Anarchism and imperialist war

[Devrim]

"In the anarchist milieu today, notably in France and Russia, we are seeing a number of elements attempting to distinguish themselves from the nationalist approach contained in the defence of regionalism, ‘ethnic identity' and national liberation struggles, questions that are often characteristic of the weaknesses of this milieu. The catastrophic course of capitalist society obliges all those who passionately desire to take part in the social revolution to seriously examine the perspectives facing the proletariat - not only the prospects for the class struggle but also the development of the barbarity of imperialist war on almost every continent."

A look at anarchist responses to the First and Second World Wars:
http://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/325/anarchism-war1
http://en.internationalism.org/wr/2009/326/anarchism-war2

[Pogue]

In a bit of an anti mood today Devrim?

[Devrim]

No, I am sitting on my own at home a bit bored, and just posting up some links to the new 'World Revolution': http://en.internationalism.org/

Devrim

[Pogue]

No, I am sitting on my own at home a bit bored, and just posting up some links to the new 'World Revolution': http://en.internationalism.org/

Devrim

Fair play.

[Devrim]

The articles aren't critical of all anarchists either:
WWI:"In Hungary after 1914, it was militant anarchists who headed the movement against imperialist war. Among them, Ilona Duczynska and Tivadar Lukacs introduced and propagandised the Zimmerwald Manifesto. Under the impulsion of the internationalist conference, the Galilee Circle, founded in 1908, and composed of a mixture of anarchists, socialists excluded from Social Democracy and some pacifists, became radicalised through a process of decantation. It went from anti-militarism and anti-clericism to socialism, from an activity as a discussion circle to a more determined propagandist activity against the war and active intervention in the openly fermenting workers' struggles. Its defeatist leaflets were signed "A Group of Hungarian Socialists Affiliated to Zimmerwald". In Spain, the struggle against war was the central activity of the CNT, linked to the enthusiastic support of the workers' struggle that grew from the end of 1915. It demonstrated a clear will for discussion and was fully open to the positions of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, which were welcomed with enthusiasm. It discussed and collaborated with socialist minority groups in Spain that opposed the war. There was a great effort of reflection to try to understand the causes of the war and the means to struggle against it. It supported the positions of the Zimmerwald Left and made it known that it wanted: "along with all the workers, the war to be ended by the uprising of the proletariat in the belligerent countries" (‘Sobre la paz dos criterios' (‘Two criteria on peace') Solidaridad Obrera, June 1917)."
WWII:"However, when world war broke out, against the outbreak of anti-fascist war-mongering, some voices from anarchism were raised that rejected the terrain of anti-fascism and affirmed the only really revolutionary position, that of internationalism. Thus in 1939, in Britain, the Glasgow Anarchist-Communist Federation declared that: "The present struggle opposes rival imperialisms for the protection of secular interests. The workers of every country belong to the oppressed class and have nothing in common with the interests and aspirations of the dominant class. Their front line isn't the Maginot Line; there they would be demoralised and killed, while their masters amassed their fraudulent gains."[15] In the south of France, the miniscule group around Voline[16] developed an intervention against the war on a clear internationalist basis: "The present conflict is the work of the powers of money of each nation, powers who live exclusively and internationally on the exploitation of man by man (...) The state leaders, the military chiefs of all colours and shades, go from one camp to the other, tear up treaties, sign others, serve the Republic here, the Dictatorship there, collaborate with those military adversaries of yesterday, and vice-versa and back again (...) the people, they pay the piper: they're mobilised for democracies, against democracies, for the fascists, against the fascists. But whether in Africa, Asia or Europe, it's the masses who pay the cost of these ‘contradictory experiences' and who get their bodies smashed in (...) It's not a question of only fighting against Hitlerien fascism, but against all fascisms, against all tyrannies, whether of the right, left or centre, whether royal, democratic or social, because no tyranny will emancipate labour, neither liberate the world, nor organise humanity on a really new basis."[17] This position clearly makes these anarchists an expression of the working class. Here again, when such a clarity is reached, it's by taking up the class positions of the proletariat.
But the hard test of isolation from other remaining internationalist groups and from the class in the conditions of the triumph of the counter-revolution, including the enormous pressure of anti-fascism ("we had daily confrontations with other anti-fascists. Should we associate with them or remain against the current? The question was often agonising on the ground.")[18] soon extinguished this spark. The death of Voline (September 1945), the incapacity of the anarchists to draw the lessons from their experiences, led the elements of his group to return to the fold of the CNT, to momentary adhesion to its anti-fascist committees and, finally, to participating in the reconstruction of the FAI on a completely bourgeois political basis."


Devrim

[Pogue]

Devrim whats your opinion of how workers should have responded to WW2?

[Devrim]

Devrim whats your opinion of how workers should have responded to WW2?

It is not an abstract question where we can say that "oh the workers should have done this and should have done that".

The fact was that the working class was defeated, which opened the way for WWII. This was the result of the defeat of the revolutionary wave, the counter-revolution under fascism and Stalinism, and the political defeat of the workers in the 'democracies' in which they were tied to the state and national defence with the ideology of anti-fascism. ...And all this only twenty years after the working class had mutinied, made revolutions and stopped the First World war.

What the communist should have done is much clearer. The order of the day was "Don't Betray". Revolutionaries, anarchists and Marxists struggled to maintain the dim light of internationalist politics through out the war.

There are times though when revolutionaries are completly isolated from the working class politically, and no amount of voluntarism can change that.

Devrim

[Pogue]

It is not an abstract question where we can say that "oh the workers should have done this and should have done that".

The fact was that the working class was defeated, which opened the way for WWII. This was the result of the defeat of the revolutionary wave, the counter-revolution under fascism and Stalinism, and the political defeat of the workers in the 'democracies' in which they were tied to the state and national defence with the ideology of anti-fascism. ...And all this only twenty years after the working class had mutinied, made revolutions and stopped the First World war.

What the communist should have done is much clearer. The order of the day was "Don't Betray". Revolutionaries, anarchists and Marxists struggled to maintain the dim light of internationalist politics through out the war.

There are times though when revolutionaries are completly isolated from the working class politically, and no amount of voluntarism can change that.

Devrim

So you think there was nothing they could have done, that participation in the war was inevitable?

[Devrim]

So you think there was nothing they could have done, that participation in the war was inevitable?

I think that by 1939 the war was inevitable and the working class couldn't stop it. Their was of course again the possibility of revolution rising out of the war.

Devrim

[FreeFocus]

Some anarchists oppose national liberation wholly, but real national liberation is only achieved through anarchism - when you target foreign occupiers, your local bourgeoisie, and establish socialism and freedom. For me, anarchism is the logical conclusion of anti-imperialism, and is its fullest realization.

[blake 3:17]

World War 2 is pretty tricky for those of us on the radical revolutionary Left. I know it's not anarchist, but left socialist but Ernest Mandel's views I think are pretty useful : http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article800

[Random Precision]

World War 2 is pretty tricky for those of us on the radical revolutionary Left. I know it's not anarchist, but left socialist but Ernest Mandel's views I think are pretty useful : http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article800

Mandel's logic justifying his opportunism is almost (but not quite) as tortured as James Cannon's line that WW2 had not actually ended when all the pieces had fallen and Trotsky's predictions were proven incorrect. I enjoy the "combination of five wars" formulation, which has to win the prize for theoretical contortion.

So in one place he is saying that revolutionaries had to challenge the reformist and Stalinist leadership of the resistance... even though the Trotskyists were to small to pose any significant challenge. Resistance to imperialist barbarity is just... even when it's on behalf of rival imperialism.

Of course, no revolutionary was advocating the "working class of Western or Eastern Europe should have abstained or remained passive towards the horrors of Nazi oppression and Nazi occupation". Revolutionaries advocated resistance that was independent of the movement that served a rival capitalist bloc. But all he has to say about it is that it's "sectarian" and "indefensible".

[Random Precision]

RoniCommunist, please do not spam the thread, you can consider this a verbal warning.