rest on feeling. Prof. James puts it in this way: “Our judgments concerning the worth of things, big or little, depend on the feelings the things arouse in us. Where we judge a thing to be precious in consequence of the <em>idea</em> we frame of it, this is only because the idea is itself associated already with a feeling. If we were radically feelingless, and if ideas were the only things which our minds could entertain, we should close all our likes and dislikes at a stroke, and be unable to point to any one situation or experience in life more valuable or significant than any other.”
In this alleged reign of reason we are apt to overlook this fact. It is frequently remarked how thin is the veneer which civilization has laid upon the primal savage. When a serious crisis arrives, the veneer cracks and the savage appears. And the whole effort of civilization seems to be, not to develop and improve the savage, but to thicken the veneer. Surely society would be more secure if the savage were not veneered at all.
The whole structure of society must rest either on conflict or on confidence, and confidence is not born of veneer. Any system of education which relies upon the imposition of ideas rather than the development of individualities must result in a hypocrisy which is none the less demoralizing for being well-intentioned; a hypocrisy which destroys confidence, understanding, comradeship and social stability. For the foundation of social stability is the co-operation of spontaneously acting individuals. Restraint is the essence of our governments, and largely the aim of our education, but restraint is not power but the denial of power. Expression is the vital thing, expression of feeling; and the function of restraint is intellectual, the preservation of balance. Reason is normally the handmaid of feeling, developed by the endeavor to fulfill our desires. To discount our emotional life and attempt to live by intellect alone is to dehumanize ourselves just as surely as to abdicate reason and live from impulse alone is to brutalize ourselves. The well-developed individual is he whose impulses and desires are so well-balanced and harmonized that he secures the greatest amount of spontaneous self-satisfaction with the least friction; and the road to this is self-discipline, that self-discipline the true function of which is the freeing of our impulses, and their co-ordination into efficiency and power.
The conduct of life is a matter of valuations, and since our valuations are dependent upon our feelings rather than upon our reason, there must always be a wide variation between the valuations of individuals. Hence it is impossible to be dogmatic, and to limit the activities and the affiliations of the Man Awake. Living is not a matter of conformity but of personality. There are many Men Awake, and while they may travel together for a time, they must part company somewhere, for each man must live his own life. Even the closest are separated by an impassable gulf, and “in the hour of our bitterest need, we are ever alone.” This isolation of individuals in the human race, a species in which each member is more utterly dependent upon his fellows than in any other, is one of the most remarkable of paradoxes. Indeed, self-reliance is an eminent social virtue, but self-limitation is a pitiful individual weakness. This distinction can hardly be too strongly emphasized. The finest type of human development is strongly self-centered, but the self-limited individual is deficient in essential humanity, for man is a social being, not merely a gregarious animal. He does not merely hunt in packs like the wolves, nor herd together for protection like weaker animals; but before man was possible a species of social creatures had appeared, who, living together, sharing in weal and woe, and especially through close association in play, developed a community of feeling which taught them speech and thought and made them the ancestors of the civilizations. One never understands what it is to be human, one never realizes his own individuality until he has gone back across the ages to study his origin, and followed the long, long journey upward. From that hour with the primitive human-like folk, he comes closer in touch with the heart of humanity, feels the great genetic forces which inhere in the race, thrills to the urge and the uplift of human progress. The glory of human joy and the bitterness of human misery press upon him, enter his soul and become one with him. He has thought of himself as belonging to the human race; now he suddenly feels that the human race belongs to him; he has found himself in humanity and humanity in himself. There is no need to talk to him of human brotherhood; he has come closer than brotherhood. The “greatest good of the greatest number sounds like empty words to the sound of his own heart throbs.
Can anyone come close to the origin and history of his kind, and yet feel satisfied? Is he not poor with the poverty of the poorest, and lonely with the desolation of the outcast? So long as some must be cold and hungry and wretched, are there not tears in all his joy, and thorns in all his luxury? Does he not feel with Ernest Crosby —
<quote>
Bitter to eat is the bread that was made by slaves.<br>
In the fair white loaf I can taste their sweat and tears.<br>
My clothes strangle and oppress me; they burn into my flesh, for I have not justly earned them, and how are they clad that made them?<br>
My tapestried walls and inlaid floors chill me and hem me in like the damp stones of a prison house, for I ask why the builders and weavers of them are not living there in my stead.<br>
Alas! I am eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree, the tree of others’ labor!”
</quote>
Can anyone find humanity and find himself and not become a revolutionist? I cannot. I declare that greater than custom and convention, greater than the laws of the land, greater than schools and philosophies, is the need of human joy. I declare that it is my business to increase it. With Traubel I say —
<quote>
Now I am at last relentless,<br>
I declare that the social order is to be superseded by another social order.<br>
I know the quality of your folly when you go about the streets looking in the dust of noisy oratory for the complete state.<br>
I know very well that when the complete state appears it will be because you bring it to others, not because others bring it to you.<br>
And I know that you will bring it, not as a burden upon your back, but as something unscrolled within.
</quote>
For who is society but myself and yourself and all selves? And what is human joy but my joy and your joy and the joy of each? And every joy of mine and every joy of yours and every joy that you or I can bring to any, all are so much added joy in the world. For how shall humanity rejoice while you and I are sad?
They tell us much of the social nature of the individual, but they forget to tell us of the individual nature of society. But I tell you that society is myself and yourself and every other self. Shall I serve society by spelling it with a capital? Shall I serve society by lying prostrate before it? Shall I serve society by waiting for it to push me forward? Society does nothing, it is I who do things. It is true that without society I can do nothing, but it is as true that without me — without every individual me — society can do nothing. Let us have done with the worship of society, for at the last there are but men and women, selves, separate and distinct but interdependent. And society progresses only as these progress. And society is great and good and prosperous and happy only with the greatness and goodness and prosperity and happiness of these men and women.
The most and the least which society demands of us is that we be ourselves. We speak of the race-ideals, but the race-ideals are of value to me only as I make them mine, my very own; as I follow them, love them and live them for myself. Then, only, does my living them become of value to my greater self, the social whole. The man in whose being a race-ideal becomes, as it were, focused, becomes from that moment a veritable savior, a leader and maker of history and social destiny; and he becomes this just in the measure of the independence of his thought and action. It is often remarked that great men are the product of their time, expressions of the mass of society; but the significance of this may be easily misconstrued. These men represent the whole by emerging from it; the measure of their greatness, aye, the measure of their service, is the completeness with which they rise above the mass of their fellows. The men who have spoken out the inarticulate desires of the masses, who have become the voice of a great human cry, the right arm of a great human purpose unto action, have been men whose individuality was of the sturdiest and sternest; men who first and foremost have thought their own thoughts and lived their own lives, even unto condemnation and disinheritment at the hands of the very people whose saviors they were. The will of the people is interpreted, is put into action, is brought to fruition, by those individuals of the people who come out from among the people with the fearless and invincible determination — “My will be done!”
We cannot all be saviors, but the impulses which these men personify and concentrate into action are the discontents, the yearnings, the purposes of individuals, and no mystic emanation of the mass as a mass. And as time passes there are more and more individuals and smaller and smaller inarticulate “masses.” The day of the inert mass is passing; the day of the individual is about to dawn, and you and I are either helping or hindering.
I come to you to-day with the question, “What is Worth While?” and I answer it boldly — “Myself!” My own life! And all I demand for myself I accord to you, gladly and with a comrade-word of good cheer — Freedom to live it to the full.
|
#title Capital Punishment: Reasons For Immediate Abolition
#author Adin Ballou
#date 1851
#source Retrieved on April 11, 2025 from http://www.adinballou.org/capital.shtml
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-04-11T15:34:30
#topics Christian, capital punishment, death penalty, christianity, abolition
*** What is Capital Punishment?
It is the infliction of Death on a human being who has been convicted of murder or some other crime, and who is a helpless prisoner in the hands of the public authorities. It is commonly executed by hanging, beheading, shooting, &c.; in our country almost always by hanging.
*** Who Inflict the Death Penalty?
All the people in the State or Nation who do not unequivocally protest against it. This is emphatically true in our Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Reader, whether voter or non-voter, male or female, adult or youth, thou art either for Capital Punishment or against it. Thou art not a neutral in the case. When one of thy fellow creatures is put to death on the gallows by public authority, with thy approbation or with thy consent, consider the deed as thine own. Nay, if thou 1ettest it be done without thy solemn protest against it, the deed is virtually thine own. Wince not at this. Know thy responsibility before God in this matter. Unless thou hast cleared the skirts of thy garments by some public, unequivocal and uncompromising testimony against Capital Punishment, thou art the man or the woman who inflicts it.
Thou and thy fellows took the life of Washington Goode, Daniel H. Pierson, and John W. Webster. Say not “the Sheriff did it — the Governor ordered it — the Court decreed it — the law requires it.” All true: but in whose name and by whose authority does the Sheriff, the Governor, the Court, the law hang a man? Who made the law, the Court, the Governor and the Sheriff? Answer: the people — the sovereign people. They do all these things. Who are the people? Answer: the voters, together with all who help to form that public opinion which governs voters, legislators and rulers.
Whatever public opinion unequivocally demands should be done, is done. Voters, legislators and rulers see that it is done. They see that hanging is done. Why? Because public opinion demands it. And who form public opinion? All men, women and children who think and speak. Public opinion is nothing but the confluence of private, opinions; like a mighty river made up of many small streams, rivulets or springs. Reader, remember that thou art one of these streams, rivulets or springs. Thy opinion is for or against Capital Punishment. So if not against it, thou art for it. If for it, thy private opinion is a part of that great river of public opinion which says to voters, legislators and rulers, “Keep on hanging murderers.” Therefore thou art one of the executioners of Capital Punishment, acting through thy agents. The deed is really thine. If it be glorious, then glory on. But if it be abhorrent and abominable, hold back thy hand from thy guilty brother’s life. Protest against the custom, the law, the public opinion. Let thy testimony be unequivocal, uncompromising and incessant against it, till the death penalty be utterly abolished.
*** Capital Punishment is Anti-Christian
Noah, Moses, and the ancients generally sanctioned it; but Christ prohibits it. The Old Testament, he knew, contained many sayings which authorized the taking of blood for blood, “life for life, eye for eye,” &c. But he took care that the New Testament should record all imperative testimony against thus resisting evil with evil. Referring directly to that whole class of Old Testament sayings which sanction the taking of “life for life,” our Lord says: “But I say unto you that ye resist not evil” — that is, by inflicting evil on the evil-doer, as you have heretofore done under the authority of these Noachic and Mosaic sayings.
Away with all hatred and vindictiveness. Oppose evil only with good — only by doing what is best both for the injurious and the injured parties. “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,” &c. that ye may be the children of your father in heaven, who always acts on this divine principle toward the unthankful and evil.
On the same ground he enjoined the duty of always cherishing the spirit of forgiveness. “When ye pray, say ... Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” “For if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Is it forgiving an offender to take blood for blood, life for life, eye for eye? Is this forgiving as we would have God forgive us? Wilt thou hang thy son’s murderer by the neck till he be “dead, dead, dead,” and then pray God to forgive thine offences as thou hast his! And after this wilt thou still presume to call Jesus Christ thy Lord, and thyself a Christian! Of all such Christ demandeth, “Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”
As Jesus taught, so taught his apostles. Hear Paul: “Recompense to no man evil for evil”; “avenge not yourselves”; “be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” “See that none render evil for evil unto any man.” So Peter, John and all the apostles. Hanging the evil doer is recompensing “evil for evil.” It is man avenging himself by “rendering evil for evil.” It is a vain attempt to overcome evil with evil. Therefore it is utterly anti-Christian.
Christ never gave countenance to Capital Punishment, or to the taking of human life for any cause. He exemplified what he taught. He was once called on to adjudge a woman to death for adultery, according to the law of Moses. Did he sanction Capital Punishment? No; but he required those who would have stoned the criminal to death, to be sure first that they themselves were without sin. They felt the rebuke and fled. The woman still remained to receive death, if at all, from his sinless hands. But forbearing to harm her, guilty though she was, he said, “Go and sin no more.” Jesus was no patron either of crime or of Capital Punishment.
When James and John would have called fire down from heaven upon the unaccommodating Samaritans, “even as Elias did,” he turned and rebuked them, saying, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” So then Christians, following out their Lord’s mission in his divine spirit, are not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them — even though Noah, Moses and Elias be officiously quoted to the contrary. When will this genuine Christianity come to be understood and exemplified throughout nominal Christendom? In that day will Capital Punishment, as well as War, be denounced and renounced as utterly anti-Christian.
Reader, do not attempt to parry the force of the foregoing demonstration by any special pleading. Do not say, as some have, “Christ had no reference to public judicial proceedings; capital punishment, &c., when he gave forth those strong prohibitory precepts against resisting evil with evil; he only referred to petty revenge between individuals in common life.” &c. This is groundless assumption, and contrary to the obvious meaning of Christ’s language. “Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye,” &c. Where? By whom? See Gen. 9:6, Ex. 21:22–25, Lev. 24:17–20, Deut. 19:16–21. Examine those passages, and thou wilt see that “life for life, eye for eye,” &c. were to be taken by public judicial authority. Can we, then, suppose Christ did not forbid legal and judicial resistance of evil with evil, but merely ordinary individual retaliations? No; he forbade all those sayings had authorized; that is, both individual and governmental takings of “life for life, eye for eye,” &c. This is too plain to be caviled upon. Neither let the reader say, as some have, Christ did not refer to those sayings of Noah, Moses, &c. but only to certain glosses on them made by some of the Jewish Rabbis. Show us any rabbinical glosses stronger than the original Scripture sayings in the Pentateuch. There are none. It is sheer assumption to plead all such abatement of Christ’s obvious meaning.
Nor let anyone rise up and say, as some have said, “You make Christ to contemn Moses, and the New Testament to destroy the Old. Thus you pervert the Word of God.” Strange notion! Is not Christ superior to Moses, and the New Testament to the Old? Who doubts this? The Jew may, but not the Christian. He who places Jesus Christ below Moses, or no higher than Moses, or the New Testament below the Old, or no higher than the Old, is anti-Christian, whatever else he may be. This is a settled point.
But it does not follow that Christ contemns Moses, or that the New Testament destroys the Old. The less and the greater may mutually corroborate each other. Moses wrote of the Christ, and commanded that when he came, the people should hear him “in all things.” Therefore said Jesus to the Jews, “Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.”
Moses was a faithful servant, but Christ is the Son of God. He who respects Moses as a servant, will surely respect Christ as the Son of God. And he who, under pretence of reverencing Moses, takes “life for life,” regardless of Christ’s solemn injunction to “resist not evil with evil,” insults both of them. He tramples under foot his acknowledged Lord, and impudently says to Moses, “I will not obey thy command, to hear Christ in all things. I will hear him in nothing that differs from thy old law of “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” That law suits my own instincts exactly, and I will not allow it to be superseded, even by Jesus Christ!”
Would Moses feel honored by such an adherent? No; he would rebuke the self-willed zealot, and say, “No man honors me who does not honor the Son of God more.” If the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, who all predicted a more glorious dispensation of divine truth and righteousness to come, could be summoned to give judgment, they would unanimously concur with Paul in his testimony: “If that which was done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.” Instead of subordinating the New Testament to the Old, or lowering down its sublime law, of resisting evil only with good, to the ancient maxims, they would exalt Jesus Christ and his precepts above all, as the true light and life of men. Alas! that anyone should so poorly appreciate either the Old or the New Testament., as to imagine that he can truly honor the former without implicitly obeying the latter as God’s revised statutes. The former had a glory which was designed to be superseded by the superior glory of the latter, even as the moon and the stars of night fade away in the radiance of the sun. Does the sun destroy the moon. and stars, because he outshines them? No more does. the New Testament destroy the Old by superseding its imperfect institutions with diviner ones. The position is impregnable. Capital Punishment, however sanctioned by Noah, Moses and the ancients, is anti-Christian. It ought therefore to be immediately abolished in all professedly Christian States. He who upholds it fights against Jesus Christ.
*** Capital Punishment is Unnecessary
There is no excuse for hanging a murderer, on the ground that he is outraging the public peace, and endangering the lives of his fellow-creatures. He is a helpless prisoner; completely in the power of the government, and there he can be kept in safe custody — in a custody which will prevent his injuring others, or being injured by others. What more does the public good require? What more does his own good require? What more does any reasonable, humane, upright man desire? Who is it that clamors for his life — that cries out to have this powerless, pinioned man thrust into eternity from a gallows? O spirit of vindictive cruelty, we know thee all through the dark ages! Thou art thyself a murderer from the beginning. Be thou exorcised from all well-meaning souls. Thou hast often transformed thyself into an angel of light, and seated thyself in the high places of Christianity; but thou shalt be cast down into the pit, whence thou camest. Thou deprecatest and revengest murder, but art forever predisposing mankind to commit it. We know thee; “Get thee behind us, Satan.”
Capital Punishment is not necessary in order to prevent the criminal’s escaping his due recompense. God has not left rewards and punishments to the uncertainty and imperfection of human government. He himself will render to every man according to his deeds. No sinner can escape the divine judgment. No murderer can by any possibility evade a just retribution. He may all mere human punishments, but none of the divine. Who but an atheist doubts this great truth? Then let no man say, “The murderer must be hung, or he will go unpunished.” Not so. His going unpunished is an impossibility. Keep him, then, unharmed, where he can harm no one, and let him be made better if possible. Leave him to be punished by the only authority that is competent to do it without error. Why not? Avenger of blood, thou art dismissed. Thy mission is fulfilled.
To whom will the putting to death of the criminal do any good? It will preserve no one’s life, that could not just as surely be preserved by the judicious confinement of the convict. It will not help God’s administration of justice. It will not restore the murdered person to life. It will give no comfort to the murdered one’s surviving friends, unless they are depraved enough to find comfort in retaliation. It will do the murderer himself no good. If he be unprepared to die, it will precipitate him into the spirit world against all the dictates of religion; and if he have become a penitent — a regenerate man, forgiven of God — man ought to be both ashamed and afraid to be less merciful. It will do the righteous, the well-disposed and tender-hearted, no good. They are grieved and disgusted by such State tragedies. It will do the wicked, the depraved, the hard-hearted, no good. They love such spectacles, crowd eagerly around them, display all the hateful traits of devils incarnate, and go away ripe for violence and bloodshed. Hence our State authorities will not allow them free access to the place of execution, giving tickets of admission only to a few select witnesses, or respectable amateurs of this kind of tragedy. This is proof positive, if proof were wanting, that the hanging of murderers works no good to the wicked. If it did, the more they should see of it the better. Away with a punishment which is as unnecessary as it is anti-Christian.
*** This Punishment is Irreparable
Man can take away life; but he cannot restore it. Many have been put to death for crimes which seemed to have been conclusively proved against them, who were afterwards ascertained beyond doubt, to be innocent. Then their judges and executioners would have given worlds for the power to reverse the fatal sentence — to repair the dreadful error. But there was no remedy — no reparation.
What presumption Is it in ignorant, fallible mortals, themselves daily beggars for Divine mercy, to crush the life out of their guilty fellows; to thrust them from the land of the living into the unknown world of spirits! It is the prerogative of the Most High to kill; for He knoweth when and how to take life, and is able, moreover, to restore it at pleasure. Not so man. In his pride and rashness he kills, and there his power ends. He may stare at the ruin he has wrought; he may deplore it; but he cannot repair it. Alas! for the accusers, the jurors, the judges, the executioners, and their abettors, who presume to quench the flame of human life. The guilt of their victims is no justification of their presumption. Vengeance belongeth unto God alone, who ever judgeth righteously, and can do no wrong. Let man content himself with imposing uninjurious restraint on the outrageous and dangerous. Then if he err in judgment, or in methods of treatment, he can correct his errors, repair his incidental wrongs, and prove himself to be, what he ever ought to be the overcomer of evil with good.
Read the following extracts, and see how liable human tribunals are to put to death the innocent.
<quote>
A few years ago, a poor German came to New York and took lodgings, where he was allowed to do his cooking in the same room with the family. The husband and wife lived in a perpetual quarrel. One day, the German came into the kitchen, with a clasp-knife and a pan of potatoes, and began to pare them for his dinner. The quarrelsome couple were in a more violent altercation than usual, but he sat with his back towards them, and, being ignorant of their language, felt in no danger of being involved in their disputes. But the woman, with a sudden and unexpected movement, snatched the knife from his hand, and plunged it into her husband’s heart. She had sufficient presence of mind to rush into the street, and scream murder. The poor foreigner, in the meanwhile, seeing the wounded man reel, sprang forward to catch him in his arms, and drew out the knife. People from the street crowded in, and found him with the dying man in his arms, the knife in his hand, and blood upon his clothes. The wicked woman swore, in the most positive terms, that he had been fighting with her husband, and had stabbed him with a knife he always carried.
The unfortunate German knew too little English to understand her accusation, or to tell his own story. He was dragged off to ‘ prison, and the true state of the case was made known through an interpreter; but it was not believed. Circumstantial evidence was exceedingly strong against the accused, and the real criminal swore that she saw him commit the murder. He was executed, notwithstanding the most persevering efforts of his lawyer, John Anthon, Esq., whose convictions of the man’s innocence were so painfully strong, that, from that day to this, he has refused to have, any connection with a capital case. Some years after this tragic event, the woman died, and on her deathbed confessed her agency , in the diabolical transaction; but her poor victim could receive no benefit from this tardy repentance. Society had .wantonly thrown away its power to atone for the grievous wrong. — Mrs. Child
A young lady, belonging to a genteel and very proud family in Missouri, was beloved by a young man named Burton; but, unfortunately, her affections were fixed on another, less worthy. He left her with a tarnished reputation. She was by nature energetic and high-spirited; her family were proud, and she lived in the midst of a society which considered revenge a virtue, and named it honor.
Misled by this false popular sentiment, and her own excited feelings, she resolved to repay her lover’s treachery with death. But she kept her secret so well that no one suspected her purpose, though she purchased pistols, and practiced with them daily. Mr. Burton gave evidence of his strong attachment by renewing his attentions when the world looked most coldly on her. His generous kindness won her bleeding heart, but the softening influence of love did not lead her to forego the dreadful purpose she had formed. She watched for a favorable opportunity, and shot her betrayer when no one was near to witness the horrible deed. Some little incident excited the suspicion of Burton, and he induced her to confess. to him the whole transaction.
It was obvious enough that suspicion would naturally fasten upon him, the well-known lover of her who had been so deeply injured. He was arrested; but succeeded in persuading her that he was in no danger. Circumstantial evidence was fearfully against him, and he soon saw that his chance was doubtful; but with affectionate magnanimity he concealed this from her. He was convicted and condemned. A short time before the execution, he endeavored to cut his throat; but his life was saved for the cruel purpose of taking it away according to the cold-blooded barbarism of the law. Pale and wounded, he was hoisted to the gallows, before the gaze of a Christian community. The guilty cause of all this was almost frantic when she found that he had thus sacrificed himself to save her. She immediately published the whole history of her wrongs and her revenge. Her keen sense of wounded honor was in accordance with public sentiment; her wrongs excited indignation and compassion, and the knowledge that an innocent and magnanimous man had been so brutally treated, excited a general revulsion of popular feeling. No one wished for another victim, and she was left unpunished, save by the dreadful records of her memory. — Mrs. Child
</quote>
Hold! all ye vindictives that would take “life for life.” It is impious, cold-hearted presumption in man to do this awful deed! It is anti-Christian, unnecessary, irreparable, abhorrent! We challenge a refutation of these reasons for abolishing the death penalty. They are unanswerable. Let the abomination cease.
|
#title Standard of Practical Christianity
#author Adin Ballou
#date 1839
#source Retrieved on April 11, 2025 from http://www.adinballou.org/standard.shtml
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-04-11T16:20:03
#topics Christian, christianity, religion, religious anarchism
Humbly desirous of promoting Christian piety and morality in their primitive purity, the undersigned do solemnly acknowledge the Principles, Sentiments, and Duties declared in the following Standard, viz.:
We are Christians. Our creed is the New Testament. Our religion is love. Our only law is the will of God. Our grand object is the restoration of man, especially the most fallen and friendless. Our immediate concern is the promotion of useful knowledge, moral improvement, and Christian perfection. We recognize no Spiritual Father but God; no master but Christ. We belong to that kingdom of “righteousness, peace, and joy” which is “not of this world”; whose throne is holiness, whose scepter is truth, whose greatness is humility, whose preeminence is service, whose patriotism is love of enemies, whose heroism is forbearance, whose glory is self-sacrifice, whose wealth is charity, whose triumphs are salvation. Therefore, we can make no earthly object our chief good, nor be governed by any motive but the love of Right, nor compromise duty with worldly convenience, nor seek the preservation of our property, our reputation, our personal liberty, or our life, by the sacrifice of Conscience. We cannot live merely to eat, drink, sleep, gratify our sensual appetites, dress, display ourselves, acquire property, and be accounted great in this world; but to do good.
All that we are and have, with all that God shall ever bestow upon us, we unreservedly dedicate to the cause of universal righteousness, expecting for ourselves in the order of divine providence only a comfortable subsistence until death, and in the world to come eternal life.
Placing unlimited confidence in our Heavenly Father, we distrust all other guidance. We cannot be governed by the will of man, however solemnly and formally declared, nor put our trust in an arm of flesh. Hence we voluntarily withdraw from all interference with the governments of this world. We can take no part in the politics, the administration, or the defense of those governments, either by voting at their polls, holding their offices, aiding in the execution of their legal vengeance, fighting under their banners, claiming their protection against violence, seeking redress in their courts, petitioning their legislatures to enact laws, or obeying their unrighteous requirements. Neither can we participate in any rebellion, insurrection, sedition, riot, conspiracy, or plot against any of these governments, nor resist any of their ordinances by physical force, nor do anything unbecoming a peaceable submission to the existing powers; but will quietly pay the taxes levied upon us, conform to all innocent laws and usages, enjoy all righteous privileges, abstain from all civil commotions, freely express our opinions of governmental acts, and patiently endure whatever penalties we may for conscience’ sake incur.
We cannot employ carnal weapons nor any physical violence whatsoever to compel moral agents to do right, or to prevent their doing wrong — not even for the preservation of our lives. We cannot render evil for evil, railing for railing, wrath for wrath, nor revenge insults and injuries, nor lay up grudges, nor be overcome of evil, nor do otherwise than “love our enemies, bless them that curse us, do good to them that hate us, and pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us.”
We cannot indulge the lust of dominion, nor exercise arbitrary authority, nor cherish bigotry, nor be egotistical, nor receive honorary titles, nor accept flattery, nor seek human applause, nor assume the place of dignity. We cannot be pharisaical, self-righteous, nor dogmatical. We cannot do evil that good may come. We cannot resent reproof, nor justify our faults, nor persist in wrong-doing.
We cannot excommunicate, anathematize, or execrate an apostate, heretic, or reprobate person otherwise than withdrawing our fellowship, refusing our confidence, and declining familiar intercourse.
We cannot be cruel, even to the beasts of the earth. We cannot be inhuman, unmerciful, unjust, unkind, abusive, or injurious to any being of our race. We cannot be indifferent to the sufferings of distressed humanity, nor treat the unfortunate with contempt. But we hold ourselves bound to do good, as we have opportunity, unto all mankind; to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, minister to the sick, visit the imprisoned, entertain the stranger, protect the helpless, comfort the afflicted, plead for the oppressed, seek the lost, lift up the fallen, rescue the ensnared, reclaim the wandering, reform the vicious, enlighten the benighted, instruct the young, admonish the wayward, rebuke the scornful, encourage the penitent, confirm the upright, and diffuse a universal charity.
We cannot go with a multitude to do evil, nor take part with the mighty against the feeble, nor excite enmity between the rich and the poor, nor stand aloof from the friendless, nor abandon them that take refuge with us, nor court the great, nor despise the small, nor be afraid of the terrible, nor take advantage of the timid, nor show respect of persons, nor side with a friend in what is wrong, nor oppose an enemy in what is right, nor forbid others to do good because they follow not us, nor set up names and forms above personal holiness, nor refuse to cooperate with any man, class, or association of men on our own principles in favor of righteousness, nor contemn any new light, improvement, excellence, which may be commended to our attention from any direction whatsoever.
We cannot make a trade or emolument of preaching the gospel, nor be supported therein by unwilling contributions, nor keep back any truth thereof which ought to be declared, nor consent to preach anything more or less than God directs us, nor encourage religious devotion in mere worldly show, nor pursue any course of conduct whereby the money, the smiles, or the frowns of corrupt men may overrule the divine law and testimony. We cannot surrender the right of serving God according to the dictates of our own conscience, nor interfere with others in their exercise of the same liberty.
We hold it impossible to cherish a holy love for mankind without abhorring sin. Therefore, we can give no countenance, express or implied, to any iniquity, vice, wrong, or evil, on the ground that the same is established by law, or is a source of pecuniary profit to any class of men, or is fashionable in high life, or is popular with the multitude; but we hold ourselves bound so much the more to testify plainly, faithfully, and fearlessly against such sins. Hence, we declare our utter abhorrence of war, slavery, intemperance, licentiousness, covetousness, and worldly ambitions in all their forms. We cannot partake in these sins nor apologize for them, nor remain neutral concerning them, nor refrain from rebuking their various manifestations; but must forever abstain from and oppose them.
We cannot promote our own advantage at the expense of others by deceiving, defrauding, corrupting, degrading, overbearing, or impoverishing them. We cannot take away their good name by defamation, nor by retailing the scandal of their enemies, nor by spreading abroad evil reports on mere hearsay authority, nor by wantonly publishing their failings. We cannot be busybodies in other people’s affairs, nor tale-bearers of domestic privacy, nor proclaimers of matters unsuitable for the public ear. We cannot rashly judge men’s motives, nor raise evil suspicions against them, nor join in condemning the accused without a hearing, nor delay reparation to the injured, nor make any one’s necessity our advantage, nor willingly render ourselves burdensome to others, nor cause any one a single unnecessary step for our mere gratification; but we will always deem it “more blessed to give than to receive,” to serve than to be served — sacrificing nothing of holy principle, though, if need be, everything of personal convenience.
We cannot live in idleness, nor be careless or extravagant, nor on the other hand avaricious, parsimonious, or niggardly. We cannot indulge a feverish anxiety in any of our temporal concerns, nor fret ourselves under disappointment, nor repine at anything that marks our lot. We cannot be austere, morose, or rude; nor capricious, ungrateful, or treacherous. We cannot practice dissimulation, nor offer fulsome compliments, nor use a flattering courtesy. We cannot follow pernicious fashions, nor encourage theatrical exhibitions, nor join in frivolous amusements, nor countenance games of chance, nor array ourselves in costly apparel, nor wear useless ornaments, nor put on badges of mourning, nor distinguish ourselves by any peculiar formalities of raiment or language.
We cannot indulge to excess in eating, drinking, sleeping, re creation, labor, study, joy, or sorrow, nor permit our passions to tyrannize over our reason. We cannot harbor pride, envy, anger, malice, wrath, ill-will, sullenness, or peevishness; nor cherish any unholy lusts, imaginations, or tempers.
We cannot swear by any matter of oath, nor make any rash vows, nor offer any extraordinary protestations of our innocence, sincerity, or veracity; nor utter any blasphemy, imprecation, falsehood, obscene expression, foolish jest, or profane exclamation.
We cannot enter into the state of matrimony without grave deliberation and an assurance of divine approbation. We cannot neglect or abuse our families, nor evince any want of natural affection towards our bosom companion, our aged parents, or our helpless offspring. We cannot imbrute our children by disregarding their education, nor by setting them an evil example, nor by over-fondness, nor by harshness and severity, nor by corporeal punishment, nor by petulance and scolding.
We cannot neglect our brethren in their adversity, nor call anything our own when their necessities demand relief, nor be silent when they are unjustly accused or reproached. We cannot speak of their faults in their absence without first having conferred with and admonished them; nor then if they have promised amendment.
We cannot over-urge any person to unite with us, nor resort to undignified artifices of proselytism, nor seek debate with unreasonable men, nor protract a controversy for the sake of the last word, nor introduce sacred subjects for discussion in a company of scorners. Yet we will hold ourselves ready to give an answer to every one that asketh of us a reason for our faith, opinion, or conduct, with meekness, frankness, and patience.
Finally, as disciples of Jesus Christ, before whose judgment seat all must appear, we acknowledge ourselves bound by the most sublime, solemn, and indispensable obligations to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, in all possible respects; and whereinsoever we come short thereof to take shame to ourselves, confess our sins, seek divine pardon, repair to the utmost our delinquencies, and bring forth fruits meet for repentance. And for all this, our sufficiency is of God, to whom be glory, world without end. Amen.
Adin Ballou, David R. Lamson, Daniel S. Whitney, Wm. H. Fish, <em>Ministers</em>.
Charles Gladding, Wm. W. Cook, <em>Laymen</em> <em>Concurring</em>.
|
#title The Constitution of the Practical Christian Republic
#author Adin Ballou
#date 1854
#source Retrieved on April 12, 2025 from http://www.adinballou.org/ConstPCRep.shtml
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-04-12T12:54:22
#topics Christian, program, religion, marriage, education, property, organization
A new order of human society is hereby founded to be called THE PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. It shall be constituted, organized and governed in accordance with the following fundamental articles, to wit:
<strong>ARTICLE 1. OBJECTS.</strong>
The cardinal objects of this Republic are and shall be the following, viz.:
To institute and consolidate a true order of human society, which shall harmonize all individual interests in the common good, and be governed by divine principles as its supreme law.
To establish local Communities of various grades and peculiarities, all acknowledging the sovereignty of divine principles, and so constituted as to promote the highest happiness of their respective associates.
To confederate all such local Communities, wheresoever existing throughout the earth, by an ascending series of combination, in one common social Republic.
To ensure to every orderly citizen of this Republic a comfortable home, suitable employment, adequate subsistence, congenial associates, a good education, proper stimulants to personal righteousness, sympathetic aid in distress, and due protection in the exercise of all natural rights.
To give mankind a practical illustration of civil government maintained in just subordination to divine principles; which shall be powerful without tyranny, benignant without weakness, dignified without ostentation, independent without defiance, invincible without resorting to injurious force, and preeminently useful without being burdensome.
To institute and sustain every suitable instrumentality for removing the causes of human misery, and promoting the conversion of the world to true righteousness.
To multiply, economize, distribute and apply beneficently, wisely and successfully, all the means necessary to harmonize the human race, with each other, with the heavenly world, and with the universal Father; that in one grand communion of angels and men the will of God may be done on earth as it is in heaven.
<strong>ARTICLE 2. PRINCIPLES.</strong>
We proclaim the absolute sovereignty of divine principles over all human beings, combinations, associations, governments, institutions, laws, customs, habits, practices, actions, opinions, intentions and affections. We recognize in the Religion of Jesus Christ, as he taught and exemplified it, a complete annunciation and attestation of essential divine principles.
We accept and acknowledge the following as divine Principles of Theological Truth.
We hold ourselves imperatively bound by the sovereignty of these acknowledged divine principles, never, under any pretext whatsoever, to kill, injure, envy or hate any human being, even our worst enemy.
Never to sanction chattel slavery, or any obvious oppression of man by man.
Never to countenance war, or capital punishment, or the infliction of injurious penalties, or the resistance of evil with evil in any form.
Never to violate the dictates of chastity, by adultery, polygamy, concubinage, fornication, self-pollution, lasciviousness, amative abuse, impure language or cherished lust.
Never to manufacture, buy, sell, deal out or use any intoxicating liquor as a beverage.
Never to take or administer an oath.
Never to participate in a sword-sustained human government, either as voters, office-holders, or subordinate assistants, in any case prescriptively involving the infliction of death, or any absolute injury whatsoever by man on man; nor to invoke governmental interposition in any such case, even for the accomplishment of good objects.
Never to indulge self-will, bigotry, love of preeminence, covetousness, deceit, profanity, idleness or an unruly tongue.
Never to participate in lotteries, gambling, betting or pernicious amusements.
Never to resent reproof, or justify ourselves in a known wrong.
Never to aid, abet or approve others in any thing sinful; but through divine assistance always to recommend and promote, with our entire influence, the holiness and happiness of all.
<strong>ARTICLE 3. RIGHTS.</strong>
No member of this Republic, nor Association of its members, can have a right to violate any of its acknowledged divine principles; but all the members, however peculiarized by sex, age, color, native country, rank, calling, wealth or station, have equal and indefeasible rights, as human beings, to do, to be and to enjoy whatever they are capable of, that is not in violation of those Principles. Within these just limits no person shall be restricted or interfered with by this Republic, nor by any constituent Association thereof, in the exercise of the following declared rights, viz.:
The right to worship God, with or without external ceremonies and devotional observances, according to the dictates of his or her own conscience.
The right to exercise reason, investigate questions, form opinions and declare convictions, by speech, by the pen and by the press, on all subjects within the range of human thought.
The right to hold any official station to which he or she may be elected, to pursue any avocation, or follow any course in life, according to genius, attraction and taste.
The right to be stewards under God of his or her own talents, property, skill and personal endowments.
The right to form and enjoy particular friendships, with congenial minds.
The right to contract marriage, and sustain the sacred relationships of family.
The right to unite with, and also to withdraw from any Community or Association, on reciprocal terms at discretion.
In fine, the right to seek happiness in all rightful ways, and by all innocent means.
<strong>ARTICLE 4. MEMBERSHIP.</strong>
<strong>Section 1.</strong> Membership in this Republic shall exist in seven Circles, viz. the Adoptive, the Unitive, the Preceptive, the Communitive, the Expansive, the Charitive, and the Parentive.
The Adoptive Circle shall include all members living in isolation, or not yet admitted into the membership of an Integral Community.
The Unitive Circle shall include all members of Rural and Joint Stock Communities.
The Preceptive Circle shall include all members specially and perseveringly devoted to teaching; whether it be teaching, religion, morality, or any branch of useful knowledge, and whether their teaching be done with the living voice, or with the pen, or through the press, or in educative institutions. All such teachers, after having proved themselves competent, devoted and acceptable in the Communities to which they belong, shall be considered in the Preceptive Circle.
The Communitive Circle shall include all members of Integral Common Stock Communities, and Families, whose internal economy excludes individual profits on capital, wages for labor, and separate interests.
The Expansive Circle shall include all members who are especially devoted to the expansion of this Republic, by founding and strengthening new Integral Communities; who have associated in companies for that express purpose, and are employing the principal portion of their time, talents or property in that work.
The Charitive Circle shall include all members who are especially devoted to the reformation, elevation, improvement and welfare of the world's suffering classes, by furnishing them homes, employment, instruction and all the requisite helps to a better condition; who are associated in companies for that express purpose, and are employing the principal portion of their time, talents or property in such works.
The Parentive Circle shrill include all members, who, on account of their mature age, faithful services, great experience, sound judgment or unquestionable reliability, are competent to advise, arbitrate and recommend measures in cases of great importance. They shall be declared worthy of a place in the Parentive Circle by their respective Integral Communities in a regular meeting notified for that purpose by a unanimous vote.
<strong>Section 2.</strong> The members of no Circle shall ever assume to exercise any other than purely moral or advisory power; nor claim any exclusive prerogatives, privileges, honors or distinctions whatsoever, over the members of other Circles; but shall be entitled to respect and influence in consideration of intrinsic worth alone. Nor shall there be any permanent general organization of these Circles as such. But the members of either may unite in cooperative associations, companies and partnerships for the more efficient prosecution of their peculiar objects; and may also hold public meetings, conferences and conventions at pleasure in promotion of those objects.
<strong>Section 3.</strong> Any person may be admitted a member of this Republic by any constituent Community, or other authorized public body thereof in regular meeting assembled. And any twelve or more persons, adopting this Constitution from conviction, may render themselves members of the Republic by uniting to form a constituent and confederate Community thereof.
<strong>Section 4.</strong> Any person may resign or withdraw membership at discretion, or may recede from either of the other Circles to the Adoptive Circle, by giving written notice to the body or principal persons concerned. Any person uniting with a Society of any description, radically opposed in principle, practice or spirit to this Republic, shall be deemed to have relinquished membership; likewise any person who shall have ceased to manifest any interest in its affairs for the space of three years.
<strong>Section 5.</strong> Any constituent Community, or other organized body of this Republic, competent to admit members, shall have power to dismiss or discharge them for justifiable reasons. And no person shall be retained a member after persistently violating or setting at naught any one of the sovereign divine principles declared in Article 2. of this Constitution.
<strong>ARTICLE 5. ORGANIZATION.</strong>
<strong>Section 1</strong>. The constituent and confederate bodies of this social Republic shall be the following, viz.: Parochial Communities, Integral Communities, Communal Municipalities, Communal States, and Communal Nations.
<strong>Section 2.</strong> Parochial Communities shall consist each of twelve or more members belonging chiefly to the Adoptive Circle, residing promiscuously in a general neighborhood, associated for religious and moral improvement, and to secure such other social advantages as may be found practicable.
<strong>Section 3</strong>. Integral Communities shall consist each of twelve or more members, inhabiting an integral territorial domain so held in possession and guaranteed that no part thereof can be owned in fee simple by any person not a member of this Republic.
There shall be three different kinds of Integral Communities, viz.: Rural, Joint Stock, and Common Stock Communities.
Rural Communities shall hold and manage the major portion of their respective domains in separate homesteads, adapted to the wants of families and to small associations, under a system of Individual Proprietorship.
Joint Stock Communities shall hold and manage the major portion of their respective domains in Joint Stock Proprietorship, with various unitary economies, under a system of associative cooperation; laying off the minor portion into village house lots, to be sold to individual members under necessary restrictions.
Common Stock Communities shall hold and manage their respective domains and property in Common Stock, without paying individual members profits on capital, or stipulated wages for labor. Common Stock Families may also be formed within Rural and Joint Stock Communities, when deemed desirable and practicable; in which case such families shall not be considered Integral Communities, but as constituent portions of the Communities on whose domains they respectively reside.
<strong>Section 4.</strong> Communal Municipalities shall consist each of two or more Communities, whether Parochial or Integral, combined, as in a town or city, for municipal purposes necessary to their common welfare and impracticable or extremely difficult of accomplishment without such a union.
<strong>Section 5.</strong> Communal States shall consist of two or more Communal Municipalities, combined for general purposes necessary to their common welfare and impracticable or extremely difficult of accomplishment without such a union.
<strong>Section 6.</strong> Communal Nations shall consist each of two or more Communal States, combined for national purposes necessary to their common welfare and impracticable or extremely difficult of accomplishment without such a union.
<strong>Section 7.</strong> When there shall be, two or more Communal Nations, they shall be represented equitably, according to population, in a Supreme Unitary Council, by Senators elected for the term of - years.
<strong>Section 8.</strong> The several constituent bodies of this social Republic, herein before named, shall all be organized under written Constitutions, Compacts or Fundamental Laws, not inconsistent with this general Constitution, and shall exercise the governmental prerogatives and responsibilities defined in the next ensuing Article.
<strong>ARTICLE 6. GOVERNMENT.</strong>
<strong>Section 1.</strong> Self-government in the Individual, the Family, and the primary congenial Association, under the immediate sovereignty of divine principles, being the basis of moral and social order in this Republic, shall be constantly cherished as indispensable to its prosperity. Therefore all governmental powers vested in the confederate bodies of this Republic shall be such as are obviously beneficent, and such as cannot be conveniently exercised by the primary Communities, or their component circles. And such confederate bodies shall never assume to exercise governmental powers not clearly delegated to them by their constituents.
<strong>Section 2.</strong> Each Parochial, and each Integral Community, shall exert its utmost ability to insure all its members and dependents a full realization of the guarantees specified in Object 4, Article 1 of this Constitution, viz.: a comfortable home, suitable employment, adequate subsistence, congenial associates, a good education, proper stimulants to personal righteousness, sympathetic aid in distress and due protection in the exercise of all natural rights. And whereinsoever it shall find itself unable to realize the said guarantees, it may unite with other Communities to insure them, by such means as shall be mutually agreed on for that purpose. Each Community shall have the right to frame, adopt and alter its own Constitution and laws; to elect its own officers, teachers and representatives; and to manage its own domestic affairs of every description, without interference from any other constituent body or authority of this Republic; excepting, always, the prerogatives which it shall have specifically delegated, or referred to others.
<strong>Section 3.</strong> Each Communal Municipality shall be formed by a Convention of delegates, chosen for that purpose by the Communities proposing to unite in such a Municipality. The delegates shall be chosen equitably on the basis of population. These delegates shall form a Constitution or Fundamental Compact, clearly defining the governmental powers to be exercised by the Municipal authorities; which, having been submitted to the voting members of the Communities concerned, and adopted, the Municipality shall be considered established, and shall go into organized operation accordingly. But either of the Communities composing such Municipality shall have the right to secede therefrom, after giving one year's notice, paying all assessments due the corporation at the time of such notice, and relinquishing its share of the public property therein. Or the union of two or more Communities, constituting a Municipality, may be dissolved at any time by mutual agreement of the federative parties.
<strong>Section 4.</strong> Each Communal State shall be formed by a Convention of delegates from the Municipalities proposing to unite in the same, through a process substantially similar to the one prescribed in the preceding Section, but without the right of secession therein reserved. And each Communal Nation shall be formed by the States proposing to unite therein, in general accordance with the same process.
<strong>Section 5.</strong> The duties and powers of the Supreme Unitary Council shall be determined in a Fundamental Compact, to be framed by delegates from all the Communal Nations then existing, and adopted by at least two-thirds of the citizen members of this Republic present and acting in their respective primary Communities, at meetings duly notified for that purpose. And all questions throughout this Republic, excepting the election of officers, shall be determined by a two-thirds vote.
<strong>Section 6.</strong> No official servant of any grade in this Republic shall ever assume to distinguish himself or herself by external display of dress, equipage or other artificial appliances, above the common members; nor shall receive compensation for official services beyond the average paid to the first class of operatives at large, with a reasonable allowance for incidental expenses; but every official servant shall be considered bound to exemplify the humility, modesty and benevolence inculcated in the Christian precept, "Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be the servant of all." Nor shall it be allowable for any of the constitutional bodies of this Republic to burthen the people with governmental expenses for mere worldly show, or for any other than purposes of unquestionable public utility.
<strong>ARTICLE 7. RELIGION.</strong>
<strong>Section 1.</strong> Acknowledging the Christian Religion as one of fundamental divine principles, to be practically carried out in all human conduct, this Republic insists only on the essentials of faith and practice affirmed in Article 2 of its Constitution. Therefore no uniform religious or ecclesiastical system of externals shall be established; nor shall any rituals, forms, ceremonies or observances whatsoever be either instituted, or interdicted; but each Community shall determine for itself, with due regard to the conscientious scruples of its own members, all matters of this nature.
<strong>Section 2.</strong> Believing that the Holy Christ-Spirit will raise up competent religious and moral teachers, and commend them, by substantial demonstrations of their fitness, to the confidence of those to whom they minister, this Republic shall not assume to commission, authorize or forbid any person to preach, or to teach religion; nor shall any constituent body thereof assume to do so. But each Community may invite any person deemed worthy of confidence, to be their religious teacher on terms reciprocally satisfactory to the parties concerned.
<strong>Section 3.</strong> It shall be the privilege and duty of the members of this Republic to hold general meetings, at least once in three months, for religious improvement and the promulgation of their acknowledged divine principles. In order to this, Quarterly Conferences shall be established in every general region of country inhabited by any considerable number of members. Any twenty-five or more members, wheresoever resident, shall be competent to establish a Quarterly Conference, whenever they may deem the same necessary to their convenience. In so doing, they shall adopt a written Constitution, subsidiary to this general Constitution, and no wise incompatible therewith; under which they may establish such regulations as they shall deem promotive of their legitimate objects. All such Conferences shall have power to admit members into the Adoptive Circle of this Republic; and also, for sufficient reasons, to discharge them. And each Quarterly Conference shall keep reliable records of its proceedings, with an authentic copy of this general Constitution prefixed.
<strong>ARTICLE 8. MARRIAGE.</strong>
<strong>Section 1</strong>. Marriage, being one of the most important and sacred of human relationships, ought to be guarded against caprice and abuse by the highest wisdom which is available. Therefore, within the membership of this Republic and the dependencies thereof, Marriage is specially commended to the care of the Preceptive and Parentive Circles. They are hereby designated as the confidential counselors of all members and dependents who may desire their mediation in cases of matrimonial negotiation, contract or controversy; and shall be held preeminently responsible for the prudent and faithful discharge of their duties. But no person decidedly averse to their interposition shall be considered under imperative obligation to solicit or accept it. And it shall be considered the perpetual duty of the Preceptive and Parentive Circles to enlighten the public mind relative to the requisites of true matrimony, and to elevate the marriage institution within this Republic to the highest possible plane of purity and happiness.
<strong>Section 2.</strong> Marriage shall always be solemnized in the presence of two or more witnesses, by the distinct acknowledgment of the parties before some member of the Preceptive, or of the Parentive Circles, selected to preside on the occasion. And it shall be the imperative duty of the member so presiding, to see that every such marriage be recorded, within ten days thereafter, in the Registry of the Community to which one or both of them shall at the time belong.
<strong>Section 3.</strong> Divorce from the bonds of matrimony shall never be allowable within the membership of this Republic, except for adultery conclusively proved against the accused party. But separations for other sufficient reasons may be sanctioned, with the distinct understanding that neither party shall be at liberty to marry again during the natural lifetime of the other.
<strong>ARTICLE 9. EDUCATION.</strong>
<strong>Section 1.</strong> The proper education of the rising generation, being indispensable to the prosperity and glory of this Republic, it shall be amply provided for as a cardinal want; and no child shall be allowed to grow up any where under the control of its membership, without good educational opportunities.
<strong>Section 2.</strong> Education shall be as comprehensive and thorough as circumstances in each case will allow. It shall aim, in all cases, to develop harmoniously the physical, intellectual, moral and social faculties of the young. To give them, if possible, a high-toned moral character, based on scrupulous conscientiousness and radical Christian principles - a sound mind, well stored with useful knowledge, and capable of inquiring, reasoning and judging for itself - a healthful, vigorous body, suitably fed, exercised, clothed, lodged and recreated - good domestic habits, including personal cleanliness, order, propriety, agreeableness and generous social qualities - industrial executiveness and skill, in one or more of the avocations necessary to a comfortable subsistence - and, withal, practical economy in pecuniary matters. In fine, to qualify them for solid usefulness and happiness in all the rightful pursuits and relations of life.
<strong>Section 3.</strong> The Preceptive Circle of members shall be expected to distinguish themselves by a zealous, wise and noble devotion to this great interest of education. And every individual, family private association and constituent body of this Republic, in their respective spheres, shall cooperate, by every reasonable effort, to render its educational institutions, from the nursery to the University, preeminently excellent.
<strong>ARTICLE 10. PROPERTY.</strong>
<strong>Section 1.</strong> All property, being primarily the Creator's and provided by Him for the use of mankind during their life on earth, ought to be acquired, aided and disposed of in strict accordance with the dictates of justice and charity. Therefore the members of this Republic shall consider themselves stewards in trust, under God, of all property coming into their possession, and, as such, imperatively bound not to consume it in the gratification of their own inordinate lusts, nor to hoard it up as a mere treasure, nor to employ it to the injury of any human being, nor to withhold it from the relief of distressed fellow creatures, but always to use it as not abusing it, for strictly just, benevolent and commendable purposes.
<strong>Section 2</strong>. It shall not be deemed compatible with justice for the people of this Republic, in their pecuniary commerce with each other, to demand, in any case, as a compensation for their mere personal service, labor or attendance, a higher price per cent, per piece, per day, week, month or year, than the average paid to the first class of operatives in the Community, or general vicinity, where the service is rendered. Nor shall it be deemed compatible with justice for the members, in such commerce, to demand, as a price for anything sold or exchanged, more than the fair cost value thereof, as nearly as the same can be estimated, reckoning prime cost, labor or attention, incidental expenses, contingent waste, depreciation and average risks of sale; nor to demand for the mere use of capital, except as partners in the risk of its management, any clear interest or profit whatsoever exceeding four per cent. per annum.
<strong>Section 3.</strong> It shall not be deemed compatible with the welfare and honor of this Republic, for the people thereof to owe debts outside of the same exceeding three-fourths of their available property, rated at a moderate valuation by disinterested persons; nor to give or receive long credits, except on real estate security; nor to manufacture, fabricate or sell shammy and unreliable productions; nor to make business engagements, or hold out expectations, which are of doubtful fulfillment
<strong>Section 4.</strong> Whenever the population and resources of this Republic shall warrant the formation of the first Communal Nation, and the government thereof shall have been organized, a uniform system of Mutual Banking shall be established, based mainly on real estate securities, which shall afford loans at the mere cost of operations. Also, a uniform system of Mutual Insurance, which shall reduce all kinds of insurance to the lowest terms. Also, a uniform system of reciprocal Commercial Exchange, which shall preclude all needless interventions between producers and consumers, all extra risks of property, all extortionate speculations, all inequitable profits on exchange, and all demoralizing expedients of trade. Also, Regulations providing for the just encouragement of useful industry, and the practical equalization of all social advantages, so far as the same can be done without infracting individual rights. And all the members shall be considered under sacred moral obligations to cooperate adhesively and persistently in every righteous measure for the accomplishment of these objects.
<strong>ARTICLE 11. POLICY.</strong>
It shall be the fundamental, uniform and established policy of this Republic:
To govern, succor and protect its own people, to the utmost of its ability, in all matters and cases whatsoever, not involving anti-Christian conflict with the sword-sustained governments of the world under which its members live.
To avoid all unnecessary conflicts whatsoever with these governments, by conforming to all their laws and requirements which are not repugnant to the sovereignty of divine principles.
To abstain from all participation in the working of their political machinery, and to be connected as little as possible with their systems of governmental operation.
To protest, remonstrate and testify conscientiously against their sins on moral grounds alone; but never to plot schemes of revolutionary agitation, intrigue or violence against them, nor be implicated in countenancing the least resistance to their authority by injurious force.
If compelled in any case, by divine principles, to disobey their requirements, or passively to withstand their unrighteous exactions, and thus incur their penal vengeance, to act openly, and suffer with true moral heroism.
Never to ask their protection, even in favor of injured innocence, or threatened rights, when it can be interposed only by means which are condemned by divine principles.
To live in peace, so far as can innocently be done, with all mankind outside of this Republic, whether individuals, associations, corporations, sects, classes, parties, states or nations; also to accredit and encourage whatever is truly good in all; yet to fellowship iniquity in none, be enslaved by none, be amalgamated with none, be morally responsible for none, but ever be distinctly, unequivocally and uncompromisingly the Practical Christian Republic, until the complete regeneration of the world.
<strong>ARTICLE 12. AMENDMENT.</strong>
Whenever one-fourth of all the members of this Republic shall subscribe and publish a written proposition to alter, amend or revise this Constitution, such proposition, of whatsoever nature, shall be submitted to each Community for consideration. Returns shall then be made of all the votes cast in every Community, to the highest organized body of the Republic for the time being. And the concurrence of two-thirds of all the votes shall determine the question or questions at issue. If the proposition shall have been a specific alteration or amendment of the Constitution, it shall thenceforth be established as such. If a Convention shall have been proposed to revise the Constitution, a Convention shall be summoned and hold accordingly. But no alteration, amendment or revision of this Constitution shall take effect until sanctioned by two-thirds of all the members present and acting thereon in their respective Communities, at regular meetings duly notified for that purpose.
|
#LISTtitle Hopedale Community Declaration
#title The Hopedale Community Declaration
#author Adin Ballou
#date 1847
#source Retrieved on April 11, 2025 from http://www.adinballou.org/declaration.shtml
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-04-11T16:26:35
#topics Christian, religion, christianity, manifesto
I believe in the religion of Jesus Christ as he taught and exemplified it according to the Scriptures of the New Testament.
I acknowledge myself a bounden subject of all its moral obligations. Especially do I hold myself bound by its holy requirements,
Never, under any pretext whatsoever, to kill, assault, beat, torture, enslave, rob, oppress, persecute, defraud, corrupt, slander, revile, injure, envy, or hate any human being-even my worst enemy;
Never in any manner to violate the dictates of pure chastity;
Never to take or administer an oath;
Never to manufacture, buy, sell, deal out, or use any intoxicating liquor as a beverage;
Never to serve in the army, navy, or militia of any Nation, State, or Chieftain;
Never to bring an action at law, hold office, vote, join in a legal posse, petition a legislature, or ask governmental interposition, in any case involving a final authorized resort to physical violence;
Never to indulge self-will, bigotry, love of pre-eminence, covetousness, deceit, profanity, idleness, or an unruly tongue;
Never to participate in lotteries, games of chance, betting, or pernicious amusements;
Never to resent reproof or justify myself in a known wrong;
Never to aid, abet, or approve others in anything sinful;
But through divine assistance always to recommend and promote with my entire influence the holiness and happiness of all mankind.
|
#title Autonomy in Conflict
#author Adrian Wohlleben
#date December 2022
#source Retrieved on 2023-08-02 from [[https://illwill.com/autonomy-in-conflict][illwill.com/autonomy-in-conflict]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2023-08-02T01:35:53
#topics autonomy, struggle, conflict
#notes <em>The Reservoir Vol. 1 is available online through</em> <em>Autonomedia</em><em>. Opened in 2014, Woodbine is an experimental hub of communist life in Ridgewood, New York.</em> The Reservoir’s <em>second issue, entitled “</em><em>Communion</em><em>,” will be released later this summer.</em>
In the following essay, first published in Woodbine’s new print-only journal, <em>The Reservoir</em>, Adrian Wohlleben argues that we ought to make room for a third sense of the term “autonomy.” Whereas its two traditional meanings refer variously to material independence or self-legislation, what Wohlleben calls “strategic autonomy” is only thinkable from within a dynamic of active and ongoing struggle. As the author puts it, what is in question is “the capacity to break the frame of a conflict while fighting it, to change the problem around which the intelligibility of the clash depends, and thereby to seize the initiative.”
-----
We inherit two principal senses of the word “autonomy” from the Western tradition: as self-legislation, and as self-reproduction.
According to its first sense, the term broadly means free will or free choice, an act of spontaneous self-obedience on the part of a rational subject. The same idea has both negative and positive valences. Negatively, autonomy refers to that domain of experience that is not subject to heteronomous forces beyond my control, either in the form of physical forces dictating my desires (laws of nature), or the arbitrary preferences of other people. At a more “positive” level, the idea is that, since I am most free when I obey only myself, autonomy means <em>autos-nomos</em>, the act whereby I discover practical principles of action within myself and follow them, principles that may to this extent be considered “laws of freedom.”
According to the second and somewhat older sense, autonomy means material self-reliance or independence. Do we possess the means necessary to fulfill the basic reproduction of our lives without having to sell ourselves to others? This sense of the term extends back to rights of gleaning in the Book of Ruth, as well as to conflicts around the “commons” and subsistence rights, from the Magna Carta to Marx’s early articles on the theft of wood. Here autonomy is less about discovering rules of freedom that bind all free and rational beings through a “kingdom of ends” than it is about arriving at a degree of economic and territorial independence that enables us to live without bending the knee or selling ourselves for a wage: what is the material threshold beyond which I don’t need to rely on hostile powers to survive?
Of course, these two conceptions are not always easily separated. For example, our models for comprehending social antagonism tend to oscillate between both senses of autonomy. The “J-Curve,” for instance, a popular tool among crisis theorists, tells us that revolts are triggered by the destabilization or deprivation of either one or the other sense of autonomy at a sufficiently rapid pace: a loss of rights or relative social status, or else, a rapid increase in the price of bread or fuel.
Without casting either of these two canonical interpretations aside, it is perhaps time that we make room for a third sense of autonomy. Whereas the first sense refers to our interior freedom, and the second to our relative material independence, the third is only thinkable from within a dynamic of active and ongoing struggle.
There is a mode of autonomy that belongs specifically to uprisings and situations of political polarization between contending forces. What I propose we call “strategic autonomy” refers to the capacity to break out of the frame of a conflict <em>while fighting it</em>, to change the problem around which the intelligibility of the clash depends, and thereby to seize the initiative. It is a question of seizing and retaining agency at the level of meaning as such, of the very framework of partisanship that conjugates and differentiates friend, enemy, and “ally.”
Recall how, within weeks, the Yellow Vest movement had outstripped any reference to the “fuel tax”; or how the viral slogan “<em>too little, too late</em>” during the 2019 Hong Kong uprising exposed the rupture and mutation that the antagonism had undergone. In each case, the rapid escalation and lateral drift of the conflict had eclipsed the initial demands of the movement, resulting in a broader and more complex framework with unclear borders. Generally speaking, wherever the virtual coordinates of the antagonism shift, no backtracking is possible.
If it makes sense to speak of such mutation-points or breakaway moments as a form of “autonomy,” this is because they attest to an inherently-collective capacity to maintain the initiative, to play the role of <em>form-giving force</em> within an unfolding dynamic. Whoever determines the frame of a conflict compels all neighboring forces to react and follow. Similarly, when an uprising overflows the terms through which it was catalyzed, those who wish to subdue it must first chase down the meaning of the antagonism from its participants. In France and Hong Kong, as the frame of dissensus began to expand and mutate, the state began frantically attempting to identify so-called leaders or representatives, in the hopes of securing mediators with whom new demands could be stabilized, new terms for the expiration of hostilities. The situation became so unruly that Emmanuel Macron had to travel the country holding “town hall” meetings with mayors just to reestablish his presence within the field, a tour that routinely met with embarrassment and failure.
The concept of strategic autonomy points to the inevitability, within any given social polarization, of a conflict over conflict. It is a serious mistake to treat movements merely as ready-made narratives one must either accept or reject. The fact is, whether consciously or not, every actual political rupture involves a virtual confrontation over the very coordinates of dissension, an attempt to force the other side to recognize the very matter of non-recognition, and by doing so, to <em>occupy the grounds of our divorce</em>. Whichever side maintains the upper hand in this battle will generally dictate not only which actions, tactical repertoire, and targets fit within the scope of the polarization, but also the horizon of what counts as victory, what “winning” looks like, and even, to an important extent, the idea of happiness that the struggle projects ahead of itself. Whereas “fidelity” to the event is important after its closure (when its memory has become subject to dispute), while the window remains open the priority must be placed on the potentiality for breakaways, widenings, and treason to its origins. Strategic autonomy coincides with moments in which we succeed in producing a new <em>problem</em>, which is another way of saying: a new evaluation of the important and the unimportant, the tolerable and the intolerable, in response to which the boundaries of what falls into dispute shift, enabling the inclusion of new composing elements.
In sum, autonomy in this third sense is related neither to material independence nor self-legislation but to the irreducibly collective capacity to retain the initiative at the highest level of warfare, namely, the capacity to dictate the nature of the conflict itself, and to align this with another set of values, with our idea of power and happiness.
One advantage of this concept is that it allows us to name a key way in which movements die out, lose steam, or wind up co-opted and defanged. The inability to contest and exceed their given frameworks of struggle ensures that, once movements run up against their limits (either through victory or defeat), there is little room to move: they will either be fractured internally, or succumb to recuperative recoding.
For example, the consistency of the ZAD at Notre-dame-des-Landes depended upon the horizon afforded by the construction of the airport. However, in spite of its ferocity, ingenuity, and unprecedented duration, the movement was never truly able to forcibly pivot into a frame of struggle that pointed beyond it. As a result, when the state withdrew the airport from the equation it found itself without a framework allowing it to push through its internal contradictions, leaving it much more vulnerable to external repression.[2]
Whereas the voided horizon following the ZAD’s victory opened a wedge for an external attack, the George Floyd revolt encountered a similar limit, only in reverse order. An early yet unrepeatable victory left the movement stillborn, inviting an opportunistic redirection of its frame. The uprising began as a memetic wave of anti-police demolition unified by a single practical aim: to destroy the places from which police violence is organized — precincts, substations, courthouses — as well as the cars and vans that circulate it... and, having done so, to consummate their absence through looting, vandalism, and festivity. However, after the first five days, when the victorious siege in Minneapolis was unable to be repeated elsewhere and the police reconquered the streets, the memetic contagion of the real movement crashed against its ballistic limits, stripping it of its practical orientation, and leaving the framework of conflict indeterminate. It was into this absence of horizon that a <em>social movement apparatus</em> was able to intervene and reframe the nature of the conflict from a <em>demolitionist</em> wave of attacks into an <em>abolitionist</em> dialectic of policy, in which activists speaking in the name of the rebellion sought dialogue with, and made demands upon, ruling institutions to implement so-called “non-reformist reforms.”[1]
The reframing of the conflict restored the rights to political discourse that had been stripped away by the first wave of revolt, forcing revolutionaries to adjust their strategies. Whereas it had previously been possible to swim within the demolitionist wave, it now became necessary to intervene into the ritualized social movement apparatus in order to attempt, wherever possible, to expand or break its frame. As occurred during France’s 2016’s <em>Loi travail</em> movement, an effort was made to transmit a virus across the social movementist platform in the hopes of provoking desertions from the ranks of the Left. In 2020, this virus assumed the form of a <em>frontliner culture</em> adapted from Hong Kong, which had deterritorialized black bloc tactics from the anarchist milieu and distilled them into pure techniques that circulated freely within the global tactical toolbox. Of course, memes that do not fold organically but must be <em>injected</em> or transmitted across a hostile milieu necessarily encounter a host of familiar obstacles: tactical fetishism, activism, a poverty of ethical and strategic horizons, etc. Sometimes these can be overcome, and the spread of radical actions in the street is able to ward-off or block the way to hostile counter-actualizations — for instance, when the pillaging of capitalist storefronts during the Yellow Vests made it impossible for the far-right to symbolically co-opt the movement for their cause. At other times no amount of escalatory action will suffice to induce a shift in an inauspicious framework of conflict, and our time is best spent doing something else.
Just as we have learned to speak of the molecular production of places of shared life in contemporary uprisings (Tahrir Square, Gezi Park, etc.) as “movement communism,” there is a <em>movement vitalism</em> that must be cultivated and expanded alongside it. To do so requires that we never take the <em>given</em> framework of a movement or conflict as exhaustive. Instead, we must train our attention on the potentiality for aberrant mutations that break away and burst the coordinates of the fight, unlocking powers unknown at the outset. Such autonomy is something we experience only at the moment we place our positions at risk by engaging in unholy alliances, when we link up and fight with groups of people who may not share our point of view, that pull us out of our comfort zone.
[1] See Adrian Wohlleben, “Memes without End,” <em>Ill Will,</em> May 2021. [[https://illwill.com/memes-without-end][illwill.com/memes-without-end]]
[2] See Mauvaise Troupe, “Victory and its Consequences,” <em>Liaisons</em> 2. [[https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/victory-and-its-consequences-part-i/][thenewinquiry.com/blog/victory-and-its-consequences-part-i]]
|
#title Class War, Reaction & the Italian Anarchists
#subtitle A study of the Italian anarchist movement in the first quarter of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, its influence on the labour movement, its history of organization and its struggles and strategies.
#author Adriana Dadà
#SORTauthors Adriana Dadà, Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici
#SORTtopics class war, repression, Italian anarchism, Italy, fascism, history, labor movement, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, Errico Malatesta, World War I
#date 1982
#source Retrieved on 17<sup>th</sup> October 2021 from [[http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen/press/pamphlets/sla-3/index.htm][www.fdca.it]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-10-17T16:29:50
#notes Pamphlet No. 3 in the <em>Studies for a Libertarian Alternative</em> series, published by the Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici. Translation by Nestor McNab. Italian original in “<em>Storia della società italiana</em>”, Volume XXI — <em>La disgregazione dello stato liberale</em>, published by Teti Editore, Milan, 1982.
<strong>At the start of the twentieth century, the Italian anarchist movement was rediscovering its ability to appear as an organized presence thanks in part to its work among the masses and the organic links which many militants had established since the 1890s with the new workers’ and peasants’ organizations. In the 1880s, as a result of the move to the tactic of “propaganda by the deed” by the international anarchist movement in reply to government repression, the path had been cleared for a tendency which was far from the established Bakuninist line. This was the anti-organizationalist tendency, which brought to an extreme the concept of the autonomy of the group and of the individual, with the result that any remaining organizational structures were destroyed.</strong><strong>..</strong>
** <strong>Part I: Introduction</strong>
At the start of the twentieth century, the Italian anarchist movement was rediscovering its ability to appear as an organized presence thanks in part to its work among the masses and the organic links which many militants had established since the 1890s with the new workers’ and peasants’ organizations [1]. In the 1880s, as a result of the move to the tactic of “propaganda by the deed” by the international anarchist movement in reply to government repression, the path had been cleared for a tendency which was far from the established Bakuninist line. This was the anti-organizationalist tendency, which brought to an extreme the concept of the autonomy of the group and of the individual, with the result that any remaining organizational structures were destroyed.
This revision (which took place at the same time as the social-democratic revisionism within the Marxist camp) was greatly influenced in many ways by an extremist reading of the revolutionary optimism and scientific determinism of Kropotkin who, in turn, had been profoundly influenced by positivism. While this revision did not reject Bakuninist ideas, it did in effect stop them from being put into practice by denying the importance of organization as an indispensable element of revolutionary action and the building of a future society. The anarchist communist project was replaced by a harmonistic vision of society. This vision relied on a hypothetical casual, fatalistic coincidence of common interests in order for there to arise the possibility of a collective agreement on the need for revolution and the running of the post-revolutionary society which would follow it. The rejection of any form of organization, brought to an extreme by those who fell under the influence of Kropotkin, had as its result the exaltation of individual action, the most exasperated spontaneism and the use of terrorism and led to isolation from the masses, something which was enormously deleterious. On a theoretical level, it led to a split between the pro-organizational anarchist communist tendency and the various other harmonistic and deterministic tendencies, the anti-organizationalists or individualists.
Just as the bombs of the 1880s and ‘90s had been the desperate reaction to the frustration produced by the bloody crushing of the Commune and the repression of the First International, anarcho-syndicalism became the response to the blind alley into which anarchism had been forced by terrorist action (which “propaganda by the deed” had degenerated into). In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the workers’ movement was developing in leaps and bounds both in Europe and in the United States, moving from mutualism to resistance. Given the “degeneration” of the anarchist party, a large number of its members (above all the more obscure ones and particularly those who were workers, or close to them) favoured this path. By doing so, they were in effect maintaining an ideological and strategic continuity that was characteristic of this tendency (also at an international level) at the start of the new century. Nonetheless, in the 1890s, alongside this rebirth in favour of organization which was to manifest itself in every country after the Capolago congress (1891), there were now various other tendencies: insurrectionalists, anti-organizationalists and individualists. At the start of the twentieth century in Italy, the modest presence of the anti-organizationalists and the weak “individualist provocation” current were unable to stop the anarchist communists (active for the most part in the class organizations) from pushing ahead with their process of organization with the founding in 1907 of the Italian Anarchist Party. This experience, though filled with difficulty, succeeded in establishing structures at local and regional level which were to get stronger and stronger during the struggles of the crisis years of the Giolitti system.
[1] On the anarchist movement between the end of the nineteenth century and the First World War, see: M. ANTONIOLI, <em>Introduzione a Dibattito sul sindacalismo. Atti del Congresso internazionale anarchico di Amsterdam (1907)</em>, Florence 1978; M. ANTONIOLI, <em>Introduzione</em> a L. Fabbri, <em>L’organizzazione operaia e l’anarchia</em>, Florence 1975; M. ANTONIOLI, <em>Il movimento anarchico italiano nel 1914</em>, in “Storia e Politica”, 2, 1973, pp. 235–254; G. CERRITO, <em>Il movimento anarchico dalle sue origine al 1914. Problemi e orientamenti storiografici</em>, in “Rassegna Storica Toscana”, 1, 1969, pp. 109–138; G. CERRITO, <em>Dall’insurrezionalismo alla Settimana Rossa</em>, Florence 1976; G. CERRITO, <em>L’antimilitarismo anarchico in Italia nel primo ventennio del secolo</em>, Pistoia 1968; P.C. MASINI, <em>Storia degli anarchici italiani. Da Bakunin a Malatesta</em>, Milan 1969; P.C. MASINI, <em>Storia degli anarchici italiani nell’epoca degli attentati</em>, Milan 1981; E. SANTARELLI, <em>Il socialismo anarchico in Italia</em>, Milan 1973; S. TARIZZO, <em>L’anarchia. Storia dei movimenti libertari nel mondo</em>, Milan 1976; G. WOODCOCK, <em>L’anarchia. Storia delle idee e dei movimenti libertari</em>, Milan 1966.
** <strong>Part II: War On War</strong>
Thanks to this effort, in the period between the last decade of the 19<sup>th</sup> century and the First World War, the Italian anarchist movement had grown both in numbers and in political influence, above all through its massive presence in the <em>camere del lavoro</em> (Labour Clubs) and in the professional structures of the <em>Confederazione Generale del Lavoro</em> (CGdL — General Confederation of Labour) and the <em>Unione Sindacale Italiana</em> (USI — Italian Syndical Union) [2]. Furthermore, in 1914 it had to dedicate itself to intense organizational activity in order to make the most of the large influx of new members as a result of the struggles against the Libyan campaign and in defence of the working classes [3]. This need was matched also in other countries, to such an extent that the idea of an international congress was raised. By way of preparation, in March 1914 the editorial group of the journal <em>Volontà</em> and the <em>Fascio Comunista Anarchico di Roma</em> (Rome Anarchist Communist Group) promoted a congress, to be held in Florence which, because of its markedly pro-organization line, was met with some suspicion by the promoters of the unity of the various currents such as the editors of <em>Il Libertario</em> and the individualists of <em>L’Avvenire Anarchico</em> [4]. However, neither the Italian nor the international congresses came about due to the worsening international situation and the preparations for war, though there were eight regional meetings between April and June dealing mainly with “questions relating to the specific organization of the movement and its relations with the workers’ organizations” [5].
Despite the war, debate between the various positions and the construction of a national organizational structure continued to develop with the conventions in Pisa in 1915 and Ravenna in 1916 [6]. It must be said that in Italy, both on an ideological level and on other levels, the effects of the conflict were less damaging to the anarchist movement (and to the left in general) that in other countries. This is partly because of the choice of the <em>Partito Socialista Italiana</em> (PSI — Italian Socialist Party) — a choice in itself influenced by the strong anti-militarist and libertarian element of the proletariat — which was summed up in the fairly ambiguous motto “neither support nor sabotage” but which was frequently contradicted in daily practice by the collaboration with the industrial mobilization by the CGdL which was controlled by reformists. In fact, “interventionism in the Italian anarchist movement was not a phenomenon, or a current, or even a question of debate or the basis of a split. It was only a series of sporadic, unconnected personal cases” [7], which in general were to be found in the Nietzschian-Stirnerite individualist fringe which had already been in difficulty at the time of the Libyan campaign [8]. The anarchist presence was crucial to the clarification of the USI’s position on intervention. The clash with the revolutionary syndicalist group, a part of which favoured Italian participation in the conflict, delivered the organization into the hands of the anti-militarist majority in September 1914, with the passing of a motion by Alberto Meschi, secretary of the Carrara Labour Club, which expressed “their trust in the proletariat of all countries to rediscover in themselves the spirit of class solidarity and the revolutionary energy required to take advantage of the inevitable weakening of State forces and of the general crisis caused by the war in order to act to sweep away the bourgeois and monarchist states which have been cynically preparing for this war for fifty years” [9].
In reconstructing the positions of anarchism regarding the problem raised by the conflict, alongside the condemnation approved by the Pisa convention in January 1915 [10], one must also consider those of the various local groups which had newspapers and could therefore influence militants and a wider range of readers. Of the most important magazines, <em>Volontà</em> had the strongest anti-patriotic and anti-war line and in no way questioned the internationalist and anti-capitalist role of anarchism [11]. It was in its pages, in fact, that the international anarchist manifesto against the war was published in March 1915 [12] as a response on the part of the majority of the movement to the “Manifesto of the Sixteen”, the pro-French interventionist declaration of certain individuals such as Kropotkin, Grave, Malato, etc. [13]. For some time, instead, <em>Il Libertario</em> allowed room for debate, for example publishing articles by Jean Grave and Maria Rygier, although the line of its editor, Binazzi, and its contributors had been made clear as far back as July 1914 with the article “<em>Né un uomo né un soldo per l’iniqua guerra</em>” (Not one man, not one penny for this unjust war)[14]. But there really was not much debate. While anarchism’s greatest exponents published widely-distributed pamphlets against the conflict [15], the “interventionist anarchists were unable even to raise the question ‘intervention: yes or no’ within the anarchist movement and were even unable to constitute a minority. They did eventually form as a group, but only after their position had been demolished by the immediate and spontaneous reaction of a healthy organism” [16].
But, whereas the vast majority was united by the anti-militarist struggle, on a whole range of other questions there continued to be theoretical differences which came to the surface even on the occasion of the Pisa meeting promoted by the individualist newspaper <em>L’Avvenire Anarchico</em> and the editorial group of <em>Il Libertario</em>, who had in other times been against permanent organizational forms and, consequently, sceptic on the usefulness of congressional decisions. In fact, <em>Volontà</em>, the mouthpiece of the anarchist communist current declined to participate, holding such conventions to be academic [17] and drawing a response from Fabbri, who instead considered it “indispensable to meet in order to discuss, to decide [...] Past experience has shown that a large part of our movements failed because we did not know what to do” [18]. The Zimmerwald Conference provoked great enthusiasm as a sign of the internationalist renaissance in the workers’ movement, but with strategic evaluations which differed on the question of relationships with revolutionary socialism. While recognizing the importance of the event, Fabbri and Borghi were inclined to assign anarchist organization a fundamental role in the reconstruction of internationalism. The more eclectic Binazzi was somewhat more positive regarding the renaissance of the Socialist International, while the individualist Renato Siglich accused everyone of deviationism in the pages of <em>L’Avvenire Anarchico</em> [19]. Dissent re-emerged during the clandestine meeting in Ravenna in August 1916 — “the first [...] since the one in Rome in 1907 which represented such a wide range of views within the Italian anarchist movement” [20] — where, while welcoming the re-birth of the socialist international and the establishing of good relations between socialists and anarchists, the latter were considered to have the task of creating an International “which would be open to all the workers and every current of socialist and internationalist thought” [21], forming an Anarchist Internationalist Committee which was to carry out badly-needed work on the internal coordination of the movement, above all in organizing support for the victims of repression, for internees and for exiles. However, it met with some difficulty in carrying out its primary and institutional tasks. The clash between the various tendencies on the role, scope and limits of any agreement with the socialists and the constant efforts of Binazzi to bring together the various factions, ended up paralyzing it to the point that it became impossible to participate in the 3<sup>rd</sup> Zimmerwald Conference.
The movement developed during the difficult war years, even at the level of nuclei of varying strengths (depending on location), and there was intense activity of class opposition. The anti-militarism of the movements was translated into desertions, single and collective mutinies [22], the promotion of and participation in popular demonstrations, all of which was tangible evidence of the proletariat’s resistance to the war. In particular we should mention the protests and public meetings in support of Carlo Tresca (the Italo-American anarchist who was under threat of execution along with other members of the Industrial Workers of the World for having organized strikes in the mining sector) [23] which culminated on 8<sup>th</sup> September 1916 in a national demonstration in Milan that was massively attended, given the limits imposed by the state of war [24].
The USI, the greater part of which was anarchist, began a series of important struggles such as the action by Valdarno miners directed by the local secretary Riccardo Sacconi. This action began in September 1916 and demanded an 8-hour day which was granted the following May [25]. In Sestri Ponente, too, where there was a strong anarchist presence, action by metalworkers seeking the same goal and beginning in January 1917, led to violent clashes and to demonstrations against the war and was followed by repression and the arrest of many militants including Alebrando Giovanetti, one of the leaders of the organization who would later be interned [26]. The enthusiasm sparked off by the “February Revolution” in Russia gave further impetus to mass action [27]. In the Turin revolt in August 1917 — which brought together all the discontent, the open hostility of the Italian proletariat to the war and the desire for social change, but which also made it clear that any spontaneous insurrection was bound to fail — “some anarchists here and there tried to give the uprising a more decidedly insurrectional direction” [28], as demonstrated by one leaflet which was later used during a trial and contained in the court’s final judgement:
<quote>
“Bring the rifles you make onto the streets and the barricades. Let all the forces of the proletariat rise up and arm themselves. Let us put an end, by force of arms, to the systematic destruction of the human race. Proletarians! Raise now your axes, your picks, your barricades, the social revolution! Proletarian soldiers, desert! If you must fight, let it be against those who oppress you! Your enemy is not at the so-called border, but here. Proletarian women, rise up! Impede the departure of your loved ones! Let it be you, O worker of the factory and of the field, conscious and strong, let it be you who throws down your tools and cries: Enough! No more! We workers no longer wish to make rifles which bring death to our brothers in struggle and in suffering” [29].
</quote>
The final year of the war saw a noticeable weakening in anarchism, as in the rest of the left, due to repression. Arrest, trial and confinement was the fate for a great many anarchists, who had been at the forefront of the popular revolts. All the movement’s newspapers were closed down, with the sole exception of the individualist paper <em>L’Avvenire Anarchico</em> which was published in Pisa and edited by the ambiguous figure of Renato Siglich. The internationalist action committee was broken up with the arrest of Binazzi, Gobbi and Monticelli (who were all sent into confinement) and the death of its fourth member, Gregorio Benvenuti. Even in Switzerland, the numerous colony of exiles, draft-dodgers and deserters was decimated by arrests and deportation to concentration camps. “Over a hundred refugees, many of whom were closely involved in the local workers’ movement, [found it] impossible to act for many months, though they were later cleared of all charges” [30].
[2] See: M. ANTONIOLI, <em>Il movimento anarchico</em> cit.; G. CERRITO, <em>Il movimento anarchico</em> cit.; G. CERRITO, <em>Dall’insurrezionalismo</em> cit.; C. COSTANTINI, <em>Gli anarchici in Liguria durante la prima guerra mondiale</em>, in “Il Movimento Operaio e Socialista in Liguria”, 2, 1961, pp. 99–122; E. SANTARELLI, <em>Il socialismo anarchico</em> cit.
[3] See: M. ANTONIOLI, <em>Il movimento anarchico</em> cit.
[4] On the projected congress in Florence see: <em>Congresso Comunista Anarchico Italiano</em>, in “Volontà”, 8 August 1914; C. COSTANTINI, <em>op.cit</em>. p. 102
[5] M. ANTONIOLI, <em>Il movimento anarchico</em> cit.
[6] On the two conventions see: C. COSTANTINI, <em>op.cit.</em> pp. 107–112; G. CERRITO, <em>L’antimilitarismo</em> cit., pp. 46 and 54; and <em>Un trentennio di attività anarchica 1914–45</em>, Cesena 1953, p. 13.
[7] P.C. MASINI, <em>Gli anarchici tra “interventismo” e “disfattismo rivoluzionario”</em>, in “Rivista Storica del Socialismo”, 5, 1959, pp. 208–212.
[8] See: G. CERRITO, <em>Dall’insurrezionalismo</em> cit., passim.
[9] Reported in R. DEL CARRIA, <em>Proletari senza rivoluzione. Storia delle classi subalterne dal 1860 al 1950</em>, II, Milan 1970, p. 18.
[10] See: <em>Un trentennio</em>, cit., p.13.
[11] See in particular: the column <em>Contro la guerra</em> published in “Volontà” starting in October 1914, later substituted by the polemical column <em>Gli interventisti e noi</em>.
[12] <em>Manifesto internazionale anarchico contro la guerra</em>, “Volontà”, 20 March 1915.
[13] Published in “Freedom”, London 28 February 1915.
[14] See: “Il Libertario”, 30 July and 3 September 1914.
[15] Amongst many others the most notable are: E. MALATESTA, <em>Réponse de Malatesta au “Manifeste des Seize” Anarchistes du Gouvernement</em>, no publishing information but Paris 1916; UN GRUPPO DI ANARCHICI, <em>La guerra europea e gli anarchici</em>, edited by L. Fabbri, Turin 1916. Amongst those published by the Italian anarchist community in the United States see: P. ALLEGRA, <em>Disonoriamo la guerra</em>, New York 1916, p. 278.
[16] P.C. MASINI, <em>Gli anarchici tra “interventismo”</em>, cit., p. 209.
[17] See: <em>Il Congresso di Firenze</em>, in “Volontà”, 26 December 1914.
[18] CATILINA [L. FABBRI], <em>Per il Convegno anarchico</em>, ibid, 1 January 1915.
[19] See: C. COSTANTINI, <em>op.cit.</em> pp. 109–111.
[20] G. CERRITO, <em>L’antimilitarismo</em> cit., p. 54. Participating in the convention were delegates of groups and federations from Bologna, Ravenna, Piacenza, Ferrara, Parma, Modena, Florence, Pisa, Piombino, Carrara, Ardenza, Livorno, Naples, Turin, Milan, Genoa, Sestri Ponente and Valpolcevera, La Spezia, Terni, Vicenza, Venice, Rome, Pesaro.
[21] The committee members were: Pasquale Binazzi, Torquato Gobbi, Virgilio Mazzoni, Gregorio Benvenuti and Temistocle Monticelli (see: “Avanti!”, 12 August 1916).
[22] See: G. CERRITO, <em>L’antimilitarismo</em> cit.; <em>Un trentennio</em> cit.; E. FORCELLA-A. MONTICONE, <em>Plotone di esecuzione</em>, Bari 1968; and the significant work by F. SBARNEMI [B. MISEFARI], <em>Diario di un disertore</em>, Florence 1973.
[23] Regarding this, see: A. DADÀ, <em>I rapporti dei “radicali” italo-americani con il movimento operaio statunitense e italiano</em>, in “Italia Contemporanea”, 1982, p.146.
[24] See: <em>Comunicazione del 10 ottobre 1916 della Prefettura di Milano al Ministero dell’Interno</em>, in ACS, Casell. Pol. Centr., b. 5208.
[25] See: “Guerra di Classe”, 2 September 1916 and 13 January 1917.
[26] See: <em>Sempre</em>, Almanacco n.2 of “Guerra di Classe”, 1923, pp. 86–87.
[27] See: P.C. MASINI, <em>Gli anarchici italiani e la rivoluzione russa</em>, in “Rivista Storica del Socialismo”, 15–16, 1962, pp. 135–169.
[28] G. CANDELORO, <em>Storia dell’Italia moderna. VIII. La prima guerra mondiale, il dopoguerra, l’avvento del fascismo</em>, Milan 1978, p. 172.
[29] Quoted in <em>Un trentennio</em> cit., p.18.
[30] G. Cerrito, <em>L’antimilitarismo</em> cit., p.63.
** <strong>Part III: The Post-War Organizational Boom</strong>
Despite all this, the end of the war marked a return to mass activity and organization within the movement. The October Revolution had awoken in anarchists (and not only them) hopes that Italy could replicate events in Russia. Historians are still unclear on the extent of such expectation and on the role that parties and labour unions played in feeding, directing or moderating these hopes, but some studies have been made on the causes and the international dimensions of the phenomenon [31]. However, from 1917 until the end of 1920, the libertarians’ internationalism led them to be convinced of the possibility of revolution in Italy [32], bearing in mind the differing positions of the various currents and individuals — from that of Malatesta (still insurrectionalist but conscious of the roles assigned to the anarchist organization and the mass organization) to the more articulate views of Fabbri, passing through the myriad nuances of all the various individuals and groups reflecting their geographical differences, social composition and involvement of militants with the class.
In February-March 1919, two important periodicals resumed publication — <em>Il Libertario</em> in La Spezia and <em>Volontà</em> in Ancona which, edited by Luigi Fabbri, made a notable contribution to the analysis of the problems of the post-war period together with a lucid and critical defence of the Russian Revolution [34]. In April, the process of re-organization was already well under way with the convention held in Florence in the rooms of the local Labour Club [35]. A significant point regarding was the fact that it was preceded by a series of preparatory regional meetings (amongst which one in Umbria-Marches and one in Emilia-Romagna which were notable for the efforts made to emphasize the question of political and economic organization before and after the revolution and relations with other parties on the left) [36] and also the lively debate in the press which sought to ensure that delegates were really representative and came from groups which were active among the masses. The <em>Unione Anarchica Anconetana</em> (Ancona Anarchist Union), a strong organization, was in the frontline of this battle, demanding that those who were to participate in the convention be really representative of organized anarchist forces” [37].
The organization which grew out of the convention took the significant name <em>Unione Comunista Anarchica d’Italia</em> (UCAdI — Anarchist Communist Union of Italy) and marked a separation from the humanistic and individualist currents which in general were composed of a series of groups and often individuals but which possessed journals such as <em>L’Avvenire Anarchico</em>, <em>La Frusta</em> and <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em> that had a certain influence over some sectors of the movement which had not yet been integrated into the various territorial organizations. The convention also re-affirmed the urgency of re-establishing international contacts (the UCAdI considered itself to be the Italian section of an International Anarchist Union) and it therefore began the necessary preparations for participating in the founding congress of the Third International “which [censored] would support anarchism’s heavy demands” [38]. Together with the directing committee, a correspondence commission was created, which functioned as a secretariat [39]. But attention was focused mainly on the situation in Italy in an attempt to establish what propaganda instruments and political action were most needed.
<quote>
“With regard to workers’ organization the convention holds that workers’ organization and struggle against the bosses is essential for the revolutionary movement and that therefore it is in the interests of anarchists to participate in this in order to promote revolution and anarchism. We must remember that the destruction of the capitalist and authoritarian society is only possible through revolutionary means and that the use of the general strike and the labour movement must not make us forget the more direct methods of struggle against state and bourgeois violence and extreme power. We note that the <em>Unione Sindacale Italiana</em> is currently (and was during the war) the closest [labour organization] to the cause of internationalism, without compromise or wavering. Without wishing to create binding duties which are incompatible with the conviction that political groups and class organizations must be autonomous and independent, this convention recommends that its worker comrades assist the <em>Unione Sindacale Italiana</em> to the best of their abilities and each within his or her own trade category, so that it may continue to hold to its revolutionary, anti-State and anti-centralization positions” [40].
</quote>
In other words, the motion expressed a precise position in favour of labour intervention, while confirming the need to preserve a precise, autonomous role for the anarchist political organization. As for how Italian anarchists were involved in the labour struggle, there was great variety in the unions to which they belonged. A large number were members of the USI, which in the following two years would reach a membership of 800,000 workers and 27 Labour Clubs. Others were active in unions belonging to the Confederation, with a significant number in the FIOM (the metalworkers union which was federated to the CGdL), even appearing at the confederal conference of 1921 as a single group [41]. Others still were members of independent unions such as the <em>Sindacato Ferrovieri</em> (Railworkers’ Union) and the <em>Federazione dei Marittimi</em> (Maritime Workers’ Federation). But it was above all in the struggles that the anarchist presence grew and strengthened.
The attack on <em>L’Avanti!</em> in April 1919 gave impetus to the anarchist proposal for the creation of a revolutionary single front, in other words the union of all workers and organizations of the left (which was to become a fundamental element of the tactical-strategic line in the mid-term), approved during the Bologna congress in 1920 [42]. The first real test of the practicality of this came about during the protests against the rising cost of living, adjudged by some commentators to be the peak of the revolutionary tensions of the <em>Biennio Rosso</em>, the Two Red Years. Borghi would later say: “It was the moment when we were best placed for a revolution” [43]. For Fabbri too they represented, together with the Ancona revolt of June 1920 and the factory occupations, moments when the “monarchical institutions were on the point of being overthrown. It was only because their adversaries were lacking order that they were not overthrown” [44]. Furthermore, Fabbri attributed the principal responsibility for the failure of the revolution to the socialists without, however, hiding the shortcomings of the anarchist movement:
<quote>
“This did not exclude the fact that in many places and in various spontaneous ways, revolutionaries of the different schools of thought acted, prepared and agitated. But what was missing was coordination of their efforts, concrete facts and wide-ranging preparation which could have initiated the revolution even in spite of the reluctance and passive resistance of the more moderate socialist elements” [45].
</quote>
Anarchists were without doubt closely involved in the workers’ and peasants’ demonstrations which marked 1919 “as a period of preparation, clashes and an indication of a much deeper and radical crisis which was affecting the country’s institutions and structures” [46]. But the movement (which was still regrouping after the constitution of the UCAdI) did not yet have a solid, definite strategy to offer its member groups in an advanced stage of organization, at least in regions such as Liguria, Lazio and especially Emilia-Romagna, where delegates from 80 different groups met at a congress in Bologna in September 1919 [47]. On its part, the USI was enjoying a boom in its membership following the war years and was acting more as a collateral organization that as an autonomous force [48], in effect mimicking the role of the CGdL with respect to the PSI.
[31] For information about anarchist involvement in the <em>Biennio Rosso</em>, see: L. FABBRI, <em>La contro-rivoluzione preventiva</em>, Bologna 1922, now in <em>Il fascismo e i partiti politici italiani. Testimonianze del 1921–23</em>, edited by R. De Felice, Bologna 1966; A. BORGHI, <em>½ secolo di anarchia</em>, Naples 1954; A. BORGHI, <em>La rivoluzione mancata</em>, Milan 1964 (revised edition of A. BORGHI, <em>L’Italia fra i due Crispi</em>, Paris 1921); E. MALATESTA, <em>Scritti</em>. I. <em>“Umanità Nova”. Pagine di lotta quotidiana</em>; II. <em>“Umanità Nova”. pagine di lotta quotidiana e scritti vari del 1919–23</em>, Geneva 1934–1936 (reprint, Carrara 1975); <em>Un trentennio</em> cit.; P.C. MASINI, <em>Anarchici e comunisti nel movimento dei consigli a Torino (1919–20)</em>, Turin 1951 (reprint, Florence 1970); P.C. MASINI, <em>Antonio Gramsci e l’Ordine Nuovo visti da un libertario</em>, Livorno 1956; P.C. MASINI, <em>Gli anarchici italiani e la rivoluzione russa</em> cit.
[32] On the positions of the Italian anarchist movement regarding the Russian Revolution, <em>ibid</em>.
[33] See: G. BIANCO-C. COSTANTINI, <em>“Il Libertario” dalla fondazione alla I guerra mondiale</em>, in “Il Movimento Operaio e Socialista in Liguria”, 6, 1960, pp. 131–154.
[34] L. BETTINI, <em>Bibliografia dell’anarchismo</em>. II, <em>Periodici e numeri unici anarchici in lingua italiana pubblicati in Italia (1872–1970)</em>, 1, Florence 1972, pp. 167–171, 277–278; and P.C. MASINI, <em>Gli anarchici italiani e la rivoluzione</em> cit., passim.
[35] For a report on the convention see: “Il Libertario”, 17 April 1919.
[36] On the conventions in Umbria-Marches (Fabriano 22–23 March 1919) and Emilia-Romagna (Bologna 23 March 1919), ibid.
[37] <em>Per un convegno fra gli anarchici</em>, ibid, 13 March 1919.
[38] <em>Ibid</em>, 17 April 1919.
[39] G. BIANCO, <em>L’attività degli anarchici nel biennio rosso (1919–20)</em>, in “Il Movimento Operaio e Socialista in Liguria”, April-June 1961.
[40] “Il Libertario”, 17 April 1919.
[41] See the pamphlet <em>Sulle direttive della Confederazione Generale del Lavoro. Il pensiero dei comunisti anarchici confederati</em>. Febbraio 1921, Rome 1921, p. 10.
[42] <em>Infra</em>, pp. 391 ff.
[43] <em>Infra</em>, pp.
[43] A. BORGHI, <em>½ secolo</em> cit., p. 153.
[44] L. FABBRI, <em>La contro-rivoluzione</em> cit., p.19.
[45] <em>Ibid</em>, p. 21.
[46] E. SANTARELLI, <em>Storia del fascismo</em> I. <em>La crisi liberale</em>, Rome 1973, p. 157. On the activity of anarchists in 1919, see also: ACS, Min. Interno. Dir. Gen. P.S., Affari Gener. e Riservati, K 1, 1920, b. 79.
[47] See: <em>Un trentennio</em> cit., p. 23.
[48] See the motion from the the Florence convention, above.
** <strong>Part IV: The Role of Malatesta</strong>
The return of Malatesta at the end of 1919 was a turning point in the development of the Italian anarchist movement. Exiled for the umpteenth time after the “red week”, he had been vainly attempting to return to Italy since 1917, even declaring himself willing to stand trial for charges outstanding against him just so he could be present in the place where he believed a favourable situation for revolutionary action was developing. However in November 1919, after the government had been forced into giving him a passport due to a series of protests (especially by the USI), the authorities continued to place innumerable obstacles in his path [49]. He was only able to return thanks to the help of Giuseppe Giulietti and the <em>Federazione dei Lavoratori del Mare</em> [50]. He thus arrived clandestinely in Taranto aboard a Greek cargo ship and headed by train to Genoa where he pretended to have disembarked.
<quote>
“Our dear comrade Errico Malatesta has finally joined us. The Genoese proletariat gave him a warm and enthusiastic welcome. On Saturday at 1.00pm the sirens sounded giving the signal for work to stop. The workers thronged to Via Milano whence they marched towards Piazza Carignano, where a public meeting was due to take place. The impressive rows of marchers with hundreds of flags flying crossed the city singing our anthems. In the huge square and the adjoining streets over 60,000 people were crammed in. The enthusiasm was indescribable. The untiring president of the <em>Co-operativa Facchini</em> (Porters’ Cooperative), Ravaschio, spoke to the crowd and introduced our dear Errico Malatesta who in turn spoke a few, short words and was loudly acclaimed” [51].
</quote>
His prestige among the masses raised hopes and enthusiasm. He was testimony to the continuity of the Italian proletariat’s struggle for emancipation. The steadfastness and consistency of his work made him the natural leader of a huge section of the workers. Furthermore, this old internationalist’s ability to unify the whole anarchist movement and his unchallenged fame facilitated (as in 1897 and 1913) this unity which, as would be seen in the following months, was based on the enthusiasm of the movement’s various components and agreement between them. His ideas for maintaining unity [52] was mostly based on his optimistic reading of the situation in Italy — a view which, though shared by a good portion of the masses at the time, was perhaps overly influenced by personal factors which are useful to examine.
Malatesta, the revolutionary par excellence, lived a large part of his life and most of the recent years in exile, with links to the international revolutionary socialist and anarchist movement [53]. His returns to Italy coincided with upturns in the class movement which could be described as insurrectional uprisings. As a result of these, he understood that “despite their differences in tendencies and parties, the masses were willing to act for a common goal” [54]. These hopes, however, were followed by periods of repression, forcing him back into exile. The insurrectionalist experience of the First International, of the Matese band, were critically re-examined after 1894 [55] with the development of the strategy for anarchist action within the organizations that the masses were building. It was something that Gori, Fabbri and many others would develop and put into practice with their activity not only in the Labour Clubs and trade federations but also through the re-organization of the anarchist party [56]. But Malatesta was not in Italy between the end of the century and 1914 and it was only from abroad that he could keep track of the process and experiences that were causing the Italian anarchist movement and its ideology to develop. And a significant indicator of his “detachment” from the latter was the position he took at the international congress in Amsterdam in 1907, where his opposition to Monatte differed (marked as it was by humanistic anarchism) from that of Fabbri, who better than any other expressed the growth in the Italian anarchist movement in the awareness of the need for the party and a presence within the mass organizations, thereby returning to the genuine Bakuninist tradition [57].
In 1914, Malatesta was still bound to this optimistic, humanistic and insurrectionalist conception. His vision of anarchist action principally as propaganda and vigilance while waiting for those occasions “which can occur when least expected” [58] and his trust in the “spontaneous drive” of the masses for revolution [59] certainly gave impetus to anarchist agitation in that year, though he himself would come to understand that the main limit on revolutionary action was the lack of coordination before, during and after the insurrectionalist outbursts. In fact, while still in exile in London in 1919, he warmly welcomed the proposal for a daily newspaper (which had only minority support at the April convention in Florence), which he considered as an essential instrument for propaganda, agitation and pre-insurrectional preparation. Like other militants, mostly involved with mass activity, Fabbri displayed “an opinion which was at the time rather contrary” to the newspaper [60], in the belief that the growth of the movement had to be more gradual and complex, bound to precise organizational structures and with a solid rooting in the proletariat’s grassroots organizations. Putting all one’s energies into the creation of a single unifying grouping of all the various tendencies seemed to him to be a waste. He therefore remained “from the start one of the few who looked at the initiative with few illusions” [61]. Malatesta, instead, “found [his] practical and principled objections well-enough founded for normal times, but [...] completely surpassed by the current conditions and by the greater need for an imminent revolution” [62].
The debate between the two confirmed their different viewpoints. While Fabbri (who not even in January 1920 let himself fall victim to the “general giddiness” of the left) [63] sought to convince his opposite of the need for a detailed, long-term strategy, Malatesta maintained the impossibility of “following that path. He had not thought he would find such effervescence. It was no longer a case of preparing the terrain, which was ready. Instead, it was essential to do what could be done as soon as possible, because the revolution was on the way, nearer than he had thought [...] I agreed with him and it was only later that doubts struck me about the revolutionary character of that impressive popular enthusiasm and that this might have made him blind to the real state of affairs” [64].
Fabbri’s perplexities between late 1919 and early 1920 seem to have been overcome by events, by the expectations Malatesta inspired among anarchist ranks and further afield, so much so that in order to avoid the overly-personalized manifestations of esteem and trust endowed on him, he felt the need to publish a letter which said, amongst other things: “Thank you, but that’s enough” [65].
With the birth of the daily newspaper, <em>Umanità Nova</em>, in February 1920, the role of Malatesta of “understanding and reconciling all the anarchist tendencies” [66] became all encompassing. Fabbri closed down <em>Volontà</em> that summer as “all its contributors, from then on, had to dedicate their attention to the newspaper” [67]. <em>Umanità Nova</em> did, however, meet with great success. It had a network of correspondents and contributors covering the whole peninsula and a distribution which reached 50,000 copies a day with a turnover of over a million lire” [68]. One unbiased witness of its importance among the masses was Anna Kuliscioff, who in August 1920 wrote to Turati:
<quote>
“The working class is going through a bad period of anarchist contagion. By now <em>Avanti!</em> is almost being boycotted and the workers are reading only <em>Umanità Nova</em> [...] This is confirmed by members of the Labour Clubs and the passengers on the morning trams where one can no longer see workers without a copy of <em>Umanità Nova</em> in their hands” [69].
</quote>
[49] See: L. FABBRI, <em>Prefazione</em> to E. MALATESTA, <em>Scritti</em> cit., I, p. 49.
[50] On the return of Malatesta to Italy, see: ACS, Casell. Pol. Centr., b. 288 Malatesta, fasc. 31568 sottofasc. 6; L. FABBRI, <em>Prefazione</em> cit., pp. 9–10; and A. BORGHI, <em>½ secolo</em> cit., pp. 199 ff.
[51] “Il Libertario”, 29 September 1919.
[52] These ideas were already to be seen in the first issue of “Umanità Nova” (see: E. MALATESTA, <em>I nostri propositi</em>, in “Umanità Nova”, 27 February 1920, now in E. MALATESTA, <em>Scritti</em> cit., I, pp. 29–33).
[53] On Malatesta see: U. FEDELI, <em>Bibliografia Malatestiana</em> in L. FABBRI, <em>Malatesta, l’uomo e il pensiero</em>, Naples 1951, pp. 261–304; L. FABBRI, <em>La vida y el pensamiento de Errico Malatesta</em>, Buenos Aires 1945; M. NETTLAU, <em>Errico Malatesta. Vita e Pensieri</em>, New York 1922 (revised edition: <em>Errico Malatesta. El Hombre, el Revolucionario, el Anarquista</em>, Barcelona 1933); A. BORGHI, <em>Errico Malatesta in 60 anni di lotte anarchiche</em>, Paris undated (later, Milan 1947); G. CERRITO, <em>Sull’anarchismo contemporaneo, Introduzione</em> to E. Malatesta, <em>Scritti scelti</em>, Rome 1970.
[54] G. CERRITO, <em>Sull’anarchismo</em> cit., pp. 51–52.
[55] In particular see: E. MALATESTA, <em>Andiamo al popolo</em>, in “L’Art. 248”, Ancona 4 February 1894.
[56] A positive contribution to this process came from the magazine “Il Pensiero” which was edited by Fabbri and Gori from 1903 until 1911; G. CERRITO, <em>Dall’insurrezionalismo</em> cit.; G. CERRITO, <em>Il movimento anarchico dalle sue origini</em> cit.; M. ANTONIOLI, <em>Introduzione</em> to L. FABBRI, <em>L’organizzazione</em> cit.; M. ANTONIOLI, <em>Il movimento anarchico italiano nel 1914</em> cit.
[57] At the Amsterdam congress (1907), though a signatory of the Monatte motion, Fabbri also voted for Malatesta’s, later declaring: “In the Monatte motion there was an explicit affirmation of the concept of class struggle which was lacking in Malatesta’s; on the other hand, Malatesta’s motion contained a statement of the insurrectional nature of anarchism which was lacking in Monatte’s” (see: L. FABBRI, I<em>l Congresso di Amsterdam</em>, in “Il Pensiero”, 1 October 1907). On the congress, see: <em>Dibattito sul sindacalismo</em> cit.
[58] E. MALATESTA, <em>E ora?</em> in “Volontà”, 20 June 1914.
[59] E. MALATESTA, <em>Movimenti stroncati</em>, in “Umanità Nova”, 22 June 1922 (now in E. MALATESTA, Scritti cit., I, pp. 101–105).
[60] L. FABBRI, <em>Prefazione</em> cit., p. 9.
[61] U. FEDELI, <em>Luigi Fabbri</em>, Turin 1948, p. 55.
[62] L. FABBRI, <em>Prefazione</em> cit., p. 9.
[63] L. FABBRI, <em>La controrivoluzione</em> cit., pp. 18 ff.
[64] L. FABBRI, <em>Prefazione</em> cit., p. 11–12
[65] “Umanità Nova”, 16 January 1920.
[66] L. FABBRI, <em>Prefazione</em> cit., p. 14.
[67] U. FEDELI, <em>Luigi Fabbri</em> cit., p. 55.
[68] L. FABBRI, <em>Prefazione</em> cit., p. 13.
[69] F. TURATI-A. KULISCIOFF, <em>Carteggio</em>, IV, Turin 1953, p. 386.
** <strong>Part V: The Struggles & Strategy Of The Anarchists</strong>
The daily was only one of the ways the anarchist voice could be heard. “Throughout the <em>Biennio Rosso</em> the anarchists were able to participate in force in the popular and workers’ movements, first mixing in with them and then aiming at a more marked distinction” [70]. As was observed,
<quote>
“they are not external to the working class, but represent a precise sector of it, the most unstable sector, newly formed and not linked to the reformist tradition. They have their greatest support among the new, young working class, among the proletarized middle class of office workers and posts and telegraphs workers, and also among the old islands of traditional anarchist support (the railway workers, independent trades, etc.)” [71].
</quote>
Actually, they were also present in other sectors such as the metalworkers. They were already in the majority in the USI, but in some regions formed independent unions and were often in charge of or well represented in autonomous Labour Clubs in places like Sestri Ponente, Sampierdarena, Savona-Vado, Livorno, in various parts of Emilia-Romagna and the Marches. They had militants in the <em>Sindacato Ferrovieri</em>, the <em>Federazione dei Lavoratori del Mare</em>, and others. In places where it was not possible to create independent unions or where their creation would have provoked artificial divisions, they worked in the Labour Clubs and within the professional unions of the CGdL, for example in Turin, where they formed a conspicuous and active component of the important metallurgical sector. The anarchists in the Piedmontese capital gave, in fact, high importance to action in the confederal mass organization. According to the anarchist Pietro Ferrero, secretary of the local metalworkers’ union:
<quote>
“In Turin there was no branch of the <em>Unione Sindacale Italiana</em> at the time and the anarchists, with the exception of the anti-organizationalists, were members of the FIOM branch and, as convinced partisans of proletarian unity, actively participated in this new movement [the factory councils], in the hopes of their bringing results” [72].
</quote>
Anarchism was able to establish itself “at the heart of the class struggle in the city of Turin during the four years after the end of the war and provided one of the best militants in the course of the resistance in the person of Pietro Ferrero, who was murdered by the fascists on 18 December 1922” [73]. Particularly significant was the influence anarchists had on the theories expressed by <em>Ordine Nuovo</em>, thanks especially to Maurizio Garino and Pietro Mosso an assistant in theoretical philosophy at the local university and author of the book “<em>Il Sistema Taylor ed i consigli dei produttori</em>” (The Taylor System and the producers’ councils) under the pen-name of Carlo Petri [74]. It comes as no surprise that the <em>Gruppo Libertario Torinese</em> (Turin Libertarian Group) was one of the signatories of the manifesto “<em>Per il congresso dei consigli di fabbrica. Agli operai e ai contadini di tutta Italia</em>” (For the congress of factory councils. To the workers and peasants of all Italy), launched in March 1920 by <em>Ordine Nuovo</em> in order to promote the use of councils [75]. Even at the meeting of the Labour Club in December 1919, Garino and the anarchists had been decisive in the victory of the pro-council current. As Gramsci wrote:
<quote>
“When Garino, the anarchist syndicalist, spoke [...] on the matter and spoke with great dialectic efficacy and warmth, we (unlike comrade Tasca) were pleasantly surprised and felt a deep emotion [...] The attitude of comrade Garino, a libertarian, a syndicalist, was proof of the profound conviction we have always had that in the real revolutionary process the entire working class spontaneously discovers theoretical unity and practical unity” [76].
</quote>
The struggle of the metalworkers in the spring of 1920 began in February in Sestri Ponente and reached its peak with the “<em>sciopero delle lancette</em>” (a series of strike actions in protest of the introduction of summer time) in March in Turin. Anarchists constantly dedicated their efforts to expanding the councils, in an attempt to transform the labour action into insurrectional action. Undoubtedly, the conception developed in anarchist circles of this new institution (the factory council), bore noticeable differences from that if the supporters of <em>Ordine Nuovo</em>, set out in the motion presented by Ferrero and Garino at the Turin Labour Club meeting in June and detailed in the report presented to the anarchist national congress in July of that year in Bologna. At the congress, Garino confirmed the need to promote the creation of factory councils as “they bring the class struggle into its natural terrain, endowing it with the strength to conquer”. He considered their primary tasks “first, immediate action; second, to guarantee the continuity of production in the insurrectionary period; third, to be perhaps the basis for communist management”. Basically, for anarchists the importance of the councils lay in the fact that they ensured the participation of all workers “without distinction [...] organized or not, on the basis of their various sectors” and that they could operate as unitary instruments of struggle and management: “the Council as an anti-State organ and the Council as an organ of power” [77].
The common point between the anarchists and the Ordinovists was their demand that every worker, whether belonging to a union or not, had an equal voice within the councils. However, they differed in that the former refused to consider the councils as the basis for a new State, a soviet State. Other differences lay in stressing the criteria that only in the revolutionary phase could the councils act as effective instruments of class struggle (and, therefore, spread to all sectors of social life) and in pointing out the risks of their degenerating into joint management bodies of a non-communist system. Endorsing these points, the anarchist congress in Bologna approved a motion which read (in part):
<quote>
“While noting that the factory and departmental councils are important above all in light of the proximity of the revolution and of the fact that they can be the technical organs of expropriation and of the necessary, immediate continuation of production, but that, by continuing to exist within the current society, they would be prey to the moderating and accommodating influence of this society, we believe that the factory councils and suitable instruments for grouping all manual and intellectual workers in their workplaces, for communist and anarchist purposes and that they are absolutely anti-State organs and possible nuclei of the future running of industrial and agricultural production. They are useful for developing in the waged worker the consciousness of producer and also, for the purposes of the revolution, for helping to transform the discontent of the industrial and agricultural workers into a clear desire for expropriation. We therefore invite comrades to support the formation of factory councils and to participate actively in their development in order to maintain their organic structure and their functions as outlined here, to fight any tendency towards collaborationist deviations and to ensure that when they are formed all the workers in each factory participate, whether they are organized or not” [78].
</quote>
As far as the soviets were concerned, the meeting relied on the report by Sandro Molinari which, in effect, repeated what was said regarding the councils. They were adjudged to be important bodies during the revolutionary phase but mention was made of the risks of authoritarian, collaborationist or statist deviations [79]. The introductory report on workers’ organization was made by Fabbri, who stressed the need to “let workers’ organizations and political organizations remain independent of each other” and to “occupy ourselves with the work of anarchist comrades [within the unions] to ensure that it increasingly promotes revolutionary and libertarian goals” [80]. Fabbri had already written on the subject in <em>Umanità Nova</em> during the days leading up to the congress, proposing that the motion on the matter approved at the Florence convention the previous year be presented again, and suggesting that “a statement in favour of proletarian unity be added”. In recalling this principle, he criticized the split between the <em>Unione Sindacale</em> and the CGdL which, he said, though “provoked by the evil designs of the reformists [...], was a mistake”, as it had not produced the effects desired by the reformists, given that “in many places the anarchists remained as members of the confederation”, because of their “desire for unity”. He also negatively considered the USI’s propensity for encouraging others to leave the CGdL:
<quote>
“If I had to give advice, I would ask the comrades to avoid provoking splits within the unions, the Labour Clubs, etc., to which they belong [...] Workers’ organization, which is based on the workers’ interests, tends to adapt itself to its environment in order to obtain the best results for its members. It is not, as was once said, automatically revolutionary or libertarian”.
</quote>
The real question lay instead in the strategy anarchists should have within the unions: an anti-collaborationist and anti-reformist strategy, able to involve non-anarchist workers, to create “that revolutionary minority whose function is to give the first blow on the closed doors of the future” and to coordinate themselves within the structures of the party [81]. But there were other positions argued during the meeting, such as Fantozzi’s, which held that it was “disgraceful that anarchist workers are still members of the Confederation of Labour”, Borghi’s, which extolled the virtues of the USI without demanding that people join it, Binazzi’s (poorly supported) middle-of-the-road position, which saw no difficulty with people joining either union. Then there was the Turin group’s position, which insisted on the importance of action within the confederation, if possible forming “opposition groups of anarchists, syndicalists and revolutionary communists”. Garino maintained that it was because “this was not the moment to force a split in those places where there was proletarian unity, given the times that were in it”. At the end, a motion prevailed (with the support of Malatesta) which did not take into account the breadth of debate and in effect took an easy line of exclusive support for the USI.
<quote>
“This Congress [...], given the current situation where several workers’ organizations exist, once more considers that the <em>Unione Sindacale Italiana</em> is the one which today best embodies revolutionary and libertarian ideals. Our solidarity goes to those comrades who devote their activity to it with a spirit of abnegation. We advise comrades to promote the action of the USI as and as long as it remains on the terrain of revolutionary, anti-State action, both by becoming members and helping to form new branches, and (where this is not possible due to local conditions and in order not to provoke damaging splits) by uniting into direct action groups or committees to oppose reformism all those revolutionary elements who are still (as a result of the above needs) members of other organizations, and ensuring that these groups or committees act together with the USI” [82].
</quote>
In more general terms, though marked by lively and complex debate, the Bologna congress was an indicator of the internal difficulty in the growth of the post-war movement where recourse was made to compromise between the various tendencies. In effect, the “pact of alliance” approved at the meeting was an attempt to hold together federations, groups and individuals with different ideas, binding them through a “programme”, which would become impossible to realize given the total local and individual autonomy which the pact itself guaranteed. Discussion on the subject revealed at least two well-defined positions. The first position was hostile to any form of organization, tied to the guarantee of absolute freedom of the individual or the group. The second position was that in order to guarantee that the <em>Unione Anarchica Italiana</em> (UAI — Italian Anarchist Union) — the new name of the UCAdI — could function well, only those who accepted an organization which though not centralized, operated on the basis of federations according to a programme that would have to be binding for all once approved.
<quote>
“The contradictions in the UAI’s action and in the ‘Pact’ it approved are evident, and are obviously the consequence of the instrumental function which the UAI was to have had at that particular political moment. Thus it tried to bridge the gap between the founding principles of anarchism and operational efficiency, in order to reach certain goals, by artificially overcoming the contrasting methods and strategies of its militants. It reminded its members of the moral obligation attached to decisions reached but recognized, on the other hand, the right to full autonomy. It gave its members a series of practical regulations regarding the working of groups, the payment of dues, the process for convening assemblies, expulsions, etc., while on the other hand confirming that every group or circle which was a member of the UAI could establish its own internal constitution and decide its own activity in whatever way it chose and in full autonomy, thereby automatically permitting the various groups to establish their own regulations even if they differed from those set out in the ‘Pact’” [83].
</quote>
Furthermore, the Programme itself, which should have provided cohesion for all the components of the movement, limited itself to outlining the project for a future anarchist communist society without defining the tactics and strategy required in order to reach this objective, trusting practically exclusively to the insurrectional moment, for which it was necessary to “prepare oneself mentally and materially so that the outbreak of violent struggle would lead to a victory of the people” [84]. Instead of an organic line, the congress created a badly-connected series of strategies and failed to create adequate mechanisms for the main proposal, the <em>Fronte unico rivoluzionario</em> (FUR — Revolutionary Single Front). In Fabbri’s words, approved by the congress:
<quote>
“it is not a single front of revolutionary parties, but between revolutionary elements in various places, even in opposition to the will of the leaders and without the blessing of the various organizations, the UAI included. It is a matter of local agreements made possible by an affinity of intent, especially with regard to action” [85].
</quote>
Given such a set-up, if it were to be practicable there would have to be theoretical, objective and organizational unity together with a good level of efficiency, on the part of the whole movement. But within the <em>Unione Anarchica Italiana</em> this unity was only apparent, not real.
Alongside the official pronouncements, the congress was also the scene of a secret meeting in order to agree (it would seem) a plan of operations in light of the expected insurrection [86]. In this area the anarchists showed themselves to be full of initiative and capable of acting as advanced nuclei of attack and defence in the waves of popular and workers’ uprising, and in extreme resistance to fascism with an effect that was superior to their numbers. The group from La Spezia had established relations with sailors and soldiers and in May 1920 they launched an assault on the Monte Albano fort in Migliarino and, in agreement with some of the guards, tried in vain to take possession of an arms depot. Significantly, the police did not make any arrests even though they were well aware of the incident, for fear of provoking “a general strike of protest” [87]. The <em>Fascio Libertario Torinese</em> (Turin Libertarian Group) formed close ties with soldiers (even with officers and junior officers) who secretly frequented the Labour Club. “The anarchist communists of Turin”, according to a June 1919 report by General Scipioni, “have well-defined tasks for action: to blow up railway bridges, to cut telegraph and telephone communications and to isolate local authorities from any outside contact” [88]. In April 1920, anarchists from Piombino, Livorno and Genoa blocked a convoy of troops being sent to Turin, the scene at the time of the “<em>sciopero delle lancette</em>”. Not to mention the role of anarchists in the Ancona revolt the following June where “soldiers armed the workers”, as Borghi reports, “and the workers defended the soldiers” [89].
The FUR was prepared to put into application temporary, local agreements which were often imposed by events, with socialists, republicans and subversives. Its best prospects seemed to lie in national initiatives and conventions jointly called by the mass organizations in defence of political victims and of the Russian Revolution, which fostered fervid hopes. Nonetheless, even the convention in Bologna in August 1920 called by the railworkers’ union, which was massively attended, did not lead to the creation of unity. Certainly, a large part of the blame was due to the unwillingness of the PSI, but in part also thanks to the attitude of Malatesta who was reluctant to accept a permanent committee for fear of the power it could have assumed [90]. Once again, then, we see the uncertainty of his position (shared at the time by a large part of the movement) whose roots lay in uncritical trust in spontaneity, in the imminence of the revolution and in the intent to leave the people to do things by themselves.
Above all, it was the workers’ and peasants’ struggles (which reinforced the conviction of their leading automatically to a revolution in society) which provided anarchists with fertile terrain to push for the immediate putting into operation of the FUR. The effect was the transformation of a mid-term strategy into the only strategy and the loss of understanding of the need for an organization of anarchists which would function as a centre of coordination and a reference point for the masses. However, their work went well beyond their intense operational activity, encompassing well-aimed analysis of the situation and the reformist attempts at limiting the initiative of the proletariat with the usual rules and regulations. Even after the end of the Mazzonis case (a conclusion effectively stage-managed by the government, which re-possessed factories occupied by workers in order to hand them back to their owners after agreeing new contracts with the workers), <em>Umanità Nova</em> wrote:
<quote>
“We regret that those who we believe to be sincerely revolutionaries have acted with complicity in this affair. What have our friends of <em>Ordine Nuovo</em> got to say about this parody of communism of the Factory Councils, which they support so warmly? Or about this loudly-acclaimed attempt at communism in a bourgeois regime with the blessing of a minister of the king? And what about the abstentionist communists in the <em>Partito Socialista</em>?” [91].
</quote>
It must be stressed that this denunciation anticipated (and perhaps led to) the position of the Ordinovists laid out in Togliatti’s article “New Tactics” [92]. In more general terms, it has been noted, with respect to the views of the other forces on the left, that
<quote>
“the position of the anarchists during the period of the factory occupations was always one of revolutionary intervention and extension and, at the same time, of conflict with respect to intervention on practices. It is not a hurriedly cobbled together political position, just a step in the development of an analysis and tactics rooted in a wider background and in decisions and choices which are particularly referred to the period following the First World War”. [93]
</quote>
In fact, right from the very start of the metalworkers action, it was followed closely and commentated, its development was examined, the position with regard to the reformists was examined and there were attempts to extend the struggle and connect it to other categories of industry and agriculture [94]. Equally, attention was focused on the new proletarian grassroots organizations which had developed out of the need to organize and manage production in order that the revolutionary transition could begin [95]. When the action culminated in the occupation of factories, the anarchists showed themselves to be aware that there were no longer sufficient economic margins for negotiation and that the clash with the bourgeoisie had shifted onto the political terrain. The understood the particular nature of the moment when the masses, overcoming the traditional insurrectional methods, took possession of the means of production, actually putting revolutionary expropriation into practice (on 7 September, after calling for the factories not to be abandoned, <em>Umanità Nova</em> stated that “never again will such a favourable occasion present itself to begin expropriating the capitalists with the minimum loss of blood”)[96]. Seeing the risk of isolation, they proposed expanding the movement to other sectors up to the level of local administration. This was the situation in which a convention was called by the USI for 7 September in Sampierdarena, with the participation of the rail, sea and port workers, grocers and CGdL delegates. “All these workers”, wrote Borghi [97], “are in favour of a courageous decision: to do the deed, to occupy immediately Italy’s biggest port, Genoa, the other Ligurian ports, and other branches of industry”. Equally perceptive was the prediction that the abandonment of the factories would inevitably spark off the fury of reaction [98].
[70] E. SANTARELLI, <em>Il socialismo anarchico</em> cit., p. 189.
[71] G. MAIONE, <em>Il biennio rosso. Autonomia e spontaneità operaia nel 1919–1920</em>, Bologna 1975, pp. 225–226.
[72] <em>Le lotte metallurgiche a Torino</em>, in “Umanità Nova”, 18 July 1921.
[73] P.C. MASINI, <em>Anarchici e comunisti</em> cit.
[74] “L’Ordine Nuovo”, 25 October and 22 November 1919.
[75] <em>Ibid</em>, 27 March 1920.
[76] A. GRAMSCI, <em>L’Ordine Nuovo</em>, Turin 1954, pp. 128–129.
[77] M. GARINO, <em>Consigli di fabbrica e di azienda. Relazione presentata al Congresso dell’Unione Anarchica Italiana (Bologna 1–4 luglio 1920)</em>, in “Umanità Nova”, 1 July 1920.
[78] <em>Congresso dell’Unione Anarchica Italiana. Terza giornata (3 luglio 1920)</em>, ibid, 6 July 1920.
[79] ARGON [S. MOLINARI], <em>I Soviet e la loro costituzione. Atti del Convegno (Relazione al Congresso Anarchico di Bologna</em>), ibid, 3 July 1920.
[80] <em>Secondo Congresso dell’Unione Anarchica Italiana. Seconda giornata (2 luglio 1920) Seduta pomeridiana. Rapporti con le organizzazioni operaie di resistenza</em>, ibid, 10 July 1920.
[81] CATILINA [L. FABBRI], <em>Anarchismo e azione sindacale</em>, ibid, 27 June 1920.
[82] <em>Secondo congresso</em> cit.
[83] G. CERRITO, <em>Il ruolo dell’organizzazione anarchica</em>, Catania 1973, pp. 87–88.
[84] UNIONE ANARCHICA ITALIANA, <em>Programma adottato dall’UAI in Bologna 1–4 luglio 1920</em>, Bologna 1920.
[85] <em>Secondo Congresso dell’Unione Anarchica Italiana. Seconda giornata (2 luglio 1920). Seduta antimeridiana. Il fronte unico</em>, in “Umanità Nova”, 4 luglio 1920.
[86] See: L. FABBRI, <em>Malatesta</em> cit., p. 139.
[87] G. BIANCO, <em>op. cit.</em>, p. 147, which includes the <em>Nota del Sottoprefetto di La Spezia del 18 aprile 1920</em>.
[88] <em>Rapporto del maggior Generale Scipioni sull’organizzazione rivoluzionaria a Torino del 15 giugno 1919</em>, reported in R. VIVARELLI, <em>Il dopoguerra in Italia e l’avvento del fascismo (1918–1922)</em>. I. <em>Dalla fine della guerra all’impresa di Fiume</em>, Naples 1967, pp. 584–586.
[89] A. BORGHI, <em>La rivoluzione mancata</em> cit., p. 129.
[90] See: L. FABBRI, <em>Prefazione</em> cit., p. 18.
[91] <em>Note torinesi, Vertenza Mazzonis</em>, in “Umanità Nova”, 7 March 1920. See also: <em>I nuovi orizzonti della lotta operaia</em>, ibid, 4 March 1920, and <em>L’espropriazione degli stabilimenti Mazzonis. Una nuova mistificazione</em>, ibid, 6 March 1920.
[92] <em>Tattica Nuova</em>, in “L’Ordine Nuovo”, 13 March 1920 (article attributed to Togliatti). G. MAIONE, <em>op. cit.</em>, p. 102, states that the Ordinovists were the only ones who understood the real implications of the Mazzonis case: when one considers what was written in “Umanità Nova” this statement seems overly biased.
[93] G. BOSIO, <em>L’occupazione delle fabbriche e i gruppi dirigenti e di pressione del movimento operaio</em>, in <em>1920. La grande speranza. L’occupazione delle fabbriche in Italia</em>, special issue of “Il Ponte”, 31 October 1970, p. 1182.
[94] In connection, see: “Umanità Nova”, 28 March, 1 and 4 April, 9 and 12 June 1920.
[95] In connection, see: <em>ibid</em>, 7 April, 6 and 22 June, 8 and 19 August, 4 and 5 September 1920.
[96] <em>Metallurguci attenti</em>, ibid, 7 September 1920.
[97] A. BORGHI, <em>La rivoluzione mancata</em> cit., p. 143 ff.
[98] See: <em>I pericoli</em>, in “Umanità Nova”, 8 September 1920.
** <strong>Part VI: The Preventive Counter-Revolution</strong>
The end of the great wave of struggle that had culminated in the factory occupations added to the repercussions in Italy of the international economic crisis to create the conditions for the defeat of any revolutionary hopes that anarchists had had during the <em>Biennio Rosso</em>. At the same time, the wounds produced by the war in the capitalist world were healing, while it was becoming ever-clearer that there would be no further spreading of the Russian Revolution in its Bolshevik version. At this point, the anarchist movement (which had provided, both in Italy and elsewhere, a not irrelevant contribution to the blocking of episodes of armed counter-revolutionary intervention) was losing the reserve which it had thus far maintained for the sake of unity of the left, and began to voice its dissent regarding the management of and the road to revolution and to protest against the persecution of anarchists in Russia. The basic criticism lay in the degradation of the soviets, proclaimed by the Bolsheviks as the basis of revolutionary action and the instruments of the new order, but which were instead suffocated by the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. This, in practice, was a dictatorship of the communist party which, with its centralizing apparatus, crushed the truly democratic structures. This was the line taken by Fabbri in his “<em>Dittatura e rivoluzione</em>”, written in August 1920 but, significantly, only published the following year [99]. So it was that the 3<sup>rd</sup> Congress of the UAI (in Ancona, November 1921) confirmed “its enthusiastic solidarity with the Russian revolution and its firm intention to rise in its defence against any reactionary attempt to destroy it by governments of other countries”, while declaring however that it “in no way recognized the so-called communist government of Russia as the representative of the revolution” and expressing “its heartiest solidarity with the anarchists of Russia who are being denied all freedom and who are imprisoned and persecuted for the [...] crimes of publishing, meeting, organizing and propagating their ideas” [100].
But the debate on the conduct of the Bolsheviks and the Anarchists on the dictatorship of the proletariat would only later have any sort of notable influence on attempts to revise strategy. In the years from 1920 to 1925, instead, attention was fixed on the re-emergence of State repression and on the spread of fascism which was unleashing armed acts of aggression against the workers’ movement, destroying the organizational structures which the masses had devoted untiring energies into building. The more dedicated militants were being assassinated or forced out of their home towns into exile or temporary refuge elsewhere. Already in October 1920, that is to say practically immediately after the abandoning of the factories, the offices of <em>Umanità Nova</em> in Milan were twice subjected to searches. The police arrested some of the best-known members of the UAI and the USI, such as Malatesta and Borghi, for “conspiracy against the State”. Preparations for the trial dragged on for a long time as the prosecution struggled to find a plausible charge on which to prosecute and the trial did not begin until July 1921 [101]. The prisoners began a hunger strike in March, which led to a series of solidarity protests and strikes led by the USI. The unease created by the arrests and by police measures drove some individualists into isolated action. On 23 March 1921, a bomb at the Diana Theatre in Milan, designed to hit the police chief, missed its target and killed around twenty people [102]. The resulting shock in public opinion led to the most violent repression, while fascist squads ransacked the offices of <em>L’Avanti!</em> and of <em>Umanità Nova</em> (which in May had to move to Rome where it was able, with some difficulty, to continue publication until December 1922)[103] and began a vicious hunt for “subversives”.
Anarchists have long debated the episode and it is still difficult to establish to what extent infiltrated agents provocateurs were involved in the attempt on the life of the police chief. “If E. Malatesta had not been arbitrarily detained in prison for such a long time”, declared one of the men sentenced for the slaughter, “the bombing would never even have been thought of” [104]. And though Malatesta (who, together with his comrades, had immediately suspended the hunger strike) totally disagreed politically with the bombers, while demonstrating a certain comprehension from a human point of view, the position of others was much more severe.
<quote>
“Let it be perfectly clear”, wrote Fabbri, “that given the choice between the bourgeois judges and the prisoners, between the accusers and the accused, we will defend the latter — in full accord with our function as defenders of the downtrodden and the weak, but we defend them for superior reasons of humanity and justice, as irresponsible victims and not as defenders of an idea. We defend them and help them, but we by no means celebrate them” [105].
</quote>
The affair contributed to some extent to weakening the anarchist movement and, more generally, the whole workers’ movement, exposing its weaknesses which were already to be seen with the first signs of repression. The convention of popular forces which was quickly called in Florence in order to promote protests and active solidarity with Malatesta, Borghi and the other prisoners, brought no results (Serrati even went so far as to describe the arrest as a “sporadic episode”)[106], demonstrating the inability to reach agreement, even on common defence, among the parties and organizations of the Italian left, their incomprehension and their unreadiness to face up to the reaction and fascism. For anarchism in particular, this shortcoming was closely linked to the basic fact that “it had not been able to develop a strategy for the revolutionary transition which would place it in a position to lead the masses” [107]. Certainly, as we have already seen, the Bologna congress had established certain points, a number of partial policies. And in fact, the supporters of that strategy had involved themselves in the class struggle which, during the <em>Biennio Rosso</em>, was at its height in exactly those areas where they were concentrated — and it was no coincidence. But just as these actions, though widespread over some while, failed to lead to a more generalized revolt, the Italian anarchist movement too (fooled by a false theoretical unity and unity of purpose which undermined any chance of debate or organizational growth within the UAI) was unable, as a political movement, to work out a strategy which could face the various stages of development, based on experience and political development. This insufficiency did not escape Malatesta, who remarked on it with great clarity in January 1920:
<quote>
“On the streets, in action, the masses are with us and are ready to act; but at the moment of truth, they allow themselves to be sweet-talked, becoming disheartened and disillusioned; we always find ourselves defeated and isolated. Why? [...] Because we are disorganized, or not organized enough. The others have the means to transmit news, be it true or false, quickly and everywhere, and they use these means in order to influence opinion and direct any action in whatever way they want. By means of their leagues, their sections and federations, by having trusted elements in every area, safe houses, and so on, they can launch a movement when it serves their purposes and halt it when the goal is reached [...] The situations I have described will certainly be reproduced in Italy and in the not too distant future. Do we really wish to find ourselves in the same unprepared state, powerless to successfully oppose the manoeuvrings of tricksters and to obtain the best possible results from any revolutionary situation?” [108].
</quote>
But the project of an alliance of leftist forces, built mainly from the grassroots at local level, was matched by an inefficient synthesis between the various anarchist currents, founded on a “pact” and a “programme” which should have served to unify through a common appeal to the principles, but which instead were avoidable and avoided thanks to the autonomy of individuals and groups. Undoubtedly, experiences and the rapid worsening of the situation were an incentive to overcoming the contradiction. The Milan nucleus, which was gathered around the journal <em>Il Demolitore</em> stated in 1922 that
<quote>
“the <em>Unione Anarchica Italiana</em> [...] must not limit its work to studying the situation and carrying out the modest task of ‘correspondence commission’. It must hold (if it really wants to be strong) under its control everything that regards the anarchist movement, its day-to-day expressions, its press, its oral propaganda, its manifestoes to the proletariat, its labour action, international relations, periodicals, its relations with the other vanguard parties, absolute control of the direction of every delicate organism and, above all, responsibility”.
</quote>
And it rightly attributed the functional shortcomings of the organization to the presence of
<quote>
“two distinct currents which block each other out: on the one hand the pro-organization anarchists who, though convinced of the need for solid political and labour organization, make tremendous efforts to free themselves from the fear of denominations and from the terror of having to be (and about time, too) nothing more than disciplined militants; on the other hand, the individualists struggling along from day to day on the margins of the two manifestations of anarchism — communist and terrorist” [109].
</quote>
Nevertheless, the dark years of total resistance to fascism were not best suited to a process of profound revision. Thus, the anarchists faced the test with the policy of the single revolutionary front, with the various leftist parties each bringing their own specific elements; engaging (with no great success) in action designed to unite, with appeals to the need for “direct agreement between all the active elements, over and above the official organizations” [110], and urgently appealing to the proletariat for an “organized resistance” [111], of which they felt themselves to be the vanguard; promoting the formation of the <em>Arditi del Popolo</em> (seen as the military application of the FUR) who, despite the diffidence of the PSI and the <em>Partito Comunista d’Italia</em> (Communist Party of Italy — PCdI), tried to react blow for blow. They were the protagonists of episodes of armed opposition both to the fascist squads and to the armed forces and police and also arms raids on military barracks, but paid a high price in deaths and jail sentences [112]. They were, however, fully aware of the need not to become isolated and to fight with the masses: if the fascist attack represented the reaction of capitalism, “the need of the leading elements in modern society to defend themselves” [113] against the proletariat which had continued to grow after the Great War, it was becoming indispensable for the resistance to be massive and for the defensive phase to become an offensive, a revolution which could overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish a new society.
Ultimately, Fascism was able to win easily simply because of the deficiencies of the Italian left. And in the eyes of many anarchists, these deficiencies were added to in no small way by the absence of any appropriate strategy by the anarchist party and above all by the lack of revolutionary initiative during the <em>Biennio Rosso</em> [114]. But Fabbri looked further than most and realized that the success of the adversary and especially the way this success was consolidated depended a great deal on international factors. As he wrote in December 1923:
<quote>
“The worst reaction is predominating all over Europe, and this is the principal reason why the Italian reaction is so strong; this is the most important reason why Italian fascism has cause to hope that its triumph can be longer-lived than would be the case if it depended solely on its material strength and the conscience, the state of mind and the spirit of the Italian people [...] The miserable state of freedom in Italy depends much more than is thought on the whims of plutocrats in Paris, London and Washington” [115].
</quote>
[99] L. FABBRI, <em>Dittatura e rivoluzione</em>, Ancona 1921 (most recent edition Cesena 1971). For an anarchist historiography of the Russian Revolution, see: VOLIN, <em>La révolution inconnue</em>, Paris 1947 (English edition: <em>The Unknown Revolution</em>, Detroit/Chicago 1974); P. ARCHINOFF, <em>Historia del movimento machnovista</em>, Buenos Aires 1926 (English edition: P. ARSHINOV, <em>The History of the Makhnovist Movement (1918–1921)</em>, London 1987); N. MAKHNO, <em>La Révolution Russe en Ucraine (mars 1917-avril 1918)</em>, Paris 1954, 3 vols.; <em>La rivolta di Kronstadt</em>, Florence 1971.
[100] “Umanità Nova”, 8 November 1921.
[101] See: T. TAGLIAFERRO, <em>Errico Malatesta, Armando Borghi e compagni davanti ai giurati di Milano. Resoconto stenografico del processo svoltosi il 27, 28, 29 luglio 1921</em>, Milan 1979.
[102] On the Diana affair, see: V. MANTOVANI, <em>Mazurca blu. La strage del Diana</em>, Milan 1979.
[103] See: L. BETTINI, <em>op. cit.</em>, pp. 289–291.
[104] G. MARIANI, <em>Memorie di un ex-terrorista</em>, Turin 1953, p. 46.
[105] Mentioned in E. MALATESTA, <em>Vittime ed eroi</em>, in “Umanità Nova”, 24 December 1921 (now in E. MALATESTA, <em>Scritti</em> cit., I, p.312).
[106] L. FABBRI, <em>Prefazione</em> cit., p. 20.
[107] E. SANTARELLI, <em>Il socialismo anarchico</em> cit., p. 180.
[108] E. MALATESTA, <em>Movimenti stroncati</em> cit.
[109] T.T. [T. TAGLIAFERRO], <em>Il senso della realtà</em>, in “Il Demolitore”, Milan 14 February 1922.
[110] E. MALATESTA, <em>Il dovere dell’azione</em>, in “Umanità Nova”, 25 June 1921 (now in E. MALATESTA, <em>Scritti</em> cit., I, pp. 97–98).
[111] E. MALATESTA, <em>La guerra civile</em>, ibid, 8 September 1921 (now in E. MALATESTA, <em>Scritti</em> cit., I, pp. 217).
[112] On anarchist resistance actions against the reaction and fascism, see: A. TASCA, <em>Nascita e avvento del fascismo (1918–1922)</em>, Bari 1965, passim; R. VIVARELLI, <em>op. cit.</em>, passim; A. BORGHI, <em>La rivoluzione mancata</em> cit., passim; <em>Un trentennio</em> cit., passim.
[113] L. FABBRI, <em>La controrivoluzione</em> cit., p. 13.
[114] See: L. FABBRI, <em>La controrivoluzione</em> cit., passim; A. BORGHI, <em>½ secolo</em> cit., passim.
[115] L. FABBRI, <em>La reazione europea e l’Europa</em>, in “Il Martello”, New York, 22 December 1923.
** <strong>Part VII: A Re-Think On Strategy</strong>
For many years in Italy, anarchists “made up, after communists, the largest contingent of political prisoners, internees and subjects of police survey” [116]. In the meantime, the emigrant community had begun a tortuous process of reflection on the causes of their defeat, on a review of their strategic lines and their operational decisions which, apart from the various tendencies singing their own praises, saw the initial basis for a clarification.
Some pounced on the negative judgements of the FUR to contest even the need for any agreement with the left, which had shown itself to be “untrustworthy” during the <em>Biennio Rosso</em>. Consequently, they sought to put their energies into the construction of an exclusively “libertarian” coalition, seen as a vast and undefined series of alliances (allowing as much room as possible for initiative by individuals and groups, held together by a generic reference to libertarian principles and methods) which would take the place of the existing anarchist organization which had revealed itself to be inadequate. The choice was reflected in the instruments of the struggle against fascism. In fact, after the unhappy experience of the <em>Comitato d’azione antifascista</em> (Committee for Anti-Fascist Action), led by Ricciotti Garibaldi, the <em>Comitato dell’alleanza libertario</em> (Committee of the Libertarian Alliance), made up only of anarchists, was formed in Paris [117].
The same positions had already been adopted in 1922 by the group behind <em>L’Adunata dei Refrattari</em> [118]. Heirs to the worst individualist tradition of <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, which it was inspired by, this newspaper was founded during a difficult period of bitter repression which followed the war and which affected the local revolutionary-inspired workers’ movement, involving the Italo-American anarchists. Examples of this were the cases of Sacco and Vanzetti, sentenced and executed for crimes they had not committed, of Salsedo, who was arrested and “committed suicide” in prison, and of Galleani, who was deported back to Italy and immediately sent into confinement by the regime [119]. Such a situation should have led to the formation of the widest possible proletarian movement with a union of anarchist forces as an integral part of it. Instead, <em>L’Adunata dei Refrattari</em> from the beginning set itself up to “disturb this cosy harmony theorized within the family and which has been fashionable for some time now, in the guise of a Single Front and an alliance of labour”. As far as struggle against fascism was concerned, it postulated an ideological “purity” which, rejecting workers’ organization as “more a hindrance that an help to the emancipation of the workers”, promoted pure and heroic individual action [120]. Having arrived in the United States, Armando Borghi accelerated the convergence of the anti-organizationalist currents and launched a campaign against any united anti-fascist agreement which, in his opinion, would only have repeated the failed experience of the FUR [121]. At that stage it was becoming inevitable that there would be a clash with the organizationalists who in 1923 had promoted the <em>Alleanza antifascista del Nord America</em> (Anti-Fascist Alliance of North America), with an autonomous and original line, with the aim of combating fascism in Italy and its spread to the United States, grouping together all those political and labour organizations who agreed with that goal [122].
The increasing bitterness of the polemics (which reached crisis point starting in 1926) provoked a split among Italian anarchist immigrants into two opposing camps. It was a split which would spread from the US towards Europe, where with the help of various factors, amongst which the stress of exile, the anti-organizationalist faction was to gain greater momentum. Although in his public statement Malatesta took a prudent line in order not to accentuate the divisions, he felt that it was necessary to take a more decided position in private. Writing to Borghi in July 1926, he said:
<quote>
“As far as I am concerned, organization between men with the same goals and who want to reach them with the same means is always the first thing to do. Since the UAI has a programme that I accept and seeks to unite only those who accept its programme, I am for the UAI. Cordial relations with anarchists of all tendencies, specific agreements for specific aims, general cooperation in everything on which there is agreement, yes; but fusion and confusion, no. Uniting on any other basis with the so-called individualists and anti-organizationalists would effectively mean putting oneself under the control of these people who, when they are not <em>je m’en fautiste</em>, are authoritarians who reject the word organization but who in reality aim at creating personal organizations, dependent on the uncontrollable wishes of a few people [...] Apart from anything else, what is important to me is not organization as such, but the spirit of organization; when there is this spirit of organization, organization arises when it is needed and takes the forms that circumstances require and permit. Now, it is the spirit of organization which is generally lacking among anarchists; and mixing together the organized and the ‘anti-organizationalists’ is no way to develop it. My wish would be for all anarchists to organize themselves according to their various tendencies and that the various organizations would establish cordial relations of mutual aid. And this would naturally be without stopping individuals or small groups, whether they belong to the general organizations or not, from acting separately for specific purposes. They would be free to do so and would also receive, when possible, any necessary aid. If only they would do it, instead of acting stupidly!” [123].
</quote>
It was a bitter realization of the failure of the attempt made in 1920 to keep the various tendencies united by omitting the very things that provide that clarity which is indispensable for the life of a political organization if it is to be successful and be a point of reference for the masses. In fact, the nature of a synthesis (more in name than in fact) of the non-homogeneous positions of the emigrant anarchist organizations could not bestow on them the presence and strength which even the UAI, with all its faults, had demonstrated during the <em>Biennio Rosso</em>, as they were lacking the essential elements which the UAI had: a programme and a strategy for creating the necessary alliances in order to carry it out. In these circumstances, the intransigent opposition to fascism by the anarchists, even though fiercely waged under various forms both inside and outside the country, sorely lacked coordination and, even more so, a united strategy.
However, there was now growing awareness of the need for a critical re-think on the causes of the defeat of the revolution in Italy and elsewhere in the world, the need to come up with a plan, a strategy, an organizational and operational concept which could firmly establish anarchism on the left and allow it to regain its dominant position in the revolutionary process. A firm step in that direction was taken by the “Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists — Draft” published in Paris by the Delo Truda group of exiled Russian anarchists [124]. Its programmatic points were: the principle of the class struggle and anarchist communism, labour activity as an indispensable method of revolutionary struggle and the creation of a positive programme for the period of transition of the revolution. It also promoted an organization whose members would have to be fully responsible with regard to the common strategy.
Leaving aside the excessive importance attributed to the organizational structures, it has to be admitted that the “Platform” was the first constructive re-thinking on the international defeat which the anarchists had suffered in the 1920s, and it was to be received with enthusiasm by some groups, such as the French and Bulgarian federations. Clearly, such a proposal sparked off debate in Italy’s libertarian circles. One group of militants joined the initiative and formed the 1<sup>st</sup> Italian Section of the new organization [125]. Fabbri gave a calm and balanced view when he wrote that
<quote>
“it places under discussion a number of problems inherent to the anarchist movement, to the place of anarchists in the revolution, to anarchist organization in the struggle, and so on. These need to be resolved if anarchism is to continue to provide answers to the growing needs of the struggle and of present-day social life” [126].
</quote>
Nevertheless, the majority of the Italian movement, though accepting that it had committed some of the errors indicated in the document, refused to accept its organizational proposals which were essential if a new direction was to be taken. And the lack of receptiveness to this essential point was to be one of the principal causes of the decline in the anarchist presence within the class struggle in Italy.
[116] E. SANTARELLI, <em>Il socialismo anarchico</em> cit., p. 195.
[117] On the birth and the programme of the Committee of the Libertarian Alliance, see: <em>Comitato Alleanza Antifascista di Parigi</em>, 2-page pamphlet with attached 4-page pamphlet <em>Compagno ascolta</em>, deposited at the Internationaal Anstituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (abbr. IISGA), Fondo Ugo Fedeli, b. 109.
[118] See: G. CERRITO, <em>Sull’emigrazione anarchica italiana negli Stati Uniti d’America</em>, in “Volontà” (Genoa) 4, 1969.
[119] See: <em>Un trentennio</em> cit., passim. On the repression against the US workers’ movement after the First World War, see: W. PRESTON, <em>Aliens and Dissenters</em>, New York 1963; and R.C. BOYER-H.M. MORAIS, <em>Storia del movimento operaio negli Stati Uniti</em>, Bari 1974.
[120] <em>È permesso</em>, in “L’Adunata dei Refrattari”, New York 15 April 1922; and <em>A che serve l’organizzazione</em>, ibid, New York 15 May 1922.
[121] On the positions taken by A. Borghi in the United States, see his <em>Gli anarchici e le alleanze</em>, New York undated [but 1927]. Later, he was to deny his involvement in the FUR during the Biennio Rosso in Italy (see: A. BORGHI, Mezzo secolo cit., p. 314).
[122] On the organization’s programme, see: Alleanza Antifascista del Nord America, in “Il Martello”, New York 24 October 1925.
[123] <em>Lettera di Errico Malatesta ad Armando Borghi dell’11 luglio 1926</em> in IISGA, Fondo Nettalu, b. Adunata-Malatesta, Borghi-Malatesta correspondence.
[124] The document was published in Paris in 1926 by Edition des Œvres Anarchistes. Librairie internazionale. The Platform and material concerning the successive debate are contained in Italian translation in G. CERRITO, <em>Il ruolo dell’organizzazione anarchica</em>, Pistoia 1973, pp. 259–360. Available in English at The Nestor Makhno Archive
[125] See: <em>Manifesto Comunista Anarchico della I Sezione</em> in IISGA, Fondo Ugo Fedeli, b. 175. For information on the group, see: G. CERRITO, <em>Il ruolo</em> cit., p.92. Available in English at The Nestor Makhno Archive
[126] L. FABBRI, <em>Un progetto di organizzazione anarchica</em>, in “Il Martello”, New York 17 and 24 November 1927 (now in G. CERRITO, <em>Il ruolo</em> cit., pp. 315–324). Available in English at The Nestor Makhno Archive
|
#title The Communist Origins of Anarchism
#subtitle Anarchist Communist Theory and Strategy and the Anti-Organisational Deviation
#author Adriana Dadà
#LISTtitle Communist Origins of Anarchism
#SORTtopics anarcho-communism, theory, strategy, anti-organization, insurrectionary, Italy
#date 1992
#source Retrieved on 14<sup>th</sup> October 2021 from [[https://anarchistplatform.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/the-communist-origins-of-anarchism/][anarchistplatform.wordpress.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-10-14T12:33:49
#notes From <em>Comunismo Libertario</em>, Anno 6 no. 32, April 1992 and no. 33, July 1992
Anarchism was defined as anti-authoritarian communism in the period of the 1<sup>st</sup> International, during which Bakunin and the majority of member sections of the organisation laid the foundations of anarchist communist theory – organisational dualism, the role of the masses as the only revolutionary forces, the role of the conscious minority as “invisible guides” inserted in the mass organisation, the <strong>International Workingmen’s Association</strong>, and anarchy being the utopistic management of an egalitarian, libertarian society which we seek.
Cafiero described the evidently communist character of anarchism like this:
<quote>
“<em>it is not enough to state that communism is something possible; we can state that it is necessary. Not only can one be communist; one must be, at the risk of the revolution failing” … “once we called ourselves ‘collectivists’ in order to distinguish ourselves from the individualists and from the authoritarian communists, but basically we were anti-authoritarian communists, and by calling ourselves ‘collectivists’ we thought that this would express our idea that everything must be held in common, without making any difference between the instruments and the materials of labour and the products of the collective labour” … “One cannot be an anarchist without being communist” … “We must be communists, because it is in communism that real equality can be reached” … We must be communists because the people, who do not understand collectivist sophisms, understand communism perfectly” … “We must be communists, because we are anarchists, because anarchy and communism are the two necessary features of the revolution</em>” [1]
</quote>
While anarchism was born decidedly communist, it is true that the persecution of the international by the governments of the period led to deviations of Bakuninist theory, deviations which would leave their mark on the history of the anarchist movement, above all on the Italian movement.
Together with “propaganda by the deed” – which was an attempt to push the masses into insurrection and thereby, in effect, substituting itself for them – another current which developed and was fed by it was the anti-organisational current which had its roots in the theorisations of Kropotkin. In Kropotkinist <strong>*</strong> theory, in fact, the aim of revolutionary action is always a society where “everyone gives according to their ability and everyone receives according to their needs”, in other words – communism. But this communism is understood as a natural harmonious state which humanity would inevitably tend towards as a result of two parallel causes: the inborn, natural solidarity of Man and the idea of the basic goodness of the human soul which lead to a preference for any form of spontaneism. Furthermore, once it has been freed from capitalist dominion, scientific progress (which capitalist domination uses to distance Man from nature) will be a potent factor in the formation of a new Man who will be conscious and in harmony with nature.
As communism represents the inevitable result of human history, as long as it is reached spontaneously as a result of certain inescapable factors such as Man’s own inclinations and the laws that govern nature, there is a total absence in Kropotkin of any trace of political strategy. In fact, for Kropotkin and his imitators, every form of organisation, political or union, must be rejected as both are ways of channelling spontaneity which is intrinsically good and leads automatically to communism.
For anarchist communists, on the other hand, organisation is at one and the same time necessary for our struggles and a guarantee of the revolutionary result of these struggles.
For the insurrectionalists,[2] organisation is “a bourgeois phenomenon” which, by compressing spontaneity, carries us further from the final result and impedes the development of the goodness of human nature and its tendency towards positive self-organisation. As the most important thing is the purity of the doctrine in its harmonious vision of the world, in other words the goal that Man desires to reach, the class struggle is at most an instrument to be used in order to reach this goal. In this way insurrectionalism distances itself from the historical path of anarchist communism (understood as a theory for the emancipation of the oppressed classes and therefore inseparably linked to the class struggle) and becomes instead a theory that is valid for everyone. This leads to a rejection of the class struggle, seen as limiting a theory that is valid for ever, which relies only on the eternal aspiration of personal liberty of every human being; an accent is placed only on the relationship of “power” and not on the relationship of exploitation.
Then again, those who see in the class struggle only a useful instrument for the emancipation of humanity become disappointed by the slowness and discontinuity with which the workers’ movement responds to the call of social justice, for its constant need to win day by day better living conditions within this society. Insurrectionalists of this type, therefore, are prone to a deep distrust in the inevitably reformist masses, affected by economicism and incapable of wider prospectives. From these premises, two forms of political behaviour are derived which are very close and often mixed, but which however represent a degeneration from the principles of anarchist communism.
In the first, the only result is indiscriminate ideological propaganda designed to win more people over to the theory, a sort of educationism where it is expected that others will sooner or later come to understand the intrinsic beauty of the ideal.
In the second case, the action of revolutionaries is substituted for that of the masses in the belief that the heroic act will provide the spark for a spontaneous insurrection and that any action, even one which is not part of a planned strategy, can represent a further stage towards harmonious communism, simply because it is coherent with the aims and the conscience of the revolutionary. If the revolution must be armed and destroy the State, understood as the centre of oppression, then revolutionaries must concretely practice armed struggle against the State as of now. In consequence, this second tradition has historically been willing to engage in adventuristic practices, which do not necessarily exclude the possibility of terrorism, and to link itself to the propagandists of individual action who do not have to answer to any type of mass organisation. Neither does their action, unlike that of the anarchist communists; have to form part of the process of political growth of the working class and its allies, directed at the re-appropriation of the capacity for self-organisation of the struggles and of society. In fact, anarcho-communists would have us believe that it is enough to break the chains of power in order for this capacity to develop spontaneously, as it is held to be an intrinsic element of human nature and not a slow, laborious process. When all is said and done, insurrectionalists have only their own consciences to answer to.
Starting from these premises, insurrectionalists charge themselves, as conscious revolutionaries, with breaking the chains of humanity, without bothering about the process of the proletariat’s re-appropriation of knowledge, in the conviction that the fall of the State will provoke (with no previous preparation) the spontaneous embarkation of freed humanity on the road to communism.
After the decline of anarchism at the end of the last century into an isolationist period of terrorist acts, in many countries it re-discovered its mass base through anarcho-syndicalism, in other words in those workers’ organisations which slowly brought anarchism back to its communist roots. It was not by chance that strong anarcho-syndicalist organisations (such as the <strong>UGT</strong> in France, the <strong>FORA</strong> in Argentina, the <strong>CNT</strong> in Spain and the <strong>USI</strong> in Italy, to name but the best-known) in the first two decades of the century were flanked by decidedly anarchist communist organisation such as the <strong><em>Fédération Communiste Revolutionnaire</em></strong> in France, the <strong><em>Federación Anarquista Iberica</em></strong> in Spain and the <strong><em>Unione dei Comunisti Anarchici d’Italia</em></strong> (which later became the <strong><em>Unione Anarchica Italiana</em></strong>) in Italy.
Let us now try to summarise the distinctive features of anarchist communism, which even today distinguish us from the other tendencies of anarchism.
Referring back to Bakuninist theory, anarchist communism clearly distinguishes between the class political movement (the revolutionary minority) and the class economic movement (the mass organisation).
The former organises all those militants in the mass organisation who share the same theory, the same political strategy and well-articulated homogeneous tactics. It is the task of this organisation to act as a repository for the class memory on the one hand, and on the other to elaborate a common strategy, which can allow the various moments of struggle to be linked within the class, while being a stimulus and guide for this. To quote <strong>Bakunin</strong> in his letter “to the Italian comrades”: [3]
<em>“if you each operate in isolation on your own initiative, you will surely remain impotent; united, by organising your forces, no matter how few they are to begin with, into one single collective action inspired by the same idea, the same goal, the same position, you will be invincible”</em><em></em>
The mass organisation on the other hand is the organisation that the proletariat gives itself for the defence of its interests, and organisation that is therefore heterogeneous, which has as its goal the emancipation of the class through direct action, self-organisation and which practices these methods constantly. The aim of really autonomous mass action is the expropriation of capital by the associated workers, in other words restitution to the producers and to their associations for them of all that has been produced by the labour of the working class over the centuries. The immediate aim is to continually develop the spirit of solidarity between the workers and of resistance against the oppressors, to keep the proletariat in practice through continual struggle in its various forms, to conquer right now everything all the freedoms and wealth that can be taken from capitalism, no matter how little it is.
Even from the very definition of the role of the political organisation and that of the mass organisation, it is evident that the function of the anarchist communist organisation is nothing like that of a leninist organisation. The political organisation is not recognized within the mass organisation as having any official standing. It is not and must not be a recognised and institutionalised leadership as a result of which it must impose its solutions and expect to represent the “real” class interests, in the style of the leninists. It is simply a place of confrontation and elaboration where politically homogeneous comrades who prepare and finalise their action and the proposals to their analysis and their ideology, without expecting that it be accepted on the basis of confrontation within the mass organisation. It is simply the place where politically kindred comrades can debate with each other, work out, prepare and set their goals for action and their proposals that are coherent with their analysis and ideology, without expecting to impose their ideas on the mass organisation.
Anarchist communist ideology therefore assigns the political organisation a very precise role as “engine” of the revolutionary process and confers the role of sole revolutionary agent on the masses. In this conception of the role of the organisation can be seen the difference in priority from the marxists on the one hand, but also with the various deviations from anarchist communism.
[1] C. Cafiero, <em>Anarchia e comunismo</em>. A summary of the speech made by comrade Cafiero to the Congress of the Jura Federation, in A. Dadà, <em>L’anarchismo in Italia: fra movimento e partito</em>, Milan, 1984, p. 187–190.
[2] As the term “anarcho-communist” has a specific meaning only in Italy, it has been replaced throughout this text by the more generally-used term in the English speaking world, “insurrectionalist”, except * where the term was removed without the replacement – APA Ed.
[3] This document was published by Bakunin in the form of a letter to Celso Ceretti and republished in A. Dadà, <em>op.cit.</em>, p. 152–65.
|
#title Communiqué from prison
#author Adriano
#SORTtopics Italy, capitalism, Act for Freedom Now!, anarchist prisoner
#date April 9, 2014
#source <[[https://actforfree.nostate.net/?p=16535][actforfree.nostate.net/?p=16535]]>. Retrieved on 03/07/2024 from [[https://lib.anarhija.net/library/adriano-communique-from-prison][lib.anarhija.net]].
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-07-03T23:24:24.100Z
Violence generates violence. Regardless of what is right or wrong, no matter how abstruse is the boundary between opposites and how easily they can converge. The word violence and the concept it expresses present deep mystifications to those who have the monopoly on it. All expressions of dissent are being disproportionately repressed… no surprise… ‘go and tell them that it’s springtime’ [<em>rough translation of ‘vagli a spiegare che è primavera’, a verse by the late anarchist singer and song-writer Fabrizio De Andrè</em>].
The modus operandi of cops and politicians is infamous enough, with their artistic architecture made of inexistent castles in the sky, and their accusing anarchists of belonging to imaginary associations; and with the judiciary of the State-Capital, servile and functional to miserable power, advocate and perpetrator of the dictates of dominion.
Between the concrete and steel imprisoning me and the prison servants complying with their function of cops (usher – controller), I’m writing these lines to unload the tension and break a suffocating silence.
I greet and sincerely thank friends, comrades and all those who expressed solidarity with me. I also express my solidarity with all rebels and resistant oppressed, inside and outside prison, and with brotherly affection I send a strong hug to my dear comrade Gianluca.
I regard anarchism firstly as a feeling, which generates other contrasting feelings. One can emphasize it, diminish it, distort it, theorize it… a feeling as such can only be lived!
But there’s no feeling or abstractions in the structures and practices exercising the control, management, submission and exploitation of life.
Systematic environmental plundering and devastation are not abstractions.
All institutions, be they political, administrative, economic, financial or social-cultural, are directly or indirectly responsible for the continuation of the status-quo, through their many coercive measures, the suppression of free will and the exercise of power, legitimized by the rule of the law.
Modern imperialist civilization grows in deception and corruption, blackmail, militarization of territories and explicit declarations of war. It vomits concrete and harmfulness, swallows nature, homologates and annihilates peoples and cultures, oppresses any resistance with force.
After all, the tyranny of civilization has characterized humanity for millennia, as humans are an evolved species, one that make slaves.
In the global commodified cauldron, liberal politics and mercantile logics dictate the law. All States (with some distinctions) respectfully submit to supranational organizations, international treaties and strangling financial dominion.
Corporations and multinationals of all sectors hold immense power. In the name of profit and progress, wearing masks of benefactors and counting on the complicity of governments, they plunder and kill without scruples.
As they try to maintain their power and profits, exploiters and polluters have been blabbing about sustainability for a long time, presenting themselves as ‘eco-friendly’ and proposing themselves as supporters and champions of the environmental cause… energy and economy have become ‘ethical’ and coloured in green… hypocrisy has become unbearable!
The ruling class have refined their methods and sharpened their blades. They analyse dull data, talk of growth and development, and become increasingly totalitarian in their technicalities. And in so doing they meet with quiet consensus.
The human civilized fauna is well tamed and intoxicated with information, crammed in megalopolis; it is made by depersonalized individuals, psychotics, consumers keen to self-domestication. They are ‘full optional’ robots that show off their smart accessories with satisfaction, are obsessed by anything and above all by themselves, are hostile towards what is different, and spend their spare time in solitude in virtual worlds… in the company of their many ‘friends’.
Herds of honest workers and unemployed desperate for a job remain helpless and indifferent, prisoners of the illusion of a false and unstable wealth. Sometimes they participate in the sad theatre of citizenist indignation like sheep led by a dog. On the contrary, when they become really aware and their anger turns into revolt, the mask of democracy falls off and reveals its face: police, military and blood. Then democracy finds the opportunity to test new weapons and devices and the judiciary fills up the jails of the country.
Since the beginning of industrialization there have occurred events producing power structures and sea changes. Then the plundering of life started on a large scale.
Today the good citizen, unaware and unable to think, is illuminated by a ‘new’ dependence, which he worships like a god and saviour: this is the ‘technological ziggurat’ promising an easy and heavenly future and advancing threateningly and frighteningly, making the environment artificial, sterilizing life with techno-scientific innovations and eliminating or modifying all natural elements. And this generates a great deal of monstrosities.
The impeding nuclear reality and the irreversible impairment of the eco-system and its regenerative capacity, the dramatic impoverishment of biodiversity, the manipulation of nature and therefore of life itself, are leading to a point of no return.
Consumerism and induced lifestyles, the control of the ‘resources’ (energy, food and water resources), technology applied to the control of the individuals and society and the advancing militarization are leading to total and absolute dominion.
In the darkness of the existent the search for irrational beauty is being lost, and the imminent future is getting even more grey and distressing, aseptic and sterile, calculable and measurable, putrid and smelling.
Society is the mirror of the absurd place where I’m locked up: a jail of insurmountable walls and invisible prisons.
Progresso, producer of rubbish and imbecility, is just a big waste dump.
Everything is imprisoned, poisoned, the earth is bleeding, and body cells are going crazy… oppression, exploitation and death…
In the status quo indifference and resignation are being praised. But I like to think that in all times and places the oppressors are faced with our brothers and sisters who resist.
It is necessary to rebel with passion, take the multiple tensions of action in the streets, collectively or individually, and not reducing everything to sterile political analysis and cerebral masturbations in meeting carousels, which often inhibit individuality. Each has to stand with their doubts and convictions, ‘armed’ with their own will, in free encounters in free spaces.
Personally I have several concerns on projectual aims and spectacular propaganda. Even if I recognize that these can have some potential, I also think that they belong to the society of appearance, based on nothing and immersed in a time of hyper-information where the centralization of the will to communicate, or an excess of communication, risks creating confusion and degenerating into exaltation as an end in itself.
I don’t know where to find the recipe of total liberation, least of all in my pockets; and I don’t believe in a future society, even if liberated and without injustice.
My vision is intimately individualist, acrobatic and existential.
Of course theory and practice are and will always be inseparable in all contexts. I’m convinced that each individual animated by his/her perceptions, will and passion can find his/her freedom in self-determination.
As a prisoner I don’t stop dreaming of a world without authoritarian violence, or the dichotomies oppressed-oppressors, exploited-exploited, a world without moral and social restraints inhibiting and reducing all horizons, a world free from all cages … cages are the shame of humanity. A world where human arrogance is set aside and substituted with a symbiotic and emphatic co-existence of all living beings, in the respect for natural balance, a world where the search for individual freedom is the only road to be taken for a real and collective self-determination.
Behind its many masks, industrial, scientific and technological civilization conceals an aberrant face of genocide and destruction of the environment… they find cures for made-up diseases… in this system of dominion everything is functional and very little is natural. And to sabotage the existent becomes necessary.
Liberation struggles are different paths converging in one fight. A fire of warm feelings is burning in the stomach. In the compulsive mobility of this time that runs at high speed, the mesh of repression –oppression are getting inexorably dense… but their weapons, their cures is just fear… my eyes are being seized and my body is being kept prisoner, beyond these disgusting walls there are horizons, and always stays the spirit rebellious and untamed, intact the idea.
Leaden sky and stormy sea… a wind of storm is blowing…<br>The earth is shaking shouting revenge, ancestral resistance in the distance…<br>For love of life, for anarchy… no pretence… no waiting!<br>With childlike passion and anarchist tenacity
A hug,<br><strong>Adriano</strong>
<br>
|
#title “You’re not radical enough”
#subtitle Reflections on Philippine Leftist exclusionism
#author Adrienne Onday
#LISTtitle You’re not radical enough
#SORTauthors Adrienne Onday
#SORTtopics exclusion, Philippines, Bandilang Itim, critique of leftism, relationships, activism, anarcha-feminism, the left
#date February 2020
#source Retrieved on 2020-02-29 from [[http://libcom.org/blog/di-ka-naman-tunay-na-aktibista-reflections-philippine-leftist-exclusion-28022020][libcom.org]]
#lang en
#notes The original title of this piece for a Philippine audience is *“Di ka naman tunay na aktibista”: Reflections on Philippine Leftist exclusionism*
#pubdate 2020-02-29T19:52:22
When I was an undergrad, I had to fight so many people to allow my voice and opinions to be heard. The central point of my struggle as a young activist then was to get formally organized activists to realize that speaking up is a form of action, too; that not being part of any organization or not being as physically and publicly active in political struggles as they were didn’t mean you weren’t one; that just because someone isn’t doing activism and radicalism the exact same way the established Left does, doesn’t mean they aren’t activists or radicals.
At the time, I was a middle-class kid tied to my meager-for-a-middle-class-kid allowance, my home life, and my mental health struggles. I couldn’t leave our house as much even if I tried because I didn’t have the money to, nor did I have parental permission to go to faraway (anything beyond Quezon City was far to my Marikina-based family) political events that typically last into the night. I also had to deal with crippling anxiety—I used to have attacks at least once a week, and having an attack in public where I knew no one well enough who could help me or send me to safety would not have been a good situation for me. These attacks, growing frequent around 2013 when I started university, lasted well into 2016–2017, when I started becoming more visible at protests and the general political sphere.
I figured people would say that there’s a way to circumvent all these issues, and one of those ways was to be a member of a mass organization. They could lend you money or carpool or something. They could ensure your safety. They could do so many things to alleviate my worries. But in the Philippines, they say, <em>kung ayaw may dahilan; kung gusto may paraan.</em> [“There will always be a reason not to do it if you don’t want to do it,” akin to the English-language idiom “where there’s a will there’s a way.”] And there was a personal reason I held back: I <em>really</em> didn’t want to be a member of any mass org I knew of.
I didn’t want to join because they made me and the people I cared about feel unsafe, judged, and othered.
I’ve been doing some reflecting this morning and I realize now more than ever that the reason I was so hellbent on recognizing even mere expression as activism, and the reason I was so hesitant to join more largely-recognized and collective forms of activism, was because of the elitism and exclusion I and other people I encountered experienced at the hands of Philippine political circles.
How could I say activism here is elite and exclusive? My experiences crystallized in the following reflections.
*** People refused to see speaking up and doing what you could with what you have as enough to qualify to be part of the struggle.
And I didn’t want anything to do with those kinds of people.
People think that just because you’re a middle-class kid, you have no excuse of limitation or oppression, and that being privileged, you had to be empowered enough to go out of your way to do Activist Things. But as I mentioned above, I’m not from a well-off-enough family (I lived in a single-parent household with four siblings); I’m also the eldest child, and a woman at that, meaning I had to be an active and emotionally available mother to my siblings as our own mother couldn’t be (at some points during university, even during exams, I would have to stay up until 4 or 5am to care for my baby sibling, leaving me with an hour or two to sleep and study); and I have been suffering mental health issues that get triggered in social situations.
Having been limited back then due to these factors, learning more, speaking up and sharing what I thought, what I knew, and what I learned were the least that I thought I could contribute stripped of any other resource but knowledge and platform. I knew what I was good at, and I knew what I had and didn’t have. I was good at reading, writing, and talking people’s ears off. And even though I didn’t really have the resources necessary to frequent mass mobilizations, I was privileged enough to go to university. I had a good reach online.
So I did what I could with what I had. I was a sociology major, so I kept reading everything my professors gave me and kept up-to-date on current events of my own volition. I processed what I learned and talked about it with friends and relatives who would listen, and posted and tweeted my reflections about these things online. I called out mistakes and wrong conclusions, back when I took active part in call-out culture, before it had a name. I called for support for different causes and advocacies — against tuition hikes, against militarization, for the lumad[1] march, for the farmers — and redirected people to resources and other people who knew more about said issues than I did.
[1] Lumad denotes the non-Muslim indigenous peoples of the island of Mindanao. They are often dispossessed of their land.
In 2016, I took part in a little personal protest my friends did. It was an idea that my friend started. We carried it out, and I posted about the protest and my experience doing it online. Unexpectedly, this protest caught attention, went viral and extended beyond the reach I originally had. We gained more platforms to talk about the issues we were concerned about. We had more chances to point to the roots of the various problems we faced.
I spoke out not only against the administration but questioned inconsistencies with more progressive actors as well. Bringing to light a critique about the current attitude of certain actors of the Left, however, also brought me vitriol. At the time, part of the Left supported the current president both during his campaign and after his election due to his promises for the marginalized and his self-identification as a socialist. I wondered aloud about the relative silence of the Left (at least, in my circles) regarding extrajudicial killings under the president’s only policy, the War on Drugs.
The only responses this got were direct, albeit “templated,” rebuttals to my claims, and personal attacks questioning my self-identified and publicly-bestowed “activist” label. A lot of Leftists wondered how I could consider myself an activist when I wasn’t part of a mass organization or present in any protest and mobilization, the latter hurled at me despite my attendance in a handful of mobilizations they organized and which I photo-documented to use online to raise awareness and support.
I marveled at the height of the bar I had to measure up to just to become an activist. I also wondered how others who do not and cannot have access to the privileges I did can become activists themselves, in spaces where mass organizations are too far, too few, or unrepresentative of specific sectors, or where the kinds of protests that are considered “proper” may be ineffective, expensive, or altogether dangerous. Apart from the seeming binary of activism which was organizer/organized, could anyone else become an activist? Could <em>anything else</em> be activism?
The short answer, where I stood, was no. At least, not if I’m coming from where these “official, real” activists come from. (It should be telling that a dichotomy arises, between “official, real” as in “organized and active” activists and “unofficial, fake” as in “everyone else who doesn’t fit the mold”.)
So I gave up trying to get people to accept me and what I did, and instead did my best to help others — those similarly not accepted and finding different ways to be radical — to realize that they deserved to carve out spaces of their own and that their voices and efforts mattered, whatever other people said.
*** I experienced discomfort and eventually some form of trauma from discrimination and harassment in activist spaces, predominantly from encounters with “progressive” or “radical” men.
I didn’t really have anyone do that for me—no one in the political sphere really reassured me that I was doing fine as an activist and that what I was doing, what I could do, mattered. I had to work up the security and confidence to realize that myself, or find other ways to learn that what I was doing was really helping.
What I did have were Leftists who were telling me that I was fake or a reactionary, or that I didn’t have the right to critique their organizations and methods even as they critiqued mine.
I distinctly remember one man from the red side of things telling me that I was a <em>dilawan</em>[2] for wanting to participate in the EDSA Day commemoration event at the People Power Monument, telling me that being a sociologist, I should know that my mere presence there means support and legitimization for the Aquinos. I met this man through Bumble, back when I was bored enough to use dating apps. I also felt extremely uncomfortable talking to him, with nicknames and backhanded compliments as the norm when he used to hit me up. Unsurprisingly, I learned a few years after that he has manipulated, lied to, and solicited sex from other women in radical spaces, amongst many other deeds. I heard the only thing his organization did about him was to warn him to limit his encounters with women or to stop doing those things.
[2] “Yellow,” a color associated with a political bloc, party, or side that leans closer to liberal democracy.
Yet another man from the red side of things asked me very personal and intrusive questions, such as if I masturbated and how. This same man called what my friends and I did “intellectual masturbation,” and to him what we did contributed nothing to the struggles of the people.
I also remember another man from the yellow side of things getting mad at me and, consequently, at a friend because I publicly criticized an event they organized for false advertisement and many other things. He would later ignore a few attempts I made to help out in their campaigns.
I know someone, too, who hates both sides as as an active part of the Left. He mansplains to me and other women quite often and talks over us whether he is aware or not; inserts himself into conversations that don’t need him; brings up his personal preferences about sex and romance in situations that may tackle the topics but don’t ask him of it; and subscribes to the idea that political conversations anywhere other than the spaces he deems valid and with anyone other than the people he considers the only oppressed are nothing but <em>kaburgisan</em>[3]—essentially excluding anyone who does even just a little bit better than the working class (and what even is a clear-cut definition of the working class at a time of economic ambivalence and precarity?).
[3] “Bourgeois,” with the root word burgis, a Tagalization of the word.
I could go on, I realize. This is the first time I’m sitting down and specifically thinking about <em>all</em> the uncomfortable situations I have been confronted with when with “radical” or “progressive” men. The casual objectification they show when they talk about other women with me because they think I’d understand as queer and “one of the boys.” The unacknowledged homophobia and transphobia. The speed and ease of things descending to physical violence when one gets offended.
It all points to a hypermasculine, overexaggerated performance that, although not exclusive to the political sphere, when mixed with ideas of activism and radicalism somehow allows men to believe they are shielded from any and all criticism. As if being an activist or radical by name is enough to make them immune to both being sexists, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes <em>and</em> to being criticized for being sexists, misogynists, homophobes, and transphobes. It’s not impossible to hear these men’s voices in my head say, “How could <em>I</em> be a misogynist? I fight for equality for all!”
(Tell that to the girlfriend you cheated on with someone else in your mass org. Tell that to the women in your collective you solicit sex from. Or, well, I’m sure you did; and your fellow men in the collective did nothing but baby you, defend you, and coddle you.)
But sure, people like me aren’t “real” activists or radicals because we go to less protests or choose not to expose ourselves to these kinds of things.
*** Our idea of activism is still classist, ableist, and sexist.
When men like <em>that</em> not only exist but even <em>thrive</em> in activist spaces, you get a sense of how unfree and unfreeing our idea of activism really is. Broad, genuine, and truly inclusive representation and action cannot exist in spaces where people are made to feel used or unsafe, in spaces requiring specific experiences to be considered, in spaces where people cannot physically or even remotely participate.
Even today, people can’t just get up and leave their homes, however much we want them to do that. There are harassers to confront. There are children to be fed. There are homes to be guarded. There are disabilities to consider. This begs us to ask: what are the ways we can make radical spaces safer and braver? What are the ways we can make activism and mobilization more accessible, kid-friendly, and inclusive?
Maybe we could have designated spaces near or outside, say, protests or meetings to care for children. Maybe there are acts of activism that can and have been done at home or elsewhere from protest sites that we didn’t recognize as acts of activism before, like free schools and care work. Maybe we have to think of ways to recognize that the PWD community has power but will have to express it differently.
Or maybe we have to reassess and rethink our spaces altogether, see how they are hinged and founded on the discomfort, unsafety, nonparticipation and oppression of many of the people we claim to fight for. Maybe we have to drastically change how we organize our collectives. Maybe we have to consider infrastructures, language, and interactions. Maybe we have to instill self-awareness, unlearn harmful behaviors, and learn better ones instead of pointing fingers, blaming anyone else but us.
Power-together, that is, <em>our</em> power as <em>the</em> people, isn’t supposed to be monolithic and unchanging, only expressed the exact same way it was done 40 years ago by coming together in Luneta or PPM to publicly protest. Creativity needs to come in to ensure our power isn’t stagnant or exclusive. An important thing to remember is that reproductive labor (better worded as <em>care work</em>, or how we ensure the physical, mental, emotional, and developmental needs of people are being met) sustains our power, too. Besides, I think there are other forms of activism that may have the same effects as — if not deeper, more personal, and more immediate than — what we call mass mobilizations.
*** Our idea of activism is still highly exclusive, as if activism was something people performed to be included in a Cool Kids Club rather than something anyone could participate in, whoever they are, in any way they can.
Enshrining activism in the form of placards, publicity, and protests leads to the tendency to equate activism with just these factors, and equating activism with these factors leads to the belief that doing these things and these things alone is what makes you an activist. Two unfortunate consequences: those who seem to only aspire for the clout are accepted into the fold as is without pushing them to be better, while those who work hard to live the principles of radical progressivism in different ways — in ways they have access to and ways they learn how to — are overlooked, kept out, and even demonized.
This is related to my earlier point of the lack of inclusivity in our idea of activism. I’d also like to bring up a very important point: the seeming importance of public performance (language, presentation, attendance) over personal effort (self-awareness, treating others better, taking their own steps when they can) in activist spaces creates such an unsafe and unaccepting environment. People — and men in particular, cis or not, based on my experience — seem to think that being this label or that means they’re automatically safe from being any type of wrong. I’ve met one too many manipulators, abusers, and perverts from the Left. I’ve met people who get mad and attack you personally because you dared to be dissatisfied and asked for better. I’ve met people who call you a know-it-all, only to turn to Twitter and call others out for one mistake, however tiny, and hurl orthodox Marxist vocabulary at them for not knowing better. Oddly, more often than not, these people are either highly respected, protected, or really coddled by their activist groups and spaces.
Meanwhile, people who are just stepping into the world of political discourse and exploring their own ideas, opinions, beliefs, ethics, and stances are either eaten up by the costume party of the activism or called out and rejected for not doing activism the way others do. People who might be more radical than we would care to admit aren’t recognized as able to contribute or already contributing because we think “contribution” requires a membership subscription, be it to an organization, an ideology, an event, or a cause.
What’s attached to the membership terrifies me, to be honest. I’ve been to enough mobilizations and educational discussions to see, hear, and feel the near-exact same way people appear, talk, and act in the political sphere.
(It’s a little funny because, despite differences, most I’ve encountered from the Left have had the exact same fatal flaw across colors: their inability to recognize their own mistakes, accept criticism, and own up to and make up for them.)
The uniformity in their use of “scientific” language, the way they carry themselves, their manner of speaking, and their takes on things (which a professor of mine called “templated”) terrifies me because sometimes I feel like I’m interacting with soldiers or bots, whatever side of the Left they came from. There’s an odd disdain for nuance, too, which I’ve seen eerily echoed both online and offline and definitely acted on in many cases.
Activists here seem to function on a you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us logic which kicks in once you either try to critique them or provide a perspective that considers the context of what they might be going against at the moment. The vision feels very black-and-white, the gray area automatically qualifying as enemy territory if only for the mere fact that it’s not the exact same thing they’re saying. Even if you clarify that you’re not taking the other side, by somehow trying to be more understanding of the Enemy of the Day (or at least, where they’re coming from), you’re immediately analyzed with a suspicious eye, the Reactionary stamp hovering over you and ready to descend any time.
But almost everyone lives in the gray area. People will not see and perform activism the way “real” activists expect them to because people will have different degrees of reservations, freedom, awareness, and risk-taking. Some may not be as theoretically equipped, but intuitively act more ethically even if they can’t explain why. Some may know more than most, but not be as visible because of resources or context. There have also been countless people who have had the “right” opinions on issues but the “wrong” opinions on activism because the reputation of activism — as in marches, rallies, and public demonstrations — has been so historically tarnished in the Philippines (by State anti-communist propaganda, by issues that arise from socially-rooted phenomenon like traffic and bad infrastructure, by problems of the Left itself) that people are bound to hate what we have now. And they’re allowed that opinion because those may be rooted in different experiences that are valid.
People are shackled and privileged in different ways, just as people walk different lives. More than changing the ways people might be adding to our repertoires of activism, maybe we should strive to add to our own and get a feel for what might garner more support from people who may not be on board with our other methods. This doesn’t mean we should pander, nor does it mean our goals and principles would change; sometimes, we just need to explore the different ways we can deliver a message so that it may be received better, clearer, and more appropriately by the people who might need to hear it.
Other people are doing that at present. Some write, some create art, some talk to people. Many are not affiliated with blatantly political organizations. Some even act through hobby or interest groups. But everyone is still learning, because there <em>has to be</em> many different ways to approach our goal.
The point is, activism cannot and should not come from a very specific group of people with clear, non-negotiable, take-it-as-is-or-leave-it political ideologies. Including <em>only</em> some automatically excludes <em>many</em> others, and there’s a saying that goes, “I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than included for who I exclude.” If a movement that aspires for systemic change does not make an attempt to include everyone, what’s the point of having this movement at all?
*** <em>Ano nga ba ang “tunay na aktibista?”</em> [What even is a ‘real activist’?]
I feel this question needs to be asked within our circles before we even begin to exclude people. It’s inevitably attached to the larger question of how we treat not only those who are like us, but especially those who are <em>different</em> from us.
The name of the game these days is othering and weaponizing identities. We already see this in how Duterte others drug users and pushers; we see this in how Trump others Blacks, people of color, and the LGBT+; are we really going to keep it alive in the spaces that are supposed to be dismantling this system that’s rooted in the oppression of certain groups and sectors? Isn’t it a point of concern that the discrimination we see the State use against its people is the same discrimination we mete out in keeping our movements “pure,” “real,” and “in line?” Isn’t aspiring for “purity” and homogeneity the problem anyway?
The activist and radical I am now — still so different, but more directly involved now than I could be before — is because of all the rejection and negativity I have experienced at the hands of those who positioned themselves at the forefront of the Philippine struggle. I have been working hard for the past few years to learn to be okay with what I am, what I’ve done, and what I want to do; I’ve also been doing my best to help others who feel as rejected and confused to be okay with being different in their political perspectives and activities, too.
I think difference is what drives change and innovation. And minding differences we need to adjust to, adapt to, and include is how we can keep our movements not only safe and alive but maybe even successful, however marginally success may feel in the face of the behemoth that is the Empire. Imagine how boring, stagnant and ineffective we would be if all of us were activists and radicals the exact same way. We’d probably still be fooling ourselves about how we haven’t really lost, even when the enemy has transformed once again, fifty years into an unrecognizable future.
|
#title Interview with Joaquin Cienfuegos of Cop Watch LA and the Revolutionary Autonomous Communities
#author Affinity Project
#SORTauthors Affinity Project, Joaquin Cienfuegos
#SORTtopics police, autonomous communities, interview, Los Angeles
#date 2006
#source http://anarkismo.net/article/9480
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-06-05T17:13:09
This interview was done in the summer of 2006. Joaquin is currently working with the Revolutionary Autonomous Communities (which at the time of the interview was in the process of being created) and the Guerrilla Chapter of Cop Watch Los Angeles.
He was interviewed along with other members of Cop Watch Los Angeles for the Affinity Project.
**AP:** So maybe you could just tell us who you are and why we're here.
My name is Joaquin Cienfuegos; I'm here at the Youth Justice Coalition Center, or Chuco’s Justice Center, in South Central, Los Angeles. I’m part of a couple different groups. One of the groups is called Cop Watch Los Angeles; another is called the Youth Justice Coalition, and the Si Se Puede Los Angeles Labor Collective. Basically these are the groups I’m working with at this point.
I guess Cop Watch is one tactic, and we're trying to form an anti-imperialist revolutionary organization with a horizontal structure and build a base for that, a revolutionary movement.
*** FINDING ANARCHISM
**AP:** What would you say your political background is, how would you self-identify politically?
Basically, I consider myself an anarcho-communist, even though I do have my criticisms of that tendency, especially in the united states at this point. I think there's definitely a lot of similarities and unity that I have with the politics. also, I think historically my background growing up--working class, Chicano in South Central Los Angeles--having to move to Fresno, California, where my parents worked in the fields, and around the time of Proposition 187, which was an anti-immigration law, that kind of forced me into politics. It basically raised my liberal consciousness and made me think about things and challenge my teachers who were actually telling me that immigrants come here and steal peoples' jobs. My reality was seeing immigrants come and work in the fields in back-breaking labour that nobody else wanted to do. The immigrant rights movement was the first cause I joined.
Also around issues of police brutality, growing up in South Central Los Angeles, I joined a couple coalitions and groups that dealt with immigrant rights and police brutality. At first I considered myself an anarchist, I was a little eclectic, but I was into revolutionary politics and felt like there needed to be a revolution in the united states to actually change the conditions that we all lived in. Around the Democratic National Convention in 2000, there were huge mobilizations in Los Angeles; there was a youth-led mobilization, there were mobilizations for immigrant rights, for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and around police brutality, and at that time-- that's when I really got into the movement and started to organize.
I got arrested at a meeting in a space in Pico-Union. Pico-Union is primarily a Central American community, and has the highest concentration of Central American people than anyplace else; the only place that's more Central American is actually Central America itself. This is right here in Los Angeles. The police department there is called the Rampart Division, and a couple years back there were scandals around the Rampart district where a lot of things came to light. The police had actually murdered people, planted drugs, stole evidence, and the police of course brushed it under the rug eventually, but these things all came to light. People saw that there was oppression and repression there.
I got arrested at a planning meeting for this youth-led mobilization against police brutality for the Democratic National Convention. There were a number of cops there and as we were walking to our cars, they told us to get against the wall. They searched us and they found a knife on me and took me to jail. People from the meeting came out and started chanting 'let them go, let them go.' they let the other two people go but they already had me in handcuffs and they took me in. They questioned me about who was involved in the organizing, how I got involved, who were the leaders.
That was my first experience with political repression. I had been harassed and arrested for things around curfew or drinking in public. Fresno and Los Angeles have youth curfew laws. Then, I guess, people who had my back or supported me were members of the Revolutionary Communist Party--a Maoist organization--so I joined them for four years. The reason why, I guess, was that they had support for me and also because I felt like they were talking about revolution, something I was interested in, and they were sort of organizing for it [according to them]. I joined them for four years and was organizing in communities like Watts, and the projects, in movements and coalitions that were led by them. Two years ago I felt that--I always had questions about their politics and the structure of their organization--the centralized power, and the people who had power in the organization reflected the power structure of this society (white, male, upper-middle class). So I had huge questions and they weren't able to answer them, so I decided to leave.
I always had unity with anarchism, especially with anarcho-syndicalism. When I was younger, when I was 14 or 15, I got kicked out of school. One of the reasons I got kicked out of school was because I would challenge my teachers. for example, my teacher saying that immigrants come and take peoples' jobs, another incident being a teacher just straight-up lying to us. I was in the honors’ classes, and my history teacher was telling us that the u.s. has won every war it's been in, and I challenged that and said 'you guys lost in Vietnam, right?' they got defensive and told me I was disrupting class, and all these things added up. I got kicked out of school, when I was in 9th grade I was out of school for two years, and I spent that time reading on my own. I was really angry. I would read history, especially Chicano and Mexican history.
One of the things that influenced me the most was the history of the Black Panther Party, learning about them and their politics and how the state crushed them with COINTELPRO. Also Ricardo Flores Magon and anarchist influences in the Mexican Revolution. Those were the kinds of things that brought me into anarchism, and the Zapatistas inspired me as well. Those things politicized me when I was young, and I got involved when I was 16 or 17 here in Los Angeles around the time of the DNC. Those were things where I got introduced to anarchism, participating in the black bloc at the DNC. A lot of the people in the black bloc varied in politics from social revolution anarchists, to anarchist insurrectionists, or green anarchists, or individualists right. Kind of like the North American anarchist scene, which is more on that tip.
**AP:** What does this term 'anarchist insurrectionist' mean? I’ve heard it a lot but I’m not quite sure what it means. I sort of feel like it's something people don't like that much, but I’m also wondering if I might be one. I’m not sure.
For me, anarcho-insurrectionism has things that are definitely positive that are there. But I think it also comes from a lot of youth who are just angry and think blowing things up is in-of-itself revolutionary, and they're not focused on organizing. [They think] blowing things up is going to create the change that is necessary and smash the state. To me that's what anarcho-insurrectionism means, and now it kind of comes from the middle class, crimethinc, anti-organization scene. There’s definitely a huge divide. It comes from privileged anarchists who don't really want to be accountable to a community, who don't want to build and create within a community. They just want the rush of destroying something or breaking windows. There’s definitely a role for that within the movement, but when there's no foundation or base built, then you're going to get crushed and smashed by the state.
Anyways, that's how I got into anarchism. I had more unity with people or color or working class people that were in the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, a group within the RCP, that were actually mobilizing in some sense, and I got lots of experience doing that there. I think I was limited in what I was able to do; people were alienated for questioning or having doubts about the party line. The members feel like everything the party says is correct.
Their leader, Bob Avakian, is viewed as an all-knowing person. It’s really religious and cultish; even other Marxists call them a cult. I feel like a lot of the politics are carried over to their methods, but I was able to grow and develop once I actually left the organization and got experience in actual organizing. I was not limited to their party line and actually got to hear people and learn from people, rather than trying to convert people to my understanding. That’s why I became an anarcho-communist.
*** SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ANARCHIST FEDERATION
We worked on different projects once I left; we had the Southern California Collective Network, which is a network of different collectives, which turned into the Southern California Anarchist Federation – Los Angeles.
**AP:** We've been hearing a lot about it all over the west coast. A friend of mine in NEFAC was talking about it.
We had a lot of the same experiences, other anarchist groups in the u.s. and Mexico, and we fell apart. I could get into it...
**AP:** Yeah that would be great to hear about, how things fall apart.
Well the Southern California Anarchist Federation (SCAF) was formed in the summer of last year, or a little bit before that. There were chapters in Orange County, in the Antelope Valley and Los Angeles. When the Los Angeles chapter formed it was one of the strongest and most diverse chapters. It had people of color, women, working class people, and for most anarchist groups in the u.s. that's really rare. Especially with anarchist organizations in the u.s., they're led by white upper-middle class folks, males. That reflects their politics as well, which is why you have the animal liberation and earth liberation scene here, and that takes priority over the class struggle, the community struggles, and mass popular movements. That’s lacking in the u.s., especially in the anarchist scene. So we formed the group in Los Angeles and a lot of projects came out of SCAF-LA.; one of them was Mujeres Libres, one of them was Cop Watch LA.
When we formed SCAF some of us wanted to build a foundation for a revolutionary movement within the communities. We had an idea of building community councils and dual power institutions.
**AP:** Like neighborhood associations?
My position was that we needed to do that. I wanted to go into communities, our communities that we already lived in, and build these councils and lay the foundation for general assemblies and organizing around the issues that affect people directly. Elect delegates, unite under common goals and vision, and build that revolutionary movement, and create the world they want while they destroy the system that's killing us.
There were different tendencies within SCAF LA; there were individualists, green anarchists, anarcho-communists, and it was a diverse mixture. Although we didn't have a lot of queer or transgendered people in the group.
**AP:** Why was that?
Well that relates to why the organization fell apart, and why we disbanded. I think that the group grew, we were pretty large in Los Angeles, and we worked with the Si Se Puede, a Los Angeles labour collective which I’m still part of. It’s small and more of a coalition now; it works with the Industrial Workers of the World and the different independent unions in Los Angeles, the port truckers in Long Beach who had a general strike on May 1st.
**AP:** They have their own association?
They do within Teamsters, I think, and the longshoreman union. The independent contractors have an independent association with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
There was also a youth collective, and a mutual aid project where one of our members was trying to work on a resource directory for his community. So I think that's basically the projects that we built and some good things came out of SCAF. It was a collective experience in actual organizing and trying to build something collectively, which I think is part of the process of unlearning. I think from the time they're born people learn to rely on other people for politics and decision-making in their lives. So it's a learning process where we have to teach ourselves to organize and lead ourselves, reorganizing our daily lives so that we have that collective power in our communities, workplaces, schools and all facets of society.
**AP:** Did you develop some sort of way of speaking to people to get people to want to take some responsibility?
I think in SCAF-LA, we lacked that, and disbanded before we actually started doing that. But I think that within the organization there was rotation, skills development. People had facilitation training, note-taking, consensus process training, and for a lot of youth--a lot of us were young--that was the first organization that we had ever joined. When we decided to disband, we were all still friends, but we were concentrating on our projects where the actual work would get done. In the projects is where the work happened.
There are still people who are trying to continue and take a step back to build political unity; we didn't have that process before we joined the organization, and just because someone calls themselves an anarchist doesn't mean we all agree. We figured that out. People were pulling the organization in different directions; people were trying to lead, especially people with more privilege. We had a huge encuentro with some individuals from Orange County (not the chapter as a whole) --not to talk shit, but this is the reality, and the truth needs to come to light --where because they started SCAF they felt that they had ownership over the organization and they were going to tell us what SCAF was going to be.
**AP:** Did they really say shit like that? That they were going to build a federation and be in charge of the federation?
Some individuals would tell us that we didn't know what a federation is. 'A federation is like a party, and we are going to decide what the bylaws are going to be and what the constitution is.' We decided that there needs to be autonomy within the federation too, and no one who isn’t from LA going to tell us what we're going to do.
**AP:** So they were going to tell everyone what to do. How is that a federation then?
Exactly. (laughs) A lot of it came from privilege that people from that chapter had; for me, people who have resources, training and education to lead in society join the movement, that privilege reflects on the way that they do their work. They end up wanting to lead, and because they have a different position within society, their politics are going to be different. They’re going to be more comfortable with their way of life and position, and have more to lose, and they're not going to want to have a movement that gives other people more power. I think that gathering that we had reflected that. I think a lot of them got challenged, and that was a good experience for them as well, because they had never had their privilege challenged before. That's why a lot of the movement in the u.s. anarchist scene, with the animal and earth liberation movement, you have mainly upper-middle class white males involved in it because they want to be involved in an organization where they don't have to challenge their privilege, or white supremacy, or sexism, or homophobia.
**AP:** I find it difficult to care about animals when people are not doing too well all around you. I mean it makes sense theoretically, I understand--and I’m a vegetarian...
Yeah I’m a vegetarian too...
**AP:** Yeah and it's not about that. It’s more about health and the whole food system is fucked up. It’s hard for me to put that as a major priority in the world.
And that is what happens; animals get prioritized over human beings, and its part of their position. I think a lot of people in Orange County in general came from those movements, and they actually had a lot of respect for the work we were doing in L.A., but they had never been checked. Some of them got defensive.
Anyways even people who called themselves anarcho-communists, who I felt a lot of unity with, some of them wanted to take ownership of the organization and spend all of our time talking about it. That shouldn't be done at the expense of the projects, the work, which many of us were already involved in.
**AP:** I want to know how you folks got together in the first place.
On the basis of anarchism I think.
**AP:** Was there a callout? How did it happen?
Well we already had a network in L.A., and they already had SCAF in Orange County before we built a chapter. But we would work on mobilizations and have anarchist contingents at anti-war marches or the Mayday labour march. That’s how we started building ties and alliances with people in Orange County. Our positions in society and our politics were all a bit different. But because we all called ourselves anarchists I think we joined into a federation. My experience through that was I at least connected with people I see more eye-to-eye with. We might actually build another federation, not specifically anarchist, within our communities. I was able to realize that just because someone calls themselves an anarchist doesn't mean I have full unity with that person. I feel like we can work on different projects within coalitions, but I might not necessarily want to build an organization with someone who has that type of politics, who doesn't take the politics of oppression seriously--race, class, sexuality, gender--politics that we were trying to integrate into the anarchist politics.
If your role to lead oppressed people or to be an ally to oppressed people? We only work with those who see themselves as allies.
*** COPWATCH
Coming from that experience with different organizers, we focused on building CopWatch up. We have a different model from other CopWatch chapters in other cities.
**AP:** Berkeley started it?
Well actually the Black Panther Party started that and Klanwatch (Deacons for Defense and Justice).
**AP:** Did they call it CopWatch?
No, they called it community patrols, and klanwatch before that. I guess we call it copwatch because that's what we're going to do; we're actually going to go out there and observe police in our communities. We didn't want to have that orientation of activism, and we wanted to be pro-active and rely on people who live in the communities and are directly affected by police brutality, to challenge it and to stop it by organizing against it. The organization in L.A. provides resources, training and support to people who are doing it themselves. This is a big part of self-determination, self-organization and self-defense of our communities. Communities like Compton, and Watts, Long Beach, South Central, East L.A., Pico-Union, are part of this project right now.
We were also involved in the South Central Farm, doing study groups and training every week. We feel like study groups are a way to democratize knowledge, and in SCAF we had the imbalance of power where people who had more experience and knowledge would end up leading. I’m also criticizing myself for doing that, because I was always speaking and taking on a leadership position because I’d had that experience already. There were other people who were doing the same. Even within us, it felt like a tug-of-war all the time between building a revolutionary organization or an anarchist network. So we ended up disbanding.
In CopWatch, we want to take the politics seriously, of actually studying and taking on oppressed communities directly and not try to tell them what to do or how they should organize themselves. It’s a different dynamic from SCAF; we also name the systems of oppression and talk about how they intersect. We’re building a culture around it, so different organizations and collectives talk about them as well. They don't just talk about imperialism and capitalism; we're actually talking about patriarchy or transphobia or homophobia, and white supremacy. We need to take these politics seriously. if you're calling yourself a revolutionary, you should be held accountable and be criticized for not taking these politics seriously.
**AP:** Do you have a lot problems with getting people to take homophobia and transphobia seriously? It seems like such a huge hurdle to get over pretty much anywhere.
I think that definitely among young people, especially from poor communities, there's a lot of homophobia and fear of queer people. There’s a lot of machismo and patriarchy, people being taught that men should lead society. We try to rely on queer people themselves; there's a group called Q-Team, which is all queer and trans youth of colour from communities like South Central. We work with them as well and support them, and actually take youth that we work with and integrate ourselves into some of those movements and learn from them. We actually talk about where that oppression comes from, and how it relates to our own oppressions too. How can we connect all these different struggles and built a movement around them.
**AP:** Like how machismo, as a static identity itself, is oppressive to men too.
Yeah, and it's different and complex. A lot of it comes from survival tactics in these communities. Being a person of colour and poor and working class and male, we get harassed by the police, people hit us up all the time, we get jumped, so we have to build this image of ourselves up, like we're tough so nobody will mess with you. And it sucks because we try and build different relationships with people, of trust and love and respect. It’s key. Changing social relationships is harder than overthrowing the state; it's the hardest thing to do. Even though overthrowing the state is hard, in the u.s., but changing social relationships that come from colonialism, that's the revolution right there. That’s a process we have to begin today, building dual power and organizing to challenge those social relationships and build something that's different. That’s what we want to do. Even though we want to respect people for their own tactics of survival, we also want to challenge that and integrate different people with other oppressed folks.
**AP:** And there are other forms of oppression that are yet to be discovered, and when they are we'll have to take them in as well.
For us, we have to challenge the entire power structure. You can't just focus on one thing and not deal with the other. You’ve got with the left in the u.s., what is called class reductionism. They don't see the intersections of class and race, class and sexuality, class and gender, and how these things are overlapping. It’s also because they don't want to challenge their own privilege. You look at who's leading these organizations and they're white males, and the RCP was challenged for years over their homophobic position. They felt that homosexuality came from capitalism, and once we got rid of capitalism homosexuality would disappear.
**AP:** Yeah they say that about racism too.
Look at Cuba today. They still have racism, and white supremacy. I don't know if you've heard of Robert F. Williams, he wrote Negroes with Guns...
**AP:** I was in Cuba talking to people, and they were telling me that there's definitely a division. Black people were saying that there's definitely a division between us and them. Well people will point to it and say it's not as racist as america, but it never was. It’s not about the revolution or Fidel, it just never was that way. Latinos and Blacks in Cuba were never in the same situation.
*** LEADERSHIP AND RESPONSIBILITY
**AP:** You mentioned that there was a problem with people who were more experienced, and probably older too, but they also might have an idea about what to do and other people don't know what they want to do.
Yeah it's complex because there's a need for expertise. You look at the EZLN, and even though there was a hierarchy in the Black Panther Party it was a self-organization for Black people, and part of the problem was a centralization of power and internal contradictions that existed with the Panthers that led to their destruction, but also there are good aspects that we can look at and learn from. Look at Geronimo Pratt, who had experience with dealing with the military aspects of organizing. He trained the Black Panthers and with that training they were able to not get massacred by the LAPD. There was a shootout that happened in South Central Los Angeles, and they held them off for nine hours and two people died. Without that training, all of them would have died. Look at the EZLN, the military component of the Zapatista movement. Militaries aren't democratic and there's a need for expertise. Look at the Ukraine during the Russian Revolution, there were militias that elected their own officers. But I think the role for those people who have experience or training is to democratize that knowledge, to teach others so that they get put in prison or killed other people take it on. Geronimo Pratt was responsible enough to do that. In other places people need to allow younger people to step up as well, so the revolution doesn't die with these individuals.
**AP:** And it's got to be a dual relationship, one that includes some respect for experience too.
Yeah, I think it's complex. In Mexico they call it protaganismo, when individuals get romanticized and put up on a pedestal. We should love revolutionaries but I don't think anybody is perfect. There’s a lot to learn from these individuals, but there's also a lot to build and to criticize. The individual has to be open to criticism when they mess up. I think what happens too is that some individuals don't try to put themselves in that position, like Subcomandante Marcos. I think that sometimes people romanticize him and look to him to solve their problems instead of relying on themselves. When I was in Mexico people criticized him and the EZLN for [protagonism]. This is criticism from within La Otra Campana, they wanted to help it. They wanted to continue to build that movement. It’s the individual's responsibility to step back, and other people have the knowledge that you have, but it might take someone a little bit longer to actually figure it out. It’s not to say that we shouldn't step in when we should step in, but we have to let people have their own process, and that's responsible leadership.
**AP:** Can you tell us more about CopWatch, and the Black and Brown racial divide?
With CopWatch, naming the systems of oppression is the political aspect, and we always try to put the question forward of why building this culture of resistance is necessary. We can't always just react to police brutality; we want to stop it before it happens. Eventually we want to build liberated communities where we have complete autonomy from the police, which is a lofty idea but it's our goal, our vision. This means that we rely on ourselves for food, for education, for culture, for everything. We're building that sort of movement in those relationships with each other.
**AP:** So CopWatch is a tactic?
Yeah it's an arm of a much larger revolutionary movement, we're building an organization that CopWatch is a part of. At first it was made up of male youth of colour, now it's women and men of colour from these communities, and when we recruit we try to focus on people who aren't represented in our organization, like queer and transgendered people. Other people of colour who aren't represented too. Most of us are Latino, and there are a couple Black people, but we want to organize with more of the Black community, and Asian community, and we do work with white people as allies. And White people should be organizing in their communities, not coming to our community, because they're not going to be accountable to this community or feel the consequences of the patrols. We have mixed areas here, and people should be organizing wherever they're at, and that's how we organize with CopWatch in Los Angeles.
*** COPWATCH AT THE SOUTH CENTRAL FARM
We’ve only been around for six months and we've had experience doing patrols in the South Central Farm. Most of us were involved in that struggle, in that movement, and a lot of people came out of that. The leadership had different tactics than the community, and CopWatch was involved to bring in the things that we thought were missing. Not that we wanted to impose our own ideas, but there were problems, a lot of celebrities involved, a lot of people with privilege who wanted to lead the movement with their own tactics, for example pacifism. And that came from the white environmentalists.
We tried to bring in the tactics that were missing, for example community outreach. CopWatch would go out into the community with the farmers and do community outreach. We would do CopWatch trainings and do security at the farm. We would be there all day and night, and would rotate and take shifts. We were building relationships with the farmers and putting forth our criticisms. Some of the members of CopWatch were arrested when the police went in there and evicted people, and two weeks later they bulldozed the farm. That day people did some direct action by going into the farm and shutting down the tractor by putting vegetables into the exhaust pipe. They shut it down and ten people got arrested. People were brutalized, slammed to the floor, a woman got choked, and a fifteen or sixteen year old kid got really kicked and beat up, and was charged with felonies. The next day, they finished destroying the farm, and the leadership of the farm was saying we can't take any more action, they opted to take the legal approach and they ended up losing because they didn't continue to fight.
**AP:** Are you trying to critique that approach?
Yeah we're trying to do it in a diplomatic way. We really support the 350 families that were on that farm, and we still want to build those relationships with them. Just because we lost that doesn't mean we can't build on that model where we're actually self-sustaining in our own communities. That’s a threat to the city and the state, which destroyed the farm.
**AP:** What do you think of the possibilities of some of those families becoming a strong, almost like farmers' movement in LA?
That would be great. I think those types of movements in Latin America, South Africa and Mexico are light years ahead of us. The South Central Farmers can reach that level of organization. I think a lot of them were kept out of the process and the struggle, because the leadership would speak for them, and they took the back seat. It was all about the celebrities, and two people doing it for them. Of course we disagreed with that, but we didn't want to go in and not be diplomatic about it. We were still critical, and raised it to the leadership. The leadership attacked us but they still wanted us there. They always relied on the legalistic approach, but we wanted to build a relationship with the farmers and give them the ability to have an experience in self-organization and collective struggle.
My position is that if we can give them training and resources to do things themselves, and if they want to disregard the leadership it will be their choice and not ours. That way they can continue to fight and not get demoralized.
*** BUILDING COMMUNITY AND CULTURE
**AP:** So what other stuff are you working on?
With CopWatch we're trying to do more political education for the community, and want to turn this into a community centre and set up workshops for silk-screening and graphic design. We want to build our own leadership skills and organizing skills. CopWatch is a grassroots organization. We don't want to rely on what is called the non-profit industrial complex; CopWatch is a dues-paying organization. All the individuals pay dues, so we don't rely on the non-profits and grants and foundations. They end up setting the terms for our organizing, and we want to be autonomous. We decide what we support, what we follow and what we don't. We’ve been building strong relationships with organizations that are community-based, like the Black Riders Liberation Party.
**AP:** What's that?
The Black Riders are a black revolutionary group; they’re George Jacksonist and African-Intercommunalist. They get attacked by the police. We have a different strategy, so we just find out where we agree and where we disagree. They work with a lot of Bloods and Crips, they're made up of Bloods and Crips, and they do police patrols as well, they call it PigWatch. they're a street organization, a militant group; they’re building a larger base in the community...
**AP:** What's their organizational structure?
They’re vertical, but I think that we have some unity with these organizations and those alliances need to be built for a strong movement. The politics can continue to be debated. We are a horizontal organization and promote those politics, and encourage people to organize that way. We’re not explicitly anarchist, and we say that different politics need to be built out of our organization. We try to take these systems of oppression seriously, because the anarchists in the u.s. don't, even the anarcho-communists don't. They also look at Kropotkin and these people as founding fathers, and take really purist positions. We want to build a platform for our organization, too, because we need to be unified on tactics and all that, but that's something that needs to come from your experience, your struggle, and your conditions. Each region has its own conditions and we need a strategy that reflects those conditions. That’s what we're trying to create, and be horizontal. A lot of us came from anarchist organizations, for example a member, was part of an anarchist organization, who left because they were white males and he didn't want to be involved in an organization that had an obscure position on solidarity.
**AP:** What are your thoughts about solidarity?
To them it meant tabling--I can't speak for him--and writing statements, and not really being an ally and figuring out what that meant. It meant more activist work, sending newsletters. Not trying to build a movement.
To me, solidarity means we're fighting for the same interests and try to support each other. It means giving resources, fighting alongside with people. For me, solidarity with struggles around the world means that we struggle to change things here in our communities, in this society. The u.s. government is responsible for a lot of the misery in the world, and we take responsibility to organize here, to give people resources and educate people about what's going on.
**AP:** Do you see any danger in looking at the government and seeing the government as white and separated from the community, and not feeling culpable or responsible for the oppression of the united states government, because I'm not a part of that? Is that an issue?
I feel like there are a lot of people who say that things are so messed up here, ‘I'm going to move to Canada.’
**AP:** Then they find out that it's fucked up there too. Especially if you're Black or Brown.
Imperialism is a worldwide system right. Most of us, we can't leave or change the colour of our skin. We have roots in our community, and have responsibility here. To me, I don't want to leave but I want to change things in my community.
Some people don't even know that they're oppressed in this country, let alone feel responsible for american oppression elsewhere. Harriet Tubman said that she could have freed a thousand more slaves if they only knew they were slaves, right. So I think that's important to realize that and we need to be conscious about our own oppression and how our struggles are connected around the world. That way we can learn from each other and have influence over each other, and build that type of movement that's international and intercommunal, but also has autonomy and is rooted within regions. That’s my vision.
**AP:** Do you ever work with religious organizations?
At the farm we had contact with Christian organizations, and we don't have a position where we don't want to work with people who are religious or spiritual, we don't shun that. We’re not purist in that sense. Definitely a part of building popular movements is working within those communities. We’ve got to be realistic; the churches have a large base in these communities, and a lot of people organize through their church. So how can we build that alliance at this point? We’re also not going to censor ourselves. CopWatch is diverse at this point, so there are people who are religious or spiritual, and there are people who are atheists like me. Of course, if we build a revolutionary organization, that's one of the topics, we need to discuss: religion and its role historically and today.
**AP:** Are there horizontal churches around?
Yeah there are different ones. There are African-based spirituality churches that are more radical and supportive. I don't think there is a church that is horizontal.
**AP:** Any sorts of Muslim organizations?
Well there's the Nation of Islam. There’s Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, who work out of Brooklyn, and the folks in Berkeley CopWatch wanted to hook us up with them, because they do CopWatch and are more along the same politics as us.
**AP:** Are there a lot of Muslims here?
There are Iranian Muslims around, and in Orange County there are Arabs, Palestinians, Lebanese... in Beverley Hills there are Iranian Jewish people, who tend to be a little bit more conservative. There are a lot of Republican Muslims around.
**AP:** Even still?
Yeah, believe it or not. I guess everyone has their own uncle toms.
I don't think our priority is to demonized religious people. Of course there are the Christian fascists who are in power, but that's different. They’re part of the power structure, the white supremacist government and imperialist state. Of course, we need to take on the whole system, but there are communist organizations that only focus on trying to demonize religion. To me, that comes from them not doing any organizing, just sitting back in their ivory tower and talking about politics and how they're the vanguard.
**AP:** What sort of difficulties do you run into when including people from different backgrounds in CopWatch?
On the one hand, you want to get people involved in CopWatch. People are taught that police are supposed to be the good guys. The immigrant community is dealing with that. We’ve been dealing with Black and Brown youth, and Black people have a different experience of dealing with the police. The police are the direct oppressor in their community. Of course they're afraid as well. Not everybody overnight is going to jump into doing patrols or being full-time organizers, but there are steps. In organizing you need to take the steps to bring people into that movement, to lead themselves. We allow them their own tactics. We want more popular political education, and build support first from the communities. For example, we need to find ways for people to feel like they're participating even though they're not out there doing patrols, where they can do different things at this point to support CopWatch. For example, people can have bake sales or have posters in their windows to support CopWatch. We want to essentially build CopWatch communities, where everybody feels like they're part of it. They feel empowered to step up, be combative, and say 'we're not going to allow the police to brutalize somebody today, to do whatever they want and kill us off.'
**AP:** If every time someone sees cops fucking someone over and came out of their houses, things would really change.
Exactly, build that culture and get people comfortable enough to go out there and observe police, have their camera or whatever they have, just get information to build that movement. Our chapter in South Central is going to be connected to Watts and Compton, because Watts is a part of South Central and is very repressive and intense. Brutality is an everyday occurrence in Watts. I don't know if you heard about the case of a young girl, she was a year and a half old, and she was shot by the SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) team. Her father had her in his arms, and it was a hostage situation, but instead of negotiating they shot both of them and they were both killed. In Beverley hills they would have negotiated for hours first. So our chapter is going to be located in Watts, and that's the largest chapter, and we're going to be doing work in South Central and Compton.
Watts has a history of rebellion. 1965 and 1992. In those communities there is a lot of tension, it's a part of the city's and the state's tactics of divide and conquer. A lot of it is perceptions over competition over jobs. Who’s at fault here for limited resources? It’s not Latinos, it's not the Black community it’s the government. Watts has a huge unemployment rate.
Part of the reason people are fighting each other is that they don't know each other's histories. They’re not taught it. In reality, they have more in common than they have differences. They have similar histories and they're living next to each other under similar conditions. They don't realize it, because of the way the state pits them against each other.
One of the things we want to do is to work with youth, and we are working with youth, and we want most of our chapters made up of youth from these communities, Black and Brown. We want more youth recruited so that they can work together and build together, to create a dialog to learn from their experiences. Also leading by example in the community. If we can show that Black and Brown youth are worried about this situation, and there are programs for resisting these things that are happening, like once-a-month breakfast programs, after-school programs, people's history, figuring out why we should be fighting together.
**AP:** Do you go door-to-door?
In South Central we've done that with the South Central Farm. When we did community outreach we go door-to-door. We’ll talk to them about the South Central Farm and also CopWatch and what we're trying to do.
**AP:** Do you use conscious hip-hop to unite people?
Yeah that's a form of political education too. And we're doing punk shows here in this space; we had our first punk show, and revolutionary hip-hop. We’re trying to use this space as a community center, to set up drums and guitars so people can come and practice music. Using culture as a form to educate people and work together. In South Central, Los Angeles and East L.A., a lot of the hip-hop and punk youth are into both types of music. They integrate both cultures, especially in South Central and East L.A.
**AP:** How do you deal with increasing number of Latino and Black cops that are in the community? It makes the binary break down; the 'white state' idea might be harder to see.
I don't think it makes it harder, because a lot of people actually see the Black and Latino cops as being worse than the white cops because they see them as trying to prove themselves to a white supremacist system, and sell themselves to their master. A lot of people see that. And we try to promote that it's not a few bad apples, it's an entire system that's at fault. This makes us different from other CopWatches. We’re more focused on revolutionary work, to get at this entire system, and we also try to educate people that even though there are people of colour in power, they're upholding white supremacist interests. We try to educate people about what that means. It means that they're not really representing Black people or Latino people; they're representing the white supremacist system. I think most people understand that and have the same feelings.
**AP:** Do you have neighbourhood watch here?
Yeah we have neighbourhood watch. We want to change that dynamic and change it to CopWatch communities. They’re more about blaming each other, blaming young people, than what's really at fault. One thing we want to do in terms of that, for example people think that women calling the police about domestic violence is going to solve that. In reality, it creates more problems and they don't care about women getting beat down.
**AP:** They have these 'someone has to go to jail' rules, where if the cops arrive for a domestic call, someone has to go to jail. do they have that here?
I don't know about that. we should look into that. either way, when the police get called in, things escalate. and even when there's a restriction order, they try to intervene, and they're not helping the situation. They're not helping women fight domestic violence. There's this organization in Brooklyn called Sista ii Sista, which is made up of women of colour, and they try to organize around domestic violence with autonomy from the police. For example, the services that get provided like counseling, we can provide ourselves. Domestic violence is a community issue, and should be dealt with by the community. I think that this is the type of situation we're trying to create. Cops aren't trained to deal with these types of problems. Neighbours know each other and build relationships with each other, and they should be able to deal with their own problems, and women should be empowered to fight against it themselves and not rely on the police.
**AP:** Do you ever think it's possible to talk to people about what to do when the cops come, and how to deal with them? My experience with them anywhere I’ve lived is that they come, they try to find your weakness mentally, and they try to get you to lash out at them mentally so they can kick the shit out of you and take you away. I guess always in life it's been lessons on how not to get provoked.
We do have know your rights trainings. When we do CopWatch training we talk about getting harassed by police too. We have lawyers who come in and talk to people about the basic laws they need to know, and the vagueness of the law, and how they get used against us. we do try to promote that as well, and pass our resource cards where it has information on how to contact us, or lawyers, and their rights.
**AP:** Besides the Black Riders, are there other political street organizations that you work with?
The Black Riders is probably one of the only ones we work with at this point. The Youth Justice Coalition is made up of people that have been incarcerated and people that have dealt with police brutality--that's a lot of people--a lot of people are coming from the streets and are ex-gang members or non-active members. We work with them too. We want to work with more youth who are affected by that directly.
**AP:** Do they come to you or is it an outreach program?
We try to do outreach. A lot of them we already know, they're in our community and we just talk to them about police brutality and what we think about it. We encourage them to organize themselves.
**AP:** Do you ever have to deal with the leadership of these gangs?
Not yet, we haven't had that problem yet.
**AP:** Are you worried about that?
I think that we want to build the type of organization that's made up an entire community, and they're a part of the community too, and we want them to defend the community, not be self-destructive. We want to get them to start supporting the projects we're carrying out. the time to engage with people is right now, and we need to get into that.
There was a group called CAPA (the Coalition Against Police Abuse), and Michael Zinzun who was one of the organizers passed away recently. He used to do a lot of work with Bloods and Crips in organizing truces, and I think we want to continue that work as well, building those types of truces within the communities. It's a part of connecting the different communities. He had been doing it since the 70s.
After the 1992 rebellion, there was a truce with the Bloods and the Crips and the Mexican gangs, but there is evidence of the sheriffs, when the Crips were having a barbeque they were shot at, and fighting was instigated again. A lot of hip hop artists were involved in the truce.
**AP:** It seems like a lot of what you're talking about is like the Black Panthers but a horizontal organizing style.
Yeah we're definitely inspired by the Black Panthers and the Zapatistas, and other revolutionary movements around the world and especially in Latin America. We want to learn from that and adapt it into our communities and conditions here.
**AP:** With COINTELPRO and the instigation of the state provoking and systematically murdering those who were involved, have you thought about how similar community programs can be started again while avoiding that sort of shit?
I think that we definitely take that seriously. anybody who takes themselves seriously has to study that, and find ways to combat it and prepare themselves for it. Some of us have already dealt with it. One of our members, Sherman Austin, the webmaster of Raise the Fist (www.raisethefist.com), was the first person to be tried under the Patriot Act, and he's a member of Long Beach CopWatch. He was affected by the Patriot Act. I had the Secret Service and the FBI come to my mom's house, and my job, and my ex-girlfriend's house. A lot of us have dealt with intimidation, scare tactics, arrests, but it's not escalated to the point where it was for the Panthers at this point. We want to do study groups around COINTELPRO and the Patriot Act. I mean it wasn't just COINTELPRO that destroyed this movement; it was internal dynamics that existed. Fighting, drugs, gender oppression. The Black Panthers were some of the only ones who took these politics seriously, and they were working on it. Of course, part of the tactics of the state is to go after the leadership. If you have a rigidly centralized organization, and don't have horizontal relationships with people, then when the leadership is arrested or killed the organization falls apart. I think that was one of the problems that existed with the Black Panthers. They were still one of the groups that posed the biggest threat to the state, because of their community projects and what they were doing, and that's why they were taken out.
So we need to talk about how do we create that type of movement while preparing for repression, and sustaining that organization for years to come.
**AP:** I mean I wasn't even alive when this shit happened, but my understanding with the Panthers was that their leadership structure was like an oil slick on the top of the water, and to avoid getting taken out you have to make them dig everyone out because they're too integrated into the community.
I think we need coordinators and organizers, but I think the role for coordinators and organizers is to make more coordinators and organizers.
**AP:** That's like that Muslim teaching; the best leader is someone who doesn't create followers but makes more leaders or something like that.
This is why Malcolm X posed such a threat to the government and others. And when Martin Luther King was killed, he was leaving his position on non-violence and getting more radical. Anybody who's talking about these things, and seriously organizing around them, is going to be attacked by the state. I mean I agree a lot too with George Jackson’s strategy, and the Zapatistas, about building dual power and counter-institutions within the community, where people can take on these projects and programs for themselves and be self-sustaining. They connect with others who are doing the same, like community councils, and at the same time we have to realize that the state is going to come down on us eventually, because we can't have autonomy under this system. So we have to prepare and organize to defend our gains in our communities and safeguard our programs. So a lot of us are trying to find ways of implementing that here, without getting smashed. We have to rely on people in the communities to defend themselves, in different ways.
Eventually it's going to come down to the state and people's self-organization. People will have to carry out a revolutionary struggle and a civil war. I think a majority of people want to eventually get rid of this system.
|
#pubdate 2009-12-21 22:19:26 +0100
#author Affinity Project
#SORTauthors Affinity Project, Peter Lamborn Wilson
#title Interview with Peter Lamborn Wilson
#lang en
#date 2009
#SORTtopics anti-globalization, black bloc, counterculture, EZLN, Hakim Bey, Islam, Peter Lamborn Wilson, post-structuralist, religion, TAZ, technology
#source Retrieved on December 21, 2009 from [[http://affinityproject.org/interviews/plw2.html][affinityproject.org]]
*** Part 1 of 2: On Islam
Affinity Project: Would you define yourself as a Muslim, and if so, what kind of Islam would you say you practice amongst the multiplicity of different forms?
Peter Lamborn Wilson: Well, I’ve been many things in my life and I don’t renounce any of them. But I don’t necessarily practice any of them on a daily basis either. I never renounced Christianity or if I did, I take it back. I’ve been involved in Tantric things that I guess you could call Hinduism, although that’s a very vague term. I practice Shia Islam. I still consider myself all those things but, obviously that’s a difficult position to take vis-a-vis the orthodox practitioners of these different faiths. So, if I had to define my position now in terms that would be historically meaningful in an Islamic context, I would refer to Hazrat Inayat Khan and his idea of universalism, that all religions are true. And if this involves contradiction, as Emerson said, OK. We’ll just deal with it on a different level. And the inspiration for this in his case was Indian synchrotism, between Hinduism and Islam especially, although other religions were involved too such as Christianity, Judaism and others. This happened on both a non-literate level of the peasantry and still persists to this day on that level, and also occurred on a very high level of intellectual Sufism which was almost a courtly thing at certain times, especially under some of the wilder Mughal rulers like Akbar who started Din-i Ilahi. So these things have precedents within the Islamic traditions, this universalism, this radical tolerance would be another way of putting it, but nowadays of course it’s hard to find this praxis on the ground. I can’t practice some Indian village cult here, that would be a little — well I sort of do, you know — but actually (laughs), it’s highly personal.
AP: Would you say that it’s radically tolerant or radically accepting? I would say that there is a distinction between tolerance and acceptance.
PLW: I know what you’re getting at. Tolerance in this sense is a kind of weak position, and acceptance would be a strong position?
AP: I would say that, for example, I can tolerate homosexuals, Muslim homosexuals, or I can say well I accept them in the fold of Islam because they define themselves as Muslim.
PLW: Using the term in that sense, what I mean by radical tolerance is what you’re calling acceptance. In other words it’s not just ecumenicalism here. It’s not a reformist position. It’s a pretty radical position. And it got Hazrat Inayat Khan in a lot of trouble amongst orthodox Muslims. This movement still suffers from that today. But in India, there is this tradition of that, it still persists in India more than in other countries where the fundamentalist/reformist/modernist thing has swept away the so-called medieval creations which make up all the charm and difference. That’s what they hate.
AP: What is it that interested or intrigued you in Islam in particular? And I believe you were introduced to it in Morocco, was it?
PLW: Well really, in New York. This goes back to the 60s and my involvement in one of the — I guess you could say — new religions of that era which came out of Moor Science tradition. I don’t know if you’ve read any of my stuff on this. So already in New York I was taking an interest in these things.
AP: And why was that?
PLW: Well, because I got contact into that movement and also began to read Al-Ghazali on the recommendation of some of the people in that movement and we all became very interested in trying to find out whether there was such a thing as living Sufism. This was the 60s, there was no ‘new-age’ there on the ground. None of these people were so visibly active. Anyway, we didn’t find them. So that was one of my reasons for going to the East.
AP: Well that’s one of the things that is associated with Al-Ghazali, especially with regards to the fact that he was considered, or considered himself to be a Sufi. And then I believe that before he had passed away he had become a Sunni. And then he began to take more of a Sunni sort of path, and highlighted nonetheless of Sufism and the spiritual element with regards to the necessity of spirituality, the return to Islam.
PLW: Yeah sure, he was a great intellectual epitome of that position in a lot of ways. But we weren’t reading him from that point of view because we weren’t reading him from inside Islam. We were reading <em>The Alchemy of Happiness</em> and it was psychadelic. It was like, “Hey, why are we reading this <em>Tibetan Book of the Dead</em> stuff, this is really far out.” And it’s only years later that I came to see Al-Ghazali as this bastion of orthodoxy within Sufism. And this is how he’s perceived in the tradition, you’re quite right. But that isn’t how we were reading it. And we got hold of a few other things some Ibn Arabi, very little, but we weren’t scholars, we weren’t Islamologists. There were such people around but they never would have occurred to us.
AP: But obviously in Islam, and I’m sure you’re aware of this, is the concept of Ijithad...
PLW: More in Shi’ism.
AP: ...the fact that it is the duty of every Muslim, male or female, child or eldery, to strive to get to know more about Islam, more about the world, etc., as much as s/he can. Is that one of the things that interested you as well is that it’s sort of an infinitum of desire to learn, to know what is the responsibility of every single individual — not just a particular scholar — and therefore removing the element of authority that exists within Islam?
PLW: I don’t know whether I grasp that very fully in my initial contacts with the thing, because I wasn’t reading Islam, I wasn’t reading Sufism per se. So in other words these dialectical aspects that you’re pointing out here were not so clear to me at the beginning. They’re very clear to me now, I could almost say in a retrospective position, which I might take now. In that sense yes, obviously, this is one of the key elements that makes certain aspects of Islam interesting to certain aspects of anarchism, that precise thing which is often being called ‘democracy.’ Sociologists would label this as a ‘democratic tendency’ within Islam as compared to other religions and they would point out that the Ulema, although technically speaking do not occupy an authoritarian position, in practice often do. And especially now.
AP: Why do you think that is? Why do you think that turns out?
PLW: Well, I don’t know. It’s like the old saying, Sufism was once reality without a name and now it’s a name without reality. We could talk about this in a completely Islamic way as the corruption and decline of the true original Islam, which for Sufism is not fundamentalist but is Sufi. The real origins are mystical origins. That’s just the sociology of institutions from a secular point of view, what we’re looking at is that institutions that become authoritarian, especially when they last for thousands of years. Yes?
AP: Yeah.
PLW: We could go on, we could go into Maxine Rodinson’s critique of Islam as not having enough of a doctrinal framework to really be considered as opposed to capitalism. Have you read him?
AP: No, I haven’t read him on Islam but I think with regards to the aspect of the anti-capitalist sentiments that exist within Islam, particularly with a pillar of Islam which is Zakat and the way of Islam...
PLW: And again, Shi’ism adds ‘social justice’ to the pillars, so if you combine those two you get as Ali Shariati did, you get the possibility of an Islamic socialism with strong non-authoritarian tendencies.
AP: Would you say an Islamic socialism or an Islamic anarchism?
PLW: No, in his case socialism. He did not go all the way to anarchism. He was interested, I think, in some anarchist thinkers but he didn’t see that as... he was looking for something practical for Iran, I think, and as much as possible he embraced Sufism and anti-authoritarianism. His movement didn’t, particularly; I’m talking about him as an individual thinker whom I find quite interesting and even sympathetic in a lot of ways. And I’m sorry I didn’t get to know him when I was in Iran.
AP: Tell me, would you see the nodes of intersection that could become, in sort of Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, lines of flight between Islam and anarchism? What do you see between both these movements?
PLW: Well, in my own work, I’ve tended to concentrate on the heretical penumbra. Extreme Sufism, Ishmaelism. If orthodox Sunni Islam is going to be taken as the norm, then this is not the norm. I would question this whole picture, but it is the picture of Islamology so let’s just go with it and say, as I myself have said in subtitling my books on Islam and heresy, ‘On the Margins of Islam,’ and I think it’s here in the penumbral aspects, the illumination around the dark body, that the interesting intersections occur. Now I was criticized in <em>Fifth Estate</em> by Barkley, for talking about Sufism as an anarchistoid element in Islam. He proposed a sort of Islamic puritanism and its democratic structure as something closer to anarchism. I was respectful of his critique, but on the other hand I had to disagree. I find the whole puritannical thing unsympathetic. It’s freedom on every level that I’m interested in, not just freedom in the assembly. So this I find amongst the wild dervishes.
AP: Well it’s the aspect that, if there’s no compulsion in religion, how can there be compulsion with regards to anything?
PLW: And it’s not often written because of the dangers of writing some of these things. It’s expressed in poetry, poetry has the license for this. And you can say, as Mahmud Shabistari said, if Muslims only understood the truth they wouldn’t become idol-worshippers. Did he get away with it? I don’t think they killed him, because it was poetry.
AP: There’s a lot of songs, too.
PLW: Yeah, because all Persian and Urdu, and I suppose Arabic poetry too, if it’s written in a traditional meter, it can be sung to traditional modes. And certain meters are connected to certain modes. So you even have the tune already laid out. And then it’s just up to you to do interesting variations on it. A Bardic reality which lacks into the Elizabethan period in the West.
AP: I spent some time with Naqshbandi Sufis in Montreal. What astonished me was that after a particular period of time, spending time with them, when I was actually considering embracing more of the Sufi elements that exist within Islam, I was a bit taken back by the issue of the Bayiah, which is the allegiance and the quest for allegiance. What do you think about that?
PLW: Well I’ve written about this. A very important influence has been the whole Uwaisi tradition, which is the anti-guru tradition within Sufism. This is based on the idea that you can seek initiation on the spiritual plane, such as in dreams or like the the Uwaisis in Turkey were actually influenced by Shamanism, they would actually meet magical animals or ghosts who would initiate them, and Julian Baldic wrote a nice book about this called Imaginary Muslims...
AP: I’m assuming those magical animals were not Djinn.
PLW: Well yeah, sure they were Djinn. And some of the Djinns were believers, too. Dealing with Djinns is not like necromancy, in the Christian West. Dealing with Djinn can be white magic, quite easily. This is why hermeticism is an easier time within traditional Islam than it has been within traditional Christian cultures.
AP: Where do you see Islam going, especially post-9/11? Where do you see Islam going on its own, and I’d like to hear your comments on what you expect that, for example, what Islam can bring to the table that something like anarchism can not bring to the table? Or vice-versa?
PLW: Well that’s sort of crystal ball stuff, which has to be taken with a grain of salt (which is also crystal). I don’t see much good ahead in Islamic culture or in the Western culture so it’s hard to compare them in that sense. Sufism and radical tolerance and all these ideas seem to be on the retreat in the Islamic world. At least as we look at it from here. My finger is not on the pulse of the East here, but I’m looking at what’s going on in America where you’ve got all these people publishing books called ‘What’s Right with Islam.’
AP: Or <em>Good Muslim, Bad Muslim</em>, that sort of thing.
PLW: I’m already so sick of this. And the liberal Muslims, why are they trying to make Islam in the image of reform Judaism? Why not pick something more exciting, like Sufism? As far as I can tell, these people are ignorant of Sufism and if they know anything about it, they agree with the reformers that it’s a medieval ecretion that should be swept away.
AP: Do you believe it’s an aspect of literacy that occurs here in the West, especially the new generation of Muslims, that they are born into a Muslim family, their family had migrated to North America, and they essentially know this thing which is called Islam but they sort of take it for granted apart from the ritualistic aspects or cultural aspects that exist within it. They never really truly identity with Islam, all they get is the surface level.
PLW: There are several interesting things going on in this respect. The Muslim punk movement, with Michael Muhammad Knight, he told me recently that his imagination seems to have started to come to life. There are actually Muslim punk bands and there weren’t when he wrote the book, which is wonderful. And I hear from people like you’re talking about, college students who suddenly realize that they’ve got roots, and these roots are interesting. But they can’t stomach all this crap that’s going on, so some of them find their way to my work.
AP: The other side of the coin with regards to college students, from what I’ve seen, is they actually turn the other way. They become very religious, very pious all of a sudden, and they start to develop a very hard line as to what is there in terms of Islam, and the concepts of Islam, and become very alienating to other Muslims and the people around them.
PLW: I was thinking of that in terms of ‘image magic.’ It’s very hard to struggle against global image. Now we have this global image of Islam. Whether it arouses waves of hatred or desire, that’s what we got. To be able to situate oneself even in a critical position to the image is so difficult, much less to exist outside it. That takes some wellspring of Himma. It’s so difficult when you’re on your own. Islam is a very communitarian religion and to be on your own, yes you can in theory, everyone is their own Imam in theory, but in practice with the sociology of institutions at work, it’s so difficult to move against that sludge.
AP: What do you think it will take to break down that sociology of institutions. Do we need another Malcolm X or Elijah Muhammad to come about with reformed knowledge, or does it come with opening up zones or spaces and people become nomads coming in and out of those spaces, and Islam.
PLW: All those things would be nice. It would be nice to have some voices coming from the Islamic world that aren’t either fundamentalist or anti-fundamentalist. It would be nice to have voices come from the Islamic world that remember something about the movement of the social, and haven’t just given up on it before this wretched fundamentalism. It would be interesting to have young Muslims in America and England and France where it’s at least possible to speak, to start working on these alternatives which we don’t even know what they are. Maybe they’re these seeds, but we can’t talk about anything that’s actually sprouting. That would be very difficult.
AP: What could Islams learn from anarchisms?
PLW: Phrased that way, we might be able to work with that question a little. The spiritual element within anarchism is already such a tiny minority, both intellectually and historically. It does exist and we could even talk about the Catholic workers, and I do consider myself a part of it, but it’s an almost inaudible voice even within anarchism. And again, if we’re talking about the wild dervishes within Islam, well most of these guys are living in the Middle Ages, and for their sake I hope they manage to succeed in continuing to do so. But they don’t have anything to learn from anarchism, they’re practicing it. And anarchists don’t particularly have anything to learn from them, it would just be sort of nice to take inspiration, to cross-fertilize while retaining the differences. No ghastly unity, like the ideals of fundamentalism and capitalism, but to embrace difference.
AP: Let’s say those dervishes would not be required to identify as muslim anarchists, or as anarchist muslims, but rather retain their identity.
PLW: It would be so historically difficult to make up some hybrid like that, just as it is so historically difficult to deal with the idea of gay Islam. Gay is the wrong word. It’s just not a concept in the Islamic world. Really it means shallow Westernization, and naturally that’s resisted. The strategy is wrong. The strategy should go to the Sufi love poetry, that’s what the strategy should be. And these wacko 19<sup>th</sup> century pseudo-scientific Greek terms like homosexual and these lifestyle labels like gay should just be ignored.
AP: Should we go back to an oral tradition in Islam, if people aren’t reading to the extent they should, is it better to stand on a box and talk to muslims, or go to the mosque to open these forums for discussions. The problem with that is if they don’t like what they hear, you become visible.
PLW: Islam is a missionary religion and always has been. We could talk about Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, it’s hard to find other such intensely missionary religions, so it would be hard to separate out the element of Tablee’kh, of propaganda of the faith, from any view that Islam might have of itself.
AP: How do reconcile that fact of Tablee’kh, which specifically came out from places like Pakistan, and which you actually see here in North America. You’ll have these moments in Toronto or Montreal and they knock at your door in compulsion of religion.
PLW: Well it would be nice if there were counter-organizations, but I don’t really see much evidence of it. Maybe you’re more in touch with the fine currents here, which I imagine someone has to be on the line to be in touch with, and it would be nice if something would emerge, in terms of a counter-Tablee’kh, I don’t know. Agit-prop? And it would have to be couched in Islamic terms. And that’s why I’m saying that Sufism could be so important. And it’s being ignored by all the counter-moves against Islamism.
AP: With regards to Muslim scholars in the West, I’m not sure you’re familiar with Dr. Tariq Ramadan? He’s married to the granddaughter of Hassan Al-Banna who started the Muslim brotherhood in 1948. He lives in Switzerland and migrates between Switzerland, France, England, and he often comes to North America and was supposed to teach in the States. As he was about to come in, the Department of Defense or Homeland Security forbid him from coming in. He’s done some work on commenting on the left and the aspect of co-operatives as alternatives to capitalist space and organization. The issue with his work is, as far as I know, the lack of exposure to anarchisms. Have you read anything by him?
PLW: I haven’t so I can’t comment, but it’d be nice if he would read some Charles Fourier. But dream on, right?
AP: How do you feel about post-structuralism and whatever influence it might have on Islam?
PLW: Well I just wrote a little review of this book on Foucault and the Iranian Revolution. I didn’t actually see the whole commentary, only Foucault’s part, in First of the Month in New York, and I pointed out that it’s true that Foucault was quite wrong in assessing the Iranian Revolution, and he had seen Ali Shariati as much more important than he actually turned out to be, sadly. His critics, including Maxime Rodinson, who wrote a very perceptive and not-nasty criticism, but a strong critique that really demolished Foucault’s position.
AP: How did he get caught up in the Iranian Revolution? How did it happen to him, of all people?
PLW: He thought he had missed all the other revolutions and this was his chance. Just like Genet who went to the Palestineans in part because ‘at least there’s something, this is a chance.’ Romanticism, and I’m a romantic myself, I sympathize. I compared the two, Genet’s book with Foucault’s work and said that desire had played a part in both cases. When he got to Tehran they were marching in the street and shouting two names: Ayotallah Khomeini and Sharati. Later on, of course, there was only the one name. By then he realized how wrong he’d been and shut up on the subject. But my point was that he had been wrong but for the right reasons. His heart had been very good on this. His head had let him down. My heart also went out to him, even though I never went through a period of romanticizing the Iranian Revolution because I saw it up close, on the ground and I realized it was in control of the mullahs right from the start. I had to shed a little tear for Foucault and his lost love.
AP: How do you feel with regards to the issue of violence and pacifism in Islam? Do you believe that the concept of “suicide bombings” ... well 9/11 is quite a different example from Palestine... but I’d like to hear you comment on both.
PLW: The only thing that really occurs to me that I can say on this is to point out how fascinating it is that the Hasan Al-Sabah archetype keeps turning up over and over again. If only Burrows were alive now, what a kick he would get out of this. He did realize that Khomeini was the sort of Hasan Al-Sabah type, which he was. And of course Osama is also, even though he’s a Sunni which makes the comparison a little weird. Nevertheless, that’s the archetype. He disappears up into the mountains and is never seen again. Believe me, he’ll never be seen again. He’ll live forever because of that. With the long white beard and sending out the Fedayeen to sacrifice themselves. It’s an archetype that apparently just keeps popping up in Islam.
AP: I recently did a class talk with regards to Islam and sacrifice. It’s interesting to see how the tactics have evolved with Iraq, 9/11 and Palestine. In Iraq the use of footage and videotape, the image and lighting that Deleuze talks about when he’s discussing Bergsonian cinema, the aspect of the imagination colliding with reality. It places the viewer in the person who is being sacrificed. The use of the technique in Palestine, when they leave footage behind; now I’m not saying hostage-taking is the same as what happens in Palestine, the two are different in terms of the context, but do you feel sympathy with Palestine and what goes on there?
PLW: I was remembering what happened with Karlheinz Stockhausen after 9/11, when he blurted out his statement about what a fantastic work of art it had been, and I believe the poor sucker is still hiding out somewhere from the fallout of making that statement. But I thought the statement was so obvious, it was a work of art. It was meant to be image manipulation and it succeeded fantastically well.
AP: Like propaganda of the deed?
PLW: It was a viral image, just absolutely did the total Burrowsian thing from the grey room into everybody’s head instantly. In a situation like that, it’s so difficult to sort out ethical and even moral strands. When you’re just being swamped with the grand illusion, the Orwellianism to the degree that would have made Orwell keel over in a dead faint. It’s just a gargantuan behemoth of imagery, and it’s got everybody.
AP: Do you think it was intentional to get that sort of image to the people?
PLW: Intention is such a.... who cares, does it even matter?
AP: Well I think it does, like Islam says that all actions are but by intention.
PLW: I mean, clearly these people are media mavens. If they hadn’t read McLuhan, it must just have seeped into their unconscious through the dreamworld or something. They’re manipulating the image, of course they are. And so is the U.S. It’s an image war. That’s why Baudrillard said about the first Gulf War, a statement he got in so much trouble for, saying it never happened. Which I presume he didn’t mean to belittle the deaths and suffering that actually occurred, but he was talking about this aspect of this Manichean spectacle of clashing imagery. Which is sometimes the same imagery which makes it even more complicated. So it’s really kinda hard to even answer your question. Yes, I’ve always been sympathetic to the suffering of the Palestineans. How could one not be? But to say that I have any kind of political insight into it, no.
AP: With regards to the aspect of Islam and desire, let’s talk about desire and homosexuality. How do you feel about there being no path with regards to desire, in an Islamic framework. Islam says that not everything you desire can be fulfilled, for example alcohol, hashish or homosexual activities. Do you think a re-interpretation takes that apart?
PLW: You could do this in an Islamic legal context, but would have to call in Ishmaelism and certain kinds of Shiaism, Sufism and so forth in order to do it. I think the way you would do it would be to point out there is no hierarchy in Islam. There’s no Pope to call on his cardinals in this. A Fatwah can be issued but whether anybody follows it is a voluntary process. If you issued a Fatwah based on hermeneutic exigesis, on esoteric interpretations of Quran and Hadith, it’d be a question of whether you had the Ummah, whether the community would accept those Fatwahs. Right now we see that it’s not likely. Although I understand there’s a so-called gay mosque in Toronto, and I wish them well, but that would be the way it would have to be done. Unless we’re gonna talk about social disintegration. And again, I think it would be worthwhile talking about this in order to avoid this schizophrenia in the very use of a term like ‘gay Muslim.’ Gay is about a consumerist lifestyle, and if that’s what they’re interested, then I’m not sympathetic (terribly). I mean do what you want to do, you know, it’s like gay marriage; from an anarchist perspective this is all big head-scratcher, you know what I’m saying? Are we asking permission of the state here or what?
AP: Well it goes back to Lacan, you never escape the structure or image that society has placed for you... the politics of demand... you always go back and forth in circles.
PLW: It’s why language is important. What theory is supposed to be about.
AP: Did Muslims waste a lot of time by trying to apologize for 9/11, trying to teach people about Islam to get away from stereotypes of the terrorist Muslim...
PLW: You tell me. Has there been any improvement as a result of these efforts?
AP: There’s a lot more reading going on.
PLW: Yeah, but reading of what? Like we talked about.
AP: A lot of people are actually reading the Quran.
PLW: A lot of my teachers say it’s a mistake to start with the Quran. Listen to it in Arabic, get the spiritual vibe but save the text for later.
AP: Particularly with regards to the Quran being used by people, who don’t know much about Islam, to bring out the elements they consider hateful against Jews and Christians.
PLW: You’ve got the Christians reading the Quran saying “It’s all full of violence!”, and unfortunately no Muslims came back with a reading of the Bible but some liberals did it for them. From a scriptual perspective it’s always a double-edged sword, which is another reason to leave the Quran for later.
AP: Do you think that Islam, if reinterpreted, would constitute a non-Western form of anarchism? Anarchism that existed before the term was coined?
PLW: I question the idea of non-Western. A lot of people consider Islam one of the Western tradition. After all, it goes all the way up to France. Yes, you can talk about ‘the East’ in the spiritual sense, but you can take it in the large sense of the whole monotheist tradition which is a kind of Eastern Mediterranean tradition, and also involved Judaism and Christianity, then how do you separate Islam and call it Eastern and the others Western? That would be a difficult road to hoe. Maybe pre-modern? Would that be a better word?
AP: Sure.
PLW: So like a pre-modern form of anarchism, like how the anarchists always look for their forebearers in the Tao Te Ching or what have you? Yeah. There’s certainly some elements there that you could play with.
AP: That interpretation of pre-modernity would really be post-modernity, cause what’s pre-modernity?
PLW: Yeah. And theory now, everything is up for grabs. This is the postmodern ecstacy, everything is up for grabs. If we don’t allow it to fall into a posty-constructionist apathy of relativism. But look on it as a kind of positive thing.
AP: The possibilities. I think looking for more practical relations, in terms of looking at local Muslim communities and speaking with them about the anarchist tradition.
PLW: We’re talked about some of the possible points in a constellation that could be presented already.
AP: The aspect of consensus, of social solidarity, of acceptance...
PLW: You could put the emphasis on those things, pre-modern aspects, and you could talk about what we could call medieval aspects, like the wild dervishes. And between those two poles, perhaps something interesting would begin to spark.
AP: How would you deal with those legalistic people who would...
PLW: That’s what I said, you get Fatwahs based on an esoteric position as you could, for example from a Shi’ite or Ishmaeli authority. Or someone who is both Sufi and orthodox, like an Algazel, that’s the kind of position that’s so sadly missing. If that kind of position existed in Islam in a normative way, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
AP: I think certainly with regards to Sufism, you pointed out with Al-Ghazali particularly, I think it’s the aspect of spirituality being blended in or returning back, but unless you get something out of it it just becomes repetitive.
PLW: That would be a good definition of Sufism, you just gave. In this sense it’s not a separate tradition of Islam. The Orientalist view of it being that is wrong.
AP: What about the adoption of techniques of innovation? How do you feel it would...
PLW: Well that’s Bidi’a, and we can’t call it that, we have to call it Ijtihad, then we can do it.
AP: But once again, Umar always said that sometimes there are good Bidi’as and sometimes there are bad Bidi’a.
PLW: Did he say that?
AP: Yeah. Sometimes there are good innovations and sometimes there are bad innovations. I recall the story of Umar and a woman standing up and correcting him, because he had a particular point of view with regards to something... for example with Taraweeh prayers. Taraweeh prayers did not occur during the time of the propet, per se. It was a good Bidi’a in the sense that they prayed during Ramadan, and then the prophet didn’t show up the next day. Everyone was worried and they knocked on his door, and they said well you can pray Taraweeh on your own or you can pray it with Jama’a. And if you pray it within Jama’a then well, that’s good, but you can pray it on your own.
PLW: This was during the lifetime of the prophet? After the lifetime of the prophet, it becames more problematic, almost synonymous with sin or heresy.That’s why you need the Shi’ite ideas of the Noor Mohamed, something that shines through the consciousness of the collectivity — Messiah as collective — the radical view of certain Shi’ites. This could all be done, but the power points for it just don’t exist, apparently.
AP: With regards to Shi’ite Islam, and the political apect and the concept of the Khalifa or the hidden Imam (Mehdi).
PLW: Corbin points out you have this hyper-authoritarian structure, based even on blood, but suddenly it flips into esotericism and you can talk about the Imam of one’s own being. That’s how you do that. Then you combine that with Sunni ‘democracy’ and come up with an interesting model. Then it’s not just ethical culture for Muslims.
*** Part 2 of 2: The Economics of Autonomous Zones
**** Ego and Invisibility
AP: You were talking about no-go zones, Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) and Semi-Permanent Autonomous Zones (SPAZ). I’m wondering about issues of visibility and invisibility. What would allow for a semi-permanent autonomous zone to exist as long as possible, without attracting attention. You’ve been talking about the media, one of the major beacons of attention. I’d use the metaphor of mosquitoes, when you go into the woods mosquitoes are attracted to you, they can sense your pulse and your carbon dioxide, and they will come and find you. It doesn’t matter where you are, a mosquito will always find you because you are a human being letting off these specific things. As a semi-permanent autonomous zone, you want to be able to exist and do what you want to do, but at the same time you want to try and avoid issuing a certain scent. I’m not even sure exactly what that is, and I’m wondering if you have some insight on that.
HB: Well style is a big problem here. I hate the term lifestyle, but let’s talk about style, since style is the human, the individual, as well as the movement. You try to have one of these, as you call them semi-permanent autonomous zones in a style which draws mosquitoes, or worse, then you are working under a handicap. I wrote this piece in <em>Fifth Estate</em> about an imaginary situation that seemed to me feasible in reality now. Briefly, it involved a kind of social camouflage in a rural county where the population is very low and you can actually take over the municipal government. So I invented a sheriff who quotes Guy Debord, and stuff like that. Basically what they try to do is not draw down the heat, so everyone kind of looks like crappy rural America. They’ve kept the shell as much as possible, and they don’t encourage lifestyle tourists to come and take part in what they’re doing. In fact, they’re funding it in various illegal ways. These are all things based on stuff I’ve heard about going on all already, except I put them all together. On the non-dramatically illegal front I heard about a ghost-town out West that people have sort of settled, and there’s no municipal government there at all, they’re just there doing all kinds of horrible zoning violations they want to do (laughs).
We can also talk about the periodical autonomous zones, like Burning Man and the Rainbow Gatherings which do have a lot of style and therefore have to keep on the move in certain ways. I know Burning Man always happens in the same place but that’s because they found the one fucking place in America that nobody else wants! (laughs) A brilliant move, actually. And even they can only do it periodically.
AP: Is there something that happens when you try and stake a claim, or say that this is your space? I felt like that’s also something that lights a blaze of fury on the part of the state form. That should be avoided somehow, I guess...
HB: You don’t want to go around saying this is now the anarchist liberated zone...
AP: But people want to also take pride in that area, but you have to keep it from going out.
HB: Well what I miss here in this equation is, where are all the fucking co-operatives? I saw them all disappear in the 70s, and we talked about it in New York anarchist circles and basically came to the conclusion that capitalism had destroyed this movement with unfair competition.
AP: Or co-opting the co-operatives... We know a co-operative that is currently in the process of moving away from its political foundations, and that seems to be something that always happens.
PLW: That’s why I always say, capitalism creates real needs. These people, I’m sure they’re not doing it because they suddenly became evil. It’s like people in my building in New York, it used to be a tenant co-operative and now it’s going to become a regular capitalist-type co-operative, and we’re going to own our apartments. It’s not that people became evil, it’s that they need to. Capitalism created the need.
AP: What’s the flaw? There’s got to be a flaw in this model.
PLW: Ivan Illich used to always talk about voluntary poverty, the actual need for asceticism. You actually have to face the fact that sacrifice is going to be involved here, and that is something that most Americans are not equipped to deal with. It’s impossible to go around copping moralistic stances and telling them that they ought to, because we’re talking about people who are hanging on to an economy by their fingernails. Give up your car, give up your computer, and they ask you if you’re asking them to starve to death. And in fact that is what you’re asking them to do.
AP: Is there anyway to do that?
**** The Untouchables: Thoughts on Failure
PLW: Only by organizing. There are, after all, certain economic forms which are permitted to inch along in capitalism so long as they don’t get to be too successful. Look at the Amish, they’re allowed to do what they do.
AP: These are the untouchables.
PLW: They have a religious argument. Even anarchists could do this if they could swallow their traditional distaste for religious self-identifications. A food co-op is not illegal, we still have one in this county, craft co-operatives are not illegal.
AP: What can you do to salvage co-ops that have gotten to that stage? That have dilapidated? Is there anything you can do?
PLW: I wish I knew. You can’t talk to these people about socialism anymore, anarchism is always difficult outside of urban bohemias...
AP: But if it has a responsibility, if the co-op was founded by the community and has a responsibility towards the community and it’s not fulfilling those responsibilities, is there a way in which a community could...
PLW: It’s going to involve sacrifice. It’s going to involve some economic reversion. Reverting to earlier models. It’s something human societies have done over and over again, it’s not something I’m dreaming about, there are anthropologists who say there are no pristine hunter-gatherer societies in the world, they all reverted to that from some form of herding nomadism or primitive agriculture. I don’t know if that argument is true, but I’m certainly willing to believe that some human societies have done that, have reverted to earlier economic models because they found the ones that they were using either unfulfilling or morally abhorrent, or both. I think we’re in a position now where people feel the moral abhorrence but they can’t see the efficiency argument. They can’t see that there are certain kinds of values higher than effeciency. The left has been terrible in this regard historically, the left is always badgering about how more fucking effecient it’s going to be when they take over. And how capitalism wastes this, and wastes that. Fuck it; effeciency is the problem, not the solution. In order to voluntarily embrace ineffeciency it means coming down in a number of bloody gadgets you’ve got surrouning you. I’m desperately disappointed by the fact that the neo-primitivist action groups in America all have website addresses and don’t even have fuckin snail mail addresses. I can’t even get in touch with them because they’re online and I’m not, and these are fuckin neo-primitivists. Zerzanistas, and people like that. Everyone’s got an SUV, everyone’s got a cell phone, and everyone’s got a computer above all, and I remember when <em>Fifth Estate</em> got their computers. What are you gonna do? You can’t put out a magazine without computers. There was a Luddite guy in Pennsylvania was putting out a magazine on Luddism; I don’t know what printing technique he was using, but it was obviously too much work and he gave it up. People weren’t paying him to do it.
AP: Do you believe in mixtures, though?
PLW: Mixed systems? Of course, you’ve gotta, you’ve got to compromise. You can’t just say, we’re going to be paleolithic socialists now.
AP: Because I’m not so much into that but I really am into having SPAZs, having spaces that are open, but I think if we have a computer I’m not going to toss it against the wall or hack it up with an axe just because it is.
PLW: No but, it has to be understood that there is such a thing as technological determinism. You use certain economies and technologies, and I don’t want to be a vulgar Marxist here or a vulgar determinist of any sort, but you use certain things and they shape consciousness. Then consciousness shapes them and they shape consciousness and it’s this complex feedback thing. You can not use certain technologies and expect certain social forms to emerge from them. This is what the Amish have discovered. They compromise, they’ll have one car in the village, one phone in the village for emergencies. They’re not puritans in that sense, maybe some of them are, since I know there are many different approaches. Just before you guys came in I was making some notes about research I would like to do about the Amish. But they are Luddites, in the sense that Luddism is about resisting technology which is hurtful to the commonality, which is the phrase that was used in one of the original Ludd letters, back in 1810s or whenever it was. Hurtful to the commonality, what technology will destroy community, and what technology will preserve community or even enhance it. And that’s the sole basis on which they make their choices. So having one telephone in the village won’t destroy the community. But internal combustion, that’s a hard one. Electricity, that’s a hard one. That’s why they say that compressed air is Amish electricity. So they found a weird little compromise.
AP: They do steam, right?
PLW: I’m not sure if steam is permissible. Steam technology was clearly disruptive to the community and in fact, it was the technology the original Luddites were, you know what I’m saying? So steam itself is already on the road to social disintegration. But maybe now since it’s a backwards step you could take it with some advantage. It would be interested to try and do a steam-based Luddism. The unfortunate fact of the matter is, there is no Luddism going on, because it takes a community. I did research this recently, I got in touch with Kirkpatrick Sale, who did that book on Luddism and was involved in a little swish of Luddite revivalism that happened around the late 90s. And I asked him if he knew of any secular Luddite communities, and he said no. And if he doesn’t know, then I guess it doesn’t exist. He got me involved in the Vermont secession movement, because he said that’s at least something we could do. I’m not sure how that’s going...
AP: One thing about co-operatives, is a lot of them are aesthetic. A lot of people meet there and become group spaces, which is important. But in the co-operative sense there’s a need for like, plumbers, electricians, things that actually make enough money that money can be put back in to do things.
PLW: I constantly think about it. I’ve been thinking about possible models, about William Mars and the printing co-operative concept. Whether you could take advantage that non-computer printed books, fine printing of some sort, I know it’s an elitist thing of course, but could be the mainstay for a small community. Or a CSA. This is big in the country, with an organic farmer taking subscriptions and you buy your food at the beginning of the season. There’s a co-operative element, you do some work to pay for your groceries, and you get your groceries during the system. It’s within the capitalist frame, not a co-op, but it’s getting closer to a co-op and could be an aspect of a new co-operative movement. But you know, I talk to people up here who are involved in ecological this, and solar that, and green the other, and they don’t have any fucking idea about economics. It’s all reformism. It’s like “Oh, if we could just have hydrogen cars.” Cmon, we would still have every single problem related to the automobile except we wouldn’t be choking to death on the pollutants.
AP: A lot of co-operatives now, they profit from bourgeois culture. I mean, we can make a lot of money from that sector. They do like a lot of aesthetic crafts and stuff it’s possible to make money from.
PLW: That’s quite true and I don’t think you have to cut your nose off to spite your face here too much. Obviously, there’s a fine line you find yourself crossing that you never noticed. I think of this in terms of the arts, for example. What are you supposed to do as an artist? Writers have already given up, there’s no money in it, but what about painters and musicians? Success means that you’re basically turning out commodities for capitalism. If you happen to have a nice lifestyle, then good. But there’s certainly no such thing as an avart-garde movement that’s bringing artists together in some kind of resistance. Everyone is on their own now. Good work is being done and it’s all very highly individualistic and if you succeed at it, basically you’re sucked into the gallery world and that’s it. Forget the suppression and realization of art. Forget the romantic revolution. Your part in that is now over: you have become a successful artist. And content has nothing to do with this, I’m afraid. It would be nice if content had something to do with it, but we know it doesn’t. We know the capitalists are quite happy to buy radical social art and hang it in their banks, because they’ve done it over and over and over again. If there’s a little bit of heat coming from a lowbrow like Giuliani or Jesse Helms every once in a while everybody gets excited an thinks we’re still living in the 19<sup>th</sup> century and it’s the struggle of the avant-gardist; it’s bullshit man. None of that’s left. There is no movement, there is no avant-garde. Either you succeed, or you fail. So recently I’ve been toying with the idea that failure is the last possible outside. And somehow or another we have to come to terms with failure.
AP: I feel quite often in North America, failure actually is not so bad. You can live pretty well as a failure.
PLW: In a society of rich garbage, failure is not necessarily a voluntary poverty option, even. It would be nice if it was part of it, so you’re looking at it in a positive way. The difficulties you’re going to face, I mean sure. We know all about the young dumpster divers and I think that’s great.
**** Recuperating the Rhizome
AP: What’s the potential for the activist strategy? Do you feel like it has a larger potential, not so much in a centralized way, but as a decentralized, rhizomatic reality?
PLW: The problem is that this ‘rhizome’ has now become the internet. This is the problem. This is why we must move on from the Deleuze and Guatarri model, I’m afraid.
AP: OK. What are your feelings on that specifically?
PLW: I think that the problem is, we mistook the internet for the rhizome. And what we’ve got now is a situation where we’re all hostages in cyberspace. We’re all held hostage in cyberspace, which is basically a haunted slum. It’s the perfect mirror of capital. This is one of the reasons there’s not a lot of money generate out of the internet but a lot of money goes around it and through it and in it, because it’s not capitalism per se but it’s a mirror of capital. Therefore its reverse and in some sense its image. So we’re all sucked into this, and every radical group in America is essentially a website and nothing more.
AP: I’ve been thinking about it and this is the first time I’ve heard it thought about in this way, but if you think about the internet as a mirror of capitalism, then it’s like if you’re looking at a mirror in this room, on that wall, then it’s this space where, you can’t actually walk into the mirror so it isn’t capitalism. But it’s there.
PLW: It’s virtually there.
AP: This goes back to the idea of spaces, the idea of looking into the mirror as the only time you can see all the way around you. So it changes the space.
PLW: Global perspective. Sure, and the breakdown of the border, which postmodern capitalism just loves, just eats it up. We’re talking about global capital, well it’s got to have global communication. And that’s what the internet is. The left in America is reduced to the point where, you start a website, you get a lot of people to come out on the street and wave some signs, and that’s supposed to be a political triumph.
AP: I did think, for instance, with Seattle and Quebec... I was in Quebec... one thing, the only thing they couldn’t... ‘they’ in the ‘wrong’ sense...
PLW: We!
AP: ‘We,’ the one thing we couldn’t do to ourselves around the message was, broken windows and property destruction is very difficult to do anything about. When the authorities, the state really didn’t like it, and it actually got a lot of people to migrate into different movement...
PLW: You’re talking about black bloc tactics?
AP: But I’m not so much in a black bloc, a black bloc whatever, we could all be wearing pink, we could all look like businessmen, or do whatever we want. Breaking things, but not hurting people, is a signification you can’t do anything with. It’s a black hole. For instance, the GAP started, in a bunch of corporate forms, starting imitating a lot of counter-cultural stuff in the late 90s and turn of the millenium, and feeding it back to us. The hipster shit, the same shit that’s gone on forever and ever right...
PLW: Well no, actually.
AP: You don’t think in the 60s it was the same sort of thing?
PLW: That’s when it started.
AP: OK. That’s my concession forever.
PLW: There was a time before that. It didn’t last very long, it lasted about 4 or 5 years, when there was a social movement that was creating its own pleasure.
AP: You mean the beats?
PLW: No, they were a literary avant-garde, they weren’t a movement. In the 60s there was this movement, sometimes called hippies but it would be better to think of a broader, vaguer term, because it was really a social movement. It wasn’t based on knowing each other, they didn’t know eachother they just knew what to look for. From 1964–1968 is the classical period when that moment of co-optation had not really occurred. After 68 then that becomes problematic. And the gap between a movement on the street and its recuperation by capital gets shorter and shorter until there is no gap, and you have capital dictating what happens on the street. And that began, I think, around 1995, just to pick a magic date.
AP: But smashing windows, breaking physical capitalist icons, it seems, it still seems, that there’s nothing that can be done with it.
PLW: It doesn’t go anywhere. As a tactic. You’re criticizing it as a tactic?
AP: I’m not criticizing it as a tactic. I know it has serious limitations. But at the same time, this rebounding transmutation of its symbol, and being able to sell it back, the potential is not there for that.
PLW: I see the whole struggle as the mystery of how to avoid that. It is totally a mystery.
AP: One of the things I saw was property destruction.
PLW: That’s one way to avoid it. (laughs)
AP: Like Earth First! can’t be sold. If they did, everyone would be goin out breakin stuff, and that doesn’t work either.
PLW: That sort of does. Look at Halloween, for example. They’re got this lovely dialectic between destructive chaos and the most expensive, now, Hallmark events of the year.
AP: They have to have limits on it, though, it’s toilet paper, it’s shit you can’t get in that much trouble for.
PLW: No no, but it makes them uneasy. We do have a certain gap between the state and the corporation here. And maybe this is an area we could play in. The values of the state are not always the same as the values of the corporation. Looked at from the big picture, viewed from outer space, yes. But viewed up close, no. So maybe there are tactical advantages to be sought there, and it would be better if we didn’t talk about them.
AP: What do you think about that though, the problem of not being able to talk about anything, which does prevent the spread. I mean, I am very critical of the internet, but I think there are uses for it in a sense. One is the decentralized spread of ideas, like memes, things that people do. On the ground the lag is so much longer. One of the major reasons I use it is to do that, politically.
PLW: Well like they say, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep. You could get widepsread, but you don’t have the follow-through, you don’t have the depth, because — and this is brutally simple to me, it’s stupid stuff — because you don’t have physical presence. Real communication is done with the whole body, in space.
AP: But the fact that I can send you an entire book and you can go print it off and go read it, this is the only thing the internet is good for. You know, this is an interesting sort of medium of sending text and it costs a lot less money.
PLW: You’ve gotta realize, though, that the sociology of this is the reification of technology, that it becomes diabolic or Mammonian. So it’s this constant retreat, our strategy needs to be based on some sort of continual tactical retreat in which you can consistently refuse to be appropriated over and over again and it’s not a natural way to live. As a strategy it has its problems.
AP: I have another question, and I hate to harp on it, but I want to see if you can think specifically about the internet. One of the things is, we would never have found you and would not be having this conversation right now without the internet. So to me, I do write about people not having the internet, even though there are social centres in bigger cities where people can go into internet rooms, or libraries, most of the homeless people in Canada that I know are on the internet because they all go to the library to use it, so I mean, there are some uses for it but there are...
PLW: There are uses for the car. In fact, there’s a need, because capital creates need. It makes it impossible to function now, without the computer. So it’s not a question whether it’s a good thing or not, you need it. It’s only because I’ve given up that I don’t have a computer. I would have to be there if I hadn’t given up to a certain extent.
AP: You have mediators, too.
PLW: If I have to buy a rare book, I have to get somebody to go online for me now, because they don’t have the book search services anymore in the back of the newspaper.
AP: They all went online.
PLW: There used to be book search services and they used to be quite good, it’s a lie you couldn’t find good books before the internet. And it’s a lie that the internet’s the only way you could have found me. If there were no internet, you would have read books and written to the publisher. That would have taken longer, but big deal. It’s the whole effeciency argument all over again. The longer it takes, the more real it becomes too, that’s also to be taken into consideration. And essentially what you’ve got here is a brutal physical reality with a bunch of people alone in their rooms in front of screens and there’s no getting away from this physical model. Interactivity is not communitas, to use Paul Goodman’s term.
AP: Computer labs are a prime example of that.
PLW: I see them, up at the school, they’re all staring at the screen, they’re not communicating.
AP: In a lecture hall there’s not even communication with the professor anymore. There’s no eye contact, they don’t listen, they’re completely transcribing. When you transcribe, you don’t listen. I know because I transcribe. (Transcriber’s note: I’m listening!)
PLW: The whole idea of being in a public space with other people now is problematic. Everyone’s coming to it with their heads stuffed full of these images. They’re not actually in the room, you know. It’s bizarre sometimes as someone who does public speaking to experience this.
AP: One of the things I see as an issue is that, I agree, but pragmatically a part of me’s like...
PLW: You need it. It’s need. But face the fact that it’s need and not some pleasure. That’s as far as I would ask anyone to go here. Now we could talk about ways in which we could try to live without it. And that’s something else again, and we come up against this apparent impossibility of Luddism.
AP: With the idea of, well can we return to this idea of Luddism and exodus to me are similar concepts, withdrawal, but a lot of the 60s stuff was very extreme, I mean we’re all gonna have a commune and live in the same room, and then we’re all gonna have social issues because we’re all gonna screw each other..
PLW: I can tell ya, I was there and it was awful. (laughs)
AP: I feel like it broke up a lot of social bonds. The fighting, and it all went to hell. There was no respect for people’s autonomy and the need for autonomy.
PLW: And hard drugs and political reaction just came down all at once. We lost, too. It was like a war and we lost.
AP: In any sort of redux, that would be different ideas.
PLW: That’s why I’m sort of fascinated by the Amish at the moment, maybe when I look into it more deeply I won’t be, or I might be more so. Because they don’t all live in the same room, you know what I’m saying? They maintain their individual households and they have economic co-operation across the village. But they’re also got this incredibly tight religion that’s holding it all together. And that’s what we don’t have, we don’t have a belief system for which people are ready to sacrifice, apparently. We have our mental image of anarchism, but we don’t have anything of it in our lives except maybe style. Which is not nothing, but still.
AP: What about the opening of not just style, the opening of anarchism so it’s less dogmatic about religion, so that we can have Jewish anarchists, Christian anarchists, Muslim anarchists, and everyone doin their own thing like they do now...
PLW: Bring it on. Do you know how to do it, because I don’t.
AP: Well there are a lot of Catholic anarchists now.
PLW: There are four or five of them, yeah. (laughs)
AP: There are a couple people talking about orthodox anarchism. There are some people starting to talk about Islam and anarchism in a practical living sense. I think this had a strong post-structuralist influ ence and a multiplicity of getting rid capital Revolution and not having to conform to styles when getting in, because I find moving into anarchist subculture a lot of the time is being whittled away until you’re the peg that fits in the hole, and that’s how it goes, and that’s always been extremely problematic for me. I was always resistant to that sort of thing. I think that’s a major issue as far as having any sustainable stuff. Have you had a lot of contact with on-the-ground anarchist projects?
PLW: I did in the 80s and 90s but I’ve kind of given up on it not so much because I’m renouncing it, but I’m too exhausted for that. Also, I have to say, I don’t see anything happening other than communication. Take Indymedia for example. It’s facing the same problem as we discussed earlier. Either they’re going to succeed and get nice job offers from major networks, or a big grant to make their film, or they’re going to fail in which case they won’t be heard except for their friends.
AP: But is failure OK then? If Indymedia doesn’t ever become large, it stays as a communication network.
PLW: I think it depends on what you’re going for. You have to have strategy as well as tactics. This is a big problem for all the Deleuze and Guattari people because they don’t like the word strategy. They think strategy is authoritarian. But to me, strategy means are we capable of envisioning victory or are we not?
AP: What’s victory?
PLW: Victory would be victory. You know?
AP: Most poststructuralists, I mean myself in the last few years, the study of strategy has mostly been about the fact that if you have a strategy you have to have some sort of end goal, that’s a specific totalizing vision of something.
PLW: I understand all that. I understand this critique, but my response to it is based partly on the fact that, the ‘triple world’ that Deleuze and Guattari were discussing doesn’t exist anymore. Now we have a unified world. Before we had the Spectacle which gave two forces and there was always the possibility of the third. And the rhizome was like this third force. But as soon as the two antitheses are subsumed into one, the third position is suddenly thrust into a new dialectic position.
AP: You think that’s happened?
**** Zapatismo
PLW: No. It should be happening but it isn’t. I thought Zapatismo was the beginning of it, but I’ve been proven wrong apparently.
AP: In what sense?
PLW: I thought the new revolutionary paradigm was going to be revolutionary difference as well as solidarity. Instead of the one-world model of Communism and progressive socialists of the 19<sup>th</sup> Century, we were now going to accept that people could be different yet also have solidarity across those differences. And I don’t see that happening, well I don’t see it taking off as much as I was so looking forward to in my anti-pessimist moments.
AP: I think maybe it didn’t blow up nearly as fast, but we were talking with Ashanti Alston, and they’re actually working with the Zapatistas in Estacion Libre. And they’ve been having a lot of success bringing African Americans and Latinos and actually going down there to Chiapas. And they deal with the issues that are going on that keeps people divided.
PLW: But what about an Islamic Zapatismo, it should have appeared by now but it hasn’t. What about what I was fondly calling urban Zapatismo? I don’t see. Either people are clinging to the old 19<sup>th</sup> century progressive model, in the anarchist-mileu, or they’re neo-primitivists online. That seems to be the major thing, here in America anyway.
AP: Well I do feel like poststructuralist interpretations of anarchism, whatever you want to call it, this new opening is taking hold and is starting to move forward at the talk level. But it’s really starting to move forward now which I feel like will influence the way people are doing things on the ground. ... How do you get the talk level synchronized on the ground?
PLW: That’s what we do. In a normal society, presumably we would have some sort of economic function, even as artists. That’s a fond dream. But in fact we don’t unless we’re absorbed into commodity world. So the whole thing is, yes it would be great to coordinate the talk with some action, but where’s the action? This ecstacy of communication has just absorbed everything into itself.
AP: Why do you think that is?
PLW: I think it’s a symptom of this total atomization which is a feature of pure late capital, or too late capital. Everybody’s the same and everyone’s separated. What I want is for everyone to be different and everyone together. I’m proposing a new revolutionary paradigm based on difference and solidarity rather than sameness and separation. Or, as in Communism, sameness and solidarity, and that’s not a very viable model. We don’t like it anymore. That’s why Zapatismo helped me to arrive at this position. They said look, we’re half-Mayan peasants and that’s the way we like it. At the same time, this is revolution, and we want to express our solidarity with everybody else who could be in a similar situation. They didn’t want people to come down and become weekend Zapatistas, because that’s part of the old model that doesn’t work. They wanted Zapatismo, or something like Zapatismo, to spring up here, there and everywhere.
AP: And how do you feel about people going to places like Chiapas and getting the experience of the models they’re adopting there?
PLW: One Zapatista that I heard in New York talked about that their revolution was an empirical revolution not an ideological one. I like that expression and thought it was an interesting expression. I’m all for it. As I told you, I’m a romantic, so I even think it’s nice to go and fight for somebody else’s cause sometimes, if they want you to. The Zapatistas, I think for interesting reasons, didn’t want that happening in the old Cuban model. That’s what they were trying to avoid, the Cuban thing, which obviously didn’t really work. But you have to have little revolutionary adventures otherwise things are just too boring.
AP: And it preserves that sort of spirit that you need.
PLW: And the Zaps are very inspiring, people should go down and bask in their glory. They’ve held out for 10 years.
AP: So there’s a lot of problems with putting this into action. I know a lot of people have ideas. I know some people who are trying to start autonomous yet collective rural ventures. Urban stuff, there are social centres to some extent...
PLW: Not like Italy, though.
AP: No, not at all. But what do you see as some of the tactics you could think of that would get something started?
PLW: There has to be some economic organizing. There just has to be.
AP: Resources.
**** Resources/ Economic Collapse
PLW: Yeah, I was about to start making a list of them when you showed up. There’s the William Morris style printing collective, the CSA model which could be pushed towards merging with the remnants of the food co-op model, craft collectives dealing unfortunately to the wealthy, and there could be ways, I mean perhaps entrism should be tried with some of these green things. Entrism is what the Communists used to do, they would join other movements and try to push them towards Communism. So maybe anarchists should be a little more adventurous in this respect and try to join some of these local green things, which are often basically NIMBYism.
AP: With the Vermont workers’ thing, that’s definitely being done there right now, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Vermont workers’ centre, there are quite a few anarchists involved in that. And these big unions of towns, they’re illegal unions.
PLW: Stuff like that has got to be done. Without some organization on that level, all this communication stuff is just froth, I’m afraid. And I say that as someone that’s devoted my life to it. To the froth, I mean. (laughs)
AP: There are certain places, too. When I’m thinking about Islam and anarchism, once again I’m thinking about Muslims that have capital, that have some sort of resources, that could be utilized by anarchists if communication...
PLW: Anarchist Osama? (laughs) The anarchist banker that Fernando Pessoa dreamed of?
AP: No but if there are collective goals that I see between Islams and anarchisms, that if a form of solidarity is established based on discussions, then they could actually take off and begin to support one another. Anarchists could provide different tactics that have been going on and used...
PLW: Take a look at one of the major reasons that Islamic fundamentalism is so successful, and that’s because they make a point of organizing economic institutions on the street level. That’s supposedly where all the money’s coming from, although it’s Saudi oil money...
AP: Would you say it’s on the street level? No doubt some of it is, but there are also people who hold a great deal of money who are also contributing to that. There are a great deal of people in Saudi Arabia on the royal family level see Osama do what he’s doing because then the Iraq oil would be tapped into and America could stay in...
PLW: Well sure there’s the macro-political thing, but I say one of the reasons they’re successful though is because they do pay attention to Hamans and elementary schools and things like that. Which apparently the Islamic socialist groups failed in this. They did not manage to institute these things at the street level where the real need was felt. And when the fundamentalists came along a decade later and actually started to do that, naturally people appreciate it. It’s the same thing on a different plane here in America. There are enough people that are hard-up and scrambling. It’s true that everyone’s got their gadgets and so forth, but things can change quickly for a lot of people. One little twitch in the economy and it could all collapse for them.
AP: I know in Canada a lot of people struggling.
PLW: And people would be looking for viable alternatives.
AP: One of the ideas I had around mutual aid and the issue of how it’s already going around, in most mainly lower-class communities in Canada specifically, in the States definitely too, is that the things people need done, they get done by all these myriad of tradeoffs that go on.
PLW: The sad thing is that they never value it.
AP: No, they don’t even think of it. That’s a major issue. They don’t see that as a valuable thing, they see it as something like I have to do this because I’m poor.
PLW: It’s the same thing with the Cubans with their organic gardens. Because they couldn’t afford the fertilizers, that’s why they started doing it. And I’m afraid that when Castro dies and the mafia takes over again, all that will disappear.
AP: What do you think of a tactic of valourizing that or People’s History Projects, social stuff about it; the depth is there in the networks, but there’s not a lot of consciousness about where they are. I always thought about projects trying to raise the consciousness of it and try to bring it up politically. Black Panther model sort of thing, but without the hierarchy...
PLW: Yeah without the inflammatory rhetoric...
AP: Without the guns.
PLW: Without the pictures of the guns.
AP: Or the anti-semitism.
PLW: Yeah, yeah...
AP: It surprised me to know that you didn’t know that lots of people in the anarchist community are looking at the T.A.Z. and S.P.A.Z. and these issues.
PLW: Well I know, some of these ideas slipped out, crept out into the language, which of course I was pleased when you make an actual contribution to language like that. And I never did consider these ideas as my ideas, I didn’t invent the T.A.Z. I just noticed it. It’s the same problem with giving value to these mutual aid networks. The T.A.Z. has always been there, it’s a question of valuing it, and seeing that certain technological trends in history have given it a new importance, a new luminocity that it didn’t have before, it shines by its own light now. Given an economic collapse in the United States, it would be short of Armageddon, but it would be more serious than the Great Depression. And that’s one of the things that it is possible to foresee. So suddenly one of the practical aspects of a lot of these theoretical ideas would suddenly force themselves on people, so I guess our task as theory-mongerers is to come up with words that will make this possible, in other words not to use words like socialism I guess, but to think of a new term.
AP: And one of the things is not just sitting around and waiting for the economy to collapse.
PLW: No, we can’t just sit around and wait. That’s what Marx did, and Fourier, and all these lonely old men sitting in their rooms with beards... (laughs) ... but what will it take to get Americans to give up their SUVs? Apparently only kicking and screaming. So if that happens then suddenly these new options will take on a new life. But in the meantime, all we can do is the theory work. But to mistake the theory work for the work, that’s a deadly mistake. To say that putting up a website IS the work, that’s the deadly mistake. And it’s so seductive to fall into. Especially when there are no other institutions asking for your time and energy. And to ask people to create those institutions, that’s asking too much.
AP: It’s asking a lot.
PLW: It’s asking a lot. Maybe too much.
AP: A lot of people try to do stuff, like I mean the Insitute for Social Ecology was an attempt to try to set up an alternative formation of an institution.
**** Image and Myth
PLW: The bits and pieces are there on the ground. What’s lacking somehow is cohesive spirit, which brings me back again to spirituality. I just don’t see how it can be done without what Sorel called the Myth. And of course he was thinking of something somewhat different than what you and I might. But, there’s got to be this extra spark of spiritual determination.
AP: Well that’s the whole thing with the hidden Ram, whether it is from Shi’a perspective or a Sunni, the Mahdi is going to come, the hidden Imam is going to come, that doesn’t mean that you should stop doing what you are doing. The sky doesn’t rain gold and silver, that sort of thing, for it to actually work. Whether it happens, whether the hidden Imam is each one of us, or us collectively, or whatever it may be according to whatever interpretation, we need to keep on doing the work that we need to keep on doing.
PLW: Absolutely and one can do no other, as Luther said. But still to suffer any delusions about the power of this theory work, that you will actually change anything on the ground without intervening actual praxis, that would be a terrible mistake, and I think it’s a mistake we’ve all fallen into.
AP: One of the things people talk about a lot are providing bridges or relays between theory and practices. And specifically, writing about and thinking about this, really the gap is not between theory and lower theory, but theory and oral tradition, because a lot of people don’t read. I feel like a lot of people CAN read, if you give them a sheet of paper they’ll read it, but it doesn’t mean that they’re actually literate. There are different forms of literacy, most people can’t concentrate very long to read entire books and they won’t, they don’t have the time for it, it doesn’t mean they’re not interested, and most people come to ideas by actually sitting around and having conversations about it. That’s how I came into anarchism, before I became an academic I couldn’t read. I don’t know if you’ve had any ideas about how those relays can happen, or if you’ve thought about that before.
PLW: Sure. Like I say, I think about it all the time. But I also find myself sinking towards despair on a lot of these questions, because although the bits and pieces are everywhere on the ground, somehow everything just fails to cohere. And the idea that there could be a movement having this grand appeal to many people, and yet nothing gets underway. And the reason for that, I think, must lie in this realm of the image, the hegemonic image. It works most of all in the subconscious. So whatever you may be theorizing about anarchism or the viable economic alternatives, on the subsconscious level you’re overwhelmed by this hegemonic imagery.
AP: The fear of slipping into it, you mean...
PLW: Whatever the form it might take. Just because we all spend our lives completely surrounded by images all the time, which are acting on the subconscious. In fact, usually one has no conscious control over the subconscious. This leads to terrible problems and it’s also kind of interesting that the whole idea of the subconscious is kind of missing from the left now. Freudianism has been thrown out with Marxism and now it’s among the things we can’t discuss. This is why I’m interested in magic. If we’re talking about theory work, and talking about influencing reality through theory work, then we’re talking about magic. Perhaps this is the spiritual tradition that we should be facing.
AP: There is a group called practical magic...
PLW: I’ve been saying this for years, so perhaps even they have read my work too, I don’t know. But Giardano Bruno is the man everyone should be reading.
AP: The other thing is, back to the issue of Himma, before Himma begins though Imam needs to be there. Imam, that’s the spirituality.
PLW: So we’re imagining that anarchism is the faith... and the Himma, the will or the intention to do something about it takes us to the realm between theory and practice that you brought up. Yes? That would be the structure of it. But again, there doesn’t appear to be a magic formula for setting all of this into motion. Because if there were someone would have taken that step already. Maybe there’s no one brilliant enough to see it yet. That would be the leadership theory, leading back to well, we need a new Malcolm X or something.
AP: Maybe it’s either discovered and hasn’t been acted upon, or there’s a cohesive component that is yet undiscovered. It needs to be discovered...
PLW: I question whether anything is possible in America given the changes that have been happening here since the 1950s. In other words, we have an economy here that basically produces nothing, which is based on service, and on image, an economy of image actually, and as one of my old anarchist friends said to me, well no one knows how to do anything anymore. Most people can’t even cook. Americans just can’t do anything. We don’t know how to make anything, we can’t do anything.
AP: True prisoners who know how to do nothing. Everything is left to other people.
PLW: Yeah and you do some shit with mailbags. And that’s what most people’s work amounts to. It might be very fascinating on the computer but it’s still just sewing mailbags for somebody else. We haven’t changed that much, it’s been the same problem for the last 6000 years.
**** Unions, Movements, Revolutions
AP: One of the start-stops that I saw happen in the last 10 years was the anti-globalization movement. It really started to move and then there were all the failings of it.
PLW: Also it got taken over by the new globalism, which is the American hegemonic globalism. So now suddenly everyone has to spend all their time, bent out of shape about the Bushites. And they’ve forgotten about globalism. Just wait until we get another fuckin Democratic president again and they’ll have to take all that shit out of the closet and brush it off. Because it’s gonna be good cop, bad cop from now until the end of the world and they’ll be making a tremendous profit off all of that.
AP: Well one of the reasons I think that happened was that this new American hegemonic union movement, that started the anti-globalization movement by their research into different corporations and how they were trading, so I think that it was sort of led by this sort of socialist-capitalist nexus that goes on in the new left in the state. I got a bit of a taste of it, working for a union once, and it’s crazy.
PLW: 11% of the American workforce is unionized and you know how much of that is just basically reactionary crap. So forget it.
AP: They’re human resources departments for corporations, essentially.
PLW: The I.W.W. only has about 2,000 members. And that’s the only good union I know of.
AP: There’s still the possibility that it’s not that it’s impossible for this sort of cohesive idea to come about, it’s that... we just haven’t done it.
PLW: Well it looks like Gustav Landauer, who’s someone everyone will read, it said that revolution is not something that is determined in a Marxist sense by history, it’s something that’s a possibility within the soul. This is the State, the relationship between souls, and not something outside us that we can break. This is one of Landauer’s greatest contributions to realize these things on behalf of anarchism. And to point out once and for all that this idea of Progress towards the one single industrial world is as hellish as the capitalist proposal.
AP: Right.
PLW: And of course, they stomped him to death. And that was the end of that.
AP: What do you think of the idea of putting forward examples of things that are already going on, and sort of trying to highlight examples of things and spread the possibility through the examples, experiments.
PLW: And if there was any money in it, then it would be on MTV.
AP: This regression away from using the internet or anything like that, what about the possibility of traveling and doing, maybe even plays or talks about different perspectives or ideas through actually meeting people and connectivity, again which requires resources.
PLW: It does, and there was a vanguard theatre group doing some of this stuff back in the 80s, it was doing some of this, they would do plays on the subway and on the street, and they would basically pick one person as the audience and create a situation around that person. That’s real political theatre, and they were getting some interesting psychological results but I don’t think it went anywhere as a movement. I keep hearing about like, people telling me did you hear about the latest, acoustic punk, and I said no I haven’t heard of that but I wish that well too. There’s always something stirring, the question is do you want to put it up on the internet so everyone will make a bad copy of it, or what? What do you want to do with this example? Basically I would say, we have to be existentialists and do it ourselves. It really is a do it yourself situation, and if you’re not, you’re just missing the boat, missing the fun, the possible pleasure. So that would have to be the motivation.
AP: And the Marcos question, it seems to me that this symbol of a very Fidelista sort of dictator, but then at the same time it turned out it wasn’t a dictator, it almost acted as a sort of hologram through which everyone spoke, do you think that has potential in North America?
PLW: Oh, that form they were using is something that just actually, you find that being used in the Ladies’ clubs now, they don’t use <em>Roberts’ Rules</em> anymore, they pass the baton now...
AP: Like the Red Hats...
PLW: Yeah (laughs). This is what I say, what’s amazing is anarchism has been so successful in certain ways, a lot around formal process, especially anything that’s gonna be carried out outside of the capitalist sphere, even it’s just a group that collects insulators, if you go to one of those groups it’s not an authoritarian meeting, you know. There’s no one telling everyone what to do, and everyone’s gonna have their turn. It’s a little autonomous zone, these hobby groups. Churches function this way for some people. I was gonna say earlier, behind the idea of a Temporary Autonomous Zone is the idea of the Third Place, which is neither home nor work.
AP: Yes, Starbucks —
PLW: Is that what they call it?
AP: Yeah.
PLW: Oh fuck. (laughs) We’ll have to give that up then. I was about to launch that myself as a slogan.
AP: I think the Third Place is still valid, though. You can steal it back from Starbucks.
PLW: Bastards!
AP: Well back to Marcos, I think it’s this figure that acts as a point of access, and once people go through it, it kind of blows up into this multiplicity.
PLW: It’s great to see that you can actually do militant things with these anarchist organizational models. That’s terrific, that’s what got me so excited.
AP: Well what about the representational value of that form, do you think it has value here?
PLW: I wonder if the fact that support for the Zapatistas began at the very moment that the Internet was taking off may have been one of the reasons the model has failed to spread in a meaningful way. That has occurred to me. In other words, the splashing of the image of the Zapatistas was counter-productive in some way. I don’t know, I can’t think through the implications.
AP: One of the things I know that the image did allow for, as opposed to just any other Mayan or Mestizo uprising which would have been completely crushed by the government, they allowed them to survive because of so much of the fact that everyone knew they existed.
PLW: It’s a paradox that we’re flying into. This distance of objective social, political and economic reality. This is the paradox, you can’t do anything without publicity, but publicity is unfortunately so often a way of destroying it. That’s what I meant by thinking about failure, how can we think about failure in a positive way? Maybe it really is true that the only way to really spread the information so that it meant something would have been for people to walk all the way to Mexico and then walk all the way back with the gospel. And go through villages, speaking to people in diners. Maybe that’s the only way it’ll work. I don’t know, I’m purely fantasizing this. Because it didn’t happen that way, so we’ll never know. So that idea of a theatre group, traveling caravans, I like that model, and I expect to see it develop more and more. And I expect that it will be very low tech, both for economic reasons and I hope for ideological reasons. Aesthetic reasons.
AP: CrimethInc, have you heard of that group before? I feel like that group kind of encourages people to take its form, I don’t know exactly how it works, that’s one of the things about it, I guess, but...
PLW: I have to say that although I know they’ve read my books they’re not particularly in touch with me and actually, I appreciate that. So I don’t know so much about how they work.
AP: I don’t think many people do. But everyone reads their books now.
PLW: I like a lot of what they have to say, I think they were very soft on the election thing, they made some big mistakes there, I think some of them were involved with that anarchist get out the vote thing bullshit. What a stupid waste of time. If anyone, they should be getting out the vote for Bush so, bring on the shit you know, next time maybe the Republicans will have an actual coup d’etat with tanks on the street, that might wake people up.
AP: Last inauguration was almost that.
PLW: Pretty close. It’s only that the Democrats are such utter fucking wimps that there were no tanks on the street.
AP: Well even with Katrina, in the wake of that people started to wake up, and see what’s going on. It raised that awareness of racism.
PLW: Well you can’t be non-white in America and not be constantly conscious of that, but it apparently also just does not mean that radical goals of black and other communities are being met. Somehow, nothing happens, even there with all their consciousness. So maybe, as Nietzsche pointed out, consciousness is not the point.
AP: Sometimes consciousness is oppressive.
PLW: He opted for pure expression over consciousness for that very reason, I think.
|
#title Afghanistan: The Taliban Victory in a Global Context
#subtitle An Anti-Imperial Perspective from a Veteran of the US Occupation
#author A Veteran of the US Occupation
#SORTauthors Anonymous, CrimethInc.
#SORTtopics counterinsurgency, insurgency, Afghanistan, CrimethInc.
#source Retrieved on 2021-08-17 from [[https://crimethinc.com/2021/08/16/afghanistan-the-taliban-victory-in-a-global-context-a-perspective-from-a-veteran-of-the-us-occupation][CrimethInc.]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-08-17T21:58:11
#notoc 1
#date 2021-08-16
The speed with which the Taliban have recaptured Afghanistan ahead of the United States pullout illustrates how fragile the hegemony of the US empire is: how much force it takes to maintain it and how quickly everything can change when that force is withdrawn. It offers a glimpse into a possible post-imperial future—though hardly a promising one. How did the occupation impact the people of Afghanistan? Why were the Taliban able to regain so much territory so quickly? What do the US withdrawal and its consequences tell us about the future and how we might prepare for it?
The War on Terror, like the Cold War before it, has forced whole populations to choose between mutually undesirable binaries, making it difficult to imagine any alternative to the choice between global capitalist empires and homegrown authoritarianism. In the long run, whatever it promises, colonial militarism can’t control nationalism, fascism, or fundamentalism—it only gives them a justification to recruit. The question is how to nurture global grassroots networks that could create a real alternative.
In the following analysis, a veteran of the US occupation of Afghanistan discusses this defeat for the US imperial project—framing the Taliban, the occupation, and its consequences in the context of a worldwide wave of fascism and fundamentalism that is also gaining ground in the United States.
*** The Taliban Victory in a Global Context
As I write this, the Taliban have taken control of Kabul and therefore of the entire country of Afghanistan. The US-backed president Ashraf Ghani has fled to Tajikistan, while Afghan Army members flee to neighboring countries or surrender to the Taliban militants. Just days ago, US Intelligence officials were predicting it would be at least 30 days before the fall of Kabul, as President Biden deployed 5000 US troops to protect the evacuation of the US embassy and personnel. Now the State Department is urging remaining US citizens to shelter in place, not to dash to the Kabul Airport for emergency evacuation. As the smoke from burning classified documents and gunfire spreads a haze over the horizon of Kabul, everyone is thinking about the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Army and National Liberation Front.
I cannot celebrate the victory of the Taliban. While they have been fighting an imperialist, capitalist occupation, they represent the worst of religious fundamentalism, patriarchy, and hierarchy. Still, it is striking to see the curtain pulled back so poignantly, revealing American military exceptionalism for what it is. Twenty years of wasted money, youth, and blood.
I am a veteran of the occupation of Afghanistan. Everything I am about to tell you is derived from my firsthand experience serving the empire as a foot soldier for ten years.
I joined for all the reasons you’ve seen in recruitment ads. As an intelligence analyst and a noncommissioned officer, I managed and led teams, squads, and units of soldiers. On the basis of my experience with aerial surveillance and reconnaissance, I was recruited to join a defense contracting company. The defense companies I worked for included L3, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. I trained units in the US and Afghanistan for over three years and deployed to Afghanistan three times for those companies. I also deployed to Afghanistan as part of the operations team for a unit managing one of the largest bases in southern Afghanistan.
Based on what I saw, US counterterrorism operations are chiefly about creating markets for US military technologies and products and securing resources for the US empire. For 20 years, we propped up local and regional warlords, giving them weapons, money, and arms so they wouldn’t attack our forces. We green-lit their death squads and called them the Afghan Local Police. Working at senior-echelon levels, I watched both ranking officers and junior soldiers scramble to pad their résumés in hopes of becoming mercenaries for the companies and agencies that were actually running the show. Generals made careers and went on to be employed by those companies or the Department of Defense/Intelligence Community. From Syria and Iraq to Yemen and all across Africa, throughout our 800 military bases, I do not know of a single military mission that is chiefly focused on creating peace and stability.
I participated in this for far too long—and I wish to be accountable, though I know there is no way to truly make amends.
It took the death of one my soldiers to put it all into perspective. Afterwards, I began to suffer from effects of CPTSD [Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder]. The classic characteristics: drinking and drug use, the loss of relationships, depression, suicidal tendencies. I also began to reach out for help. I joined Iraq Veterans Against the War and connected with current and former service members fighting US imperialism. With information from the GI Rights Hotline, I was able to leave the Army Reserves. I began a process of politicization in which I learned about militarism, imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy.
Now that the occupation has ended, an entire generation of US military veterans will be forced to question what it was all for. All I can do is ask why it took them so long to arrive at that question. It was always evident, all around us.
These are elders from Panjwai district in Helmand province—the district where the Kandahar massacre took place. This child came with his father to make a claim against the US for using their farms to build a base. They made the trip every week for months—they’d lost their wells, orchards, and livelihoods. Our base was the only one in all of southern Afghanistan that allowed for what we called “foreign claims,” requests for compensation for lives, land, or property destroyed by the US. The boy must be in his mid-teens now. Every beneficiary of the US occupation must figure out what it means to act in real solidarity with the people who experienced the effects of the occupation.
Throughout my time in Afghanistan, we never controlled territory outside of our bases and outposts—and we often found the enemy inside of our own walls. The Taliban ran a successful counter-insurgency for twenty years. They maintained a shadow government, collected taxes, settled social, cultural, and economic disputes, and maneuvered and captured territory, biding their time all the while.
Why was the Taliban able to wait out the occupation and recapture power so easily?
The Taliban benefitted from the tribal and ethnic structures of Afghanistan, a complex web of allegiances and social and cultural bonds that US/NATO forces were never entirely able to understand. Afghanistan, like other nation-states of the former British Empire, was created without consideration of ethnic and religious demographics. The result was a population comprised of Pashtus, Tajiks, Hazara, Uzbek, Aimak, Turkman, and Baloch—groups with a wide range of cultures and practices. Some found it easy to ally with NATO, while others were adamantly opposed.
The Taliban were almost entirely Pashtu—the dominant ethnic group of Afghanistan, with 40 to 50% of the population. The Pashtu people exist on either side of Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan and along the southern portion of the country. Their social connections and traditions extend beyond the country’s colonial borders, making it easy for them to move between safe havens in Pakistan, exploiting a gap in NATO military control.
When I think over the many moments that illustrated why the war was useless, I recall my time at Kandahar Airfield, a base housing least 22,000 soldiers, contractors, and civilians. There, I learned that the Taliban Shadow District Commander was the brother-in-law of the sitting Afghan Air Force general. In view of the importance of tribal and familial relationships in Pashtu culture, it was obvious that the general’s allegiances to the NATO-backed government would never take precedence over this relationship. The connections between those two warlords, even if they were formally considered enemy combatants, ensured that neither would seek to defeat the other. I encountered this sort of interconnection between supposed enemies multiple times, from my interactions with everyday citizens all the way up to the then-sitting Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The Taliban also provided for people. The legitimacy of the Taliban is rooted in their ability to provide protection and religious guidance, predating the US invasion by years. Their mullahs settled social, cultural, and economic disputes in the areas under their control. They collected taxes and controlled agriculture throughout the war. They also carried out acts of extreme violence, which is how they gained footholds in territories they hadn’t controlled before the war.
The US occupation failed to diminish Taliban resistance for twenty years because there was never a time at which the majority of the population considered the occupying forces legitimate. Bombs and bullets alone are not capable of winning a war against a determined population. By contrast, the US-backed government and military were utterly self-interested and corrupt. Being motivated chiefly by personal gain, NATO forces fought their battles around metrics—they were more concerned about numbers of projects, of casualties, about money spent or money saved. Spending time in the country in relatively short-term deployment rotations, they were never able to build trust or respect. New units and new people were constantly showing up with no idea where they were or what had been done before. This lack of respect was so essential to the insurgency that during a 2012 deployment, insider attacks (attacks by Afghan Government Forces against NATO Forces) represented over 14% of the total casualties.
In the end, the Taliban were able to take control because they understood that the essential thing to winning a struggle against colonial occupation is that you have to survive a war of attrition. For twenty years, demonstrating the ineffectiveness of a corrupt NATO-backed government, they maintained the normative and hierarchal systems of control that they had established before the US invasion.
But the fundamentalism of the Taliban was not essential to their success. Empires crumble from their extremities inward: the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is part of a larger process in which US geopolitical influence is eroding around the world. The Chinese state may gain power in the region; we may see escalating power struggles between India and Pakistan. The question is what will come next—in Afghanistan and around the world.
At this moment in history, in the core of the American empire, I see a rising conservative movement with many ideas and policies that reflect the same fundamentalism, patriarchy, and hierarchy that characterize the Taliban. The opinions I’ve seen expressed by the right wing regarding women’s bodies, LGBTQIA+ communities, migrants, and anyone deemed outsiders line up with the violent worldview justified by the religious tenets of the Taliban.
In the US, the authoritarian right is spreading a myth of shame around the American male—a mythology about replacement, feminization, defeat, a loss of control and power. They have been developing this mythology for years, and the defeat in Afghanistan will only add fuel to the fire. The violence and hatred we have seen in the streets through years of fascist mobilizations is the direct consequence of a nation that has glorified the lies of a losing war. “Patriots” and Proud Boys who wear Right Wing Death Squad patches are not far removed from the death squads of Taliban fundamentalism.
I have seen liberals fall in step with this same imperial war machine. As far as their ideas go about militarism and police, they line up side by side with the fascist right—and regardless of their progressivism, they have done nothing to bring about real safety for our communities. It is instructive that two Republican and two Democratic presidents oversaw this war. One administration after another has expanded the power of the executive branch, while the defense and security budgets of the past two decades have bled our communities dry.
The US has spent trillions of dollars on weapons. Many of these have ended up in the hands of the Taliban and ISIS; others have been brought back and deployed against communities in North America, especially against Black and Brown and Indigenous people. The proletarians who [[https://crimethinc.com/2020/06/10/the-siege-of-the-third-precinct-in-minneapolis-an-account-and-analysis][torched police stations] and fought the street battles of a not-so-distant uprising have found themselves up against the same forces, strategies, tactics, and mindsets that were developed to police Afghanistan.
For a full generation now, the Global War on Terrorism that started in Afghanistan has been both exploited and commodified. People who never even participated in the conflict have purchased branded materials in order to LARP out their warrior culture fever dreams. An entire sector of the population has internalized the toxic male death cult of patriotism and nationalism. Now that façade has been stripped bare and I am watching as this generation’s identity—built around their proximity and participation in the war—crumbles around them. Liberals will inevitably blame conservatives and vice versa, while the process of political polarization intensifies and both sides surrender their futures to differing brands of authoritarianism in hopes of maintaining the illusion of stability.
If the victory of the Taliban demonstrates anything, it is that the American empire is a stack of cards waiting to fall. It is capable of extreme violence, of killing in the most technologically advanced ways known to humanity. It is capable of extreme cruelty. But it is a paper tiger nonetheless, unable to conquer people’s hearts and minds, regardless of the intensity of the intervention or the length of the occupation.
Turtle Island has seen over 500 years of resistance to occupation, and regardless of how many more years lay before us, it should be clear that we will also win. The fallout from Afghanistan will not just be the defeat of a corrupt and unwanted puppet regime—it will reverberate in many areas of this crumbling empire for years to come.
An entire generation of combat-experienced individuals have learned the hard way that our participation in imperialist rule was based on fallacies. We have already begun to invest our knowledge and experiences back into communities focused on actual liberation.
But what will come next? If the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan is any indication, what succeeds the US empire may be oppressive fundamentalism or nationalism. We should ask how we could go about fighting the reigning order in such a way that it will not be replaced by the equivalent of the Taliban when it collapses elsewhere.
The enemies of our communities and of the futures that we desire have also absorbed disgruntled and disaffected veterans of the occupation. Their anger, rooted in the aforementioned shame, expresses itself in violence rather than solidarity. They have already attempted [[https://crimethinc.com/2021/01/07/january-6-the-debut-of-a-mass-base-for-fascism][a coup]] for the sake of their authoritarian vision. The events in Afghanistan will motivate them further. We can expect to see former soldiers, special forces operators, and mercenaries mobilizing against their perceived enemies and carrying out individual acts of terrorism. That is what we are up against.
Climate change, political polarization, economic crisis, the crumbling of the American empire, and simmering social unrest all stand before us as not individual phenomena, but as a single challenge comprised of interconnected disasters. We can draw inspiration from the defeats of our adversaries in the US government and learn from the successes of those who resist them everywhere while maintaining a permanent opposition to all forms of oppression. My heart pours out for the Afghan people who have suffered the traumas of war for generations now. We are talking about the legacy of a land and a diverse population of people that have repeatedly beaten the most powerful empires in the history of the world. I hope that they find the strength to carry on and, ultimately, to achieve real liberation, real safety. I hope that those of us here in the US, understanding ourselves as a part of an international movement, find the strength to do whatever it takes in the heart of this evil empire to build a new world in the ruins of the old.
Now is the time to listen to the Afghan people, to support refugees, to support [[https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/countries/afghanistan][aid organizations]], and to rail against those responsible for the catastrophe of the past twenty years—to open our hearts to new possibilities and new potential accomplices—to develop the skills and mindsets that will keep us safe as we go forward into the unknown.
----
*If you or your family members are currently serving in the US military, please contact the GI Rights Hotline at 1-877-447-4487 or just go AWOL. There is no need to stay in the service of a violent front for weapons and defense corporations. There’s no reason to die for their benefit, and there’s absolutely no reason to do to the poor of the world what we’ve just spent the past two decades doing to the people of Afghanistan.*
|
#title Anti-Capitalism, Mutual Aid, and Asset-Based Community Development
#author Afrofuturist Abolitionists of the Americas
#SORTtopics anti-capitalism, mutual aid, community organizing, black anarchism
#date 29th August 2019
#source https://afanarchists.wordpress.com/2019/08/29/104/
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-06-10T16:43:14
<quote>
“We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism”.
-Fred Hampton
</quote>
*** LIFE UNDER CAPITALISM
Life under Capitalism is not just the “normal” state of affairs or the result of “human nature”.
Capitalism is a fundamentally Racist, anti-Black, sexist, eco-cidal and exploitative economic system based on private ownership of the means of production (land, factories, equipment, etc) and their operation for profit by the few at the expense of the many.
Characteristics central to capitalism include the ownership of private property (not to be confused with public property or personal property), capital accumulation, wage labor, violent land and resource theft, and the exploitation, oppression and murder of Black and Brown people all over the world.
Under capitalism, corporations and employers attempt to squeeze the most work and time out of workers that they can, (especially those that are Black and Brown) while paying as little as possible and providing as few benefits as possible. Those who are incapable of or unwilling to make profits for capitalists, are considered disposable, and are criminalized.
The State uses the police and the courts as tools of oppression to enforce the laws laid down by the capitalist property-owning class.
In order to sustain themselves, capitalist states steal the labor and natural resources of Africa, South America, the Middle East, and of poor Black and Brown people in so-called developed countries, bombing us, burning us, displacing us, gentrifying us, destroying our homes and our cultures, and locking us up at a profit just for trying to survive.
Capitalism won’t save Black and Brown people; it requires the continued brutal exploitation of Black and Brown people in the United States and around the world in order to survive. Neither will voting for the lesser of two evils, or more “representation” in the media. A few high profile success stories or a couple more rich Black actors, athletes or politicians do not speak to the every day experiences of the majority of Black and Brown people struggling under this white supremacist economic system.
Socialism (or Communism) is a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole, not a select and privileged few.
Instead of capitalism and reliance on the State, we believe that the only way forward for Black and Brown people in the U.S. and around the world is to build strength within our own communities, by engaging in the principle of mutual aid, (sharing with and helping each other), and beginning to engage in the hard work of building our own community institutions and services outside of those inadequately provided by the State.
These include our own free schools, free quality accessible healthcare for every member of our community, worker co-ops, the infrastructures for growing and distributing our own food, and a culture of community defense.
White supremacy and capitalism would like us to believe that we are alone in this struggle and that we are powerless. We are not alone and we are not powerless. We believe that when everyday people come together and do the work of community, we have the power and the capacity to organize, struggle with, feed, educate, and defend our neighborhoods better than the state, the police, or people from outside of our communities could ever do.
*** WHAT IS MUTUAL AID?
Poverty and want are the direct result of this disgusting capitalist system, strengthened by systems of Racism, Sexism, Ableism, Cis-Heterosexual patriarchy, land theft and labor theft that combine to maintain the inequality and injustice in our homes, in our neighborhoods and in society. Capitalism tells us that it’s everyone for themselves and that we should have to “grind” just to eat and live. We believe that quality food, safe and comfortable housing, medical care, and education, are things that every person should have unrestricted access to and that the resources are already present in our communities to provide these services.
Mutual Aid is a voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for the mutual benefit of everyone. Mutual aid, as opposed to charity, does not imply moral superiority of the giver over the receiver. Examples include organizing and benefitting from food drives, donating clothing or money directly to those in need, financial advice, tutoring, child-care, help navigating social services, and community defense networks, to name a few. Mutual Aid is based on the principle of investing in our communities now, for a return later. Under capitalism, the person who offers aid today may be the person who needs Aid tomorrow. Strong communities practice mutual aid.
*** HOW DO I CONNECT WITH MUTUAL AID NETWORKS IN MY COMMUNITY? WHAT IS ASSET-BASED COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT?
Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) is an approach that sparks change and development based on using the existing gifts and capacities of people and their communities.
The ABCD model discourages development brought in from an outside source, but rather energizes change and development from within.
For truly sustainable development, it’s important to focus on a community’s strengths versus solely its needs. The important factor is finding the area where local assets meet local needs.
Creating Communities that are able to self-govern, and that can provide their own social safety net, will greatly reduce the need for the State.
Community assets include our parks, our churches, community centers, food banks and free legal services to name just a few; but especially our community members who are doctors, artists, teachers, speakers, athletes, engineers, care givers, food growers, musicians, organizers, etc. The people are our greatest asset because every member of the community has something to give.
<br>
<quote>
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains”.
-Assata Shakur
</quote>
|
#title Christian Supercessionism
#subtitle A Problem for the Black Movement
#author Afrofuturist Abolitionists of the Americas
#date August 30, 2020
#source Retrieved on 25 October 2023 from [[https://afanarchists.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/christian-supercessionism-a-problem-for-the-black-movement/][afanarchists.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/christian-supercessionism-a-problem-for-the-black-movement]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2023-10-26T02:37:25
#topics Zionism, Christian, Christianity, Black, antisemitism, Black anarchism
Conversations about anti-Jewishness in Black Movements are hard to have when we consider the reality that Zionism is real. This Kickback will be a very quick flash through of many historical concepts: anti-Semitism in European Christianity, the Hamitic hypothesis, Black cultural nationalism, Zionism, and bourgeois/capitalist thought. This is not exhaustive although I have some resources to refer to but definitely encourage further research on your own terms.
*** How it all begins:
Early Christians, instead of being mad at Rome for killing Yeshua, they blamed Jewish people for essentially “pulling strings” to get him killed. In the Bible, the Sadduccees and Pharisees were interpreted as having snitched on Yeshua to Roman authorities. So Jews at some point started being seen as instruments of the devil, or puppetters of satan’s activity in the dominant system. Throwing Jewish life under the bus during the early days of Christianity was part of interreligious conflict between ethnically Jewish Christians and “gentile” Christians of Hellenized/greek and other backgrounds.
There was two motivations to the religious bias against Jews that started this all: 1) a theological motivation is the most apparent one. There was heavy conversation about whether memberships in the church was egalitarian (open to all) or conditional on Jewish ethnicity and Jewish ritual observance. This conversation was the main reason the Apostle Paul wrote what he wrote. 2) a missiological motivation is another major aspect of the bias. There were growing concerns at the time, due to Roman oppression of religious movements of that day, about if the church was actually supposed to be a challenge to Roman authority or if it should align with Rome to make the spread of the gospel easier.
Eventually the church did collaborate with and incorporate Roman sensibilities. A certain use of Paul’s theology was essential in making appeals to dominant Roman persuasions around things like slavery, sexuality, and more—all while castigating Jewishness as hostile to the gospel’s spread. Whether this was Paul’s intent is up for debate but I can say that his and other Christians’ openness to drawing on Greco-Roman culture to illuminate the Christian Message while teaching that Jewish life could only be essential to that same process of illumination in the past tense created room for a new and problematic doctrine.
Supercessionism is the name for this doctrine. It means basically the church is supposed to be the “new Israel” and Jewish rituals and law and identity should fade away as God through the church incorporates the whole world into a mystical experience of redemption. The assumption is that the “world” being brought in and Christianized is a Roman one, as that is what was the context for “gentile” identity at the time.
So, what we have is some early Christians already seeing Jews as devil-collaborators against Jesus, and some Christians started tryna appeal to/draw on Roman thought in order to make the church’s spread easier. Jewish people became seen as both an enemy to Christians AND a hindrance to the Christian’s spiritual right to missionize and reclaim the world’s dominant system.
*** Anti-semitism arrives:
What we understand today as Anti-semitism originates there, and as an ideological edifice it still retains these features: the Christian supercessionist wants to claim as their territory that which is seen as “owned” by Jewish people, and frames Jewish people as either devilish masters of that dominating system or hindrance to Christian reclamation thereof.
It’s this scapegoating coupled with reactionary desire to reclaim a dominant system from the “Jewish enemy” that took a new character as Capitalism arose. Europeans had a long history of reactionary violence against Jews by this time. They had even begun to somewhat racialize Jewishness by then. There was a combination of narratives about Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus for silver, and also early Christianity’s inherent criticism of wealth and the rich that converged to mark Jewish people as inherently spiritually corrupt around greed. During the formative days of capitalism, working class Europeans would turn their frustration into deep hatred for “Jewish bankers,” an idea that still persists today. Anger about Capitalist oppression (rather than Roman oppression) and yet a desire for rulership as Capitalists (rather than collaboration with Rome) begins unfolding. There is anger now at the fictive “Jewish masters” of Capitalism who are also somehow “hindrances” to gentile/Christian rights and authority/autonomy therein. Today, white nationalism retains these anti-Semitic, racialized, understandings as well as the reactionary pro-capitalist desires, when expressed in secular terms.
*** Black Christianity:
In comes Black people who adhere to Christianity. The forms of Christianity we converted to are European ones. Something I did not mention before is that along with a theological history that led to anti-Semitism, Christianity has had a theological history known as the Hamitic hypothesis. Hamitic hypothesis is the idea that Black people are slaves because of the Curse of Ham. In the book of Genesis, Noah has three sons: Shem, Ham, Japheth. Noah curses Ham’s grandson Canaan because Ham ended up seeing his father naked while Noah was passed out drunk. The curse basically says that Canaan shall be a “servant of servants.” The historical context of that curse against Canaan was land conflict between the Israelites and the Canaanites. I won’t get into that too much, but basically that curse had nothing to do with race or even ethnicity, but was about a particular local territory conflict. For some reason, though Shem became later interpreted as the father of all Asians and Middle Easterners, Japheth as the father of all Europeans, and Ham as the father of all Africans. And in the process of this theological shift, the curse of Canaan got associated with all “Hamites”—African people—and we were said to be a “servant of servants.” By the 600s CE we find trace evidence in Jewish and Islamic thought of this Hamitic notion, and it is possible there was a skin color association but the historical record on this is not clear. What we do know, however, is that Black people’s relationship to the Christian narrative was certainly understood as that of the Hamite, a servant of servants by God’s will, especially as modern colonialism began to develop. When we look into chattel slavery, we find that many pro-slavery advocates used the idea of a Hamitic hypothesis to explain the savagery and sexual immorality of Black people that slavery was supposed to be the correct punishment for. Many Black people internalized these narratives but some did not, or perhaps modified them. At some point, a few Black Christians began to reinterpret a number of Scriptures, like the Psalm which says “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand to God.” This and other reclaimed Scriptures were said to cancel out any European Christian justification for slavery and other forms of colonial violence against our people. Instead now, because of Christ, we deserve liberation. This is the earliest Black nationalism as we understand it today.
But along with this racialized theological formula, these Christians continue to hold onto Europeans’ racialized supercessionism. In this way, a Black Nationalist right to freedom and self determination is about fulfilling a Christian spiritual right to reclaim the dominant system for us. It modifies the earlier reactionary missiological framing where “the Jews” are the devilish masters of a dominant system that “we” (Christians) actually have a spiritual right to occupy. Jewish people become the face of whiteness/the oppressor, and Black people the face of Christianity qua the “real Hebrews” or “True Israel” who must incorporate or appropriate the oppressor’s system instead. Mind you, this is all happening in a capitalist context, so the understanding of Black liberation they cling to is, of course, a bourgeois one. Black nationalism in this way is therefore often both Christian/religious and pro-capitalist, and so the understanding of Jewishness and of our relationship to the world system is shaped by European ideology. This is the only reason why there are similarities between Black cultural nationalism and white nationalism. White nationalism is also a bourgeois/capitalist project.
*** Revolutionary Nationalism:
Unlike white nationalism tho, colonized people have developed revolutionary nationalism that are not bourgeois/capitalist. As such Black REVOLUTIONARY nationalism will NEVER understand the world system as something we have a spiritual right to as Black people. Black revolutionary nationalism is hostile to the world system. The logical consequence is that a Christian supercessionist and anti-semitic understanding of Jewishness CANNOT EXIST in revolutionary nationalism. As a result, Black revolutionary nationalism has deep history of solidarity with Jewish people, understanding that our struggles are not religious struggles—they are MATERIAL struggles. Additionally, Black revolutionary nationalism is never gonna use a whitewashed understanding of Jewishness—where Jewishness becomes the face of white violence. What Black revolutionary nationalism will say is that the violence of white Jews is the same as that of white Christians, white Muslims, white Hindus, white Buddhists, white atheists. Revolutionary nationalism will say that all these violences are colonial violence. Just like the violence against Yeshua of Nazareth and against the early church was not because of Jewish people but because of COLONIALISM (Rome had a vested political interest in suppressing the dissenting voice of Yeshua). Again, the battle is material not religious.
Kwame Touré is one of the go to figures for understanding the contemporary Black revolutionary stance on Jewish struggle, that nationalists, Anarkatas, and other radicals all proclaim now in some way. From Touré’s organizing, it was established as a fundamental political line that resistance to Zionism is essential to fighting our domination under colonialism. But Touré was always careful about distinguishing between Zionism and Jewishness itself. Kwame Touré and others have faced and continued to face repression for our stance against Israel’s existence and Zionism. And yes, that repression is often framed through false accusations that to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-Semitic.
However, the defense of Israel through appeals to guarding against anti-Semitism is not because of a unique power that white Jewish people somehow have in the global capitalist/colonial system. The struggle for Palestinian Liberation gets suppressed because of the strategic impact of the anti-Zionist line on all struggles against colonialism. Anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism are the basis of anti-Zionism and that is the only way to effectively explain why the political establishment works so hard to silence critics of Israel and white Jewish violence. Anyone implying that white Jewish people are the sole/main Zionist forces, however, or that they themselves have orchestrated a uniquely repressive variation on colonialism through the State of Israel, is giving room to covertly anti-Jewish feelings among some of our people. This implication bears too close a resemblance to the architecture of anti-Jewish thinking which always frames “the Jews” as devilish masters of some dominating system. White non-Jewish leftists are very guilty of this line, and they do it because like other anti-Semites, they do want to hold onto a colonialist world system for themselves (which is why they criticize Israel so loudly but remain silent on Amerikkka). Black anti-Zionism is not to be hypocritical like this, because our anti-Zionism is an anti-colonial politic. It is from that perspective that we must not scapegoat white Jewish people because while we certainly acknowledge that white Jews are certainly complicit in and agents of colonialism, slavery, and Zionism—we also know it is Christianized Europeans whose nations have been firmly and avowedly behind the creation and maintanence and propaganda for the Israeli apartheid/fascist project since the beginning. And we know their support for Israel, dressed up in what some call “philosemitism,” and white Jewish complicity in it all, have less to do with shared religious heritage and more to do with material interests. It is solidarity along colonial/capitalist lines that is most decisive here, not a “Judeo-Christian” affinity. The Holocaust emerged because of material crisis within Europe that had its roots in colonialism and imperial conflict; and Europeans only stepped in to defeat the Nazi regime to further maintain their power against the threat of anti-colonial and communist struggle; and the development of the Israeli project has always been a step in the strategic process of trying to keep Massa’s house intact moving forward.
An analysis on colonialism and imperialism is our basis.
*** Black Celebrities:
When folk like Nick Cannon cart out xenophobic narratives about Jewish people, they are not doing it for anti-colonial or anti-imperial reasons. These people are not radicals but are bourgeois in thinking.
This is why I often say, amending Fanon’s observation about the relationship between anti-Semitism among whites and negrophobia, the anti-Semite in our community is undoubtedly a transphobe. Because anti-semitism emerges only in formula of understanding committed to the colonial/capitalist system. The anti-Semite in our community therefore is someone who holds to his biased ideas about Jewishness because he is a bourgeois nationalist, who also believes in the binarist nuclear family model is the pinnacle of Black salvation from economic destitution since it aligns with capitalist ideas. He likely sees the Jewish threat to his reactionary desire to reclaim the system as an architect of communist and queer liberation movements, because he asserts the validity of capitalism as a mode of production, and will be biased against those politics which call it into question. He will, furthermore, believe (or at least not question) the dream of America and his place in it, and so when cops murder us it is not assumed that it’s because we aren’t Americans like revolutionary nationalist Malcolm X taught. No, the cultural/bourgeois nationalist has integrationist desires behind his anti-racist criticisms of the police. Even the most fiery and militant ones get angry mostly because they feel that our (spiritual) right to reclaim a dominant system we been excluded from is hindered (and often times police brutality is interpreted as Divine punishment for Jewish or queer or communist presence in our community). The cultural nationalist, whether he is a Notep or a Hebrew Israelite, or a Nation of Islam member, or any of the various Christian sects—he has no disregard for the capitalist/colonial system itself. Since his ideas are informed by a European Christian context of understanding, once again he is likely going to see “the Jews” as the face of his exclusion from the dominant system his reactionary thought tells him is his (spiritual) right to claim. So the supercessionist belief that he is the “real Hebrew/Jew” only exemplifies this thought process. Too many people have tried to give Nick Cannon credit and assume that Nick Cannon’s words were just some misguided expression of anti-colonial frustration about white Jewish violence. No, they were bourgeois and upheld by supersessionist cultural legacy.
If I am wrong, and there were any remotely anti-colonial energies behind why Black cultural nationalists push these concepts, though, then how do we explain the fact that whenever Zionists (both Christian and Jewish) in the US approach them—as happened with Nick Cannon—they reveal their pro-Israel and other pro-colonial stances? We cannot simply say the Nick Cannon succumbed to Zionist pressure. Black radicals should not inject our anti-colonial alignment in the words of these class traitors when nothing they say reflects our political lines at all. Kwame Touré faced repression but never backed down from the correct line. It should be obvious that a celebrity’s expression a pro-Israel stance is because of his bourgeois class orientation or class interests. And so it is with the other big faces of modern bourgeois/cultural nationalism in the Black movement. Nick Cannon and these other men completely recognize the suitability of the Israeli capitalist project to their own worldview as a rich people or boujie aspiring people. Their originary anti-Jewishness has not gone away simply because they express support for Israel. Philosemitism never goes beyond its supersessionist orientations, only trying to coopt Jewish struggle into colonial/capitalist politics instead.
We should reject the idea that simply pressure from Zionist media can be used to explain his shift in language. It is the prevalence of Euro-derived religious nationalist influences in our culture and the way it cloaks capitalist ideology that upholds both anti-Jewishness and other biases and oppressions including Zionism. For this reason, conversations about anti-Zionism cannot continue to be framed as the only solution to anti-Jewishness. This ignores the fact that Christian nationalism as a bourgeois project is essential to Zionism while also being the primary driver of anti-Jewishness in all communities. In order to address anti-Jewishness and practice anti-Zionism simultaneously, Black non-Jews must confront bourgeois nationalism in our communities’ faith practices, especially the Christian or Christian-influenced ones.
This is the primary contradiction, as Christian religious nationalism is what allows room for Zionists to step in to seemingly “call him” into accord, because of the shared material/bourgeois investment. It’s the same thing with the union of Black evangelicals and white evangelicals around Israel, especially in the prosperity theology world which is a hyper capitalist religious fold. The call out of Nick Cannon was nothing more than a crisis intervention method to stabilize conflict that could emerge in a man who publicly demonstrate that he had a shared bourgeois interest with them. We cannot look at Nick Cannon as some victim on par with Kwame Touré or anything of the sort. Nick Cannon is not a working class Black revolutionary.
*** What We Can Say:
At the same time, it is possible to remark that colonizers also coalesced around Nick Cannon because they do not want bourgeois aspirational Black people to express things that might cause working class Black folk watching him to see themselves as at odds with white/colonial interests. Working class people have legitimate frustrations with white Jewish oppression that has been a site for real conversations on Zionism and colonialism in general by Black revolutionaries. The ruling class is afraid of us raising consciousness around anger about white Jewish oppression to a level that locates their violences in a larger anti-colonial continuum. Because then they know our community’s love for Black nationalist political tendencies will then evolve into a revolutionary variety that questions not just Israel but the US and all forms of imperialism and colonialism. And we’d then organize in a way that poses a challenge to the cooption of our mindset that they have been tryna succeed at for the last few decades. Zionists stepped in not because of Nick per se, but because of what Black radicals could do with the controversy he introduced by exorcising the reactionary aspects of nationalism and espousing its radical iterations. It’s this same damage control mechanism behind why they collaborate with Black evangelical/prosperity ministers around a philosemitic push, to keep the working class people in their pews from ever becoming open to the radical explanation for their frustration with white Jewish violence in the hood. In all these cases, anti-Jewishness never truly goes away, it’s just twisted so that whiteness and capitalism is centered. But anticolonial struggle, Black Jews, Palestinian liberation, Black radicals—all get erased and shut out. As a bourgeois class traitor, Nick was completely on board with holding the line in these ways to solidify bourgeois rather than revolutionary thought. That’s why he got up with public support for a colonial project, effectively closing out any potential for critical conversations about either Israel or colonialism, all through the ruse of newfound philosemitism.
The role of Black celebrities in brandishing colonial thought for themselves and suppressing radical perspectives is very pertinent beyond just Nick Cannon and conversations about Israel. So much Black “leadership” is not just pro-Israel, but pro-America, pro-cop, etc. So much Black leadership pushes the Pull Yourself By the Bootstraps idea than ever before, calling it the “Grind” of calling their presence liberation or calling themselves businesses. So much Black leadership is saying that we should hug cops because most of them are good, and that we should vote for center-Right politicians because they are the best we have. So much Black leadership centers cis and abled victims of police violence because these are respectable victims to them who don’t deserve State repression like the queers, crazy folk, etc. And so much of the cultural touchstones being drawn on or appealed to in order to legitimize these dominant social relations is religious values, more specifically Christian. If there is any religious group posing an issue for the Black Movement, including anti-Zionist struggle, it is Christians, not Jewish people. But again, that is because of a bourgeois investment, and therefore it is a material problem and not a fundamentally religious problem.
Therefore, while it is often suggested that Black and anti-Zionist Jewish comrades must prove they are pro-Black, prove that Judaism isn’t colonial in order to not experience bias from folk engrained in Black Christian culture—I say that Christians should be doing the work to demonstrate that our religion is not to be aligned with colonialism/capitalism. It cannot be any longer that Christianity is the only major religion that’s been violently used whose adherents don’t have to develop and affirm a radical politics. It cannot be that we are simply written off as a lost cause while Jewish comrades have to defend themselves to our community. Christians must affirm that neither the anti-semitism of early AD/CE days, or of the Middle Ages, or of today, is valid or logical. Christians must affirm that anti-Jewishness is xenophobic and is an ideological strategy of reaction and mystification—to uphold capitalism. Christians must affirm that anti-Jewishness and philosemitism alike are a colonial tactic expressed around Christian religious logics to let the real system (capitalism and colonialism) off the hook. Part of this may require a shift in our theologies, our religious understanding of Jewishness and other faiths but also of Blackness/Afrikanness. We need a viable theological alternative to supercessionism, one that can acknowledge the distinction of Christianity from Judaism without enunciating a mystical edifice that is oriented around both missiological incorporation of dominant thinking and the negation of Jewishness. We also need viable theological alternatives to the way Africanness is still demonized and sexually criminalized in mainstream Christian thinking. We need a formula for enunciating the spiritual validity of Black liberation without relying on and trying to rewrite European derived religious anthropologies about moral deficit on part of Afrikan culture and Afrikan people. But most importantly, while we are doing this religious solidarity work, we must raise consciousness around capitalism as an exploitative and ecocidal mode of production, and around the color line—the war between Man and colonized—by which it accumulates and unfolds. Capitalism and colonialism are the material basis for all this mess; structures of domination are what is primary here and we should put in the work to organize our communities against it.
What approach do you suggest in doing this?
I personally believe encouraging Black August or Freedom Week fasts and Bible studies attuned to Black liberation struggle is a good starting place because abolition is so resonant in Black Christian history. That is what I have been suggesting. The theology around fasting as a relinquishment of worldly investment and a deeper pursuit of the Spirit’s grace to overcome death can shine really well during Black August or Freedom Week to illuminate certain basic liberation theology affirmations like the inherent sinfulness of the capitalist/colonial system and way of behaving as well as the counter-oppressive element built into a Christian life of salvation. Christian Fasting during Black August and Freedom Week can allow us to bring Scriptural encouragement to be “transformed by the renewing of our mind” or to “cast down imagination that exalt themselves above the knowledge of God” to Black Freedom struggle. From there we scale and study not just carcerality, capitalism, colonialism, but anti-Jewishness, queerphobia, ableism, and so many other form of domination, hierarchy, and oppression.
If you have other ideas, let’s hear them.
|
#title The Left Has A Misogynoir Problem
#LISTtitle Left Has A Misogynoir Problem, The
#subtitle Anti-Blackness At the Midwest Leftist Assembly
#author Afrofuturist Abolitionists of the Americas
#SORTtopics white supremacy, racism, misogyny, assemblies, black anarchism, critique of leftism
#date 11th September 2019
#source https://afanarchists.wordpress.com/2019/09/11/the-left-has-a-misogynoir-problem-anti-blackness-at-the-midwest-leftist-assembly/
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-06-10T16:53:07
*** From an Anarkata-
I went to the Midwest Leftist Assembly to present a workshop with my homie —— on Black Anarchisms, and to connect with other Black radicals working in different parts of the region. I came with a lot of excitement and hope that folks would engage with us and the material.
I wound up facing down an armed wh_te leftist who was visibly agitated that attention had been brought to the rampant anti Blackness of security, organizers, and other participants by my friend, a Black woman, who had been profiled and targeted for harassment throughout the weekend.
So when I tell you that the wh_te left has a problem with racism, I’m telling you so that other Black, Brown & Indigenous folx are not put into dangerous situations just by being near you people.
And when I say that we are not safe around you, I’m not being hyperbolic.
This was one group of incredibly unprepared, non trauma informed, wh_te “leftists” who did not give an ounce of f**k about unpacking their anti Blackness before urging Black folks to attend an event they bottom lined. But the screwed up thing is that many leftist orgs create and foster the same type of anti Blackness that allow for the safety of Black participants – like those who attended the MLA with me last weekend – to constantly be put in sketchy situations. We are constantly placed in settings where we are demanded to interact in good faith and agree to empty, formless non apologies for incredibly racist words and (in)actions by wh_te leftists – all the while being cast as “hostile”, “criminal”, and “threatening”, even as our access to platforms and ability to participate in organizing spaces are routinely stripped away through procedural death… The leftist bureaucratization that allows the same fuckin discrimination we experience everywhere else to happen in supposedly radical spaces.
This is how the wh_te left polices Black bodies while maintaining the optics of equitable, revolutionary praxis, simultaneously upholding wh_te supremacy and the privileges it gives them.
MLA was fucked up. But IWW? Y’all better take the warning now.
………..
*** From an anonymous Black Anarchist
<br>
Long post about the Midwest Left Assembly
I haven’t really been posting a lot of positive stuff about Midwest Left Assembly the past few days. It’s sad because this was an event that I had been promoting and supporting for the past months leading up to it. I’ve been a member of Horizontal Stateline since it began and helped set up the land trust prior to the even this year. Anyone can tell you my enthusiasm prior to the event. I invited a number of people from across the country including fellow black anarchists to facilitate a discussion about black anarchism with me. I drove and picked up black folks from around rockford, arranged travel, arranged housing so people could attend. I believed in this event. I’m saying all of this because I know how white leftists can come at people for attempting to “wreck” and I want to make it clear that my intentions were the best.
However, despite the positive experiences of the first day (I’ll talk about in a later post), I’m writing this as a record for accountability. That’s because I had to leave early because one of my friends (a black woman) was repeatedly harassed by the security because they “mistook” her identity for someone else. That’s racial fucking profiling. We were stopped twice at the gate even though security should have known that my friend was not banned from the assembly. She had been promoting it with me in the upcoming months. It was traumatizing to my friend who was confronted again by security about not belonging at the event (something about her driving a car around the land trust even though she drove to the trust with me both days) while myself and another homie were about to play a show. She grabbed the mic and began to address the assembly about what happened. Many white folks weren’t taking what she was saying seriously and had to be silenced by other black attendees. (this isn’t just coming from me and her by the way, there were a number of other black folks who saw this happen and left as a result) From what I understand, none of the organizers or security team has even offered her an apology. I wish they had taken her and my concerns more seriously. Furthermore, the event organizers should not have treated my friend like a situation to be handled. The only situation that should have been handled was the chauvinistic behavior of the security team. ———— should not have been the person yelling at the white folks after that happened, that should have been the organizers. White people need to keep other white people in line. I sincerely regret bringing her and inviting other black people into the space (despite all of the good connections that I made). Activist spaces are meant to be safe and they need to be safe for everyone, especially black women and black queer folks. I understand the need for security at events like this but the security apparatus must be horizontal and needs to be grounded in anti-oppressive politics. (repeatedly stopping a black woman is not a good look when ya’ll radical white folks claiming to be somehow different from these killer cops). I don’t know what accountability looks like at this point but I know it has to involve formal apologies from the security team, the organizers and I believe some sort of financial compensation for my friend to support her organizing work (been telling yall to pay reparations). Frankly, what is even more fucked up is that my identity as a fair skinned college educated biracial man makes yall take this more seriously while if she had posted this, ya’ll wouldn’t have given a flying fuck. Once again, the misogynoir in this situation is palpable. We can’t claim to support black women and femmes in our rhetoric while not doing it in our actions. ———– is not a troublemaker, she is not lying about this to start drama, if yall even attempt to insinuate that bullshit, I am going to block you. She and I had been repeatedly talking over the past few months about how to bring black people out to the event and how to support it as a whole. Passing this repeated harassment off as a misunderstanding and not taking it seriously is deeply anti-black and racist. As the black anarchist Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin says
<quote>
“I give white radicals the tools to work with, a theoretical framework, and some analysis of racial oppression. I cannot, however, make them take the steps to actually use in dismantling racism inside radical movements. I just tell them that their lip service and feeble attempts to this point are unacceptable, and one day it will all be taken out of their hands. So they had better act now, or they will find themselves on the wrong side, when these decisive battles take place.”
</quote>
If you want to speak more to me about what happened in length, engage in some sort accountability, please send me a private message. More importantly, please apologize to the black women and femmes that were harmed. Also, please don’t bother them needlessly, they are both very busy people with lots of important work to do. I don’t believe in callout culture but I can’t see explicit anti-blackness exist in so-called radical spaces and not call it out. It is completely unacceptable that my friend felt like she didn’t belong in that space which lead to her, myself and others to leave early. I’m not really going to be engaging with white comments (I’m actually going to delete them) on this post but if you’re black, feel free to comment and ask any questions. White people should go read the progressive plantation right now. Our spaces must be informed by a committed intersectional politic. I hope white organizers take this lesson to grow and confront white supremacy within their own spaces.
<quote>
“These people want to demand ideological conformity, to make those incoming people of color toe the line. I believe they are threatened by the idea of possibly large numbers of people of color joining the Anarchist movement and especially by the idea they might create autonomous tendencies that would challenge white hegemony of the overall movement. Predictably, there will those among them who will rise up in mock alarm at the very notion… “how dare you say this?” “See there, he’s making trouble again!” But I have seen it happen numerous times over the years and am frankly sick of it. There is no use pretending there is no racism in the Anarchist scene, or trying to discredit me for raising the issue. I have both seen and experienced it myself.”
Lorenzo Ervin
</quote>
|
#title Spare the Child
#subtitle A primal anarchist view of how civilization breaks children
#author Artxmis Graham Thoreau
#SORTtopics colonialism, anarcho-primitivism, Canada, residential school, colonization
#date 2021-06-21
#source [[https://paleolithicism.medium.com/spare-the-child-a-primal-anarchist-view-of-how-civilization-breaks-children-e2a8977bf5c8][paleolithicism.medium.com]]
#lang en
<quote>
“The subtext of all of it is really that the worst civilization can do, it does to children.” — Kevin Tucker
</quote>
[[a-t-ag-thoreau-spare-the-child-1.jpg f][“Distant view of Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Industrial School with tents, [Red River] carts and teepees outside the fence, Lebret, Saskatchewan, [May 1885?]. Image courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.” — irshdc]]
Children are born as individuals. Wild. Screaming. Emotional. Impulsive. They cry when exposed to this new world, and it helps them develop. They expand their lungs and expel all their mucus and other fluids. The children may not be fully aware of it, but they are born as unique and beautiful as any other. Their life has begun, and so has the attack by Civilization upon their uniqueness.
Jacques Camatte — still not fully appreciated in the many circles he has influence in — understands that children are domesticated, broken into submission. Camatte states Civilization needs repression in order to suit someone to the conditions of civilization. In particular, Camatte believed the parents, despite their confessed love of the child, repress her desires and ‘naturalness.’ By naturalness, I mean her instincts and impulsive behaviors not suited to the cold and unliving demands of Civilization. In addition to the suppression of these drives, the child has to cope with what has been done to her. A level of neurosis forms.{1}
Of course, this isn’t an attack on the role of the mother, father, and extended family as natural caretakers of the child. This abuse and repression was done onto the parents when they were children by Civilization, and they reproduce this onto their own child. Under Civilization, the parents become an authority, a home-bound domesticator. The parent instills social consciousness. In another context, this could be a consciousness of freedom and intimacy. In our context, it means submission and fear.
A recent 2020 study found:
<quote>
Approximately one in four children experience child abuse or neglect in their lifetime. Of maltreated children, 18 percent are abused physically, 78 percent are neglected, and 9 percent are abused sexually. The fatality rate for child maltreatment is 2.2 per 1000 children annually, making homicide the second leading cause of death in children younger than age one. Exposure to violence during childhood can have lifelong health consequences, including poor physical, emotional, and mental health.[1]
</quote>
Risk factors provided by the study were, “Young age, prematurity, special needs, twins, colic/crying, behavior problems, and toilet training/accidents increase the risk for child physical abuse. Perpetrator risk factors include poverty, parental alcohol or drug abuse, and domestic violence in the home (30% to 60% co-occurrence); 91% of the time the perpetrator is a parent.”[2]
From the same study, “[S]tudies have found a quarter of all adults report enduring physical abuse as children. One in five females and one in 13 males report experiencing childhood sexual abuse. Emotional abuse and neglect are common. Females are especially vulnerable to sexual violence, exploitation, and abuse.” [3]
How else can this be explained beyond pressures of raising a child under the conditions of Civilizations? The risk factors provided by the study are indicative of Civilization and the breakup of the communal family. When all life, including the basic components of survival, has become commodified, such abuse seems to become commonplace. When we (children or parent) are alienated from support channels, the risk of this abuse occurring and not being stopped is expected, too.
Of course, as one might imagine, this has worsened under the ongoing pandemic. Another study found that, “During the COVID-19 pandemic, the total number of emergency department visits related to child abuse and neglect decreased, but the percentage of such visits resulting in hospitalization increased, compared with 2019.” [4]
The continued isolation, the most vulgar expression of our domesticated alienation, cannot help but worsen the issues we face in our everyday lives. The abuse of children is no exception. In addition, there has been a rise in domestic abuse, generally. A study titled, “Family violence and COVID‐19: Increased vulnerability and reduced options for support” confirms this:
<quote>
As the novel coronavirus outbreak has intensified globally, countries are adopting dedicated measures to slow the spread of the virus through mitigation and containment (van Gelder et al. [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7264607/#inm12735-bib-0027][2020]]; Campbell [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7264607/#inm12735-bib-0004][2020]]). Social distancing and isolation are central to the public health strategy adopted by many countries, and in many settings, penalties are in place for any person who breaches these imposed restrictions. Social isolation requires families to remain in their homes resulting in intense and unrelieved contact as well as the depletion of existing support networks, such as through extended family as well as through social or community‐based support networks for families at risk. Additionally, isolation places children at greater risk of neglect as well as physical, emotional, sexual, and domestic abuse (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children [NSPCC] [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7264607/#inm12735-bib-0018][2020]]). Due to (necessary) imposed social distancing and isolation strategies, and the resulting shortages of essential resources and economic consequences of these measures, people globally are living under stressful conditions. While social isolation is an effective measure of infection control, it can lead to significant social, economic, and psychological consequences, which can be the catalyst for stress that can lead to violence.
[…]
Isolation paired with psychological and economic stressors accompanying the pandemic as well as potential increases in negative coping mechanisms (e.g. excessive alcohol consumption) can come together in a perfect storm to trigger an unprecedented wave of family violence (van Gelder et al. [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7264607/#inm12735-bib-0027][2020]]). In Australia, as social distancing measures came into place, alcohol good sales rose more than 36% (Commonwealth Bank Group [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7264607/#inm12735-bib-0005][2020]]), and as restaurants, bars, and pubs closed, people are now drinking more within the confines of their homes. Unemployment figures around the world have rapidly risen into the double digits, with millions signing up for welfare payments and a worldwide recession predicted in the near future (Kennedy [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7264607/#inm12735-bib-0016][2020]]). Substance misuse, financial strain, and isolation are all well‐known domestic abuse risk factors (Richards [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7264607/#inm12735-bib-0023][2009]]). During isolation, there are also fewer opportunities for people living with family violence to call for help. Isolation also helps to keep the abuse hidden with physical or emotional signs of family violence and abuse less visible to others (Stark [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7264607/#inm12735-bib-0024][2009]]). [5]
</quote>
Such abuse is not limited to the household, but unfortunately extends to all of the world. Schools are a place where children spend most of their waking hours, and are exposed to increased possibilities of abuse. concluding thoughts of a relevant study by NHERI were that there was a “remarkable rate of abuse of U.S. schoolchildren by school personnel (e.g., teachers, coaches, bus drivers, administrators, custodians).” The study also attributed that the many regulations and policies not only did not prevent the abuse, but contributed to the lack of reporting. [6] In particular, there was an increase of more than 50% pertaining to reported sexual violence at schools (“9,600 in the 2015–2016 school year to nearly 15,000 in the 2017–2018 school year”). [7]
School, be it public or private, makes good captives, not individuals. Just as the Worker is abused, so is the child. There is no coincidence that while the Worker is the prisoner of labor, the Child-Student is the prisoner of education. (<em>There is a joke about Foucault here, probably.</em>) It is also no coincidence that the infamous zero tolerance policies are major contributors to the school-to-prison pipeline. [8]
The Church is another location of abuse and domestication. T When I say the Church, I mean the Christian Church as a whole, from the established dominion of the Vatican to the sects of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. No religion, especially those with temples for their dead Gods, are free of this. That said, the focus will be on the role of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), both for the sake of brevity and to be more specific on more recent issues.
In 2004, the United States RCC — in light of upheaval against the institution regarding sexual abuse accusations — approved a study into the accusations. Working alongside the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the US RCC produced surveys to provide information on the cases. Though, it is important to note that it is possible the Church was selective in information, and should be kept in mind. The range of the study ranged from 1950 to 2002 and found that, “A total of 10,667 individuals made allegations of child sexual abuse by priests. Of those who alleged abuse, the file contained information that 17.2% of them had siblings who were also allegedly abused.”[9] All victims were younger than 18 and victims of priests and deacons. The study also found:
<quote>
When allegations were made to the police, they were almost always investigated, and about one in three priests were charged with a crime. Overall, few priests with allegations served criminal sentences; only 3% of all priests with allegations served prison sentences. The priests with many allegations of abuse were not more likely than other priests to be charged and serve prison sentences.[10]
</quote>
Such a study was groundbreaking. Many could never have known, or accepted, the scale of the abuse, and remember, these are only the accusations found by the surveys. Imagine the unreported crimes, those not found by the survey, and those outside the range of the survey (before and after, and outside the US.) I couldn’t find reliable studies on abuse in general, and I cannot even begin to imagine the scale of it.
This all culminates in a tragic story; one that has not ended, despite the claims of liberals: the abuses of Indigenous children by state created and Church run schools.
The RCC has a history of being a main vehicle of colonization. The introduction of this belief system, by force or otherwise, would break up traditional social bonds, which were often based in the traditional spiritual practices. The Church didn’t simply convert the Indigenous peoples to their belief, but came to assimilate them into the European society the missionaries came from. The Indigenous people had to be made into Whites.
Indigenous children. Kidnapped. Murdered. Culture taken. No traditional language, hair cuts, clothes taken. No identity.
Genocide.
Since May of 2021 to today (19 July 2021), more than 1,000 Indigenous children’s remains have been found at Canadian Residential schools. [11]
This is how the residential school systems worked, as per the Indigenous Foundations:
<quote>
The term <em>residential schools</em> refers to an extensive school system set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches that had the nominal objective of educating Indigenous children but also the more damaging and equally explicit objectives of indoctrinating them into Euro-Canadian and Christian ways of living and assimilating them into mainstream white Canadian society. The residential school system officially operated from the 1880s into the closing decades of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. The system forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time and forbade them to acknowledge their Indigenous heritage and culture or to speak their own languages. Children were severely punished if these, among other, strict rules were broken. Former students of residential schools have spoken of horrendous abuse at the hands of residential school staff: physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological. Residential schools provided Indigenous students with inappropriate education, often only up to lower grades, that focused mainly on prayer and manual labour in agriculture, light industry such as woodworking, and domestic work such as laundry work and sewing. [12]
</quote>
Where traditional schools operate to assimilate and break children, and ready them for the performance of their roles as Worker and child domesticators, residential schools were the most vulgar. They had to locate children who were born and/or raised outside of Colonizer Civilization and <strong>rip</strong> them from their identities, their communities, and their worlds. They were kidnapped and abused. This is a genocide.
The logic of Canada’s residential school system is innately tied to those in the US. As one of its foundational architects, Captain Pratt said, “Kill the Indian, and Save the Man.”
The programs were a clear articulation of the genocidal intent to overwhelming disrupt and disturb Native communities already under assault. The abuse that the children endured was relentless:
<quote>
At boarding schools, staff forced Indigenous students to cut their hair and use new, Anglo-American names. They forbid children from speaking their Native language and observing their religious and cultural practices. And by removing them from their homes, the schools disrupted students’ relationships with their families and other members of their tribe. Once they returned home, children struggled to relate to their families after being taught that it was wrong to speak their language or practice their religion.[13]
</quote>
The specifics of the relationships between the schools and churches varied between the US and Canada. In the US, the most common operator of these indoctrination centers was the Methodist Church. The Catholic Church was fourth on the list. [14]
Despite this, they were functionally the same system: “There were more than 350 government-funded, and often church-run, Indian Boarding schools across the US in the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> centuries. Indian children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools hundreds of miles away, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their native languages.”[15]
To get a grasp on the context of the residential school program in the US, there were 20,000 children in the schools in 1900. By 1925, that number increased to 60,889. The program expanded to 367 schools spread out over 29 states. [16]
These numbers are just the tip of this iceberg. Genocide is the interwoven of flow between dead children and tears in the fabric of Native communities. We still don’t know the exact number of children who died in these torture schools, nor do any of these statistics encapsulate the extent of personal and inter-generational trauma of abuse that these children and their families endured. This is the cost of Civilization, of “civil society,” but how is any of this civil? What is the real savagery at play? These genocidal practices carried on through the 60s Swoop, forced sterilization programs, foster systems, and is continued in ICE detention camps, of which many or most detainees are Indigenous or of Indigenous descent.
This focus on Canada and the US is limited in scope. This is civil terror, and the continuity between here and abroad demands persistent attack. The true realities, the sheer and unending brutality of colonization and civilization, demand more attention and outrage. I hope I can continue to spread the information of Civil Terror, both in the context put forth here, and abroad. I urge all readers to continue the research too, and learn the truth of colonization and civilization.
In <em>Civilization and Its Discontents</em>, Freud identified the innate hostility we all harbor against civilization:
<quote>
But it would be wiser to reflect upon this a little longer. In the third place, finally, and this seems the most important of all, it is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presupposes precisely the non-satisfaction (by suppression, repression or some other means?) of powerful instincts. This ‘cultural frustration’ dominates the large field of social relationships between human beings. As we already know, it is the cause of the hostility against which all civilizations have to struggle. [17]
</quote>
And struggles there have been. For George Guerin, former chief of the Musqueam Nation, the hostilities were explicit at the Kuper Island residential school (which lasted until 1975):
<quote>
Sister Marie Baptiste had a supply of sticks as long and thick as pool cues. When she heard me speak my language, she’d lift up her hands and bring the stick down on me. I’ve still got bumps and scars on my hands. I have to wear special gloves because the cold weather really hurts my hands. I tried very hard not to cry when I was being beaten and I can still just turn off my feelings…. And I’m lucky. Many of the men my age, they either didn’t make it, committed suicide or died violent deaths, or alcohol got them. And it wasn’t just my generation. My grandmother, who’s in her late nineties, to this day it’s too painful for her to talk about what happened to her at the school. [18]
</quote>
Abuse and repression, for all that the colonizers say about civilization, this is what it really means. And this is how its cycles of violence perpetuate.
{1} I recommend “Capital Abaddon: Some words on and oft inspired by Jacques Camatte” By Howard Slater for interesting summaries and explanations on this.
[1] Brown CL, Yilanli M, Rabbitt AL. Child Physical Abuse And Neglect. [Updated 2020 Nov 20]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2021 Jan-. Available from: [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470337/]]
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Swedo E, Idaikkadar N, Leemis R, et al. Trends in U.S. Emergency Department Visits Related to Suspected or Confirmed Child Abuse and Neglect Among Children and Adolescents Aged <18 Years Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, January 2019–September 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:1841–1847.
[5] Usher, Kim et al. “Family violence and COVID-19: Increased vulnerability and reduced options for support.” <em>International journal of mental health nursing</em> vol. 29,4 (2020): 549–552. doi:10.1111/inm.12735
[6] Ray, Brian D. “Child Abuse of Public School, Private School, and Homeschool Students: Evidence, Philosophy, and Reason.” <em>National Home Education Research Institute</em>, NHERI, 21 Feb. 2019,
[7] Balingit, Moriah. “Sexual Assault Reports Sharply Increased at K-12 Schools, Numbering Nearly 15,000, Education Department Data Shows.” <em>The Washington Post</em>, WP Company, 28 May 2021, [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/10/15/sexual-assault-k-12-schools/]].
[8] Kopas, Anne. “Learning About the School-to-Prison Pipeline Puts Theory into Practice for Students.” <em>Hamline University</em>, 7 Oct. 2020, [[https://www.hamline.edu/news/2020/school-to-prison-pipeline/]].
[9] John Jay Report (New York, 2004.)
[10] Ibid.
[11] Weisberger, Mindy. “Remains of More than 1,000 Indigenous Children Found at Former Residential Schools in Canada.” <em>LiveScience</em>, Purch, 13 July 2021, [[https://www.livescience.com/childrens-graves-residential-schools-canada.html]].
[12] Hanson, Eric. “The Residential School System.” Edited by Daniel P. Gamez and Alexa Manuel, <em>Indigenousfoundations</em>, 2009, [[https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/#what-were-residential-schools]].
[13] Little, Becky. “Government Boarding Schools Once Separated Native American Children From Families.” <em>History.com</em>, A&E Television Networks, 19 June 2018, [[https://www.history.com/news/government-boarding-schools-separated-native-american-children-families]].
[14] Nabs. “For Churches.” <em>The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition</em>, [[https://boardingschoolhealing.org/healing/for-churches/]].
[15] Nabs. “US Indian Boarding School History.” <em>The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition</em>, [[https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/]].
[16] Nabs. “US Indian Boarding School History.” <em>The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition</em>, [[https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/]].
[17] Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (New York, 1961)
[18] <em>Stolen from Our Embrace the Abduction of First Nations Children and the Restoration of Aboriginal Communities</em>, by Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Crey, Crane Library, 2014, p. 62.
|
#title Notes on Democracy
#author Against Sleep and Nightmare
#LISTtitle Notes on Democracy
#SORTauthors Against Sleep and Nightmare
#SORTtopics democracy, communism, revolution, prole.info
#source Retrieved on March 12th, 2021, from http://web.archive.org/web/20160405033210/http://prole.info/texts/notesondemocracy.html
#lang en
Democratic ideology essentially contains two sort of the illusions:
1. The idea that under all circumstance the morally superior way of making decisions is having some sort of electoral participation by the majority.
<br>
2. The idea that the method of decision making is what distinguishes different sort of social system.
These illusions have many forms and are interrelated. Mainstream American democratic rhetoric justifies political decisions by the use of both elections and polls. It is "very democratic" in the sense that the passive choices of the majority can change the form that the American repression and exploitation take.
Worker's self-management is a more obscure form of this illusion which claims that the changes in the way a factories' decisions are made will change the form that an entire society will take. It's basic position is summarized in the sticker that calls for workers to "fire" their bosses, and apparently continue production in the same old way.
It is important for revolutionaries to oppose both versions of democratic ideology. On one hand, after a revolution there certainly won't be any reason to fixate on the process of reaching each decision. For example, one person could be assigned to decide a day's delivery schedule in a communal warehouse without oppressing the other workers - who might prefer to spend their time walking on the beach. This dispatcher would have no coercive power over the other participants in the warehouse and deciding the schedule would not give her power that she could accumulate and exchanged for other things. For their own enjoyment, the worker might on the other hand want to collectively decide the menu of a communal kitchen even it was a less efficient use of time.
On the other hand, it's important to realize that no scheme for managing society will by itself create a new society. Highly democratic, highly authoritarian and mixed schemes are now used to administer capitalism. The basic quality of this capitalism that the average person has little or no control of their daily mode of living. Wage labor dominates society. You must exchange your life to buy back your survival. Whether the average person under capitalism might somehow be able to make a large of decisions about which records they buy, which inmates serve long sentences, what the color the street lights are, etc. is irrelevant.
The community that escapes capitalism will involve people effectively controlling their process of living. This the individual and collective refusal of work, commodity production, exploitation etc. This certainly will require a large amount of collective decision making and a large amount of individual decision making. The transformation cannot be reduced to a set way of making decisions or a fixed plan of action.
The different modes of living are easier to describe using Marxian terminology sometimes because it speaks in terms of social processes rather than atomized individual actions. The economy is both a way people make decisions and a way people act. You can only see the real conditions of society by looking at the conditions of daily life - how a society's mode of existence reproduces itself. This is summarized fairly well using the Marxian terms of political economy, spectacle, commodity etc.
All forms of democratic ideology appeal to a model of human behavior that implies each person is wholly separate social agent that only affects others in fixed, definable ways. This is the language of "common sense" in a world where people's senses are controlled by capitalism. It defend the right, for example, for a man to shout cat-calls at woman who has previously been raped because that man's actions are simply "free speech" not connected to any social action.
Communist positions see a social web which to not reducible to a fixed number to definable relations. Communists do not say that without capitalism we can guarantee that humans will create a human community. It says with capitalism, humans cannot create a human community. It sees that any movement for a human community will oppose capitalist social order and social relationships all along the way. The motivating force will not come with a communist blue-print but from the process of living of proletarians creating a new social relation.
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.