#title The Revolutionary Anarchist Tradition
#author Chris Day
#LISTtitle Revolutionary Anarchist Tradition
#SORTauthors Chris Day
#SORTtopics Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, Revolutionary Anarchism
#date August 1997
#source *Love & Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (New York Local) Member Handbook*, First Edition.
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-04-07T07:51:25
A slightly different version of this article, written by Chris
Day, originally appeared in Love & Rage, June / July 1996.
Some of the points in the article were controversial within
the organization, as reflected by the fact that another L&R
member, Wayne Price, wrote a letter in response to the article, which was printed in the next issue of the paper. The
controversies in this article mirrored controversies over
internal documents circulating at the same time. Despite the
controversy, this piece is the best we have for laying out the
historical tradition with which Love & Rage most closely
identifies. The version of the article printed here was edited
to incorporate the criticisms and comments made about the
original article.
— the editor
----
For most of this century the revolutionary struggle for human
liberation has stood in the shadow of the Bolshevik victory in
the Russian Revolution and the regime it established. The
Collapse of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe, repression of the
Chinese democracy movement, and the electoral defeat of the
Sandinistas in 1989 revealed the decay within Marxism as a supposed
ideology of human freedom. The ensuing collapse of much of the
Marxist left created an opening for a renewal of the revolutionary project.
Love and Rage was the creation of a layer of mainly young anarchists who were frustrated with the disorganization and lack of serious revolutionary politics within the anarchist movement. We were
committed to building a serious revolutionary anarchist movement.
While we came from a variety of political backgrounds and perspectives we did not collectively identify ourselves with any single tradition within anarchism. Surveying the various trends in anarchism
(anarchist communism, anarcho-syndicalism, anarcha-feminism) as
well as the libertarian trends that did not identify themselves explicitly as anarchist (council communism, the situationists) we did not see
any single current as answering all of our questions. Furthermore
many of us drew considerable inspiration from the anti-authoritarianism of the New Left of the 1960s, and from the new social movements
that arose in the 70s and 80s. We also identified strongly with anticolonial struggles for national liberation that, in spite of their authoritarian organization, fundamentally challenged imperialism and raised
the hopes of hundreds of millions of people for a world without
oppression and exploitation.
Not only were none of the already existing currents within anarchism satisfactory to us, but we understood that our vitality as an organization depended on an atmosphere of open debate and discussion.
This didn’t mean that as an organization we would be agnostic on
every political question, but rather that our politics would be developed through a process of collective practice and discussion. And this
is pretty much what has happened — Love and Rage has developed a
body of not always explicitly stated common politics by working
together for so many years.
While our politics have remained consistently anti-authoritarian,
Love and Rage has from its inception been defined by our disregard
for anarchist orthodoxies. This is a good thing. If anarchism is to
become a serious revolutionary movement it must develop a whole
new body of theory and analysis for confronting the new realities of
the 21st century, and that will require the transcendence of various
cherished anarchist prejudices. The revolutionary anarchism of the
future must be a living synthesis of all the useful thinking that has
been created in the course of the struggle for human freedom.
At the same time we have been guilty of not looking closely
enough at the debates within the anarchist movement of the past century. While the different currents defined by those debates are still an
inadequate foundation on which to build a new body of revolutionary
theory, we are not the first group of anarchists to be deeply frustrated
by the deep structural problems of anarchism. In this sense we are part
of a revolutionary anarchist tradition — a small but vital current within anarchism that has sought to learn new lessons from our defeats,
that has struggled to raise anarchist politics above the level of naive
moralism, that has confronted head on contradictions within anarchist
thinking, that has fought for tighter forms of organization, that has
sought to develop a coherent strategy for actually making an anarchist
revolution. Revolutionary anarchism speaks to the fundamental failure of Marxism’s authoritarian reliance on the state as an instrument
for revolutionizing society. But just as Marxism has been tested by
history and found wanting, so too has anarchism failed to deliver real
human liberation. Therefore we must be particularly attentive to the
distinct current of revolutionary anarchist practice that has sought to
confront these historic failures of anarchism. This article is an attempt
to trace the course of that current through anarchist history.
This current has asserted itself most strongly when new historical conditions have demanded a rethinking of past anarchist assumptions. So at the beginning of this century the anarchist movement was
still dominated by the theory of “propaganda of the deed.” Small anarchist groups or individuals would carry out bombings or assassinations in the vain hope that by revealing the vulnerability of the system
they would inspire the masses to rise up and throw off their chains.
Anarcho-syndicalism was simultaneously a recognition of the futility
of this approach and a turn towards the mass revolutionary potential
of the increasingly insurgent workers movement that was chafing
under the largely middle-class leadership of the various socialist parties. The early anarcho-syndicalists were roundly denounced by the
rest of the anarchist movement for abandoning the “anarchist principles” of individualist terror.
Similarly Love and Rage and the broader revolutionary anarchist
current of which it is part is a response to new conditions. The collapse of the Soviet Union and with it the prestige of marxism as a theory of human liberation created an opening for revolutionary antiauthoritarian ideas. But the anarchist movement was too accustomed
to its role as the gadfly of the authoritarian left to break out of that role
and put forward a positive vision of a new revolutionary movement.
Contemporary revolutionary anarchism is the effort to do that.
In between the early anarcho-syndicalists and the collapse of the
Soviet Union, there have been a series of other expressions of the revolutionary anarchist impatience with anarchist orthodoxy.
*** Malatesta
Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarchist who spent half of his life in
exile. His most important period of activism was during the first thirty years of the 20th century up to his death in 1932. While he participated in a variety of groups and struggles his main significance was as
an agitator and propagandist. Malatesta didn’t so much break with
prevailing anarchist thinking as push it as far as it could go without a
thorough critical re-examination. Malatesta’s writings on organization
are still crucial reading for all revolutionary anarchists. He was
unabashedly pro-organization and divided the discussion of organization into three parts:
organization in general as a principle of and condition of
social life today and in a future society; the organization of
the anarchist movement; and the organization of the popular forces and especially of the working masses for resistance to government and capitalism...
Malatesta: *Life and Ideas*
p. 84 (Freedom Press, 1984, London)
Malatesta argued for a sharp distinction between popular organizations like labor unions and organizations of the anarchist movement.
In contrast to the mainstream of anarcho-syndicalism Malatesta recognized the inherently reformist character of the unions, even unions
with avowedly revolutionary programs, that grows out of their daily
struggle for modest improvements in the lives of the workers. He
argued that anarchists should not hesitate to work within such organizations, that it is precisely their openness to non-anarchists that makes
them such fertile fields for anarchist agitation. Malatesta’s arguments
laid the theoretical groundwork for the organization of the Iberian
Anarchist Federation (FAI), an organization of anarchist militants
working within the larger popular movements.
Malatesta was also critical of the attempts to claim that anarchism rested on a scientific foundation. He used his obituary of Peter
Kropotkin to polemicize against Kropotkin’s efforts in this direction.
The claims of political ideologies (like Marxism) to scientific truth
have consistently had authoritarian implications.
Malatesta strove to ground anarchist activity in political reality.
Unfortunately his writings remain trapped in a method of speculative
politics that seems to dominate anarchist theory. There is a timelessness to his arguments. That means that they can be easily applied to
the present. But it also means that they are not based on any sort of
systematic investigation of the actual conditions then confronting the
anarchist movement. His arguments would be as well reasoned in the
19th, 20th or 21st centuries, but they are a limited guide to practical
action precisely because of this timelessness.
What is missing from Malatesta’s thinking is a dialectical
method. His conclusions are not based on investigation of the actual
conditions within society (or within the anarchist movement) and they
are not tested against the results of their application. Rather they flow
from a set of abstract principles and if they don’t coincide with current reality eventually, the reasoning seems to go, reality will just have
to catch up.
The limits of Malatesta’s methodology come out most sharply
only when he is finally confronted with a new current in the anarchist
movement that seeks to root its practice in a concrete analysis of the
current conditions. The revolutionary upsurges in the wake of World
War I exposed in practice the limitations of certain aspects of the prevailing thinking within the anarchist movement. Anarchists participated in many of these upsurges, but the most significant achievments
were in Ukraine. When the Ukrainian anarchists summed up their
experiences and called for some changes in the anarchist movement in
light of theme Malatesta defended the prevailing orthodoxy.
*** The Makhnovchina
The Ukrainian Revolution is a seriously underappreciated chapter in
anarchist history. Unlike Spain where over 60 years of anarchist educational work had shaped the thinking of much of the Spanish peasantry and proletariat, the Ukraine did not have a strong well organized
anarchist movement when the February 1917 revolution toppled the
Russian Czar and opened up the whole Russian Empire, including
Ukraine, to the pent-up revolutionary forces of peasant and worker
discontent.
The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia on a program of Bread,
Land and Peace. They obtained peace with the German and AustroHungarian Empires through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which handed over Ukraine to the imperialists. The relatively small Ukrainian
anarchist movement seized the moment and built a revolutionary
anarchist army around a nucleus of guerrilla partisans commanded by
Nestor Makhno. The peasants were already seizing the land largely
without the help of the anarchists. Makhno’s army defended their
gains and argued for the voluntary collectivization of the land while
they fought the Austrians, the Germans, and the White armies of
Deniken and Wrangel. After defeating the first three the
Makhnovchina joined forces with the Bolshevik Red Army to defeat
Wrangel. After the defeat of Wrangel the Bolsheviks turned around
and crushed Mahkno’s army, retaking the Ukrainian lands they had
given away in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Mahkno was openly contemptuous of the “dithering” and disorganization of most of the anarchist movement. While he didn’t let the
Bolsheviks off the hook for their crimes he correctly identified a number of the anarchist movement’s weaknesses that he saw as responsible for the ease with which the Bolsheviks consolidated power.
Mahkno’s two primary virtues as a revolutionary thinker are his lack
of sentimentality and his willingness to radically reassess prevailing
anarchist orthodoxies in light of actual experience. He describes the
original military organization of the anarchists in Ukraine, the “free
battalions”:
It quickly transpired that that organization was
powerless to survive internal provocations of every sort,
given that, without adequate vetting, political or social, it
took in all volunteers provided only that they wanted to take
up weapons and fight. This was why the armed units established by that organization were treacherously delivered to
the enemy, a fact that prevented it from seeing through its
historical mission in the fight against the foreign counterrevolution. . . Elsewhere the practical requirements of the
struggle induced our movement to establish an operational
and organizational Staff to share the oversight of all the
fighting units. It is because of this practice that I find myself
unable to subscribe to the view that revolutionary anarchists
reject the need for such a Staff to oversee the armed revolutionary struggle strategically. I am convinced that any revolutionary anarchist finding himself in the same circumstances as those I encountered in the civil war in the Ukraine
will, of necessity, be impelled to do as we did. If in the
course of the coming authentic social revolution, there are
anarchists who rebut these organizational principles, then in
our movement we will have only empty chatterers or deadweight, harmful elements who will be rejected in short
order.
“On Defense of the Revolution”
from *The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays*
by Nestor Mahkno (AK Press, 1996, San Francisco)
Mahkno understood that revolutionary anarchists had to operate in the
real world of imperfect circumstances. If anarchist ideas were to mean
anything they had to be applied in the struggles of the day. And if they
were inadequate to the tasks of the struggle then they needed to be
modified.
*** The Platformists
Unfortunately the Bolshevik victory in Russia gave their authoritarian
politics enormous prestige amongst revolutionary minded people all
around the world. Huge sections of the anarchist movement went over
to Bolshevism in country after country. And it wasn’t necessarily the
worst elements that left either. In many cases the anarchists who
remained true to their principles were the most dogmatic, the least
interested in what actually worked in practice, the most unconcerned
with making anarchism relevant to the majority of humanity. Outside
of Spain and Latin America where the mass character of the anarchist
movement delayed this development, anarchism was rapidly replaced
by Bolshevism as the “revolutionary wing” of the workers movement.
In the face of Bolshevik hegemony the anarchist movement became
increasingly sectarian and oddly resistant to any challenges to its theoretical orthodoxies.
In the face of military disaster Nestor Mahkno drew the appropriate lessons and reorganized his forces to go on to beat the imperialist and White armies in Ukraine. After his defeat at the hands of the
Red Army he and many of his Russian and Ukrainian comrades were
forced into exile in Western Europe. There they found the same dogmatism and disorganization that had doomed the anarchists in the
Russian Revolution.
Just as they had sought to apply the lessons of the defeat of the
“free battalions” in building a revolutionary army, Mahkno and his
comrades in exile sought to apply the political lessons they had drawn
from their experience and to create a new kind of revolutionary anarchist organization — one capable of the profound organizational tasks
involved in carrying a revolution through to victory. Their call for the
formation of such an organization was a pamphlet entitled “The
Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists.” The
Platform, as it came to be known was published in 1926 and quickly
became an object of controversy within the anarchist movement.
Reading its opening paragraphs it is not hard to see why:
It is very significant that, in spite of the strength and incontestably positive character of libertarian ideas, and in spite
of the forthrightness and integrity of anarchist positions in
facing up to the social revolution, and finally the heroism
and innumerable sacrifices borne by the anarchists in the
struggle for libertarian communism, the anarchist movement remains weak despite everything, and has appeared,
very often, in the history of working class struggles as a
small event, an episode, and not an important factor.
This contradiction between the positive and
incontestable substance of libertarian ideas, and the miserable state in which the anarchist movement vegetates, has
its explanation in a number of causes, of which the most
important, the principal, is the absence of organizational
principles and practices in the anarchist movement.
The introduction goes on to say that :
(I)t is nevertheless beyond doubt that this disorganization
derives from some defects of theory: notably the false interpretation of the principle of individuality in anarchism; this
theory being too often confused with the absence of all
responsibility. The lovers of assertion of ‘self,’ solely with a
view to personal pleasure, obstinately cling to the chaotic
state of the anarchist movement, and refer in its defense to
the innumerable principles of anarchism and its teachers.
The Platform had three section. The first or “General” section was a
basic exposition of revolutionary anarchist thinking concerning the
process of revolution. The second “Constructive” section elaborated
an anarchist program for the reorganization of industry, agriculture,
and consumption. This section also addressed the question of how the
gains of the revolution would be defended by a revolutionary army.
The final “Organizational” section called for the creation of a
“General Union of Anarchists” on the basis of four organizational
principles:
1. Theoretical Unity
2. Tactical Unity or the Collective Method of Action
3. Collective Responsibility, and
4. Federalism
The Platform was widely attacked within the anarchist movement in
terms that would be familiar to those who have followed the controversies around Love and Rage. The Platformists were accused of
being crypto-Leninists and of attempting to dominate the whole anarchist movement in their effort to build an effective organization. The
Platformists were pushed to the margins of the anarchist movement
and their efforts to build an organization failed. But the ideas of the
Platformists lived on and a variety of Platformist groups have come
and gone over the years. Two Platformist organizations that are currently operating are the Anarchist Communist federation in England
and the Workers Solidarity Movement in Ireland.
The political program of the Platformists was not as much of a
break with anarchist orthodoxies as their organizational principles
which Malatesta described as “the absolute negation of any individual
independence and freedom of initiative and action.” In response to
Malatesta’s charges Mahkno noted how the absence of the spirit of
collective responsibility had resulted in the chronic disorganization of
the anarchist movement and its effective abdication of its revolutionary responsibilities. The sharp exchange between Malatesta and
Mahkno should be required reading for all anarchists today.
(Fortunately it has recently become available again in English with
the publication of The Anarchist Revolution, a collection of
Malatesta’s later writing by Freedom Press.) Malatesta’s criticisms of
the Platformists are ponderous and abstract, making no reference to
the actual state of the anarchist movement. In contrast Mahkno’s
response raises the difficult questions that anarchism had up to that
point effectively evaded.
One obvious error that the Platformists made was their overestimation of the potential for winning over the majority of anarchists to
their position. Given the depth of their criticisms they should have
understood that at least initially they would only we able to attract a
minority of the anarchist movement. A General Union of Anarchists
united around the sort of program advocated in the Platform would not
be possible before an intense political struggle within the anarchist
movement, a struggle that the Platformists were not in a position to
win. Consequently, by tying their project to winning over the majority of anarchists they doomed it.
The Platformists also failed to develop a coherent analysis of
imperialism and the profound influence that its global inequalities
would have on the process of world revolution. Consequently their
political program and their understanding of the class struggle reads
today as very simplistic. But their critique of the organizational failings of the anarchist movement and the measures necessary to correct
those failings has lost none of their resonance. Their organizational
principles are simple and common sensical. But they are a stake
through the heart of anti-organizational thinking in anarchism. The
intensely hostile response they generated is a profound testimony to
the political irrelevance of much of the anarchist movement.
Tragically the Platformists were to have almost no influence on
the Spanish anarchist movement. When the Spanish anarchists found
themselves in a revolutionary situation they were considerably better
positioned than their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts to give the
revolution a libertarian character. But in the end they failed for many
of the same reasons. J. Manuel Molinas, Secretary of the Iberian
Anarchist Federation (FAI) in the early 1930s later wrote: “The platform of Arshinov and other Russian anarchists had very little influence on the movement in exile or within the country ... ‘The Platform’
was an attempt to renew, to give greater character and capacity to the
international anarchist movement in light of the Russian Revolution ...
Today, after our own experience, it seems to me that their effort was
not fully appreciated.” The Spanish Revolution offered the best
opportunity to carry the anarchist revolution to completion. The failure of the Spanish anarchists to learn the lessons of the Russian and
Ukrainian experiences before it was too late is perhaps the single
greatest tragedy in the history of the anarchist movement.
*** The FAI
The Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) was founded in the summer of
1927. Whereas the Platformists were the product of the experience of
defeat of the Russian and Ukrainian anarchists, the FAI arose in
response to the burgeoning revolutionary potential of Spain and some
of the contradictions within the Spanish anarchist movement. Up until
the formation of the FAI the main organizational form of the Spanish
anarchist movement was the National Confederation of Labor (CNT).
The dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera had broken up the CNT
as a functioning national organization. Under these conditions of
repression powerful tendencies towards reformism asserted themselves within the scattered anarchist movement. The FAI brought
together the most militant and determined revolutionaries in Spain
under conditions of intense repression. The FAI was composed of
small affinity groups federated locally, regionally, and nationally
(including also Portuguese groups and exile groups in France). When
the CNT was reorganized in 1928 the FAI came to exert a dominating
influence on its orientation.
While the FAI constituted the most revolutionary forces within
the anarchist movement they were not united around any sort of
coherent program. Rather they were united in their opposition to any
sort of collaboration with the reformist forces. Politically the FAI was
heterogeneous in the extreme including a wide range of anarchist tendencies as well as groups organized to promote vegetarianism,
Esperanto (an artificial language created for purposes of international
communication), etc..
In opposition to Malatesta who argued that the unions should be
ideologically non-sectarian in order to attract the broadest participation of the working class, the FAI declared itself in favor of explicitly
anarchist unions because “working-class unity is not possible.” The
existence of widespread sympathy for anarchism among the Spanish
proletariat and peasantry made it possible to build an explicitly anarchist mass union like the CNT, but the very existence of the FAI pointed to the contradictions involved in such a union. Malatesta argued
that the need to meet the daily needs of the members under the existing system has a conservatizing influence on unions regardless of
their origins or assertions of radical aims. The experience of the CNT
prior to the founding of the FAI confirmed this position. In effect the
FAI constituted itself as an organization of the most advanced elements that fought for (and won) revolutionary politics within the
CNT. Opponents of the FAI’s revolutionary orientation attacked the
FAI for dominating the union. The FAI resisted this characterization
of their role within the CNT and certainly non-FAI members were
often influential, but an honest assessment of the FAI must acknowledge its leadership function within the Spanish anarchist movement.
While the FAI was undeniably composed of many of the most
committed revolutionary anarchist fighters in Spain they fundamentally failed to cohere themselves around a program or strategy until it
was too late. Reading Juan Gomez Casas’ Anarchist Organization,
The History of the FAI (Black Rose, 1986, Montreal), one can not
help but be struck by this fact. Year in and year out the conferences
and plenums of the FAI are dominated by discussions the most elementary organizational matters. The political resolutions are agonizingly vague and subject to the broadest possible range of interpretations. When a revolutionary situation fell into their hands they were
utterly unprepared for the difficult choices involved.
On July 19, 1936 the CNT carried out a revolutionary general
strike in response to an fascist military coup. They were joined in
varying degrees by the socialist union (the UGT) and the political parties of the left. In Catalonia where the anarchists were dominant within the working class and among the peasants the CNT decisively
smashed the military revolt, armed the workers and peasants, formed
revolutionary committees and organized militias to fight the fascists.
A similar pattern repeated itself, again in varying degrees, across
those parts of Spain where the fascists were unable to establish control.
In Catalonia the revolutionary upheaval was so complete and the
anarchist predominance within it so beyond dispute that on July 20
Luis Companys, the President of the semi-autonomous government of
Catalonia (the Generalidad) summoned the leaders of the CNT and the
FAI and offered to resign. The leaders of the CNT and FAI declined
claiming that they did not want to establish an “anarchist and
Confederal dictatorship.”
In this single moment we find distilled the historical anarchist
abdication of political responsibility. The anarchist movement has no
reason to expect to be presented with a better opportunity to reorganize society on libertarian lines than existed on July 20, 1936. While
support for the CNT was not universal, they clearly had the allegiance
of the majority of the oppressed classes in Catalonia. They had created a situation of dual power with the capitalist state. The choice before
them was not one between collaboration with the capitalist state and
an anarchist dictatorship. It was between the revolutionary creation of
a federation of the popular committees and councils and collaboration.
To take the first road would have required smashing the state not just
militarily (as they already had) but politically by overthrowing Luis
Companys and the Generalidad. Since the popular committees in
Catalonia were largely initiated by the CNT’s defense committees
established to prepare for the insurrection there is no reason such a
program could not have been carried out. Dual power is not an end in
itself, it is a condition under which an opportunity exists to smash the
old power and replace it with a new organization of society. Situations
of dual power are inherently unstable. Sooner or later the old power
or the new power will smash the other one. The consequence of the
CNT and FAI’s false fear of being party to an “anarchist dictatorship”
was that they soon found themselves first under a dictatorship of the
petty bourgeoisie and the Communist Party and then under Franco.
The FAI’s failure to unite around a comprehensive analysis of
Spanish society and strategy for its revolutionary transformation
meant that they were unable to seize the revolutionary moment when
it presented itself. The workers and peasants were ahead of their leaders and accomplished profound things in terms of collectivizing
industry and agriculture and reorganizing social life in the villages and
cities under their control. But they lacked the organization or collective political experience to navigate the complicated political situation
that confronted them. The organization that was best positioned to
provide these things, the FAI, was unable to do so.
It was only after the revolutionary moment had passed and the
Spanish state was reorganized with the generous assistance of
Moscow that the FAI recognized the need to reorganize itself in accordance with its actual role. In July 1937 the FAI reorganized itself with
clear standards of membership based on agreement with a common
political orientation. The affinity groups were stripped of any “official
role in the new FAI organization” and vote by simple majority was
introduced to prevent small groups from obstructing the work of the
organization as a whole. But the new political statement of the FAI
was again hopelessly vague and the organization had been fundamentally compromised by their participation in the Republican government and their treacherous call for a cease-fire during the “May Days”
in Barcelona two months earlier.
*** The Friends of Durruti
The failure of the FAI to provide revolutionary leadership in spite of
the powerful revolutionary aspirations of the Spanish peasants and
workers created a political vacuum. One organization that attempted
to fill that space was the Friends of Durruti.
One of the central issues in the Spanish Revolution was the
attempt to incorporate the militias into a new regular Republican
army. Much of the impetus for this militarization came from the
Communist Party, which by virtue of its connections with the Soviet
Union, was prepared to dominate the command of such an army. The
anarchist and POUM militias resisted this process in varying degrees.
Ultimately most of the anarchist militias were either incorporated into
the new army or broken up by it. One group that resisted militarization were the militias at the Gelsa front. Instead of joining the army
many of their members returned to Barcelona and joined with some
other dissidents in the CNT to constitute themselves as the Friends of
Durruti.
The Friends of Durruti played a pivotal role in the May 1937
events in Barcelona, calling on the anarchist forces to maintain their
barricades when the CNT leadership was preaching conciliation with
the Communists. After these events the Friends of Durruti issued a
pamphlet “Towards a Fresh Revolution” that analyzed the defeat of
the Spanish Revolution and put forward proposals for its regeneration.
Unlike anarchists today who see the Spanish militias as the model of
anarchist military organization the Friends of Durruti had seen them
in action and proposed in opposition to either the Republican army or
an exclusive reliance on the militias the revolutionary army:
With regard to the problem of the war, we back
the idea of the army being under the absolute control of the
working class. Officers with their origins in the capitalist
regime do not deserve the slightest trust from us. Desertions
have been numerous and most of the disasters we have
encountered can be laid down to obvious betrayals by officers. As to the army, we want a revolutionary one led exclusively by workers; and should any officer be retained, it
must be under the strictest supervision.
The Friends of Durruti also proposed the creation of a Revolutionary
Junta to be democratically elected by all of the revolutionary working
class organizations that opposed further participation in the
Republican government. The precise mechanism for forming the
Junta (a word which does not have the same authoritarian implications
in Spanish as it does in English; all the CNT unions were governed by
juntas) varied in different statements of the Friends of Durruti, but the
point should be emphasized that what they were proposing was a popular democratic structure, not a party-state like the one established by
the Bolsheviks in Russia. This is similar to the program for workers’
and peasants councils, although not quite as good since it required
working through the existing union structures. The Friends of Durruti
also took some tentative steps to align themselves with anti-colonial
forces in Morocco. As troops stationed in Morocco constituted the
base for the fascist uprising, the question of support for Moroccan
independence was a crucial one. This tentative anti-imperialism is
indicative of the Friends of Durruti’s determination to confront the
weaknesses of anarchist theory.
*** Conclusion
The Friends of Durruti continued to operate even after the ultimate
defeat of the Republic by the fascists, but in the final analysis their initiative clearly came too late. Like the Mahknovchina before them,
they only came to understand the need for a different kind of revolutionary anarchist organization as a result of bitter defeats. Their
abortive efforts to create such an organization did not get far enough
to offer us much guidance today. What they do provide, however, is a
desperately needed example of revolutionary anarchism confronting it
s errors head on and creating new forms in response to new conditions.
The experiences in Ukraine and Spain demonstrate that in the
course of a revolution, a certain amount of centralization and repression of open counter-revolutionaries will be necessary. Of course antiauthoritarians must consciously strive to keep such centralization and
repression down to the minimum level necessary and should deliberately work to keep the communal organization as decentralized and
radically-democratic as possible. Exactly how to maintain this balance
is a matter of political judgment, but there should be no ambiguity in
our opposition to party-states.
One simple lesson from the experiences discussed here is that the
attempt to build a serious revolutionary anarchist organization will
inevitably encounter hostility from many quarters, including many
sincere anarchists. Only a minority of the most serious and committed
activists can be expected to join such an effort. And only in the context of profound social upheaval will the importance of their extended period of organizational and political preparation become clear.
Only in the course of struggling to build such an organization on the
basis of coherent politics can we hope to collectively confront and
overcome the mistakes of the past.