Left Communist (Marxist) analysis of the black army.

[Rafiq]

What is it? As in a class analysis...

[Savage]

Well first of all, I think this belongs in theory or history, and left communists are not the only type of Marxists.

[Paulappaul]

Black Army? I think that can be taken alot of different ways.

[Geiseric]

Wasn't the black army anarchist?

[Zav]

Are you referring to Makhovchina?

[Blackscare]

I'm almost certain that's what he's talking about.

They were almost entirely peasant-based, although they had a decent level of support in some towns. They weren't particularly good at getting the worker's councils working efficiently, although to their credit they did try to implement them. Much of this had to do with their relative isolation; it's hard to democratically run an individual node of an industry (such as the railroads) without bringing the entirety of the system into harmony. They did what they could, and I think that much of their support and reason d'etre came from the Bolshevik's inability early on to reconcile relations between the countryside and the cities.

[Paulappaul]

It's hard getting an honest story on the whole Ukrainian revolutionary movement. Most the books I have read have been extremely sympathetic to the Maknovists or outright Anarchist. Peasant based Councils were just Communes, the later agricultural collectives that the CNT-FAI would set up would be reminiscent of these Communes. They held Political and Economic power and if I recall correctly the land was collectivized. Recall that the Bolsheviks at these time split up the land amongst individual peasants, creating a whole wave of petty bourgeois producers. This was warned aganist by those along the German, Dutch, British and Russian currents of Left Communism, from Rosa Luxemburg, to Sylvia Pankhurst, to Alexander Kollontai. In this respect, the Left Coms were in line with the tactics being employed by the Maknovists.

The Industrial Proletariat was at this time extremely small. It existed side by side with the Artisan Petty Bourgeois and the Middle Class intellectuals. Think France 1789. Indeed it was characteristic of very early Capitalism. Regardless even where it existed it was usually under foreign occupation, either from the traditional government, the German Front or the rising Liberal government. So, Blackscare it wasn't a fault of the Anarchists as much as it was fault of the conditions at hands. The Industrial Proletariat they were aligned with were usually the Railroad workers of whom they organized into Anarchist Labor Associations. Notice I don't say Union, because they associations, while being purely economic, they consisted of a variety of elements, of both these radical elements of the almost non existent industrial proletariat and of the agricultural proletariat and peasant class. One of these labor associations were headed by Makno himself. Of the Soviet that did exist it was basically a large confederation of Communes, of which Makno was the head of. I think he was elected at one point to the All Congress of Soviets and this is where the famous feud between him and Lenin happened.

The Left Communists were critical of the Bolshevik's oppurtunistic tactics because in the Industrial Capitalist countries the Proletariat stood alone. They could not count on, as the Bolsheviks did on the Peasants, to be the Vanguard of the Revolution. In Makno's case, it was the opposite. The Peasant Class stood completely alone, in conditions more characteristic of late stage feudalism then that of Russia itself. These revolutionary Peasants I would think would be a realization of what Marx had said only a few decades earlier with regards to the possibility of the Peasant class skipping the Capitalist phase and going straight to Socialism.