It’s full title is the Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists, a document written in Paris in 1926 written by Nestor Makhno, Ida Mett, and Piotr Arshinov, among others. A number of groups today take inspiration from it, including the FdCA in Italy, NEFAC in the US and the WSM in Ireland. (The wikipedia entry on platformism lists some other groups as well and I found two things on the history of the platform and platformism, haven’t read them yet.) I read parts of it ages ago and didn’t really get it. I recently re-read it. The beginning in particular is excellent. The basic point is that anarchism has been made ineffectual by lack of organization, by lack of an organization of anarchists working together as anarchists. I find that highly compelling.
The document proposes an organization called a General Union of Anarchists. The GUA would draw together “most of the participants in the anarchist movement, would establish a common tactical and political line for anarchism and thereby serve as a guide for the whole movement.” The GUA is not the movement, then. Really, the GUA - and perhaps the term ‘union’ is indicative of this - is the organization of class struggle anarchists, or, as the FdCA says, of class struggle militants who are anarchists.
“We reject as theoretically and practically unfounded the idea of creating an organization using the recipe of the “synthesis”, that is to say, bringing together the supporters of the various strands of anarchism. Such an organization embracing a pot-pourri of elements (in terms of their theory and practice) would be nothing more than a mechanical assemblage of persons with varying views on all issues affecting the anarchist movement, and would inevitably break up on encountering reality.”
“The only approach which can lead to a solution of the general organizational problem is, as we see it, the recruitment of anarchism’s active militants on the basis of specific theoretic, tactical and organizational positions, which is to say on the basis of a more or less perfected, homogeneous programme .”
The Platform isn’t that organization or a blueprint for it. It’s a general guide, a platform in the sense of a basic foundation, for the forming of such an organization. The document implies that there should be one organization of class struggle anarchists, not many.
The principles proposed for organization are unity of theory, unity of tactics, collective responsibility, and federalism.
Unity of theory understood as the general outlook of the group, unity of tactics understood as agreement upon what the group will do and presumably why, collective responsibility understood as everyone in the group taking responsibility for the development of all - this sounds to me resonant with the marxist, and perhaps not only marxist, slogan of communism as that within which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all - and agrees to carry out the tasks of the group and be accountable, and federalism understood as rejection of centralized decision making, actions will be the result of collective agreement freely entered into, thus though there is one group it’s not one top down group.
“[T]he federalist type of anarchist organization, while acknowledging the right of every member of the organization to independence, freedom of opinion, personal initiative and individual liberty, entrusts each member with specific organizational duties, requiring that these be duly performed and that decisions jointly made also be put into effect.”
I find all of that compelling, though I have reservations that federalism can be (mis)interpreted to mean duplication of administrative structure. Decision-making power should be decentralized but administration should be as centralized as possible, as a matter of efficiency, with duplication occurring only when needed as a check to prevent administration from becoming power. And the vesting of organizational power in small groups or individuals for the purposes of executing collective decisions is of course fine. That is, federalism does not mean lack of differentiation of function (though differentiations shouldn’t turn into hierarchies).
There are a few bits I find less compelling or unclear. All the stuff about what anarchists need to do in a revolutionary situation doesn’t really speak to me, perhaps symptomatic of a lack of imagination or optimism on my part. I can see why it’s in there, given the moment and the authors.
I’m not clear on this: the document states that organizationally “we have to operate along two lines: on the one hand, by the selection and grouping of revolutionary worker and peasant forces on the basis of anarchist theory (explicity anarchist organizations) and on the other, on the level of grouping revolutionary workers and peasants on the basis of production and consumption (revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ production organizations, free workers’ and peasants’ cooperatives, etc.).” I get the first part. Does the second part - production and consumption organizations - mean just co-ops, or unions as well? I’m not very interested in cooperatives. I think they function basically as small businesses prior to the abolition of capitalism and I think they’re often conducive to lifestylism in the present. I do understand how they’re important theoretically and will be, and I could imagine work like this proceeding well, but I’m not excited about it.
I also find the placement of co-ops over unions puzzling. I’m much more interested in conflict against the class forces in the economy than I am in setting up alternative production arrangements which will be exploited by market in an alternative manner prior to the abolition of capitalism. Furthermore, I think the types of conflicts involved in workplace organizing - and I imagine there are analogs for peasants - radicalize people - producing more militants with the class hatred which fuels meaningful theory as well as producing militants who are capable of acting in a meaningful (ie, at least somewhat effective) way on their beliefs. That is, struggle at the point of production, if effective, produces more potential members for activity along the first line.
I find the entire section on the transitional period leaves me cold. I don’t understand their objection to minimum program nor the idea that the revolution is immediate. Given that the task of anarchist communists prior to the revolution is “to prepare the workers and peasants for the social revolution,” and given all the stuff on the defense of the revolution for a period of years, there is precisely a transitional period. And a minimum program could be part of that preparation. In a sense, the process of organization building could be considered a type of minimum program. I suspect this section is part of a debate at the time and isn’t particularly relevant now.
I don’t get this:
“The ideas of communism and of syndicalism occupy two different planes. Whereas communism, i.e. the free society of equal workers, is the goal of the anarchist struggle, syndicalism, i.e. the revolutionary movement of industrial workers based on trades, is but one of the forms of the revolutionary class struggle.
In uniting the industrial workers on the basis of production, revolutionary syndicalism, like any trade-union movement, has no specific ideology: it has no world view embracing all the complex social and political issues of the current situation. It always reflects the ideologies of a range of political groupings, notably of those most intensively at work within its ranks. ”
Re: the first, the IWW and others would argue that the movement of industrial workers should and can be based on industries, not on trades. It’s also not at all clear why a union movement “has no specific ideology.” Of course unions can and do exist with all sort of ideologies. So do political organizations and anarchists. If a union and the union movement “reflects the ideologies of a range of political groupings, notably of those most intensively at work within its ranks” then the political task in that milieu is simply to increase the quality and quantity of the best political groupings and ideologies at work within it. Maybe this is just semantics, as they do write that “anarchists must be involved in revolutionary syndicalism as one of the forms of the workers’ revolutionary movement.”
This involvement should occur in a very particular way, according to the platform. That is, anarchist should work within that movement and in a way which builds links “with the organization of anarchist forces outside of that movement.” Personally, I think anarchists in the labor movement should focus on the labor movement mainly, and anarchists outside the labor movement should be the ones doing the bulk of the relationship building. (I’d say it’s likely that anarchists in the labor movement have ties to anarchists outside the labor movement more than anarchists outside the labor movement have ties to anarchists in the labor movement.)
I like the emphasis is on revolutionary syndicalism, and I like the goal of creating revolutionary unions - anarcho-syndicalist ones, actually. It’s a bit unclear, though, if the revolutionary syndicalist movement is meant to be ‘revolutionaries in labor unions’ or if it means specifically dual unionism alone. I think it’s both. In the anglophone word I think the former predominates for the most part, unfortunately.
In the discussion here, someone comments that Skirda’s ‘Facing the Enemy’ is worth looking at re: the Platform, and references a debate between Makhno and Malatesta which I’ll have to look at later. (Malatesta’s reply to the platform, Makhno’s response,
Malatesta’s response and a Malatesta article talking about all of this, focusing on collective responsibility.
A commenter at the version I linked to above also raises a question about how mutual the responsibility is between members of the GUA who are also syndicalists - the platform mentions responsibility of the members of the GUA to the GUA regarding their syndicalism, but not those members also have responsibilities to their fellow syndicalists.
I was also surprised at the reference to the GUA as the ‘organized vanguard’ (in the earlier translation I saw, not in the one I linked to).
Nate,
The issue with cooperatives is understandable in the context of the platform’s creation. Two basic and intertwined contexts are immediately relevant: the personalities involved (Especially Makhno, Arshinov, and Mett) and the economic situations (primarily Eastern Europe, contemporary post-Soviet Europe) toward which the platform was oriented.
The three authors mentioned above all had direct and personal experience with organizing the peasantry as well as the proletariat, and like all successful revolutionaries since the French Revolution, they recognized the need for what Gramsci referred to as a Jacobin plan, which put the peasants (still the overwhelming majority of the country, and almost to this day, the world) in alliance with the urban proletariat.
While conventional Marxist revolutionary theory focused exclusively on the proletariat as the vanguard class opposed to capitalism (and on the intellectuals as the vanguard of the proletariat), they completely neglected the peasants, as was seen in the Bolshevik destruction.
The thing is that revolutionary movements run by vanguard groups (who tend to the intellectualist) almost always believe that having arrived at a ‘correct’ analysis of the situation, all participants should immediately correct their practices to fall in line with revolutionary goals. This is difficult if not impossible with proletarians, who commonly resist vanguardist movements but who are at least disciplined to think of economic rationality as a good thing, in line with their managers. Peasants, however, live in a very different economic world, and have a few well-understood preferences, almost all of which militate very strongly against the collectivization of smallholder farms. Trained to value themselves precisely in proportion to the success of their skills on their small plots of land, immediate and radical collectivization tends to work best in situations where the land in question has been expropriated from large landholders, not from small farmers. Farmers are nevertheless very willing to engage in co-operative enterprises which protect themselves as a class against state or corporate predation. (Minnesota’s early Twentieth Century includes some great examples of this).
Makhnov, who led a two-front war against capitalists and state communists simultaneously, backed by the peasantry and the proletariat, Arshinov, a lapsed bolshevik who eventually led NABAT, and Mett, the author of the damning Kronstadt Commune, were all acutely aware of the problems of organizing the non-capitalist classes. Difficult enough to do in countries like France or England, in the throes of a successful industrialization and proletarianization, in an economic situation like that of Russia or the Ukraine, where agriculture dominated everything, cooperatives were a decent means of opposing capitalist predation for classes united in their opposition to capitalism, if not in their unified vision of a future.
No big fan of the Platform, I agree with your general take on it. But I’ve always wanted to know more about two specific issues that make me nervous: ideological unity and collective responsibility. Any ideas?
Solid.
Comment by Ericco Hedake — July 9, 2007 @ 7:06 pm
Ciao Ericco,
Always a pleasure compagno, and thanks. I thought of you when I read it, the stuff on peasants. One thing that I forgot to comment on was how much there wasn’t anything in the document that disagreed with marxism understood as a critique of economic power. Anyhow, I figured as much about the context. I’m still not enthusiastic about the co-op stuff and think the placement of co-ops as the organizational task over unions (or other organs of waging economic conflict). Alongside the syndicalism there could and should be organizing to fight the economic powers that peasants conflict with, sort of peasants’ unions. It may be that they already see an existing movement or set of organizations doing the economic conflict and so don’t see building those as a task of the times. That seems like a charitable reading.
One thing, I don’t know that agree with you on this - “proletarians [are] disciplined to think of economic rationality as a good thing, in line with their managers.” I mean, if nearly anyone but you or a handful of similar comrades said it I’d object pretty strongly. Since it’s you, I assume for now that I’m misunderstanding and responding a meaning that I’m importing. Can you explain this line?
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 9, 2007 @ 7:20 pm
Hiya, Nate. I agree with you in abstract principle in preferring unions to co-ops. Absolutely. The problem is that, for reasons largely rooted in their history and form of subsistence (that is to say, ‘culture’), landed peasants - even those with miniscule amounts of land - are rarely willing to collectivize and abandon household-based (private) production. They *are* willing to fight back by collectively operating through co-ops to secure better prices to seed stock, livestock, or to defend legal rights to land use, usufruct of commons, water rights, etc.
Sure, this is essentially a ‘backward’ move in many ways: it is a form of collectivization that defends private property of the means of production, for instance. So, are these co-ops just alternative forms of capitalist organization? They can be, but I don’t think they have to be, and this (I think) is where the Platform comes in. I don’t see the platform as promoting co-ops over unions in anyway, but seeking common group between peasants and proles in their fight against the capitalists.
There’s two basic ways to follow from this that I can see (sure, there’s always more than two, but I’m the type of person who sees everything in terms of ‘two groups’), and both are a bit naive, I think. First, we can imagine that unless we root out all forms of private property or even private usufruct, such as those of traditional peasantry, capitalism will remain undefeated and continue to oppress us all. This is a bit silly, since the peasants are not and never have been particularly interested in engaging in capitalist oppression (we can argue about the Khmer Rouge, if you want, but whatever else they were, they weren’t peasants). Second, we can imagine that having destroyed the capitalist class, other forms of economic and political oppression will simply disappear. This seems to be closer to the platformist position, which sees small shopholders and peasants as natural allies, and doesn’t account for the different motivations and positions that these groups have vis-a-vis the proletariat, even “after the revolution.”
Anyway, I’m not actually a platformist, just a run of the mill organizational anarchist.
As for my comment that the proletarians are disciplined to think of economic rationality as a good thing, in line with their managers,” What’s your reading of that line? All I meant by it is that in the capitalist workplace, ‘efficiency’ and ‘economic rationality’ is an enshrined value that crosses class lines. This is so to the point that laid-off workers can commonly be heard to explain their loss of a job in the same terms as those given by the bosses that laid them off - efficiency, redundancy, etc. “What can you do?” To convince a proletarian that she deserves to live and eat even at the cost of economic rationality is often deeply difficult. Not so with peasants, who go hungry much more often than proletarians, by and large, and have no love of efficiency in general.
Comment by Ericco Hedake — July 10, 2007 @ 8:33 pm
heya Ericco,
On that line, I thought you might have meant something like that. I suppose some workers do think that way. I think a lot of workers’ struggles and individual actions as small as taking a longer smoke break are protests against capitalist economic rationality. Even those who believe in that stuff in their heads to a greater or less extent often do this kind of thing, parallel to workers who voted for no strike pledges in WWII but then went out on wildcat strikes against problems on the job.
On peasants, I like your second option, not the first. I’m not fussed about collectivization of agriculture. I think it’d be better to form collective bodies analogous to unions that fight for tenants’ rights if they’re not land owners, fight interest rates if they are owners, and fight with buyers of crops if the peasants sell crops at market (fighting big buyers who ship goods elsewhere and/or pricing agreements for locally sold goods - I’m less keen on the latter than the former as the former is more likely to involve capitalist entities and bigger ones). This latter doesn’t involve collectivizing production, the work on the land, but it is a sort of collectivizing of the conditions of sale. I think that kind of stuff involves class struggle analogous to workers’ struggles - conflict with the other class above the peasantry at the economic points of contact - and could create the changes in people that makes collectivization possible if people wanted to do it. Again I’m not fussed if collectivization doesn’t happen.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 10, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
It sounds as if we are in agreement on the issue of collectivization, and on the variety of methods that peasants can and should use against capitalists. Do you also agree (and therefore, agree with the Platformists) that these struggles can take place in a co-op form, or do you envision a need for a ‘union’ of peasants? If the latter, how would it look in organizational form, and how would it be different from a co-op, since the smallholders would still be smallholders and therefore owners of the means of production?
I agree with you that many individual workers rebel against economic rationality via long smoke breaks, masturbating in the bathrooms, surfing the internet, etc. My point is not that these ‘weapons of the weak’ are in line with the capitalist ideology of economic rationality, but that when workers engage in these individual actions they are not rebelling against the value, but against its imposition on their lives. I do see these as different things, both linked around the concept of autonomy. Briefly:
We build values and repurpose values through collective, autonomous action and struggle, not through individual action (for me, values are by definition collective: an individually held opinion is not a value - values must have collective backing and sanction). To take a long smoke break is to deny the imposition of the value at the individual level, but not to oppose the value itself.
This is because the individual who destroys a little bit of economic value by resisting the imposition of economic rationality is not acting autonomously - they are merely carving out a little bit of rebellious space. It is merely oppositional, and in no way positive.
I say it is not autonomous because the length of the smoke break has very little to do with the employee’s choice. The employee’s desires can (and should) go far beyond decisions about how many minutes are permitted per cigarette. To equate the smoking of two cigarettes instead of only one with struggles against capitalist ideology is, I think, mistaken. Your point about people who ‘actually believe in that stuff’ doing the same kind of thing supports my argument, I think: sloughing off on the job is not autonomous or collective and therefore doesn’t alter values. These values are inculcated and reinforced by the imposition of their organizational expression (workplace discipline, etc.). In turn, and here we get to that poorly phrased comment of mine that started this discussion, it is the managers who discipline the workers in this manner, and therefore are the primary tool of capitalism in reproducing the value of economic rationality in workers.
Wildcat strikes, on the other hand, are an excellent example of collective and autonomous struggles against economic rationality, which do indeed reshape values. Through collective action, and the history that is created in such action, workers gain confidence and experience in making their desires reality, and autonomy is built for both individuals and collectives (potentially).
No war but class war,
Ericco
Comment by Ericco Hedake — July 11, 2007 @ 9:15 am
You’re probably already aware of it, but my namesake (you read italian, look at my name and figure it out if it’s not already clear) had a very useful exchange with Makhno back in the late twenties about the Platform.
Errico was already an old man at this point, under house arrest and surveillance, and without access to much in the press or in way of personal correspondence. The exchange took place over a couple of years.
His main complaint about the platform were the insistence on the notion of collective responsibility and ideological unity (the points I raised earlier), which he saw as unintentionally but necessarily authoritarian.
You can find these reprinted in Malatesta, Errico. 1995. The anarchist revolution. Polemical articles 1924-1931. Vernon Richards, ed. London: Freedom Press Part V. I can type out a few relevant sections if you can’t get access.
Comment by Ericco Hedake — July 11, 2007 @ 9:18 am
Ciao Ericco,
Thanks for those. Can you do me a favor and just tell me how many pieces there are in that exchange? Two letters to Makhno, an article on collective responsibility, and one letter from Makhno are online. Is there more in the debate than that? If so, I’ll have to get that book.
FW Todd from PDX told me that Rocker wrote a criticism of the platform in German, I don’t think it’s been translated. He should get an IAS grant and translate it for the rest of us!
un abraccio,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 11, 2007 @ 9:49 am
3 pieces only - Errico’s original assessment of the Platform, Nestor’s kind and forceful reply, and Errico’s belated continuation.
Everything Rocker ever said is worth reading and meditating on. Have you read his Nationalism and Culture? Mindblowing. We definitely should convince FW Todd to apply for an IAS translation grant. My German is nonexistent at this point (though I can struggle, painfully, through very short passages), and I’d jump at the chance to read a good translation. (But I’m surprised it’s in German and not Yiddish!)
Comment by Ericco Hedake — July 11, 2007 @ 10:07 am
hey there,
No I haven’t read that. FW Jack’s been slowly reading that for like a year or so I think. I’ve read his anarchosyndicalism, which I think is excellent, but that’s it. Maybe at GA we can put Todd in a headlock until he agrees to do the translation, IAS or no.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 11, 2007 @ 10:10 am
Malatesta’s writing–and life– remains interesting to me (though I take issue with some of his actions) for his refusal to compromise with the more hard-line communists and union organizers. The massive labor unions in CA for instance hardly seem progressive or revolutionary; personally, I believe that most unionists (especially of the “petit-bourgeois” sort–teachers, cops, nurses, state employees) present nearly as much an obstacle to authentic progressive politics as do businessmen and management trash. Nonetheless the right sort of Deed could conceivably do more than 1000s of striking schoolmarms or nurseys (or PC marxist-academics for that matter). Malatesta, like Bakunin, wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty: even Ed Abbey realized that.
Comment by Perezoso — July 11, 2007 @ 12:02 pm
i looked for Rocker’s stuff and talked to the FAU about it. No go. It is lost somewhere and would require some deep research probably in europe. Check out Luigi Fabbri (organizational dualist) reply to the platform. He was supportive, but took issue with some elements. I have more thoughts, but its too hot to be on the computer more
Comment by todd — July 11, 2007 @ 9:13 pm
All the more reason for you to get a grant to find and translate it…!
*
More platform related stuff to read later:
Supplement to the Organizational Platform, by Makhno and co
http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/supporg.htm
The Problem of Organization and the Notion of Synthesis from just before the Platform, by the same folk
http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/proborg.htm
Fabbri’s responses to the platform
http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/fabbri.htm
Reply To The Platform by “Several Russian Anarchists”
http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/volrep.htm
Response to that reply
http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/confus.htm
Maria Isidine on the platform
http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/isidine.htm
Arshinov’s reply to Isidine
http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/elements_arshinov.htm
Arshinov’s reply to Malatesta
http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/oldnew.htm
Berneri on the platform
http://www.nestormakhno.info/spanish/berneri.htm
http://www.nestormakhno.info/spanish/berneri_gutierrez.htm
Maximoff
http://www.akpress.org/2003/items/constructiveanarchism
Comment by Nate — July 11, 2007 @ 11:36 pm
Gah. Wish I’d seen this before, would saved me some link copying:
http://www.nefac.net/node/544
Comment by Nate — July 11, 2007 @ 11:38 pm
Re trades and syndicalism - I’ll think you’ll find that many in the pre-WWI IWW distinguished their industrial unionism from much of European syndicalism, precisely because some (many?) versions of the latter organised along trade rather than industrial lines …
Comment by Steve — July 13, 2007 @ 7:22 am
Makhno was obviously no do-gooder pacifist like most contemporary granola-chewers: indeed he may have been more sinister than some naive anarchists realize–regardless his struggles seem to embody the absurdity of being caught between a rightist colonial power and the communust state (he apparently fought against the Whites, kulaks AND the bolsheviks, and other factions as well–). Makhno’s biography could have been written by Kafka, maybe directed by Bunuel.
Comment by Perezoso — July 16, 2007 @ 12:12 pm
Ah man, donde estan Nestor?
The Peoples of W.I.T.H. are proud to present
“The Nestor Mahkno Story”
………….
with Nate starring as Mr. Mahkno
NO? Es poseeblay.
Comment by Perezoso — July 20, 2007 @ 1:28 pm