Notes on a Dialogue with Stalin

Written in 1952 this essay is one of the last to be written with the goal of proving the capitalist nature of the USSR, it is also the weakest of them I have read.

This is partly because its scope is the most narrow and superficial, rather than look at Soviet society and economics as a whole it is just a direct response to a book published by Stalin `Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR` so it mainly concerns itself with picking apart the passages in the book.

Bordiga says at the beginning we should read between Stalin's lines, to get at the true meaning of his work. If we do the same to Bordiga's argument an interesting pattern emerges. Another reason for the weakness and limits of this work is that Bordiga does not actually disprove of much of how the soviet society developed. He openly defends Lenin and spends most of the work trying to distinguish between the economies of the two, despite most of the capitalist features already present. The best Bordiga can do is claim that Lenin was aiming at building state capitalism, whereas Stalin has merely built industrialism.

He also explicitly endorses the terror and the closest we get to criticism of Lenin is a brief remark of a time when Lenin committed the great sin of disagreeing with Bordiga at a Comintern meeting.

To be honest there are passages were Bordiga seems to have no real issue with Stalin's economic system, and is mainly incensed by the misuse of his beloved Marxian language and terminology. This makes sense as Bordiga was very much a believer in stageism and so while a book accusing the soviet union of capitalism in red clothing seems damning, to Bordiga the development of capitalism in Russia and Central Asia is a fine and necessary thing, if only Stalin were more honest.

"Once again, it remains true: Russian “economic policy” has certainly developed the material productive forces, has indeed expanded the world market, but within the capitalist forms of production. It does indeed represent a useful historical tool: no less than the industrial invasion at the expense of the starving Scots and Irish or the Wild West Indians, but it cannot loosen the relentless grip of the contradictions of capitalism, which very well potentiates the forces of society, but which for that must debilitate and subjugate the workers' association."

The work also has issues with tone, parts, especially the beginning are extremely purple and full of points that end in obscure classical references, other times he makes a point and then fails to elaborate it. There are also entire sections that serve no real purpose in regards to the argument but give Bordiga a chance to praise without qualification Marx and Engels, the praise is so all encompassing it reminded me of the odes to comrade Stalin that the soviet press and art world had to keep making to escape the hand of the secret police.

Read Berkman instead, or if you must have a Marxist Pannekoek.

Anarkiismo en Bulgario - Anarchism in Bulgaria

The Source

Anarchism in Bulgaria

The autobiography of Aleksander Metodiev Nakov (1919-2018) is useful for learning about the Esperanto movement in Bulgaria, and also its relationship to Anarchism. In fact the best representative of this interconnection was Nakov himself, who was active during the period of the right wing dictatorial regime established before the second world war[1], and also during the subsequent communist dictatorship. Nakov dubbed the former Fascist and the latter Bolshevik. Born into a poor family in the village of Kosatĉa (Kovačevići) in the western part of the country, after finishing elementary school he started work as a peasant working the land. Later he moved to the mining town of Pernik getting a job in the Machinostroitel factory[2]. Walking down the main street of the town in the winter of 1936 when his attention was caught by an Esperanto teaching book in the window of a book seller. He was attracted to both the purpose of the language and its ease of learning, but even more so the possibility of following directly the revolutionary events in Spain, which could be read in Esperanto bulletins that reached Bulgaria.

Despite his ignorance of the Latin alphabet, he began to learn the language. He soon became acquainted with the young miner Boris Serginov, who tried to sell an Esperanto calendar from 1937. With him Nakov chatted for the first time in the international language. However, the most influential person at that time was Anka Pisarska, whom Nakov first met at a meeting of young Anarchists in Vitosha. She taught him the grammar which enabled him to start corresponding with fellow travellers nationally and internationally. Nakov and his friends founded the Esperanto group Nova Vojo (New Way), which connected beginners with experienced Esperantists, and organised courses in schools and hosted public meetings. Several Bulgarians took part in international Esperanto gatherings, but due to political restrictions Nakov was not allowed to leave the country. However, he participated in the national Esperanto events, in addition to those that took place during his stay in concentration camps or prisons. These internments happened several times. It is no coincidence that other Esperantists were found in fascist prisons, such as the communist Asen Grigorov, author of textbooks and dictionaries. Later in the concentration camps run by the communists he also meet up with Esperantists[3]. As a member of the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda (World Anti-national Association), Bulgarian Esperanto Association, collaborator on the Bulgara Esperantisto (Bulgarian Esperantist) etc, he was always faithful to Zamenhof's language, which was also used in anti-authoritarian activities. For example, thanks to the Esperanto environment, he became acquainted as early as the 1980s with Karl Steiner's 7000 Days in Siberia.

But the life of Nakov also demonstrates the Anarchist perspective, starting in 1937. In the Machinostroitel factory he established a libertarian group. Because of this activity he was imprisoned in 1941 together with five other comrades. Sentenced to eight years in prison, however he was freed in 1944. In that year he created two new libertarian groups, one in Kosatcha and later another in Pernik, both named after Elisee Reclus[4]. A member of the Libertarian youth Nakov became a local leader of the Bulgarian Anarchist Union. He continued to act clandestinely during the Communist regime, because the authorities were actively suppressing the libertarian movement. Because of this persecution he was arrested again and spent six years in the concentration camp in Belene, where he was punished several times for bad behaviour. Nakov returned weak, unhealthy, and hungry, in his own words "I only survived thanks to mutual aid between us Anarchists, which is not only a human principle but a well organised practice". 

Later he continued his political activity, remaining a conscious anarchist and Esperantist until the end of his life. Anecdotally, twice (December 1948 and March 1974) his complete correspondence was taken away, including Esperanto newspapers, etc.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the "dossier of object 1218", signed by a colonel of Bulgarian state security, which contains such pearls like the following "Presently the object often meets mainly with anarchists for comments on events, the exchange of litereature and to help one another" (…) "The attitude of the object toward popular power is oppositional" (...) "He looks at world events through the prism of a free thinker, away from the dogmas of modern communism" (…) "Naturally the object is modest, he does not drink, does not smoke, and is hardworking. He has a good culture generally and politically, and is a member of the Esperanto association New Way in Pernik. Is a fanatical Anarchist, and has openly declared that no prison will destroy his ideals nor his relationship with other Anarchists. In conclusion, based on his hostile activity I recommend that he be detained as a social danger".  

Javier Alcalde

Translated by Reddebrek

Aleksander M. Nakov, The Dossier of Subject No. 1218, Edmonton, Black Cat Press, 2016, trad. Mariya Radeva.

Александър Наков, Досие на обект номер 1218, Sofio, ИК „Шрапнел“, [2006] 2009 ; Статии, sl, 2017.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes:

1: The Kingdom of Bulgaria spent much of the interwar years worried about workers and peasant revolts and initiated many purges, crackdowns and its own White Terror, imprisoning thousands of suspects and killing many militants of any even vaguely anti monarchy organisation, especially the anarchist movement and the Bulgarian Communist Party. While not explicitly Fascist, during WWII it sided with the Axis and came under increasing influence of Nazi Germany.

2: A company trading under the name of Machinostroitel still operates in Bulgaria, but if it is the same one then it appears to have moved out of Pernik.

3: For more details on the brutality of the Communist party of Bulgaria see Bulgaria the New Spain - The Communist Terror in Bulgaria

4: Famous French Anarchist and geographer 

La membiografio de Aleksander Metodiev Nakov (1919-2018) utilas por lerni pri la esperanta movado en Bulgario, sed ankaŭ pri ĝiaj rilatoj kun anarkiismo. Fakte, la ĉefa reprezentanto de tiu interligo estas ĝuste Nakov, kiu agadis dum la dekstrema aŭtoritatema reĝimo antaŭ la dua mondmilito, sed ankaŭ dum tiu komunisma. Nakov nomis ilin reciproke « faŝisma » kaj « bolŝevika ». Naskiĝinte ene de malriĉa familio en la vilaĝo Kosatĉa (Kovacevci) en la okcidenta parto de la lando, post la bazlernejo li eklaboris kiel terlaboristo. Li translokiĝis al minista urbo Pernik, kie li laboris en fabriko Machinostroitel. Promenante sur la ĉefa strato de la urbo je la fino de 1936, kaptis lian atenton iu lernolibro de Esperanto en montro-fenestro de librovendejo . Allogis lin, kaj la celo de la lingvo kaj ĝia lerno-facileco, sed eĉ pli la ebleco sekvi rekte la revoluciajn eventojn en Hispanio, pri kiuj legeblis en Esperanto-bultenoj atingintaj Bulgarion.

Malgraŭ sia nescio de la latina alfabeto, li eklernis la lingvon. Baldaŭ li konatiĝis kun la juna ministo Boris Serginov, kiu klopodis vendi esperantan kalendaron de 1937. Kun li Nakov babiladis unuafoje en la internacia lingvo. Tamen, la plej influa homo en tiu epoko estis Anka Pisarska, kiun Nakov ekkonis en kunveno de junaj anarkiistoj en Vitoŝa. Ŝi lernigis lin la gramatikaĵojn de la lingvo kaj tiel li komencis korespondi kun samideanoj nacie kaj internacie. Nakov kaj liaj amikoj fondis e-grupon Nova Vojo, kiu kunigis komencantojn kaj spertajn esperantistoj, kaj kiu organizis kursojn en lernejoj kaj okazigis renkontiĝojn. Kelkaj bulgaroj partoprenis en internaciaj esperantaj aranĝoj, sed pro politikaj kialoj Nakov ne rajtis eliri la landon. Li tamen partoprenis la naciajn Esperanto-eventojn, krom tiuj okazintaj dum lia restado en koncentrejoj aŭ malliberejoj. Kaj tio okazis plurfoje. Eble ne hazarde en faŝistaj prizonoj troviĝis aliaj esperantistoj, kiel la komunisto Asen Grigorov, aŭtoro interalie de lernolibroj kaj vortaroj. Poste en komunismaj koncentrejoj li ankaŭ kunestis kun esperantistoj. Kiel membro de Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, Bulgara Esperanto-Asocio, kunlaboranto de Bulgara Esperantisto ktp, li ĉiam estis fidela al la zamenhofa lingvo, kiu ankaŭ utilis en lia kontraŭaŭtoritata agado. Ekzemple, dank’al la esperanta medio li konatiĝis jam en la 1980-aj jaroj kun la verko 7000 tagoj en Siberio de Karlo Ŝtajner.

Sed la vivo de Nakov ankaŭ klarigeblas el anarkiista perspektivo, almenaŭ ekde 1937. Tiam en la fabriko Machinostroitel li kreis liberecanan grupon. Pro tia agado li estis enprizonigita en 1941, kune kun kvin aliaj kamaradoj. Kondamnita al 8 jaroj de malliberejo, li tamen liberiĝis en 1944. En tiu jaro li kreis du novajn liberecanajn grupojn, unu en Kosatcha kaj poste alian en Pernik, kiu nomiĝis Élisée Reclus. Ano de la liberecana junularo, Nakov rolis kiel loka gvidanto de la Bulgara Anarkiista Unuiĝo. Li daŭre aktivis klandestine dum la komunista regado, kiu malpermesis la liberecanan movadon. Pro tia persekutado en 1947 li deteniĝis denove kaj pasigis ses jarojn en koncentrejo Belene, kie li estis plurfoje punita pro malbona konduto. Nakov revenis malforta, malsana kaj malsata. En liaj vortoj: “Mi nur travivis danke al la interhelpo inter ni anarkiistoj, kiu ĉiam estis ne nur homa principo, sed bone organizita praktiko”.

Poste li daŭrigis sian politikaj agadon, restante konscia anarkiisto kaj esperantisto ĝis la fino de sia vivo. Anekdote, dufoje (decembro 1948 kaj marto 1974) oni forprenis lian kompletan korespondadon, inkluzive de esperantaj gazetoj, ktp.

Verŝajne la plej interesa parto de la libro estas la “dosiero de objekto 1218”, subskiribta de kolonelo de la ŝtata sekureco de Bulgario, kiu inkludas perlojn kiel la jenajn: “Nuntempe, la objekto ofte kunsidas kun la ĉefaj anarkiistoj por komenti pri eventoj, interŝanĝi beletron kaj helpi unu la alian” (…) “La sinteno de la objekto pri la popola povo estas kontraŭa”(…) “Li rigardas la mondajn eventojn per la prismo de liberpensulo, for de la dogmoj de moderna komunismo” (…) Nature la objekto estas modesta; li ne drinkas, ne fumas kaj estas laborema. Li havas bonan kulturan ĝeneralan kaj politikan, kaj estas membro de la esperanta asocio Nova Vojo de Pernik. Temas pri fanatika anarkiisto, kiu malferme deklaras ke nenio malebligas deturni lin de lia ideo kaj de liaj rilatoj kun anarkiistoj. Konklude, bazita sur lia malamika agado, mi sugestas ke li estu internigita kiel sociala danĝerulo”.

Javier Alcalde

Aleksander M. Nakov, The Dossier of Subject No. 1218, Edmonton, Black Cat Press, 2016, trad. Mariya Radeva.

Александър Наков, Досие на обект номер 1218, Sofio, ИК „Шрапнел“, [2006] 2009 ; Статии, sl, 2017.

A Mild Defence of White Man's Burden (the 1995 film, not the cultural concept)

White Man's Burden was made in 1995, the plot is in a nutshell; John Travolta (Louis Pinnock) is a working class man raising a family in a bad neighbourhood, gets falsely accused as a peeping tom by his employer Harry Belafonte (Thaddeus Thomas) and is soon dismissed, losing his job and the callous way he loses it kicks off a chain reaction of bad news for Louis, who faces unemployment and eviction, after trying and failing to find a new job a desperate Louis kidnaps Thaddeus and tries to ransom him. The rest of the film is a sort of odd couple morality tale where a hostage Thaddeus is dragged through the slums and learns how the other half live while an increasingly desperate Louis tries to improvise ways to make his ransom plan work.

The unique selling point of this movie is that it takes place in an alternate reality USA where the racial dynamics are flipped upside down. Here the wealthy and politically dominant are Black Americans, and the White Americans are a marginalised underclass. Its not a great movie, but I feel its heart was in the right place, the reason it exists its to try and expose the features of societal racism to the group that gets the most out of the way society works. To paraphrase `Think racism is no big deal huh, well what if you were on the receiving end of it?` sort of moral lesson. I'm not American so I can't say how well its aged but its an interesting attempt at least. And Harry Belafonte does excellent work with what he's given, he's really convincing as an aloof casually bigoted wealthy patriarch who thoughtlessly uses the vast powers his position gives him to practically make or ruin many total strangers lives and doesn't even notice. And when he's being dragged through the films ghetto neighbourhoods he's believable as the scared and clueless fish out of water. As impractical and ill thought out as Louis's kidnapping plan is, Thaddeus has never had to be confronted in this way before and is equally hapless as he tries to placate the unstable Louis and use opportunities for escape and rescue. And his final transformation as man riddled with guilt over his own role in a horrible system, combined with his continued uselessness and unfamiliarity with his surroundings gives the film its emotional weight.

Its not a science fiction dystopia, its a pretty realistic depiction of a 1990s USA, just with the roles mirrored. The businessmen are all highly educated Black men, there are Black workers in the factories and services alongside white Americans, but the senior positions, the managers, foreman etc are mostly held by black workers. The unemployment office is bureaucratic and unhelpful, and they filmed the scenes depicting overwhelmingly white slums in the actually existing impoverished neighbourhoods that have overwhelming black and latinx populations, and the largely black police force behaves just like the largely white police force does. However there is a downside to this striving for a sense of realism, John Travolta does an accent, loaded with a slang dialect, he's doing this so the film can comment on how society penalises and judges minorities for behaving in ways that are perfectly normal for them, but different from that of the more powerful group that establishes normality. Problem is its very distracting, and it weakens his performance because so much of his energy is spent on keeping the accent going. 

Its not a perfect film, but it is watchable and while the message may seem a bit obvious to some, but when I saw it one night in the early 2000s, -I couldn't have been older than 13- certain parts of it did teach me things I honestly had never encountered or considered before. I grew up in a small town with very little ethnic diversity, so while I was aware that racism exists and is bad, it was always a bit abstract. This film helped me understand that it wasn't just individual ideology and beliefs that created racism and kept it going, but that a society founded for and on the benefit of some would perpetuate those views and relationships everywhere. I still remember the scene where they're channel surfing, and the cast of every single program be it adverts, soap operas, action movies, documentaries etc was starring black actors, and were usually depicting "typical American lifestyles and values" that were far removed from the lives lived by the white urban poor of the film. Which got me thinking, that's probably not because the heads of the tv channels are all individually actively racist, its because they're run by people who grew up in those life styles, and are marketing shows and products to that audience. But the effect of this is that the people who don't have any connections to those lifestyles, and cannot take part in the markets being targeted are essentially stuck watching another world that's foreign and alienating.

Another strength of the film is that it doesn't take easy ways out. Thaddeus is not like Scrooge, who totally changed his ways after being visited by three ghosts in the night. Thaddeus has been changed by what he's witnessed, but his one attempt at change is not accepted, is motivated largely by personal guilt and its made clear that even if his gestured had been accepted it wouldn't have changed anything truly important. At the start of the film he's part of a societal power structure that perpetuates cruelty, and he's powerful enough to inflict some of that on his own, but when it comes to making meaningful change he's powerless and buckles under the pressure. 

White Man's Burden isn't very popular, its critical reception is mixed and it doesn't come up in conversations often, but its not totally obscure either, dvds are still being sold at standard prices and clips aren't hard to find. But given the content and how our existing societies have developed since the 1990s, I would be very curious to see if this film could still get broadcast today and what its modern reception to a new audience was. 

The Church: Fascism's Ally An Interpretation of Christianity By Capt. J.R.White

The Church: Fascism's Ally

An Interpretation of Christianity

By Capt. J.R.White

---

I should like to discuss this subject from the standpoint of a Christian Anarchist, which, if I am to have a label at all &endash; and I hate all labels &endash; is the nearest label to fit me. From that standpoint I define my conception of Christianity as perfect Freedom, which coincides with my conception of Anarchy. In my opinion there are two conceptions of spirituality: the one that only in the fullest attainment and expression of his freedom can man attain to the spiritual life, individual and social. And the other that he must seek the high goal of his spirit not by self-expression and freedom, but by self-repression and obedience to external authority.

I believe the first conception to be that of Christ, and the Gospels read with any intelligence, and the second to be so foreign to the whole sprit of Christ that it is not only un-Chrisitian, but positively anti-Christian. It follows that any Church which bases itself on the second, that of obedience to the external authority and denial of the individual's right to experiment and judge for himself, above all in those realms of faith and morals where his own soul must find its own unique path, is not, in my opinion, a Christian Church, even though it arrogantly claims the monopoly of Christian inspiration.

Subordinating Individual Freedom

From this standpoint I could have foretold the association of the Roman Catholic Church with Fascism, not only in Spain, but everywhere else, on philosophical grounds, because that Church and Fascism have the same fundamental philosophy of subordinating individual freedom to the totality of Church and State.

For the present, however, I must stick to the subject and cannot do better than by examining a controversy between a Cardinal Archbishop of the Spanish Church, Cardinal Goma, and Senor Aguirre, leader of the Basque Catholic Nationalists, who support the people's cause in Spain. This controversy brings out clearly the conflict between the Pope and almost the entire Hierarchy and controlled Press of the Catholic Church and the small but honourable number of Catholic priests and laymen, who have dared to follow their conscience against the overwhelming weight of their Church's authority. It is a conflict not only of ideas, but also of facts, and I hope to show that the Cardinal cannot defend his perversion of ideas without a direct and complete falsification of the facts.

Senor Aguirre writes to the Cardinal:

"The war has arisen between an egoistic Capitalism, which has abused its powers, and a deep feeling for social justice. It is not a war of religion."

Now you will see at once that in an argument whether, the Spanish struggle is or is not a war of religion, some definition of what is meant by religion is necessary, and my preamble about two different and irreconcilable conceptions of religion, namely, of, freedom and authority, were not out of place.

"I do not believe that there are a dozen men who have taken up arms; to defend their property or to defend themselves from the persecution of those who hold or administer property.

I admit social injustice is one of the remote causes of the struggle, but I categorically deny that this is a class war. A pretext is not a real cause, and the championship of the working classes has been only a pretext for this war."

The full insolence of the Cardinal's inversion of the facts lies in the last sentence, for it implies that on the sham pretext of labour demands for social justice, the Spanish people took up arms and started a war. Now let us have the truth, which the Cardinal inverts, in the words of Father Lopo, one of the few priests who have been faithful to their people.

"When the people were roused to demand their rights, when they asked for the universally claimed transformation of the land-owning System; when they asked for access to the great heartless machine of industry to humanise labour there - when we stopped our ears; we gave them a few crumbs in the name of charity and refused to envisage the solutions which reason and justice forced on every Christian conscience;

And there appeared immediately in the midst of the conflict a word lacking all meaning and reason for those who were to use it as a terrible weapon of attack. There appeared the word 'Order'; they talked of the established order and fortifying themselves against the workers, they called them with infinite scorn, 'enemies of order."

'Let everything go on as it was', was the supreme aspiration of those who were comfortably placed in life, who: were little if at all perturbed by the Existence of the disinherited; yes, disinherited, a term and a conception which fill the mind with horror, so clearly do they speak of fratricidal and anti-Christian cruelty."

I am reminded of Francis Adam's lines:

Sometimes the heart and brain

Would be still and forget

Man, woman and childen

Dragged down the pit

But when I hear them declaiming

Of Liberty, Order and Law,

The husk-hearted gentleman

And the mud-souled bourgeois

A sombre, hateful desire

Creeps up slow in the breasts

To wreck the great guilty temple,

And give us rest.

"The great guilty temple," there is the position in a nutshell. Guilty priests of that guilty temple who refused to envisage, who from atrophy of soul and mind were, I believe, incapable of envisaging, the solution which reason and justice forced on every Christian conscience.

Wolves In Sheeps' Clothing

But when the disinherited, claimed their human inheritance, they were not allowed to claim it legally and peacefully, as they sought to do. They were attacked by their disinheritors. They had to fight to defend more than their property they had not secured: they had to defend their liberty and their lives from the Fascist wolves, led on by the viler wolves in sheeps' clothing: the guilty priests.

Not a dozen men, says the Cardinal, took up arms to defend themselves from the persecution of those who hold and administer property. We answer him, "Foul bloated blasphemer! The whole Spanish people took up arms to defend themselves against the treacherous, rebellious attack of those who held and administered property and cared little, if at all, for those they had disinherited.

"They took up arms," do I say? They took up sticks, they took up stones, they fought with their bare hands for they had no arms to take. And in the sacred passion of the right for which they fought, and the burning determination not to be robbed once more by the treacherous violence of the inheritance, of which they had been robbed for centuries, now almost within their grasp, they wrested the arms from the hands of their persecutors and created a great people's army.

And then what?

The bullies and thieves could not depend on their own, conscript army to shoot down their; brothers. They imported more and more infidel Moors to massacre their own countrymen in the name of the most high God.

But the Moors were not enough. They had to pawn their country to foreign butchers, till whole army corps of Germans and Italians came to help the holy 'massacre.

I pray to the God of Justice, whom I believe can never be mocked in the end, that the peoples of the whole world will rise at last to take just vengeance on the spiritual criminals, who in frightful blasphemy pervert religion and encourage, the slaughter of the poor and humble, whom it is their duty to defend.

Source : Spain And The World, March 5th 1937, courtesy of the Kate Sharply Library.

The Meaning of Anarchism J.R. White

The Meaning of Anarchism

J.R. White (1937)

---

PART I

There has been bloodshed between Anarchists and Stalinist Communists in Catalonia. Many are asking:
(1) Is there so deep-rooted a difference of principle as to provide a philosophical basis for a physical clash?
(2) What is the fundamental principle of Anarchism?
(3) If the Anarchists have a definite and different philosophy, will it work in this wicked world?
I propose to contrast Anarchism with Socialism and Communism, confining my use of the word Socialism to include points where Socialists and Communists agree.

The socialists say: The State has been formed on a class basis to preserve the domination of one class by the domination of the others. To achieve liberation, therefore, we must get possession of the State. When we become masters by election or by insurrection we will abolish its raison d'être, which is the division of society into a possessing and an exploited class. Then the State will wither away and will give place to an economic administration of things, which will no longer have to safeguard the privileges of a minority but to minister to the needs of all. But to abolish the State one must first capture it and use it to destroy the cause which has given it birth - the inequality between the majority which produces everything and the minority which consumes a disproportionate amount of the product of the majority's labour. That is why it is all important to secure the election of as many MP's and Municipal Councillors as possible. Their installation will mean so much less to accomplish on the day of the revolution, when we shall have in the persons of our elected representatives guards within the citadel to throw open the gates to us.

To this the Anarchists reply: The State contains a corrupting influence in itself. The people have always been deceived (when they are not machine-gunned) by the revolutionaries who in their ignorance the people have hoisted to power. Consequently, to destroy the State, one must not begin by becoming, the State; for in doing so one becomes automatically its preserver. One becomes so by force of circumstance, without conscious dishonesty, inevitably, because things appear under a different aspect and so many difficulties and duties crop up that no revolutionary turned politician can remain a single minded revolutionary. The State corrupts the purest and the best. So to keep our revolutionary virtue, we must not expose ourselves to its pernicious infection. It is not from above with the machinery of the oppressive State, that one can abolish class society. It is from below that we must wage the war against the privileged class and undermine the foundation of their privileges. "We will expropriate them by law," say the Socialists. "We can do it without you and your laws," reply the Anarchists. "We know how to strip the bourgeoisie by direct action. Our direct action is a series of attacks incessantly renewed, delivered at one point today and another tomorrow; an endless sequence of major and minor crises, schooling the exploited in practical war against the exploiter and preparing them for the final crisis of the general strike. We feel no need of voting to impose masters on ourselves. We are anti-parliamentarians, abstentionists. In one thing we are faithful Marxists: Did not Marx say, "The emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves"? Well, we are workers and we will emancipate ourselves. As for you Socialists who offer to liberate us, if we listened to you we should only prepare one more disillusionment for the proletariat. For once become a Government, you would do to us who are the people just what every Government has always done."

It would seem that the Anarchists have justification for their mistrust, not only in the lessons of history but in the nature of things. Anarcho-syndicalism applies energy at the point of production; its human solidarity is cemented by the association of people in common production undiluted by mere groupings of opinion. Affinity of interests is more stable and more powerful than affinity of opinions. Disunity begins where differences of abstract opinion can no longer be harmonised and resolved in collective work. We cannot surrender the cause of human freedom to any combination of incongruities, to any "popular front" whose incompatible elements can guarantee nothing but the obligation to compromise. In any popular front, groups and elements are accepted whose economic interests run counter to those of the proletariat. In the people who compose it there are intellectual and moral affinities, which may disappear under pressure. It is dangerous to place people between the appeal of the conscience and reason and the appeal of these interests. These fragile affinities cannot exist in the groupings of anarcho-syndicalism; stronger than any bond of sentiment or of reason there is a bond of interest which unites them, the only stable and solid bond of unity.

The Socialists reply that Anarcho-syndicalist propaganda, just because it makes flank attacks and raids on Capitalism, because its primary object is the defence of local and regional interests, is inadequate to make conscious revolutionaries. Anarcho-syndicalism is good for guerrilla but unsuited to serious organised warfare. Its efforts must automatically be lacking in concentration. Co-ordination and centralisation of effort can be the work only of a Party whose horizon is not limited to a town or an industry but embraces all the complex factors of a national or international situation. In our common interest of the revolution, Socialist and Anarcho-syndicalist action must combine.

The Anarchists answer the Socialists: "Where is your logic? You assert that in the society which you intend to build, economic groupings will be the only ones and public authority will be limited to the necessary administration to ensure the production and distribution of objects necessary to people's existence. Why then wait for the revolution to give to economic groupings their vital creative function? Let them take the importance today hey will have tomorrow. You admit the State is the effect of class exploitation and its function is to maintain it. We prefer to attack the cause. Leave the workers to fight heir own battle on their own ground. Don't ask them to idle themselves with political masters, who the day after they conquer state power will want, like all conquerors, to remain the masters. Between employer and worker there is a brutal vis-à-vis. Against the tremendous power of the State one must stoop to tactics; sometimes one has to combine these tactics with those of other Parties. The proletariat finds it hard to follow these long range operations, or it gets concerned with their detail, missing their whole scope: thus it risks contradicting a political habit of mind, which slowly atrophies the revolutionary spirit. The working class, economically organised, is sufficient unto itself, it needs only to be conscious of its power; electoral and parliamentary combinations can only delay the day of self-realisation."

Steklov, in his history of the First international, speaks of the split in it as caused by the past of the international proletariat rising in revolt against its future. He means by this that Bakunin and the Anarchists thought it was possible to jump straight from the decay of feudal aristocracy, which from 1848 began definitely to collapse in favour of bourgeois industrialism, to the proletarian revolution.

"The broad masses of the workers," says Steklov, "for the time led astray by Bakunin, returned to the broad river of International Socialism." Dare we reply that the broad river of revolutionary destiny, for a time mapped correctly by Marx over a stage of its course, shows signs of reverting to a deeper bed charted by the genius of Bakunin.

Marx was, "par excellence", the prophet of the industrial proletariat; any developments depending solely on that proletariat had to await its growth and class conscious solidarity; and that growth and solidarity had to await in turn the maturity, not to say the overripe bursting, of the bourgeois order. This patient dependence on ripening external conditions gives to Marxism an element of fatalism in sharp contrast with the unconditioned spontaneity of Anarchism.

"Anarchism does not wait. It acts in the individual and in small groups to build up social forms, which shall be, as near as possible, embryos of the fully developed Anarchist society."

"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick," and any philosophy of action preaching present revolt as the best preparation for future revolution on a wide scale starts with an appeal to the fighter and people of action rather than the theoretician, which is psychologically sound. To the seer the Kingdom of Heaven is always at hand, and its proximity calls for immediate preparation. And though the seers are generally wrong in their time forecast, they are often more right than the scientist about the fundamentals of cataclysmic change.

Bakunin was a seer, Marx was a Scientist. Bakunin was greatly influenced by the just and elemental protests of the peasants ruined by dawning Capitalism, and he believed he could enlist the revolting bourgeois intellectuals in the service of complete social liquidation. He was wrong as to the time. But Marx was wrong in his scientific belief that revolution would spread automatically out of the most highly industrialised countries. The revolt not of Germany or France but of Ireland and Russia during the Great War is one up for Bakunin's rapport with elemental human and one down for Marx's analysis of the scientifically conditioned mass.

"What!" I hear someone exclaim. "You place the Irish National Rebellion on a par with the Russian proletarian revolution and use both to discredit the accuracy of Marxian analysis! What heresy run to insanity is this?"

Just a minute, friend; I am pleading for two things: spontaneous voluntarism versus scientific social conditioning, and the elemental vitality retained by a peasantry, as indispensable features in revolution. I am suggesting that though the industrial proletariat has the strongest incentive to make the revolution, they are too mechanised and lack the vital force ever to do so unaided, and that therefore a social science based on industrial economics alone as the determining factor is inevitably misleading. Do the facts support me or do they not? Has successful revolution ever been achieved in a highly industrialised country? It has not. If we analyse the factors in the most recent revolutions we are familiar with, those of Ireland, Russia and Spain, in conjunction with the frustration of revolution in highly industrialised countries, we may have to conclude it is something deeper than bad tactics and treacherous leadership which has thrown out our calculations.

Perhaps the Marxians and even Marx have omitted elemental and human factors, which can express and manifest themselves better through the vehicle of Anarchism. I am not saying Marx was wrong. Obviously he was very largely right. I am suggesting that he did not say the last word about the individual and collective "unconscious" when he interpreted so scientifically the consciousness of the industrial worker.

If we compare the Irish and Russian revolutions, the former has two advantages over the more exclusively proletarian nature of the latter. It preceded it in time, the Dublin rising of 1916 antedating even the Kerensky Revolution by about a year, and it is surpassed in its voluntarism. It was essentially an insurrection of a conscious and voluntary minority forestalling and creating mass conditions rather than await their ripening. If Nationalism has any function in paving the way for International Revolution, Ireland showed that function at its best. In Ireland, Republican Nationalism combined with Irish International Socialism (Connolly and the Citizen Army) against the common Imperial enemy, and in so doing made the only repudiation of the Great War in Western Europe long before the chaos and social military breakdown caused by the war compelled that repudiation, as in Russia, and later to some extent in Germany.

This voluntarism, scorning to calculate consequences and creative of new mass conditions, is the essence of Anarchism with its distrust of majorities and "l'illusion majoritaire" and its respect of spiritual quality rather than numerical quantity. The Anarchist recognises, implicitly if not explicitly, that there are two reasons, one emotional and creative, arising from inner spontaneity, the other "rational" and dead because its premises are in the past or present status quo and it is therefore reduced to calculate consequences in terms of the past or present status quo rather than create new forms.

The State worship of Communist and Socialism has its source in the failure to lay enough stress on the inner spontaneity of people, and a consequent enslavement to outer externalised forms, such as the State as the source and key to power. The people's only road to real freedom lies in the voluntary co-ordination of their maximum individual spontaneity. All social panaceas that seek to supersede that co-ordinated spontaneity, even as a means to the alleged end of restoring it, must lead not to freedom but to the loss of such freedom as the people have achieved and to increasing depths of tyranny.

PART II

Having brought the Anarchism v. Socialism argument, with which this article opened, to its psychological and philosophical head, let us apply it to recent history in Spain, recent history still pregnant with problems of world-shaking importance.

If people's inner spontaneity is a factor of importance in revolution, increasing in direct ratio with the mechanical perfection and international consolidation of the forces of Fascist repression, are we not apt to overlook the surprises in the unknown destiny of people in our scientific forecasts of the mechanical destination of society? May not our oversight damage our insight into unexpected factors in revolutionary development? We must not divorce the spiritual qualities of a people from our scientific assessment of their place in economic evolution. Almost we might say that if human spontaneity has to become more dynamic and intense to triumph over intensified and universalised reaction, each succeeding revolution must be more Anarchist in its principle and practice than the last. Socialistic centralisation would thus become counter-revolutionary in effect and have latent affinity with counter-revolutionary forces, no matter how revolutionary its slogans or even its intentions.

Now Spain is deeply impregnated with the psychology, the principle and the practice of Anarchism. It would, I think, be false to insulate this principle and practice of Anarchism from the Spanish racial characteristic of human dignity. The sense of human dignity seems to be consubstantial with every Spaniard and undoubtedly it inspires the Anarchist goal of general freedom and solidarity and the educational voluntary associative methods leading towards it. The situation in Spain today compels us to ask the question: What is the surest guarantee against the triumph of Fascism? Is it the Anarchist psychology and tradition of the Spanish people expressing itself in its own Anarcho-Syndicalist forms or is it centralised State Socialism imposed, or alleged to be imposed, in the interests of maximum military efficiency and the maximum efficiency of production to feed the fighting fronts? May not this efficiency be too dearly bought, if it is bought at the price of damping the revolutionary enthusiasm of the Spanish people and splitting their revolutionary unity even in the interests of a unified command? One might even add with trepidation a further question: Whither is this State centralisation in the interests of Spanish "democracy" leading? We are assured it is aimed at, and will lead to the speedy defeat of Franco, Have not the Second and Third Internationals agreed to meet to further that most desirable object? So, I note, have the Ambassadors of the capitalist Powers already met and conferred with the Valencia Government. Let us hope they have agreed to co-operate in the speedy defeat of Franco. That, however, is uncertain. One thing is certain. Anarchist leaders have been displaced, imprisoned, murdered, groups of Anarchists have been massacred by Socialist-Communists and the Anarchist idea of revolution, collectivisation of industry and as far as possible the agricultural village-communities, is being stopped and undone. The Anarchists had defeated not only Franco in Catalonia but had superseded the economic order, which Franco is fighting to save and restore. Now the Socialist-Communists are saving and restoring it instead, not for him, of course, but to speed up his defeat. Meanwhile large sections of the Spanish people have misunderstood; things were too puzzling.

When they saw their workers' military and economic committees dissolved, their workers' militia abolished, themselves disarmed and finally the telephone building which they had won by repeated attack from the Fascists in July, forcibly seized from their syndicate by the Govt assault guards, they came out on the streets and erected barricades. They thought their revolution was being destroyed instead of saved. Their misunderstanding was increased by the arrival of French and British warships in Barcelona and the landing of French marines, while the open allies of Franco, the Germans and Italians, continued to blockade them outside the three mile limit. The strange coincidence of the arrival of the French and British warships just at the moment when the workers came out on the streets to save a revolution they believed to be threatened, has been mixed up in their simple proletarian minds with the previous fact that the French and British had been blockading them all along under cover of a non-intervention pact and that the Valencia Government sent troops and threatened to send more to suppress what they thought was the defence of their revolution.

These simple people have been called "uncontrollables." In point of fact they were very easily controlled and went back to their work after six days of almost entirely defensive fighting. One can only hope they will not regret their docility.

I note that the epithet "uncontrollable" is reserved for my Anarchist comrades. Their fellow criminals in the joint misunderstanding are mostly "Trotskyites." A "Trotskyite", so far as I understand the term is someone who thinks Marx meant what he said when he spoke of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the transition period from Capitalism to Communism. Mr. Emile Burns, in his book Communism, Capitalism, and the Transition, has put the matter in a nutshell, not only as regards what should happen in theory but what did actually happen in the Russian Revolution. He might have been writing of the revolution that the simple Spanish "Trotskyites" thought they were defending. "All executive positions," writes Mr. Burns, " which had formerly been filled by appointment from above had to be made elective and the elected persons had to be subject to recall at any moment by the bodies that elected them; therefore from the first day of the revolution the command of armed forces was taken over by elected deputies; the factory workers were armed and fought all the most vital battles; the officials in State Departments were replaced by workers; the managers in the factories were replaced or controlled by councils of workers; the existing Law Courts were abolished and Workers' Courts with elected judges took their place; wherever Soviet order was established, elected workers' Committees took the place of appointed officials."

Now that is precisely the kind of order that the Spanish "Trotskyites", in common with other Spanish "uncontrollables", thought they were fighting to preserve and maintain from May 2nd to 7th in Barcelona.

But I would hate to be thought a "Trotskyite", for I remember it was Trotsky who helped to smash all that sort of thing at Kronstadt. So I must perforce be an "uncontrollable."

What is the difference between a "Trotskyite" and an "uncontrollable"? I expect I am simple, too, but I will give the only definition my simplicity can rise to. A Trotskyite is a Marxist who has stuck to Marx, who believes for instance, that it is their converging or conflicting economic interests which will determine sooner or later - perhaps sooner, alas! - whether the Capitalist "democracies" will or will not help the Spanish people, led by the present Valencia Government, to defeat Franco and the relics of the clerical aristocratic order, which he seeks to preserve.

Not being a Marxist, I offer no opinion.

And an "uncontrollable" is an Anarchist who has stuck to Anarchy and who is not, therefore, primarily concerned with the shades or strata of Capitalism, but with revolution by direct action; who believes with Marx indeed that emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves, but with Bakunin, Kropotkin and Maletesta, that free humanity must be substituted for the State, and that when Anarchists take part in a Government, they allow themselves to be deflected from their proper task and become corrupted by association with an instrument of tyranny. The first false step in Spain was the association of Anarchist leaders with the Government and the State. Had they given all their energies to co-ordination and unified command of CNT Collectives and Anarchist military units, instead of sacrificing Anarchist principles and control to compromises with a Government, the uncontrollables would have remained in control of themselves and ready for co-ordinated action with other sections instead of being sacrificed to a State dictatorship through a political party.

[Originally issued by the London Freedom Group, 1937. Republished as Anarchy (Belfast Anarchist Collective, Belfast, 1982) and The Meaning of Anarchism (Organise!, Belfast, 1998).]