Hungarian review of 'The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists'

hungary / romania | history of anarchism | debate Monday April 11, 2005 23:34 by ? - Barricade Collective

This lengthy review of the 'The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists' was found online and seems to try to fuse anarchist communism with left/council communism. This is not unique and offers the other side of a particular debate within anarchist communist than that represented by the organisations active in this site. This is clear in the text below from their rejection of working in mass organisations like unions.

Historical background.

After the repression of the worldwide revolutionary wave in 1917-23 thousands of proletarian militants had to flee the areas where they actively took part in the revolts, because the terror of the capitalists was not able to kill every revolutionary, though that was its intention. Apparently, the revolutionary movement has suffered a great blow: the triumphant counterrevolution has almost completely destroyed the structures which the proletariat had already conquered while it was organizing itself to a class. The proletarian organizations, which, as the prefigurations of the communist world party were organizing the centralization of the struggle, were destroyed or distorted into the counterrevolutionary caricatures of themselves. The Bolshevik social democracy, which entitled itself "communist", together with the traditional Social Democrats, tried to disintegrate and to falsificate one of the foundations of its class-being, the class memory of the proletariat.

In fact these tendencies imply the objective negation of the class as such, because their definitions of the class, just like their practical activity, disguises the basic antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, by serving conceptions like the Leninist theory of the "socialism in one country", the "peaceful adjacency" of socialism and capitalism, the Bersteinian line of the socialistic evolution of capitalism etc. These ideologies are the reflections of the negation of classes-the objective life condition of capitalism, which actively helped the bourgeoisie to absorb of the class conflict and to reinforce the atomisedness of the proletariat.

But still, the counterrevolutionary period was unable to completely destroy the proletariat. That was practically impossible - and it will be so for the bourgeoisie that be --, because the revolution is not the consequence of the personal will, but the production and inevitable accompany of the capitalist system. Many have been trying to interpret, elaborate the lessons of the revolution (and of the defeat) directly after the defeat - and to carry on the basis of these lessons. One thing seemed to be obvious for the conscious proletarians, the preparers of the new revolutionary wave: the social democracy (both its Bolsevik and traditional form) had denounced itself as the tool of the counterrevolution.

Actually it is important to show that the social democracy was not a revolutionary movement, what later (according to the public opinion: in 1914) became the traitor of the proletariat. It has been the tool of the capital ever since, in its every manifestation. In reality its goal has never been the communist class struggle against the state, the value and the dictatorship of the capitalism, but the reforming of the capitalism, achieving compromises, the manteinance of the state of exploited for the workers by some superficial help.

Naturally this does not appertain to those millions of the proletarians which were - due to the lack of the break, to the counterrevolutionary propaganda etc. -- organizing themself in the parties of the II International; this is about the organisation itself, the representative of the historical social democracy - which is the answer, and the alternative against the class struggle, offered by Capitalism.

The leadership of the II International has already on the founding congress started its struggle for the elimination of the revolutionary elements; and in every important question it committed against the elements entitled "anarchist". About the end of the revolutionary wave, in 1923-24 the counterrevolutionary tendency of the Bolshevism also became apparent for the most of the proletarians. Although only the more important news got out from the Soviet Union itself, but the world still could see the tendency of the consequencing steps: The signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, and in connection with this the repression of the Left SR revolt (1918), the repression of the Makhnovtshina (about 1918-21), Kronstadt (1921), and last but not least the NEP, when the triumphant comeback of every characteristics the capitalism was announced (1921) meant the more important turning points.

The "center" of the Bolshevik Party (Lenin, Trotsky) abolished every revolutionary protesting (either inside or outside the party), and consequently followed the policy of maintaining the Capitalism and the dictatorship of value. As early as 1918 they attacked the Moscow Anarchist Center by the force of arms, 600 militants were imprisoned and many of them killed. The cause was that the anarchists organized their own armed force, the Black Guard, which was preparing to a cruel showdown with the class enemy. And there is nothing more frightening for the capitalism than the armed proletariat.

So in the Bolshevism the proletarian factions, which were confronting the state power of the repainted capitalism for the sake of the revolution, were called "anarchist", "leftist divergent" again, or they were treated like criminals and bandits, by this denying their political role. So at the beginning of the twenties the anarchism and "left-wing" communism seemed to be the only heir to the revolution - and the social-democracy were after them by all possible means.

Beside the already mentioned Russian and Ukrainian Anarchists, on one hand the German and the Netherlands Council Communists were those who belonged here -- their party, the German Communist Workers' Party (KAPD) played an important role in clarifying the lessons of the revolutionary wave, and in deepening the break with capitalist system. On the other hand, the left wing of newly formed Communist parties, especially in England (Sylvia Pankhurst's newspaper, The Workers' Dreadnought, and the "anarcho-marxists") and in Italy (the internationalist Communists grouping around Amadeo Bordiga), the German Anarcho-Syndicalists, whose organisation, the Germanian Union of the Free Workers (FAUD), after the revolutionary dynamism at the beginning, under the direction of Rudolf Rocker was becoming a more and more withholding force; and the countless "anarchist" tendencies all around the world.

In many cases we can only mention persons like Errico Malatesta, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, who were in themselves manifesting tendencies. In England there was a powerful anarchist movement beside the radical communists, just like in Spain. But the foreign - especially Russian - anarchists fleeing from the counterrevolution mainly in France found asylum. (Here we only deal with Europe - we are just mentioning that in this period the center of the revolutionary activity have already been placed outside of Europe, mainly in Latin-America.)

The phenomenon called "anarchism" that time meant very diverse and controversial groups and tendencies. In whole it was not revolutionary, moreover, its counterrevolutionary essence was due to the fact that in many elements it was really struggling for the revolution, but it was regarding the anarchism as a big family or a community where the different tendencies want the same thing on an ethereal level. But this was not true. The majority of the "anarchist" groups was using bourgeois paroles and their activity was only the completion of the Social-Democracy: they were denying the centralization of the class struggle, they were declaring the cult of the individual, they rejected the dictatorial form of the revolution and the proletariat.

Most of them praised the self-government of the producers, so instead of changing the base - the dictatorship of value on the human needs - they stressed a completely technical question, the ways of controlling. Others - first and foremost the council communists and many of the anarchist communists - formed a truly communist minority and continued their revolutionary struggle. There were all kinds of people in the French exile. Everybody was talking about Anarchism and they entitled the most narrow-minded bourgeois phantasms with this adjective. But essentially this process had the same goal (only in a smaller extent), which the Bolshevism had on the "other side": to cloud the essence of the class struggle.

They hashed the old position about "the abyss between Anarchism and Communism" -- emasculating both sides which are in fact one and the same. The Bolsevik printing-houses were pouring out the pamphlets against the Anarchists, the calumnies about the Makhnovtshina, and Lenin's brochure, the "Left wing communism as an infantile disorder" in which the author pronouncedly condemns every revolutionary tendency, and holds brief for the elite party, the parlamentarism and the trade union struggle. But the "anarchist" side was also quick to answer back - the "leaders", first and foremost Berkman and Malatesta enumerated some untoward arguments against the "autoriter socialism", i.e. the "marxian" communism.

The most characteristic product of the era was a pamphlet entitled "Bakunin vs Marx" whose unknown anarchist author is analyzing the "antagonism" of the two tendencies in the tone of the tabloids. This is an adequate "anarchist" pair to Lenin's "communist" pamphlet.

The biggest organization of the French anarchists, the Anarchist Union (UA) in 1926 started a great debate about a manifestation which goal was to harmonize the positions of the individualis, the revolutionary anarchism and the syndicalism. The debate grew more and more acrimonious, and the anarcho-communists stated that they have nothing common with the individualist and with other bourgeois "anarchists", so they left the organization and founded the Anarchist-Communist Union (UAC). The new organization stated that "the only possible means of the fight is the revolutionary anarchism, the only possible goal is the communism; the two is one and the same."

They marked as a goal the "break with the Big Family of the anarchism" which tried to unify the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary tendencies into a pseudo community. The majority of the UAC was for the centralization of the struggle and the usage of dictatorial means, insofar as in 1927 the founding of an anarchist party was arised ( party i.e. centralised fighting organization-not a political party).

Then a tendency - the "synthesists" -- left the UAC, and with the leading of Sebastian Faure and the ex-makhnovist Volin, fell back upon the old theory of the popular front, the "synthesis" of the many kinds of anarchisms - while the revolutionary anarchist reinforced their organization under the name Revolutionary Anarchist Communist Union (UACR), which was operating until 1930.

The Russian Anarchists (who were mainly revolutionaries) were also participating in these struggles. They already in 1925 founded the Foreign Group of the Anarchists of Russia, which ran a newspaper called Workers' Truth (Delo Truda) - the editors were Nestor Makhno, Ida Mett and Piotr Arshinov. That was the organ where they published the programmatical text of the group, the "Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communism", which later became famous simply under the name "The Platform".

The coming out of the platform instantly initiated heated debates. Leaded by Volin, the synthesists started an attack in their newspaper "Union" "The claim that the anarchism is simply the theory of class struggle, leads to a unilateral position" - stated Volin. The platformists summoned a meeting on 5th of February 1927, whose goal was to organize an international conference of revolutionaries. A Temporary Comittee was set up, with the participaiton of Makhno, the Chinese Chen and the Polish Ranko. The participiants who were from 6 different countries worked out the main issues of the future conference: 1)The class struggle as the most important element of Anarchism 2)Anarchist Communism as the foundation of the movement 3)Syndicalism as an important means of the fight 4)The necessity of establishing the General Union of Anarchists, which organisation is based on the ideological and tactical unity and the collective responsibility 5)The neccessity of a positive program in order to achieve the social revolution.

This was a very revolutionary programme on the level of the period, though it contains some strange elements either - e.g. the acception of a kind of participation in the trade unions - the 1918-21 elements had clearly shown the impossibility of this. The debate about the suggestion couldn't be finished because the police raided the assembly and everyone was arrested. Makhno was saved from the death only by the campaign of the French Anarchist. In the end the "International Federation of the Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist" remained a plan and many of the participiants turned against it. (e.g. Camillo Berneri, the great Italian Anarcho-Communist, who was later killed by Erno Gero in Barcelona, 1937)

The inidividualist side led by Malatesta also started a great attack against the Platform. Makhno and his comrades in 18th of August, 1927 published the "Reply to the Anarchist-Communist." In this they explained their views about the necessity of the revolutionary leadership: "It is obvious that the revolution will be accomplished by the masses themselves, but the revolutionary mass always produces the minority which will push the masses forward." This point of view was a big mote in the platformists' eye in the opinion of the "anarchists" praising the freedom of the "individual" and the unlimited individualism. The article wrote the following about these people: "The whole company of the individualists who call themselves anarchist, in fact not anarchist at all. The fact that this many people who gather (but on what foundation?) and claim that "we are one family", and they call this whole mixture an "anarchist organization" is not just inept, but pronouncedly hostile."

Although the international organisation couldn't be formed, the Platform made a great effect to revolutionary anarchists of many countries. In France the platformists took many organizations under their control for a while, but in the end they always had to leave them. This was an important lesson for them that the obsolete, counterrevolutionary organizations should not be cobbled and reformed, because it is completely useless, but instead of that they should again and again, through many break-ups, concretize the class program of the proletariat. Organizations were found in Italy and in Bulgaria, just like in Poland - though that just adopted the general principles, but rejected the Platform as authoritarian.

The 1935-45 war dissolved the ranks of the anarchism but since the capitalist peace haven't brought much change compared to the capitalist war, the class struggle activity toned up again. By this time the Bolsheviks (including the Trotskyites) have already played their role and could not make any effect to the really class struggling proletarian elements. The revolutionary movement in many cases reached back to the Platform and created, somewhat controversary but in any case revolutionary organizations like the Libertarian Communist Federation (FCL) in France and the Anarchist Proletarian Action Groups (GAAP) in Italy at the beginning of the fifties, and later the Revolutionary Anarchist Federations in different countries.

About the Platform

The text itself, as we have seen before, was written in a period when the counterrevolution - after the abolishment of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave - was in the full flush of health. So the most emphasized point of the text was to point out the disorganisedness and confusedness of the movement, the complete lack of centralization and united practice. It is doubtless that against the powers of the extremely centralized and - at least against the proletarians - unified capital one has to use the similar methods in order to win. But the pseudo-anarchism was attacking with full force the antidemocratical and dictatorial essence of the proletarian struggle. So the desired unity only without them and against them could be achieved.

The Platform correctly states that anarchism is "not a beautiful utopia, nor an abstract philosophical idea, it is a social movement of the labouring masses." Instead of the bourgeois duality of practice and theory, this is an organical unity, the process of the abolition of capital in its every manifestation. The Platform always proceeds from the active reality and tries to react in according to this, doesn't care with the theoretical "problems" constantly debated by the "anarchologists" (Did Kropotkin wore flowered underpants? Will there be weather forecast in the anarchist society? etc.)

Above all the text urges the creation of a powerful, all-in anarchist organization. Maybe today this seems to be obvious, but in that situation it was not. Many pseudo-anarchist denied even the necessity of the organization itself, the others said if an organization exists, it must be something nominal, just for the purposes of coordination, within which the individual persons and subgroups have inner autonomy. This democratic pseudo-organization has in each case proven that it is completely unable to any revolutionary activity.

Hence the creators of the Platform were for the unitary - revolutionary - tendency and for the organized collective activity. This was a very important step from the anarchist, because they were challenging those taboos which meant the real barrier for anarchism to the really effective struggle. The Platform stresses the absurdness of the pseudo-organization established on the basis of such synthesis.

The goal of the text is no other than to give the program of a forming internationally anarchist-revolutionary organisation, namely the program of the worldwide communist proletarian party - the program of the proletariat organized into a class. This task was beyond the means of the text. In general, this is the revolutionary program of the proletariat - though it is an existing and effective historical reality, it is no other than the revolutionary process: nobody, no group will ever be able to put them down exactly. But this is not necessary, because in the course of the concretizations of the class struggle (which contains the written documents too) this program will always be realized to some extent.

From these events, from the lessons of them one can abstract and deduce some of its characteristics. These are principally the break with democracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the struggle against parliamentarianism and the trade unions, the struggle against the political parties and the tasks of the anarcho-communist revolutionary core (with an inappropriate word, the "vanguard"). These points have no clear appearance in the Platform either.

The poorest parts of the text are those dealing with the concrete task which should be completed in the course of the revolution, which try to give a picture about the organization of the production, consumption, army etc. It must be laid down that the Platform - which went quite far in the break with the pseudo-anarchism and in other crucial questions of the proletarian revolution - here falls into the trap of making up utopias. The main problem with these utopias is that they can be realised as well: they do not solve the antagonism between human activity and work, means and ware, use-value and exchange-value. The exchange between cities and villages (though with a great simplification) nowadays goes the same way as well...

The platformists didn't see the complete subversiveness of the proletarian revolution - its characteristics that it must profoundly change the relations. The antagonisms mentioned before should be destroyed in the first minutes of the revolution, and there cannot be any transitional, half-capitalist-half-communist state.

Although in the text itself lays down this in a whole chapter, exposing how counterrevolutionary are the conceptions about the transition, however, in the second part the text itself drafts such a state ... The form of the dictatorship of the proletariat - which is not "the organ of the transition" but the nature of the revolutionary struggle, the proletarian class - is the counter-state, which is the complete and active negation of the existing order - just as the proletariat is the negation of the bourgeoisie in itself. The creators of the text fall into the error that they talk about the "freedom" and the "independency of the proletarians (in their terminology, the workers - which means the same here).

Here are two anarchist fetishes which the text could not surpass. These two terms only in the capitalism have sense. From what is a worker free and independent? From the capitalism? It is obvious that this is not the case, because that determines his existence (as a worker and as a social creature either). Thus it is his class what he is free and independent from, from the force whose goal is no other than the complete abolishment of this system - including the freedom and independency of the "worker".

The interesting thing is that the text has many times settled its account with these illusions because it argues the necessity of the centralization and the unified organization. It was attacked many times by the champions of freedom...

As we have mentioned before, its position about the trade unions is quite confused as well. While elsewhere it is clearly shown that the revolutionary struggle is no other than the anarchist communism, in this question the authors draw several levels, and they assign the syndicalism as a means of the struggle. On one hand they see the counterrevolutionary role of the trade union (which the majority of the syndicalists saw too during the revolution), on the other hand they believe in the possibility that they can be improved.

The anticipation explained here is in fact about a trade union under anarchist influence. This is a contradiction though: an organization which tries to ameliorate (because it is trade union) the society which want to completely destroy (because it is anarchist).

The historical program of the proletariat does not contain wage struggles (?), declared strikes (?), trade union maydays. Conversely, it does contain the abolition of wage labour, the violent wildcat strikes, the ecstatic joy of struggle and the dictatorial oppression of the hostile interests.

We do not want to deal with the part on production and distribution, army etc. These are desipient, sometimes dangerous daydreaming about self-management and voluntariness etc - a kind of a democratic heaven which is in a complete discordance with the expectations of the general part. But we should add that the one who tries to describe the communist society within the circumstances of the current society, cannot go further than daydreaming.

At the end of the text the authors have to fight another pseudo-anarchist phantom, which seems to be quite dangerous: the federalism. Although the text in fact is about organizing ourselves into a class and about centralizing the struggle - and this is obvious for the pseudo-anarchist wimperers - the authors are too shy to admit the necessity of centralization verbally. They try to avoid this by making difference between "bad" and "good" federalism. The "bad" one is emphasising the importance of the ego and it is the means of the individualist, while the "good" one is, as it is revealed, is not federalism but centralism ... Exactly the vagueness of the question, the lack of breaking-up in this question leads the authors to put down that entirely bourgeois rubbish about the Federal Executing Committee. Well, this is not the "organized vanguard" ....

Shortly we mention another critical point: the text keeps separating the peasantry and the proletariat - though this latter does not only refer to the "oily handed workers". Peasantry is not a social class, it is a layer created by the division of labour. There are bourgeoises as well in their ranks, not only proletarians (and this also refers to the workers, though there are obviously more peasant bourgeoises...) But still, it is an important lesson that the peasantry in the modern revolutionary movement in Europe and in the areas where it was a real owner of its lands (unlike in Russia!) played a more counterrevolutionary role. The overestimating of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry is due to the group's (a bit too much overemphasized) Russian point of view. The importance of labour is also overemphasized. They fall into the old ouvrierist trap, which is the oldest weapon of the social democracy against us: let's be proud of our work, let's be proud to be workers, unlike the bourgeois "drones", let's struggle for the "society of labour"...! But the communism is no other than the complete negation of labour, every kind of work, the realisation of human activity against the alienated activity. It is not just we are not proud to be workers, but that's why were are revolting, we are revolting against labour!

"What is the difference between the social democrat and the communist?" -- posed the question the Situationist International at the beginning of the seventies: "The social democrat want full employment, the communist want full unemployment."

We want to stress once more that the Platform is not a holy text and it is not without errors. It wasn't like that in 1926 either. But its goal was - as the authors claim it - not to create a bible, but a sort of starting a debate which results common revolutionary activity among the really revolutionary elements. We cannot say nothing more either but let it nowadays do a similar task as well.

Barricade Collective February, 2005

Original text from http://www.angelfire.com/co4/tamtsih/barikad/brosurak/platform.htm copyright etc remains with authors