This article is a short summary of the revolution in the Ukraine, written to be introductory. It was first published on Red Black Notes in 2020. 

I highly recommend reading the Anarchist FAQ section on the Russian and Ukrainian revolutions, which deals with the topic in more depth.

Maria Nikiforova, founder of the Black Guards in the Ukraine, who also helped establish the first Soviets in the Ekaterinoslav region.

The revolution in the Ukraine of 1917 to 1921 is an understudied period of history. While the Bolsheviks consolidated their bureaucratic grip over the workers of Russia, another model of socialism was experimented with in the Ukraine. While largely influenced by anarchism, socialists from many parties struggled alongside workers and peasants to find a more libertarian direction, where self-management and organisation meant a chance at actual socialism from below. Anarchists would build a national federation to co-ordinate their political and cultural efforts, and they would also be instrumental in forming the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine. Often known as the “Makhnovists”, the movement’s nickname derived from Nestor Makhno. A union organiser during 1917, by 1919 he would become an important partisan and commander in the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine (RIAU) during the revolution. The insurgents would fight alongside the Bolsheviks against counter-revolutionaries, then against the Bolsheviks as the regime degenerated. They would even attempt to aid the workers’ uprising during the Kronstadt rebellion.

Anarchists in the Ukraine

Compared to anarchism in Russia, the anarchist movement through the late 1800’s and early 1900s had much deeper roots in the Ukraine. Cities such as Odessa and Kiev had large and active anarchist presence. The anarchists made up the leadership of a number of large unions, including the metalworkers, bakers, shoemakers, woodworkers and millers. Anarcho-syndicalists in particular had a large base amongst the Donbass miners. According to the diaries of the anarchist Gorelik ‘Workers demonstrations of up to 80,000 people would often be led by a procession of black flags’ (Skirda, 2004). In the more rural areas, smaller anarcho-communist groups proliferated. Thought not yet formed into a national organisation, rural groups would form larger regional federations. The anarchist movement was largely influenced by the writings of the Russian anarchists Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin.

During the 1917 period of the Russian revolution, anarchists would establish ‘Black Guards.’ (Makhno, 2007) These were armed groups that were the equivalent of the revolutionary ‘Red Guards’ in Russia. Based on village, union and factory, they would defend workers from hostile forces, protect strikes, expropriate funds, etc. The first Black Guards in the Ukraine were established by the anarchist militant Maria Nikiforova in the city Alexandrovsk, soon to be followed by Odessa, Nikolaev, Kamensk, Nikopol, and others. (Shubin, 2010). Maria’s Black Guards joined forces with the Bolsheviks to overthrow the local bourgeois government and establish workers Soviets. Anarchists from the Guilay-Polye region mobilised in assistance. The early Soviets of Left-Bank Ukraine were dominated by Bolsheviks, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Anarchists. However when the Bolsheviks government in Russia signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty the Ukraine was overrun by German military occupation. The basis of the Black Guards partisan resistance would form into the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine.

In November 1918, an initial conference was called to organise a ‘National Confederation of Anarchist Organisations of the Ukraine.’ This federation became known as the “Nabat!” (meaning Alarm) and was officially formed at the second conference, in April 1919. The Nabat had its headquarters in Kharkiv. In Ekaterinoslav its regional offices were in the same building and on the same floor as the Bolshevik headquarters. The Nabat was the first national anarchist federation to operate during a revolutionary period, and its chair, the intellectual Voline, wrote a mammoth history of the Russian revolution; “The Unknown Revolution.” Many of the organisers of the Nabat were anarchists who had fled Russia due to Bolshevik persecution, and anarchists returned from as far abroad as England and the United States to participate (Skirda, 2004). The Nabat had branches in nearly every city in the South East of the Ukraine. (Avrich, 1973)

Throughout the revolutionary period in Ukraine, anarchists had two main focuses: developing the ‘free soviets’ alongside trade unions and co-operatives; and the defense of the revolution, through the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine.

The Free Soviets

As in Russia, the Ukrainian workers and peasants used the same model for the new organisation of society, the Soviet. These Soviets were based upon unions, workplace committees, farm-labourers committees and mass assemblies, usually drawn along the geographical lines of townships. The Ukrainian revolution was more rurally based than in Russia, however it’s rural proletariat were relatively well developed, and though poor, the Ukrainian peasantry were often more educated than its Russian counterpart (Shubin, 2010).

The anarchists believed the Soviets really should represent the interests of the workers and peasants, rather than operate as rubber stamps for the Party or bureaucracy. Hence the term ‘Free Soviets’. The first congress of Free Soviets occurred on the 25th of September, 1917, in the local Guilay-Polye district. After this first smaller local congress, there were larger congresses representing many regions of Ukraine.

Despite the initial retreat from revolution following the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, with liberation from German occupation by the RIAU, workers, peasants and revolutionaries began to organise new Soviets. Between the 23rd of January and the 20th of October 1919 there were four major congresses. The congresses made plans for dividing and collectivising land and agriculture, dealt with economic questions, and defense of the territory. Each congress elected a Revolutionary Military Soviet, whose role it was to administer the decisions of the congress between conventions. Theoretically this soviet had authority over the RIAU, although the realities of war made this difficult. The civilian congress could however overrule the military organisation. (Malet, 1982) The makeup of the Soviet represented workers, peasants, soldiers and the revolutionary parties. Dissident Bolsheviks participated in many roles in the Ukrainian revolution, until ordered by higher party bodies to withdraw. During the military collapse of 1920 the RMS was dissolved and replaced by another Soviet elected from the RIAU. It had seven members, including Left SRs.

The peak of the Soviet experiment was at the third congress on 10th April, 1919 in Aleksandrovsk. Over 2 million workers and peasants were represented, with delegates from 72 regions. There were another two congresses planned, but both were cancelled by Bolshevik oppression. The Bolsheviks were not willing to tolerate an experiment with workers’ control that they did not have a monopoly over. As the historian Malet puts it,

“No government can long tolerate an independent or autonomous area within its borders, and of none is this more true than a highly centralised authoritarian state such as that headed by Lenin. There was no room even for mild concessions to federalism, especially where areas of vital strategic importance were concerned.”

Bolshevik suppression would be ruthless. A congress was set for 15th of June, 1919 but made illegal by Trotsky under punishment of death. The last attempt at a free congress was due in early 1920, but the Red Army had over-run the majority of the Free Territory by this time. All independent workers and peasant organisations were banned.

The Insurgent Army

The RIAU’s infamous armoured train, “The Terrible.”

The other key organisation that anarchists participated in was the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine. The Insurgent Army was formed in 1919 by bringing together several guerrilla partisan bands operating in the Ekaterinoslav region. The first to join forces were the units under the command of Nestor Makhno and Fedir Shchus, just outside the village of Bolshe-Mikhailova. When the town was liberated from German-Austrian occupation the peasants of the liberated town gave the movement the nickname “Makhnovist” (Makhno, 2011). After bringing together numerous partisan groups that had grown out of the Black Guards movement, a more formal military apparatus was formed.

In contrast to the supposedly spontaneous nature of the organisation, the reality is the Nabat had put forward theories of partisan warfare for the defense of revolution. The anarchists were extremely aware that any armed body seperate to the population had the potential to become a new ruling force over the working class. As the Nabat Youth put it ‘No… Red Army… can be the genuine defender of the social revolution. By its very nature every such army must… become a reactionary force and threat to the revolution.’ (Avrich, 1973) The defense of the revolution rested on the people themselves in arms. The anarchists also understood that unless the revolution spread internationally, it could not succeed.  

The RIAU kept a number of principles that had disappeared quickly in the Red Army. Officers were elected and subject to recall. This included the highest levels of command. During ‘peace times’ partisans, including officers, were expected to return to their communities and workplaces. True to the anarchist conceptions of leadership, even officers must fight on the frontline. Makhno was famously shot in the neck and the legs, commanders like Schuss would die in combat against the nationalist armies and Dmitry Popov (a Left-SR) would be executed by the Bolsheviks.

The RIAU had a newspaper ‘The Road to Freedom’, and a cultural section that concentrated on educating partisans. They also worked to establish schools in the territory they liberated. (Shubin, 2010) The cultural section would be largely staffed by members of the Nabat and the Left-SR party.

The RIAU would reach a peak of roughly 40,000 members and defend a territory of several million inhabitants (Skirda, 2004). The RIAU made two military alliances with the Bolsheviks, and together they fought against counter-revolutionary forces. Both of these alliances were betrayed by the Reds when the Bolsheviks felt they had the upper hand. The most despicable betrayal was on the 26th November, 1920. RIAU commanders were invited to a joint congress with the leadership of the Red Army. Unbeknownst to them, it was a trap planned by Trotsky himself. When they arrived, they were surrounded and most executed on the spot. The victims included Simon Karetnik, who was at the time in command of the RIAU. (Azarov, 2008).

The RIAU would continue the fight for free socialism into 1921. During the Kronstadt revolt, the RIAU even attempted to get supplies to the revolutionaries. Unfortunately, due to the short timeframe of the revolt, the uprising would be over before meaningful aid could be supplied. When the RIAU was eventually destroyed by the Red Army the survivors fled the country, most ending up in France. Underground resistance by partisans reportedly continued into the 1930s (Azarov, 2008).

Key achievements of the RIAU would include the breaking of Denikins advance on Moscow, thus saving the Russian revolution itself. Joining the defeat of Wrangle, and helping maintain political freedom in Ukraine so the experiment in self-managed socialism could go on.

Conclusion

The Ukrainian revolution is important for libertarians as it was the first time anarchist leadership had significant influence on a revolutionary process. The revolutionaries involved learnt many lessons that would have ramifications for the development of the anarchist movement. For example, without a committed, formalised national organisation, the Ukranian anarchist movement would have been rendered as ineffective as its Russian counterpart. The anarchists came to understand how important it was to live and struggle alongside the masses. It was the reflection on the Ukrainian experience that led some of the anarchists involved to write The Platform years later. Ukrainian revolutionaries would go on to contribute to the Spanish revolution and the fight against fascism.

Most importantly though, while limited by concrete circumstances, the anarchists would prove that alternatives were available to the choices the Bolsheviks made. The complicated relationship between the workers and peasants’ economic organisations, the political organisation of the anarchists and the partisan army are worthy of deep analysis. Hardly idealistic dreamers, the actions of the Ukranian anarchists attempted to bring together the workers and peasants of the Ukraine and encourage them towards the creation of a society free from capitalism and state. They were aware that socialism could not be imposed, only achieved by the self-directed struggle of the workers.

References
Skirda, A. (2004). Nestor Makhno – Anarchy’s Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917-1921. AK Press.
Shubin, A. (2010) ‘The Makhnovist Movement and the National Question in the Ukraine’. Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870-1940. BRILL.
Makhno, N. (2009). Under The Blows of Counter Revolution. Edmonton: Black Cat Press.  
Makhno, N. (2007). The Russian Revolution in the Ukraine. Edmonton: Black Cat Press.
Makhno, N. (2011). The Ukranian Revolution. Edmonton: Black Cat Press.
Avrich, P. (1973). Anarchists in the Russian Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell.
Malet, M. (1982). Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War. The Macmillan Press Ltd.
Azarov, V. (2008). Kontrrazvedka: The Story of the Makhnovist Intelligence Service. Edmonton: Black Cat Press.

Agustín Guillamóns latest translated work “Insurrection; The Bloody Events of May 1937 in Barcelona” is a brilliant political history of the Stalinist and collaborationist-anarchist Counter-Revolution in Spain, and the last gasp of the proletarian rank-and-file resistance to it.

Originally published in Spanish in 2017, AK Press published the english translation in 2020. Insurrection is actually number three of four books detailing the Spanish revolution - plus supplementary texts on the Friends of Durruti and the Stalinists. (Ready for Revolution; The CNT Defense Committees in Barcelona should be required reading for anyone serious about not only the Spanish Civil War, but anyone interested in working class revolution.) In Guillamons typical style, Insurrection lets the protagonists tell the story themselves through a chronology established with the extensive use of minutes, letters and quotes. The author annotates the events with the occasional political reflection, though these are largely saved for the conclusions. By using access to sources rarely touched by other historians of the Spanish revolution Guillamon makes space for unique reflections. For example he quotes often from Jacob Prince’s letters home to the Argentine Federation of Anarchist Communists, illustrating the international dimensions of the debates within the anarchist camp. The book is also supplemented by a large amount of archival material and interviews. It includes an extensive interview with Jose Quesada Suarez of the Bolshevik-Leninist Section (the 4th International Group in Spain). Such interviews provide unique insights into often ignored aspects of the struggle - they also help dismiss popular myths - there is a commonly repeated claim from some Trotskyists camps that Durruti himself, and then the Friends of Durruti were influenced by Trotsky and his followers. It’s blatantly obvious this is a purely invented myth.

It should be noted that Guillamon is not an anarchist - he is a Marxist - but he is not easily defined within the closed borders of the typical camps. In the introduction he states; “Workers striving to discover their own history is but one of the many battles being fought in the class war. It is not a matter of mere theory, nor is it abstract and banal, because it is part and parcel of class consciousness itself and can be classified as a theorization of the world proletariat’s experiences. In Spain, it must, necessarily, embrace, digest and take ownership of the anarcho-syndicalist movements.” To Guillamon, what matters is tracing the revolutionary element in the proletariat, analysing the circumstances and the choices that were made.

New heroes emerge from the history presented in Insurrection. We all know the beautiful quotes of our heros like Durruti, of the martyrs like Ascaso and Berneri, or the betrayals of figures like Garcia Oliver and Federica Monsteny. Even the journalist Jamie Balius - the figurehead and intellectual of the Friends of Durruti is a name relatively repeated. However it is figures like Julian Merino, Pablo Ruiz and Josep Rebull who emerge as the unknown intransigent revolutionaries of Spain. Merino led the Barcelona FAI and Defense Committees to plan for the May Insurrection, to pass motions at a plenum damning the CNT-FAI national leadership. That same plenum, at Merinos insistence, established a secret revolutionary committee planning to overthrow the Generalidad in Barcelona with the POUM. Ruiz was from the ‘Renancer’ affinity group alongside Balius - the history of these revolutionaries is often sidelined compared to the 'Nostros’ affinity group - but it shouldn’t be. Ruiz, alongside Balius, led the crystallisation of the anti-collaborationist elements inside the CNT. Josep Rebull is another forgotten name. He was from the left wing of the POUM and fought on the frontlines amongst the militias. Rebull argued for a position inside the POUM that wanted to establish “Workers Councils” (Soviets) with the CNT-FAI. He worked with the genuine anarchist revolutionaries in the CNT-FAI, and had a hand in the idea of the secret Revolutionary Committee.

Insurrection also brings to light many anecdotes of general proletarian resistance to collaboration. Some that stuck with me; the first is a defense committee in the northern barrios of Barcelona threatening to shoot a collaborationist minister if he came into their territory. The second, during the insurrection Italian anarchists stationed in the Spartacus barracks ignored orders to stay put and instead stole tanks, parked them outside of the Karl Marx barracks and shelled any Stalinists attempting to join in the street fighting. Even as the fighting wound up the Italians continued patrolling the streets in their commandeered tanks attempting to provoke the insurrection into revolution. The Italians seemingly had a much clearer understanding of what was at stake in Collaboration. Though the book doesn’t touch much on economics, there is a beautiful anecdote about the Woodworkers Union and how they re-organised their industry, attempting to overcome inefficient production and illustrating that they had an extremely clear understanding of the danger of ‘Trade Union Capitalism.’ The Barcelona Woodworkers Union represented the highpoint of Syndicalist revolution. Finally, I can’t shake the image of POUM activists forced to sell their papers while carrying rifles and wearing helmets for protection - even before the Insurrection! The scapegoating of these Marxists was one of the most criminal acts in the Republican camp.

Guillamon also does well to highlight the depths of Stalinist betrayal; first and foremost the way their minister Commorea defended the free market and in fact, used it to destroy the provisioning established by the CNT’s defense committees. By undermining the Barcelona proletariats’ access to secure, free foodstuff they were sent scrambling back to more everyday concerns - less time for politics means less time to fight counter-revolution. Guillamón has an entire book on the “Bread Wars” dedicated to how insidious this PSUC strategy was. Add to this the murders, provocation, and even the deliberate aerial bombing of CNT militias on the frontline and you are left with nothing but rage over the actions of these fake revolutionaries.

The only criticisms I would level at the book are that at times the minutia and over-use of minutes can become a bit tedious, dragging on what is otherwise a rush of dramatic events. Secondly, though perhaps this would have made things more tedious - for a Marxist work Guillamon doesn’t look too deeply at political economy or international events in the book. While it might be hard to situate Barcelona in the global economy and political situation without risking being bogged down, more information may have gone some way to clarification.

Overall, Guillamon does an excellent job of rescuing the revolutionary elements of the CNT-FAI and the POUM, adding depth and nuance to debate about a revolutionary sequence that is often as weak as it is cliche. His conclusions will be uncomfortable for both anarchists and Bolsheviks - anarchist theory failed to comprehend the revolution as it unfolded or what to do, in contrast the Leninist model is inappropriate nor would have it appealed to the Spanish proletariat. Insurrection is an excellent book, and I would recommend Guillamóns works over those of almost all other historians of the Spanish revolution (it’s well past nigh time to retire Felix Morrow). Insurrection opens with a quote - “Historical memory is a theatre of the Class Struggle”, and Guillamón is one of its most consistent revolutionaries.

*Strategy of the Urban Guerrilla, Chapter IV pg-68-72

In urban warfare, unless all of a town has taken up arms, small military endeavours should not be undertaken to seize posts, arsenals or other large objectives. It is better to draw out the revolutionary spirit of the people with small and repeated military actions until they willingly enter into battle, or rather until there are no neutral parties in the revolutionary war.

Battles as in Stalingrad or “El Alamein” are typical of powerful national armies or coalitions of national armies. A revolutionary who acts as commander-in-chief of an insurgent town will never enter into a large battle such as the uprising of Warsaw against Hitlers troops, just to become the military objective of the heavy artillery of the enemy. Such strategy, typical of bureaucratic generals, will always lead to the defeat of the insurgents. 

Homeric battles such as that of the Commune of Paris in 1871 should not place within the city. Actions should consist of numerous small conflicts both in and out of the city which slowly corrode the enemy, stripping him of his ability to unite his forces. Entering into a large urban battle, confronting the Yanqui power combined with its sepoyan followers, is more like a surrender than a genuine revolutionary strategy. In 1965 the Vietnamese NLF had blockaded more than fifty cities, disconnecting them from their rural source of supplies. However, this did not entirely liberate the cities since it contributed to the North American bombing of them and led to conventional warfare.

A revolutionary commander should not be subject to the myths of the classic strategy, in which all else is secondary to the conquest of space. In the case of the revolutionary, the fundamental strategic objective is not space. The positive force is the will of the people. Consequently, it is not necessary to hold a position upon which the enemy can exert its power in three dimensions (air, land and sea) or a fourth dimension (atomic weapons, including nuclear warheads). When the enemy realises that, because of the cost, the atomic bomb cannot be used to kill an ant, when its heavy artillery and its great concentration of troops fail to produce results, the revolutionary soldiers will liberate the cities. Meanwhile, guerrilla warfare is necessary, even taking many troops from the cities to the countryside in order to revolutionise them.

“A revolutionary commander should not be subject to the myths of the classic strategy, in which all else is secondary to the conquest of space. In the case of the revolutionary, the fundamental strategic objective is not space. The positive force is the will of the people.“

The strategic error of Colonel Caamaño in the rebellion of Santo Domingo in 1965 was based on the following factors. During the first and second day of his coup d’état he should have rushed to defeat the internal enemy. However, after three days the North American Marines landed and changed the allegiance of powers in a way unfavourable to Caamaño. He should have sent a part of his troops quickly to the interior of the country. In this many the Americans would not have been able to surround them in the small perimeter of the city. If the followers of Caamaño had controlled the interior of the country, the Yanquis would have had to negotiate with them or else embark on a prolonged revolutionary war such as in Vietnam. The US was not morally and politically prepared for such a war, lacking the support of the Latin American masses, who were solidly behind Caamaño, not to mention lack of support from its own citizens.

A revolutionary command that does not fall into strategic mistakes must conduct itself as in Madrid (1936) or Petrograd (1917), provided that the people in the streets and the military establishment is in a state of disorder. To give up the taking of a city when no military resistance is found would be absurd and against the basic rules of strategy. Once the city is taken over, it must be defended against enemy attack by moving parts of its population to the countryside. A different strategy is required by the people in the event of foreign intervention. If the invader should attempt the capture of a city, that action must be repelled not by defending one firm, strong position, but rather by going into light guerrilla formations and inflicting persistent casualties to the invaders through evening attacks or by daylight ambushes wherever the terrain allows. But it is most important to preserve the morale of the people. When confronting an enemy equipped with superior arms and forces, revolutionary warfare must not concentrate the defense of one position.

With the fall of the Paris Commune, the victorious enemy appropriated 400, 000 rifles and approximately 1,500 pieces of artillery. Had that material been well distributed in the interior as well as in Paris, the Commune could have destroyed the forces of Versailles. That is how the Paris Commune failed in its strategy and in its politics of coordination of the peasant forces and other provincial communes. The alliance of workers and peasants is fundamental to the revolution. The peasants must accept the aid of the urban labourer to assure him the land; to attempt to gain it on his own is to remain in the condition of a pariah. The urban labourer needs the peasant to upset communications, to sabotage and harass the enemy. The peasant must be part of a territorial organisation, regional or provincial paramilitary group and unit of self-defense, working during the day and fighting at night. The secret of revolutionary victory lies in the unity of country and city under the same strategic direction in the revolutionary war. This war must not be fought only in the countryside nor must it be fought only in the city. Each must complement the other. Victory will not result from urban strategies as in Warsaw, nor will it be a product of classic peasant fighting dispersed and disconnected between regions. On the contrary, both countryside and city must be unified under the same military command and one commander-in-chief.

Sub Section 2. Strategy and the Urban Population – from Estrategia de la Guerrilla Urbana 1969 & Desafio al Pentagono 1969.

Each System of production has its own law of population: slavery distributed population between the cities and the country; feudalism polarized the masses around the castles; capitalism has concentrated the population in the industrial cities at the expense of a decrease in the population in the country. Wherever capital centralises and accumulates, there are its servants: the workers bound to wage-labour.

In the great industrial centers there is a great human mass ruled by the tyranny of private capital. There are active workers, retired ones, unemployed workers, employees and a wide variety of sub-proletarians and middle strata. Private capital concentrates and accumulates the direct products of thousands of craftsmen, labourers, peasants and other victims of capitalist production.

And in this way each day there are fewer capitalists, who nevertheless are more powerful. The great monopolizing enterprises have arisen from the liquidation of many small capitalists who could not stand up under the law of competition in the market. It is implicit the centration of a vast proletariat. The bourgeoise is thus preparing its own undertakers: the proletarians dispossessed of their means of production.

The great urban complexes of London, New York, Amsterdam, and others have concentrated enormous masses of proletarians under the regional or urban polarization of the capital. All of these economic and demographic regional complexes have been poorly studied from the economic, demographic and strategic viewpoints.

If 70% of a countrys population is urban, the demography and the economy must dictate the specific rules of the strategy of revolutionary combat. The center of operations should never be in the mountains or the villages, but in the largest cities where the population suffices to form the army of the revolution. In such cases, the countryside must support the actions of the urban guerrillas through its clandestine local militias (groups of self-defense), who work during the day and fight at night, encouraged by a program of agrarian reform that gives the land to those who cultivate it.

Some of the urban centers in the underdeveloped countries such as Buenos Aires and Montevideo have respectively more than 30 percent and 50 percent of the total population of the country. The capitals of these countries including their sub-urban zones constitute a sea of houses which extends for miles. But in the interior of the country the population of the ranches consists more of animals than of men. There are fewer inhabitants per square mile than there were in the Middle Ages in Europe. The great cattle ranges have contrubited to transferring population from the countryside to the slums of the city. At the same time, capitalist monopoly concentrates the workers in the cities, extracting them from the marginal population of the countryside. Strategically, the case of a popular revolution in a country in which the highest percentage of the population is urban, the center of operations of the revolutionary war should be in the city. Operations should consist of scattered surprise attacks by quick and mobile units superior in arms and numbers at designated points, but avoiding barricades in order not to attract the enemys attention at one place. The units will then attack wit the greatest part of their strength the enemys least fortified or weakest links in the city.

In those countries with more than 50 percent urban population (72 percent in Argentina and 84 percent in Uruguay), the revolutionary battle should preferably be not in the mountains and countryside but in the urban areas. For the revolutions potential is where the population is. In the provinces without a dense population there are possibilities of creating hundreds of incidents in order to attract a part of the enemy troops (the more the better) through hundreds of separate guerrilla actions. Thus when the enemy is dispersed throughout the country, it is conquered by the concentration of the revolutionary army upon the cities, the rearguard of the revolution. To achieve victory over a powerful army that is hated by the population, it is necessary to scatter it, attracting it here and there, defeating it in small battles in a suitable field for the urban guerrillas, until the population turns against it and more and more people join the army of liberation, regional echelons and groups of self-defense (local guerrillas).

“To achieve victory over a powerful army that is hated by the population, it is necessary to scatter it, attracting it here and there, defeating it in small battles in a suitable field for the urban guerrillas, until the population turns against it and more and more people join the army of liberation…”

Each system of production contains its law of the social division of labour, which allocates in time and space the means of production and the population. The city regularly produces machinery and other goods for the countryside, receiving food and raw materials in return. If the rural guerrillas interrupt the communications between city and countryside by means of nocturnal sabotage, food and raw materials will not flow normally into the city. It is the purpose of this strategy to shatter the functioning of the law of the division of labour, the exchange between countryside and city. The city without food is a disintegrating world. The countryside, however, can subsist for a longer period of time without manufactured goods from the cities. Consequently, not even in those countries with a high percentage of urban population is an effective strategy possible without including the countryside. Cooperation between the labourer and peasant is essential to the revolution.

In those countries with a high percentage of urban population in which the economic system is concentrated upon one, two or three cities, revolutionary warfare must be preferably be urban, without excluding the cooperation of the rural militias, whose job it is to attract part of the urban military forces in order to preserve the initiative of the army of liberation…

…Buenos Aires represents approximately 70 percent of the wealth, the consumption of energy, the transportation, the industry, the commercial and in general the greater par of the argentine economy. Santiago de Chile, Lima, Rio de Janiero, Mexio City, Bogota, and other Latin American Capitals do not have the concentrated economic power of Buenos Aires and Montevideo… Revolutionary Warfare is preferably rural in Brazil, although it has its center of operations in the cities of the River Plate. Brazil is a country in which the war must be conducted against an enormous mass of counterrevolutionary troops, while Uruguay and Argentina must undertake prolonged urban warfare based on many small military victories which together will render the final victory.

* * *

When a country is integrated by the great regional industrial complexes or by a great capital city and its suburbs with little rural population, it would be poor strategy to carry the epi-center of the revolutionary conflict to the countryside as the peasants did in the Middle Ages. Strategy is not created by geniuses or by generals, but by the development of the productive forces, the logic of events and the weight of history.

“Strategy is not created by geniuses or by generals, but by the development of the productive forces, the logic of events and the weight of history.“

If the urban masses find themselves without work, and are discontent, it is not a question of encouraging them to demonstrate in the streets just to be trampled by the horses of the police. They should be places in guerrilla units which strike unexpectedly here and there with the superiority of arms and number in order to disarm the agents of authority who have been dispersed. In this way the liberation army grows as the repressive army diminishes… Disarming one enemy agent is worth far more than temporarily stopping thousands of them by a barricade, risking a total loss of materials, ammunition and men. Slight damage to the enemy is better than making him run. The damage can be inflicted persistently until a giant surrenders to a dwarf. Goliath was defeated by David not by strength but by cunning and skill: the giant trusted in the strength of his arms, but David’s sling killed him from a distance simply because the giant blindly trusted in his own victory.

* * *

For a politics of the people to be effective under conditions of a pretorian dictatorship it is necessary to resort to an urban strategy that upsets the political apparatus, replying to violence with violence. But for a small armed minority to endure in the struggle against despotism it must lead a consistently clandestine existence with the support of a favourable population in the neighbourhoods where the police and the army will be misinformed and harassed from all sides. Nonetheless, some of the urban guerrillas will have to be situated in bourgeois or petty-bourgeois neighbourhoods, but on the condition that they live separately rather than together. The basic strategical principle of the guerrillas has to be: live separately and fight together in order to elude police repression. Under no circumstances should the urban guerrilla ever leave a suburb densely populated with houses and reside several months in a house outside the city where he is easily identifiable. If he does not wish to expose himself to detention early or late, the urban guerrilla will have to remain, like  fish in the water, within a favourable urban milieu. And in order to endure he will have to change his domicile constantly, never settling in a given place.

In a large city where there are a hundred guerrilla cells of give persons living separately and fighting together, the police will be unable to control matters; it will have to cede terrain, especially at night, in unfavourable population zones where no policemen dare appear separately or in small groups. If at night the city belongs to the guerrilla and, in part, to the police by day, then in the end the war will be won by whoever endures the longest. The guerrilla will be able to endure if he can count on the support from the great majority of the people, anxious to shake off the yoke of a repressive, bloody, treasonable and self-colonizing dictatorship of an already oppressed country.

There is a strategical law that no guerrilla army must fail to recognise: the strength of a fighting unit is the product of its firepower and mobility. These factors are inversely proportional: a guerrilla advances rapidly with light arms, slowly with heavy ones, but utilising grenades, machine guns, rifles with small-bore bullets and a few bazookas, a guerrilla has, at one and the same time, the advantages of an infantry endowed with artillery.

On Revolutionary Discipline

Nestor Makhno

Pictured; The Revolutionary Military Soviet of the RIAU.

The following (very) short piece was written by Makhno in December 1925 and published in Dyelo Truda (Workers Cause), a Russian language anarchist magazine published in France.

In Makhnos typical style it is a no nonsense calling out of the erratic, incoherent nature of the common ‘practice’ of anarchism that is far more influenced by liberal and bourgeois ideas than revolutionary practicality.

For context; Makhno was born of a peasant family, had been a long time member of the Guilay Polye Anarcho-Communist Group, was a foundry worker, union leader, chairman of a local soviet, and spent many years in jail for revolutionary activity. But is most famously known as partisan fighter and commander in the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine.

The influence of anarchists in the development in the Ukrainian struggle, as compared to the Russian is not insignificant. In many cities the Anarchists were the most popular political force. For example, in the Ekaterinoslav Province the 'Nabat’ (The Ukranian Anarchist Federation) even shared the same building as the Bolsheviks, with their offices next door. Perhaps one key to the influence of the Anarchists in the Ukraine is they had overcome one of the key theoretical weaknesses of the broader movement - they had already seen the need for a specifically anarchist organisation to influence events and co-ordinate efforts.

The Nabat was to play a significant role in the Ukraine, helping co-ordinate unions, the building of schools and hosptials, and running in conjunction with Maximalists and Left SRs the cultural section of the RIAU. However, the Nabat was what we would now call a 'synthesist’ organisation, meaning libertarians of disparate tendencies tried to co-operate in the one political organisation. This is probably even less coherent than having Trotsyists and dedicated 'Stalinists’ in the same party, and was to have severe limitations. It was in reaction to this political quagmire and general ineffectiveness of the broader Russian anarchist movement that Makhno, Arshinov and Ida Mett wrote 'The Platform’, in an attempt to theoretically clarify the mistakes they had seen. Part of that obviously, to someone as dedicated a revolutionary as Makhno, who wore the scars of a revolution, (his nurse in the 1930s described his body as 'a cocoon of scar tissue’) was to address questions of what makes for genuine revolutionary activity, and not just revolutionary posturing.

None of the issues addressed by Makhno, Arshinov and Mett have been fully answered today, though certain Platformist and Especifist currents around the world have made significant developments.

In a personal capacity, I would add that I feel the concept (or lack thereof) of revolutionary discipline is a plague upon the house of anarchism. In Australia today, anarchism does not play even a minor role. It is utterly insignificant. The ghosts of past political and theoretical mistakes still haunt us. Individualism, lifestyle politics and immature 'insurrectionism’ predominate rather than the tendencies which have had actual historical significance (anarcho-communism and syndicalist strategy). I don’t claim to be above this and in my time in anarchist organisations have made grave mistakes in the lack of discipline. I would also reflect that the broader milieu rubs off on any individual who has coherent politics, and that organisations who attempt to build something serious can be dragged down by the complaints of individuals and the general swamp of the 'anarchist scene’ with no stake in organisation.

That our society is at once so individualised and that the majority of libertarian organisations draw their membership from universities (students lives are in direct contrast to the working class whos responsibilities and life being disciplined by the demands of capital make inherently for a much more serious and practical revolutionary politics) is not insignificant either. The material realities of society dictate what is possible, and shape the implementation of our ideas. However organisation and depth of theory and practice can overcome something of this shortcoming.

Breaking through this barrier will be an uphill battle, but escaping from anarchisms ghettoised form and restoring the social vector of anarchism will mean addressing the practical needs of Australias exploited classes. In turn this will help us move back towards effective conceptions of anarchist revolution and organisation.

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“Some comrades have put the following question to me: how do I perceive revolutionary discipline? Let me answer that.

I take revolutionary discipline to mean the self-discipline of the individual, set in the context of a strictly prescribed collective activity equally incumbent upon all. This should be the responsible policy line of the members of that collective, leading to strict congruence between practice and theory.

Without discipline inside the organisation, there is no way of undertaking any consequential revolutionary activity at all. In the absence of discipline, the Revolutionary vanguard [note: 'Vanguard’ was a commonly used term by anarchists in this period, it has different theoretical connotations in anarchism to Leninism] cannot exist, for in that case it would find itself in utter disarray in its practice and would be incapable of identifying the tasks of the moment or of living up to the initiator role the masses expect of it.

I envisage this question against the backdrop of observation and experience of consistent revolutionary practice. For my part, I take as my basis the experience of the Russian revolution, which bore within it a content that was essentially libertarian in many respects.

Had anarchists been closely connected in organisational terms and had they in their actions abided strictly by a well-defined discipline, they would never have suffered such a rout. But, because the anarchists "of all persuasions and tendencies” did not represent (not even in their specific groups) a homogeneous collective with a well defined policy of action, for that reason, these anarchists were unable to withstand the political and strategic scrutiny which revolutionary circumstances imposed upon them. Disorganisation reduced them to political impotence, separating them into two categories:

The first made up of those who hurled themselves into the systematic occupation of bourgeoise properties, where they set up house and lived in comfort. These are the one I term 'tourists’, the various anarchists who beetled around from town to town in hope of stumbling across a place to live for a time along the way, taking their leisure and hanging around as long as possible to live in comfort and ease. [Note; isn’t this ironically reminiscent of todays lifestyle anarchists and their obsession with squatting! Rather than organise side by side with the mass of workers in renters unions or tenant assosciations, they seperate themselves by bizzare lifestyle choices. The irony today being 'revolutionary’ squatters rarely live in comfort, they would rather take up insecure housing in decrepit shitholes than paying rent and getting a job where they can organise.]

The other category was made up of those who severed all real connections with anarchism (although a few of them inside the USSR are now passing themselves off as the sole representatives of revolutionary anarchism) and fairly swooped upon the positions offered them by the Bolsheviks, even when the authorities were shooting anarchists who remained true to their revolutionary credentials by denouncing the Boksheviks treachery. [Note: while hardly a betrayal of the same magnitude, this is reminiscent of a certain trend in Australian anarchism of more organisationally minded anarchists to join The Greens or various socialist parties because of vague arguments around 'access to resources’ or the 'absence of anarchist organisations’ rather than struggle to build one.]

In light of these facts, it will be readily understood why I cannot remain indifferent to the nonchalance and negligence currently to be encountered in our circles.

For one thing, it prevents the establishment of a coherent libertarian collective that would allow anarchists to assume their rightful place in the revolution, and for another, it leads to a situation where we make do with fine words and grand ideas, whilst fading away when the time comes for action.

That is why I am speaking about a libertarian organisation that rests upon the principle of fraternal discipline. Such an organisation would lead to the crucial understanding between all of the living forces of revolutionary anarchists and would assist in its taking its rightful place in the struggle of labour against capital.

In this fashion, libertarian ideas can only gain a mass following, and not be impoverished. Only empty-headed irresponsible chatter boxes could balk at such an organisational set up.

Organisational responsibility and discipline should not be contraversial; they are the travelling companions of the practice of social anarchism.“

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Bonus content!

Makhno met with Durruti and Ascaso before the Spanish revolution. After their meeting they returned to Spain where they politics took a very obvious turn from insurrectionist-bank robber types to much more sober revolutionaries who would have siginficant impact upon the Spanish revolution. I have my suspicions that Makhnos ideas greatly influenced the two Spanish libertarians, and I believe this quote from Durruti on revolutionary discipline illustrates that well;

"I believe, as I always have, in freedom. The freedom which rests on the sense of responsibility. I consider discipline indispensable, but it must be inner discipline, motivated by a common purpose and a strong feeling of comradeship.”

Pictured; A Rally of the FORA, a gigantic anarcho-syndicalist union in Argentina during the early 20th century.

This letter was written to Luigi Fabbri by Malatesta on the 30^th of July, 1919. The complete translation was by Davide Turcato and appears in The Method of Freedom.

This letter doesn’t appear to be online in English anywhere (Except to download the entire book from Libcom), but its one of my favourites by Malatesta, where in simple language he lays out the confusion around, and simplifies the differences between, Anarchists and Marxists as regards “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” Malatesta shows an amazing perceptiveness writing as early as 1919, as it were from exile in London, particularly with the line; “Trotsky and [his] companions are certainly sincere revolutionaries – as they understand the revolution, and the will not to betray it; but they prepare the governmental cadres that will serve those that will come, who will profit from the revolution and kill it. They will be the first victims of their method, and with them, I fear, will fall the revolution.” Was this not precisely the fate that awaited Trotsky? For all his opposition to Stalin, it was too little, too late, and the foundations of the bureaucratic state were built while Lenin and Trotsky were Bolshevik leadership.

The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a contentious one between Marxists and Anarchists. Certainly some tendencies seem to come closer to agreement; the ISO’s apparent vision of the ‘workers state’ is similar in conception to one put forth by the Friends of Durruti in “Towards a Fresh Revolution” for example. However these tendencies part ways over political strategies and definition of the state itself. I find the essay ‘An Anarchist View of the Class Theory of the State’ by Wayne Price, addressing the anarchist analysis of the state, only deepens the Marxist conception, and as a particularly helpful piece.

Dearest Fabbri:

Upon the question that so occupies your mind, that of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it seems to me that we are fundamentally in accord.

Upon this question it seems to me that there can be no doubt among anarchists, and in fact signifies there was none prior to the Bolshevist revolution. Anarchy signifies non-government, and therefore for a greater reason non-dictatorship, which is absolute government without control and without constitutional limitations.

But when the Bolshevist revolution broke out several of our friends confused that which was the revolution against the pre-existent government and that which was the new government that came to superimpose itself upon the revolution so as to split it and direct it to the particular ends of a party… and they came themselves very close to claiming to be Bolsheviks.

Now, the Bolsheviks are simply Marxists, who have honestly and coherently remained Marxists, unlike their masters and models – the Guesdes, the Plekanoffs, the Hyndmans, the Scheidemanns, the Noskes, who finished as you know. We respect their sincerity, we admire their energy, but as we have not been in accord with them on the grounds of theory, we cannot affiliate with them when from theory they pass to action.

               But perhaps the truth simply is this, that our Bolshevized friends intend with the expression of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ merely the revolutionary act of the workers in taking possession of the land and of the instruments of labor and trying to constitute a society for organizing a mode of life in which there would be no place for a class that exploited and oppressed the producers.

Understood so the dictatorship of the proletariat would be the effective power of all the workers intent on breaking down the capitalist society, and it would become anarchy immediately upon the cessation of reactionary resistance, and no one would attempt by force to make the masses obey him and work for him.

And then our dissent would have to do only with words. Dictatorship of the proletariat should signify dictatorship of all which certainly does not mean dictatorship, as a government of all is no longer a government, in the authoritarian, historic, practical sense of the word.

But the true partisans of the dictatorship of the proletariat do not understand the words so, as they have clearly shown in Russia. Obviously, the proletariat comes into it as the people comes into democratic regimes, that is to say, simply for the purpose of concealing the true essence of things. In reality one sees a dictatorship of a party, or rather the heads of the party; and it is a true dictatorship, with its decrees, its penal laws, its executive agents and above all with its armed force that serves today also to defend the revolution from its external enemies, but that will serve tomorrow to impose upon the workers the will of the dictators, to arrest the revolution, consolidate the new interests and finally defend a new privileged class against the masses.

Bonaparte also served to defend the French revolution against the European reaction, but in defending it he killed it. Lenin, Trotsky and their companions are certainly sincere revolutionaries – as they understand the revolution, and the will not to betray it; but they prepare the governmental cadres that will serve those that will come, who will profit from the revolution and kill it. They will be the first victims of their method, and with them, I fear, will fall the revolution. And history will repeat itself; mutatis mutandis, it was the dictatorship of Robspierre that brought Robspierre to the guillotine and prepared the way for Napoleon.

These are my general ideas upon things in Russia. Inasmuch as the news we get from Russia is too contradictory to base upon it a judgement, it is possible that many things that seem bad are the fruit of the situation, and that in the peculiar circumstances in Russia it was impossible to do otherwise than was done. It is better to wait, much more so in that whatever we might sday would have no influence upon the developments in Russia, and might be ill interpreted in Italy and seem to echo the interested calumnies of the reaction.

The important thing is what we must do. But there we go again, I am far away, and it is impossible for me to do my part…

This article was originally published on the ASF-IWA’s website by the Geelong branch in February 2019. It was specifically written to reach a particular audience, to be more broad in its acceptance of ‘anarchist politics’ than I actually agree with (and didn’t take up the broader question of what specific political organisation is required), and to come across less sectarian in its critique of the electoral participation of ‘revolutionary socialists.’ I believe many of the arguments would stand from a number of revolutionary communist positions, not just anarchist.

On the 16th of February 2019 the Victorian Socialists held their first official ‘founding’ conference. Commitment to the new electoral project was formalised by Socialist Alternative, Socialist Alliance, and individual activists. After their first electoral efforts (during the last state elections), the conference decided to continue the electoral project and contest the upcoming Australian federal elections. The regroupment of the larger Trotskyist organisations in Victoria into the Victorian Socialists project has created the most significant electoral socialist presence in the country since the original Communist Party. Large numbers of volunteers have been mobilised, some progressive unions gave relatively significant financial support, and the initial campaign garnered a reasonable amount of media attention. In some electorates, the Victorian Socialist project brought in a larger portion of the vote than socialists have received in a long time, and only missed out on one seat because of preferencing. While performing stronger than socialist electoral efforts in recent decades, this is not an earth shattering result. As anarchists, we can draw lessons from the achievements of the Victorian Socialist campaign in mobilising people around working class issues, but we are not here to sing praises for the project. It is more important we remind ourselves why we believe electoral politics is a dead end for the working class.

Anarchists do not hold anti-electoral politics for no reason. We have always been well aware that electoral politics cannot become a path to liberation – attempts to use the state as such by the socialist left results in the individuals in parliament becoming, at best, an irrelevance with their campaigns a waste of time and resources, and at worst, becoming the most virulent defenders of the state and privilege. Despite the undoubted integrity of some genuine revolutionaries entering parliament, a principled position in parliament can only last so long.

“The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rouge.” – Emma Goldman

Given that a government of socialists, either in the minority or majority, do not control the entire apparatus of the state under bourgeois democracy, they must attempt to implement a minimum plan. As standard practice, socialists argue to increase taxes on the rich, or to use funds from other state sectors and invest them in poorer communities. This is all well and good, but by involving themselves in this task, they suddenly find themselves burdened with running the very system they claim to want to overthrow. Consider what would happen if a Victorian Socialist candidate is elected and achieves some of the aims of their manifesto, for example, the proposed recycling plant in the northern suburbs. Though the plant will provide some positives – it will create jobs, and meet environmental needs – in a capitalist system, workers will inevitably struggle with their pay and working conditions. Subsequently, the socialist councillors will have to mediate the struggle and potentially discipline striking workers. This highlights an inherent contradiction when ‘revolutionaries’ in government have no choice but to administer the capitalist state. The greatest idealism is shipwrecked on the shores of the reality of capitalist economics. It may sound like quite an abstraction, but historical precedence would indicate this is a very real concern. Throughout history workers have had to face ‘socialist’ strikebreaking many times.

Some of the groups and members within the Victorian Socialist tent will point out that as revolutionaries they should be using parliament to denounce bourgeois democracy (the best line in this situation), but others will see the small reforms as achievements. They will push the party to continue this line of ‘progress’, drawing more and more resources and activists towards parliamentary activity. Given that the Victorian Socialists are a broad project and not an explicitly Leninist organisation, there will be more space for reformists to manoeuvre and rise within the ranks of a growing party apparatus, pushing increasingly conservative demands on the basis of ‘practicality’, that is, what will get them elected. This presents yet another tension between electoral needs and the maintenance of revolutionary principle.  

When a party measures progress by the vote tally they can become obsessed with chasing numbers. Imagine a campaign that may have initially started with a radical program. As the party gains seats and power, it is likely to drop its more radical ideals in order to maintain its positions in parliament. Though supposedly progressive, in its last terms of government Labors inability to legislate for gay marriage was a clear example of acting from fear of being ‘too radical.’ In the end, it was the conservatives that legalised gay marriage – after decades of pressure from social movements. We see the same process taking place today with the rightward shift of the Greens, from an activist party to one of ‘professional politicians’. Slowly but surely, Victorian Socialists, like every socialist party before them, will become more invested in the running of, and for positions within, the state, until such a situation that they become the very defenders of electoral democracy. At this stage, the Socialist Equality Party have a better position in regards to participation in bourgeois democracy!

We know that it is social movements and struggle that force politicians left, not parliament. If that were not true, we wouldn’t have seen significant reforms benefiting the working class come from conservative politicians during periods of mass movement and rebellion. On February 19th this was proven once again with the striking teachers in West Virginia, USA, defeating market-oriented reforms by Republican politicians. By contrast, we wouldn’t have seen leftist parties around the world implement tragic and authoritarian laws and punishments upon the working class again and again, betraying them at pivotal moments.

Where Victorian Socialists are leading people is a dead end. If we really want socialism, the working class must learn to organise and lead struggles themselves. Placing hope in politicians is misleading when workers would be developing militant class consciousness based on their direct actions. Victorian Socialists members will certainly argue that this is not what they are attempting to achieve. Rather, they believe they are playing the ‘inside, outside’ game; where they leverage parliamentary office to help build social movements. This was famously Adam Bandt’s justification for becoming a Greens MP. Participation in electoral politics is the socialist’s shortcut, just as insurrectionism is the shortcut of ‘anarchists’. Both seek to skip the slow, often painstaking work of building the consciousness of a class that can fight for itself, and organise its own structures to run the world. Elections are not just another ‘tool in the toolbox’, rather they are a tool that actively harms the other work a revolutionary organisation is engaged in.

Elections build the idea that you sign someone up, everyone votes, and when the preferred representative gets into parliament, the party’s demands can be implemented. It’s fun and it’s easy to hand out ‘how to vote’ cards – to spruik the virtues of your preferred candidate against the others – but it doesn’t develop the critical relationship with electoral and capitalist politics we have to work towards. Millions of people today are disaffected with politicians. Adding socialists to the list of vultures that ‘get voted in and do nothing’ will not help us build revolutionary ideology. Parliamentary activity does very little to build the capacity of the working class itself to struggle, let alone the idea that the working class can run the world.  As MAC-G have written “A Victorian Socialist in the Legislative Council of Victoria might make stirring speeches in support of grassroots struggles and might fight hard to get reforms out of this neo-liberal Labor Government, but if they don’t explain to the working class that this isn’t how we’ll win Socialism, they’ll be leading workers in the wrong direction.”

In practical terms, consider the example of Kasama Sawant, the Socialist Alternative (unrelated to the Australian grouping of the same name) councillor in Seattle. Kasama was elected in 2013, hailed as a major breakthrough as the first ‘socialist’ elected anywhere in the USA for generations. She was elected around a demand for “$15 Now”, that is $15 an hour minimum wage within the Seattle region. She faced significant hostility from business interests, and was funded by the unions to fight for this platform. Though elected, she failed to get this reform through and ‘$15 now’ became ‘$15 later..’ Whilst in Seatac, a city basically next door, the labour movement maintaining autonomy managed to get a republican to pass the legislation without sacrificing themselves to parliamentary limits. The limits of relying on politicians is clear; we see Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez voting to fund ICE in the USA, while simultaneously claiming to want its abolition. The DSA project is yet another example of a growing anti-capitalist consciousness kneecapped by electoral politics.  While it is as much a reflection of the current limits of politics within our unions, and paltry compared to the donations to the Labor party, the funds given to the Victorian Socialist project could have gone into ‘on the ground’ organising efforts, fighting campaigns and strike funds.

We can only wonder at the wisdom of the Victorian Socialist campaign at this time. No one from any group within the Victorian Socialist tent has put out a significant theoretical piece explaining their decisions to engage as ‘Victorian Socialists’ in parliamentary politics yet. Socialist Alternative refused to participate in elections until only last year and haven’t yet justified their change of tactics publicly with a material analysis. The closest thing one can find to Socialist Alternatives position on electoral participation being articulated is Mick Armstrong’s 2016 piece from Marxist Left Review ‘The Broad Left Party After SYRIZA.’ While promoting a healthy understanding of the limits of SYRIZA, Armstrong defends the actions of DEA, Socialist Alternatives sister organisation in Greece that participated in the SYRIZA coalition, with the ‘inside, outside’ (or ‘fighting with both fists’) strategy (struggle inside parliament, struggle outside in the movements),

When SYRIZA enacted its historic betrayal of the Greek people, DEA led a revolt that split away from the party… only to repeat the tactic and participate in the formation in a new coalition, Popular Unity. The difference is that now they take a miniscule amount of the vote, losing any position in parliament and having virtually no influence on the struggle. First as folly, then as farce.

We believe they made a fundamental mistake by participation in the first place. The left can be more effective in power at implementing capitals agenda than the right, as social movements that become invested in a party take their foot off the gas in order to allow the new government to ‘perform.’ As such, all the resources that went into the struggles within SYRIZA who would inevitably betray the Greek people by virtue of participation in the state could have gone into developing an even more militant element to the class struggle in Greece. To the union movement and building strikes, to the anti-fascist struggle, to the countless occupations and direct action struggles, to defending the worker controlled factories like VioME – where we see embryonic forms of workers democracy and expropriation of capitalist interests. As Fred Hampton points out, you have to build power where the people are. As anarchists we know that these new forms of social power are infinitely more important than the struggle within parliament.

Armstrong would disagree, arguing in the MLR piece ‘To directly counterpose building strikes and radical movements in the streets as the alternative to a political intervention in a radical left party like Syriza is to lapse into a syndicalist or movementist error that fails to see the dialectical connections between the two. The forces needed for a revolutionary party are not going to be accumulated simply by building mass movements and strikes; and conversely mass movements and strikes are ultimately not going to be successful in challenging capitalist rule without a mass revolutionary party being built.’

Armstrong would appear to see the dialectic incorrectly. Rather than a project like Victorian Socialists acting as a foothold for radical ideas in a broader workers movement, participation in parliament establishes a foothold for reformist ideas in revolutionary organisations. While we agree with Armstrong on the limitations of movementism, and we believe in building mass social organisations that can overthrow capitalism – they are not the ‘vanguard’ party.

“…according to the Syndicalist view, the trade union, the syndicate, is the unified organisation of labour and has for its purpose the defence of the interests of the producers in the existing society and the preparing for and the practical carrying out of the reconstruction of social life after the pattern of [libertarian] Socialism. It has, therefore, a double purpose…” – Rudolph Rocker

As such, the accusation of syndicalist and movementist errors only holds true to a socialist who believes that only the vanguard party can lead the working class to make the revolutionary rupture with capitalism. However as anarchists and libertarian socialists, we know that historically this is untrue. Syndicalism also provides a mass organisation where workers take up the battle of ideas in all facets of society, making the critique of both capitalist and state socialist visions, and promoting the vision of a free and equal world. It is only the narrow view of socialists who believe revolutionary unions cannot play this role. Despite eventual failure of the classic workers revolutions, the working class has nonetheless shown its capacity to overthrow the state and capitalism without the ‘vanguard party.’ Revolutionary experiments in the Ukraine ‘19-21 and Spain in ‘36 attempted to establish a society where ‘the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things’. It would be facetious to argue that the Bolsheviks were the only ‘successful’ example of working class revolution when what they achieved was a bloody and repressive failure certainly no worse than the failure of the libertarian revolutions. If your only criteria of revolutionary success is the crushing of counter-revolutionary military forces, then the Bolsheviks were indeed successful. However if your criteria is the building of a workers democracy from the bottom up, then they failed almost from the very start. World revolution has not been achieved, but we can remain certain that socialists in parliament is a strategy that cannot lead to socialism.

“We assert that social problems can only be resolved by a revolutionary movement that transforms the economy while at the same time destroying bourgeois political institutions.” – Garcia Oliver

While within the libertarian movement we can debate various forms of anarchist organisation from syndicalism to especifismo, anarchists all seek to propagate the idea of self-management and direct action, and assist the working classes to build new forms of self-governance beyond capitalism. This differs vastly from the Leninist party. After all, the state and party have proven in the last instance to be the defenders of bourgeois interests and the gravediggers of the social revolution. Even if we agreed with Lenin, we doubt very much that the defence of electoral participation by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 in any way translates to a strategy for today – especially for a ‘mass socialist party’ that isn’t yet much more than a coalition of propaganda groups based out of the universities.

Only coherent and combative anarchist organisations with distinct class politics can become an alternate pole of attraction to fill the space on the revolutionary left – anarchism is becoming a stronger revolutionary current around the world once again, given the abysmal failure of Marxist politics in the 20th Century, and with ‘21st Century Socialism’ proving to achieve either nothing, futile reform, or some meaningful reform but no capability to move beyond capitalism (Socialist Alliance in the UK, SYRIZA, and Venezuela come to mind respectively.)

Internally to Victorian Socialists, fractures within the revolutionary cadres of Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance will begin to become more pronounced as resources are pulled from practical needs and in the situation of a Victorian based party – other state branches. Revolutionary socialists who understand the dead ends of electoral politics will break away from electoral projects like Victorian Socialists in time, and we must be there to meet these militants who have always had the right idea in understanding the many problems of capitalism. What they will need is a better perspective of the state.

Far more important than winning over militants from the socialist groups however is winning new workers over to the anarchist movement. For too long the anarchist movement in Australia has been internal looking. Our struggle as libertarians should be where the working class itself is fighting, and our ideas should inform our action. It will be our motion that draws people in, not just our ideas – this for example is part of the initial explosion of ‘success’ of the Victorian Socialist project.

Anti-capitalist ideas are growing traction around the world, and we want anarchism to become the dominant form of revolutionary politics once again. It is easy to forget that anarchism was once the predominant ideology of the revolutionary left, a far cry from the liberal mess we find passing for much of anarchist politics today. To return to relevance, we require insertion into the important movements and struggles of our time to help build their mass character, and playing a leading role in the redevelopment of a labour movement. To counter the growth of electoral projects anarchists also need easy ‘on ramps’ to politics too, but not ones that will channel workers into handing their fate over to political parties. To build our own organisations and militant movements requires developed and specifically anarchist politics to guide our strategies and tactics. It is our task to reveal the fatal flaw of following strategies like the Victorian Socialists electoral attempts, and reaffirming that the revolution can only be made by the struggle of the workers themselves.

“The working class has no Parliament but the street, the factory, and the workplace, and no other path than social revolution.” – Buenaventura Durruti

For a more comprehensive understanding of the limits of electoral politics I recommend the pamphlet “Socialist Faces in High Places”, by the Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

With an upturn of interest in ‘the housing question’ in Melbourne, or more broadly in Australia, we thought we’d ask some questions of our friends at the Social Log collective in Bologna, Italy, about their squatting projects and their connection to the broader working class movement.

Social Log is a collective of ‘autonomia’, a branch of Marxism which has parallels with anarchist theory given Autonomia’s focus on self-organisation, grassroots initiatives and social reproduction, and struggle outside the direction of vanguardist parties and ‘official’ unions. They run a number of projects, including a ‘desk’ or ‘pop-up’ where they distribute propaganda related to issues affecting the workers of Bologna, and help connect activists between different struggles. One major squat they initiated and supported was an ex-Telecom building, which housed over 300 people, mostly migrants from the North African community. This was violently evicted not long ago by 200 officers and 40 police trucks, despite massive resistance from the community. Social Logs outreach and ability to connect to real local struggles and assist them practically, while helping them maintain militancy and autonomy should be something anarchists can draw lessons from. It shares a lot of parallels with Platformist/Especifist anarchism – that is seeking to insert into social struggle to encourage, defend and help retain working class autonomy and militancy. The language may be different, but the intentions are very close.

Can you tell us some basics about the project of Social Log Bologna? How did it come about? Who set it up? How was it run?

Social Log was born in November 2013, in the aftermath of a massive 100,000 person ‘autonomous’ demonstration in Rome on October 19. A number of antagonistic movements (Turin area’s No TAV, Bologna’s logistics workers, Sicily’s “No Muos”, Pisa and Rome’s own housing struggle initiatives – plus grassroots unions, as well as environmental committees and students and workers’ collectives) converged on that day in order to oppose the EU-dictated austerity policies of the late Letta government and laid siege to the Ministry of Infrastructures for two days.

Back then the housing emergency was unfolding in Italy because of the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the earlier grassroots initiatives to tackle it. A breakthrough in this way were the so-called “Tsunami Tours” - organized by the Blocchi Precari Metropolitani, Coordinamento di Lotta per la Casa and Progetto Degage collectives - which occupied in large numbers scores of vacant buildings in Rome in early 2013.

In Bologna our social centre Laboratorio Crash was focused on precarious workers and university and high school students, but it did not have a housing struggle desk at the time. Always starting from the material needs of the lower classes, we wanted to contribute to the nationwide network which was organizing through the Abitare nella Crisi (“Dwelling in the Crisis”) platform, too. We were in the middle of a great workers’ effervescence in the logistics’ sector in our area. To make a long story short, between 2012 and 2014 there had been lot of protests, strikes, pickets and blockades at the warehouses of big Italian companies – which were exploiting a workforce mainly comprised of migrants through bogus ‘co-operatives’. As a social centre, and with fellow student collectives joining the grassroots SI COBAS union in these actions, we shaped the Social Log initiative in order to give continuity to this particular struggle.

First, we wanted to keep together the belligerent subjectivity we built along with these workers. Starting from meeting their needs (some of them were hired again after a number of victorious battles - but others were not, and were starting to be short on money and under threat of eviction), which were the same as ours: being ourselves precarious workers and students threatened by the increased grants cuts and the reintroduction of underage labour, through partnership between high schools and private businesses internship projects.

By reinforcing interaction and circulation of struggles, when we moved on to occupy buildings it was easier to communicate between different groups and organize actions: the logistics worker could be informed of a radical talk at the university - or the high school student could attend to a benefit event organized by the housing struggle committee.

It is exactly in this way that we wanted Social Log to function as a logistics of social struggles (hence its name).

The physical occupation of the building of Social Log’s ‘desk’  (which opens 2 days per week and has been managed by militants – later to be joined by committed occupiers) was only a first step in building and organizing this framework. The desk deals with all kinds of housing distress (homelessness, eviction, foreclosures, issues in public social housing…) stretching its auditing and inquiry to other issues (transports, healthcare, labour issues, unjust taxation…) as well. Always avoiding and rejecting a charity, bleeding-heart approach to these issues, and rather working on empowerment through forms of collective re-appropriation (squatting) of the right to housing (and beyond).

You’ve just been evicted from one building. How long did the project last? And how did the collective organise to fight state repression?

The project is still ongoing! After 2 years and half we still hold two housing occupations in Bologna at the moment of this interview, accommodating dozens of individuals and families. Like our social centre, they are under attack right now because of the joint interests of a maverick public prosecutor and of the political directions given to the Police Department from Rome. Plus, there is political pressure linked to the upcoming administrative elections in Bologna.

We can also count on our Inquilini Resistenti (“Resisting Tenants”) committee, still working to prevent evictions of people who are in economic distress and cannot pay the rent, or whose housing contract expired. Even if a core of militants helps with coordinating them, the committee is still made up of people with similar housing problems, mobilizing each time one of them is under eviction, and attempting to postpone it at a later date – until a solution is found.  

Finally, there is the self-organized initiative of the Galaxy residence tenants. Some of the residents were living in a former occupation of ours - the ex-Telecom building, which was accommodating around 200 people. After they were evicted by a massive police dispositif (expression of power), thanks to the pressure of the struggle they were relocated to the Galaxy residence – one set up by the city council in order to alleviate the housing emergency. Previously they were not entitled to that, and we consider it a little success - in a region that, after decades of social-democratic welfare, is experiencing a full-fledged implementation of neoliberal policies. Being already politicized through pickets, assemblies and other means of antagonist socialization, they came in contact with the other tenants of the residence and started a battle to reclaim income and other legal rights that a Renzi government law denies them.

In addition to head-on resistance against the evictions, which we try to make participated in by everyone as best as they can and feel they can do, we finance legal expenses through self-managed events at our social centre, in the university and elsewhere. Of course, the communal dimension and circulation of struggles featuring different age, ethnic and worker groups - which was built all the way from pickets to occupations - helped prevent the subjectivity from disbanding, even after most serious blows.

How did Social Log fit into the broader anti-capitalist movement in Bologna? How does it contribute to broader struggles?

The movement is going through a complex and difficult phase in Bologna, as in other parts of Italy as well. The Renzi government, with a ‘start-upper, go-getter’ attitude mixed with a certain flavour of institutional populism, directly attacked the movements’ political space in housing, environmental, labour and education issues with targeted legislation. Some cracks in this monolith appeared with recent scandals and difficulty to consolidate a territorial ruling class (which has been then replaced by technical commissioner-like subjects), the government is still able to thrive by capitalizing political apathy (sometimes driven by the outright struggle for daily survival by the masses) and support from interested and deluded minorities.

The institutional left all but disappeared or moved rightwards – mostly in a liberal but in some cases even in an authoritarian direction. Therefore, people in the movement that used to rely on them are now directly entering institutional politics (à la Syriza and Podemos, but without even the slightest degree of popular legitimacy that these political projects were entrusted by their seminal grassroots movements – drawing their Italian counterparts from defeated minority social-democrat parties). These subjects also endorse an idea of being able to better manage social care issues and institutions at proximity level rather than state/capitalist forces, by teaming up with charities, civic committees and other “civil society” groups. This is relatively dangerous as their ultimate outcome is, through the promotion of a watered-down form of militancy (activism) and non-confrontational or merely spectacular practices (which are by definition repeatable by anyone) to create a weak subjectivity, as they appease social rage and style themselves as mediators/managers of social emergencies.

We say relatively because our process, being aware of this framework, has been trying to develop an alternative to it – and is often successful in doing so. By instead addressing the urgency and longing of radical practices by groups of citizens who suffer the retreat of the state from their sphere of interest in the forms of cuts and increasingly authoritarian management, and feel threatened and alone: disgruntled teachers, disenchanted social workers, pensioners, overloaded healthcare operators, and so on.

Also, we distance ourselves from the movements elites living in their own separate comfort sphere, promoting abstract platforms and practices; we think we have been able to provide a welcoming environment for those subjects from the orphaned left or from grassroots organizations, dealing with real needs, to pursue their initiatives. From camp kitchens during occupations and evictions hosted by people’s canteens and our in-house Workshop of Mestizo Cuisine to memorial marches for university comrades killed by police in the ‘70s; from exhibitions by people’s gyms to benefit sells of radical farmers’ products we test and experience new forms of antagonist socialization.

What has been the lasting impact?

Given the still in-progress character of Social Log, at the least we can say that the response by the city has been encouraging: many people started to show up at our desk in the last year, to the point their numbers were comparable with those of the top-funded, established (and bureaucratic) mainstream unions.

The housing issue was able to overcome a great deal of the stigma of “free-riding” – ‘abusive occupiers’ versus ‘hard-working citizen-taxpayers’, as many people showed up to contribute to some internal projects of the occupations (such as a children’s playroom) or provide them with food and furniture.

Also, political space was opened for other initiatives, both ours and other groups’. The eviction of the ex-Telecom building last October triggered a crisis between state and local institutions and, after a march of 5000 peopleh the following saturday, the emotional fallout was the linchpin for a massive popular confrontation against a national demonstration of right-wing and xenophobic parties in November.

Thus, the legacy (and still the pivotal character) of Social Log is to make the housing issue a springboard to exploit the contradictions among the ruling class institutions, in order to create space of autonomy and counterpower in the metropolis; by contending its battleground to the state and capitalist forces and establishing alternative patterns of development and relationships. Which are already free from those forces, but always prepared to resist their attacks, and organizing to consolidate and expand their scope and framework.

You can keep up to date with Social Log at http://www.infoaut.org/index.php/english or on facebook.

This is a talk I gave around 2016. As such the writing style is the same as speaking rather than aiming to sound academic. Since this talk was given if I have any reflection I think I was far too fair on individualist and lifestyle politics. But that reflected my attempts to engage the broader ‘anarchist movement’ in Australia at the time, which I now think was basically a waste of time. I should have argued more directly for a platformist/especifist & syndicalist forms of organisation.

Lets start here;

It’s the symbol associated with anarchism… We see it everywhere from actual anarchist propaganda, to graffiti, to printed on t-shirts at kmart. Most here probably know this, but it’s not an A in a circle, it’s actually an A in an O. It means, ‘Anarchy is Order’, which is one of those wonderful juxtaposing quotes Proudhon used. What he meant is that anarchism will be a highly sophisticated, highly organised and well developed social order. A social order based on the maximum of human freedom, federalism, socialism, equality and development.

Proudhon was the first person to ever use the label anarchist, back in the 1800’s France. It’s with him that the confusion between social and individualist anarchism immediately starts. See, he was certainly a type of socialist, he was totally against the exploitation of labour, and he developed an economic system called mutualism based on free contracts between producers, meaning both collectives of workers and small craftsmen would have equal freedom in the economy. This is a bit divorced from the anarchist communism that has become the main tendency since then, but it certainly laid many of foundations. He was anti-state and anti-authority, though sadly he never extended this to women. His ideas on economics and social reconstruction were so popular its said some people in the Paris Commune had little copies of 'What is Property’ they used to carry around in their pocket (don’t quote me on this actually happening!), and his economic theories some influence on even Marx. Some people like to argue that he was more of a precursor to anarchism, theres some truth in this – in that his politics where not totally coherent or developed to what is specifically anarchism today. But he did, and was the first, to use the label.

Before him we had William Godwin and Max Stirner, both libertarians certainly, both anti-state, but neither used the term anarchist, and this is important, because alot of individualists certainly like to base their ideas on Stirner. I’m not going to talk about Godwin, but i’d like to point out that Stirner really was more like an early existentialist, his radical 'freedom’ was entirely about the ego and the mind, and was anti-everything. There wasn’t a trace of positive content in his ideas (besides affirmation of the ego, and this extremely undeveloped ‘Union of Egoists’), which were also pretty racist if you take the time to read The Ego and His Own. About the best thing he had to offer was a critique of state-socialism, and that’s not saying alot.

Anyway after these three “Anarchism” definitely had a name and existed in the world as a political ideology.

Since the birth of Anarchism people have often found it quite hard to define a coherent theory of anarchism; Chomsky always uses that quote 'Anarchism has a broad back, like paper is can endure anything.’ And Rudolph Rocker believed that anarchism was something of a tendency in human nature towards egalitarian non-hierachical forms of social organisation. He also believed it was the inheritor of the best parts of both Liberalism and Socialism, the ‘descendants’ of the Enlightenment. Emile Armands Individualist manifesto entirely bases its definition of anarchism around freedom from any social constraint. While from people like Bakunin and Malatesta we see that anarchism is a very specific political philosophy based around class struggle, with the realisation of libertarian socialism as the goal. They use examples like the Paris Commune to point to future potentials, but recognise that anarchism is a modern political philosophy that started with Proudhon and the French workers movement. In modern attempts to look back at anarchism we see both these kinds of definitions in action. Authors like Peter Marshall in his 'Demanding the Impossible’ takes the opposition to state as the only requirement to anarchism - and often Marxists who like to have a crack at anarchism use this weak definition too. Modern authors like Van Der Walt and Wayne Price will however often present more coherent and consistent understandings of anarchism.

So basically we kind of have two fields; Social anarchism and Individualist anarchism. Social anarchism sometimes gets referred to as organisational anarchism, and individualist anarchism kind of leads on to what often gets called lifestyle anarchism today. Within both fields we can find a whole range of ideas on both strategy and economics. Still we can somewhat represent where the ideas and who represents them sit.

Obviously we could add hundreds more authors into these fields, but it’s a basic illustration.

So, lets kind of compare the two and I think it will lead us to a better understanding of how anarchism manifests in the world today.

I realise here I am presenting these fields as something of strawmen. But this is not an academic essay and there is only so much time.

As you can well imagine by its name, individualist anarchism starts, and ends, with the demand of maximum liberty for the individual. There are to be no fetters on the development of the so called natural qualities of the individual, and while they think everyone should be free, it really begins with personal struggle and ends with the individual. The only freedom you have is what you can take. Society is also as much a crushing source of authority as the state. There are to be no programmes set for what anarchism might look like, because everyone has different wants and needs. Rebellion is emphasised over revolution – revolution will either lead to a new state or to a new social tyranny. Despite rhetoric against capitalism, market economics are permissible provided there is no boss-worker relationship (although sometimes that’s ok too!.) It is this retreat into the self that actually shares a lot of parallels with new age spirituality, with existentialism and most importantly with neo-liberal capitalism. It’s this abstract opposition to 'the state’ and 'society’ that allows authors like Peter Marshall to give the nod towards people like Thatcher and Friedman as being somehow libertarian.

Individualism did not have much influence during the emerging the working class, nor did it do much to shape collective politics of rebellion. Individualists often expressed their 'anarchism’ and 'freedom’ through forms of dress, individual acts of insurrection, and living in small communities of other radicals only. While today we use the word ‘insurrection’ to mean something like when a community/class violently attacks a regime/authority, the connection between the term insurrection and anarchism actually comes from Stirner, who believed revolution was impossible, and that individual 'insurrection’ was the only tactic that would keep authority at bay, however temporarily. It was during times of severe social repression, when little other avenue for struggle existed, that individualist anarchism did come to attention - usually with assassinations and bombings - this image of the anarchist bomb thrower still exists. Terrorism became, and to a large degree remains, the peak form of struggle for this tendency. I don’t want to say much on it, but I believe that the terrorist and guerilla war is a Leninist strategy, not an anarchist one, despite the flowery rhetoric.

This still happens today. Not long ago some group let off a bomb in Chile at a church, and a year or two ago some insurrectionists kneecapped the CEO of a Nuclear Power company. The targeting of the Nuclear CEO has obvious reasons - the church not so. They issued a massively irrelevant manifestos crapping on about religious feeding the people bullshit. Not exactly a material analysis of religion. The most famous example of this strategy today would be Conspiracy of Fire Cells in Greece. They’re a group known for robbing banks, having shoot outs with police, and bringing ‘left wing terrorism’ back to Europe. They’re all arrested now, and have been involved in struggles for prisoners’ rights and hunger strikes over the last few years.

If you’re interested in the terror question, and the rather bold statement that terrorism is a Leninist strategy, i’d highly suggest grabbing a copy of “You Can’t Blow Up A Social Relationship,” quite a famous essay written by an Australian libertarian socialist group.

So then, what’s social anarchism?

Taking the concept of freedom as the basis of anarchism, I want to start with a quote from Bakunin, he says;

“The individual, their freedom and reason, are the products of society, and not vice versa; society is not the product of individuals comprising it; and the greater their freedom - and the more they are the product of society, the more do they receive from society, and the greater their debt to it.

Here we find a definition of freedom based entirely on social bonds - what Bakunin is saying is that we are all products of social development – it is through relationships and education we find the ideas, motivations and influences that will make us free. Without the development of all, without equality, we will never know real freedom. The more free the person beside you is, the more free you are. Social anarchism is therefore inherently committed to collective methods of organisation - be it through things as various as unions, affinity groups, syndicates, communes, or whatever. Social anarchism also collectivist in economics. We have had Proudhon, and the Spanish economist De Santillian. But ultimately social anarchists owe a great debt to Marx for their understanding of economics - it’s over questions of political organisation that we divide.

It’s this freedom through solidarity that found such fertile ground in the workers movement. The ideas of social anarchists, particularly Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta flourished in many parts of the world, namely Spain, Italy, Argentina and China, and had profound influence on the mass anarchist organisations that were to develop. We often sell ourselves short as anarchists today, because much of our history is lost, and because our movement is so small and insular we often feel like a subculture. But when it comes to history, remember we are talking about a movement that affected the lives of millions of people. These were no small propaganda groups or insurrectional cells. These were mass organisations that had obvious anarchist politics. Maybe not all 2 million members of the CNT or the FORA were anarchist – but anarchism had an influence on their lives.

So in comparison, while social anarchism first found its roots in the federalist sections of the international, in the Paris commune, and in the emerging union movements, it is fair to say that Individualism came to prominence when anarchism lost its connection with the working class, and interestingly has largely been a phenomenon tied to the USA and Europe, and Russia. While also in places like Korea, South America, and parts of Africa where anarchism has had periods of significance, individualism has been for the most part irrelevant (feel free to correct me if you’ve come across individualist literature from these parts of the world!) Perhaps the tactic of insurrection by small groups and individuals had some grounding, but its irrelevance seems to be the broader rule. This loss of social influence for anarchism in most countries has never been recovered. The withdrawl of self-styled anarchists from social movements for activities that don’t require long-term commitment, thinking, responsibility or coherence is a serious problem if we ever want anarchism to be a philosophy that can change the world again.

Members of the Korean Peoples Assosciation in Manchuria. From 1929-31 Manchuria ‘was Anarchist’, a little remembered period of history.

It’s pretty clear that the irrelevance of a coherent and social anarchist philosophy is also tied to the reactionary and conservative societies we live in. Despite efforts to break out of the leftist ghetto, much like our socialist mates, today we remain largely irrelevant. The anarchist principles of federalism, direct action, anti-parliament politics, and mutual aid are barely connected to a class struggle that is largely institutionalised. With no solid, commited organisations to use our tactics, we don’t feed back into the movements, we don’t test our ideas and fresh activists are few and far between. It’s a two way street. The end result of this isolation can often be liberalism dressed in radical clothing, and the dominance of ‘lifestyle anarchism’ is basically the black flag version of the socialist politics that believes in the revolutionary potential of Bernie Sanders, SYRIZA and Jeremy Corbyn.

Anarchists today are finding our way back to relevance in struggle; in a number of places around the world anarchist organisations and movements are beginning to flourish again. Greece, Ireland, Brazil are a few examples.

I found it illuminating that in this Workers Solidarity Movement talk about the growth of anarchism in Ireland, Andrew Flood says that as anarchists have regained their social relevance over the last two decades, they went from the stereotype of 'punks and people dressed in black’ to 'looking like your everyday person’, and that about that time the media began to have to acknowledge that anarchism was actually a factor in Irish political life. The Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation in the USA is another wonderful example.

I want to give a historical example of anarchism finding its feet in a concrete situation. It is an example of anarchism feeding into a movement, and developing as a result. Actually, it’s the worlds first example of specifically anarchist organisations doing just such – for all its many limits, there are many lessons to be learnt; I just finished reading Makhno’s account of the revolution in the Ukraine, and during some of the most intense periods of social upheaval he expresses extreme frustration with the revolutionaries in Russia. He points out that the combination of armchair intellectualism and obsession with aspects of theory – like the proletariat over the peasantry means that they’re entirely ignorant of the revolutionary and of the practical means these anarchists can take to expand the revolution. This isn’t just frustration with individualists either, this is with anarcho-syndicalists, communist and whatnot. He points out the inflexibility of anarchist theory at this time can’t deal with practical situations. For example when he was elected leader of his particular battalion he had to give orders right- and he recognises that most anarchists don’t believe in giving orders or leaders or whatever. And he expresses that he felt quite uncomfortable with the role he was given. But they were fighting a war. An actual revolution. Not having accountable roles or rules is crap, and I think this is a frustration because of the individualist influence. Just because anarchists didn’t believe they should ever be told what to do, doesn’t mean they can’t develop structures of collective responsibility.

Nestor Mahkno, (elected) leader of the Insurrectional Army of the Ukraine

Anarchists have leaders. This is something that modern anarchism really struggles to acknowledge. Just because we refuse to put a label on power doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exists. Let’s consider this quote from Bakunin;

“Nothing is more dangerous for a man’s private morality than the habit of command. Two sentiments inherent in power never fail to produce this demoralisation; they are: contempt for the masses and the overestimation of one’s own merits.”

So what makes anarchist 'leadership’ special is that what we are actually wanting to achieve is to create structures that limit the concentration of power. Informality does not do this. This is a serious danger that exists in individualist and lifestyle anarchism. Rather we should look to have strict mandates given by the collective to their delegates, when assemblies are not practical. That’s why we try to rotate roles - to assure one person doesn’t end up with too much power, and to assure that everyone develops skills keeping the field more even if you will. Individualism doesn’t address this. Actually egoist individualism like Stirners ends up justifying power over other people – hardly an anti-authoritarian philosophy. If you ever get a chance I recommend reading 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness'by Jo Freeman.

As I said, this delegate-mandate-rotate structure is actually infinitely more anti-authoritarian than not having any kind of accountability. Bakunin talked about this, the CNT knew this, the anarchist army in the Ukraine knew this (though it wasn’t great at it.) But it’s quite lost these days. Obviously, how we structure this leadership isn’t the same as socialist groups - there are practical things that differentiate us here. At any rate - that is a topic for another time.

So I want to skip back to individualism, I want to explain why I believe often the result of individualist philosophies put into practice can be damaging to social movements, how they often become anti-social rather than anti-capitalist. I think this confusion that starts from the concept of imminent rebellion against authority, meaning that things that aren’t actually anti-authoritarian can end up with tacit anarchist support.

Groups like Crimethinc tend to border this line, advocating and fetishing sub-cultural practices as anti-capitalist in and of themselves with little conceptualisation of how they assist in the struggle against capital and the state, if at all. Squatting, sabotage, petty-crime, theft, arson, and assassinations all register in the arsenal of insurrectional-individualist tactics. Actually, I think this is the definitions of the vague term we throw around; ‘lifestylism.’ Precisely this fetishisation. A comrade has raised with me that it is perhaps not only that, but it’s the result of despair at the failures of long-term organising that leads to believing only immediate actions and ‘living politics’ can be revolutionary.

Crimethinc, elevating great ways to get arrested to a lifestyle.

It’s not that say social anarchists don’t use tactics like insurrection, sabotage etc too. But what is to be considered is if the action is beneficial or negative, collectively empowering or just alienating and anti-social.

For example, tactics like sabotage have often been used during union campaigns, the IWW was pretty famous for this. When used as an individual tactic, workers often risk alienation from others, punishment from the state, a waste of comrades resources who bail them out or organise legals. Individuals may get a small benefit from stealing, squatting, living on the dole as a ideological choice etc, but there are always consequences. So when sabotage is done collectively, it can be a powerful tool against the boss, especially so because everyone has each others backs, and the decision to take action has been made together. It’s the small sums of collective actions that become a movement.

Consider;

"Shoplifting, dumpster diving, quitting work are all put forward as revolutionary ways to live outside the system, but amount to nothing more than a parasitic way of life which depends on capitalism without providing any real challenge.”

Obviously with this quote we don’t want to conflate what it takes to ensure survival under capitalism, or to demonise people who are unemployed or anything ridiculous like that. Rather whats being said is that if you have the option to make these choices, if you can always move back in with your folks or whatever, you’re not actually contributing to anti-capitalism - you’re just living out some kind of radical liberalism.

The rich, politicians, anyone in a position of power surely has plenty of time for people who become 'non-participants’ in the system. They do not actually challenge power, they do not help organise collectivelly, they may create small concessions and 'spaces’ of existing without the yoke of capitalist burden, but the ability of this to both spread and become empowering has to be considered. The truth is, you cannot, ever, completely drop out of capitalism or get saway from the state. People in power are afraid of the Assata Shakurs, the Malcom X’s, the union organisers, the organisations that demand and fight for collective rights. Not hippie communes.

I’m not saying everyone who’s doing some kind of activism has to rush out and form an anarcho communist collective, join an organisation or start towing a political line – I’m not here to say 'hey, you should join X because we have the best politics ever! Actually what’s more important as anarchists is that hopefully you go away with some ideas about organising yourself- what i’m saying that there are differences in ideas and hence organisational methods that have very real impacts on the effectiveness of our activism.

It’s been pointed out plenty of times that activists who have no 'home team’ will often find they’ve put incredible amounts of energy into a single campaign, sometimes for years, but when it ends - those lessons are lost, there is no where to keep moving, there is no collective development of knowledge that comes from critical reflection on what you’ve been doing. Unlike individualists would believe everyone is an island, we are all socially formed, and it’s through society we find our freedom. Anyone who thinks they can come to the perfect answers alone, that they can live outside and beyond society is a joker. Here’s an anecdote; did you know its not common for anarchists in the Uruguayan Anarchist federation to talk in first person? They’re so adamant that every individual’s personality is a product of collective development that to talk in third person shows humility and acknowledgement of each’s contribution to one another. I’m not suggesting that we stop talking in first person but I think that such humility is quite an inspirational revolutionary value.  

I think what individual libertarian/anarchist activists who aren’t in organisations do though is help the development of libertarian values. By participating in social struggles as anarchists we hope to help build a culture that empowers from the bottom up. And developing an anarchist culture is really important. We want to have our own morals, different to those advocated by a capitalist and statist society - we want a world without patriarchy or racism, and conscious cultural reconstruction is important if we understand that there are forms of exploitation and repression that are reinforced by more than just capitalism.

I think the strength of actions by anarchist individuals is more like a reproduction of ethics, rather than any programmatic revolutionary strategy. Because we recognize that there are two levers of power in society right - the state and the point of production, you could maybe say that the third is the social reproduction of capitalist relations - and that’s where community organising is important. We can’t and don’t just fetishise the workplace. We are not marxists and we don’t agree that societies problems are limited strictly to the superstructure of production (not that they all do! It’s hard to avoid strawmen in such a broad piece of writing.) Anarchists know power exists in all social relations, we have talked often about the centre and the periphery of power. And knowing that centralisation creates power we acknowledge that we can’t ‘take the state’ – that’s completely against anarchist strategy and understanding of how society works - what we do want to do is build counter-power to where capital and oppression are created. That’s absolutely key to overthrowing this society. And that’s not done by throwing a bomb into a bank, it’s done by organising workers and communities.

Many people today are drawn towards anarchism because it offers space to individuals who feel marginalised by predominant social constructions. When you identify as an anarchist its okay to be totally yourself. But we have to acknowledge the whole idea of the individual against society is absurd - anarchism IS the single most social political philosophy - we believe in a world of completely free and equal individuals - how can we be anti-social, unless you’re you think society and the state are the same?

What I think is useful from here is to talk a little about how there are differences in tactics, politics and strategy. Now this is pretty key and will lead us onto a bit of discussion about particular things anarchists today are into. To be honest, the useful terminology for this distinction was only just brought to my attention by another comrade.

Firstly; we have politics. This is the level at which we identify the philosophy we believe in - which is anarchism. So starting from the vision of building a world without states, capitalism or authority we have to decide on the appropriate strategies for making that happen.

So, strategy. Here’s where we do maybe the most reflection - what does our society look like? What kind of changes do we need? How could we start making them happen? Are we insurrectionists, are we syndicalist, are we into community organising, should we be concentrating on propaganda? There is alot to be figured out.

Finally; tactics. The tactics we employ are the specific details of the strategy we decide upon, as in, what particular actions we undertake to implement the strategy. For example if you did believe you needed an insurrection, you might form a cell that wants to annihilate capitalists and cops or something, I dont know. If you chose syndicalism you might look at what industries are most important to organise in right now, and if you want to start a specifically anarchist union or if you want to radicalise existing ones by building shop stewards networks and advocating wildcats. Within social anarchism there are a variety of ideas about strategies, these are just two, very different and broad examples.

The problem in Australia seems to be that our movement is so confused, so unsophisiticated that we don’t take the time to work our way through these considerations. We as the collective that is anarchism in Australia tend to fetishise one or the other, or completely muddle them up. Remember here i’m not just talking about individualists; most anarchist groups in Australia are completely guilty of this too. But at the same time, I think what we like to call 'lifestyle’ can be traced back to the early individualism, where personal rebellion and individual, violent insurrection are considered as the total strategy against the state.

All the same, I want to look at a few places where we see the confusion at work. Firstly i’m going to talk about squatting.

So squatting is a tactic, yea? But if you believe that it’s inherently political, you’re going to get stuck repeating it over and over when it’s not the right strategy, or when you can’t do it, where are your politics? This kind of thing happens all the time. It’s a really big problem in the environmental movement. I’m not really involved in that anymore but it’s kinda where I started back in Newcastle, and I saw a fair bit of this confusion.

Squatting is not really a huge thing in Australia, though I do know a number of squatters and there are a few in Melbourne - it’s a much bigger thing in Europe. Many anarchists seem to consider squatting as a lifestyle choice (though there are some, i’m sure, who do it because they haven’t any other option - I know at least one person who fits this category.) There’s a difference between a choice and survival here. Living in a squat would appear to give people the space to exist outside typical property relations, maximising personal freedoms and somehow 'propagate’ the idea that squatting is an option to the broader community. There is an element of truth in this, but it’s actually extremely limited.

Creating 'liberty’ for oneself doesn’t necessarily mean it creates it for others, sometimes it can even limit the freedoms of others. Squatting isn’t necessarily one of those times, but it’s not as helpful a tactic as other options. There is a difference between punks who want to live in a squat cause its free and they can have parties, and a squat that’s used as an accessible social center that, for example, that helps house refugees. The first is fine; it doesn’t really matter to anyone except the landlord. But the second has collective and social power. I’d argue that as anarchists this is exactly our task. We don’t just want revolution for ourselves, we want it for everyone.  

To turn a squat into a viable social center it seems obvious that it needs resources, organisation, community outreach, and importantly the backing of other social groups willing to defend it when eviction time comes. I believe this is a task for anarchist organisations. Lets look at WSM in Ireland for a second, they’re an anarchist group who doesn’t operate, control or dominate any squats. What they do however, is help initiate them, have activists involved in their on going upkeep and daily activity (one squat in Ireland that has a few WSM members used the workshops to build heaters to send to refugees in Calais), and defend them and their autonomy against repression from the state. They also organise forums and do the important task of political propaganda helping legitimate squatting as a strategy against capitalism. I use WSM as an example of this because they’re particularly successful - they have an anarchist publication reaches thousands of people monthly, and they have public attention for being at the forefront of several social movements. Imagine what such a powerful anarchist organisation can bring to the defence of autonomy?

On the other hand - it doesn’t take an anarchist organisation to make squatting a valid social project - im just pointing out what I think tasks of anarchist are.

EDIT: Since this was written the totally super awesome squat project in Bendigo St, Collingwood has popped up! This occupation was organised by the Homeless Persons Union of Victoria, and is drawing attention to the rate of homelessness in Melbourne compared to the enormous number of empty homes. This is a fantastic example of the social value of a squatting project.

Lets look at Social Log Bologna in Italy for a moment. This was a squat that is now quite a large social center. The site itself used to be a postal facility. The people who set it up were autonomist marxists, and you know what - they didn’t just use it for themselves -now it’s entirely self-run by refugees! It had enormous social potential and outreach. A while back the cops tried to shut it down - look at how many people turned out to protect it!

This wasn’t just a venue for gigs - this actually demonstrated that when we get rid of fucking capitalism - there going to be so many creative things we can do with the economy to make sure everyone has everything they need. It was also the result of serious planning and looking at the specific things the working class of a particular area needed at a particular point in time.

Some of the local community coming to defend Social Log from eviction.

So then I’d like to ask; “what is a squat compared to a rent strike?”

This I believe is where we begin to see real collective action forming. Rent strikes aren’t a thing here anymore, but Australia does have some history with them. Actually, I almost never hear people talk about them! If you don’t know what a rent strike is, it’s basically like this; the community in a particular area organises against inflated rents and evictions, you hold some mass meetings, do some propaganda and whatever, maybe you target on the basis of community, maybe you target a particular landlord, but you get to a point where collective power is established and people stop paying rent. When the cops turn up, you picket in defense of whoever they try and evict, maybe you go hassle the state department or the rental agents or something. Not really something we’re in a position to do now - but worthy of remembering this exists for when struggle around housing intensifies even more. If you want to look at historical examples, i’d suggest Scotland during the 30s’ and Italy in the 70s’. There is a pretty good article on libcom.org about the Italian rent strikes - which were significantly influenced by the autonomia movement. For those that don’t know, Autonomia was/is a branch of marxism that started to question the significance of the party, started including feminism and talking about 'social reproduction’ and all that. It reproduced a lot of the problems of Leninism, and some of the problems of unorganised Anarchism, but has some very valuable lessons to draw from.

What makes rent strikes so much more powerful is that, unlike squatting, they’re a viable tactic to a huge portion of the population. Squatting is unavailable to so many people, for so many reasons. There are only so many places, its unsuitable for families, for people who need to keep stuff secure for work or whatever, for people with disabilities, for people who want to be guaranteed a hot shower. For those who require stability and security, things we all deserve, squatting is not a real option. Even for many of Australia’s homeless squatting wouldn’t be viable - what’s deserved is secure housing. Wouldn’t it be better if we could organise a mass renters and housing movement committed to direct action and direct democracy, with total autonomy from political parties and the upper classes? Social movements provide the space to lay the real foundations of a society built from the bottom up.

Let’s look really quickly at another places the anarchist movement finds itself sometimes fetishising tactics rather than politics. Sections of the anarchist left often have an idea that they can provide social services purely because it seems ideologically sound. Services that have often been won by the left are now provided by the state and far better than what we can do. Why would anyone want to go to a dodgy anarchist day care in a squat if there’s a nice clean one run by professionals and provided by the state?

I think a relevant example can be Food Not Bombs. I’m not here to have a go at people doing FNB. I’m just raising it as an example we can relate to! FNB is a sweet idea, you get the food that Woolies or Coles or whatever were going to throw away - cause you know, capitalism is extremely fucking wasteful. Or you take what you’ve grown at your co-op or whatever, and you turn it into a feed and put it on for free in a park or down a street in the city and give it out to whoever needs it. You produce some propaganda around it that points out that capitalism is fucked. Rad, this is actually a great idea. Practical things like this is the way we make our politics seen, the way we prove we can do things differently, the way we prove we have something to offer, and we have a way to talk to people that can be way less alienating than shoving a newspaper in someones face. (Note; Anarchists need a newspaper. I’m pointing out that there are ways of doing things that are less alienating, and that we believe in ‘propaganda of the deed.’)

But you know, taking into account the politics, strategy, tactic formula… is this the best thing to do in Australia? There are loads of charities and even state institutions that feed the homeless. Sometimes you’re competing with mega churches and the state! In a society where *most* people have what they need to eat, then maybe resources are better put into something else? That’s where you go back to your politics, look at the concrete situation, start talking about a strategy to build anarchism and then figure out what tactics are going to be effective. If we were in say, Greece, where the soup-kitchen idea is really important, then fuck yes anarchist should be setting up Food Not Bombs or whatever name you wanna give it. That’s exactly our territory and the perfect place for demonstrating alternatives. There’s a Marx quote I like, “every real movement is worth a dozen programmes.” Anarchism is meant to be connected to the real needs of the people - actually anarchist organisation exists to support the real struggle, not to establish socialism by decrees. The principle of mutual aid comes from was the early workers movement, not Kropotkin. It wasn’t some ethic dreamed up by intellectuals. Early anarchist movements were dealing with the lack of social services, they were dealing with real social needs.

So what I’m saying is that now when we establish these mutual aid groups, filling these 'holes’ in social needs isn’t a great idea if they have been filled by capitalism and the state, because until anarchism becomes a large and organised social force, we can’t really compete with capitalist or state facilities without wasting a large amount of our own time and resources. We’re far better off organising workers to struggle in those sites and to take them over.

So at the current state, I think we need to stop and reflect where anarchism needs to go. What are our politics? What strategies have we got to make anarchism relevant? Do they reflect how Australian society looks today? We can’t just take the CNT model from 36 Spain and make it happen here, we’re sure as fuck are not going to the hills to start a peasant Insurrectional Army.

To summarising a few points, let’s start with this contradiction between individual and social anarchism.

Anarchism is really the most completely social philosophy - we seek a world based on solidarity, mutual aid and co-operation. How these values could go hand in hand with anti-social elements is beyond me. We are anti-capitalist, because capitalism is toxic for a healthy social system, not because we’re angsty teenagers.

To consider how we want to see a future influenced by anarchism, we need only take a moment to look at the past. There have been times anarchism has been a fruitful social ideal, and during those times it’s only ever been the social and well-developed anarchist organisations and movements that have made an impact; the CNT/FAI in Spain, the Insurrectional Army of the Ukraine, the FORA in Argentina, FAU in Uraguay. There has never been a 'Union of Egoists’, armed terror groups like Conspiracy of Fire haven’t started a revolution, assassinations by individualists have only brought down the states wrath on broader society. Individualist anarchism cannot achieve what collective organisation can. Individualism is the result of bourgeoise and liberal tendencies, it is the dreams of intellectuals trying to mix itself with workers struggles. In contrast, social anarchism comes from the real social struggles of the lower classes.

We certainly believe in building the new society in the shell of the old, and this involves individual action and development, but its always connected to the realisation of a real communal society. Small organisations that fulfill immediate needs, like Co-operatives, affinity groups, etc, have been important parts of working class culture, and their general demise has come hand in hand with repression and co-option of working class movements. Models and examples help point the way, they demonstrate that another world is possible, but again these are models of communal action - we are not led to the revolution by the image if the anarchist bombthrower, by Stirners unlimited Ego, or by this terrible 'temporary autonomous zone’ idea. We’re led by images of the Paris commune, the Russian Soviets, the Spanish syndicates, the Hungarian workers councils, even today glimmers of hope exist in the new communal structures in Chiapas, the grassroots councils of Syria and the TEV-DEM in Rojava, not for the political forces that defend them, but the practical institutions of counter-power that are building a new social life.

The considered undertaking of practical activity, connecting it to a broader political programme, and the building of dedicated anarchist organisations will only strengthen our ability to make a difference and increase the scope of human freedom both in the here and now, and to lay the preperation for a revolutionary situation. I’d urge any who believe anarchism is achieved by autonomous, atomised and unorganised individuals to seriously reconsider how they believe revolution is possible, and if it is, what it will take to get there. But for anarchists in dedicated organisations, it is worth a reminder that actions undertaken by the working class will not come with a perfectly worked anarchist line or program, that developing ideas takes time, that the revolution is messy and slow, that patronising or dismissing peoples genuine individual needs and concerns is not a helpful attitude. But if we stick to our guns, to our morals of solidarity, co-operation, equality, and autonomy that we will sow the seeds of freedom today, so that tomorrow we may have truly free society. I don’t know about you, but I want to take this really seriously, I want to live to see anarchy. If we refuse to acknowledge the lessons of the past, if we don’t take on the lessons of the past we will just let the state continue to exist, either in its capitalist or socialist form.