PRC-UTE
3rd January 2005, 06:20
Towards a History of Anarchist Anti-Imperialism (http://www.anarchist-studies.org/article/articleview/48/2/7/)
Bakunin and The First International
Support for national liberation follows directly from anarchism's opposition to hierarchical political structures and economic inequality, and advocacy of a freely constituted international confederation of self-administrating communes and workers' associations. At the same time, however, anarchism's commitment to a general social and economic emancipation means that anarchism rejects statist solutions to national oppression that leave capitalism and government in place.
If anyone can be named the founder of revolutionary anarchism, it is Mikhail Bakunin (1918-1876). Bakunin's political roots lay within the national liberation movements of Eastern Europe, and he retained a commitment to what would nowadays be called 'decolonisation' throughout his life. When Bakunin moved from pan-Slavic nationalism towards anarchism in the 1860s, following the disastrous 1863 Polish insurrection, he still argued in support of struggles for national self-determination.
He doubted whether "imperialist Europe" could keep the colonial countries in bondage: "Two-thirds of humanity, 800 million Asiatics asleep in their servitude will necessarily awaken and begin to move." [1] Bakunin went on to declare his "strong sympathy for any national uprising against any form of oppression", stating that every people "has the right to be itself .... no one is entitled to impose its costume, its customs, its languages and its laws." [2]
East Europe
The crucial issue, however, "in what direction and to what end" will the national liberation movement move? For Bakunin, national liberation must be achieved "as much in the economic as in the political interests of the masses" : if the anti- colonial struggle is carried out with "ambitious intent to set up a powerful State" or if "it is carried out without the people" and "must therefore depend for success on a privileged class," it will become a "retrogressive, disastrous, counter-revolutionary movement." [3]
"Every exclusively political revolution - be it in defence of national independence or for internal change.... - that does not aim at the immediate and real political and economic emancipation of people will be a false revolution. Its objectives will be unattainable and its consequences reactionary." [4]
So, if national liberation is to achieve more than simply the replacement of foreign oppressors by local oppressors, the national liberation movement must thus be merged with the revolutionary struggle of the working class and peasantry against both capitalism and the State. Without social revolutionary goals, national liberation will simply be a bourgeois revolution.
The national liberation struggle of the working class and peasantry must be resolutely anti-statist, for the State was necessarily the preserve of a privileged class, and the state system would continually recreate the problem of national oppression: "to exist, a state must become an invader of other states .... it must be ready to occupy a foreign country and hold millions of people in subjection."
The national liberation struggle of oppressed nationalities must be internationalist in character as it must supplant obsessions with cultural difference with universal ideals of human freedom, it must align itself with the international class struggle for "political and economic emancipation from the yoke of the State" and the classes it represents, and it must take place, ultimately, as part of an international revolution: "a social revolution .... is by its very nature international in scope" and the oppressed nationalities "must therefore link their aspirations and forces with the aspirations and forces of all other countries." [5] The "statist path involving the establishment of separate .... States" is "entirely ruinous for the great masses of the people" because it did not abolish class power but simply changed the nationality of the ruling class.[6] Instead, the state system must be abolished and replaced with a coalition of workplace and community structures " directed from the bottom up .... according to the principles of free federation." [7]
These ideas were applied in East Europe from the 1870s onwards, as anarchists played an active role in the in 1873 uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina against Austro-Hungarian imperialism. Anarchists also took an active part in the "National Revolutionary Movement" in Macedonia against the Ottoman Empire. At least 60 gave their lives in this struggle, particularly in the great 1903 revolt.
This tradition of anarchist anti-imperialism was continued 15 years later in the Ukraine as the Makhnovist movement organised a titanic peasant revolt that not only smashed the German occupation of the Ukraine, and held off the invading Red and White armies until 1921, but redistributed land, established worker- peasant self-management in many areas, and created a Revolutionary Insurgent Army under worker-peasant control.
Egypt and Algeria
In the 1870s, too, the anarchists began to organise Egypt, notably in Alexandria, where a local anarchist journal appeared in 1877,[8] and anarchist group from Egypt was represented at the September 1877 Congress of the "Saint-Imier International" (the anarchist faction of the post-1872 First International).[9] An "Egyptian Federation" was represented at the 1881 International Social Revolutionary Congress by well-known Errico Malatesta, this time including "bodies from Constantinople and Alexandria." [10] Malatesta, who lived in Egypt as a political refugee Egypt in 1878 and 1882,[11] became involved in the 1882 "Pasha Revolt" that followed the 1876 take-over of Egyptian finances by an Anglo-French commission representing international creditors. He arrived specifically to pursue "a revolutionary purpose connected to the natives' revolt in the days of Arabi Pasha," [12] and " fought with the Egyptians against the British colonialists." [13]
In Algeria, the anarchist movement emerged in the nineteenth century. The Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (CGT-SR) had a section in Algeria. Like other anarchist organisations, the CGT-SR opposed French colonialism, and in a joint statement by the Anarchist Union, the CGT-SR, and the Association of Anarchist Federations on the centenary of the French occupation of Algeria in 1930, argued: "Civilisation? Progress? We say: murder!". [14]
A prominent militant in the CGT-SR's Algerian section, as well as in the Anarchist Union and the Anarchist Group of the Indigenous Algerians, was Sail Mohamed (1894-1953), an Algerian anarchist active in the anarchist movement from the 1910s until his death in 1953. Sail Mohamed was a founder of organisations such as the Association for the Rights of the Indigenous Algerians and the Anarchist Group of the Indigenous Algerians. In 1929 he was secretary of the "Committee for the Defence of the Algerians against the Provocations of the Centenary." Sail Mohamed was also editor of the North African edition of the anarchist periodical Terre Libre, and a regular contributor to anarchist journals on the Algerian question.[15]
credits
Published:
This essay originally appeared in Against War and Terrorism: Anarchist Writings on the War, Dublin, Ireland (2001).
Bakunin and The First International
Support for national liberation follows directly from anarchism's opposition to hierarchical political structures and economic inequality, and advocacy of a freely constituted international confederation of self-administrating communes and workers' associations. At the same time, however, anarchism's commitment to a general social and economic emancipation means that anarchism rejects statist solutions to national oppression that leave capitalism and government in place.
If anyone can be named the founder of revolutionary anarchism, it is Mikhail Bakunin (1918-1876). Bakunin's political roots lay within the national liberation movements of Eastern Europe, and he retained a commitment to what would nowadays be called 'decolonisation' throughout his life. When Bakunin moved from pan-Slavic nationalism towards anarchism in the 1860s, following the disastrous 1863 Polish insurrection, he still argued in support of struggles for national self-determination.
He doubted whether "imperialist Europe" could keep the colonial countries in bondage: "Two-thirds of humanity, 800 million Asiatics asleep in their servitude will necessarily awaken and begin to move." [1] Bakunin went on to declare his "strong sympathy for any national uprising against any form of oppression", stating that every people "has the right to be itself .... no one is entitled to impose its costume, its customs, its languages and its laws." [2]
East Europe
The crucial issue, however, "in what direction and to what end" will the national liberation movement move? For Bakunin, national liberation must be achieved "as much in the economic as in the political interests of the masses" : if the anti- colonial struggle is carried out with "ambitious intent to set up a powerful State" or if "it is carried out without the people" and "must therefore depend for success on a privileged class," it will become a "retrogressive, disastrous, counter-revolutionary movement." [3]
"Every exclusively political revolution - be it in defence of national independence or for internal change.... - that does not aim at the immediate and real political and economic emancipation of people will be a false revolution. Its objectives will be unattainable and its consequences reactionary." [4]
So, if national liberation is to achieve more than simply the replacement of foreign oppressors by local oppressors, the national liberation movement must thus be merged with the revolutionary struggle of the working class and peasantry against both capitalism and the State. Without social revolutionary goals, national liberation will simply be a bourgeois revolution.
The national liberation struggle of the working class and peasantry must be resolutely anti-statist, for the State was necessarily the preserve of a privileged class, and the state system would continually recreate the problem of national oppression: "to exist, a state must become an invader of other states .... it must be ready to occupy a foreign country and hold millions of people in subjection."
The national liberation struggle of oppressed nationalities must be internationalist in character as it must supplant obsessions with cultural difference with universal ideals of human freedom, it must align itself with the international class struggle for "political and economic emancipation from the yoke of the State" and the classes it represents, and it must take place, ultimately, as part of an international revolution: "a social revolution .... is by its very nature international in scope" and the oppressed nationalities "must therefore link their aspirations and forces with the aspirations and forces of all other countries." [5] The "statist path involving the establishment of separate .... States" is "entirely ruinous for the great masses of the people" because it did not abolish class power but simply changed the nationality of the ruling class.[6] Instead, the state system must be abolished and replaced with a coalition of workplace and community structures " directed from the bottom up .... according to the principles of free federation." [7]
These ideas were applied in East Europe from the 1870s onwards, as anarchists played an active role in the in 1873 uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina against Austro-Hungarian imperialism. Anarchists also took an active part in the "National Revolutionary Movement" in Macedonia against the Ottoman Empire. At least 60 gave their lives in this struggle, particularly in the great 1903 revolt.
This tradition of anarchist anti-imperialism was continued 15 years later in the Ukraine as the Makhnovist movement organised a titanic peasant revolt that not only smashed the German occupation of the Ukraine, and held off the invading Red and White armies until 1921, but redistributed land, established worker- peasant self-management in many areas, and created a Revolutionary Insurgent Army under worker-peasant control.
Egypt and Algeria
In the 1870s, too, the anarchists began to organise Egypt, notably in Alexandria, where a local anarchist journal appeared in 1877,[8] and anarchist group from Egypt was represented at the September 1877 Congress of the "Saint-Imier International" (the anarchist faction of the post-1872 First International).[9] An "Egyptian Federation" was represented at the 1881 International Social Revolutionary Congress by well-known Errico Malatesta, this time including "bodies from Constantinople and Alexandria." [10] Malatesta, who lived in Egypt as a political refugee Egypt in 1878 and 1882,[11] became involved in the 1882 "Pasha Revolt" that followed the 1876 take-over of Egyptian finances by an Anglo-French commission representing international creditors. He arrived specifically to pursue "a revolutionary purpose connected to the natives' revolt in the days of Arabi Pasha," [12] and " fought with the Egyptians against the British colonialists." [13]
In Algeria, the anarchist movement emerged in the nineteenth century. The Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (CGT-SR) had a section in Algeria. Like other anarchist organisations, the CGT-SR opposed French colonialism, and in a joint statement by the Anarchist Union, the CGT-SR, and the Association of Anarchist Federations on the centenary of the French occupation of Algeria in 1930, argued: "Civilisation? Progress? We say: murder!". [14]
A prominent militant in the CGT-SR's Algerian section, as well as in the Anarchist Union and the Anarchist Group of the Indigenous Algerians, was Sail Mohamed (1894-1953), an Algerian anarchist active in the anarchist movement from the 1910s until his death in 1953. Sail Mohamed was a founder of organisations such as the Association for the Rights of the Indigenous Algerians and the Anarchist Group of the Indigenous Algerians. In 1929 he was secretary of the "Committee for the Defence of the Algerians against the Provocations of the Centenary." Sail Mohamed was also editor of the North African edition of the anarchist periodical Terre Libre, and a regular contributor to anarchist journals on the Algerian question.[15]
credits
Published:
This essay originally appeared in Against War and Terrorism: Anarchist Writings on the War, Dublin, Ireland (2001).