It does not matter if this party calls itself “Socialist Party” or “Workers Party”; it is the fact that anyone who gets into office becomes divorced from the struggles of the workers and poor, more often than not, corrupted by the power and privileges of the state.

....................................................

We'll see about that. The Socialist Party's in Ireland and Australia don't seem to have become particularly reformist as a result of them having councillors and TDs elected.

Here's a socialist draft election program of the 'left list' in Austria.
www.fifthinternational.org/index.php

What would anarchists offer instead?

• For the redistribution of wealth from those at the top to those at the bottom! Down with the privileges of the rich and the superrich! As a first step: abolition of tax breaks and introduction of progressive taxation of the capitalists. No to any further privatisation, for the return of public property to state administration under democratic workers' control! Expropriation of the richest 10,000 and of all banks and firms to the benefit of the broad majority of the population!

• Use these financial resources for: a general reduction of the working week to 35 hours with no loss of pay! For the monthly indexation of wages against inflation! Abolition of all fees for education, enlargement of premises and reduction in class numbers to a maximum of 20! Expansion of the public health, pension and welfare system instead of privatisation!

• Down with privileges for politicians! Skilled workers' wages for all holders of political office.

• No to racism and fascism! Repeal of all special laws directed at migrants and asylum seekers! Right of abode for all instead of deportations!

• No to the oppression of women! For equal rights at all levels! For an end to unpaid domestic labour and childcare! Instead: For a massive development of a network of state childcare!

• No to militarism, war and occupation: immediate withdrawal of federal troops from Chad and from Kosovo! End the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine! No war against Iran!

• For a workers' government based on local committees in the towns and factories instead of a government which only acts in the interests of the big corporations!
• Against the Europe of the corporations and generals: for a united workers' Europe!

"What would anarchists offer instead?"

I think you're missing the point. Anarchists do not differ from other socialists (marxist, social-democratic/ liberal etc) so much over *what* the end goal of socialism is, all socialists share roughly the same fuzzy utopia of workers control, community-based democracy, equal access to resources etc. Anarchists differ over *how* such a goal can be achieved (can, not should, not what is ideal, merely what is possible).

Historical anarchist writers have seen well-meaning attempts at revolution through the state tried and failed, so they tend to condemn any approach involving the seizure of the state of the election of socialists into power positions as a sell-out.

I agree with the traditional anarchist position that the seizure of the state by a vanguard has only ever resulted in a new, and often worse, tyranny, not socialism or communism in any positive definition of these terms. Howerver, my position is that electionary tactics can be a valid part of an overall revolutionary strategy, as long as:
1) those in elected positions remain in close contact with the rest of the movement.
2) those in elected positions are seen as activists engaged in a particular tactic, not a leadership, or vanguard whose strategy and tactical suggestions the movement should uncritically follow.

My problem with the Chavistas among us, and perhaps also those who support the Nepalese Maoists in government, is that they fall foul of point 2. They seem to see 'socialist' government in the developing world as leaderships that activists here should follow. I'm not averse to seeing Chavez as a fellow revolutionary attempting to implement a socialist agenda through the tactic of being elected to government, but I am very suspicious of the concentration of power in his new 'socialist' party, and the 'with me and the party, or against us' line he is taking reminds me disturbingly of the sentiments of another Republic's President.

Strypey

So would you agree with the Austrian 'left list' program provided that the workers' government really is based on "local committees in towns and factories".

Presumably those committees would have to represent a wider rank and file, otherwise you would have to have referenda for every vote.

Those referenda could not avoid being national in order to express the needs of all fairly, otherwise rich localities could hog the resources.

So these town and factory committees would need to coordinate at a regional and national level to implement an overall plan to meets the needs of everyone.

Would that meet your idea of the goals of a socialist government?

"and the 'with me and the party, or against us' line he is taking reminds me disturbingly of the sentiments of another Republic's President."

Actions speak louder than words though stripes. When Bush uttered similar words they were a precusor to the bloody slaughter of 100,000+ Iraqis and just as many Pastun in Afghanistan.

The left seems to be waiting around for Chavez to fuck up so they can pounce on his ass for not dissolving central Government, doing away with oil and planting trees where there are now roads...so to speak...

"So these town and factory committees would need to coordinate at a regional and national level to implement an overall plan to meets the needs of everyone."

I'm not sure if you realise, but this is the idea of anarchist Federation: a method of organisation anarchists have been talking about since Prodhoun and before the International!

The difference is that it's not implimented from above by a 'party', but from the rank an file: workers councils, community councils etc etc. Another main difference is that these federated councils at the larger level have no means to make binding decisions on the rank and file, and are recallable at any time.

Please note: this is one understood method, and I don't pretend to speak for all anarchists when I write this. But it would seem you would do well to read some more anarchist texts, an come over to 'the dark side' haha!

Check our www.infoshop.org and the anarchist FAQ page, epecially to do with organisation.

Cheers

Jared D

PS Ignore my terrible spelling sorry, it's kinda early (our should be out, an should be and, geez...)

Jared D

Jared D:
"The difference is that it's not implemented from above by a 'party', but from the rank an file: workers councils, community councils etc etc. Another main difference is that these federated councils at the larger level have no means to make binding decisions on the rank and file, and are recallable at any time."

Two questions here:
First, by "party" do you meant that the individuals in the workers councils cannot form themselves into political groups on the basis of their political positions?

Why would such "parties" necessarily be organised from above"? Surely they would represent an organised political tendency that would put forward delegates to be voted for like any other tendency?
If the party has a majority why is this something imposed from above?

Second:
If the councils represent the rank and file views democratically, given the right of recall etc., why would the rank and file then reserve the right to ignore decisions taken by a federation of such councils? How would this rejection take place? Would it mean special conferences to reconsider the decision and a repeat of the whole process?
Would that special conference require a majority vote to reconvene? If not, then it would appear that minorities could permanently stymie any actual implementation of decisions.

I can see such things happening if events force a reconsideration of past decisions, or as the result of a 'betrayal' by delegates. But if this is a normal procedure where federations cannot make binding decisions that affect the local councils, then surely it would lead to 'anarchy' in the popular sense of the word.

I'm not quite sure if I follow what you mean by party. My understanding of 'party' is that of a body seperate from the 'rank and file' with decision making power, in a centralised (often a bottom-down) fashion, which is supposed to 'represent' the rest of the workers and their interests. This could be a revolutionary vanguard, or a political party. I don't need to go into the history of this method, as examples of it's failure are various.

As for worker's forming themselves into political groups, I'm not sure if I follow? If you mean by sending forward delegates to represent a particular body, representing their direct interets in an anarcho-syndicalist/anarcho-communist sense, then yes, of course this is neccessary, otherwise federation would not co-ordinate. However, the term 'political' doesn't really fit, as it would not be political groups, but temporary and fluid comittees.

If you mean sending individuals forward from a workers council into a bourgeois environment, to somehow bring about their economic emancipation through parlimentary means, then again, read the pdf above, some history books and get back to me. Anarchists believe that only the workers themselves, not bodies or parties representing their interests, can bring about real, tangible economic emancipation.

In terms of your second question, this is something no one can answer in any kind of uniform and absolute manner. Various forms of vote taking and decision making will suit various forms of work councils and communities - generally anarchists would advocate CONSENSUS decision making over majority rule, however, assembly sizes (like I said before) will obviously be different. The CNT and other revolutionary unions that exist today use a proportionate voting system, when absolutely necessary, to combat this problem (see 'Basic Anarcho-Syndicalism at www.zabalaza.net/zababooks).

Anarchists would argue that the whole point of delegation is to represent the rank and file, making the right of refusal absolutely vital to the system of Federation working. Any other method, by its very nature of creating power and heirachy, becomes centralised and therefore, un-democratic.

Again, I don't speak on behalf of anarchists; these are simply my rather rambling attempts to answer your questions. What I do know is that many Workers Parties or Socialist Parties may have the rhetoric of bottom-up, revolutionary modes of organisation, but sadly their track records show otherwise.

As Marx once said, "events in world history occur twice — first time as tragedy, second time as farce".

Cheers

Jared D

Communism is from each according to their ability to each according to their need, right?

How are you going to organise and plan post-capitalist society if you reserve the right for minorities to break decisions that are mandated by the majority?

Once everyone has their views represented by recallable mandated delegates, then the views of the majority have to be respected.

Individuals and minorities who want to opt out are breaking with the democracy of the majority.

Parties form under capitalism around programs on how to reform or overthrow capitalism. As long as they are represented proportionally how does that subvert the democratic process?

The failures of socialism and of anarchism in the past are the result of minorities corrupting the will of the majority and imposing the will of a minority.

Thus the question of how the will of the majority is to be expressed in the organisation of a post-capitalist society is key. For Marxists this organisation would have to impose the will of the majority onto the minority that resist the revolution. For anarchists it seems that minorities have some equal or superior rights to the majority.

Free association means the right for groups, councils and workplaces to decide what works for them, directly and with concensus. However, these decisions are not made in a void — obviously a minority opting out of federated systems based on solidarity and mutual aid would not be benificial for them, making it highly unlikely. But if they did, then there is no right for a majority to impose anything, nor is their right for a minority to do the same. Think of post-capitalist society, rather than a bottom up linear structure, but rather of many circles overlapping in benificial association. Some circles could stay out, but it wouldn't really make sense.

Again, no one can predict what post capitalist society looks like. Thats why anarchists prefer to start building those structures here and now, free of heirarchy. Means should be the ends — if we use parties now in a centralised manner, then again, as the past has shown, those means become the ends — a centralised society, with a state no different from what we have now.

Going out for a bit, but will come back to your second question of party programs soon!

Cheers

Jared D

What say the minority opting out is really the old ruling class re-asserting its class rule under the cover of workers democracy? It would make sense for them to stay out of the majority if it allowed them to take back their class property and power.

Couldn't that happen in a Marxist state also?

That's highly likey to happen, and anarchists have, and will, safeguard the revolution. To think the ruling class will be swept away in one big revolution is just not logical. A process of revolution, with varible results and varible ideology will take place. The advantage of anarchist theory is that it's not black and white or dogmatic, meaning the ability to adhere to conditions, rather than some strict ideology. Again, through Federation, the problems of each situation could be dealt with.

Anarchist ideas such as the freedom of association means exactly that, as long as it does not impede on anyone else's others freedom. If any minority such as the one you describe came about, and cut into others freedoms or the progress of social change, then it would be countered. These gains will be defended, not by the new 'party', but by the people themselves. When workers and communities are directly involved in real, sweeping change, it is more likely their interests will be defended, as it would mean the loss — not only of some vague idea of 'the workers state', or political emancipation — but of their very livelyhood. We've seen this happen in the Ukraine in the period of the Russian Revolution, with the formation of a People's Militia, and again in other times throughout history.

Again, the difference between anarchist and marxist systems mainly deal with means and methods used, and the issue of power. The idea that anarchists would be less vigourous in safeguarding social change is simply wrong.

Cheers

Jared D

Jared you mention the Ukraine during the period of the Russian Revolution as an example of anarchist theory in practice.

I would say that this is an example of a class difference that shows up as a refusal of the peasantry to agree with the workers majority as represented by the Bolsheviks.

It isnt as if Makhno's forces entered the soviets and fought for their own policies to keep control of their peasant produce. In effect they stayed out of the workers state and created an independent peasants state. Their class interests were independent peasant holdings defended from the return of the landlords on the one hand, and from the forced requisitions of the workers state.

Here is a recent article that puts a Marxist perspective on the differences that arose between the peasants and workers over who should control the economy following the revolution.

www.marxist.com/History/russia_peasants.htm

Another interesting article on Makhno
www.isreview.org/issues/53/makhno.shtml

I'm not sure of the purpose of your comment.

"In effect they stayed out of the workers state and created an independent peasants state. Their class interests were independent peasant holdings defended from the return of the landlords on the one hand, and from the forced requisitions of the workers state."

A reason they stayed out of a workers state may have been because a worker's state in a Marxist sense does not imply autonomy or democratic freedom for all, nor does it cover (as you imply above) the various forms and interests of ALL workers. They would have known that 'a workers state', as all anarchists would agree, is nothing more than a change of who's at the top under the psuedonym of socialism. In this case, the 'workers state' was in fact, real workers soviets co-opted and controlled by the 'Party'. You are confusing party power with popular power. The logic of the anarchist case is simple. In any system of hierarchical and centralised power (for example, in a state or governmental structure) then those at the top are in charge (i.e. are in positions of power). It is not "the people," nor "the proletariat," nor "the masses," it is those who make up the government who have and exercise real power. It's clear why Makhno's militia's and the automous regions of Ukraine decided to stay clear.

Also, to say that the Ukraine was simply an 'independent state' re-enforces the mis-understanding of the concept of both the state itself, and the nature of autonomous collectives and federated workers councils.

You also fail to mention the fact that Makhno's forces helped repel the counter-revolution, only to be supressed and killed by the forces under Lenin and Trotsky. An example of 'the worker's state' in action (ie centralised individuals pretending to advocate the 'will of the masses'). This is the nature of a political entity — workers or otherwise — as it cannot tollerate anything that subverts the party line.

Again, it comes back to a simple fact: representation implies heirarchy, heirachy implies power, power implies division — division, which is the direct opposite to social and economic equality, and of socialism itself.

Cheers,

Jared D

And if your defense of Marxism is to simply pull up a website deploring (from a Marxist perspective) one individual's actions 90 years ago, then obviously your theory has issues.

Jared D

The points here flow from a modern revisionist conceptulization of the modern state of pollution. It is clear that these two positions are arguing for the sake of no change and merely following the forms of the past century. Here is a new challenge to both positions and really is becomming not an option.

RETOOL THE ENTIRE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

Coal, gas, oil, and atomic energy is destroying the planets livability and therefore the last forty-five years of ecological green revolution has brought into being the hi-tech tools to put in place wind, tidal, and solar power which transforms to electricity and is more power than can be used by society. No more blackouts. This non-pollution solution is given freely in natures kinder laws and provides work for all and forever more. Viva socialist liberation. End pollution wars, not endless wars for more pollution.

The anarchist seems to complain that the bourgeoisie is being overthrown by the workers, and that the workers state is comming into being. In fact that is so in all modern societies because the proletariate needs to eliminated the Aggressive wars against the worlds' working classes that are on-going now. Engles further states that in the time of Marx and Engles the modern proletariate was too small and not fully concious of its herstorical and historical tasks of 'abolishing all forms of exploitation' and that the tool and instrument to do that is the workers state. The workers must constitute them selves as 'the nation' in preparation of liberating all classes and that includes animals, plants and ending the criminal pollution of the air, land, and water on which the livability of the planet depends. The present aggressive wars launched by the U.S. imperialists who head the entire imperialist camp are in fact Nazi-fascist unjust wars of aggression, and illegal violence by the anti-fascist covenants of the anti-fascist fighters of the second world war and on-going in law to the present times.

These three war crimes are being committed obviously, 1) targeting and killing of civilians, 2) torturing and killing of prisoners of war, 3) collective punishment such as 'Shock and Awe' the deliberate bombing to rubble of hundreds of villages, towns, and cities throughout the Holyland wherin sits Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and lately Pakistan. These wars are based on lies and deception by a criminal ruling class that has fraudulently using its power for its own narrow interests, while ignoring the needs of the american people for progammes such as health care, pensions for workers, museums, parks, bridges, leavees, firehalls, courts, habeous corpus, trials, lawyers, and due process of the law. Bush by executive power, that neither the congress not the senate have had the chance of reading, has passed laws such as 1) all citizens opposing his wars of aggression will have their property taken away, and their assets frozen, (sub-prime housing crisis deliberately created as a threat and real supression of property for the middle classes and proletariate) and laws creating the building of concentration camps to the capacity of 500,000 against the American Peoples protesting his wars against the workers abroad and at home (Patriote Act suspends habeous corpus) and he has now legalized torture violating the United Nations resolutions forbidding torture at anytime and for any reason. Torture is a fascist method belonging to the medieval ages and must be abolished globally.

The Nuremburg Trials chaired by U.S. Judge Jackson states that the planning and doing of aggressive war is the 'Supreme International Crime of the Planet' in that it sets in motion all other crimes high and low, big and small. It is for all these reasons and more, that his high crimes and misdemeanors according to the U.S. constituion and leading to his present impeachment for violation of the anti-fascist covenants, (international law) and shedding of the U.S. constitution that he twice swore to uphold faithfully when taking his oath of office he is forced to hear impeachment hearings. Congressman Kucinich has support and Conyers is allowing. Further now a leading U.S. prosecutor who has written numerous true life best selling crime books has now been published by vangard books, the new book 'the prosecution of George W. Bush for murder'. Here the tens of millions of people in the street have caused a deep division in the U.S. Imperialist criminal ruling class, which is forcing the peoples to re-avaluate the society they live in. We are witnessing the biggest peoples front against fascism emerging since the second world war.
Time is on the side of the anti-fascists and not the Imperialist war mongers who are using fascism to suppress, and to justify what cannot be justified. Permanent war is their response to the peoples unity, and the resistence is a global movement. Bush has declared to the International Criminal Court, who has found the Bushco guilty of war crimes, that no American soldier will be taken to court while he is president giving the green light to the U.S. aggressors to continue their war crimes globally and for that he tries to award them with immunity despite the ruling of the anti-fascist covenants to which he is signed on to. There by he commits not only national crimes but the supreme crime in the world which U.S. Judge Jackson says is a crime whether Germany does it or the U.S. does it. And further it states in the Nuremburg Charter that no soldier need follow unjust orders. Bush is criminally breaking this supreme law of the land and punishing or allowing punishment of the American soldiers concils that are directly resisting this unjust war and illegal violence done on false pretenses.

Endgles further replies to the anarchists that they are the ones that must face reality and once the workers state becomes, they must take part in ending the abuse and harm the rulers have inflicted on them for thousands of years through empires to which the imperialist owe their present unjust rule. Then though work and toil we will see the society become classless and free together. Really there is much to do, and the time honored slogan and fact of daily core majority life in each and every country will ring true throughout the world, Workers of all lands, unite!! You have a world to win.

A modern re-contextulisation? By quoting Engels? The only thing 'modern' about this rather off-topic reply is the fact that Marxist's have finally caught on to the ecology movement! Something anarchists have placed emphasis on for a long time (as well as an emphasis on womens liberation, people of colour, trans gender and queer issues).

This post offers nothing new.

Anarchists will continue to struggle for emancipation and environmental change, but in a manner that is truley inclusive, direct, and benificial for all people of the working class — not just their 'leaders'.

And yes, workers of the world, unite (and enjoy!).

Jared D

Here's a reply to the Makhno Marxist perspective. Sorry, its rather lenghty, but if you followed the link posted earlier, then you'll realise the tripe written is rather long too!

Taken from anarchism.pageabode.com/.

"Replace Trotsky with Makhno and you get a feel for the quality and inspiration for Jason Yanowitz’s “On the Makhno Myth.” Like Monty Python’s King Arthur faced with a searing anarcho-syndicalist critique of Monarchy, Yanowitz’s response to the awkward fact of the Makhnovist refutation of Leninist dogma is to mutter “Bloody peasant!” and trust that the faithful will not actually read the source material his numerous footnotes he selectively references.

Space precludes any detailed critique of Yanowitz’s article but, luckily, I do not have to as he repeats the usual Marxist attacks I debunk in detail in “An Anarchist FAQ” (see the appendix on the Makhnovist movement). For some strange reason Yanowitz does not mention that. He obviously hopes his silence will convince those ignorant of the subject that anarchists have no answer to the points he raises. As such, you have to laugh when he asserts that “Makhno was not the saint his supporters suppose.” As if anarchists thought he was! In fact, most anarchist accounts of the Makhnovist movement discuss its failings and problems as well as the personal failings of Makhno. Yanowitz is aware of this as he quotes them! The best that can he said of his account is that acknowledges that the Makhnovist “leadership was principally against anti-Semitism or alliances with the Whites” yet strangely fails to note that the Bolsheviks and their followers repeatedly claimed otherwise. (Makhno appendix: 9 and 12) While the subjects may have changed, the approach has not.

Suffice to say, Yanowitz presents the same lack of common sense, distortion and lack of understanding of anarchism and the Makhnovists I have come to expect from Marxists and refuted before. The only real new development is that Yanowitz relies heavily on another Marxist’s PhD thesis on Makhno by Colin Darch. Yet this new source leaves much to be desired. To get a taste of Darch’s perspective, we can point to his first essay on the subject (“The myth of Nestor Makhno”, Economy and Society, 14(4)) where he considered “Makhno's role as a leader of peasant counterrevolution in the USSR” as “a significant one, and merits careful investigation.” That suggests his Marxism may get in the way of his objectivity. His PhD thesis relies on Soviet sources for many of his key attacks on the Makhnovists (it is on the basis of these that Yanowitz states the anarchist “timeline and version of events is well refuted by Darch”!). Significantly, for all Darch’s rummaging around in Soviet sources, non-Marxist scholars like Michael Palij (The Anarchism of Nestor Makhno, 1918-1921) and Christopher Reed (From Tsar to Soviets) confirm the anarchist version of events.

Yet even reading Darch’s obviously biased account shows that the main Bolshevik complaints about the Makhnovists were simply that they refused to stop spreading their own political ideas countering Bolshevik propaganda (“the political commissar of the Trans-Dnepr Division complained that anarchist and Left SR agitation was making his work very difficult”); they involved the general population in discussing social and military affairs by organising soviet conferences (“the reaction of the Bolshevik commanders to . . . the summoning of yet another anarchist [sic!] congress . . . at a time of military crisis -- was decisive and harsh”); and generally not allowing themselves to be treated like canon fodder for the Bolshevik dictatorship (“Despite the seriousness of the military situation for the Red Army and for the revolution in general, the Congress apparently felt no compunction about adopting and endorsing an anarchist platform that the Bolsheviks inevitably viewed as a provocation”).

Which raises an obvious question: Does being a Leninist make you stupid? I ask because Yanowitz simply cannot see the obvious replies to his attacks on the Makhnovists. In a footnote, he seriously wonders why, if the Makhnovist accounts of Bolshevik betrayal were true, then why did the Whites manage to breach the front (and it should be noted that both he and Darch take the Bolshevik claims on this as gospel). However, it is hardly difficult to work out why the Whites breached the front if the Bolsheviks refused to arm the Makhnovists. Troops without weapons or ammunition can hardly fight. That Yanowitz cannot see this shows that discovering the truth about the Makhnovists was the last thing on his mind.

Then there are the numerous factual errors. An example is his claim that “parties were banned from organizing for election to regional bodies.” That hardly fits with the fact that they had SR, Menshevik and Communist delegates. What the Makhnovists opposed were “party lists” in soviet elections, not delegates that were members of a political party. It is this aspect of “soviet” elections which allowed the Menshevik leader Martov to be picked as a factory “delegate” over Lenin in early 1920. The Makhnovists argued that delegates had to be workers from the village or workplace which elected them. Rather than “obliterate existing state structures before moving on,” they organised soviet congresses in both liberated towns and countryside and only left when forced to by military necessity. As for them “regulat[ing] the press,” it seems ironic that an increase in press freedom under the Makhnovists compared to the Bolsheviks becomes a rod with which to beat them! Much the same applies to Yanowitz’s other examples of Makhnovist so-called authoritarianism.

Then there is Makhno’s advice to the railway workers. Well, that is the key thing -- it was advice as he thought that working class people had to solve their own problems by themselves, through their own organisations. In contrast, Trotsky imposed martial law on them along strict military and bureaucratic lines. One-man management or workers’ control? Which is more socialist? And which the railway workers preferred? And which worked better, given the railway network totally collapsed after Trotsky got his way with it? Needless to say, in spite of the Bolshevik track record of breaking strikes, disbanding soviets, suppressing freedom of organisation, assembly and speech and imposing political and economic dictatorship onto the working class, Yanowitz still tries to argue that it was the Makhnovists who were anti-working class rather than the Bolsheviks! (Makhno appendix: 10)

Yanowitz’s assertions to the contrary, in reality, it was the lack of “local autonomy” which lead the Bolshevik “coordinated, centralised plan for war production and defence” into inefficiency, waste and bureaucracy, i.e. it made matters much worse (see Silvana Malle’s The Economic Organisation of War Communism 1918-1921). This mismanagement started early. One historian summarises the situation in 1918:

"it seems apparent that many workers themselves . . . had now come to believe . . . that confusion and anarchy [sic!] at the top were the major causes of their difficulties, and with some justification. The fact was that Bolshevik administration was chaotic . . . Scores of competitive and conflicting Bolshevik and Soviet authorities issued contradictory orders, often brought to factories by armed Chekists. The Supreme Economic Council. . . issu[ed] dozens of orders and pass[ed] countless directives with virtually no real knowledge of affairs." [William G. Rosenberg, Russian Labour and Bolshevik Power, p. 116]

Significantly, the one-man management imposed by the Bolsheviks made things worse. On the railways, for example, abolishing the workers' committees resulted in more confusion, isolation and ignorance of local conditions. It got so bad that "a number of local Bolshevik officials . . . began in the fall of 1918 to call for the restoration of workers' control, not for ideological reasons, but because workers themselves knew best how to run the line efficiently, and might obey their own central committee's directives if they were not being constantly countermanded." (William G. Rosenberg, Workers' Control on the Railroads, pp. D1208-9) Leninist wishful thinking and fantasy aside, the destruction of the Russian economy under the weight of centralisation confirmed the anarchist argument on the importance decentralisation, from the bottom-up organising and federalism.

As for the old myth “anarchists ignore the objective difficulties facing the revolution,” that is debunked in AFAQ (there is a whole appendix on it). Strangely Yanowitz could not bring himself to discuss that. It is as perplexing as his silence over the Bolsheviks disbanding any soviet elected with a non-Bolshevik majority since before the Civil War started, how they had been advocating party dictatorship since the start of 1919 and how this influenced their relations with the Makhnovists. The identification of party dictatorship with the dictatorship of the proletariat” helps explain the Makhnovist “hostility” which Yanowitz finds so puzzling (As one delegate to a Makhnovist soviet congress put it, "No party has a right to usurp governmental power into its own hands . . . We want life, all problems, to be decided locally, not by order from any authority above; and all peasants and workers should decide their own fate, while those elected should only carry out the toilers' wish." (quoted by Palij, Op. Cit., p. 154)). And who, precisely, decides when “objective circumstances” cannot permit a social transformation? The Bolsheviks never asked working class people or peasants their opinion on this. Perhaps, as seems likely, they took their rejection in soviet elections as the sign?

Space also excludes much discussion of the political issues Yanowitz raises as much as the factual ones. As he repeats the standard Marxist attacks anarchists have been debunking for decades, I can simply recommend visiting AFAQ for the anarchist critique to Marxism, our vision of social revolution and how to defend it (see section H). A few basic points can be made, however.

The central fallacy of his critique is to assume that abolishing or resisting authority is somehow authoritarian. Few people would consider stopping someone trying to kill or enslave you as being “authoritarian.” They would rightly consider your actions as self-defense. This applies to his examples of Makhnovist “authoritarianism.” He seems to assume that the true “libertarian” approach is to let others impose their rule on you as stopping them is “authoritarian”! As Malatesta put it, some "seem almost to believe that after having brought down government and private property we would allow both to be quietly built up again, because of respect for the freedom of those who might feel the need to be rulers and property owners. A truly curious way of interpreting our ideas." (Anarchy, p. 41)

The next fallacy is his assumptions about anarchism and his curious interpolations about what opposing authority means -- inspired no doubt by Engels’ “On Authority” (H.4). Rather than some individualistic notion which makes collective decision making impossible, anarchist opposition to authority logically implies the importance of collective decision making by those who are affected by the decision. Bakunin argued that "the principle of authority" was the "eminently theological, metaphysical and political idea that the masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must submit at all times to the benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice, which in one way or another, is imposed from above." (Marxism, Freedom and the State, p. 33)

Clearly, by the term "principle of authority" Bakunin meant hierarchy rather than organisation and the need to make agreements (what is now called self-management). And note the collective nature of Bakunin’s definition – “themselves” and “the masses.” Thus the “principle of authority” refers to the elimination of collective decision making by the people and its replacement by the power of the few who govern them on their behalf. This support for self-management (collective freedom) has its roots in individual freedom, of course, as its rationale is that only in self-managed organisations can individuals express their freedom. It also explains anarchist support for dissent within free organisations as the majority can be wrong and minorities have the right to point this out and resist if need be. (H.2.11)

Underlying his attack is the assumption that self-management is impossible, that we cannot manage our own affairs and need someone to rule us. Usually, Leninists argue that self-management is possible – when the state withers away. For Yanowitz, any complex organisation seems to be a state because it necessitates, at best, collective decision making, or, at worse, hierarchy and so anarchism is impossible. Yet if that is the case, then Marx and Lenin were wrong – the state will never “wither away.” Yet anarchists have long pointed out that government is not the same as collective decision making. We are also aware that a delegate body and any associated administrative organs may, by force of circumstances or by design, start to act like a state. That is why we have always argued for instant recall of mandated delegates rather than representatives who elect a government. However, to argue that we should just give up trying to organise in this way because of this possibility makes as much sense as becoming reformists because of the possibility that a revolution will fail.

Which brings us to the next fallacy: the assumption that any form of social organisation equals a state. As he puts it:

“But left in control of territory that they wanted to secure, the Makhnovists ended up forming what most would call a state . . . They organized regional legislative conferences. They controlled armed detachments to enforce their policies . . . They banned authority with which they disagreed to ‘prevent those hostile to our political ideas from establishing themselves’ . . . The Makhnovists used their military authority to suppress rival political ideas and organizations.”

Yet there is a fundamental difference between a social organization based on self-government from the bottom up and one based on top-down, centralized power held by a minority. The latter has what has always been rightly termed a state and its structure has evolved precisely to exclude the majority from decision making. The former is not a state as it empowers the many to govern themselves. This can be seen under “primitive communism.” Tribes practiced communal decision making and used delegates to form federations to co-ordinate their joint interests (“legislative conferences”). They had war bands to fight their enemies (“armed detachments”) and defended their liberty by force (“banned authority with which they disagreed”). Even Engels and Marx acknowledged that these were not states. States came later when the masses were subjected to minority rule, a rule which required a state to impose.

So to call the communal system anarchists aim for a “state” when its role is to promote and ensure mass participation in social life is nonsense. (H.3.7) That Leninists are vaguely aware of this obvious fact explains why they sometimes talk of a “semi-state” or a “new kind of state.” This not a matter of mere “labels” as Yanowitz asserts, but rather revolves around who has the real power in a revolution – the people armed or a new minority (a “revolutionary” government). Anarchists argue for the former, the Leninists for the latter (hidden, usually, under democratic rhetoric).

Failing to understand that anarchists and Leninists do not share the same definition on what constitutes a state, Yanowitz bolsters the anarchist analysis:

“Why did self-proclaimed anarchists create a state? They were not confused or impure. They built a state because they had no choice. Ultimately, states are coercive instruments whereby one class rules society. A workers’ state is unique in history because the class wielding power does so in the interests of the vast majority.”

Can it be considered “coercive” to stop people ruling or oppression you? (H.4.7) As for “unique in history,” quite! So why call it a state? Simply because, in reality, the working class does not wield power in the so-called “workers’ state”: the party does. This was the case in Russia. The working class never wielded power under the Bolsheviks and here is the most obvious contradiction in Yanowitz’s account. (H.3.8) Throughout 1917, Lenin constantly called for the Bolsheviks to seize power not the working class – and that is precisely what happened. The first result of the Bolshevik revolution was the creation of an executive organ above the All-Russian Soviet Congress which was in direct contradiction to Lenin’s arguments in “State and Revolution.” (H.1.7) From top to bottom of the new state, the Bolsheviks centralised power in executive bodies, gerrymandered soviet elections and simply disbanded any soviet with a non-Bolshevik majority. (H.3.15).

So the working class did not wield power, the Bolsheviks did. This can also be seen by whom the so-called “workers’ state” actually repressed. Yanowitz complains that “[i]n the midst of a civil war, [the Makhnovists] emptied all the prisons and jails.” Considering who were in Bolshevik jails, they had a point. Of the 17,000 prison camp detainees on whom statistical information was available on 1 November 1920, peasants and workers constituted the largest groups, at 39% and 34% respectively. Similarly, of the 40,913 prisoners held in December 1921 (of whom 44% had been committed by the Cheka) nearly 84% were illiterate or minimally educated, clearly, therefore, either peasants or workers. (George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police, p. 178) I'm also sure that Robespierre and the reactionaries of Thermidor that followed him were disappointed that the ignorant masses had demolished the Bastille. Stalin, I am sure, was grateful that he did not have to build new prisons for the Trotskyists – they simply joined the anarchists and other socialist political prisoners who had been rotting in them since Lenin’s time.

As such, Bolshevik Russia confirmed Bakunin warning that "[b]y popular government [the Marxists] mean government of the people by a small under of representatives elected by the people.” That is, “government of the vast majority of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority, the Marxists say, will consist of workers. Yes, perhaps, of former workers, who, as soon as they become rulers or representatives of the people will cease to be workers and will begin to look upon the whole workers' world from the heights of the state. They will no longer represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions to govern the people." (Statism and Anarchy, p. 178)

Or, to quote Trotsky summarising the lessons of the Bolshevik revolution, the “very same masses are at different times inspired by different moods and objectives. It is just for this reason that a centralised organisation of the vanguard is indispensable. Only a party, wielding the authority it has won, is capable of overcoming the vacillation of the masses themselves.” (The Moralists and Sycophants, p. 59) Such “vacillation” is expressed by democratic organisations. Unsurprisingly, Trotsky (echoing Lenin) explicitly argued that the "revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party" was "an objective necessity imposed upon us by the social realities -- the class struggle, the heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the necessity for a selected vanguard in order to assure the victory." This "dictatorship of a party" was essential and "we can not jump over this chapter" of human history. He stressed that the "revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution" and argued that "the party dictatorship" could not be replaced by "the 'dictatorship' of the whole toiling people without any party." This was because the "level of political development among the masses" was not "high" enough as "capitalism does not permit the material and the moral development of the masses." (Trotsky, Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4)

So much for “the class wielding power”! (H.1.2)

Anarchists are well aware that any libertarian socialist society will not be created overnight. (H.2.5) In fact, as AFAQ proves, we have always been at pains to stress that a social revolution would be difficult, facing both economic disruption and counter-revolution. As such, we know that “[d]uring the civil war, the Ukraine was far from a classless society, as the actions of the Makhnovists show.” That, in its own way, gives the game away. Yes, the Bolsheviks were fighting a civil war. The Makhnovists were fighting a revolution, not merely a civil war. So it looks like the old Stalinist argument from the Spanish Revolution of winning the civil war first, then having the revolution has an old heritage.

Yanowitz argues that the Makhnovists “had repeatedly declared overwhelming hostility to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and had nothing but vague platitudes to offer as a substitute.” Given that the Bolsheviks themselves equated the “dictatorship of the proletariat” with the dictatorship of the party by this time, this in itself suggests that Makhnovist “hostility” was understandable. This rather than “their utopian views prevented them from uniting with the workers’ state.” Equally, since when were soviet democracy, workers’ self-organisation and self-management, freedom of press, association and speech mere “vague platitudes”? How do you expect a socialist society to be created without the active participation of the working class and peasantry? How do you expect an economy not to break-down in the face of centralized bureaucratic ignorance? But then, Yanowitz seems unable to understand what “socialism from below” actually means:

“The Makhnovists were organized with an approach of anarchism from above as the peasant army would roll into a town and obliterate existing state structures before moving on.”

Presumably, the Makhnovists should have waited outside of the town leaving the workers to the tender mercies of the Whites until they had organized their own insurrection? What about solidarity? Equally, should the Makhnovists have allowed the White state structures to remain intact? Whatever happened to smashing the capitalist state? The lack of commonsense is staggering. And what was the Bolshevik (and, presumably, “socialism from below”) approach? Well, the Red Army would roll into a town and obliterate existing state structures. What happened next is what counts. Rather than impose, as the Bolsheviks did, a revolutionary committee to exercise power the Makhnovists called a soviet conference in order for working class people to start to manage their own affairs by means of their own organizations. Unlike under the Bolsheviks, all parties could publish their papers and their members could, and did, get elected to attend the congress. As Arshinov notes, the "only restriction that the Makhnovists considered necessary to impose on the Bolsheviks, the left Socialist-Revolutionaries and other statists was a prohibition on the formation of those 'revolutionary committees' which sought to impose a dictatorship over the people." (The History of the Makhnovist Movement pp. 153-4)

Now, how is this “anarchism from above”? With his, let me say, unique understanding of up and down, Yanowitz should not be put in charge of a lift never mind a powerful centralised state. That is the fundamental issue. (H.3.2 and H.3.3)As he states in his conclusion:

“But the strength required to fundamentally transform society and set it on new foundations cannot exist only among the enlightened few who ‘get it.’ Instead, it is found in the collective energy and self-activity of the working class. With their hand on the lever of production, only the working class can revolutionise society. The Russian experience demonstrates they will need a state when they do so—to defend their new gains.”

This is precisely what did not happen in Russia precisely because the Bolsheviks created a state! If it had, I’m sure that most anarchists would be Marxists now. Instead, Bakunin’s grim predictions of party rule became all too true (i.e., the “dictatorship of the proletariat” quickly became a dictatorship over the proletariat). (H.1.1) The working class was dispossessed of political, economic and social power by the Bolshevik government which implemented its vision of centralised state “socialism” rather than that, for example, of the factory committees ("On three occasions in the first months of Soviet power, the [factory] committees leaders sought to bring their model [of workers' self-management of the economy] into being. At each point the party leadership overruled them. The Bolshevik alternative was to vest both managerial and control powers in organs of the state which were subordinate to the central authorities, and formed by them." (Thomas F. Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, p. 38)). (H.3.13 and H.3.14)

That any future “socialist” revolution preceded over by Leninists will suffer the same fate can be seen by Yanowitz’s words: “when workers’ power next establishes itself, its wielders will have to put tremendous energy into helping workers in other countries in their project of self-emancipation.” That is, the working class will not be wielding "workers' power" but rather something else will -- namely the party.

Ignoring all the evidence that refutes him (including, ironically, some he mentions himself), Yanowitz states that “Makhno had . . . no generalized plan or vision for the future.” Needless to say, the Makhnovists, like anarchists, had a vision for the future and tried to implement it. They also recognised that the means shaped the ends. There is no point having a vision of the future if your current actions take you on a path which leads away from it. Anarchists do not seek perfection; simply that society is changing in ways which will make anarchy more likely rather than less. As Emma Goldman put it, she had not "come to Russia expecting to find Anarchism realised." Such idealism was alien to her (although that has not stopped Leninists saying the opposite). Rather, she expected to see "the beginnings of the social changes for which the Revolution had been fought." She was aware that revolutions were difficult, involving "destruction" and "violence." That Russia was not perfect was not the source of her opposition to Bolshevism. Rather, it was the fact that "the Russian people have been locked out" of their own revolution and that the Bolshevik state used "the sword and the gun to keep the people out." As a revolutionary she refused "to side with the master class, which in Russia is called the Communist Party." (My Disillusionment in Russia, p. xlvii and p. xlix) That was why she, like so many anarchists then and now, supported the Makhnovists.

Could the Makhnovists have won the civil war? Not on their own. That would have required similar movements in all parts of Russia and the Ukraine. What anarchists argue is that the principles which inspired the Makhnovists and which they tried their best to implement could have. They show that Bolshevik authoritarianism was not simply a product of “objective circumstances” as Leninists argue. Rather, Bolshevik ideology played a key role. Their vanguardism produced the ideological justification for party dictatorship once their popular support receded. (H.5) Their centralism dispossessed working class people from their own revolution and turned organs of popular self-management into marginalised talking shops within a state. Their vision of socialism as “merely state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people" (to use Lenin’s term) justified the elimination of the factory committees and workers’ control, so making the economic situation worse. (See the appendix on “How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?”). As Kropotkin summarised, “We are learning to know in Russia how not to introduce communism." (Anarchism, p. 254)

Ultimately, the logic in Yanowitz’s attack fails him. True, the Makhnovists did not live up to all their anarchist ideals but they did a remarkable job in difficult circumstances. The Bolsheviks did far worse in relation to theirs! Yet, for Marxists, the former must be pilloried far more than the latter. I can only surmise that this is because the Makhnovists, for all their faults, expose the authoritarian core of Bolshevism and show that libertarian alternatives were possible after all.

All I can do is sketch the real facts and sources of disagreement between anarchism and Marxism. I hope that those interested will seek the facts for themselves. As Peter Arshinov put it: “Proletarians of the world, look into the depths of your own beings, seek out the truth and realise it yourselves: you will find it nowhere else.” Hopefully, An Anarchist FAQ would be a good starting place for that journey.

The anarchist reply to Yanowitz includes this point towards the end.

"Ultimately, the logic in Yanowitz’s attack fails him. True, the Makhnovists did not live up to all their anarchist ideals but they did a remarkable job in difficult circumstances. The Bolsheviks did far worse in relation to theirs! Yet, for Marxists, the former must be pilloried far more than the latter. I can only surmise that this is because the Makhnovists, for all their faults, expose the authoritarian core of Bolshevism and show that libertarian alternatives were possible after all."

What this seems to miss is the evidence that Makhno's army was authoritarian and ran its own state regime, despite the ideal of peasant communes. As the Yanowitz article points out, this reflects the class interests of peasants squeezed between the landlords and the workers in a time of crisis and civil war.
The class difference is that the peasant commune is a utopia. It could only exist in a temporary backwater by an alliance with the landlords (as is pointed out the peasants who got their own land remained the majority) or concessions from the workers state. When the workers state no longer needed the unreliable and treacherous Makhno as an ally, it withdrew its concessions and the peasant commune collapsed.
The mistakes of the workers state are altogether different. As a workers dictatorship its class interests were to unite the poor peasants with the workers in a planned economy. It tolerated Makhno when his peasant state interests coincided with the defence of the soviet state, but rejected him when his interests came into conflict with the workers state. From the workers point of view Makhno and his anarchist state was part of the counter-revolution because the peasants put their class interest ahead of the interest of the survival of the soviet state. This was also true of the Kronstadt rebellion.
Ironically the peasant counter-revolution as a threat to the soviet state ceased when the NEP was introduced. This replaced the forced requisitions with a tax that encouraged peasants to profit from production in order to supply grain to the starving nation. But the cost of the NEP was the revival of capitalist social relations on the land in the 1920s and a growing influence of petty bourgeois elements in the Soviet state. It was the main material basis of the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy that caused the degeneration of the soviet state.

In other words, the only example of anarchism in practice during the period of the soviet state represented a counter-revolutionary opposition by a peasantry who refused to allow their production to be requisitioned to feed the starving workers.
Dressing this up as an alternative to the soviet state, independently of the problems, mistakes and excesses of that state, is by itself absurd.

Again, maybe we need to point — not to the Ukraine — but the idea of the state. Because the continued reference to the Ukraine and the how it's peasants reamaining autonomous from the 'worker's state' seem, in the last posts, to somehow repute anarchist ideas, and confirm Marxist ones. If anything, these arguments confirm suspicions of the nature of a marxist-leninist state, rather than support them.

The anarchist issue over the state is one of power. Even if the proletariat does seize political power (in a party sense), can the whole proletariat can actually exercise it. Bakunin raised the obvious questions:

"For, even from the standpoint of that urban proletariat who are supposed to reap the sole reward of the seizure of political power, surely it is obvious that this power will never be anything but a sham? It is bound to be impossible for a few thousand, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands of men to wield that power effectively. It will have to be exercised by proxy, which means entrusting it to a group of men elected to represent and govern them, which in turn will unfailingly return them to all the deceit and subservience of representative or bourgeois rule. After a brief flash of liberty or orgiastic revolution, the citizens of the new State will wake up slaves, puppets and victims of a new group of ambitious men."

He repeated this argument in Statism and Anarchy, where he asked "[w]hat does it mean, 'the proletariat raised to a governing class?' Will the entire proletariat head the government? The Germans number about 40 million. Will all 40 millions be members of the government? The entire nation will rule, but no one will be ruled. Then there will be no government, no state (anarchism); but if there is a state, there will also be those who are ruled, there will be slaves."

So, again, from a Marxist perspective, anyone or group that does not adhere to this idea of 'the worker's state', and choose to implement real socialism through their own means, become 'counter-revolutionary'. Our way or the highway, essential. Very democratic.

A quick note on other comments on the Ukraine:

a) popular malitias — such as in the Ukraine, and in the Spanish Civil War — can function perfectly based on the bottom-up methods of Federation. Of course, to acknowledge this would be acknowledging the validity of its method, so it somehow these popular militias becomes 'authoritarian' in it's critics eyes.

b) that they, and Kronstadt, put their 'class' interests before the 'soviet state'. Again look at the nature of that soviet state by 1920 — is it any wonder workers and peasants stayed clear of a system totally defunct? And as the Kronstadt workers proclaimed in their mannifesto — 'the soviet system no longer represents the will of the people'. The 'worker's state's reply: mass liqudation.

All these references to past events serve the one purpose of hiding behind history, without looking at the contradictions and weaknesses of the Marxist method that live on from those times. Anarchists refuted them in 1868 in the First International, and will again in 2008 — not through the history books, but through looking at Marxism itself: a centralised, dogmatic power structure hiding behind a veil of 'scientific realism'. After the repeated failure of this method, who now, is utopian.

Cheers

Jared D

Geez sorry about the terrible grammar, I should really read it over before I post it!

Jared D

There are none so blind as those who *will not* see.

As Leninism continues to spiral down the flushing toilet of history, anarchistic practices flourish in a variety of forms, many of them being practiced by people who would be surprised - even shocked - to hear the @ word used in connection with them. Transition Towns is an example that comes to mind, where both the planning and the work in done by self-managing groups at the grassroots. Not only do anarchists not need to impose their utopia on the working class by force, they don't even need to to have direct contact with people for practices compatible with their theory to flourish.

This is not because anarchist have posession of *the secret*, the perfect ideology coded into the very DNA of the working class. Rather it's because anarchist aspire to view themselves as a tendancy of the working class struggle, not it's leaders in waiting. They regularly revise their theory in response to the practical experiences of others in the class. Leninists, on the other hand, seem to have been preaching from the same bibles for a hundred years. They are like a less successful version of the hare krishnas, whose movement is only about 40 years old but is much bigger than all the mutally-antagonistic Leninist sects around the world put together.

As republicans tend to say about monarchists, for every one of them that dies, ten of us are born. Arguments like this are only useful in sharpening our critical claws for the real challenge of taking on the champions of the free market state in its various forms - the only kind that still stands to be smashed.

Oh and this discussion isn't really about the failure of socialism, or communism, or even marxism. It's specifically about the failure of marxist-leninism in its various flavours (maoist, trotskyist etc). Many situationists and autonomists consider themselves marxist, and even anarchists accept much of Marx's analysis of how capitalism works. They just reject his woefully under-developed strategies for opposing it, and the various revolutionary thalidomide babies that still cling to them as unquestionable truth.

Oh do fuck off Strypey, and leave the conversation to the adults. Go on and run back to the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, I hear you're standing for them in the elections this year? Some fucking anarchist...

Buddy, this discussion was going well until you came along and degraded yourself.

Leave it 'to the adults', or say something worthwhile.

Jared D

Yeah there is absolutely no point name calling because at worst these positions will remain totally entrenched and not open to argument. At best we can look at the evidence to try to see "what went wrong".
The anarchists blame the bolsheviks for usurping workers power and creating a top down state. The bolsheviks blame the anarchists for setting up their own petty bourgeois counter-states.
There has been a lot of serious discussion drawing on considerable evidence over the years. I'm sticking with the Marxist position because I don't see the Bolsheviks usurping the workers. Rather I see the counter-revolution overwhelming the revolution resulting in the smashing of workers democracy as well as the Bolsheviks.
To the argument that dictatorship is inherent in a workers state from the start I think the evidence shows that anarchists historically form states, as in the Ukraine, in Kronstadt (if it had succeeded it would have led to a white coup) and in Catalonia in the 1930s where the Anarchist leaders joined the bourgeois government.
I think the ball is in the Anarchist court to face up to the fact that you cannot take power and hold onto it without a centralised organisation i.e. a state.
A state by definition is a class dicatorship. So why do anarchists form bourgeois states in opposition to workers states?

Anarchists would argue, once again, the definition of 'the state', the nature of the state, or the key issue of power (ie who actually has power in a workers state). For to hold power in the sense of a Marxist one — no matter how sincere — is to reinforce unhealthy power systems, such as heirarchy, a chain-of-command structure, and centralised control. Again, the answer to these problems lie in federation — a way to ensure rank and file workers truley get to exercise direct democracy.

To point to counter-revolutions as the reason Bolshevism failed ignores the simple fact that a 'dictatorship', no matter in who's name, is still a dictatorship:

"For, even from the standpoint of that urban proletariat who are supposed to reap the sole reward of the seizure of political power, surely it is obvious that this power will never be anything but a sham? It is bound to be impossible for a few thousand, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands of men to wield that power effectively. It will have to be exercised by proxy, which means entrusting it to a group of men elected to represent and govern them, which in turn will unfailingly return them to all the deceit and subservience of representative or bourgeois rule. After a brief flash of liberty or orgiastic revolution, the citizens of the new State will wake up slaves, puppets and victims of a new group of ambitious men." Bakunin.

It also ignores time — as the Bolsheviks were consolidating their power and suppressing dissent BEFORE the civil war. And again, to call Ukraine a state ignores the collectivism/federalism that actually took place. You wouldn't join a capitalist/oppresive state willingly — as it goes against your principles. For those in the Ukraine, the choice was the same — a centralised state or real, workers autonomy.

Spain is an entirely different ball game — and yes, the CNT delegates went against anarchist principles and joined a popular committe (which, I might add, included the Communist Party). This is no fault of anarchism as a theory, but again, of bad decisions made in the heat of the moment. I might add, that this in no way reflects the other areas of Spain such as Aragon, which ran production and consumption highly succesfully using libertarian communist methods (far better than the ones imposed by the Bolsheviks in Russia).

The ball is in our court, and that's great, because it means people will realise that anarchists — far from organising bourgeois states — work to achieve total, direct emancipation for workers, and help put control over economic means of production in the people's hands — based on bottom-up federation, mutual aid, solidarity and direct democracy. After the failure of past methods, such as Marxist-Leninism, anarchism points the way forward, rather than dwelling on situations of the past.

Cheers,

Jared D