Wellington Anarchist Bookfair 2014: I spoke on How Anarchists Build Counter-power

Reflections on Sydney's first-ever Anarchist Bookfair

Submitted by Jay on Wed, 23/04/2014 - 6:22pm

This article was originally written for Anarcho-Syndicalist Review. By Jay Kerr & Sid Parissi.
A collective of anarchists organised a significant political event in March 2014 in Sydney, Australia. Although initiated by the Jura Collective that operates a long running bookshop, events and organising centre, it quickly grew into an autonomous collective of various groups and individuals. Previous bookfairs had been held in Melbourne, a city some 900km to the south, but none had been held elsewhere in the country. This article is an account of the preparation for the event by Jay, one of the organising collective and impressions of the day by Sid, a member of the Jura Collective.

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The Making of an Anarchist Bookfair
In the Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin discussed the notion that everything we enjoy in the present is because of the combined efforts of people in the past and people in the present; these words ring true in organising the first Sydney Anarchist Bookfair.
Over six months of preparation boiled down to a one day event that took place in March this year at Addison Road Community Centre, building on the work of anarchists around the world who have been organising anarchist bookfairs for decades and the encompassing the efforts of a dynamic anarchist movement in Sydney.
From the early days in London some thirty years ago, when the first Anarchist Bookfair was launched, the idea has spread across the globe. It was with that in mind that a few members of Jura Books got to thinking that Sydney, being the largest city in Australia, really should have its own.
A call out was made to anarchists across the city and before too long a collective was formed comprising of members from Jura and the Black Rose Social Centre in Newtown as well as independent, non-aligned anarchists. True to Australia’s composition as a ‘nation of immigrants’, several of the collective members were migrant workers from Europe; anarchists passing through or long term residents, working collectively alongside Australian born anarchists in establishing the parameters of this new addition to the tapestry of global anarchist bookfairs.
From the first collective meeting important decisions were made on the structure of the group, the desired limits in the size of the collective, and the inclusion of other groups. The collective aimed at being a nucleus, making consensus-based decisions with input and support from the wider anarchist community. Practicalities of the event were debated and discussed ranging from who should be invited to hold a stall or give a talk; should the collective define themes for the Bookfair talks or invite topic suggestions from potential speakers; should there be childcare and how should it be run, where is the best space to hold such an event? Some tough choices had to be made.
Acknowledging the past work of comrades around the globe, emails were sent to London and Dublin for their advice. A range of suggestions were given, practical advice that stood us in good stead, indicating the importance of setting deadlines, defining the parameters and highlighting some issues that have arisen for them over the years. Who knew that the decline in fist fights at the London Bookfair over the years corresponds directly with the decline of alcohol sales?
Organising an event of this size and trying to satisfy all requests and desires of anarchists and activists in the movement is a tough job. Stress hit hard at times and in the collective tensions became frayed, while at other times consensus decision making itself was put to the test as divisions on what and, more importantly, who the Bookfair should include brought differences over anarchist politics to the fore. Where no consensus was viable the default fell to the negative with no action taken, a situation that can (and did) hit proactive organising hard and raises issues for organising on a wider scale.
But, in general, the experience of organising the Sydney Anarchist Bookfair was positive as cool heads tended to prevail. Sydney’s anarchist community rallied to support the event with positive suggestions and contributions, promoting far and wide, from emails and online posts to flyering and poster distribution across the city; a vital part of the success of any event, especially an anarchist bookfair.
Our combined efforts were duly rewarded when between 500 and 700 people turned out to Addison Road Community Centre, browsing the stalls inside Gumbramorra Hall, and attending talks and discussions in the Latin American hut next door or over at Speakers Corner on the lawn. Anarchist Bookfairs promote anarchist ideas through attraction, offering a relaxed, non-partisan atmosphere for people to engage with others in discussing new ideas. The success of the Sydney Anarchist Bookfair, a collective effort built on the work of people from around the world, on the work of years past, offers hope for the future. Anarchist Bookfairs are worth spreading.
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Impressions of the day.
Anarchists take over a former military base! Well, not quite but we did manage to fill out a large and smaller hall and a large grassed area of a former military base that had been handed over for community use. The place is now a busy community-use area and the site of a weekly market and two reuse/recycle outfits in addition to many of its other functions. Think of a mini Christiania, but not squatted. We had a great start to the day with an ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ that was given by Aboriginal Elder Ray Jackson.
Wow, what a day! Everyone smiling, talking, laughing, discussing.... 30 different stalls in the big hall, anarchist, Wobbly, union, and the largest number from community groups who each paid $50 for a table – and everyone I talked to thought it was well worth it, in fact, excited about the opportunity. It was an opportunity to spread knowledge about their group, network with other groups and generally have an anti-authoritarian festival. So, Jura ran a number of tables, including ones for PM Press and AK Press, and general anarchist books. In addition, other stalls were organised by Black Rose, Melbourne anarchists, Wobblies from Sydney and Melbourne, anti-nuclear, vegan, leftist T-shirts for sale... and many more.
Besides the stalls there was vegan food and drink, and free apples and water available from the information centre, music from individual troubadours and also from the anarchist Riff Raff Marching Band, physical stuff like yoga and women’s self defence, a join-in singing group, an open ‘DIY’ area and a ‘tune-up-your-bike’ space. One of the organisers sorted out the child care, with a certified child care worker on site – They were dressed as pirates! Then there were the discussion meetings on a variety of topics. These included: Oppression of Australia’s Indigenous People, a discussion on a university strike, on Bakunin’s 200th Birthday, the Spanish Revolution, two on feminist and anarcha-feminist topics, environmental issues, and one by Michael Schmidt on ‘Global Fire: The lmpact of Revolutionary Anarchism’.
It was great to see such a variety of people attending, from babies to an anarchist elder Jack Granchoff in his ‘80s. Most were younger, in their 20’s and 30’s, with, at a guess, a good gender balance, and perhaps even more women than men. The young children running around having fun and the range of participants demonstrated that, in many ways, this was an evolving, maturing and culturally-richer anarchist and near-anarchist milieu than in the past. From a book-sales point of view, it was really encouraging to get so many books, pamphlets and other material out to people who don’t often get to the shop. So, yes, it was a bookfair, but it was much more than just that.
This writer didn’t get to the after party, but those who went said it was a blast. And everyone’s keen to build on this year’s strengths and lessons learned, and have another next year.

Politični seminar: Anarhizem in proti-moč

16 May 2014

Sreda, 21. maj 2014, ob 17h

Filozofska fakulteta UL, predavalnica R1B (Rimska)

Predavanje Michaela Schmidta o pomenu anarhizma nekoč in danes
Vprašanje, kako anarhisti gradijo kritično maso, ki je potrebna, da padajo hierarhične buržoazne vlade, bo v središču predavanja južnoafriškega raziskovalca Michaela Schmidta. Na podlagi zgodovinskih primerov horizontalne delavske moči, ki je ljudem omogočila samoupravne sisteme v Španiji, Ukrajini in na Kitajskem, se bomo spraševali o tem, kakšen pomen je imel anarhizem nekoč, na kakšne načine je bil del množičnega delavskega gibanja, in kaj iz svojega nabora idej, strategij in taktik lahko ponudi ljudem, ki s(m)o danes vpleteni v progresivna družbena gibanja, da bi zgradili alternative onkraj parlamentarne demokracije in kapitalizma.

Michael Schmidt deluje znotraj Inštituta za anarhistično teorijo in zgodovino iz Brazilije, sicer pa je dolgoletni raziskovalni novinar v Južni Afriki ter aktivist v različnih anarhističnih in delavskih gibanjih. Skupaj z Lucienom van der Waltom je objavil razvpito knjigo Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, ki na novo preizprašuje temeljne ideje in politike anarhizma. Lani je pri založbi AK Press izšla njegova najnovejša knjiga Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism, v kateri popisuje zgodovino in pomen anarhizma v množičnih družbenih gibanjih od njegovega rojstva v delavskem gibanju 19. stoletja do proti-kapitalističnih uporov v kontekstu sedanje krize.
Politični seminar, v soorganizaciji Študentskega društva Iskra in Anarhistične pobude Ljubljana, bo potekal v angleškem jeziku.

Več o predavatelju in njegovih delih:

• Pogovor z avtorjem ob izidu njegove zadnje knjige Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism
• Blog o knjigi Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism

Lost Conversations: Questioning the legacy of anarchosyndicalism

By Scott Nappalos

There is more interest than ever in anarchosyndicalist unions, their history, and lessons for doing organizing in today’s context. During its peak, anarchosyndicalism engaged millions of workers on every continent except Antarctica. Though the Spanish experience through the CNT and 1936 revolution stands out, anarchosyndicalism was perhaps stronger in Latin America and Asia than in Europe. Despite the depth of those experiments and today’s interests, our knowledge of anarchosyndicalism is still poor.

Anarchosyndicalism is usually characterized by about being about principles and form of the anarchosyndicalist union. Emphasis is frequently placed on democracy, solidarity, and other values. Formal aspects of the union like direct democracy, autonomous locals, federations, the use of direct action, etc., are seen to carry inherent power to guarantee the desired future society. The problem partially lies with the anarchosyndicalists we find readily available in English. For instance Rudolph Rocker, the German anarchosyndicalist who in many way popularized the term, writes:
“For the Anarcho-Syndicalists the labour syndicates are the most fruitful germs of a future society, the elementary school of Socialism in general. Every new social structure creates organs for itself in the body of the old organism; without this prerequisite every social evolution is unthinkable. To them Socialist education does not mean participation in the power policy of the national state, but the effort to make clear to the workers the intrinsic connections among social problems by technical instruction and the development of their administrative capacities, to prepare them for their role of re-shapers of economic life and give them the moral assurance required for the performance of their task. No social body is better fitted for this purpose than the economic fighting organisation of the workers; it gives a definite direction to their social activities and toughens their resistance in the immediate struggle for the necessities of life and the defense of their human rights.”¹

If you read Rudolph Rocker’s classic text on the issue Anarcho-syndicalism, he largely focuses on those issues and encourages thinking about it that way.² Anarcho-syndicalism’s friendly opponents likewise frame the debate around that conception, for example: Malatesta’s critique of syndicalism³ and with him anarchist’s right wing who propose to only work within the largest established institutions, and the anti-union sections of the Marxist ultraleft. Is ideology relevant or not? Is only focusing on form enough? How much form makes it syndicalist or not? Today’s anarchosyndicalists often encourage this reading. Many anarchosyndicalist publications frequently put their agitation in terms of setting up certain structures or promoting libertarian ideas.
One of the main problems in evaluating this is that the history of anarchosyndicalism is nearly lost. With the experiences of the CNT in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 being for most purposes the height of anarchism, still very little has been translated or even studied.⁴ Even just looking at Spain, key texts from the Spanish experience have never made it into English. Consider that we have none of the works of the Libertarian Youth Federation (FIJL), who took similar positions to the Friends of Durruti, none of the original texts of the Mujeres Libres, none of the publications or discussions of the Friends of Durruti, or even the largest and best histories of the revolt. Worse still are other experiences. In South America anarchism was dominant in the labor movement for key periods, yet we have essentially none of the original texts or even histories translated. Taking the Argentinian FORA, even in Spanish most of the texts are out of print with few studies in the original language. The texts of Lopez Arango, Santillan, Gilimon, and other key theorists of the FORA are not in present print in Spanish and to our knowledge were never translated despite having been at the center of one of the largest and most significant anarchist milieus in the world. In many cases, even in Spanish original texts are out of print, and there is no online archive comparable to what is available in English through resources like libcom.org. Still less is known of or translated of other historically important anarchosyndicalist movements such as the Italian USI during the Red Years, the Korean and Japanese anarcho-syndicalists, the South African syndicalists, or even within the United States the foreign language sections of the IWW (of which many were ideologically anarchist).
Beyond the issues of language who the anarchosyndicalists were created problems for passing on their history. Most anarchosyndicalists where not wealthy or formally educated, coming from the global proletariat to a degree dissimilar to many other movements of their era. Like other parts of the broader ultraleft, anarchosyndicalist movements lacked institutional support (either by Moscow or academia) to reproduce their works, relying instead on the donations and voluntary labor of anarchist workers. It’s treasures often lie still hidden in part by the proletarian nature of the movement, lack of professional theorists to catalogue and popularize its perspectives, and a dearth of resources to publish and distribute their works. With these factors in mind, when we take a textual and historical approach to anarchosyndicalism it is often based on fragments, semi-random pieces that have made it into English, and more frequently the biases of hostile commentators from the official left who were in opposition to the syndicalist currents.
Taking a few small cases, it will become clear how this is a limited perspective. Consider that anarchosyndicalism is typically charged with having been only focused on the workplace and on men. This is largely true in that there were clear issues in the movement of unquestioned patriarchy failing to build a powerful movement of women’s workers, and a core focus on workplace struggles. Even a brief look at the history complicates the picture though. Mujeres Libres, an organization of women members of the CNT aimed at addressing patriarchy and developing its own militants, stands out as one of the most advanced feminist movements in the history of the left as a whole, and one that emerged within anarchosyndicalism as an attempt to expand upon its practices.⁵ Despite the interest in popular education, how little has been done to look at the practices of capacitation raised by the Mujeres Libres? Their concept of capacitation was that of increasing the abilities of women militants to intervene within struggles rather than as instruction or simply changing formal aspects of anarchosyndicalist organizations to address patriarchy. Capacitation offers an alternative view of education taken away from its elitist and intellectualist practices, and one based off key moments in struggle.
Capacitation was also raised in the writings of the FORA and debates within the Argentinian anarchist movement of the early 20^th century, though I have been unable to find any in-depth discussion of it. Likewise in Argentina and Chile, a significant women’s movement emerged that produced it’s own interventions such as anarchist communist women’s publications, Resistance Societies specifically for women and women’s struggles, and fights led by women. Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil all had experiences with attempts to grapple with patriarchy and build movements both within the workplace and community led by anarchosyndicalist women.⁶ In Germany, the FAU-D attempted to construct women’s leagues for self-education.⁷ There is next to nothing in English on these struggles and the material is difficult to find in Spanish, let alone Portuguese or German. Anarchosyndicalists were grappling with the dominant patriarchy of their time, and in key instances were creative in trying to address it and build proletarian women’s organization. Little of this history is acknowledged, known even within the anarchist movement, or studied.
The same is true of struggles outside the workplace organized by anarchosyndicalist unions. The Buenos Aires Tenant’s Strike of 1907 was led by some of the women’s Resistance Societies and women leadership within the FORA. Involving perhaps tens of thousands or so tenants, it was led primarily by the FORA and represented the intervention of the organization into social life beyond the factory walls as rents were climbing excessively in Buenos Aires.⁸ In 1931, the CNT pushed a similar mass rent strike against unsafe and increasingly expensive housing in Barcelona.⁹ Today’s anarchosyndicalist organizations participate in struggles inside and outside the workplace from housing struggles to transportation and struggles around social benefits. Groups like Seattle Solidarity and the UK’s Solidarity Federation take inspiration from anarchosyndicalism in doing organizing within a broader sphere of working class life, not limited to the walls of the shop floor. Far from an aberration, the anarchosyndicalist movement did not have a position on the centrality of the workplace as cleanly as some would place on it.
Anarchosyndicalism is often charged with overemphasizing unions and inheriting defects that all unions allegedly have. The history is a bit fuzzy here as some of the groups that are called anarchosyndicalist were equivocal or even rejected the label of union. Some writers and speakers of the FORA critiqued the title anarchosyndicalism preferring to call it an anarchist communist workers organization, if a union at all.¹⁰ In Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina the anarchist workers organization were built out of Resistance Societies or locality based organization of workers.¹¹ There were distinct organizations of trades apart from the mixed Resistance Societies. Even the French CGT arose first out of a federation of the bourses du Travail, local workers societies that combined culture, education, and mutual aid. The FORA itself went so far as to reject the industrial divisions of capitalist society altogether, and indeed ANY role for unions after the revolution.¹² The clean picture of unionist workers trying to build the future cells of society becomes problematized when one goes beneath the surface.
If we think about it, it is logical. Any movement that encompasses millions will have within it a wealth of experiences and conflicting perspectives that make pinning narrow frameworks on it difficult. This history and debate within the anarchosyndicalist movement has largely been lost and ignored, reducing its breadth to caricature and a naïve workerist economism by its enemies. Though these examples themselves are limited, they offer a chance to rethink what we believe about anarchosyndicalism, these movements, and our own practices in social movements, political ideology, and the path towards liberation. The real advances and lessons of anarchosyndicalism are yet to be fully tapped. Specifically very little has been done to look at the contribution anarchosyndicalists made to understanding how workers become radicalized, the relationship between ideas and activity, and struggling against the totality of working class life. We would be better served by viewing anarchosyndicalism as a global experience without trying to reduce it to narrow formulas, structures, or merely specific moments. Our own challenge today is to find our way through the maze of a changing world. Within these struggles there continues to be echoes of the experiences of the anarchosyndicalists.

1. Rocker, R. Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism. http://libcom.org/library/anarchism-and-anarcho-syndicalism-rudolf-rocker [↩]
2. Rocker, R. Anarcho-syndicalism. http://libcom.org/library/anarcho-syndicalism-rudolf-rocker [↩]
3. Malatesta, E. (1925). Syndicalism and Anarchism. http://www.marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1925/04/syndic1.htm [↩]
4. The work of Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt in Black Flame and Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism both available from AK Press shed some much needed light on challenging a Spain and euro-centric view of anarchism. [↩]
5. Acklesburg, M. (2004). Free Women of Spain. AK Press. [↩]
6. Maxine Molyneux’s 1997 Ni Dios, Ni Patrón, Ni Maridos: Feminismo anarquista en la Argentina del Siglo XIX. http://www.cnm.gov.ar/generarigualdad/attachments/article/199/Ni_Dios_ni_patron_ni_marido.pdf; Bellucci, Mabel. (1989). Anarquismo y Feminismo. El Movimiento de Mujeres Anarquistas con sus logros y desafíos hacia principios de siglo. Buenos Aires.; Valle Ferrer, Norma. (2004). Anarquismo y feminismo. La ideología de cuatro mujeres latinoamericanas de principios del siglo XX. Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, Nº 9, junio. San Juan. [↩]
7. Solidarity Federation. (2012). Fighting for Ourselves: Anarchosyndicalism and class struggle.Black Cat Press. [↩]
8. On the Tenant’s Strike in Buenos Aires see Juan Suriano’s 1983 La huelga de inquilinos de 1907. CEAL. [↩]
9. Worker’s Solidarity Alliance. The Barcelona Mass Rent Strike of 1931.http://workersolidarity.org/archive/rentstrike1931.htm [↩]
10. Lopez Arango, E. (1925). Syndicalism and Anarchism. http://libcom.org/library/syndicalism-anarchism [↩]
11. De Laforcade, Geoffroy. (2011). Federative Future: Resistance Societies, and the Subversion of Nationalism in the Early 20^th-Century Anarchism of the Río de la Plata Region. E.I.A.L Vol. 22 (2).http://www1.tau.ac.il/eial/images/vn22n2/laforcade-v22n2.pdf [↩]
12. Federación Obrera Regional Argentina. (1923). Memoria presentada por la F.O.R.A al Congreso de Berlin de la Asociación Internacional del Trabajadores A.I.T. http://fora-ait.com.ar/ait/index.php?text=presentacionFORA1923; Damier, Vadim. (2011). Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20^th Century. Chapter 8.http://libcom.org/library/chapter-8-ideological-theoretical-discussions-anarcho-syndicalism-1920’s-1930’s [↩]

 

 

Cartographie de l’anarchisme révolutionnaire

«L’histoire n’est pas neutre. À l’école, on nous fait croire que nous avons besoin de patrons et de gouvernements. On nous raconte que l’histoire est le récit de luttes entre gouvernements, entre armées, entres élites. On nous dit que ce ne sont que les riches et les puissantes qui font l’histoire, mais ce qu’on ne nous dit pas, c’est qu’il y a toujours eu des gens ordinaires pour lutter contre les patrons et les dirigeants, et que cette lutte des classes est le véritable moteur de la civilisation et du progrès.»
- Michael Schmidt
Avec Cartographie de l’anarchisme révolutionnaire, publié chez LUX en mai dernier, Michael Schmidt participe à réhabiliter l’impact historique des mouvements anarchistes. L’intérêt de cette précieuse - et trop courte - publication est triple.
Des mouvements de masse au niveau international
Elle sort tout d’abord l’histoire anarchiste des ornières dans lesquelles plusieurs - dont quelques anarchistes! - l’enfoncent : celles d’un mouvement surtout européen qui aurait eu pour principal déploiement l’épisode espagnol de 1936-1939. Michael Schmidt déconstruit avec brio ce mythe commode en survolant en cinq vagues (voir plus bas) la riche histoire des mouvements anarchistes à l’échelle internationale.
Des syndicats anarchistes rassemblant des dizaines - parfois des centaines - de milliers de personnes ont ainsi été les principaux moteurs de changement social dans plusieurs régions du monde : en Argentine, en Uruguay, à Cuba, en Afrique du Sud et aux Philippines. Leur présence s’est également fait sentir au Maghreb, en Afrique du Sud et en Asie du Sud-Est. De 1868 à 2012, Schmidt fait la récension non exhaustive - disponible en glossaire - de près de 200 organisations anarchistes révolutionnaires dans une centaine de pays et de régions. L’âge d’or de l’anarchisme est située entre les années 1880 et 1920, bien que certaines régions - notamment l’Asie - aient connu leur plus importante activité dans les années 1920 et 1930.
L’anarchisme était ainsi bien davantage qu’une affaire de barbus révolutionnaires européens, mais un ensemble d’outils et de pratiques vivantes mises de l’avant par des gens «ordinaires». Et ces personnes, lorsque confrontées aux répressions et défis de leur époque, ont offert des réponses variées et contextualisées que Schmidt prend le temps d’examiner. Chaque fin de chapitre se conclue ainsi par des réponses s’articulant grosso modo autour de la même «question complexe qui gît au coeur de toute révolution sociale et qui a donné tant de fil à retordre à tous les révolutionnaires de gauche : celle de la relation entre une organisation révolutionnaire et l’ensemble des exploité-e-s et des opprimé-e-s».
Des principes : une définition limpide et cohérente de l’anarchisme
Un second intérêt de l’ouvrage est qu’il offre une définition plus exigeante - et selon moi plus cohérente - de l’anarchisme. Dans les premières pages de son ouvrage, Schmidt dégage ce qu’il nomme la «grande tradition anarchiste» à travers de grands principes. Il écarte à cette étape quelques penseurs qui ont eu une influence sur les mouvements anarchistes, mais dont certaines dimensions de la pensée les excluent de la famille anarchiste. Pour différents motifs, Proudhon, Marx, Stirner et Tolstoi font ainsi partie du lot!
Des stratégies : le syndicalisme comme moyen privilégié des anarchistes
Au sein de cette famille anarchiste qu’il a balisée, Schmidt distingue deux approches stratégiques : l’anarchisme insurrectionnel et l’anarchisme de masse. Si le premier postule que les réformes sont illusoires et met l’emphase sur les actions armées, le second considère que les mouvements sociaux et syndicaux peuvent créer un changement révolutionnaire, et met l’emphase sur des gains au quotidien. Chacune des approches stratégiques a ses forces et ses limites, mais Schmidt privilégie de couvrir la seconde. Il souligne alors que le syndicalisme révolutionnaire - non pas celui des grandes centrales complaisantes du Québec - a constituté le principal moteur de l’anarchisme.
Il aurait été bien sûr intéressant d’avoir une histoire de l’anarchisme un peu plus généreuse. Cartographie de l’anarchisme révolutionnaire est d’ailleurs, à bien des égards, un succédané de Black Flame : The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, un ouvrage plus complet paru en 2009. Mais en attendant d’avoir une traduction complète de cet ouvrage, il faut saluer cette parution en français!

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LES CINQ VAGUES DE L’ANARCHISME
Ensemble de repères historiques indiquant les hauts et les bas du mouvement anarchiste.
1ère vague (1868-1894) : L’essor du grand mouvement anarchiste à l’ère de l’expansion étatique capitaliste.
2e vague (1895-1923) : Consolidation du syndicalisme anarchiste et révolutionnaire et des organisations spécifiques anarchistes en temps de guerre et d’assauts de la réaction.
3e vague (1923-1949) : Les révolutions anarchistes contre l’impérialisme, le fascisme et le bolchévisme.
4e vague (1950-1989) : Actions d’arrière-garde sur fond de guerre froide et de décolonisation des continents africain et asiatique.
5e vague (1990 à nos jours) : Résurgence du mouvement anarchiste à l’ère de l’effondrement du bloc soviétique et de l’hégémonie néolibérale.

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SYNDICALISME
«Par syndicalisme, nous entendons une stratégie syndicaliste anarchiste révolutionnaire dans laquelle les syndicats - qui appliquent la démocratie participative et ont une vision révolutionnaire du communisme libertaire - sont considérés comme étant le moyen principal et immédiat de résistance aux classes dirigeantes et comme le noyau d’un nouvel ordre social basé sur l’autogestion, la planification économique démocratique et l’universalité de la communauté humaine.»
- Michael Schmidt

Michael Schmidt, Cartographie de l'anarchisme révolutionnaire, Lux, coll. « Instinct de liberté », 2012, 196 p., ISBN : 978-2-89596-136-9.

 

 

Michael Schmidt, journaliste sud-africain et militant anarchiste, remet en cause l’historiographie traditionnelle anarchiste. Trop souvent, à son goût, les anarchistes se contentent de faire référence à cinq moments forts de la mémoire collective anarchiste : les martyrs anarchistes de Haymarket exécutés en 1887 aux États-Unis, la Charte d’Amiens de la CGT en 1906, texte fondateur du syndicalisme révolutionnaire, la révolte des marins de Cronstadt en 1921 contre la dictature des bolcheviks, la révolution espagnole de 1936-1939 et enfin mai 68 en France. L’auteur critique cette martyrologie du mouvement anarchiste qui laisse de côté certaines participations beaucoup plus actives des anarchistes : à la révolution mexicaine de Basse-Californie en 1910-1920, à la révolution de Mandchourie en 1929-1931, à l’implantation des syndicats clandestins à Cuba entre 1952 et 1959… Il critique cet ethnocentrisme fixé sur l’Atlantique Nord, qui oublie les mouvements d’Europe de l’Est, d’Amérique du Sud, du Japon, de la Chine, de la Corée ou encore du Vietnam. Michael Schmidt propose un récit plus large de l’histoire du mouvement anarchiste.

• 1 Irène Pereira, L'anarchisme dans les textes. Anthologie libertaire, Textuel, coll. « Petite encycl (...)
• 2 AK Press, Oakland, 2009.
• 3 « L’anarchisme classiste, parfois appelé révolutionnaire ou anarchisme communiste, n’est pas un si (...)

2Le livre de l’auteur se réfère à la « grammaire communiste libertaire »1, à l’anarchisme classiste, celui qui fait de la reconnaissance de la lutte des classes et de l’existence des classes sociales, et non de l’humanité ou des individus, la base de l’action anarchiste. Dans leur livre, « Black Flame : The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism (Counter-Power vol. 1) »2, Lucien van der Walt et Michael Schmidt affirment d’ailleurs que : « the class struggle anarchism, sometimes called revolutionary or communist anarchism, is not a type of anarchism… it is the only anarchism ».3On comprend dès lors, pourquoi l’auteur fait démarrer l’origine de l’anarchisme à la Première Internationale en 1864, et plus particulièrement à la scission de 1868 entre la majorité anarchiste et la minorité marxiste.

3Michael Schmidt distingue cinq vagues de militantisme anarchiste ‑ distinction qui s’apparente plus à des repères historiques qu’à une véritable loi immuable historique. Il différencie par ailleurs deux approches de la stratégie de la grande tradition anarchiste : l’anarchisme de masse d’une part, qui considère que seuls les mouvements de masse peuvent provoquer des changements révolutionnaires dans la société et qui donne un rôle prépondérant aux organisations comme les syndicats révolutionnaires ; l’anarchisme insurrectionnel d’autre part, qui s’appuie sur la lutte armée, voire le terrorisme.

4La première vague, relevée par l’auteur, débute en 1868 avec la Fraternité internationale, créée par Mikhaïl Bakounine, à la suite de la publication de son Programme (abolition de l’État-Nation, des forces armées, des tribunaux, du clergé et de la propriété privée). L’anarchisme de masse se constitue notamment au sein de fédérations en Espagne, au Mexique, en Uruguay, à Cuba et aux États-Unis, puis plus tardivement en Allemagne. Cette première vague est une réponse aux insuffisances du marxisme et aux dangers du terrorisme populiste des narodnik. Cette vague se termine en 1894, suite à la dissolution de l’Internationale noire en 1893, et au développement de l’anarchisme insurrectionnel.

5La deuxième vague, 1895-1923, est une période durant laquelle, selon M. Schmidt, il y a une consolidation du syndicalisme anarchiste et révolutionnaire. Deux événements participent à cette expansion au début du XX^e siècle : d’une part les guérillas anarchistes et la constitution de communes en Macédoine en 1903 et d’autre part l’apparition des premiers soviets, d’inspiration anarchiste, à Moscou et à Saint-Pétersbourg en 1905-1907. On peut aussi signaler la création de la Croix noire anarchiste au cours de cette période. Dans le prolongement de ces événements, des syndicats révolutionnaires sont créés aux États-Unis (IWW) puis en Australie, au Canada, en Grande-Bretagne, en Afrique du Sud… Par ailleurs, à l’issue de la révolte russe, de nombreux anarchistes (comme Pierre Kropotkine) vont s’exiler à Londres et diffuser la nécessité d’une action collective, par opposition aux anarchistes individualistes. De fait, les fédérations anarchistes vont travailler de concert avec les syndicats anarchistes révolutionnaires dans de nombreux pays d’Amérique latine, en Espagne, au Portugal… Et en 1922, une nouvelle Internationale des travailleurs est créée à Berlin. Pendant cette vague, on assiste également à l’éclosion de différents mouvements révolutionnaires : de 1910 à 1920, il y a une révolution d’influence anarchiste au Mexique, qui s’éteindra en raison de la fragmentation des groupes révolutionnaires ; en 1919, l’Armée insurrectionnelle révolutionnaire d’Ukraine, liée aux groupes anarcho-communistes, libère un territoire de 7 millions d’habitants. En Russie également des mouvements anarchistes se développent (en Sibérie, à Cronstadt…). Mais dans les deux cas, ces mouvements seront étouffés par les bolcheviks. Si on ajoute l’échec de la révolution de 1918-1923 en Allemagne, se termine une période qui verra monter les nationalismes et également le découragement de nombreux anarchistes.

6La troisième vague, 1923-1949, se fait dans un contexte de mise en place des deux totalitarismes que sont le fascisme et le bolchevisme. Durant cette période, il y a un reflux des mouvements anarchistes, expliqué notamment par la domination soviétique, mais aussi par le développement de la social-démocratie et des premiers éléments de l’État-Providence. Il y a, malgré tout, de nouveaux mouvements anarchistes avec la création en 1928 de la Fédération anarchiste orientale, regroupant le Japon, la Chine, la Corée, le Vietnam, l’Inde, et au cours de la même année de l’Association continentale américaine de travailleurs en Amérique latine. Il y a une révolution en Mandchourie entre 1929 et 1931, dans la préfecture de Shinmin, qui créée une structure administrative régionale socialiste libertaire. Cette révolution mandchoue sera écrasée par l’invasion japonaise de 1931. En Europe, c’est en Espagne que naît et se développe une révolution, à la suite du putsch de l’armée coloniale, entre 1936 et 1939. Des communes libres apparaîtront en Catalogne, Aragon, à Valence. Les différentes fédérations anarchistes et la Confédération nationale du travail vont s’allier, sans toutefois permettre une cohésion efficace. À la suite des différents échecs révolutionnaires, le mouvement anarchiste va perdurer au sein de la résistance aux totalitarismes. Par ailleurs des fédérations vont apparaître en Afrique. En 1948, des Commissions internationales anarchistes sont créées afin de faciliter les relations entre les différents mouvements dans le monde, et se réunissent conjointement en 1949 à Paris.

7La quatrième vague, 1950-1989, se caractérise par l’affaiblissement du mouvement anarchiste. Ce déclin temporaire se fait dans un contexte de guerre froide, d’apparition de dictatures en Amérique latine, du bolchevisme en Extrême-Orient, du totalitarisme en Chine, en Corée. Toutefois, l’anarchisme reste présent dans le syndicalisme, notamment lors des grèves de 1956 au Chili et en Argentine, dans la création de nouvelles fédérations comme en Uruguay ou bien dans des mouvements de guérilla en Chine et en Espagne. C’est surtout à partir de 1968 que l’anarchisme va connaître un renouveau avec les mouvements sociaux qui secouent de nombreux pays : France, États-Unis, Sénégal, Allemagne, Japon, Mexique… En Amérique latine, les anarchistes s’opposent aux dictatures, au Chili, puis en Argentine, mais sont écrasés par la répression. Au Moyen-Orient de nouveaux mouvements apparaissent, en Irak, en Iran. Certains mouvements dans l’hémisphère nord s’orientent vers une lutte plus violente : sabotages en Grande-Bretagne, premiers membres d’Action directe en France, mouvement du 2 juin en Allemagne, groupes révolutionnaires au Pays Basque… mais qui, pour la plupart, se perdront dans un terrorisme déconnecté des thèses anarchistes. Par ailleurs, on assiste à une prolifération d’organisations anarchistes à travers le monde, notamment dans les pays de l’Est et en Russie.

8La cinquième vague commence en 1990 et se poursuit aujourd’hui. Elle est portée par l’effondrement du bloc soviétique, de la Yougoslavie. Les mouvements anarchistes souterrains peuvent donc se constituer en fédérations. La fédération la plus importante dans le monde aujourd’hui étant Action autonome qui possède des sections dans de nombreuses villes de Russie, d’Arménie, au Bélarus, en Ukraine… Des mouvements se développent à nouveau depuis les années 2000 à Cuba, en Amérique du Sud, en Afrique, aux États-Unis, au Canada. Par ailleurs, l’anarcho-syndicalisme reste présent, ainsi la CGT espagnole compte 60 000 adhérents.

9Autre intérêt du livre, Michael Schmidt met en relation chaque vague à l’évolution de la théorie et de la stratégie anarchistes. Ainsi, dans la première vague, c’est le programme de Bakounine qui domine, avec le rejet de toute solution étatiste, le rôle d’intermédiaire de l’organisation révolutionnaire anarchiste. Dans la seconde vague, les exilés russes à Paris (dont Makhno) publient La Plate-Forme, qui préconise une discipline interne stricte et une unité théorique et tactique au sein des différentes organisations anarchistes et le projet d’une société révolutionnaire fondée sur les soviets. Les anarchistes traditionnels s’opposeront à cette orientation en accusant les plate-formistes de bolcheviser l’anarchisme, et proposeront la synthèse anarchiste, avec une idéologie plus souple, d’où le nom de synthétistes. Lors de la troisième vague, en Espagne, les durrutistes publient un document stratégique prônant la création d’une junte (un soviet) révolutionnaire, et sont également accusés d’autoritarisme. Dans la plupart des pays, la plate-forme reste dominante. Lors de la quatrième vague se développe le fontenisme (de Georges Fontenis, militant français) à la suite de la publication du Manifeste du communisme libertaire. Ce manifeste s’oppose aussi bien à l’extrémisme individualiste qu’au bolchevisme, et prône la constitution d’une avant-garde implantée au sein des syndicats et autres organisations de masse. Enfin, lors de la cinquième vague, les plate-formistes s’imposent dans un mouvement anarchiste en pleine croissance, et notamment en Amérique du Sud où la Plate-Forme est connue sous le nom d’especifismo.

10Le livre de Michael Schmidt est un ouvrage militant, écrit par un militant anarchiste. La conclusion est de ce point de vue explicite et appelle à la lutte quotidienne. Il ne s’agit donc pas d’une présentation historique objective des mouvements anarchistes. Mais ce n’était pas le propos revendiqué de l’auteur. On y trouvera toutefois des informations intéressantes sur des mouvements et des organisations oubliées, ou en tout cas, trop peu étudiées par les historiens ou les anarchistes eux-mêmes.

Notes

1 Irène Pereira, L'anarchisme dans les textes. Anthologie libertaire, Textuel, coll. « Petite encyclopédie critique », 2011. http://lectures.revues.org/1314

2 AK Press, Oakland, 2009.

3 « L’anarchisme classiste, parfois appelé révolutionnaire ou anarchisme communiste, n’est pas un simple type d’anarchisme… c’est le seul anarchisme. »

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Jacques Ghiloni, « Michael Schmidt, Cartographie de l'anarchisme révolutionnaire », Lectures [En ligne], Les comptes rendus

Global Fire – South African author Michael Schmidt on the Global Impact of Revolutionary Anarchism

Posted on 17 March 2014 by Anarchist Affinity — No Comments ↓

Michael Schmidt is an investigative journalist, an anarchist theorist and a radical historian based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has been an active participant in the international anarchist milieu, including the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front. His major works include ‘Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism (2013, AK Press) and, with Lucien van der Walt, ‘Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism’ (2009, AK Press).
In your recent book, Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism (AK Press, USA, 2013), you argue that anarchists have often failed to draw insights from anarchist movements outside of Western Europe. What lessons does the global history of anarchism have to offer those engaged in struggle today?
The historical record shows that anarchism’s primary mass- organisational strategy, syndicalism, is a remarkably coherent and universalist set of theories and practices, despite the movement’s grappling with a diverse set of circumstances. From the establishment of the first non-white unions in South Africa and the first unions in China, through to the resistance to fascism in Europe and Latin America – the establishment of practical anarchist control of cities and regions, sometimes ephemeral, sometimes longer lived in countries as diverse as Macedonia (1903), Mexico (1911, 1915), Italy (1914, 1920), Portugal (1918), Brazil (1918), Argentina (1919, 1922), arguably Nicaragua (1927-1932), Ukraine (1917-1921), Manchuria (1929-1931), Paraguay (1931), and Spain (1873/4, 1909, 1917, 1932/3, and 1936-1939).
The results of the historically-revealed universalism are vitally important to any holistic understanding of anarchism/syndicalism:
Firstly, that the movement arose in the trade unions of the First International, simultaneously in Mexico, Spain, Uruguay, and Egypt from 1868-1872 (in other words, it arose internationally, on four continents, and was explicitly not the imposition of a European ideology);
Secondly, there is no such thing within the movement as “Third World,” “Global Southern” or “Non-Western” anarchism, that is in any core sense distinct from that in the “Global North”. Rather that they are all of a feather; the movement was infinitely more dominant in most of Latin America than in most of Europe. The movement today is often more similar in strength to the historical movements in Vietnam, Lebanon, India, Mozambique, Nigeria, Costa Rica, and Panama – so to look to these movements as the “centre” of the ideology produces gross distortions.
The lessons for anarchists and syndicalist from “the Rest” for “the West” can actually be summed up by saying that the movement always was and remains coherent because of its engagements with the abuse of power at all levels.
How is anarchism still relevant in the world today? What do anarchist ideas about strategy and tactics have to offer people active in social movements today?
I’d say there are several ways in which anarchism is relevant today:
1) It provides the most comprehensive intersectoral critique of not just capital and the state; but all forms of domination and exploitation relating to class, gender, race, colour, ethnicity, creed, ability, sexuality and so forth, implacably confronting grand public enemies such as war-mongering imperialism and intimate ones such as patriarchy. It is not the only ideology to do this, but is certainly the main consistently freethinking socialist approach to such matters.
2) With 15 decades of militant action behind it, it provides a toolkit of tried-and proven tactics for resistance in the direst of circumstances, and, has often risen above those circumstances to decentralise power to the people. These tactics include oppressed class self-management, direct democracy, equality, mutual aid, and a range of methods based in the conception that the means we use to resist determine the nature of our outcomes. The global anti-capitalist movement of today is heavily indebted to anarchist ethics and tactics for its internal democracy, flexibility, and its humanity.
3) Strategically, we see these tactics as rooted in direct democracy, equality, and horizontal confederalism (today called the “network of networks”), in particular in the submission of specific (self-constituted) anarchist organisations to the oversight of their communities, which then engage in collective decision-making that is consultative and responsible to those communities. It was the local District Committees, Cultural Centres, Consumer Co-operatives, Modern Schools, and Prisoner-support Groups during the Spanish Revolution that linked the great CNT union confederation and its Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) allies to the communities they worked within: the militia that fought on the frontlines against fascism, and the unions that produced all social wealth would have been rudderless and anchorless without this crucial social layer to give them grounding and direction. In order to have a social revolution of human scale, we submit our actions to the real live humans of the society that we work within: this is our vision of “socialism”.
In sum, anarchism’s “leaderless resistance” is about the ideas and practices that offer communities tools for achieving their freedom, and not about dominating that resistance. Anarchists ideally are fighting for a free world, not an anarchist world, one in which even conservatives will be freed of their statist, capitalist and social bondage to discover new ways of living in community with the rest of us.
Is it important to advance anarchism explicitly? Or is it enough to engage in social movements whose objectives we support without adopting the anarchist label?
This is primarily a tactical question, because the approaches adopted by anarchists have to be suited to the objective conditions of the oppressed classes in the area in which they are active, and the specific local cultures, histories, even prejudices of those they work alongside. The proper meaning of “anarchist” as a democratic practice – a practical, not utopian, one at that – of the oppressed classes clearly needs to be rehabilitated in Australia and New Zealand. Just as the Bulgarian syndicalists who built unions in the rural areas relied upon ancient peasant traditions of mutual aid to locate syndicalist mutual aid within an approachable framework, so you too must find a good match for anarchism within your cultures. We, for example, have relied heavily on traditional township forms of resistance to explain solidarity, mutual aid, egalitarianism, and self-management. Yet, it is also a strategic question because in my opinion, where you have the bourgeois-democratic freedoms to organise openly and without severe repression, it is important to form an explicitly anarchist organisation in order to act as:
a) a pole around which libertarian socialists, broadly speaking, can orbit and to which they can gravitate organisationally – though it is important to recognise that there can be more than one such pole; and
b) as a lodestar of clear, directly-democratic practice, offering those who seek guidance a vibrant toolkit of time-tested practices with which to defend the autonomy of the oppressed classes from those who would exploit/oppress them.
It is the question of responsibility that compels us to nail our colours to the mast. This is for three reasons:
a) firstly, because we are not terrorists or criminals and we have nothing to be ashamed about that requires hiding, even from our enemies (we should be able to openly defend our democratic credentials before mainstream politicians);
b) secondly, that by forming a formal organisation, people we interact with are made aware that none of us are loose cannons but are subject to the mandates of our organisation (with those mandates being public, fair and explicit); and
c) lastly, but most importantly, that the communities we work within, whether territorial (townships, cities, etc), or communities of interest (unions, queer rights bodies, residents’ associations etc) know that we are responsible to them, that our actions, positions and strategies are consultative, collaborative, responsive and responsible to those they may most immediately affect.
We’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of Counter Power Volume 2, Global Fire: 150 Fighting Years of Revolutionary Anarchism, is there any news on when it will be released? What ground will you be covering that people might not expect?
Global Fire is really a monstrous work: in research and writing for close to 15 years now, it’s really an international organised labour history over 150 years, tracing the organisational and ideological lineages of anarchism/syndicalism in all parts of the world. We have a lot to get right: we need to have a theory, at least, for why the French syndicalist movement turned reformist during World War I, or why the German revolutionary movement as a whole, both Marxist and anarchist, collapsed over 1919-1923, paving the way for the Nazis. These are issues of intense argument among historians, and we have to be able to back up with sound argument our stance in every case, from the well-known, like the Palmer Raids against the IWW in the USA in the wake of World War I, to the fate of syndicalism in Southern Rhodesia in the 1950s, or of the near-seizure of power in Chile by the syndicalists in 1956, and their fate under the red regimes in Cuba, Bulgaria and China, or the white regimes in Chile, South Korea, or Argentina. We need to understand the vectors of the anarchist idea in a holistic, transnational sense, but have often been hampered by the narrowness of national(ist) perspectives. Even within the Anarchist movement, histories have been more anecdotal and partisan than truly balanced and rigorous assessments, and have often been very disarticulated by language differences. With lengthy delays incurred by us trying to make sure that Global Fire is the best (in fact only) holistic international account of the movement. You can be assured that Lucien is working on refining the text, which if published in its current format would weigh in at a whopping 1,000 pages, and that we have a pencilled-in release date for 2015, though perhaps 2016 is more realisable.