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The Legacy of the St. Imier Congress
The St. Imier Congress and the Birth of Revolutionary Anarchism
The September 1872 St. Imier Congress of federalist and anti-authoritarian sections and federations of the International Workingmen’s Association (the “IWMA”), otherwise known as the “First International,” marks a watershed moment in the history of socialism and anarchism.
Just over a week earlier, at the Hague Congress of the International (September 2 – 7, 1872), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had engineered the expulsion of Michael Bakunin and James Guillaume from the International on trumped up grounds, and then had the General Council of the International transferred from London to New York, despite the General Council having been granted increased powers to ensure ideological uniformity. The Hague Congress had also passed a resolution mandating the formation of national political parties for the purpose of achieving political power.
While Marx and Engels’ allies at the Hague Congress, notably the French Blanquists (followers of Auguste Blanqui, a radical French socialist who advocated revolutionary dictatorship), had supported the expulsions of Bakunin and Guillaume, they were taken by surprise when Marx and Engels succeeded in transferring the executive power of the International, the General Council, to New York, and had quit the International in disgust. The New York based “International” quickly became an irrelevant rump.
The September 1872 St. Imier Congress of federalist and anti-authoritarian sections and federations of the International Workingmen’s Association (the “IWMA”), otherwise known as the “First International,” marks a watershed moment in the history of socialism and anarchism.
Just over a week earlier, at the Hague Congress of the International (September 2 – 7, 1872), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had engineered the expulsion of Michael Bakunin and James Guillaume from the International on trumped up grounds, and then had the General Council of the International transferred from London to New York, despite the General Council having been granted increased powers to ensure ideological uniformity. The Hague Congress had also passed a resolution mandating the formation of national political parties for the purpose of achieving political power.
While Marx and Engels’ allies at the Hague Congress, notably the French Blanquists (followers of Auguste Blanqui, a radical French socialist who advocated revolutionary dictatorship), had supported the expulsions of Bakunin and Guillaume, they were taken by surprise when Marx and Engels succeeded in transferring the executive power of the International, the General Council, to New York, and had quit the International in disgust. The New York based “International” quickly became an irrelevant rump.
Much to the surprise and consternation of Marx and Engels, far from neutralizing the federalist and anarchist elements of the International through the expulsion of Bakunin and Guillaume and the transfer of the General Council to New York, these actions helped solidify support for a reconstituted International that embraced federalist principles and rejected centralized power.
A majority of the International’s sections and federations did not support the resolutions of the Hague Congress. Barely a week after the Hague Congress, several of them held their own congress in St. Imier, Switzerland, where they reconstituted the International independent of the shell organization now controlled by Marx and Engels through the General Council.
The opponents of the Marxist controlled International were united in their opposition to the concentration of power in the General Council, regardless of whether the Council sat in London or New York. They also shared a commitment to directly democratic federalist forms of organization. Some were completely opposed to the formation of working class political parties to achieve state power, while others were opposed to making that a mandatory policy regardless of the views of the membership and local circumstances. The reconstituted anti-authoritarian wing of the International was to have anarchist, syndicalist and, for a time, reformist elements.
The St. Imier Congress began on September 15, 1872, just eight days after the Hague Congress. It was attended by delegates from Spain, France, Italy and Switzerland, including Guillaume and Adhémar Schwitzguébel from Switzerland; Carlo Cafiero, Errico Malatesta, Giuseppi Fanelli, and Andrea Costa from Italy; Rafael Farga-Pellicer and Tomás González Morago from Spain; and the French refugees, Charles Alerini, Gustave Lefrançais, and Jean-Louis Pindy. Bakunin, although living in Switzerland, attended as an Italian delegate.
A “regional” congress of the Swiss Jura Federation was held in conjunction with the “international” congress, with many of the same delegates, plus members of the Slav Section, such as Zamfir Arbore (who went under the name of Zemphiry Ralli) and other French speaking delegates, including Charles Beslay, an old friend of Proudhon’s who went into exile in Switzerland after the brutal suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871.
Virtually all of the participants were either anarchists or revolutionary socialist federalists, and many of them went on to play important roles in the development of anarchist and revolutionary socialist movements in Europe.
The assembled delegates adopted a federalist structure for a reconstituted International (or the “anti-authoritarian International”), with full autonomy for the sections, declaring that “nobody has the right to deprive autonomous federations and sections of their incontrovertible right to decide for themselves and to follow whatever line of political conduct they deem best.” For them, “the aspirations of the proletariat can have no purpose other than the establishment of an absolutely free economic organization and federation, founded upon the labour and equality of all and absolutely independent of all political government.” Consequently, turning the Hague Congress resolution regarding the formation of political parties for the purpose of achieving political power on its head, they proclaimed that “the destruction of all political power is the first duty of the proletariat.”
With respect to organized resistance to capitalism, the delegates to the St. Imier Congress affirmed their position that the organization of labour, through trade unions and other working class forms of organization, “integrates the proletariat into a community of interests, trains it in collective living and prepares it for the supreme struggle,” through which “the privilege and authority” maintained and represented by the State will be replaced by “the free and spontaneous organization of labour.”
While the anti-authoritarian Internationalists entertained no illusions regarding the efficacy of strikes in ameliorating the condition of the workers, they regarded “the strike as a precious weapon in the struggle.” They embraced strikes “as a product of the antagonism between labour and capital, the necessary consequence of which is to make workers more and more alive to the gulf that exists between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat,” bolstering their organizations and preparing them “for the great and final revolutionary contest which, destroying all privilege and all class difference, will bestow upon the worker a right to the enjoyment of the gross product of his labours.”
Here we have the subsequent program of anarcho-syndicalism: the organization of workers into trade unions and similar bodies, based on class struggle, through which the workers will become conscious of their class power, ultimately resulting in the destruction of capitalism and the state, to be replaced by the free federation of the workers based on the organizations they created themselves during their struggle for liberation.
The resolutions from the St. Imier Congress received statements of support from the Italian, Spanish, Jura, Belgian and some of the English speaking American federations of the International, with most of the French sections also approving them. In Holland, three out of the four Dutch branches sided with the Jura Federation and the St. Imier Congress. The English Federation, resentful of Marx’s attempts to keep it under his control, rejected “the decisions of the Hague Congress and the so-called General Council of New York.” While the longtime English member of the International, John Hales, did not support revolution, he advised the Jura Federation that he agreed with them on “the principle of Federalism.” At a congress of the Belgian Federation in December 1872, the delegates there also repudiated the Hague Congress and the General Council, supporting instead the “defenders of pure revolutionary ideas, Anarchists, enemies of all authoritarian centralisation and indomitable partisans of autonomy.”
However, there was a tension in the resolutions adopted at the St. Imier Congress. On the one hand, one resolution asserted the “incontrovertible right” of the International’s autonomous federations and sections “to decide for themselves and to follow whatever line of political conduct they deem best.” On the other hand, another resolution asserted that “the destruction of all political power is the first duty of the proletariat.”
The resolution regarding the autonomy of the federations and sections in all matters, including political action, was meant to maintain the International as a pluralist federation where each member group was free to follow their own political approach, so that both advocates of participation in electoral activity and proponents of revolutionary change could co-exist.
However, the call for the destruction of all political power expressed an anarchist position. The two resolutions could only be reconciled if the destruction of political power was not necessarily the “first duty of the proletariat,” but could also be regarded as a more distant goal to be achieved gradually, along with “the free and spontaneous organization of labour.”
The tension between these two resolutions continued to exist within the reconstituted International for several years. James Guillaume supported political pluralism within the International and sought to convince some of the sections and federations that had gone along with Marx, such as the Social Democrats in Germany, to rejoin the anti-authoritarian International, and to keep the English Internationalists who had rejected Marx’s centralist approach, such as Hales, within the reconstituted International.
Although the German Social Democrats never officially joined the reconstituted International, two German delegates attended the 1874 Brussels Congress. English delegates attended both the September 1873 Geneva Congress and the September 1874 Brussels Congress, where there was an important debate regarding political strategy, including whether there was any positive role for the state.
The Geneva Congress in September 1873 was the first full congress of the reconstituted International. It was attended by delegates from England, France, Spain, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland. The English delegates, John Hales and Johann Georg Eccarius (Marx’s former lieutenant), had been members of the original International. They were interested in reviving the International as an association of workers’ organizations, and in disavowing the Marxist controlled General Council and International that had been transferred by Marx and Engels to New York. They had not become anarchists, as Hales made clear by declaring anarchism “tantamount to individualism… the foundation of the extant form of society, the form we desire to overthrow.” Accordingly, from his perspective, anarchism was “incompatible with collectivism” (a term which at the time was synonymous with socialism).
The Spanish delegate, José Garcia Viñas, responded that anarchy did not mean disorder, as the bourgeois claimed, but the negation of political authority and the organization of a new economic order. Paul Brousse, a French refugee who had recently joined the Jura Federation in Switzerland, agreed, arguing that anarchy meant the abolition of the governmental regime and its replacement by a collectivist economic organization based on contracts between the communes, the workers and the collective organizations of the workers, a position that can be traced back to Proudhon.
Most of the delegates to the Congress were anti-authoritarian federalists, and the majority of them were clearly anarchist in orientation, including “Farga-Pellicer from Spain, Pindy and Brousse from France, Costa from Italy, and Guillaume and Schwitzguebel from Switzerland.” Also within the anarchist camp were Garcia Viñas from Spain, who was close to Brousse, Charles Alerini, a French refugee now based in Barcelona associated with Bakunin, Nicholas Zhukovsky, the Russian expatriate who remained close to Bakunin, François Dumartheray (1842-1931), another French refugee who had joined the Jura Federation, Jules Montels (1843-1916), a former provincial delegate of the Commune who was responsible for distributing propaganda in France on behalf of the exiled group, the Section of Revolutionary Socialist Propaganda and Action, and two of the Belgian delegates, Laurent Verrycken and Victor Dave.
The American Federal Council sent a report to the Congress, in which it indicated its support for the anti-authoritarian International. The Americans were in favour of freedom of initiative for the members, sections, branches and federations of the International, and agreed with limiting any general council to purely administrative functions. They felt that it should be up to each group to determine their own tactics and strategies for revolutionary transformation. They concluded their address with “Long live the social revolution! Long live the International.”
At the 1873 Geneva Congress, it was ultimately agreed to adopt a form of organization based on that followed by the Jura Federation, with a federal bureau to be established that “would be concerned only with collecting statistics and maintaining international correspondence.” As a further safeguard against the federal bureau coming to exercise authority over the various sections and branches, it was to “be shifted each year to the country where the next International Congress would be held.”
The delegates continued the practice of voting in accordance with the mandates that had been given to them by their respective federations. Because the International was now a federation of autonomous groups, each national federation was given one vote and the statutes were amended to explicitly provide that questions of principle could not be decided by a vote. It was up to each federation to determine its own policies and to implement those decisions of the congress that it accepted.
Eccarius also attended the next Congress in Brussels in September 1874 as the English delegate. He and the two German delegates remained in favour of a workers’ state and participation in conventional politics, such as parliamentary elections.
The most significant debate at the Brussels Congress was the one over public services. César De Paepe, on behalf of the Belgians, argued that if public services were turned over to the workers’ associations, or “companies,” the people would simply “have the grim pleasure of substituting a worker aristocracy for a bourgeois aristocracy” since the worker companies, “enjoying a natural or artificial monopoly… would dominate the whole economy.” Neither could all public services be undertaken by local communes, since “the most important of them,” such as railways, highways, river and water management, and communications, “are by their very nature fated to operate over a territory larger than that of the Commune.” Such intercommunal public services would therefore have to be run by delegates appointed by the federated communes. De Paepe claimed that the “regional or national Federation of communes” would constitute a “non-authoritarian State… charged with educating the young and centralizing the great joint undertakings.”
However, De Paepe took his argument one step further, suggesting that “the reconstitution of society upon the foundation of the industrial group, the organization of the state from below upwards, instead of being the starting point and the signal of the revolution, might not prove to be its more or less remote result… We are led to enquire whether, before the groupings of the workers by industry is sufficiently advanced, circumstances may not compel the proletariat of the large towns to establish a collective dictatorship over the rest of the population, and this for a sufficiently long period to sweep away whatever obstacles there may be to the emancipation of the working class. Should this happen, it seems obvious that one of the first things which such a collective dictatorship would have to do would be to lay hands on all the public services.”
De Paepe’s position was opposed by several delegates, including at least one of the Belgians, Laurent Verrycken. He spoke against any workers’ state, arguing that public services should be organized by “the free Commune and the free Federation of communes,” with the execution of the services being undertaken by the workers who provided them under the supervision of the general association of workers within the Commune, and by the Communes in a regional federation of Communes. Farga Pellicer (“Gomez”), on behalf of the Spanish Federation, said that “for a long time they had generally pronounced themselves in favour of anarchy, such that they would be opposed to any reorganization of public services that would lead to the reconstitution of the state.” For him, a “federation of communes” should not be referred to as a “state,” because the latter word represented “the political idea, authoritarian and governmental,” as De Paepe’s comments regarding the need for a “collective dictatorship” revealed.
The most vocal opponent of De Paepe’s proposal was Schwitzguébel from the Jura Federation. He argued that the social revolution would be accomplished by the workers themselves “assuming direct control of the instruments of labor;” thus, “right from the first acts of the Revolution, the practical assertion of the principle of autonomy and federation… becomes the basis of all social combination,” with “all State institutions,” the means by “which the bourgeoisie sustains its privileges,” foundering in the “revolutionary storm.” With “the various trades bodies” being “masters of the situation,” having “banded together freely for revolutionary action, the workers will stick to such free association when it comes to organization of production, exchange, commerce, training and education, health, and security.”
On the issue of political action, the Belgian delegates to the Brussels Congress continued to advocate working outside of the existing political system, albeit partly because they did not yet have universal suffrage in Belgium. Nevertheless, they claimed they did not expect anything from the suffrage or from parliament, and that they would continue to organize the workers into the trades bodies and federations through which the working class would bring about the social revolution, revealing that, as a group, the Belgian Federation did not yet share De Paepe’s doubts that the free federation of the producers would not be the means, but only the result, of a revolution.
The French delegate indicated that the French Internationalists remained anti-political, seeking to unite the workers “through incessant propaganda,” not to conquer power, but “to achieve the negation of all political government,” organizing themselves for “the true social revolution.”
The Congress ultimately declared that it was up to each federation and each democratic socialist party to determine for themselves what kind of political approach they should follow. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that as of September 1874, the majority of the anti-authoritarian International continued to embrace an anarchist or revolutionary syndicalist position. At the end of the 1874 Brussels Congress, the delegates issued a manifesto confirming their commitment to collectivism, workers’ autonomy, federalism and social revolution; in a word, nothing less than the original goal of the International itself: “the emancipation of the workers by the workers themselves.”
By the time of the October 1876 Bern Congress, the English had ceased participating in the anti-authoritarian International. The debate over the “public service” state continued, with De Paepe now openly advocating that the workers “seize and use the powers of the State” in order to create a socialist society. Most of the delegates rejected De Paepe’s position, including Guillaume and Malatesta.
Malatesta argued for “the complete abolition of the state in all its possible manifestations.” While Guillaume and some of the other veteran anti-authoritarians liked to avoid the “anarchist” label, Malatesta declared that “Anarchy, the struggle against all authority … always remains the banner around which the whole of revolutionary Italy rallies.” Both Malatesta and Guillaume made clear that in rejecting the state, even in a “transitional” role, they were not advocating the abolition of public services, as De Paepe implied, but their reorganization by the workers themselves.
In September 1877, the anti-authoritarian International held a congress in Verviers, Belgium, which was to be its last. Guillaume and Peter Kropotkin, now a member of the Jura Federation, attended from Switzerland. The French refugees, Paul Brousse and Jules Montels, also attended. In addition, there were Garcia Viñas and Morago from Spain. Otto Rinke and Emil Werner, both anarchists, “represented sections in both Switzerland and Germany, while there was a strong delegation from the Verviers region, the last stronghold of anarchism in Belgium.” Costa represented Greek and Egyptian socialists who were unable to attend, as well as the Italian Federation.
De Paepe did not attend the Congress, as he was preparing for his rapprochement with social democracy and parliamentary politics at the World Socialist Congress that was about to begin in Ghent. In anticipation of the Ghent Congress, the delegates to the Verviers Congress passed several resolutions emphasizing the limited bases for cooperation between the now predominantly anarchist oriented anti-authoritarian International and the social democrats. For the Verviers delegates, collective property, which they defined as “the taking of possession of social capital by the workers’ groups” rather than by the State, was an immediate necessity, not a “far-off ideal.”
On the issue of political action, the delegates indicated that class antagonism could not be resolved by government or some other political power, but only “by the unified efforts of all the exploited against their exploiters.” They vowed to combat all political parties, regardless of “whether or not they call themselves socialists,” because they did not see electoral activity as leading to the abolition of capitalism and the state. While the majority of the delegates therefore supported anti-parliamentary socialism, none of the policies endorsed at the congresses of the reconstituted International were binding on the International’s member groups, who remained free to adopt or reject them.
With respect to trade union organization, the delegates confirmed their view that unions that limit their demands to improving working conditions, reducing the working day and increasing wages, “will never bring about the emancipation of the proletariat.” Trade unions, to be revolutionary, must adopt, “as their principal goal, the abolition of the wage system” and “the taking of possession of the instruments of labour by expropriating them” from the capitalists.
Unsurprisingly, despite Guillaume’s hopes for reconciliation between the social democratic and revolutionary anarchist wings of the socialist movement, no such reconciliation was reached at the Ghent Congress, or at any subsequent international socialist congresses, with the so-called “Second International” finally barring anarchist membership altogether at its 1896 international congress in London.
Despite the formal position taken at the St. Imier Congress regarding the freedom of each member group of the reconstituted International to determine its own political path, reaffirmed at the 1873 Geneva Congress, because the majority of the delegates to the anti-authoritarian International’s congresses, and its most active members, were either anarchists or revolutionary socialists opposed to participation in electoral politics, it was not surprising that eventually those in favour of parliamentary activity would find other forums in which to participate, rather than continuing to debate the issue with people who were not committed to an electoral strategy.
Only a minority of member groups in the reconstituted International ever supported or came to support a strategy oriented toward achieving political power – the English delegates, a few of the German delegates who did not officially represent any group, and then a group of Belgians, with the Belgian Federation being split on the issue. Other than the debate on the “public service state,” which again only a minority of delegates supported, most of the discussions at the reconstituted International’s congresses focused on tactics and strategies for abolishing the state and capitalism through various forms of direct action, in order to achieve “the free and spontaneous organization of labour” that the St. Imier Congress had reaffirmed as the International’s ultimate goal.
For example, there were ongoing debates within the reconstituted International regarding the role and efficacy of strikes and the use of the general strike as a means for overthrowing the existing order. Any kind of strike activity had the potential to harm the electoral prospects of socialist political parties, an issue that had arisen in the Swiss Romande Federation prior to the split in the original International. Once the focus becomes trying to elect as many socialist or workers’ candidates as possible to political office in order to eventually form a government, the trade unions and other workers’ organizations are then pressured to tailor their tactics to enhance the prospects of the political parties’ electoral success. Both the immediate and long term interests of the workers become subordinate to the interests of the political parties.
After socialist parties were established in western Europe in the 1880s, and workers began to see how their interests were being given short shrift, there was a resurgence in autonomous revolutionary trade union activity, leading to the creation of revolutionary syndicalist movements in the 1890s. Some of the syndicalist organizations, such as the French Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), adopted an “apolitical” stance, similar to the official stance of the reconstituted International. The CGT was independent of the political parties but members were free to support political parties and to participate in electoral activities, just not in the name of the CGT. Independence from the political parties was an essential tenet of the original CGT, so that it could pursue its strategy of revolutionary trade union organization and direct action unimpeded by the demands and interests of the political parties.
A majority of the International’s sections and federations did not support the resolutions of the Hague Congress. Barely a week after the Hague Congress, several of them held their own congress in St. Imier, Switzerland, where they reconstituted the International independent of the shell organization now controlled by Marx and Engels through the General Council.
The opponents of the Marxist controlled International were united in their opposition to the concentration of power in the General Council, regardless of whether the Council sat in London or New York. They also shared a commitment to directly democratic federalist forms of organization. Some were completely opposed to the formation of working class political parties to achieve state power, while others were opposed to making that a mandatory policy regardless of the views of the membership and local circumstances. The reconstituted anti-authoritarian wing of the International was to have anarchist, syndicalist and, for a time, reformist elements.
The St. Imier Congress began on September 15, 1872, just eight days after the Hague Congress. It was attended by delegates from Spain, France, Italy and Switzerland, including Guillaume and Adhémar Schwitzguébel from Switzerland; Carlo Cafiero, Errico Malatesta, Giuseppi Fanelli, and Andrea Costa from Italy; Rafael Farga-Pellicer and Tomás González Morago from Spain; and the French refugees, Charles Alerini, Gustave Lefrançais, and Jean-Louis Pindy. Bakunin, although living in Switzerland, attended as an Italian delegate.
A “regional” congress of the Swiss Jura Federation was held in conjunction with the “international” congress, with many of the same delegates, plus members of the Slav Section, such as Zamfir Arbore (who went under the name of Zemphiry Ralli) and other French speaking delegates, including Charles Beslay, an old friend of Proudhon’s who went into exile in Switzerland after the brutal suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871.
Virtually all of the participants were either anarchists or revolutionary socialist federalists, and many of them went on to play important roles in the development of anarchist and revolutionary socialist movements in Europe.
The assembled delegates adopted a federalist structure for a reconstituted International (or the “anti-authoritarian International”), with full autonomy for the sections, declaring that “nobody has the right to deprive autonomous federations and sections of their incontrovertible right to decide for themselves and to follow whatever line of political conduct they deem best.” For them, “the aspirations of the proletariat can have no purpose other than the establishment of an absolutely free economic organization and federation, founded upon the labour and equality of all and absolutely independent of all political government.” Consequently, turning the Hague Congress resolution regarding the formation of political parties for the purpose of achieving political power on its head, they proclaimed that “the destruction of all political power is the first duty of the proletariat.”
With respect to organized resistance to capitalism, the delegates to the St. Imier Congress affirmed their position that the organization of labour, through trade unions and other working class forms of organization, “integrates the proletariat into a community of interests, trains it in collective living and prepares it for the supreme struggle,” through which “the privilege and authority” maintained and represented by the State will be replaced by “the free and spontaneous organization of labour.”
While the anti-authoritarian Internationalists entertained no illusions regarding the efficacy of strikes in ameliorating the condition of the workers, they regarded “the strike as a precious weapon in the struggle.” They embraced strikes “as a product of the antagonism between labour and capital, the necessary consequence of which is to make workers more and more alive to the gulf that exists between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat,” bolstering their organizations and preparing them “for the great and final revolutionary contest which, destroying all privilege and all class difference, will bestow upon the worker a right to the enjoyment of the gross product of his labours.”
Here we have the subsequent program of anarcho-syndicalism: the organization of workers into trade unions and similar bodies, based on class struggle, through which the workers will become conscious of their class power, ultimately resulting in the destruction of capitalism and the state, to be replaced by the free federation of the workers based on the organizations they created themselves during their struggle for liberation.
The resolutions from the St. Imier Congress received statements of support from the Italian, Spanish, Jura, Belgian and some of the English speaking American federations of the International, with most of the French sections also approving them. In Holland, three out of the four Dutch branches sided with the Jura Federation and the St. Imier Congress. The English Federation, resentful of Marx’s attempts to keep it under his control, rejected “the decisions of the Hague Congress and the so-called General Council of New York.” While the longtime English member of the International, John Hales, did not support revolution, he advised the Jura Federation that he agreed with them on “the principle of Federalism.” At a congress of the Belgian Federation in December 1872, the delegates there also repudiated the Hague Congress and the General Council, supporting instead the “defenders of pure revolutionary ideas, Anarchists, enemies of all authoritarian centralisation and indomitable partisans of autonomy.”
However, there was a tension in the resolutions adopted at the St. Imier Congress. On the one hand, one resolution asserted the “incontrovertible right” of the International’s autonomous federations and sections “to decide for themselves and to follow whatever line of political conduct they deem best.” On the other hand, another resolution asserted that “the destruction of all political power is the first duty of the proletariat.”
The resolution regarding the autonomy of the federations and sections in all matters, including political action, was meant to maintain the International as a pluralist federation where each member group was free to follow their own political approach, so that both advocates of participation in electoral activity and proponents of revolutionary change could co-exist.
However, the call for the destruction of all political power expressed an anarchist position. The two resolutions could only be reconciled if the destruction of political power was not necessarily the “first duty of the proletariat,” but could also be regarded as a more distant goal to be achieved gradually, along with “the free and spontaneous organization of labour.”
The tension between these two resolutions continued to exist within the reconstituted International for several years. James Guillaume supported political pluralism within the International and sought to convince some of the sections and federations that had gone along with Marx, such as the Social Democrats in Germany, to rejoin the anti-authoritarian International, and to keep the English Internationalists who had rejected Marx’s centralist approach, such as Hales, within the reconstituted International.
Although the German Social Democrats never officially joined the reconstituted International, two German delegates attended the 1874 Brussels Congress. English delegates attended both the September 1873 Geneva Congress and the September 1874 Brussels Congress, where there was an important debate regarding political strategy, including whether there was any positive role for the state.
The Geneva Congress in September 1873 was the first full congress of the reconstituted International. It was attended by delegates from England, France, Spain, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland. The English delegates, John Hales and Johann Georg Eccarius (Marx’s former lieutenant), had been members of the original International. They were interested in reviving the International as an association of workers’ organizations, and in disavowing the Marxist controlled General Council and International that had been transferred by Marx and Engels to New York. They had not become anarchists, as Hales made clear by declaring anarchism “tantamount to individualism… the foundation of the extant form of society, the form we desire to overthrow.” Accordingly, from his perspective, anarchism was “incompatible with collectivism” (a term which at the time was synonymous with socialism).
The Spanish delegate, José Garcia Viñas, responded that anarchy did not mean disorder, as the bourgeois claimed, but the negation of political authority and the organization of a new economic order. Paul Brousse, a French refugee who had recently joined the Jura Federation in Switzerland, agreed, arguing that anarchy meant the abolition of the governmental regime and its replacement by a collectivist economic organization based on contracts between the communes, the workers and the collective organizations of the workers, a position that can be traced back to Proudhon.
Most of the delegates to the Congress were anti-authoritarian federalists, and the majority of them were clearly anarchist in orientation, including “Farga-Pellicer from Spain, Pindy and Brousse from France, Costa from Italy, and Guillaume and Schwitzguebel from Switzerland.” Also within the anarchist camp were Garcia Viñas from Spain, who was close to Brousse, Charles Alerini, a French refugee now based in Barcelona associated with Bakunin, Nicholas Zhukovsky, the Russian expatriate who remained close to Bakunin, François Dumartheray (1842-1931), another French refugee who had joined the Jura Federation, Jules Montels (1843-1916), a former provincial delegate of the Commune who was responsible for distributing propaganda in France on behalf of the exiled group, the Section of Revolutionary Socialist Propaganda and Action, and two of the Belgian delegates, Laurent Verrycken and Victor Dave.
The American Federal Council sent a report to the Congress, in which it indicated its support for the anti-authoritarian International. The Americans were in favour of freedom of initiative for the members, sections, branches and federations of the International, and agreed with limiting any general council to purely administrative functions. They felt that it should be up to each group to determine their own tactics and strategies for revolutionary transformation. They concluded their address with “Long live the social revolution! Long live the International.”
At the 1873 Geneva Congress, it was ultimately agreed to adopt a form of organization based on that followed by the Jura Federation, with a federal bureau to be established that “would be concerned only with collecting statistics and maintaining international correspondence.” As a further safeguard against the federal bureau coming to exercise authority over the various sections and branches, it was to “be shifted each year to the country where the next International Congress would be held.”
The delegates continued the practice of voting in accordance with the mandates that had been given to them by their respective federations. Because the International was now a federation of autonomous groups, each national federation was given one vote and the statutes were amended to explicitly provide that questions of principle could not be decided by a vote. It was up to each federation to determine its own policies and to implement those decisions of the congress that it accepted.
Eccarius also attended the next Congress in Brussels in September 1874 as the English delegate. He and the two German delegates remained in favour of a workers’ state and participation in conventional politics, such as parliamentary elections.
The most significant debate at the Brussels Congress was the one over public services. César De Paepe, on behalf of the Belgians, argued that if public services were turned over to the workers’ associations, or “companies,” the people would simply “have the grim pleasure of substituting a worker aristocracy for a bourgeois aristocracy” since the worker companies, “enjoying a natural or artificial monopoly… would dominate the whole economy.” Neither could all public services be undertaken by local communes, since “the most important of them,” such as railways, highways, river and water management, and communications, “are by their very nature fated to operate over a territory larger than that of the Commune.” Such intercommunal public services would therefore have to be run by delegates appointed by the federated communes. De Paepe claimed that the “regional or national Federation of communes” would constitute a “non-authoritarian State… charged with educating the young and centralizing the great joint undertakings.”
However, De Paepe took his argument one step further, suggesting that “the reconstitution of society upon the foundation of the industrial group, the organization of the state from below upwards, instead of being the starting point and the signal of the revolution, might not prove to be its more or less remote result… We are led to enquire whether, before the groupings of the workers by industry is sufficiently advanced, circumstances may not compel the proletariat of the large towns to establish a collective dictatorship over the rest of the population, and this for a sufficiently long period to sweep away whatever obstacles there may be to the emancipation of the working class. Should this happen, it seems obvious that one of the first things which such a collective dictatorship would have to do would be to lay hands on all the public services.”
De Paepe’s position was opposed by several delegates, including at least one of the Belgians, Laurent Verrycken. He spoke against any workers’ state, arguing that public services should be organized by “the free Commune and the free Federation of communes,” with the execution of the services being undertaken by the workers who provided them under the supervision of the general association of workers within the Commune, and by the Communes in a regional federation of Communes. Farga Pellicer (“Gomez”), on behalf of the Spanish Federation, said that “for a long time they had generally pronounced themselves in favour of anarchy, such that they would be opposed to any reorganization of public services that would lead to the reconstitution of the state.” For him, a “federation of communes” should not be referred to as a “state,” because the latter word represented “the political idea, authoritarian and governmental,” as De Paepe’s comments regarding the need for a “collective dictatorship” revealed.
The most vocal opponent of De Paepe’s proposal was Schwitzguébel from the Jura Federation. He argued that the social revolution would be accomplished by the workers themselves “assuming direct control of the instruments of labor;” thus, “right from the first acts of the Revolution, the practical assertion of the principle of autonomy and federation… becomes the basis of all social combination,” with “all State institutions,” the means by “which the bourgeoisie sustains its privileges,” foundering in the “revolutionary storm.” With “the various trades bodies” being “masters of the situation,” having “banded together freely for revolutionary action, the workers will stick to such free association when it comes to organization of production, exchange, commerce, training and education, health, and security.”
On the issue of political action, the Belgian delegates to the Brussels Congress continued to advocate working outside of the existing political system, albeit partly because they did not yet have universal suffrage in Belgium. Nevertheless, they claimed they did not expect anything from the suffrage or from parliament, and that they would continue to organize the workers into the trades bodies and federations through which the working class would bring about the social revolution, revealing that, as a group, the Belgian Federation did not yet share De Paepe’s doubts that the free federation of the producers would not be the means, but only the result, of a revolution.
The French delegate indicated that the French Internationalists remained anti-political, seeking to unite the workers “through incessant propaganda,” not to conquer power, but “to achieve the negation of all political government,” organizing themselves for “the true social revolution.”
The Congress ultimately declared that it was up to each federation and each democratic socialist party to determine for themselves what kind of political approach they should follow. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that as of September 1874, the majority of the anti-authoritarian International continued to embrace an anarchist or revolutionary syndicalist position. At the end of the 1874 Brussels Congress, the delegates issued a manifesto confirming their commitment to collectivism, workers’ autonomy, federalism and social revolution; in a word, nothing less than the original goal of the International itself: “the emancipation of the workers by the workers themselves.”
By the time of the October 1876 Bern Congress, the English had ceased participating in the anti-authoritarian International. The debate over the “public service” state continued, with De Paepe now openly advocating that the workers “seize and use the powers of the State” in order to create a socialist society. Most of the delegates rejected De Paepe’s position, including Guillaume and Malatesta.
Malatesta argued for “the complete abolition of the state in all its possible manifestations.” While Guillaume and some of the other veteran anti-authoritarians liked to avoid the “anarchist” label, Malatesta declared that “Anarchy, the struggle against all authority … always remains the banner around which the whole of revolutionary Italy rallies.” Both Malatesta and Guillaume made clear that in rejecting the state, even in a “transitional” role, they were not advocating the abolition of public services, as De Paepe implied, but their reorganization by the workers themselves.
In September 1877, the anti-authoritarian International held a congress in Verviers, Belgium, which was to be its last. Guillaume and Peter Kropotkin, now a member of the Jura Federation, attended from Switzerland. The French refugees, Paul Brousse and Jules Montels, also attended. In addition, there were Garcia Viñas and Morago from Spain. Otto Rinke and Emil Werner, both anarchists, “represented sections in both Switzerland and Germany, while there was a strong delegation from the Verviers region, the last stronghold of anarchism in Belgium.” Costa represented Greek and Egyptian socialists who were unable to attend, as well as the Italian Federation.
De Paepe did not attend the Congress, as he was preparing for his rapprochement with social democracy and parliamentary politics at the World Socialist Congress that was about to begin in Ghent. In anticipation of the Ghent Congress, the delegates to the Verviers Congress passed several resolutions emphasizing the limited bases for cooperation between the now predominantly anarchist oriented anti-authoritarian International and the social democrats. For the Verviers delegates, collective property, which they defined as “the taking of possession of social capital by the workers’ groups” rather than by the State, was an immediate necessity, not a “far-off ideal.”
On the issue of political action, the delegates indicated that class antagonism could not be resolved by government or some other political power, but only “by the unified efforts of all the exploited against their exploiters.” They vowed to combat all political parties, regardless of “whether or not they call themselves socialists,” because they did not see electoral activity as leading to the abolition of capitalism and the state. While the majority of the delegates therefore supported anti-parliamentary socialism, none of the policies endorsed at the congresses of the reconstituted International were binding on the International’s member groups, who remained free to adopt or reject them.
With respect to trade union organization, the delegates confirmed their view that unions that limit their demands to improving working conditions, reducing the working day and increasing wages, “will never bring about the emancipation of the proletariat.” Trade unions, to be revolutionary, must adopt, “as their principal goal, the abolition of the wage system” and “the taking of possession of the instruments of labour by expropriating them” from the capitalists.
Unsurprisingly, despite Guillaume’s hopes for reconciliation between the social democratic and revolutionary anarchist wings of the socialist movement, no such reconciliation was reached at the Ghent Congress, or at any subsequent international socialist congresses, with the so-called “Second International” finally barring anarchist membership altogether at its 1896 international congress in London.
Despite the formal position taken at the St. Imier Congress regarding the freedom of each member group of the reconstituted International to determine its own political path, reaffirmed at the 1873 Geneva Congress, because the majority of the delegates to the anti-authoritarian International’s congresses, and its most active members, were either anarchists or revolutionary socialists opposed to participation in electoral politics, it was not surprising that eventually those in favour of parliamentary activity would find other forums in which to participate, rather than continuing to debate the issue with people who were not committed to an electoral strategy.
Only a minority of member groups in the reconstituted International ever supported or came to support a strategy oriented toward achieving political power – the English delegates, a few of the German delegates who did not officially represent any group, and then a group of Belgians, with the Belgian Federation being split on the issue. Other than the debate on the “public service state,” which again only a minority of delegates supported, most of the discussions at the reconstituted International’s congresses focused on tactics and strategies for abolishing the state and capitalism through various forms of direct action, in order to achieve “the free and spontaneous organization of labour” that the St. Imier Congress had reaffirmed as the International’s ultimate goal.
For example, there were ongoing debates within the reconstituted International regarding the role and efficacy of strikes and the use of the general strike as a means for overthrowing the existing order. Any kind of strike activity had the potential to harm the electoral prospects of socialist political parties, an issue that had arisen in the Swiss Romande Federation prior to the split in the original International. Once the focus becomes trying to elect as many socialist or workers’ candidates as possible to political office in order to eventually form a government, the trade unions and other workers’ organizations are then pressured to tailor their tactics to enhance the prospects of the political parties’ electoral success. Both the immediate and long term interests of the workers become subordinate to the interests of the political parties.
After socialist parties were established in western Europe in the 1880s, and workers began to see how their interests were being given short shrift, there was a resurgence in autonomous revolutionary trade union activity, leading to the creation of revolutionary syndicalist movements in the 1890s. Some of the syndicalist organizations, such as the French Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), adopted an “apolitical” stance, similar to the official stance of the reconstituted International. The CGT was independent of the political parties but members were free to support political parties and to participate in electoral activities, just not in the name of the CGT. Independence from the political parties was an essential tenet of the original CGT, so that it could pursue its strategy of revolutionary trade union organization and direct action unimpeded by the demands and interests of the political parties.
It is not fair to hold the anarchists and anti-parliamentary revolutionary socialists in the reconstituted International responsible for the exit of the groups that had decided to focus on electoral activity. The majority of the Belgian Internationalists would have changed their strategy from supporting an international federation of autonomous workers’ organizations to supporting the Belgian Socialist party regardless of the refusal of the anarchist and revolutionary socialist members of the reconstituted International to agree with such an approach.
The majority of those who chose to remain active in the reconstituted International based on the resolutions adopted at the St. Imier Congress believed above all that the International should not only remain independent of the socialist political parties, but that the International should continue to pursue its goal of achieving “the free and spontaneous organization of labour” through the workers’ own autonomous organizations, free of political interference and control. For those who chose instead to throw their lot in with the political parties, there really wasn’t much reason for them to remain involved in such an organization, even though there was no formal bar to their continued membership and participation. It was simply time for them to part ways.
The majority of those who chose to remain active in the reconstituted International based on the resolutions adopted at the St. Imier Congress believed above all that the International should not only remain independent of the socialist political parties, but that the International should continue to pursue its goal of achieving “the free and spontaneous organization of labour” through the workers’ own autonomous organizations, free of political interference and control. For those who chose instead to throw their lot in with the political parties, there really wasn’t much reason for them to remain involved in such an organization, even though there was no formal bar to their continued membership and participation. It was simply time for them to part ways.
Robert Graham
Source - The Legacy of the St. Imier Congress | Robert Graham's Anarchism Weblog 4.9.2022
sábado, 9 de julio de 2022
Alex Krainer: The Shocking Truth of the 1938 Munich Agreement. Anglo-German Nazi Connection
Alex Krainer: The Shocking Truth of the 1938 Munich Agreement
In this presentation, economic analyst, researcher and historian Alex Krainer shed light on the shocking truth of the 1938 Munich Agreement and broader Tripartate agenda for a fascist world order which nearly succeeded before and even during WW2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irc7Dh37nEE
martes, 19 de abril de 2022
Libertarian Geopolitics: it is not Ukraine, the US or Russia, it is the War for the New World to Be Born
We thought that this was a dead debate, but due to the avalanche of anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian, pro-American and pro-NATO anarchist publications, has made us take a brief look at the different situations and conditions to decide which option is more in line with the libertarian ideal and if we anarchist can reach any kind of consensus about.
The clash of powers that determines world geopolitics forces us to take a side. We Anarchists cannot talk about the Ukraine war without remembering the 8 years of support we have given to the Dombass people and the Civil War there since 2014. Numerous anarchist comrades went to fight against Ucronazi forces set by NATO. Today our immediate interests coincide, to our regret, with those of Russia. But our goals bring us much further. Don't be scared by the intro, keep reading, please.
Supporting the Dombass
At that time, the independence or autonomy of the Dombass of Ukraine seemed correct to the libertarian movement. It seemed like a better solution than the Russian annexation of Crimea.
We also reject the Ukrainian military intervention, its apartheid and its segregationism in the Dombass. We denounce the torture, assaults and murders of civilians and comrades.
Finally many went to fight for the Dombass; and we support them without fissures.
We didn't care then, and even felt relief, knowing that the region was under Russian control. Even knowing that Russia would use it to stop the NATO's expansion by prolonging the conflict.
Our positions, sooner or later, will coincide with the interests of some elites, inevitably; either in favor or in collide, which is usually the most common. Should we stop supporting what we previously believed correct only because of these circumstantial coincidences? Do these coincidences invalidate the previous struggle or could reinforce it? Welcome to geopolitics, anarchists.
Our position coincides, to our regret, with that of Russia
To Russia does not seem possible to achieve the Dombass autonomy by political means. Russia, for many reasons, has started a war without asking us.
This war adventure causes a contradiction and dilemmas in the libertarian movement that must be resolved:
Ukraine
Ukraine is hostage to NATO and the US in the west, and Russia in the east. Debating libertarian support for Ukraine means deciding whether or not we support NATO and the Pentagon, or Russia.
Russia
-On the one hand, Russia kills our Ukrainian sisters.
-But in turn Russia protects our sisters from the Dombass.
USA
-The US does not directly kill our Dombass sisters.
-The US does not directly kill our Ukrainian sisters.
-USA/EU/NATO provides the means for our Ukrainian sisters to attack their Dombass sisters.
As we can see, the contradictions reside on both sides of the trench. All murderers, all with their own reasons.
What follows is to make a geopolitical assessment of the convenience or not of the postures of one and the other side. Because of the result of this debate we will end up supporting one world or another: NATO or Russia.
Geopolitical assessment of political support
Supporting Ukraine
Supporting Ukraine is not only defending a territory, defending the lives of some people. It doesn't even mean defending our compañeras; is much more.
Before the war broke out, the neo-Nazi government in Ukraine practiced Apartheid throughout its territory and ethnic cleansing in the Dombass.
During the war the fascist militias became battalions of the regular army. It was then that the real war showed its face: runes and swastikas sank into the pavilions. The troops were Nazis, the monster had been reborn.
If Ukraine won, if it joined the EU, NATO and kept the Dombass whihin Ukraine, what would happen? The victory would be for the United States Stablishment, which would continue with its plans. A series of events not very different from those seen so far would be triggered. Are we willing to take on their Apartheid tactics in Ukraine, and let them end their ethnic cleansing? Are we prepared to witness in Europe the same tactics that the fascists employ in Palestine? That they conclude total the nazification of the country? The Europe Nazification progresses? That it spreads around the world? To see the swastika waving as a flag of liberation? Are we thinking in collaborate with ethnic cleansing, genocide, massacres, coups and, ultimately, with our collective political suicide? Neither Ukraine nor the US gov nor NATO can be supported by libertarians.
Supporting USA
The US has not stopped harassing Russia and the rest of countries, generating wars (Yugoslavia, Kwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria) and expanding NATO since 1989. In 2010 NATO goes global. The US has plans to expand NATO to encircle Russia and has shown evidences of proliferation of nuclear weapons.
If the US wins in Ukraine, it would mean its entry into the EU, NATO and the placement of nuclear missiles across the country. Also the admission of Finland and Swedento in the NATO club. These would be answered with the placement of more missiles on the Russia and Belarus borders (proliferation). The US would rise tension with China over Taiwan. They would try to penetrate Central Asia through Turkey, Georgia and Chechnya. It would continue the expansion of global NATO with its swastikas as its coat of arms. The end of the UN. In short, the global expansion of US and its IV Reich goverment plans, that would affect to our northamerican camarades also in the way of repression, jail, policial militarization and fascists militias.
Supporting Russia
Is the suppor to Russi the alternative, which is similarly retrograde, corrupt and has systematically repressed and imprisoned us anarchists? The answer is not very positive. Russia knows very well how to organize a good repression, preventive attacks, occupations, wars, purges or traffickig between mafia corruption. They may now be apparently waging a more civilized war, their geopolitical objectives may be different from those of the Americans, but deep down, it is the same system, capitalism. Once they win, they will do to us what every capitalist system does: use our meat in their metabolism, either on the war front or in their sweatshops.
Russia, however, shows no signs of expansion in the short term and has supported threatened peoples by the IV American Reich throughout the world, such as Venezuela, Cuba or Iran. With Russia as the winner, in the medium term, the perspective of transnational warlike expansion, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and Nazism vanishes.
Russia is for now the lesser evil.
Can Russia be supported?
The key question is whether or not Russia can be supported. We can find the answer in all those places where conflicts of interest, paradoxes or dilemmas in the movement have rise.
Rojava 2012
Broadly speaking and with all the nuances, during the Syrian war the Rojava region in Syrian Kurdistan declared an autonomous region. The situation was as follows: Daesh forces at south, Turkey army at north and west and Syria at east. Rojava was supported by the Iraqi Kurdistan, a presidential and pro-fascist Barzani family. In addition, it was supported by France and the US against Turkey and Syria, while at the end of the war it managed to reach an agreement with the Syrian government and ended up admitting former Daesh Wahavites into its ranks; transforming then into 'brand new libertarian confederates'. Welcome to polyhedrism, comrades.
With such a mixture of intersecting interests, alliances, merges and splits, can Rojava be supported without supporting its imperialist allies? All we anarchist in general very much understood that the Rojavista Democratic Confederalism project was more important than their local and war time politics. Some others criticized it (this same media), others supported it (this same media), others rejected it. Others do not understand that the practice and politics of alliances are different matters. The official war in Syria ended, but the consensus di facto is the same as in Catalonia: autonomy to the region and end of repression, Syria and Turkey. Rojava, despite the tortuous background, remains as a guide, and the project continues to be globally supported.
Venezuela 2014
The most important guarimbas, barricades, rise up against the Venezuelan Regime in 2014. Anarchists side with the revolts and against the state. The guarimbas turned out to be a co-opted movement by the extreme right and ended up calling for US military intervention. Faced with the advent of an occupation war, part of the oppository right demobilized. After the 2017 assault, the right opposition dissolved and failed to recompose several times. In 2019, the US imposes Juan Guaidó as acting president. He calls again for foreign military intervention and American troops in Caracas.
The question is clear, what made some comrades support foreign military intervention in their own country twice ? We hope that the answer is that they took into account immediate needs as more important than strategic needs, because otherwise it would mean that the compañeras supported the US invasion in their own territory and the slaughter of their sisters and brothers.
Catalonia 2017
In 2017 a process of independence form the Spanish region was developed. The conflict was then rightly seen as an attempt by the local bourgeoisie to get rid of the central bourgeoisie, a typical power struggle. Bad cards for anarchists, in both cases, by action or omission, they would end up supporting one or another government without the possibility of grays.
Anarchist comrades took part in the process for secession. Others criticized the process for being reactionary and nationalistic. Others advocated that autonomy, cantonalism, federalism, and aid to fellow anarchists in struggle prevail. The libertarian struggles in Spanish territory were for self-determination and the end of repression.
Belarus 2020
The country was experiencing an authoritarian situation and widespread disaffection with a corrupt regime. In the last elections of 2020 there was a revolt against the winner Lukashenko. These revolts were clearly supported from within by the fascist hordes waving monarchist and far-right flags and from abroad by the Nazis of the US, EU and NATO. The protesters ended up requesting external military intervention in a similar way to Venezuela under the 'Color Revolution' script established by the Pentagon. From that moment they lost strength, the attached forces were dissolved and their leaders fled to the United Kingdom and Poland. Our comrades in Belarus were severely repressed. Did it help to support the far-right that request to bomb its own country? Was there any point in participating toguether with the international fascism remotely controlled movement? Even so, there were comrades who participated defending to set a capitalist dictatorship of the extreme right there.
The contest then led us to the dilemma of what is more preferable, if a socialist dictatorship or a far-right capitalist dictatorship.
We could continue with the deliberation between major, minor, unacceptable evils, red lines and resistance: USSR, Cuba, Nicaragua... let's apply the same logic: is it the alternative better than what is in place? What would happen at a world level if USA/NATO penetrates in the most of national parliaments? Is military balkanization the path to self-managed liberation? Is the destruction of minorities by majorities and minorities admissible?
The 'Dombass Solution'
It is clear that we will desagree regarding the US, NATO or Russia . We don't really know why, but that's how it has been until now. Let's forget about the actors and their propaganda. Let's look at the facts.
What we all could agree is that:
-Ukraine has suffered from an actively fascist government since 2010 with Yanukovych, when hard segregationist and racist measures began.
-Ukraine suffered a fascist coup in 2014, the so-called Euromaidan.
-The Dombass developed a process contrary to the EuroMaidan, called antiMaidan, declaring itself independence.
-The Dombass was attacked by nationalist and openly Nazi forces in a NATO maneuver, starting the Ukrainian Civil War.
-The Dombass must be independent, and its people Autonomous.
-We do not know what will be Russia's next step, but the US advance will continue, and with it global NATO and world Nazification. An even american and brithis fellows will suffer ir.
It is at this point, of an independent Dombass and its Autonomous people, where we all can find the point of union with Russia that we cannot find with the US.
Dilemmas will keep rising up
Regardless of our position in Ukraine, dilemmas will continue to appear in anarchist organizations, especially since there are common topycs, and such a range of opinions, groupings, currents and political tendencies, that it will be difficult for us not to agree with nationalists, fascists, tories, capitalists and even recognized criminals.
The capitalists themselves unfold such a broad spectrum, from the ultraliberal to the ultraconservative, that they will often be tempted to support and even assist us. This is the case of the Social Democrats. In France 2018, when the Yellow Vests movement managed to bring together fascists with leftists. The same thing happened in Catalonia 2017. And throughout Europe, the most abominable far right is leading the fight against NATO and the EU. We will also agree in future on numerous issues, such as pensions, work, environmentalism, energy or industry. Does this put them on our side or Russia's? Yes, specifically, but not generally. We will not stop being enemies.
Are we going to give up our principles and demands because they coincide with those of the fascists? NO! Are we going to allow popular movements to be co-opted as always? NO! We are going to fight on a double front, denouncing fascism and expossing our cause. This, which seems to be a disappointment and a loss of the 'concentration of forces', is the key to win the struggle, to Allianceism and Revolutionary Pedagogy.
The new world to be born
We have before us a cross interests multilevel scenaries in which the capitalist forces are falling apart, trapping our organizations in the middle, and even using them as pawns; meattools.
We must not get carried away by their appels and propaganda, because doing taht, we will be metabolized (intake, digested and excreted).
We must never lose sight of our own declared objectives: the creation of freely federated territorial autonomies and the direct democratization of institutions. The Revolutionary Strategy of "the Three Fronts" and its organization.
Contradictions and Coincidences
When our interests coincide, they coincide; which does not mean unconditional support or sticking to their dialectic. We must continue with our plans for Social Revolution wherever we are, because that is the fate of anarchism; change the world and make it free from exploitation and abuse. If we are forced to collaborate, if we want to attract awareness, it is a priority to constantly explain and criticize collaboration (revolutionary pedagogy again, with the Propaganda for Fact as a fundamental substrate).
The solution to the Ukraine is not the War in the Ukraine, but neither the war against the Dombass. The military conflict is served at the geopolitical level, and they ask, demand, and force us to choose sides. Our place is not with the capitalist armies, it is with the people: stop the war, assist the victims, reduce belligerence, prevent militarization, advance social justice, prevent the advance of fascism, Nazism and nationalism, prevent the proliferation nuclear weapos are our priorities. And protect the Dombass from pogroms and their planned genocide.
Does supporting the Ukrainian government, its army, or the US, achieve our goals? No. It means the proliferation of Nazism and world militarism; just the opposite of our purposes.
Does supporting the Russian government achieve our goals? Does supporting the Dombass government achieve our objectives? We do not believe that all the objectives will be achieved, but we can sense that fascism, segregationism, apartheid and genocide will be stopped, and an autonomous region will be achieved.
In short, our options are not good at all and involves collaborating and choosing between an evil and a greater evil (not a lesser evil).
Collaborate with fascism? Never! Double Front
What if our interests coincide with fascist interests? Many understand that this is the situation in both sides in Ukraine. They are not misguided.
We face fascism on a daily basis in our jobs individually. Daily practice shows that our interests often coincide with those of the fascists: to the aforementioned cases we can add Yellow Vests or riots in Hong Kong... But their ability to monopolize the media spectrum makes our revolutionary efforts, and our revolutionary gymnastics, benefit and strengthen those who declared to be our very enemies and who have explicitly declared that they want to eliminate us.
If history shows anything, it is that you cannot collaborate or argue with fascism. Just destroy it. Collaborating with fascism means automatic defeat. The war front in collaboration with fascism means opening a conflict with fascism itself. We cannot assume its premises, nor its conditions, nor its objectives. We cannot assume their speech or their narrative. The closest one can collaborate with a fascist is in the formal and informal, non-military institutions, to counter him.
And yet it has happened, as the example of Rojava shows. How did they survive? Clinging to their principles, developing their own social and military programs, organizing the social environment avoiding fascist infiltration, pro-NATO and pro-Syrian discourse, and a huge propaganda network worldwide. How did they fisicaly defend their advances? Buying weapons from world fascist organizations. They developed a true Autonomy. For example: in the joint military offensives with the US, their declared objective was never towns, but DAESH military positions. There is a difference. Their offensives against Turkish positions did not concern the Turkish people, but the fascistic army of Turkey.
Conclusions
It is not logical that anarchists participate within the Ukrainian army, because it is not true that the Ukrainian territory is in danger. The only attacked territory was the Dombass for 8 years.
Once the war is over, if Ukraine wins, the apartheid against pure non-Ukrainians will continue, Nazification will continue, and them will come the attack to the next country, which may be Belarus or Georgia. Another country to evangelize nailing swastikas and crosses of fire.
Once the conflict is over, if Russia wins, it will impose its political conditions, but it will not impose apartheid or nazification. It will ask for the disarmament and NATO removing from neighbor countries, Finland and Sweden.
The territory that was, is and will be in danger if Russia does not achieve its objectives, will be the Dombass: So it is logical to support its struggle despite the fact that Russia carries out its operations in its own way. The conditions of Dombass are different from those of Russia . The Dombass must be protected.
It is of the greatest interest to humanity that NATO dissolves and that the decaying hegemon, the main focus of current distortions, disturbances and disorders, the United States, falls as soon as possible. Russia must beat NATO. The United State people must be free from NATO.
It would be terrible to see anarchists sister against sister fighting on the front lines because of the publications that give rise to the imperialist call to arms against the oppressed peoples. We sincerely hope that the comrades of Enough14, CrimethInc, Pramen, libcom, ALB, portal Oaca, and an endless number of Anarchist counterinfo pages AYP, continue with their critical work, but reconsider their position and their editorial lines; because they are considered a libertarian think tank, and their opinion can affect thousands of people, and the world libertarian movement itself; and with it to the base of world social movements. They do not realize its key importance or its influence. If we do not achieve a greater consensus around libertarianism and less in the face of the rhetoric of the powers in contention, the atomization will be such that we will end up disappearing from history (as we have already foreseen). They should be binding elements, not diluents.
The old world is burning, and we will not be able to build a New World from its ashes if we cannot completely destroy it, bury in the way that the moster can not rise from the grave.
Dombass must survive, Russia must stop, the US must stop, NATO must disappear. We need to stop world Nazism now.
Health! PHkl/tctca
_____________
To know more
Gira europea trascendental de Biden para impulsar la 3GM 22.3.2022Análisis militar Ucrania vs Rusia: de la Guerra moderna a la Clásica en la Era del Descenso 21.3.2022
Más sobre las respuestas libertarias a la guerra | Alasbarricadas.org 15.3.2022
La visión de Ucrania, la visión de Rusia | Alasbarricadas.org 6.3.2022
Europa Battle Zone: Rusia cede a las provocaciones de Estados Unidos, y ésta se cobra tres piezas. Geopolítica 28.2.2022
La Anarquía y sus Aliados: el 'Frente Unido' y 'Agrupación de Tendencia' 10.1.2022 Tommy Lawson. Libro en PDF
Source - TARCOTECA: Geopolítica Libertaria: no es Ucrania, EEUU o Rusia, es la Guerra por el Mundo Nuevo por Nacer Published 8.4.2022, last edition 11.4.2022
domingo, 20 de marzo de 2022
USA, Listen, You’re About To Sink — Gonzalo Lira. Video
sábado, 5 de marzo de 2022
The only war to end all wars…
Source - The only war to end all wars… – Anarchist Communist Group 4.3.2022
This is not the reality for most of the planet though. Our relative peace for nearly 80 years has been bought at the expense of vast swathes of the world where superpower conflicts have been fought by bloody proxies. We have seen this most recently in Ethiopia and Tigre, in Sudan and Central Africa, Somalia, the Sahel and Middle East, Myanmar and Sri Lanka going all the way back to 1945.
The Russian onslaught on Ukraine reminds the West that war can happen. We look on in horror as people “looking like us” in towns “like ours” go to shelters or wade through rubble. It seemed unimaginable to generations who believed war all but abolished.
In almost every country and every inhabited continent millions have perished miserably to maintain the Western fiction of a New World Order’s international peace. As revolutionaries and internationalists, the war comes as a tragic confirmation that our system of exploitation and profit and endless bloody conflict are inseparable. They are not only inseparable but a causal and defining cog in the wheel of planetary destruction grinding the pandemic and climate change.
There is no victimless exploitation, bloodless war, virtuous state, or egalitarian capitalism. They are more like the apocryphal horseman of a stoppable apocalypse. Against this background, equally largely hidden from view in the western mind has been the struggle of millions in continuous resistance to both war, exploitation and annihilation. The struggle that thrives on every inhabited continent and of which we count ourselves.
On our own it feels insurmountable but collectively we grow in strength confidence and skills. No action is too small to start though its relevance is crucial. From food banks to social centres, strike committees to picket lines. Marches to demonstrations, blockades to occupations. Coming together in free association to share, develop and challenge. To build anew as we grow and break their rules and constraints. From refusal to re-imagining and from resistance to revolution.
The war in Ukraine is not the only one but one of many, and those wars are essential to the nature of capitalism, power and the state. More wars are coming and so is more resistance. Those who order them, don’t fight, those forced to fight come from the same class and communities as us. By building resistance in our communities we can build the power to refuse their war and replace it with our own, class war. The only war that will end all wars.
*Add- This article was sent to us from an ex-member of Manchester Anarchist Federation
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