Die Neue Zeit
16th February 2013, 22:50
Neo-Bakuninism at Work: Critique of Anti-Politics and Dishonest Action Strategies
“This is what Bakuninist ‘abstention from politics’ leads to […]” (Frederick Engels)
Continuing with the aforementioned critique of “changing the world without taking power,” dismissing state frameworks as arenas for political activity, parroting the “economic is political” line of crude economic determinism, and confusing politico-ideological independence for the working class with mere economic independence, the genesis of this very old but persistent confusion lies in Mikhail Bakunin and his followers. As observed and documented in 1873 by Engels:
That is what Bakuninist "abstention from politics" leads to [...] the workers may sometimes be made to believe that it is a great revolutionary action to sit out the elections at home […]
In the Bakuninist programme a general strike is the lever employed by which the social revolution is started. One fine morning all the workers in all the industries of a country, or even of the whole world, stop work, thus forcing the propertied classes either humbly to submit within four weeks at the most, or to attack the workers, who would then have the right to defend themselves and use this opportunity to pull down the entire old society […] it was universally admitted that this required a well-formed organisation of the working class and plentiful funds. And there's the rub. On the one hand the governments, especially if encouraged by political abstention, will never allow the organisation or the funds of the workers to reach such a level; on the other hand, political events and oppressive acts by the ruling classes will lead to the liberation of the workers long before the proletariat is able to set up such an ideal organisation and this colossal reserve fund. But if it had them, there would be no need to use the roundabout way of a general strike to achieve its goal.
[…]
What then is the result of our whole investigation?
1. As soon as they were faced with a serious revolutionary situation, the Bakuninists had to throw the whole of their old programme overboard. First they sacrificed their doctrine of absolute abstention from political, and especially electoral, activities. Then anarchy, the abolition of the State, shared the same fate. Instead of abolishing the State they tried, on the contrary, to set up a number of new, small states. They then dropped the principle that the workers must not take part in any revolution that did not have as its aim the immediate and complete emancipation of the proletariat, and they themselves took part in a movement that was notoriously bourgeois. Finally they went against the dogma they had only just proclaimed -- that the establishment of a revolutionary government is but another fraud another betrayal of the working class -- for they sat quite comfortably in the juntas of the various towns, and moreover almost everywhere as an impotent minority outvoted and politically exploited by the bourgeoisie.
2. This renunciation of the principles they had always been preaching was made moreover in the most cowardly and deceitful manner and was prompted by a guilty conscience, so that neither the Bakuninists themselves nor the masses they led had any programme or knew what they wanted when they joined the movement […] when it came to doing things, the ultra-revolutionary rantings of the Bakuninists either turned into appeasement or into uprisings that were doomed to failure, or, led to their joining a bourgeois party which exploited the workers politically in the most disgraceful manner and treated them to kicks into the bargain.
3. Nothing remains of the so-called principles of anarchy, free federation of independent groups, etc., but the boundless, and senseless fragmentation of the revolutionary resources, which enabled the government to conquer one city after another with a handful of soldiers, practically unresisted.
Nonetheless, as noted by Mike Macnair, this confusion has quite a staying power and ties to the development of fascism itself:
Bakunin’s line was reinterpreted by the anarcho-syndicalists to permit partial strike struggles, and this shift allowed big post-Bakuninist trade union confederations to be built: the CNT in Spain in particular, but also the Italian trade union movement, to a considerable extent the Belgian trade union movement, and the French CGT before World War I.
Arising out of this mass syndicalist movement came theorisation; particularly Georges Sorel argued that violence – direct action (action directe) – was the key to working class independent class-consciousness. For Sorel, direct action was the difference between what he called the decomposition of Marxism, the allegedly scientistic, deterministic Marxism of Karl Kautsky and others in the German SPD, and a really revolutionary policy.
Very similar arguments were put forward in Italy by Arturo Labriola within the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), and by Benito Mussolini – later a fascist, but in the pre-war period a leader of the ‘direct action’ left of the PSI. In Germany, Robert Michels’ book Political parties was written as a syndicalist critique of the SPD. Michels himself became a fascist in the inter-war period, and his book has become a standard textbook of US political science courses, an instrument to make students believe that all politics is about manipulations by small elites.
Closer to the ideas of ‘classical Marxism’, but influenced by the syndicalists, were those of Rosa Luxemburg, in particular in The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions; Anton Pannekoek; Karl Korsch; the young György Lukács in the 1920s; and the young Gramsci. It was from these sources that the ‘new left’ which emerged after Hungary 1956, and hence the 1960s-70s far left, took general-strikism.
Although the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World was not mentioned, its own historic refusal to become its own political party, organize mass spoilage campaigns, and engage in other independent political activity was so unimpressive that historian Michael Kazin was blunt about its organizational orientation:
Radical workers drifted away, leaving less able and more conservative unionists to maneuver on unfavourable terrain. Haywood and other Wobblies of national prominence had left earlier to fan the flames of revolt elsewhere in America. Abjuring any truce in the class war, Wobblies refused to sign contracts or build durable locals, and their beachheads of militancy soon disappeared.
The Lawrence uprising had been a thing of beauty for the textile workers and their revolutionary spokesmen. Upton Sinclair later dubbed it "the Bread and Roses" strike, after a contemporary poem in which picketing women remark, "Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses." But the aftermath of the big strike revealed that, for all its romantic elan, the IWW was an organization of beautiful losers.
Where is the dishonesty in all this, though? In such an extreme withdrawal of labour at the point of production, there would be a full-scale electrical power outage, no gasoline would be supplied, all traffic control and other transportation systems would be rendered inoperative, the hospitals would not function, and other truly essential services would be shut down. It is not just areas of so-called “consumerism” that would be affected. Underlying this, of course, are unavoidable questions of government.
There are, of course, protracted strike waves mixing heightened action to settle mere labour disputes with strikes for generalized economic demands and with protest action for political measures. In such times, decision-making processes would necessitate partial or complete exemptions from a piece of the action in order for essentials to continue functioning. For example, mass refusals to collect user charges, such as fare strike action by bus drivers, would substitute walkouts or sit-ins in order to maintain or increase support for workers collecting those user charges.
However, the questions of government are still unavoidable. Consider this non-violent political occupation in Greece, for example, where no one bothers to evade the unavoidable:
Angry over his statements that the Greek minimum wage is too high and should be further reduced despite a 22 percent previous cut, demonstrators took over the office of Finance Ministry General Secretary Giorgos Mergos on the morning of Feb. 14, media reports said.
They were identified as members of the youth organization of the major opposition party Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), which is opposed to ongoing austerity measures being imposed by the government.
Mergos later said his comments were misinterpreted and that he didn’t say what he said. The protesters didn’t buy the backing up. “The only answer to those who are planning to impose new measures designed to impoverish workers and young people is collective and defiant struggles to overturn the government and the memorandums,” they said in a statement. Riot police, the government’s tactic against protesters and strikers, were sent to the scene.
Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias ordered an administrative inquiry into allegations that two SYRIZA Members of Parliament were beaten up by police during an anti-austerity protest outside the finance ministry building. SYRIZA MPs Kostas Barkas and Vangelis Diamantopoulos claimed they were attacked by members of the MAT riot squad and would sue, Kathimerini reported.
Moreover, as discussed earlier, decision-making during these times does not require continuous session to hold others to account, something that is essential for society-wide decision-making under more normal conditions.
REFERENCES
The Bakuninists at Work by Frederick Engels [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/index.htm]
Anarchist origins of the ‘general strike’ slogan by Mike Macnair [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/857/anarchist-origins]
American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation by Michael Kazin [http://books.google.ca/books?id=YrWAGMV-c8kC&printsec=frontcover]
San Fransisco Transit Fight by Tom Wetzel [http://www.zcommunications.org/san-francisco-transit-fight-by-tom-wetzel-1]
SYRIZA Occupies Greek Finance Ministry Office by Andy Dabilis, GreekReporter.com [http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/02/14/protesters-occupy-greek-finance-ministry-office/]
“This is what Bakuninist ‘abstention from politics’ leads to […]” (Frederick Engels)
Continuing with the aforementioned critique of “changing the world without taking power,” dismissing state frameworks as arenas for political activity, parroting the “economic is political” line of crude economic determinism, and confusing politico-ideological independence for the working class with mere economic independence, the genesis of this very old but persistent confusion lies in Mikhail Bakunin and his followers. As observed and documented in 1873 by Engels:
That is what Bakuninist "abstention from politics" leads to [...] the workers may sometimes be made to believe that it is a great revolutionary action to sit out the elections at home […]
In the Bakuninist programme a general strike is the lever employed by which the social revolution is started. One fine morning all the workers in all the industries of a country, or even of the whole world, stop work, thus forcing the propertied classes either humbly to submit within four weeks at the most, or to attack the workers, who would then have the right to defend themselves and use this opportunity to pull down the entire old society […] it was universally admitted that this required a well-formed organisation of the working class and plentiful funds. And there's the rub. On the one hand the governments, especially if encouraged by political abstention, will never allow the organisation or the funds of the workers to reach such a level; on the other hand, political events and oppressive acts by the ruling classes will lead to the liberation of the workers long before the proletariat is able to set up such an ideal organisation and this colossal reserve fund. But if it had them, there would be no need to use the roundabout way of a general strike to achieve its goal.
[…]
What then is the result of our whole investigation?
1. As soon as they were faced with a serious revolutionary situation, the Bakuninists had to throw the whole of their old programme overboard. First they sacrificed their doctrine of absolute abstention from political, and especially electoral, activities. Then anarchy, the abolition of the State, shared the same fate. Instead of abolishing the State they tried, on the contrary, to set up a number of new, small states. They then dropped the principle that the workers must not take part in any revolution that did not have as its aim the immediate and complete emancipation of the proletariat, and they themselves took part in a movement that was notoriously bourgeois. Finally they went against the dogma they had only just proclaimed -- that the establishment of a revolutionary government is but another fraud another betrayal of the working class -- for they sat quite comfortably in the juntas of the various towns, and moreover almost everywhere as an impotent minority outvoted and politically exploited by the bourgeoisie.
2. This renunciation of the principles they had always been preaching was made moreover in the most cowardly and deceitful manner and was prompted by a guilty conscience, so that neither the Bakuninists themselves nor the masses they led had any programme or knew what they wanted when they joined the movement […] when it came to doing things, the ultra-revolutionary rantings of the Bakuninists either turned into appeasement or into uprisings that were doomed to failure, or, led to their joining a bourgeois party which exploited the workers politically in the most disgraceful manner and treated them to kicks into the bargain.
3. Nothing remains of the so-called principles of anarchy, free federation of independent groups, etc., but the boundless, and senseless fragmentation of the revolutionary resources, which enabled the government to conquer one city after another with a handful of soldiers, practically unresisted.
Nonetheless, as noted by Mike Macnair, this confusion has quite a staying power and ties to the development of fascism itself:
Bakunin’s line was reinterpreted by the anarcho-syndicalists to permit partial strike struggles, and this shift allowed big post-Bakuninist trade union confederations to be built: the CNT in Spain in particular, but also the Italian trade union movement, to a considerable extent the Belgian trade union movement, and the French CGT before World War I.
Arising out of this mass syndicalist movement came theorisation; particularly Georges Sorel argued that violence – direct action (action directe) – was the key to working class independent class-consciousness. For Sorel, direct action was the difference between what he called the decomposition of Marxism, the allegedly scientistic, deterministic Marxism of Karl Kautsky and others in the German SPD, and a really revolutionary policy.
Very similar arguments were put forward in Italy by Arturo Labriola within the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), and by Benito Mussolini – later a fascist, but in the pre-war period a leader of the ‘direct action’ left of the PSI. In Germany, Robert Michels’ book Political parties was written as a syndicalist critique of the SPD. Michels himself became a fascist in the inter-war period, and his book has become a standard textbook of US political science courses, an instrument to make students believe that all politics is about manipulations by small elites.
Closer to the ideas of ‘classical Marxism’, but influenced by the syndicalists, were those of Rosa Luxemburg, in particular in The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions; Anton Pannekoek; Karl Korsch; the young György Lukács in the 1920s; and the young Gramsci. It was from these sources that the ‘new left’ which emerged after Hungary 1956, and hence the 1960s-70s far left, took general-strikism.
Although the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World was not mentioned, its own historic refusal to become its own political party, organize mass spoilage campaigns, and engage in other independent political activity was so unimpressive that historian Michael Kazin was blunt about its organizational orientation:
Radical workers drifted away, leaving less able and more conservative unionists to maneuver on unfavourable terrain. Haywood and other Wobblies of national prominence had left earlier to fan the flames of revolt elsewhere in America. Abjuring any truce in the class war, Wobblies refused to sign contracts or build durable locals, and their beachheads of militancy soon disappeared.
The Lawrence uprising had been a thing of beauty for the textile workers and their revolutionary spokesmen. Upton Sinclair later dubbed it "the Bread and Roses" strike, after a contemporary poem in which picketing women remark, "Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses." But the aftermath of the big strike revealed that, for all its romantic elan, the IWW was an organization of beautiful losers.
Where is the dishonesty in all this, though? In such an extreme withdrawal of labour at the point of production, there would be a full-scale electrical power outage, no gasoline would be supplied, all traffic control and other transportation systems would be rendered inoperative, the hospitals would not function, and other truly essential services would be shut down. It is not just areas of so-called “consumerism” that would be affected. Underlying this, of course, are unavoidable questions of government.
There are, of course, protracted strike waves mixing heightened action to settle mere labour disputes with strikes for generalized economic demands and with protest action for political measures. In such times, decision-making processes would necessitate partial or complete exemptions from a piece of the action in order for essentials to continue functioning. For example, mass refusals to collect user charges, such as fare strike action by bus drivers, would substitute walkouts or sit-ins in order to maintain or increase support for workers collecting those user charges.
However, the questions of government are still unavoidable. Consider this non-violent political occupation in Greece, for example, where no one bothers to evade the unavoidable:
Angry over his statements that the Greek minimum wage is too high and should be further reduced despite a 22 percent previous cut, demonstrators took over the office of Finance Ministry General Secretary Giorgos Mergos on the morning of Feb. 14, media reports said.
They were identified as members of the youth organization of the major opposition party Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), which is opposed to ongoing austerity measures being imposed by the government.
Mergos later said his comments were misinterpreted and that he didn’t say what he said. The protesters didn’t buy the backing up. “The only answer to those who are planning to impose new measures designed to impoverish workers and young people is collective and defiant struggles to overturn the government and the memorandums,” they said in a statement. Riot police, the government’s tactic against protesters and strikers, were sent to the scene.
Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias ordered an administrative inquiry into allegations that two SYRIZA Members of Parliament were beaten up by police during an anti-austerity protest outside the finance ministry building. SYRIZA MPs Kostas Barkas and Vangelis Diamantopoulos claimed they were attacked by members of the MAT riot squad and would sue, Kathimerini reported.
Moreover, as discussed earlier, decision-making during these times does not require continuous session to hold others to account, something that is essential for society-wide decision-making under more normal conditions.
REFERENCES
The Bakuninists at Work by Frederick Engels [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/index.htm]
Anarchist origins of the ‘general strike’ slogan by Mike Macnair [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/857/anarchist-origins]
American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation by Michael Kazin [http://books.google.ca/books?id=YrWAGMV-c8kC&printsec=frontcover]
San Fransisco Transit Fight by Tom Wetzel [http://www.zcommunications.org/san-francisco-transit-fight-by-tom-wetzel-1]
SYRIZA Occupies Greek Finance Ministry Office by Andy Dabilis, GreekReporter.com [http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/02/14/protesters-occupy-greek-finance-ministry-office/]