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			    <title>Ukraine | ANTIFA.CA - ANTIFA Canada - Canadian Anti-Fascist movement!</title> 
				<link>http://www.antifa.ca/ukraine</link> 
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			<title>Ehrung für SS-Anhänger</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/ehrung-fur-ssanhanger</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Trauerbeflaggung am Tag des Sieges: Ukrainische Faschisten beklagen Niederlage der Nazis und ihrer Helfer
Von Frank Brendle
	
»Meine Ehre heißt Treue«? Neonazis aus Rußland und Litauen marschierten schon im April gemeinsam durch Lwiw (Ukraine), um die 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS hochleben zu lassen
Foto: AFP / YURIY DYACHYSHYN
	Den ganzen Artikel: hier 
	Anmerkung der Antifa Düren:
	Aus gut unterrichteten Kreisen wissen wir, dass es in der CDU Düren Politiker gibt, die, wie in dem Artikel beschrieben, ähnlich über den Tag der Befreiung vom Faschismus denken wie die ukrainischen Faschisten. Ihnen ist die jährliche Antifaparty in Düren, zum Jahrestag der Befreiung vom Faschismus, ein Dorn im Auge. Wenn es nach ihnen ginge, hätte die Antifa keinen finanziellen  Zuschuss für dieses Fest bekommen, denn für sie ist es nicht akzeptabel den 8.Mai als Tag der Befreiung vom Faschismus zu bezeichnen und dann noch zu feiern. Sie bevorzugen diesen Tag als Niederlage zu bezeichnen den sie offenbar auch so empfinden.  Das auf den Werbeflyern für dieses Fest dann auch noch das Monument des sowjetischen Ehrenmals im Treptower Park Berlin, ein sowjetischer Soldat, der auf dem einen Arm ein Kind trägt und in der anderen Hand ein Schwert, mit dem er ein Hakenkreuz zerschlägt, abgebildet war trieb ihnen Schaum vors Maul. Zugegeben die Anlage im Treptower Park ist nicht gerade als klein zu bezeichnen. In Anbetracht dessen, was die sowjetische Bevölkerung unter der faschistischen Besatzung zu leiden hatte und was das sowjetische Volk geleistet hat im Kampf gegen den Faschismus, ist dies allerdings mehr als angemessen. ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 22:50:03 CEST</pubDate>
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			<title>Kiev : News about activist V.N. (Ukraine)</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/kiev-news-about-activist-vn-ukraine</link>
			<description><![CDATA[In the evening of 14th of April, comrade V.N. was seriously wounded. He was attacked by a group of 5 Nazis in the region of the metro station Dorogožitsi. Young “patriots” used knives and cut arteries of activist in three places, and also knocked out several teeth. Besides these, V.N. got a brain concussion.
  V.N. has recovered well from the attack, his jaw was operated and next phase is recovering his teeth. Thank you for everyone, who was concerned and showed us solidarity! Your letters provided more support for the comrades, and donations were helpful with financing the costs of the operation. Solidarity is our weapon!          ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Sun, 12 May 2013 12:50:01 CEST</pubDate>
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			<title>Ukraina - Anarchico ferito in agguato nazi, appello alla solidarietà</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/ukraina-anarchico-ferito-in-agguato-nazi-appello-alla-solidarieta</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Nella sera del 14 aprile l’attivista sociale V.N. è stato gravemente ferito a Kiev. E’ stato aggredito da 5 nazi nell’area della stazione metro Dorozhichi]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2013 19:20:01 CEST</pubDate>
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			<title>Anarchist activist seriously wounded in a Nazi attack in Kiev of Ukraine</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/anarchist-activist-seriously-wounded-in-a-nazi-attack-in-kiev-of-ukraine</link>
			<description><![CDATA[In the evening of 14th of April, social activist V.N. was seriously wounded in Kiev. He was assaulted by 5 Nazis in the area of metro station Dorozhichi. Young patriots used knives and cut three arteries in the legs of the activist. V.N. also lost teeth and suffered a brain concussion.
If it was not the purpose of attackers to murder, at least they attempted to permanently maim an activist who takes an active part in anti-government, anti-capitalist and animal rights actions. V-N. lost much blood, but due to an operation made in time, his life is no more in danger. 
Currently money is needed for covering his medical costs.
Paypal of ABC-Moscow for donations: abc-msk@riseup.net
Please write by e-mail how much you have donated, as same account is used for multiple campaigns.
Besides paypal, it is possible to use bank transfer or Western Union.
For details, please write to abc-msk@riseup.net]]></description>
			<pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:40:01 CEST</pubDate>
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			<title>75 anos do assassinato de  Olga Ruvinskaia</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/75-anos-do-assassinato-de-olga-ruvinskaia</link>
			<description><![CDATA[professora,metalurgica,operaria,anarquista, socialista revolucionaria ...
ma breve biografia de Olga Taratuta a &quot;avó&quot; do movimento anarquista russo e um dos fundadores da Cruz Negra Anarquista
Elka Ruvinskaia nasceu na aldeia de Novodmitrovka perto Kherson na Ucrânia em 21 de janeiro de 1876 (ou possivelmente 1874 ou 1878). Sua família era judia e seu pai tinha uma pequena loja. Depois de seus estudos, trabalhou como professora. Ela foi presa por &quot;suspeita de pratica política&quot;, em 1895. Em 1897, ela se juntou a um grupo social-democrata por influência do do seu irmão (que mais tarde tornou-se anarquista). Em 1898-1901 foi membro da comissão de Elizavetgrad do Partido Social-Democrata e da União do Sul da russa de Trabalhadores. Em 1901, ela fugiu para o estrangeiro, vivendo na Alemanha e na Suíça, onde conheceu Lenin e Plekhanov e trabalhou para o jornal Iskra.
Em 1903, na Suíça, ela se tornou anarquista e Em 1904, ela voltou para Odessa e se juntou ao grupo Sem partido, que foi composto por anarquistas e discípulos do socialista polonês Machajski. foi presa em April1904 e no outono foi libertada por falta de provas. Ela, então, juntou-se ao Grupo Trabalhadores de Odessa onde atuavam alguns grupos anarquistas e distribuiu propaganda em círculos de trabalhadores organizados. começou então a adquirir uma reputação como um dos mais notáveis anarquistas na Rússia. Ela usou o pseudônimo Babushka/taratuta (vovó) um apelido estranho considerando que ela ainda era apenas em torno de 30.
No início de outubro de 1905, ela foi presa novamente, mas foi novamente liberada com a anistia de Outubro. Ela se juntou ao Destacamento Batalha ,dos anarquistas do sul da russia que usava a tática ´´anarcoterrorista´´ com ataques a instituições e representantes do regime autocrático, em vez de indivíduos mais visados com ligação ao regime. Ela ajudou a preparar o ataque notório no café Libman, em dezembro de 1905. Ela foi presa e condenada a 17 anos de prisão em 1906, ela escapou da prisão em 15 de dezembro e fugiu para Moscou. Em dezembro de 1906 ela entrou para a organização anarquista de moscou a organização Buntar (organização rebelde) que fazia agutações grevistas nos locais de trabalho. Após a prisão de membros do grupo março 1907, ela e alguns outros fugiram para a Suíça, onde editou um jornal com o mesmo nome.
No Outono de 1907 Olga voltou a Ekaterinoslav e Kiev e depois mudou-se para Odessa. Ela preparou uma atentado contra o comandante da região militar de Odessa, e contra o general Tolmachov governador de Odessa e uma explosão no tribunal Odessa. russo e um dos fundadores da Cruz Negra Anarquista
Elka Ruvinskaia nasceu na aldeia de Novodmitrovka perto Kherson na Ucrânia em 21 de janeiro de 1876 (ou possivelmente 1874 ou 1878). Sua família era judia e seu pai tinha uma pequena loja. Depois de seus estudos, trabalhou como professora. Ela foi presa por &quot;suspeita de pratica política&quot;, em 1895. Em 1897, ela se juntou a um grupo social-democrata por influência do do seu irmão (que mais tarde tornou-se anarquista). Em 1898-1901 foi membro da comissão de Elizavetgrad do Partido Social-Democrata e da União do Sul da russa de Trabalhadores. Em 1901, ela fugiu para o estrangeiro, vivendo na Alemanha e na Suíça, onde conheceu Lenin e Plekhanov e trabalhou para o jornal Iskra.
Em 1903, na Suíça, ela se tornou anarquista e Em 1904, ela voltou para Odessa e se juntou ao grupo Sem partido, que foi composto por anarquistas e discípulos do socialista polonês Machajski. foi presa em April1904 e no outono foi libertada por falta de provas. Ela, então, juntou-se ao Grupo Trabalhadores de Odessa onde atuavam alguns grupos anarquistas e distribuiu propaganda em círculos de trabalhadores organizados. começou então a adquirir uma reputação como um dos mais notáveis anarquistas na Rússia. Ela usou o pseudônimo Babushka/taratuta (vovó) um apelido estranho considerando que ela ainda era apenas em torno de 30.
No início de outubro de 1905, ela foi presa novamente, mas foi novamente liberada com a anistia de Outubro. Ela se juntou ao Destacamento Batalha ,dos anarquistas do sul da russia que usava a tática ´´anarcoterrorista´´ com ataques a instituições e representantes do regime autocrático, em vez de indivíduos mais visados com ligação ao regime. Ela ajudou a preparar o ataque notório no café Libman, em dezembro de 1905. Ela foi presa e condenada a 17 anos de prisão em 1906, ela escapou da prisão em 15 de dezembro e fugiu para Moscou. Em dezembro de 1906 ela entrou para a organização anarquista de moscou a organização Buntar (organização rebelde) que fazia agutações grevistas nos locais de trabalho. Após a prisão de membros do grupo março 1907, ela e alguns outros fugiram para a Suíça, onde editou um jornal com o mesmo nome.
No Outono de 1907 Olga voltou a Ekaterinoslav e Kiev e depois mudou-se para Odessa. Ela preparou uma atentado contra o comandante da região militar de Odessa, e contra o general Tolmachov governador de Odessa e uma explosão no tribunal Odessa. 
No final de fevereiro 1908, ela foi a Kiev para preparar a explosão dos muros da prisão de prisão Lukianovka e organizou a fuga dos anarquistas detidos lá. No entanto, todos os outros membros do grupo foram presos, mas Olga conseguiu fugir. Ela foi presa em Ekaterinoslav e no final de 1909, condenado a 21 anos de prisão. Ela foi libertado da prisão Lukianovka março 1917. Como Paul Avrich diz em seu livro Os anarquistas russos, ela era agora &quot;uma mulher cansada e suave em seus quarenta e tantos anos,&quot; no primeiro momento mantendo a distância do movimento. Em maio de 1918, ela organizou a Cruz Vermelha socialista em Kiev, que ajudava revolucionários presos, independentemente de suas filiações políticas, e que uma vez até ajudou bolcheviques. Até sua velha intrasigência revolucionário voltou, disparada por sua indignação crescente como anarquistas revolucionários estavam sendo tratados pelos bolcheviquese foi buscar uma organização anarquista mais avançada. Em 1919, ela se mudou para Moscou. Em junho de 1920 ela participou da organização de Golos Truda (Voz do Trabalho). No final de setembro de 1920 após a assinatura do pacto entre o governo soviético e os makhnovistas ela voltou para a Ucrânia. Em Gulyai Polye a ela foram dados 5 milhões de rublos pelos comandantes makhnovista. Com esse dinheiro ela foi para Kharkov e connstruir a Cruz Negra Anarquista que ajudou anarquistas presos e reprimidos. Em novembro de Olga foi eleito como representante dos makhnovistas em Kharkov e Moscou.
Durante a onda de repressão contra os anarquistas e makhnovistas na Ucrânia, Olga foi presa novamente. A Cruz Negra foi fechado e seu centro destruído. Em janeiro de 1921, ela foi transportado para Moscou com 40 outros anarquistas ucranianos.Ela foi um dos anarquistas presos autorizados a assistir ao funeral de Kropotkin pelos bolcheviques. No final de abril de 1921, ela foi transferida para a prisão Orlov. Em maio de 1921, o procurador-geral soviético propôs a Olga que ela poderia ser liberada se ela se retratou de suas idéias em público. No verão de 1921, ela se juntou à greve de fome de 11 dias de anarquistas presos. Em março de 1922 ela foi exilada por dois anos para Velikii Ustiug.
Libertada no início de 1924, ela se mudou para Kiev. Ela deixou toda a atividade, mas manteve contato pessoal com vários anarquistas. Meados de 1924 ela foi presa por fazer propaganda anarquista contra a a campanha difamatoria dos makhnovistas feita pelos bolcheviques, mas logo foi liberada. Em 1924, ela se mudou para Moscou. Em 1927, ela apoiou a campanha de Sacco e Vanzetti. Em 1928-1929, ela escreveu muitas cartas sobre a necessidade de organizar uma campanha internacional para os anarquistas presos na União Soviética. Em 1929 ela se mudou para Odessa, onde foi presa por tentar criar células anarquistas entre os trabalhadores-ferroviarios (Durante este período, nos anos 20 ela estava envolvida com os anarquistas Odessa no contrabando ilegal de literatura anarquista na URSS). Ela teve um periodo de 2 anos em solitária&quot;. Ela foi libertado em 1931 e voltou para Moscou. Ela tornou-se membro da Sociedade de ex-presos políticos e exilados que tentaram obter pensões para antigos, revolucionários pobres e doentes, mas sem sucesso. Em 1933, ela foi novamente presa e condenada, mas documentos deste processo não existem mais. Em 1937, ela estava morando em Moscou e trabalhou em uma metalurgica como um esmilhiradora.
em 27 de novembro de 1937, Ela foi presa novamente e acusada de anarquistas e anti-soviética em atividade. Em 08 de fevereiro de 1938 Olga foi condenado à morte pelo Tribunal superior da União Soviética e executada no mesmo dia.
NÃO ESQUECEMOS E NÃO PERDOAMOS!
]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:40:01 CEST</pubDate>
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			<title>Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A critical evaluation</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/democratic-centralism-in-practice-and-idea-a-critical-evaluation</link>
			<description><![CDATA[The terrain is changing beneath our feet. Since the collapse of the majority of the “official communist” regimes, the world has witnessed both events and ideas that have undermined the former dominant thinking within the left. The Zapatistas, Argentina in 2001, South Korean workers movements, Oaxaca in 2006, the struggles around anti-globalization, and Greece’s series of insurrectionary moments have increasingly presented challenges to traditional left answers to movements and organization. In previous eras Marxist-Leninism was the nexus which all currents by default had to respond to either in agreement or critique. Today, increasingly anarchist practices and theory have come to play this role. 

As a member of an anarchist political organization, a friend once told me I in fact was practicing democratic centralism. This was perplexing, because the group had no resembling structures, practices, or the associated behaviors of democratic centralism. However, I was told that since we debated, came to common decisions, and acted on that collective democracy, we were in fact democratic centralist. This kind of productive confusion led to questions about the concept, and why the target of democratic centralism has shifted. This move, the shifting conceptual territory of core concepts of a certain orthodoxy, comes up repeatedly not only with democratic centralism, but also surrounding ideas like crisis, dialectics, the State, and class. The resulting cognitive dissonance caused me to investigate attempts at reinvigorating the concept of democratic centralism (democratic centralist revisionism), and understand truly what it is, where it came from, and how it has been practiced. 
It can be reasonably asked why someone would choose to address democratic centralism in light of the catastrophic legacy that the so-called official Communist parties of the world (present and former rulers of the Soviet block and associated Marxist-Leninist governments), who popularized globally the concept of democratic centralism, have left us. Indeed, the human tragedy that occurred throughout the old Soviet-aligned nations is so great that we can reasonably question whether we have gotten to the bottom yet, or whether more horrors are still to be discovered. From another perspective, for revolutionaries who find no connection between democratic centralism and these tragedies, we live in a different era from the birth or maturation of democratic centralism. Today is a time of dispersed movement, low-levels of struggle, and failure of the left to organize and sustain itself. The material reality and historical moment of democratic centralism’s heyday could not be further from our own.

Because of the decompositions and changes both in movements and discourse, this has created twin pressures on the thinking around democratic centralism. On the one hand there is a current underway of reframing many such conceptions (likely at least in part as a response to the challenge posed by the failures of so-called official communism and challenges from new libertarian currents and events to such thinking). With the collapse of the Soviet Union attempts to reinvigorate democratic centralism and rescue it from its authoritarian and bureaucratic elements have been increasing. Here, democratic centralism is being remixed for new audiences either by the official communist orthodoxy (Stalinist, Trotskyist, Maoist, etc.), or by the oppositional Marxist-Leninist tradition that argued for a more libertarian interpretation of the concept. Many Marxist-Leninist parties and political formations now give verbal credit to concepts like participatory democracy, worker self-management, and other traditionally libertarian or anarchist concepts. The International Socialist Organization (US) for example while remaining adherent to democratic centralism frames its democracy beyond simply democracy in terms of participatory democracy. “There have to be formal mechanisms of democracy within the party, but more than that, democracy has to be active and participatory”[1]. The Socialist Workers Party (UK), which earlier was in an international organization with the International Socialist Organization, likewise frames workers’ self-activity in terms of a relationship with democratic centralism.

“The ‘self activity’ of the working class develops through a struggle against the enemy class. As part of this ‘self activity’ revolutionary workers have to be able to suggest ways of generalizing the struggle, tactics that can produce victory. They can only do so successfully by suggesting tactics, by offering leadership, that fits in with the leadership offered by revolutionaries active in other parts of the class. The question of coordinated direction, of centralized leadership, necessarily arises again. The existence of a centralized revolutionary party does not, therefore, form an obstacle to the self-activity of the masses—on the contrary, the latter is incomplete without it”[2].

Freedom Road Socialist Organization draws more explicitly from the anarchist influences within members of it’s party, and condemns the practices associated with self-identified democratic centralist organizations as bureaucratic centralist.

“Many of our revolutionary youth are under the organizational sway of various anarchist tendencies. Some are strongly influenced by what they believe is Zapatismo. They have also, perhaps rightly, been soured by what they have learned of the bureaucratic centralism and vanguardism practiced by various Marxist-Leninist parties historically”[3]

Though in this moment such statements seem unassuming, it’s worth reflecting on their significance. Even the fact that a group like the SWP (UK) would have to put forward and defend the concept of the self-activity of the working class is a sign of the times. Democratic centralist thinking is being pushed to defend itself against the critiques of both past democratic centralist movements and the growing dominance of anarchistic thinking that seems to contradict democratic centralism. Democratic centralism is seen either as an unachieved goal, or as a tool which can provide solutions to the new environment we find ourselves in. There are then multiple attempts to contest ownership of democratic centralism, craft a new revisionism about democratic centralism, break it from its most crass Stalinist form, and claim new lineages or practices.

As the Freedom Road quote shows such moves do not only come from within the Marxist-Leninist milieu, but also from ex-anarchists and anarchist sympathizers. This is not neither necessarily new nor solely monopolized by the Marxist-Leninist left. Perceived roadblocks and limitations of the broad libertarian or anarchist milieu have sent some in search of answers to real problems they face as revolutionaries in struggle. The series of protest movements which fueled anarchism’s rise in the global north (anti-nuke, anti-war, anti-globalization, anti-austerity, etc.) have presented insufficient responses to the attacks of states and capital, and the unorganized or anti-organizational libertarian milieu is perceived as not posing sufficient answers to on-the-ground issues of how to respond to repression, how to push forward with revolutionary challenges, and how to build upwards across the peaks and valleys of struggle. Some anti-authoritarians (though likely a small minority) thus have begun to turn to democratic centralism as well as a cure for the perennial disorganization and out-organization of social movements at this time, and as a general response to low-points in struggle.

Framing Failure

It’s worth noting though in both cases, there’s thinking around organization that connects a theory of organization across the periods with specific problems of movement today. Many thinkers attempt this move, for example when people try to account for the failures of revolutions in terms of the actions, absence, or presence of specific revolutionary organizations. Surely those things are factors, but there is a larger elephant in the room.

Take the Spanish revolution of 1936 for example. One series of analyses relates to questions of organization either from Trotsky, the Friends of Durruti, factions in the CNT, or relationships to organized international movements. In other words, why weren’t particular organized revolutionaries able to win the war, deepen the revolutionary process, or beat back sabotaging reformist tendencies? Another question though is why did the Spanish popular classes fail to intervene at key moments even when there were organized tendencies representing such positions? There are separate questions and elements in these situations. There are organizations, there are revolutionaries, there are reactionary forces, and there are the activities of the popular classes (as diverse and complex as they are). We should separate out then questions about organizations from large scale popular questions. The two are bound up together, but answers to one do not necessarily provide answers to the other. To be concrete, even if you have the perfect organization with the correct line in 1936 Barcelona, it’s not given that the people would have destroyed the State and assumed popular control. This is just to say that the question of revolution is bigger (though not independent) than organization.

The project to revise, expand, or reframe democratic centralism arises from these instincts about organizational questions settling political problems. In trying to do so, democratic centralist thought is pushed in a number of directions that can not be reconciled. In opening up this discussion, the intention is not just to point the independent anarchist-communist organizational history, but rather to question the way in which the project of democratic centralist revision approaches organization in our conjuncture: today, here, and with our problems.

Defining the Debate

In Petrograd during the summer of 1917, the Sixth Party Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik) occurred. At this congress it was later reported that the Bolsheviks defined democratic centralism as follows:

That all directing bodies of the Party, from top to bottom, shall be elected;
That Party bodies shall give periodical accounts of their activities to their respective Party organizations;
That there shall be strict Party discipline and the subordination of the minority to the majority;
That all decisions of higher bodies shall be absolutely binding on lower bodies and on all Party members[4].
The first three points are relatively uninteresting, whatever we think of directing bodies, elections, minorities, and discipline. The fourth stands out. The history the quote is draw from was written by a special commission of the Communist Party central committee under Stalin, shortly following some of the worst purges in the 1930s, and with the liquidation of much of the leadership of the Bolsheviks from the revolution having been murdered.

Most of the content of this article arose from a debate with friends about the legitimacy of the fourth point above. There are a number of factors. Was it real? Is this actually what democratic centralism represents or merely a Stalinist aberration? To what extent did it actually represent Bolshevik practice? Is democratic centralism inherently Leninist, or is it a more fundamental concept? Did it represent it only for certain periods? Is there another way of interpreting it?

Critics from the libertarian left have often been content to merely attack the most obvious and egregious forms of democratic centralism. This leaves these critiques open to quick dismissal and wastes an opportunity to expose core political issues that can help our movement grow. It is useful then to engage the theory, take on democratic centralism at its best arguments, on its own terms, and provide a more nuanced understanding of the dangers of democratic centralism so that we do not face the same problems under a different banner.

Democratic centralism will be addressed on four fronts to provide a wider scope than is normally given to the concept. First, where did democratic centralism grow out of, and how did it develop in history? Second, what did oppositional revolutionaries who contested the ideas of democratic centralism outside the orthodoxy offer in understanding the debate? Third, moving to the US context, how did democratic centralist practice function in recent history? Lastly what does it look like if we abstract away all the history and practices, and look at it hypothetically as a theory of the process of the internal functioning of organizations?

Within democratic centralism we see for all the theorists, there are two components: a process of internal functioning, and a structural proposal for the interaction of centralized bodies with the base of the party. The interpretations between the two components vary. It is with the process of internal functioning we will find the main motivations for the theory and practice, as well as the best insights it has to offer. The structural proposal on the other hand has the least offered justifications and the worst implications. It is in the ambiguity within and between these two components, and the failure to demarcate the structural component from an authoritarian relation that gives democratic centralism its fatal flaws, and makes any reinvigoration from more democratic motivations unsustainable.

Though unfortunately broad, this investigation tries to reveal a fork created by democratic centralism. On one side is the material reality of democratic centralism as a living theory in the history of class struggle with inherent bureaucratic and authoritarian tendencies[5]. As Ngo Van, Vietnamese revolutionary and participant in various Vietnamese Leninist parties, states, “the so-called ‘workers’ parties’ (Leninist parties in particular) are embryonic forms of the state. Once in power, these parties form the nucleus of a new ruling class and bring about nothing more than a new system of exploitation”[6].

On the other side there is democratic centralism as a liberatory concept abstracted from practice, yet so broad that nearly every form of organization from anarchist to market socialist becomes democratic centralist, and hence meaningless. The goal, as with any revolutionary inquiry, is not to merely castigate or to try and paint the adherents of movements or theories as one-sided pathological villains, but to learn from the mistakes and victories of humanity in pursuit of liberation from centuries of exploitation and oppression.

We will close not simply with the critique, but instead with a brief description of a different methodology for revolutionary organization. Called especifismo, dual-organizationalism, platformism, or at other times simply anarchist communism, this tradition developed it’s way of thinking and acting in unity without the structures or concepts of democratic centralism. Coming to life independently in different moments in Asia, South America, Europe, and North America this tradition provides answers for the real problems that democratic centralism wrestled with and ultimately failed to address.

The Birth of Democratic Centralism

Today we can see that democratic centralism was to become the organizational theory of a rising ruling class. It became a tool of domination over all of Russia’s laboring classes, and eventually across the globe. Struggles for liberation led by committed revolutionaries produced state capitalist dictatorships against the proletariat, though under a red banner [7]. The story of democratic centralism is more complicated than this however, and it is important not merely to condemn the mistakes but to attempt to understand what happened.

Democratic centralism lived and changed across its life beginning with Russian Social Democracy and evolved to become a dominant political class with a monopoly of power and illegalized all political opposition. We should say there are many democratic centralisms rather than a single unitary theory. It is easy to look back at its most characteristic form under Stalin and associated official Communist Parties wherein higher bodies had dominant powers and centralization trumped democracy, but both the theory and practice of democratic centralism never had such coherence or continuity.

The most broad and populist formulation of democratic centralism describes it as being a method for internal function, or how to act inside an organization, that goes through a process of democratic deliberation to form a unity, which will be carried out as a group. It is democracy in deciding, and unity in action. Allegedly, non-democratic centralist groups rejected unity in action, having discussion and then individuals and divisions acting as they pleased irrespective of decision. Still other groups have no democratic debate, and simply implement directives. Democratic centralism is supposed to unify these (dialectically) in a practice of internal democracy, and external unified action. But what were the motivations for this theory, and what relationship does it have to higher bodies, directives, internal oppositions, etc.?

The term was first used by a Lassalean named Schweitzer, who was a German socialist active in the General Association of German Workers. That group was organized under what he called “democratic centralism”. Interestingly Marx and Engels criticized the strict organization practiced by this group in their September 1868 letters[8].

The fleshed out democratic centralism as we know it came on the heels of a short period of openness secured by the 1905 revolution in Russian. Both the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks introduced the concept when they were in the common social democratic party. The Mensheviks were actually the first ones to put out the concept at their 1905 conference, with the Bolsheviks following shortly thereafter. At a unity conference in 1906 both factions adopted a resolution endorsing democratic centralism[9]. The most common formulation however came from Lenin’s report at that congress, and was “freedom of discussion, unity of action”[10]. In the context of the congress this meant the engagement and debate of the party members, the coming together of branches in a coordinated cohesive organization, and implementing the decisions made in the open discussions.

The split in Russian social democracy that was to produce a fleshed-out democratic centralism occurred around a division on what membership constituted[11]. Lenin’s conception of democratic centralism sought to respond to a context of illegality and the authoritarianism of the Russian monarchy. Democratic centralism was a proposal for how the party should function both for a level of commitment and unity, and for paid professional revolutionaries[12]. All of these issues were transformed first in the 1905 revolution, and later during the subsequent Russian revolutions. The kernels of this thought underwent shifts alongside the tumult of those struggles.

It is important to see that democratic centralism sought to address real issues. With democratic centralism, Lenin and his associates promoted the idea of revolutionary organization based on coordinated activity, an internal process for debating and trying craft and hone political positions around that activity, and an orientation of members to that work at a high level of commitment.

Stated in that way, these are important points that are not owned by democratic centralism, but are broad issues many revolutionaries (and their theories) try to grapple with. It was the particular ambiguities and marriages of these concepts to others that gave democratic centralism its historical significance and problems.

Lenin’s conception of commitment was expressed as paid professional revolutionaries.

“I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organisation of leaders maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an organisation, and the more solid this organisation must be (for it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses); (3) that such an organisation must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity; (4) that in an autocratic state, the more we confine the membership of such an organisation to people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the organisation; and (5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from the other social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it.”[13]

There are a number of false assumptions here that led to dangerous paths. We can reasonably question (4) given the unsuccessful experiences of guerilla movements worldwide. Professionalism and training do not seem to have sheltered movements for example in the Southern Cone of South America from the resources and organization of local and international imperialism[14]. Today Lenin’s assertions seem naïve

“When we have forces of specially trained worker-revolutionaries who have gone through extensive preparation (and, of course, revolutionaries “of all arms of the service”), no political police in the world will then be able to contend with them, for these forces, boundlessly devoted to the revolution, will enjoy the boundless confidence of the widest masses of the workers”[15].

The ability of revolutionary movements to be immersed and supported within popular power under such repressive conditions provided a much better security than professionalism could hope to. Confidence in the workers comes less from professional training than the emergence of revolutionary currents in autonomous struggles. Lenin had no serious response to the alienation of paid professionals from those struggles.

Lenin also failed to see the distinction between seriousness and discipline versus the centralization of decision-making and power. He explicitly rejected such distinctions in fact. Lenin argued for a rigorously applied division of labor, and believed that workers and non-proletarian revolutionaries needed to be removed from wage labor in order to become a professional revolutionary. For instance Lenin argues that “a well-organised secret apparatus requires professionally well-trained revolutionaries and a division of labour applied with the greatest consistency…”[16]

As Larry Gambone and Don Hammerquist point out, there is a difference between political unity and the centralization of power[17][18]. Many communists of the period conflated the two concepts, in terms of the form or structure of the organization and the content of the organization. The point ultimately was to ensure an effective and serious organization, but the professionalization of this work was to be transformed later in practice into party-bureaucracy officials. This division would eventually become one of the bases by which the party bureaucracies became the administrative ruling class, and sought to liquidate all political opposition in the masses and internally.

For all the talk of seriousness, paid professionals, cadre, etc., it can reasonably be questioned how accurate that was for the Bolsheviks at various points, and the causality of the revolution. It’s often proposed that the Bolshevik’s understanding and practice of democratic centralism, unlike the disorganization of anarchists say, secured their position at the vanguard of the masses, and made ultimately allowed the revolution to thrive, at least initially. Yet there’s also a different defense of the Bolsheviks that contradicts these ideas. Some put forward the idea that the Bolsheviks were very democratic initially, to the point were the central committees could not have discipline over the party, which had an allegedly thriving democracy.

For example one author, Alexander Rabinowitch, makes reference to a well-cited event in which the central committee suppressed one of Lenin’s letters (Marxism and Insurrection) from the party’s membership in 1917. Lenin criticized the party publicly. Similar disputes and disagreements in the Central Committee at that pivotal time are taken as evidence of the lack of cohesion and authoritarianism charged against the Bolsheviks under Lenin. In the July days of the Russian Revolution the military organization of the party and regional bureaus (something like locals) acted independently of the Central Committee in partly initiating the demonstrations that led to the July days. Perhaps most famous of all was the incident where Lenin argued for overthrowing the provisional government in an insurrectionary act by the party and revolutionary forces. Key to this for the purposes of argument is the fact that Lenin was in a minority concerning launching the October revolution, for which the majority of the Central Committee opposed even publicly[19].

This poses a contradiction however. If the Bolsheviks were not a cohesive organization, with a robust democracy of sections acting independently of each other, a central committee unable to maintain the will of the majority, etc., it begs the question what role democratic centralism plays? If the party was not democratic centralist at that time, then it appears democratic centralism occurred with the rise of the bureaucracy and the death of the revolution. If it was democratic centralist during the chaotic period, in what sense was it centralist? As we will see these ambiguities plague the theory and become a moving target.

At some point even most Leninists would agree that party cadre were transformed from revolutionaries attempting to build initiative, accountability, and discipline into having military like obedience of party hierarchies. Surely the theory itself has a strong role to play in this, but the historical struggles of Bolsheviks and Russian peasantry and workers intrinsically shaped this ideology as well in the course of successive revolutionary waves. As history unfolded, what were once mere concepts in writings were later interpreted and found a voice in the post-revolution world of Russia and other nations.

Today we can see some errors in the theory that should be increasingly obvious, and which had practical consequences. There is a difference between voluntary commitment of militants and compulsory obedience to higher authorities with monopolies of power. This is not merely moralism either; without independent capabilities and assessment skills, revolutionaries will not be able to build anything. Under the soviet bureaucracies, such soldier-like functioning was able to function in accordance with the interests of the State, but in our situation replicating such is suicidal. Paid professional revolutionaries develop interests and perspectives separate and often against that of the working class they are supposed to serve. Through separating both in terms of work, physically, and organizationally from the classes they serve, bureaucracies develop independent perspectives, needs, and desires which they reflect as any class formation does. This should be clear from union bureaucracies that arise from the working class but grow to work against it, for example when union bureaucracies seek to secure a reliable existence through soft-ball contracts and appeasing the bosses. Though in theory they represent the workers, in reality their own interests as bureaucrats can turn them against their fundamental task, and put them in an antagonistic position in relation to workers. Left ideologies have no silver bullet to prevent that transformation[20].

Some claim that Lenin gets a pass, with Stalin taking the blame for the mechanical and repressive structure of the Russian Communist Party following Lenin’s death. The consequences of this professionalization and centralization proved disastrous in terms of repression against political and popular opposition before Stalin’s rise however, and its role was solidified in the early 1920s in producing a bureaucracy vested in reorganizing capitalism within the revolution through attacks on the soviets and collectivization efforts, and eventually introduction of market reforms under the NDP period[21].

The victory in the civil war against the counterrevolutionary Russian whites brought about new problems for the fledgling Bolshevik regime. Years of war and the backwardness of the Russian economy proved a challenge. Though the whites were defeated, there was far from cohesion both inside the party and outside of it. Imperialist invasions, internal sabotage, and competition with other political currents all weighed heavily on the rising Bolsheviks. External to the party, prior political allies were viewed increasingly as a liability. Economically, Lenin and the party looked to capitalist theory of economic production through Taylorist management, factory time studies, and centralized repressive managerial powers in production. Autonomous workers and peasants movements provided a potential challenge to any plans to implement Taylorist production in Russia. Their direct implementation of collectivizations and proto-socialist experiments created a bulwark and organization of alternatives that would have to be restrained in order to move in that direction. The Bolsheviks believed that Russia needed to pass through a capitalist phase before graduating to socialism, and sought to increase the productive forces of Russia via state-capitalist measures. Allies of the revolutionary peasantry and working class thus posed a double challenge to Bolshevik power.

The Ukrainian anarchist worker and peasant movements were thus seen as a threat. Earlier, the Ukrainian anarchist militias (often called the Makhnovschina after the most famous of them, Nestor Makhno) saved the Bolsheviks during the White assault that nearly destroyed them. The Whites had advanced to Moscow, only to beat back when the Ukrainians destroyed their supply lines from behind bit by bit, and sent them fleeing. With the whites out of the way, the Bolsheviks turned on their former Makhnovschina allies and sought to destroy the power of the workers and peasants in Ukraine, Siberia, and elsewhere (let alone considering Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, etc). Likewise Left Social Revolutionaries party members would face brutal repression in the Bolsheviks’ attempts to centralize power in a party dictatorship. The workers movements, inspired by councilist and anarchosyndicalist movements, faced military repression including the infamous assault and murder of the communist and anarchist Kronstadt sailors, once amongst the front guard of the revolution[22]. The mass movements were treated as threats to the power of a professional revolutionary force using the might of a centralized military to impose capitalism onto a rebellious and self-organizing peasant and workers movement. While these issues are external and democratic centralism only deals with internal manners, it is worth understanding the economic and political transformations the Bolsheviks initiated while consolidating their conception of internal functioning.

Whatever one may think about these external oppositional movements, internally as well the Bolshevik leadership turned its guns on its political opponents with Lenin leading the charge. Two internal factions (there were also other left communists that split from the party) sought to critique the relationship of the party to the mass movements as one of domination and repression, and question the role of centralization internally. The Democratic Centralist faction[23] and the Workers’ Opposition[24] led this fight, and advocated something akin to syndicalism and a communist critique of the Bolsheviks’ repression and imposition of capitalist social relations on the insurgent working and peasant classes. Both factions were made up of old Bolsheviks from early in the party and were proletarian in character, making them more difficult to carry out character assassinations on. Their opposition movement arose specifically to the imposition of one-man rule in the factories and the administration of the economy by the party, and in fact the centralization of the Central Committee. These factions argued at the Ninth Party Congress of the Bolshevik Party that the soviets should remain autonomous from the party’s rule, and that the management of the economy should be by the union and soviet organizations and not the party. They lost this battle with Lenin blasting them. Here Lenin is at his most candid in rejecting their demands:

“I assert that you will find nothing like it in the fifteen years’ pre- revolutionary history of the Social-Democratic movement. Democratic centralism means only that representatives from the localities get together and elect a responsible body, which is to do the administering [my emphasis]. But how? That depends on how many suitable people, how many good administrators are available. Democratic centralism means that the congress supervises the work of the Central Committee, and can remove it and appoint another in its place.”[25]

Immediately the Workers Opposition and Democratic Centralists were attacked for their alleged anarchist and syndicalist deviations. Lenin acknowledged that there were not Makhnovists, but that Makhnovists would use their positions against the Bolsheviks[26]. The response was to endorse the now infamous concept of one-man rule in factories under the banner of the militarization of labor.

This presents some difficulty for those who would seek to pull democratic centralism away from its historical centralization and bureaucracy. The democratic centralist faction tried to expand the democratic elements of the theory, but at what moment did this occur? What was happening was not merely an argument over terms. The emergence of a monopoly of power in a revolutionary situation transformed existing practices and concepts, and created new contradictory political currents within the same body.

This clash would lead to the ban on party factions, and sew the seeds of the imprisonment and murder of any left communist opposition thereafter. While moral and political critiques of this activity are emotionally resonant and meaningful, there are deeper lessons we should draw as well. The Bolsheviks were not merely great men of history greedy and lusting after power, but were revolutionaries who dedicated their lives to the cause of human equality. Here at these crucial moments, elements of the theory of democratic centralism (professional revolutionaries separate from the masses, subservience of mass movements to the party, and centralization) became ideological weapons of a (perhaps unconscious) ruling class in ascendancy. Far from being liberatory tools, these ideas were embedded in a productivist capitalist ideology that sought to bring the insurgent workers autonomy and peasant implementations of direct socialist production (such as in Ukraine, Georgia, and Siberia) under one-man rule of Taylorist capitalism. The liquidation of those revolutionary experiments would span three decades, and would cost the peoples under Bolshevik regimes countless lives and suffering.

Democratic centralism beyond Lenin- hope in the West?

Even before Lenin fell and Stalin rose, the Bolsheviks lost allies. A growing amalgam of left communist opposition (councilist, ultra-left, and anarchist) built upon their non-Leninist traditions in the struggles and revolutions across the globe. Still some want to have their cake and eat it to. What about those inspired by democratic centralism, but who either had critiques of or broke from the practices of the Bolsheviks? I will look at a few figures to get a sense of the field. Though one can’t possibly look at everyone who wrote anything about democratic centralism, I hope that by spanning theorists as diverse as Gramsci to Bordiga we can get a sense of what role the concept has played.

Antonio Gramsci is one with credentials that would aid democratic centralism. Gramsci came of political age in the libertarian milieu of industrial Turin. Gramsci, though fond of some rather unenlightened critiques of anarchists, he cooperated with the anarchist workers movements in Turin during the Red Years[27]. Of all the Leninist figures, Gramsci is perhaps one of the most thoroughly libertarian leaning, or at least problematizes a narrow reading of either tradition. Gramsci surprisingly wrote very little explicitly about democratic centralism. The one place he takes it up in some detail is The Modern Prince during his internship in fascist prison. There a few unique elements of Gramsci’s interpretation of democratic centralism that set it apart from the Bolsheviks. Gramsci sees democratic centralism not merely as a set of characteristics of an organization, or a method for internal decision making, but additionally a process embedded in and shaped by history.

“’Organicity’ can only be found in democratic centralism, which is so to speak a ‘centralism’ in movement-i.e. a continual adaptation of the organisation to the real movement, a matching of thrusts from below with orders from above [my emphasis], a continuous insertion of elements thrown up from the depths of the rank and file into the solid framework of the leadership apparatus which ensures continuity and the regular accumulation of experience. Democratic centralism is ‘organic’ because on the one hand it takes account of movement, which is the organic mode in which historical reality reveals itself, and does not solidify mechanically into bureaucracy; and because at the same time it takes account of that which is relatively stable and permanent, or which at least moves in an easily predictable direction, etc”[28].

Though Gramsci’s language is somewhat abstract he appears to open the party up to being accountable to history and the proletariat as well as internally democratic. That is to say that for Gramsci, a democratic centralist organization is such only when it is able to adapt and reflect the real movement of the working class in struggle. This is moreover internal to his concept of democratic centralism.

“Democratic centralism offers an elastic formula, which can be embodied in many diverse forms; it comes alive in so far as it is interpreted and continually adapted to necessity. It consists in the critical pursuit of what is identical in seeming diversity of form and on the other hand of what is distinct and even opposed in apparent uniformity, in order to organise and interconnect closely that which is similar, but in such a way that the organising and the interconnecting appear to ‘be a practical and “inductive” necessity, experimental, and not the result of a rationalistic, deductive, abstract process-i.e. one typical of pure intellectuals (or pure asses). This continuous effort to separate out the “international” and “unitary” element in national and local reality is true concrete political action, the sole activity productive of historical progress”[29].

Democratic centralism for Gramsci is both an objective measure of judging the co-evolution of the party with the dominated classes, as well as a methodology utilized by the party to ensure its connection and development within resistance to capitalism.

This is an advance over the Bolshevik model for the theory since it requires that the political organization be judged objectively both in terms of its role in history and its role for the class. Again somewhat obscurely, Gramsci seems to imply a more pluralistic operation of political organization through the engagement, co-existence, and synthesis of political opposition as opposed to authoritarian practices.

Unfortunately Gramsci does not fully break from the Leninist model, though perhaps he lays down the paving stones for an exit route.

“This element of stability [see first quote] within the State is embodied in the organic development of the leading group’s central nucleus, just as happens on a more limited scale within parties. The prevalence of bureaucratic centralism in the State indicates that the leading group is saturated, that it is turning into a narrow clique which tends to perpetuate its selfish privileges by controlling or even by stifling the birth of oppositional forces-even if these forces are homogeneous with the fundamental dominant interests (e.g. in the ultra-protectionist systems struggling against economic liberalism). In parties which represent socially subaltern classes, the element of stability is necessary to ensure that hegemony will be exercised not by privileged groups but by the progressive elements-organically progressive in relation to other forces which, though related and allied, are heterogeneous and wavering”[30].

Gramsci understands the problem of rising bureaucracy and their antagonism to the subaltern classes, but retains the division between rulers and ruled, between centralized power and the class organized. This is not merely an issue with some forces being better organized or having advanced ideas, but the existence of a political class with special organizational powers and in a position of authority in relation to the subaltern classes. In other writings Gramsci argues that the proletariat can develop only embryonic consciousness, which lacks full development without the revolutionary communist party.

“[Democratic Centralism] requires an organic unity between theory and practice, between intellectual strata and popular masses, between rulers and ruled. The formulae of unity and federation lose a great part of their significance from this point of view, whereas they retain their sting in the bureaucratic conception, where in the end there is no unity but a stagnant swamp, on the surface calm and “mute”, and no federation but a “sack of potatoes”, i.e. a mechanical juxtaposition of single “units” without any connection between them.[31]”

Likewise, in other places Gramsci speaks of organization which seems to suggest a belief in the sufficiency and necessity of presumably revolutionary vanguard leadership.“…In reality it is easier to create an army than to create generals. It is equally true that an already existing army is destroyed if the generals disappear, while the existence of a group of generals, trained to work together, amongst themselves, with common ends, soon creates an army even where none exists.”[32]

Reading Gramsci charitably, perhaps we could excuse or read out the more authoritarian interpretations of that division. Indeed it could be seen as fluid and more historical than organizational. These readings may in fact be unfair to Gramsci, but it creates a dilemma. Take Gramsci at face value and he accepts the problematic divisions in democratic centralism which threaten the more liberatory elements he puts forward.

If on the other hand we find the more liberatory elements in his thought, his stress on praxis, the movements and ruptures of history, the necessity of federation, organic intellectuals, etc., it should be reasonably asked in what sense it is democratic centralism?

The problem is that short of that division, it’s unclear what would distinguish democratic centralism from other organizational methodologies, forms, and histories with completely distinct practices and concepts. Anarchist and socialist practices mirror some of these elements Gramsci describes, but fail to take up the democratic centralist call for the “orders from above”. We are not interested in Gramsci here, but whether Gramsci provides a basis for reclaiming or revising democratic centralism. It is quite possible that Gramsci indeed broke with the Bolshevik’s theory, but such a break would hardly leave democratic centralism as a coherent concept intact.

Though merely a side point here, it should be noted that Gramsci does something unique with organization. By attempting to understand and develop organizational theory as a dynamic within history, he puts it on a footing which goes beyond mere structural proposals. This points to need for historically specific strategies for organization, and for our organizations to evolve with their practices in the struggles of the popular classes. While easy to understand, this conception of praxis and historically rooted theory is generally absent or under utilized from most traditions of left thought.

An opponent of Gramsci provides an interesting counterpoint. Amadeo Bordiga, once a large figure in Italian socialist and communist leadership, and later a leading figure of the left communist current, rejected democratic centralism outright. Gramsci is replying to Bordiga in part when he addresses “organic centralism”, which the Bordigists counterposed to democratic centralism. Bordiga had a thorough critique of democracy in general as a product of bourgeois society, and contrasted it to communism which would have no such corollaries (since communism implies the abolition of classes and the state). Bordiga agreed with Lenin’s argument for tight centralized parties, but rejected the democratic portion for somewhat related reasons.

Bordiga said, “…the meaning of unitarism and of organic centralism is that the party develops inside itself the organs suited to the various functions…” and called for the party to “…[eliminate] from its structure one of the starting errors of the Moscow International, by getting rid of democratic centralism and of any voting mechanism, as well as every last member eliminating from his ideology any concession to democratoid, pacifist, autonomist or libertarian trends”[33].

Bordiga was prone to polemics and obscurity, and the last quote comes from his left communist period following WWII. Looking to an earlier time when he was opposing the Bolshevization of the communist movement (he was the last to call Stalin the gravedigger of the revolution to his face and live) we gain more insight.

“Democracy cannot be a principle for us. Centralism is indisputably one, since the essential characteristics of party organization must be unity of structure and action. The term centralism is sufficient to express the continuity of party structure in space; in order to introduce the essential idea of continuity in time, the historical continuity of the struggle which, surmounting successive obstacles, always advances towards the same goal, and in order to combine these two essential ideas of unity in the same formula, we would propose that the communist party base its organization on ‘organic centralism’”[34].

For Bordiga then, democratic centralism borrows from bourgeois society democratic formal mechanisms (voting procedures, layered semi-parliamentary structure), and merges them with a centralist orientation of unity around a communist program. This is a rather crass formulation of Bordiga’s quite insightful distinction between content and form[35]. For Bordiga the content of communism was primary, and the party was rigorously centralized around that content. Though he opposed Gramsci, we see a few areas where they differed and others of apparent agreement.

Bordiga was for continuity and a trajectory, while Gramsci was for movement and induction. Bordiga was against democracy, Gramsci roughly for it (obviously not the bourgeois form). Bordiga raises the issue of centralism though in a way which demonstrates the field of contestation. Bordiga’s critical intervention maintains centralization and places it as a point of agreement, even if an artificial, stagnant, and mechanical one[36]. In otherwords, Bordiga and Gramsci disagree on the meaning and practice of democracy, but agree partly on centralism. That agreement problematizes any attempt to make centralism more innocuous. Centralism is not merely doing what you say you do, but rather a more fundamentally hierarchical power of minorities over majorities.

Jacques Cammatte, an ultra-left figure once close to Bordiga, but who split from the Bordigist movement, criticized these positions on democracy and centralism.

“The central committee of a party or the center of any sort of regroupment plays the same role as the state. Democratic centralism only managed to mimic the parliamentary form characteristic of formal domination. And organic centralism, affirmed merely in a negative fashion, as refusal of democracy and its form (subjugation of the minority to the majority, votes, congresses, etc.) actually just gets trapped again in the more modern forms. This results in the mystique of organization (as with fascism). This was how the PCI (International Communist Party [Bordigist]) evolved into a gang.”[37]

It is interesting that here, amongst the extreme of the ultra-left it is again taken without question that it is the role of the center that is in question. The question of centralism then from Leninism to left-opposition to ultra-left rejection do not contest that concept of centralism during the heyday of the theory. Unless we grant Gramsci a level of exceptionalism[38], however we construe it the debate around democratic centralism involved an understanding of the role of an organized hierarchical center with directive powers.

A Dialectical Alternative?

Moving now to a different tradition, some have looked to the structuralists that came out of Europe and Latin America for alternative tools for reconceptualizing Marxism. Though infamous for becoming apologists for the worst of Stalinism under Althusser, some of the structuralists (such as Poulantzas) embraced seemingly libertarian positions such as the autonomy of the state, if only from a problematic revisionist Marxist political economic perspective. These thinkers (Balibar, Poulantzas, Marta Harnecker, etc) inspired a generation of revolutionaries in Latin America and the Caribbean who sought more liberatory forms of Marxism and were more pluralistic in their influences[39].

In the article Should we reject bureaucratic centralism and simply use consensus?, Marta Harnecker presents arguments for democratic centralism against bureaucratic centralism. Correctly she asserts that

“For a long time, left-wing parties operated along authoritarian lines. The usual practice was that of bureaucratic centralism, influenced by the experiences of Soviet socialism. All decisions regarding criterion, tasks, initiatives, and the course of political action to take were restricted to the party elite, without the participation or debate of the membership, who were limited to following orders that they never got to discuss and in many cases did not understand. For most people, such practices are increasing intolerable”[40].

Unfortunately against these experiences, she makes a caricature of its critiques by contrasting it only to largely anti-organizational perspectives such as excessive faith in consensus decision making procedures alone. Ignoring the crass straw men in her arguments, she promotes democratic moves such as supporting positions of minorities, and encouraging full debate while discouraging majorities from dominating and crushing opposition. At the same time she quite explicitly embraces the binding authority of decisions by higher levels on the base and all the baggage that brings with it.

“For the sake of a unified course of action, lower levels of the organisation should respect the decisions made by the higher bodies, and those who have ended up in the minority should accept whatever course of action emerges triumphant, carrying out the task together with all the other members”[41].

Again, she makes an identification between democratic centralism and unification not merely of positions but rather of a centralized decision making authority. “This combination of single centralised leadership and democratic debate at different levels of the organisation is called democratic centralism. [emphasis is the author’s][42]”.

Moving to the second facet of democratic centralism, Harnecker presents a different perspective. Unlike Gramsci who sees the role of democratic centralism as a movement in time of the relationship between the masses and party, Harnecker sees the same movement and dialectic between levels of struggle and the party.

“It is a dialectic combination: in complicated political periods, of revolutionary fervour or war, there is no other alternative than to lean towards centralisation; in periods of calm, when the rhythm of events is slower, the democratic character should be emphasised”[43].

Gramsci seeks to use democratic centralism as a method for building a unity of democracy and centralization, or perhaps centralization is a democratic process of bringing together the diversity in the mass struggle within revolutionary organization. Yet Harnecker is closer to Bordiga in seeing them as polar opposites. Taking them dialectically in this fashion, we would wonder when the dialectic is overcome and what comes next (the synthesis)? The implications are not comforting as increasing struggles negate democracy and that does not give us the tools to understand how to avoid the errors of the official communist nations, in all their barbarity. This must be contextualized coming from an intellectual of the party elite writing from Habana.

The deeper point is not about the extent to which Harnecker has come to question the legacy of the Bolshevik inspired national experiments. Rather it is that the debate about democratic centralism by its adherents revolves around two poles: the issue of structural centralization, and the dialectical movement of the process of democratic centralism. Positions differ on how the dialectic is understood, how the structure is produced and relates to the masses, and how it all stands via the party and the question of externality. Yet we can see the ambiguities present at the birth of democratic centralism carry through the theory into its later incarnations. Gramsci came closest to breaking with that tradition, but without the ideological apparatus to climb over that wall. In his case, it may have been both the fascist prison walls and the Stalinist wall of communication surrounding him that prevented his escape or elaborating a separate conception.

In Practice

Democratic centralism as a theory revolves around theses about centralization, higher and lower bodies, and internal processes for revolutionary organization. What about the practice? What about recent practice, near to our own situation here in the United States in the conjuncture we find ourselves in? Luckily we have accounts of people in these movements reflecting on their participation in and construction of democratic centralist political organization not merely from one sect or tendency, but from a number of different tendencies, communities, and moments. The length of some of these passages is justified, because such accounts are not always readily available, and provide direct insight into these groups from first-hand participants.

Honing in on a few of these, we can see trends in the practice that mirror the problems in the theory. It isn’t that democratic centralism automatically creates bureaucratic or authoritarian practices. This is not a survey or a quantative study of these parties. Theories are not computer programs that spit out copies of their instructions. Practices diverge, struggle, and evolve in a historical context. Yet looking across disparate traditions and moments we do see some regularity of such practices, and when contextualized with the internal conflict in the theory of democratic centralism, we gain tools for understanding both the theory and the practices, and perhaps a way beyond them. From these reports we find themes of the suppression of critical thinking amongst cadre, directive-command structure from central bodies, suppression of debate and dissent within, holding back the political development of cadre, and unaccountable leadership/professionals. Whether deviant or not, recent US democratic centralist practice reflects the acceptance of centralized directive hierarchies rather than showing them to be contested in thought or struggle.

Central bodies

One of the core elements of democratic centralism is the relationship of central bodies to the party as a whole. Likewise as in the theory, in practice this led to strong central bodies with distinct powers and direction of the party as a whole. Max Elbaum discusses democratic centralist practice in the party and pre-party democratic centralist organizations of the New Communist Movement, a collection of Mao-inspired communist groups formed in the 60s-80s.

“…All sections of the New Communist Movement drew heavily on selections from Mao when trying to define democratic centralism, especially his concise stricture that: ‘(1) the individual is subordinate to the organization; (2) the minority is subordinate to the majority; (3) the lower level is subordinate to the higher level; and (4) the entire membership is subordinate to the Central Committee”[44]

With the entire membership subordinated to the authority of the central committee, these groups “…gave far more weight to centralism than democracy”[45]. In an environment of such concentrations of control, questions surface concerning where power lies and how the membership sets the agenda for the organization. Elbaum, speaking broadly across the various groups, reflects on how this structure proved mystifying and concentrated not merely decision making in the hands of the central bodies, but also the positions of the organizations as a whole were set by a small group of leaders.

“…The new Marxist-Leninist groups functioned with a sophisticated division of labor and pronounced hierarchy [emphasis is mine]… To exercise week-to-week leadership, the larger groups generally had some kind of central body of five to twelve people located at the national headquarters-usually termed a political bureau or executive committee. Sometimes real power rested with an even smaller subgroup dubbed a standing committee or co-chairs collective… In theory all executive committers were subordinate to the larger central committee, but in practice central committees were relegated to a relatively passive role except in periods of upheaval. Executive committees typically retained authority to choose which individuals would be assigned to the most important organizational posts, including the newspaper, theoretical journal and internal bulletin editors. Those individuals (usually members of the executive committee themselves) shaped the way an organization’s views would be present…” [46]

While perhaps in theory institutionalization of leadership could try to spread that leadership, in practice it creates a bureaucracy with interests in preserving their control over the life of the organization. Rather than resolving the question of building more capacity, this institutionalized political center problematized it as struggles emerged to retain political control over the organization. This is clear in revolutionary moments from the peaks of history, but also is evident in smaller examples from the New Communist Movement as Elbaum demonstrated.

Unaccountable professional leadership

While the formulation of democratic centralism traditionally promoted election of all positions, this has not always been utilized. In fact the convergence of power and centralization, created a situation in which the method of determining leadership became murky in practice. For the New Communist Movement, “in practice, central committees were chosen in a variety of ways, sometimes by members in each local area electing their representatives without an organization-wide congress, and sometimes without elections at all”[47]. The deep sway, culture, and politicization of institutional leadership clearly facilitates this situation. The importance and power of leadership contributes to an atmosphere of both withdrawal from and manipulation of the direction of the organization. While the theory may promote elected leadership, the professionalization and unilateral power of directive centers makes the maintenance of that democracy problematic. Historically, there was a similar repetition where that structure began to undermine the theoretical commitment to democracy.

These practices were not merely isolated to groups inspired by Mao however. In fact they ran the gamut from Trotskyists to Lotta Continua, an Italian autonomia group that moved eventually to a variant Marxist-Leninism. In England, one participant in the Trotskyist movement of the same time period discusses the relationship between full time party leadership and the factional splits characteristic of that movement. Speaking of the International Marxist Group, he said “bureaucratic centralism develops with the growth of the full-time apparatus”[48]. More recently a group of young members from the International Socialist Organization split and formed a new group called the New Socialist Project. Part of their experiences was shaped by their experiences with such organizations, and a desire to move beyond it.

“There have… been subjective weaknesses and factors that we must face up to. In a good year, the socialist micro-sects recruit a handful of students and intellectuals without training them and without any systematic development process. These sects are usually ruled by an unaccountable bureaucracy that runs its micro-empire of mini-branches with an iron-fisted combination of elitism and myopia, whether or not they have any internal ideology or rhetoric to the contrary”[49]

While we can dismiss fights and harsh words within an often-fractured milieu, these experiences and feelings are not isolated, but are pervasive in the democratic centralist organizations. Without taking sides on who is in the right, we see a repetition of the struggle around unaccountable leadership with monopolies of power holding back membership, and contestation around those centers of power. The debate is framed around these questions, even if different factions don’t agree on who is in err.

Directives/lack of critical thinking

Corresponding to the empowerment of the central bodies and the shifting power away from membership, many participants in democratic centralist groups reference a sense of carrying out orders rather than being empowered and developed to think and act as creative cadre. This was also referenced above in the quotation aimed at the International Socialist Organization from the New Socialist Project. Coming back to the New Communist Movement, Fred Ho edited a book of interviews documenting the histories of some of these groups called Legacy to Liberation. In one such interview, Chris Kando Lijima describes the role of party members under the directives of the central leadership.

“FH: Most people don’t know what [democratic centralism] was like. Describe it some more.

CI: Here’s an example from doing cultural work. Here’s the line, write a song with the line. Period. You don’t write anything else that’s not the line. It’s your job to write songs, perform songs, that illustrate the line. That was my understanding of [democratic centralism] when it came to cultural work.

FH: So it really wasn’t democratic, but directives.

CI: It was a lot of centralism, but not a lot of democracy, which was true of most groups”[50].

This assessment, that democratic centralism meant in many instances central directives rather than an active and participatory democracy is repeated in many places. Max Elbaum writes that “democratic centralism also meant that central bodies were given a great deal of power to direct the work of every other party committee”[51]. This direction of work was understood as “all members were required to belong to and take assignments from a party unit [my emphasis]”[52]. All of this is a far cry from building organizations which can help create creative, independent, and competent organizations. Contrary to what Harnecker argues, the military model of directives and assignments is here reproduced not merely in military contexts such as perhaps Russia, but rather in wholly dissimilar situations. We can imagine the reason for this lies not only in authoritarian currents in society, and class contradictions within capitalism, but more importantly from the reproduction of democratic centralist ideology and its inherent tensions.

Suppression of dissent

Directives were not simply an activity of central bodies in isolation. Mechanisms for securing the activity of party members required having means of ensuring internal discipline. Many groups effectively self-censured and implemented policies aimed at suppressing dissent and debate within, especially outside the control of the central leadership. In the New Communist Movement, tasks were assigned as stated before, however there were also polici]]></description>
			<pubDate>Sun, 17 Mar 2013 17:50:01 CET</pubDate>
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			<description><![CDATA[Jouer loin de Fukushima Merci à Martine Carton pour ce témoignage et cette traduction qui montrent ce qu&#039;est la vie après une catastrophe nucléaire. La ville de Fukushima (300&#039;000 habitants) aurait dû être évacuée : début avril 2011, elle présentait … Continue reading (...)
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		-- Actualité]]></description>
			<pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:10:01 CET</pubDate>
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			<title>[Jura Libertaire] [La liberté ou la mort] Tchernobyl sous la neige</title>
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			<description><![CDATA[Le sarcophage de Tchernobyl se serait en partie effondré Une destruction partielle des murs et du toit de l&#039;enceinte de confinement du réacteur 4 de Tchernobyl (Ukraine) serait survenue mardi 12 février, selon le service de presse de la centrale, … Continue reading (...)
		-- Luttes antinucléaires, Bouygues, Novarka, Tchernobyl]]></description>
			<pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:10:01 CET</pubDate>
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			<title>[La liberté ou la mort] Tchernobyl sous la neige</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/la-liberte-ou-la-mort-tchernobyl-sous-la-neige</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Le sarcophage de Tchernobyl se serait en partie effondré Une destruction partielle des murs et du toit de l’enceinte de confinement du réacteur 4 de Tchernobyl (Ukraine) serait survenue mardi 12 février, selon le service de presse de la centrale, … Continue reading →]]></description>
			<pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:30:01 CET</pubDate>
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			<title>Die große Wende im Osten</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/die-grose-wende-im-osten</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Geschichte. Das Kriegsjahr 1943: Anfang vom Ende faschistischer Besatzung
Von Dietrich Eichholtz
	
Januar 1943 in Casablanca: Im Osten kämpft die Rote Arme auf Leben und Tod und im Westen lernt Elliott Roosevelt den Hitlergruß, während US-Präsident Roosevelt (2. v. l.) und Englands Premier Churchill mit der Westfront nicht an den S
	Die Niederlage der Wehrmacht in Stalingrad im Winter 1942/43 veränderte den Krieg, wendete das Schicksal all der Völker, die der deutsche Faschismus in finsteres Elend zu stürzen unternommen hatte (siehe jW-Thema vom 19.11.2012). Noch dauerte es aber anderthalb schwere, blutige Jahre, bis die UdSSR, damals in Europa militärisch fast auf sich allein gestellt, den größten Teil ihres okkupierten Heimatbodens freigekämpft hatte.
	Eine »vergessene« Zeit nennen manche deutschen Militärhistoriker neuerdings das Jahr 1943 und können doch wohl kaum übersehen, daß der Beginn der unaufhaltsamen, großräumigen Vertreibung der Wehrmacht aus dem Sowjetland das wichtigste, gewaltigste Ereignis des Krieges seit Stalingrad darstellte. Ihre Motivation ist durchsichtig: Es handelte sich, bis auf kleinräumige, kurzzeitige Abwehrschlachten, ausschließlich um deutsche Niederlagen und Rückzüge in ununterbrochener Folge, die dem heute wiedererstandenen deutschen Großmachtimage nicht gut anstehen wollen.
	Alliierte Erfolge
	Seit dem Kriegseintritt der USA am 6. Dezember 1941 hatte sich das militärische und wirtschaftliche Kräfteverhältnis zugunsten der Antihitlerfront ganz offensichtlich und unwiderleglich verändert. Bis zum Mai 1943 wurden die deutsch-italienischen Truppen vom afrikanischen Boden vertrieben; in Tunis wanderten die verbliebenen 250000 Mann ihres Bestandes in die Gefangenschaft. Im Nordatlantik erlitt die deutsche U-Boot-Flotte zur selben Zeit immense Verluste und mußte den Krieg gegen den britischen und sowjetischen Nachschub über See weitgehend einstellen. Die deutsche Luftwaffe fand in dem Vielfrontenkrieg, den zu führen sie schon lange zu schwach war, kein Mittel gegen die zunehmende Lufthoheit der westalliierten Bomberflotten. Der von deutschen Truppen besetzte Norden, Westen und Süden Kontinentaleuropas lag von nun an im unmittelbaren Gefahrenbereich einer Invasion. Nach der alliierten Landung auf Sizilien im August 1943 wechselte der bisherige deutsche Verbündete Italien die Seite.
	Im Osten griff die Rote Armee auf der gesamten Frontlänge von über 3000 Kilometern während des ganzen Jahres 1943 an, offensiv auch in beiden Wintern. Sie erreichte im Norden und Süden der Front die Nähe der Westgrenze der UdSSR und überschritt sie erstmals im März/April 1944 in Nordrumänien. Hunderte Städte, Tausende Ortschaften wurden frei.
	Schon seit Januar 1943 hatte eine sowjetische Offensive bei Schlüsselburg einen Landweg nach Osten für die rings eingeschlossene Stadt Leningrad freigemacht. Ein Jahr später war es endlich so weit: Seit dem 12./14. Januar 1944 griff die Rote Armee von Leningrad und vom Wolchow aus in breiter Front nach Süden und Westen an und eroberte – mit Hilfe der Partisanen – das Leningrader Gebiet bis Ende des Monats schon bis zu einer Tiefe von fast 200 Kilometern. Damit war die Stadt nach 900 Tagen aus ihrer tödlichen Umklammerung befreit und der Gefahr des Untergangs endgültig entrissen.
	In der Frontmitte war das Moskauer Gebiet schon seit dem Winter 1941/42 frei. Ein Jahr später war der Feind überall fast 400 Kilometer nach Westen abgedrängt. Im Süden hingegen hatten die Kämpfe Stalingrad und den Kaukasus bis zu 1600 Kilometer hinter sich gelassen; seit der Schlacht an der Wolga hatte die Rote Armee den Don, den Donez, den Dnepr erreicht und überschritten, nahm den Übergang über den (südlichen) Bug und den Dnestr in Angriff und kämpfte sich Ende 1943 auf den Prut, den rumänischen Grenzfluß, vor.
	Die Kursker Schlacht
	Das Jahr 1943, in dem die Rote Armee die Befreiung der Heimat in ihrer entscheidenden Phase erfocht, läßt die kurzlebige deutsche Offensive bei Kursk im Juli in einem anderen Licht erscheinen als in jener grotesken Überschätzung, die sie in Veröffentlichungen mancher deutschen Militärhistoriker erfährt. Wenn überhaupt ein strategischer Gedanke in dieser seit März in der Planung befindlichen mäßig großen Operation – der letzten dieser Art im Osten – zu erkennen ist, so war es der, den »Russen« an dieser einen Stelle vernichtend zu schlagen, ihn auf lange Zeit zu lähmen, deutsche Kräfte für die nächste Zukunft freizumachen und eine Art Zentralreserve für die Bildung einer Art »Festung Europa« hinter einem »Ostwall« zu mobilisieren. Bewähren würden sich, so die Überzeugung der deutschen Führung, ihre Feldherrnkunst und die deutsche Waffen- (Panzer-) und soldatische Überlegenheit – Hirngespinste des »Führers« und der ihm hörigen Generalität!
	Die Offensive begann schließlich am 5. Juli 1943, mußte aber nach weniger als zwei Wochen, zwischen dem 16. und 19. Juli, nach blutigen Kämpfen und geringem Geländegewinn, unter heftigen Auseinandersetzungen in der Heeresführung, abgebrochen werden. Die erbitterten Kämpfe, die mit je etwa 3000 Panzern auf beiden Seiten ausgetragen wurden, beschrieben deutsche Teilnehmer, einfache Soldaten, später als »Weltuntergang«, als »Hölle«. Als jener »Weltuntergang« wurde in erster Linie die berühmt-berüchtigte Panzerschlacht von Prochorowka am 12. Juli nördlich von Belgorod erlebt. Die Verluste beider Seiten bei diesem Zusammenstoß und unbarmherzigen Vernichtungskampf zweier gewaltiger Panzergruppen mit jeweils Hunderten Panzerwagen auf kleinstem Raum waren desaströs. In deutschen Darstellungen wird die Schlacht heute als »Sieg« – ohne Geländegewinn und mit folgenden entsetzlichen Niederlagen – reklamiert. Die Verluste werden nach herbeigeschwindelten Quellen mit ganzen 41 »beschädigten« deutschen Kampfwagen gegenüber mehr als 300 sowjetischen »Totalverlusten« beziffert. Zudem wird die sowjetische Führung von Stalin an abwärts bis zu den Truppenkommandeuren der Roten Armee für das »verfehlte« operative Vorgehen kritisiert. – Ein derartiges Schema der »Abrechnung«, zur Schau gestellt mit peinlich antisowjetischer Genugtuung, macht, das ganze Jahr 1943 betreffend, in der heutigen militärhistorischen Literatur Schule.
	Weitere Offensiven
	Tatsächlich aber hatten im Juli und Anfang August eine Reihe überwältigender sowjetischer und alliierter Offensiven begonnen, die Hitler und die Generalität die Schlacht nicht nur nach 14 Tagen abbrechen, sondern starke Kräfte abziehen und an Gefahrenpunkte höchster Dringlichkeit verteilen ließen:
	– Am 10. Juli setzten die ersten alliierten Truppen von Nordafrika nach Sizilien über und eroberten die Insel bis zum 17. August. Schon am 24./25. Juli 1943 wurde Mussolini als »Duce« von König Viktor Emanuel III. abgesetzt. Ita­lien bereitete seinen Übergang zu den Alliierten vor.
	– Am 12. Juli begannen mehrere sowjetische Fronten ihre Gegenoffensive, die sie nördlich des Kursker Bogens nach Orel und an Orel vorbei nach Westen führte und die im September schließlich in eine allgemeine Offensive der gesamten mittleren und Südfront überging.
	– Die Gegenoffensive im Süden des Kursker Bogens (Beginn 3. August) führte zur Befreiung von Belgorod und Charkow. Beide Offensiven erreichten den Dnepr und damit den geplanten »Ostwall« Hitlers auf einer Breite von 1200 Kilometern und gewannen die Ausgangsposition für die Eroberung Kiews im November.
	– Im Südabschnitt hatte eine sowjetische Großoffensive bereits am 17. Juli begonnen, die bis September über Isjum (Donez), Slawjansk, Kramatorsk, Stalino, Taganrog und Mariupol entlang des Asowschen Meeres bis vor Melitopol führte und damit den größten Teil des Donezbeckens befreite.
	Die Befreiung der Ukraine und Südrußlands machte im Winter 1943 und Frühjahr 1944 weiter stürmische Fortschritte bis an die Karpaten und in die Nähe der polnischen und rumänischen Grenze.
	Die Antihitlerkoalition 1943
	
Verlauf der Kampfhandlungen an der deutsch-sowjetischen Front zwischen April und Dezember 1943
	Die deutsche Niederlage bei Stalingrad zeigte begeisternde Wirkung zu allererst bei den Völkern der Antihitlerkoalition. Die Reaktion der führenden Kreise in den USA und in Großbritannien war allerdings bei weitem nicht so einhellig. ­US-Präsident Franklin D. Roosevelt gratulierte Stalin zu dem Sieg und drückte seine Bewunderung für die Rote Armee aus. Sein Amtskollege Winston Churchill sah frühzeitig, daß ein bewaffnetes Erscheinen der Westalliierten auf dem Kontinent für ihr Ansehen jetzt immer wichtiger, wenn auch voraussichtlich nicht einfacher werde. »Wenn Rußland den Krieg allein gewinnt, so wird es auch am Friedenstisch allein dominieren«, hieß es warnend in der New York Post vom 10. Februar 1943. Die antisowjetischen Kräfte gar zeigten alles andere als Begeisterung für die sowjetischen Erfolge.
	Roosevelt und Churchill trafen sich vom 14. bis 26. Januar 1943 in Casablanca (Französisch-Marokko), um die Lage in Europa und Afrika sowie im Pazifik zu erörtern. Der Krieg gegen Deutschland spielte hier eine zentrale und nicht zum wenigsten umstrittene Rolle. Eine früher für 1943 zugesagte alliierte Invasion in Westeuropa sahen die militärischen Stäbe nicht mehr vor. Churchill und Roosevelt versuchten nach der Konferenz, dem empörten Stalin ihren Wortbruch zu erklären. Ihre Hauptargumente waren die japanischen Eroberungen und schweren Kämpfe auf dem pazifischen Kriegsschauplatz und die Schwierigkeiten der Vorbereitung einer Invasion in Westfrankreich, die beide umfangreiche See- und Luftrüstungen erforderlich machten.
	Bestimmte Erklärungen auf der Casablanca-Konferenz sollten offensichtlich als Ausgleich dafür dienen, daß jenes wichtigste Anliegen der UdSSR, nämlich die Eröffnung der zweiten Front, mindestens ein Jahr aufgeschoben wurde. Zu nennen ist zu allererst die Absicht, die deutsch-italienischen Truppen aus Nordafrika durch gemeinsame Offensivanstrengungen von Osten (Ägypten) und Westen her (Französisch-Westafrika) zu verdrängen und baldmöglichst nach Italien (Sizilien) überzusetzen. Ferner sollte der Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland in Zukunft intensiviert und konzentriert, nicht zuletzt gegen die innerdeutsche Wirtschaft, geführt werden. Die strategischen Angriffe der US-Langstrecken-Bomberflotten setzten ostentativ im Januar mit einem Tagesgroßangriff gegen Wilhelmshaven ein.
	Eine Frage, die häufig zu Beschwerden des sowjetischen Oberkommandos Anlaß gab, war die Unregelmäßigkeit, Unsicherheit und Verspätung der Lend-Lease-Hilfslieferungen an die UdSSR, die 1942 und noch 1943 stockend anliefen und zu dieser Zeit wertmäßig nicht mehr als etwa 20 Prozent der US-amerikanischen Gesamtlieferungen ausmachten. Nach Casablanca setzten die Lieferungen über die damals wichtigste Nordroute über Murmansk viele Monate lang ganz aus (siehe die Übersicht der Kriegsmateriallieferungen).
	Roosevelt hatte sich schon einige Zeit, auch gegen Widerstand aus den eigenen Reihen, für einen baldigen Schlag in Westeuropa gegen Hitlerdeutschland eingesetzt (»Germany first«). Am 24. Januar 1943 trat er in Casablanca auf der abschließenden Pressekonferenz mit der Formel von der »bedingungslosen Kapitulation« hervor, die er offenbar nur mit dem State Department abgestimmt hatte. Diese »einfache Formulierung der Kriegsziele« könne »allem Ermessen nach den Weltfrieden für Generationen sichern«. Sie bedeute »die Zerstörung einer Weltanschauung in Deutschland, Italien und Japan, die auf der Eroberung und Unterjochung anderer Völker beruht«. Diese Formulierung wurde von sowjetischer Seite begrüßt und spielte eine wichtige Rolle bei der Festigung der Antihitlerkoalition.
	Polen »verschieben«
	Eines der schwierigsten Probleme, das 1943 erhebliche Spannungen in das Verhältnis innerhalb der Antihitlerkoalition brachte, war das der polnischen Nachkriegsgrenzen. Im April 1943 waren im Gebiet Smolensk bei Katyn die Leichen von über 4000 offensichtlich im Jahr 1940 erschossenen polnischen Offizieren von den Deutschen ausgegraben worden. Seitdem war die Urheberschaft dieser Untat umstritten; sie wird aber heutzutage den stalinschen Organen zugeschrieben.
	Die polnische Exilregierung in London brach alle offiziellen Verhandlungen mit Moskau ab, obwohl die Rote Armee der polnischen Grenze südlich von Brest im Laufe des Jahres immer näher kam. Churchill hielt die dramatische Situation für lösbar und blieb später in Teheran mit seinem Vorschlag ohne Widerspruch, Polen zu »verschieben«. Zur Empörung der Exilpolen schlug er als Ostgrenze Polens die alte Curzon-Linie seines damaligen Kabinettskollegen ­George Curzon aus dem Jahr 1920 vor, die sich nun aber wesentlich mit der deutsch-sowjetischen Grenze vom August 1939 deckte. Als Äquivalent dachte Churchill an eine Verschiebung der polnischen Westgrenze bis an die Oder, unter Einschluß Ostpreußens.
	Diese geplante Operation am offenen Leib Polens schuf eine Art Cordon Sanitaire gegen künftige Gefahren, die von Deutschland ausgehen könnten. Sie war für die damalige polnische Exilregierung nicht annehmbar. Aber Churchills »Teheraner Formel« fand Stalins Zustimmung. Roosevelt verhielt sich in der Frage der polnischen Grenzen zurückhaltend.
	Er blieb daran interessiert, sich überhaupt für spätere Friedensverhandlungen in Europa die Hände freizuhalten. Später sollte sich zeigen, wieviel politischer Zündstoff sich in dem Problem der Wiederherstellung Polens verbarg; die reaktionären Kräfte, die in der polnischen Exilregierung dominierten, stützten sich außenpolitisch vorwiegend auf die antisowjetischen Sympathisanten in den USA und Großbritannien.
	Die gewaltigen Erfolge der Roten Armee in der Ukraine drängten die Westalliierten zur Beschleunigung des Eingreifens in Westeuropa. Roosevelt verband damit die Anwartschaft der USA auf die politische und strategische Führerschaft im westlichen Bündnis, was freilich nicht im Sinne Churchills war, dem eine solche Rolle im europäischen und afrikanischen Raum, wenigstens nach errungenem Sieg, für das britische Weltreich vorschwebte.
	»Totaler Krieg«
	Nach Stalingrad und nach der Landung der Alliierten in Italien war die deutsche Niederlage militärisch mit Händen zu greifen. In der deutschen Generalität sahen nur einige wenige ein schreckliches Ende voraus. In ihrer Masse blieben die Generale und Marschälle Kreaturen Hitlers, gewissenlose Ehrgeizlinge, die ihre Verbrechen – Massenmorde, »verbrannte Erde« – im fremden Land fortsetzten und deren Renommee sich nur noch vom sinnlosen Blutvergießen – fremden und deutschen Blutes – herleitete. Bis zum Exzeß chauvinistisch und antikommunistisch, widmeten sie die Reste ihrer militärischen Begabung ausschließlich der Vernichtung fremden Lebens und der Verlängerung des eigenen.
	Deutschland war 1943 militärisch und wirtschaftlich noch eine starke, gefährliche Macht. Die Ostfront blieb die entscheidende Front, die das ganze Jahr hindurch die Masse der Divisionen fesselte und in immer härteren Kämpfen verschliß. Aber auch der europäische Süden und der inva­sionsgefährdete Westen und Norden verlangten Divisionen auf Divisionen, ferner Kräfte und Material für Verteidigung und Küstenschutz. »Die Personalfrage«, erklärte Hitler Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein am 11. März, »ist unsere größte Sorge und das weitaus ernsteste Problem«.
	Mit einigem Recht kann der Historiker im Nachhinein urteilen, daß Hitler seit Stalingrad und dem Fiasko in Nordafrika und in Italien nicht mehr Herr der Lage war und, mehr oder weniger im Wahn krankhafter Überforderung, an einem beschleunigten Weg in den Untergang festhielt, der noch Millionen an Opfern auf beiden Seiten fordern sollte. Reale Pfänder, über die das Regime noch 1943 zu verfügen schien, waren eine beängstigende militärische Macht, die, bis auf die Luftabwehr, noch weit von den deutschen Grenzen entfernt operieren konnte; ferner eine weitgehend intakte Rüstungsmacht. Rüstungsminister Albert Speer und die mit seiner Regierungsbehörde fest verbundene Großindustrie versprachen dem »Führer« sogar, eine neue, unschlagbare U-Boot-Generation zu schaffen, und arbeiteten an der Entwicklung wirksamer Abwehrwaffen gegen die alliierten Bomberflotten. In engem Bündnis mit Innenminister Heinrich Himmler waren Speer und Hitler sich ihrer Gewalt über die Millionen von Zwangsarbeitern und KZ-Häftlingen im Reich sicher. Himmler und die SS beteiligten sich selber an der Unter-Tage-Verlagerung und an der Aufstellung der sogenannten Vergeltungswaffen.
	Europäischer Widerstand
	Mit dem Sieg von Stalingrad und der fortschreitenden Befreiung des Sowjetlandes begann im übrigen Europa eine neue Ära antifaschistischen Befreiungskampfes. Er ergriff jetzt breitere Bevölkerungskreise in ganz Europa, geführt von nationalen Befreiungs- und kommunistischen Widerstandsorganisationen (Frankreich, Jugoslawien, Griechenland, Polen, Italien), die mitunter in direkter Verbindung mit der Moskauer Regierung und der Roten Armee standen und Waffenhilfe erhielten.
	Weltweit bekannt wurden Aktionen wie der Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto, die Rettung der Mehrheit der dänischen Juden vor Deportation und Vernichtung, die Verhinderung von Produktion und Lieferung norwegischen Schweren Wassers für die geplante deutsche Atombewaffnung und der Kampf gegen den deutschen Eisenbahntransport in Frankreich und Belgien in den Monaten bis zur Invasion.
	An dem Befreiungskampf der Roten Armee hatten die sowjetischen Partisanen inzwischen einen entscheidenden Anteil. Berühmt wurde die umfassende Zerstörung von wichtigen Eisenbahnverbindungen und Nachschublinien (»Schienenkrieg«). Der Kampf gegen die Partisanen band 1943 außer den dafür bereitgehaltenen Hunderten von SS-, SD- und Polizeieinheiten eine halbe Million Soldaten als Hilfstruppen und durchschnittlich etwa zehn bis 15 Prozent der Heerestruppen.
	So waren der gesamteuropäische Widerstand und die kämpfenden sowjetischen Partisanen während des Jahres 1943 und im Frühjahr 1944 außer den Fronttruppen selbst die wichtigste und wirksamste Kraft der Antihitlerkoalition.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:00:01 CET</pubDate>
			</item><item>
			<title>Anarchists and the French-Algerian War</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/anarchists-and-the-frenchalgerian-war</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Book review of David Porter&#039;s &quot;Eyes to the South; French Anarchists and Algeria&quot;
How did French anarchists deal with the Algerian revolution? How anarchists in an imperialist country reacted to a war for national liberation? What this tells us about how anarchists today should relate to current struggles for self-determination of oppressed peoples?
From 1954 to 1962, a vicious, war raged between the people of Algeria and the French state. Anarchists in France played a small but significant role in opposing their government’s colonial war. Their activities and views are covered in this exceptional book, along with anarchists’ attitudes toward post-war Algeria. The ways French anarchists opposed the war, and the varying views they held about it, may help today’s antiauthoritarians (in the US and elsewhere) in thinking through our views about struggles against national oppression. 

The world remains divided into nations. Most nations today have “their own” states, with their own flags, money, and postage stamps, not to mention armies and presidents (although there are still exceptions, such as Puerto Rico, Palestine, and Tibet). But they are still integrated into the world market, which remains dominated by the international corporations based in the imperial countries. And they are still integrated into the power structure of the world’s states, which may turn into military invasion and occupation by the major powers at any time. As I write, the US state is occupying Afghanistan, waging “covert” war on several other countries, such as Pakistan, and threatening imminent war against two other countries, Syria and Iran, while expanding its military bases around China. So issues of imperialism, nations, national wars, national oppression, and nationalism are far from “over” or irrelevant in today’s world. 

There has been some coverage of anarchists in oppressed nations. Hirsch &amp; van der Walt (2010) has a set of essays on anarchist and syndicalist organizing in “the colonial and postcolonial world.” They cover Egypt, South Africa, Korea, China, Ukraine (Makhno), Ireland, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and the Caribbean. There is a fine book by Ramnath (2011) on anarchism and India. She focuses not so much on self-identified anarchists as on libertarian, near-anarchist, trends in the Indian freedom movement (for example, Gandhi and Gandhism were not anarchist, but were decentralist). 

But I find Porter’s book especially interesting because it concerns the role of anarchists within the imperial nation, opposing that nation’s policies. Their issues are close to those faced by the movements US anarchists have been directly involved in (although I think they would have interest for anarchists currently living in oppressed nations).

First, let me clarify some terms (I have learned that this is often necessary when discussing national issues with anarchists and antistatist Marxists). By “national oppression” I mean that a people (self-identified as a nation) is dominated and controlled by the state and capitalists of another nation. (Nations are, of course, socially constructed out of people’s actions and beliefs; most—but not all--of its people are workers, peasants, and small businesspeople.) In general the world is divided into a minority of oppressor nations and a majority of oppressed nations, although this is not a razor-sharp division. “National liberation” is the goal of a people to be free of this foreign domination. “National self-determination” means that a people has the right to decide its own future, its own political and economic organization (including whether to have a state or no state, whether to be capitalist or state socialist or libertarian communist). The freedom to make decisions for yourself does not, obviously, mean that peoples (or individuals) will make the right decisions at first. Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes. 

“Nationalism” is not a synonym for “national liberation.” Instead, it is one (only one) possible program advocated to achieve national liberation. It says that a people can be free if they win their own state and their own capitalist economy (sometimes state capitalism). It declares common interests between the upper classes and the working classes of the oppressed nation and overlooks various divisions within the nation (of gender, religion, minority nationalities, etc.). 

Anarchists and other libertarian socialists do not agree with this program. At best, it would result in the workers and peasants of a formerly oppressed nation being exploited by their “own” nation’s capitalists instead of by foreign capitalists. But actually, we say it will not even achieve this goal. There will be no real national liberation. Even winning its own state, the nation would remain oppressed within the imperialist world economy and great-state power politics. Only the revolution of the international working class and its allies can end all national oppression, by creating a nonstatist, libertarian socialist, and federated world. Anarchists may have a “negative” agreement with nationalists, in that both are “against” national oppression. But what the two trends are “for,” what they think will truly end this oppression, is quite different.

Finally, there are some ignorant anarchists and libertarian Marxists who regard “national self-determination” as something Lenin thought up. Not so. National self-determination is part of the traditional bourgeois-democratic program (of, say, the U.S. and French revolutions). It goes along with freedom of speech and of association, with land to the peasants, with the election of officials, with equality before the law of gender, race, and religion, and so on. Of course, the bourgeoisie never has lived up to its program, not consistently. Lenin thought that advocating such democratic demands would strengthen his party and lead to (his version of) socialism. What was wrong with Lenin was not his support of democratic demands! That is not what anarchists reject about Leninism.

The French-Algerian War

After World War II, the French rulers sought to re-establish their empire (which says something of the nature of that “war against fascism”). They tried to rebuild their colony in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. The Vietnamese people drove them out. But they were more persistent about continuing to rule Algeria in North Africa. Algeria, they claimed, was not even a colony, but was an integral part of France. There were about a million French settlers (colons) who had made their homes in Algeria, 10 percent of the whole Algerian population. Meanwhile the actual Algerians were treated as aliens in their own homeland, or as second-rate “citizens” at best. 

Unlike Vietnam, the national rebellion was not led by “Communists.” Its leaders were more-or-less “for” socialism (understood as state socialism, which in practice has always meant state capitalism). Much of the leadership was secular but they made an alliance with Muslim forces which wanted a religious state. The movement was, as Porter writes, “…largely a coalition of competing personal and regional cliques and political factions, with leadership…committed only to an independent nationalist and populist regime with greatly enhanced opportunities for personal gain and power” (p. 31). 

As usual, what the leadership intended and what the workers and peasants wanted were different, implying different programs. “Meanwhile, radical egalitarian expectations inevitably emerged at the grassroots level ….While such radical hopes among Algerian workers in the cities and prosperous colon farms implied some sort of modernist socialism, the poor peasantry—the great majority of ALN soldiers--was communitarian in a more traditionalist sense” (same). 

The settlers were violently against any reform, however mild, in their rule over the Algerians. They were tied into right wing forces in the French army. But the organized left was no help to the oppressed. The president of France was Guy Mollet, a Socialist, elected on a program of peace. Instead he expanded the war, directing that it be waged by terror, massacre, and mass torture. The Communist Party supported the Socialists in the government and therefore the war, up until almost the end--the Soviet Union sought an alliance with the French government! (Previously Communists had supported France’s war in Vietnam.) In 1958, the Socialists were booted out and deGaulle brought in, to win the war. DeGaulle came to realize that this could not be done. He ended the war in 1962, ceding independence (in a Nixon-goes-to-China fashion).

After 8 years of war, the number killed were estimated to have been between 300 thousand to a million Muslim Algerians (out of a population of about 9 million). The wounded or missing were even a larger number, and about 3 million had been displaced. The aftereffects of the widespread use of torture by the French cannot be measured. Among the colons, the number of killed or missing was probably 50 to 60 thousand (about 5 percent of their population). After independence, around 90 % of French Algerians fled the country, fleeing a people they had made into an enemy.

 Porter provides a concise and clear overview of the politics within the French empire and within the Algerian nationalist forces—during and after the war. I will not review this, since I am most interested in his overview of the French anarchists’ reactions to the war.

French Anarchist Positions

Porter puts the French anarchists’ anti-war positions in the context of their overall development. I am not going to summarize his overview of specific organizations. For further background, see Berry (2009), who takes the history of French anarchism up to 1945, when Porter begins his story. Skirda (2002) gives an overview of European anarchism, from the point-of-view of “platformism,” including a chapter on the French during this period. 

All the French anarchists were against the war waged by the French state. They stood against the Socialists and Communists, as well as against former members of the Resistance who now used fascist methods against the Algerians. They organized demonstrations and mass meetings, petitions and newspaper articles. They built alliances with other anti-war and radical organizations (pacifists, Trotskyists, Maoists, Catholic leftists, etc.). They opposed conscription and helped draft evaders and deserters. The government responded by banning meetings and demonstrations, attacking them with police, fining their organizations, and jailing their members. It was particularly dangerous to oppose the draft and supposedly sow dissatisfaction among the soldiers. However, almost 600 military evaders were smuggled to Switzerland by an underground railroad (Skirda, 2002).

 But the area of controversy among anarchists was the attitude to take toward the Algerian struggle. It was one thing to be “against” waging war on the Algerians. However, the Algerians were de facto in two or more competing organizations, with their own army, aiming to set up their own national state, and fighting with their own methods (including, at times, terrorist attacks on civilian colons). They were not anarchists or any kind of libertarian socialists. 

One possible approach was to condemn both sides of the war as equally bad. For example, in 1960 some anarcho-pacifists condemned the “…war [which] has raged between France and Algeria. For six years, it’s proceeded, encouraging blind terror from one side, disgraceful torture from the other…” (quoted in Porter, 2011; p. 80). But even this statement put the burden on France to “initiate a ceasefire since it is the colonial conquest, the stupid racism, and the spite of privilege that made this war inevitable” (same). 

Others came close to this view of condemning both sides in the war. They focused on opposing their own imperialist power, but were largely critical and pessimistic about an Algerian victory. They pointed out that this would lead to a new state, a new capitalism, new oppressions, and likely religious intolerance. (All of which came true.)

But one group made a clear comment. “We have not chosen between two governments. We’ve chosen the camp of oppressed people in revolt, those who, for over a century have been insulted, robbed, and reduced to misery in there own country….They are not anarchists, they carry out a war of national independence. And how could it be otherwide?” (quoted on p. 61). 

Another group of anarchists declared, “National independence of the colonial territories…creates--in protecting a people from the repressive apparatus of an imperialist state, all the while weakening that state—the possibililties for this people to make its revolution by suppressing its own exploiters” (quoted on p. 53).

Some anarchists chose to explicitly side with the Algerian rebels and their nationalist organizations. George Fontenis was later to comment that his group’s public stance of clear support to the Algerian revolution “’saved the honor’…of the proletariat and the anarchist movement” (quoted on p. 36). They supported all the Algerian insurrectionists against the French state, but they did not take sides in conflicts between the two main Algerian national organizations (which sometimes ended in killings). In addition to the other anti-war activities of the rest of the anarchists, they provided direct help to the Algerian armed forces, working in support networks which smuggled guns and money, found printers for their literature, provided safe houses in France, arranged for lawyers for Algerian prisoners, and did other services. Naturally the French government came down very hard on this wing of the movement, causing its main group to officially disband. 

Porter also covers the views of activities of two individuals: Albert Camus and Daniel Guerin. While Camus was close to the anarchist movement for a while, he does not seem to ever really have been an anarchist. Guerin, however, played an important role. Many readers will know him from his book on anarchism and his anthology of anarchist writings. He evolved from a quasi-Trotskyist background to revolutionary anarchism (although believing that anarchists could use certain aspects of Marxism, an opinion which I share, at least in principle). He was also a Gay activist (not mentioned in this book). At the time of the war, Guerin was a “public intellectual,” in the same general category as Sartre and Camus. Porter compares him to Chomsky, today. Guerin was “probably the best-known politically engaged French intellectual critic of colonialism by 1954….He would eventually become the single most prolific French anarchist writer on Algeria” (p. 43). 

Guerin expressed his solidarity with the Algerian people in insurrection, and he was for their nationalist organizations when they fought against the French state (which is not the same as endorsing their politics, which he did not). In 1956, he wrote, 

“As long as French troops…trample Algerian land, every wrong will be on our side. Whatever attitude Algerians adopt toward us or whatever they undertake or do against us will be right…What can we do if the program of the most extreme Algerian [nationalists] is from our social point of view, reactionary and tending to allow the anti-popular aspirations of the bourgeoisie to triumph? It is for their peasants, not us, to explain this to them” (quoted on p. 47). 

He improved this last perspective later, in 1959. As summarized by Porter, his view became, “While European anti-colonists typically refrain…from criticizing the problems and contradictions of national liberation struggles…it is wrong to be silent since our basic criterion is genuine movement toward human emancipation and we are all citizens of the world…It is not a betrayal to speak with courage and lucidity about unsatisfactory aspects of the struggle” (p. 48). And in fact he wrote a detailed critique of the wartime struggle. He also praised the work of Franz Fanon, who participated in the Algerian struggle, but wrote powerful critiques of the limitations of post-independence nationalist states.

Porter only covers the Algerian war for independence in Part I of a V part book. As anarchists had warned, after the revolution, Algeria became a one-party, military-dominated, poverty-stricken, religion-influenced, neo-colony. That this happened does not mean that the anarchists were wrong who expressed solidarity, in some form, with the rebelling Algerians. It does mean that it would have been wrong to hide criticisms of the authoritarian nature of the nationalist movement (the way US radicals have done in the past in regard to Vietnam or Central America). It is unclear from this book whether the anarchists made many efforts to reach out to Algerians, to spread anarchist ideas or organization (which would have faced the double repression of the French authorities and the Algerian nationalists). It does say that French anarchists did have “many direct political discussions” with militants of the various nationalist organizations and that “certain…militants were even close to joining” an anarchist group” (p. 39), but leaves it at that.

Very interestingly, the post-revolutionary economy was not simply a mix of private investment and state ownership (traditional and state capitalism). There also developed a fairly widespread self-managed (autogestion) sector, of factories and large farms abandoned by the fleeing colons. The workers took them over and started to run them. This was essentially spontaneous, by the workers, with almost no theoretical planning. (It was a sign of the implicit second program, the program of the workers and peasants, as opposed to the official statist program of the nationalist leadership.) The level of efficiency varied, of course, but some enterprises worked very well, especially with some state aid. Instead of using this as the basis for a new economy, the nationalists undermined it through government overregulation and market manipulation, until it failed. 

 His book goes up to “the present” and covers more recent evidence of class struggle and the drive of the popular classes toward a libertarian, communal, future. He discusses Berber and urban revolts, and the Kabyle autonomy movement, and the responses to them of the French anarchist movement.

Were They Wrong?

Were the anarchist wrong, those who sought some way to express solidarity with the Algerian insurrection, despite its nationalist leadership? I do not mean to ask whether any specific tactics were right (such as smuggling guns) but whether they were right to show solidarity in some way. I think they were right, in principle, even though the Algerian state turned out to be what anarchists had feared it would be. First, because it is only by being on the side of the rebellion that it was even a possibility of making contact with Algerian workers and peasants and showing them that anarchist revolution was the only way of really achieving their goals. Secondliy, because, morrally, anarchist revolutionaries are always on the side of the oppressed. This did not require support for the nationalists and the state they wanted to create. It does require solidarity with the workers, peasants, and small businesspeople of the oppressed nation when they fight against their imperial oppressor.

In conclusion, this is an interesting and a valuable book. I have focused on one aspect of it, namely its coverage of the French-Algerian war and the reactions of the French anarchists. I believe that this aspect can provide much food for thought when considering the vital question of how anarchists should view national self-determination struggles. But there is much more of use in this book, worth reading and studying.
Wayne Price
Written for www.anarkismo.net
References
Berry, David (2009). A History of the French Anarchist Movement, 1917 to 1945. Oakland CA: AK Press.

Hirsch, Steven, &amp; van der Walt, Lucien (2010). Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World; 1870-1940; The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution. Leiden, The Netherlands/Boston: Brill.

Porter, David (2011). Eyes to the South; French Anarchists and Algeria. Oakland CA: AK Press.

Ramnath, Maia (2011). Decolonizing Anarchism; An Antiauthoritarian History of India’s Liberation Struggle.
Oakland CA: AK Press/Institute for Anarchist Studies.

Skirda, Alexandre (2002). Facing the Enemy; A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968 (trans. Paul Sharkey). Oakland CA: AK Press.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:20:01 CET</pubDate>
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			<title>Contre un féminisme complice du patriarcat</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/contre-un-feminisme-complice-du-patriarcat</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Deux forment de militantisme féministe se font entendre: le militantisme lobbyiste et le militantisme «déshabillé» qui cherche à attirer les médias. Il manque aujourd’hui la voix d’un féminisme de combat.
Entre féminisme institutionnel et nudité militante, la voie est étroite pour les féministes radicales. Ce texte est écrit avant « les 6 heures pour l’égalité des salaires entre les hommes et les femmes » qui ont eu lieu le 20 octobre. Il s’agit là d’entendre des chercheuses, des militantes et des travailleuses en lutte pour « mettre au centre du débat sur l’égalité salariale les travailleuses les plus précaires » et exiger l’augmentation des salaires dans « tous les secteurs féminisés ». On ne peut qu’être d’accord sur les objectifs. Et un moment pour se réchauffer ensemble et alimenter nos analyses n’est pas à négliger. Mais pour quelle efficacité ? La loi sur l’égalité des salaires existe, le précariat des femmes est chiffré, analysé et connu.

Comment faire avancer le féminisme ?

Le collectif Féministes en mouvement regroupe 21 associations et organisent des rencontres d’été. Cette année le thème était « L’égalité hommes-femmes en chantier ». Les objectifs sont l’échange, la productiond’analyses et de propositions pour le pouvoir. Quelle efficacité ? Le mouvement féministe est riche en analyses de la situation. Et le pouvoir s’assied sur ses propositions, en particulier en matière économique. Elles ont également interpelé les candidates aux élections présidentielles. Toute cette énergie ne devrait-elle pas être utilisée autrement ? Ajoutons les rassemblements bi-annuels des 8 mars et 25 novembre, qui rappellent que rien n’est gagné (mais celles et ceux qui ne le savent pas ne seront pas convaincus ainsi), une pétition contre le viol… Internet a sans doute beaucoup facilité l’organisation entre militantes, mais malheureusement il a aussi rendu le « pétitionnage » trop facile. Ce féminisme traditionnel – tout à fait estimable – ainsi que l’échange et l’élaboration, sont utiles mais ce féminisme n’a aucune efficacité, encore moins aujourd’hui où le patriarcat et le capitalisme sont en guerre contre le monde du travail et les femmes en particulier. Les rassemblements revendicatifs qui ont suivi le verdict récent et honteux d’un procès de viols collectifs ont plus fait pour l’appel du parquet que la campagne de pétitions et d’affiches en cours depuis des mois. Le harcèlement des féministes envers DSK a permis que le silence n’ensevelisse pas ses actes. C’est dans la rue, en harcelant les harceleurs, les machos, les violents que nos idées avancent.

Se déshabiller pour lutter : un leurre !

L’autre féminisme visible – beaucoup plus visible – est le féminisme déshabillé. C’est celui des Femen, ces militantes, dont le mouvement est issu d’Ukraine, qui réclament la fin du patriarcat et de la dictature avec des slogans peints sur leurs seins nus. Nous ne nous prononcerons pas sur le militantisme seins nus en Ukraine, mais sur les Femen France. C’est aussi le militantisme des « salopes » qui organisent des marches en tenues sexy et minimales pour réclamer le droit de s’habiller comme elles veulent. Exhiber sa nudité, c’est entrer complètement dans l’idée que le dévoilement est nécessaire et qu’il ne faut plus rien cacher. « La lumière représente, dans notre monde, un déterminant culturel puissant. Nous manifestons une foi profonde et obstinée dans les vertus de l’exposition, au point de nier la violence qu’elle implique. Nous sommes persuadés qu’il est bon d’en montrer le plus possible, que du dévoilement viendra une forme de révélation, de délivrance. Seule la honte paraît pouvoir justifier que l’on veuille garder des choses pour soi ». [1]

C’est une idée qui peut être analysée comme profondément capitaliste. « Une fille doit montrer ce qu’elle a à vendre. Elle doit exposer sa marchandise. […] On croyait avoir compris qu’un droit féminin intangible est de ne se déshabiller que devant celui (ou celle) qu’on a choisi(e) pour ce faire. Mais non. Il est impératif d’esquisser le déshabillage à tout instant. Qui garde à couvert ce qu’il met sur le marché n’est pas un marchand loyal. On soutiendra ceci, qui est assez curieux : la loi sur le foulard est une loi capitaliste pure. Elle ordonne que la féminité soit exposée. Autrement dit, que la circulation sous paradigme marchand du corps féminin soit obligatoire. Elle interdit en la matière – et chez les adolescentes, plaque sensible de l’univers subjectif entier – toute réserve ». [2]

L’utilisation de la nudité ou de l’exhibition de son corps pour militer rend-elle la nudité subversive ou au contraire fait-elle de la subversion un simple avatar de la publicité qui nous écoeure de corps de femmes nus ? Cela participe de la pornocratisation de la société. Nous ne critiquons pas les choix individuels de ces femmes, ni ne mettons en doute leur sincérité, nous relèverons simplement que le patriarcat a des pièges profonds et qu’il est complexe d’échapper à son conditionnement. « Depuis le déchaînement antiféministe orchestré par les industries pornographiques et proxénètes, en particulier à partir des années 1970, le patriarcat s’est assuré par tous les moyens que la seule chose qui passe pour féministe aux yeux et aux oreilles des jeunes femmes soit une image totalement pornifiée de nos luttes. Alors qu’il y a un silence de mort à la fois sur les mouvements féministes qui combattent pour faire cesser ces violences, et les atrocités commises sur les femmes par les hommes, les seuls évènements que relaient les médias sont des actions de femmes qui reprennent les insultes misogynes, comportements ou stigmates de notre oppression. En d’autres termes, si les journalistes parlent de la lutte des femmes, c’est pour que les hommes puissent se masturber dessus – une des stratégies antiféministes les plus utilisées actuellement pour humilier notre mouvement et nous déshumaniser publiquement ». [3]

Un féminisme qui s’appuie sur les standards de désirabilité du patriarcat publicitaire, jeunes, minces, épilées et nues… est un féminisme complice du patriarcat. Si le féminisme institutionnel est inefficace à part pour entretenir nos compétences et nos argumentaires (ce qui est déjà bien), le féminisme déshabillé nuit aux femmes et au féminisme. En revanche, le féminisme de type lutte pour le droit à l’IVG est un exemple dont il faut s’inspirer : manifestations de rue, implication de personnalités, action directe (IVG à la maison)… Rosser les hommes violents et les déménager du domicile familial, ne pas taire les violences et protéger les violeurs par le silence, partager les salaires et le temps de travail, occuper, se mettre en grève… être illégales et convaincues… Mais surtout prendre et ne pas quémander, ne pas draguer les médias mais y mettre le feu… Les moyens du féminisme radical sont à retrouver.
Christine (AL Orne)
[1] Mona Chollet, Beauté Fatale, la Découverte, 2012

[2] Alain Badiou, cité par Mona Chollet

[3] A. Ginva, «FEMEN: cessons de nous déshumaniser» sur http://sandrine70.wordpress.com/2012/10/05]]></description>
			<pubDate>Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:20:01 CET</pubDate>
			</item><item>
			<title>Saint Vera And The Nihilist Warriors</title>
			<link>http://www.antifa.ca/antifa-news/saint-vera-and-the-nihilist-warriors</link>
			<description><![CDATA[“Women, it must be confessed, are much more richly endowed with the divine flame than men.  This is why the almost religious fervor of the Russian revolutionary movement must in great part be attributed to them: and while they take part in it, it will be invincible.”
-Sergei Kravchinskii, 
Despite what is commonly believed in anarchist circles, the ideas of martyrdom and self-sacrifice were central to the efforts of the early Russian nihilists.  Many of the young people who became enmeshed in the webs of conspiracy and revolt came from the upper classes and had grown up under the influence of the Bible.  Like Bakunin before them, many of the early nihilists were illuminated by the suffering of Jesus and carried the symbol of his sacrifice with them into their era of struggle.
In his later years, Sir Isaac Newton, the priest of gravity, began attempting to assign a specific date for the end of the world.  He ultimately decided that the apocalypse would take place no earlier than 2060.  But in his book Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John, Newton decided 1866 would be the year of the end.  
The 1860&#039;s were times of emergent student activism in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.  The fledgling radicals were avid readers of the latest fiction and two books were central in their intellectual development.  The first was Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev.  In this book, the author coined and popularized the term nihilism in reference to the new generation and their particular blend of materialism and atheism.  Turgenev was another one of the old liberals, forever lamenting past glories and pining for the Europeanization of Russia, a place they considered backward and primitive.  Although the book was meant to critique this emerging trend, it ending up invigorating the youth and caused hundreds of them to identify as nihilists.  
The second book that forged the ideas of these young rebels was What is to be done?, a book written by Nikolai Chernyshevski.  It details the activities of a young man named Rakhmetov, a person completely dedicated to overthrowing the old order and establishing a utopian city of light, filled with glass and steel.  He is the perfect warrior monk, intentionally sleeping on bare wood, never having sex, foregoing meat, sugar, and bread.  He is dedicated to the revolution and the triumph of the people over tyranny.  He is perfect, he is a saint, and he is a martyr.  In the novel, Rakhmetov is reading Isaac Newtons analysis of the apocalypse and it is insinuated in the text that 1866 will be the year of the revolution.
In reality, 1866 brought an apocalypse no one could have foreseen.  His name was Sergei Nechaev, the son of a newly middle-class family.  He appeared as if out of nowhere in the halls of Saint Petersburg University, his mind boiling with plans and conspiracies.  He originally came to the university to teach Bible studies and found his ways into radical circles.  He had read all of the newest books and had made himself into the living embodiment of Rakhmetov.  It was not long before he used the mystique of this literary character to his advantage, attracting young students into a secret organization.
That same year, a group of young radicals in Moscow formed a group simply called Hell. They were led by a man named Ishutin, another radical attempting to embody the pure revolutionary.  He believed there were three great mean in the world: Jesus, Paul the Apostle, and Nikolai Chernyshevski.  This was his trinity.  Animated by it, he and his group planned to assassinate Tzar Alexander II.  Their efforts ultimately failed, the assassin was hung, and Ishutin was sent into exile in Siberia and quickly went insane.  Before being shipped away, he had informed the authorities that every member of Hell had to have “an infinite love and devotion for his country and its good.”
Not wanting to be outdone, Nechaev began organizing a group along similar lines in Saint Petersburg.  After two years of organizing student meetings, he began to grow frustrated.  Seeing his peers as inferior revolutionaries, he decided to set them all up in order to harden their spirits.  After calling for a mass meeting to sign a document demanding freedom of assembly for students, Nechaev handed the list of everyone who signed over to the authorities.  This was a sacrificial act, a trial by fire for the un-initiated.  Dozens of radicals were thrown into prison because of his commitment to the revolution.  One of these people was Vera Zasulich.
Like many others, she was inspired by the image of Jesus on the cross.  As young girl she loved him and the transcendent suffering he underwent for the people.  In her teen years she read What is to be done? and would attempt to live out the literary dreamworld with her sisters and their friends in Saint Petersburg.  They went to cramped meetings in small flats to organize with students and discuss theory.  They established cooperative presses and sewing operations in order to be independent and materially free.  Over time, they were won over by Nechaev, the man who could best embody the protagonist of their new favorite book.  
Thanks to him, Vera was thrown in jail, kept in solitary confinement for over a year, and was eventually released in 1873.  She found her way into a Bakuninist group in Kiev where she organized for the next few years.  Despite the bitterness she felt towards manipulators and liars like Nechaev, she never lost touch with her original desires to serve the people and sacrifice herself for their betterment.  While Nechaev would only ever murder one of his former comrades and manipulate Bakunin into isolation and depression, Vera ended up outdoing all of the other literary pretenders.
In 1877, Vera and her friend Masha set out to assassinate the governor of Saint Petersburg and a leading prosecutor.  Their plans were fueled by news of a nihilist prisoner being lashed with birch rods in prison  These two women stepped out into the cold morning with revolvers in their shawls and headed to their destinations.  Only Vera would succeed in shooting her target.  Although he lived, Vera became the living manifestation of the pure will to avenge the suffering of the people.  She freely admitted her actions while in custody and showed no repentance to the authorities.  In 1878, a jury found Vera not guilty, in no small part due to the portrayal of her as a Joan of Arc in the local papers.  She was the avenging angel, acting for completely self-less and benevolent reasons.  Never before had an assassin been freed by the people who were meant to judge her.          
Amongst contemporary Marxists, Vera is still remembered as the woman who convinced Marx that Russia did not need to transition to capitalism before a revolution would be possible.  Her faith in the people and her commitment to her ideals was enough to convince the old man that he was wrong.  
Amongst contemporary anarchists, Vera is largely forgotten.  Her full story does not easily integrate with the current conceptions of nihilism, nor do the stories of the other Russian nihilists.  There are many post-modern and literary influences on contemporary nihilism, influences that have turned it into a polymorphic blend of ideas that encourage passivity and hopelessness in the face of an overwhelming and total opponent.  There has only ever been one nihilist movement in history that was active.  Its legacies have more to do with Leninism and the USSR than they do with contemporary notions of nihilism.  As I have briefly outlined, Russian nihilism was influenced by the Bible, literature, sacrifice, and martyrdom.  Their history is distinct and cannot be easily appropriated.    
For more information, see the excellent Angel of Vengeance by Ana Siljak.  It is by far the most thorough history of the Russian nihilists ever written.

Tags: nihilismhistoryvera fignerCategory: Analysis]]></description>
			<pubDate>Sun, 09 Dec 2012 06:10:01 CET</pubDate>
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