For a long time there has been an erroneous conception regarding anarchists' views on parties. In this document, we, as revolutionary anarchists, wish to clarify the matter a little. We will begin by saying that our ideology is rooted in the philosophical and political ideas of the Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin. With that said, we believe that, as a self-sacrificing fighter for the cause of the workers and therefore an enemy of bourgeois capitalist exploitation and State repression, Bakunin understood perfectly the historical need for a revolutionary party, consisting only of the most dedicated elements who sacrificed themselves to the revolutionary cause and were an integral part of it.
Not only did Bakunin understand the need for an organization with these
characteristics, but actually formed one in the year 1868 called the "Alliance
of Socialist Democracy". The Alliance was founded in the same period as the
"International Working Men's Association" (the 1st International) and the
members of the Alliance were unjustly and mistakenly accused by the Marxists of
"wanting to weaken the International by forming a new one from within". The
reality, however, was totally different, as far from wanting to weaken it,
Bakunin had realized quite rightly that the best complement to the Workers'
International would be an organization of the best elements with a high level of
revolutionary consciousness which could lead to a large number of workers
organized in the International, in an authentically socialist and revolutionary
direction. This is how Mikhail Bakunin explained the relationship between the
Revolutionary Organization of the vanguard (the Alliance) and that immense,
formidable mass Proletarian Front, the International Working Men's Association:
"The Alliance is the necessary complement to the International. But the
International and the Alliance, while having the same ultimate aims, perform
different functions. The International endeavours to unify the working masses,
the millions of workers, regardless of nationality and national boundaries or
religious and political beliefs, into one compact body; the Alliance, on the
other hand, tries to give these masses a really revolutionary direction. The
programmes of one and the other, without being in any way opposed, differ only
in the degree of their revolutionary development. The International contains in
germ, but only in germ, the whole programme of the Alliance. The programme of
the Alliance represents the fullest unfolding of the International." - Mikhail
Bakunin
Although we anarchists recognize the need to build a revolutionary organization
with tactical and ideological unity, whose task is to encourage the development
of the workers' consciousness of their revolutionary historic role of getting
rid of capitalism and the institutions of inequality, we reject the use of the
term "party" to refer to such an organization. We reject the use of this term
for two reasons which derive from the word in question. The first is confusion
with the bourgeois political parties; the second is the Marxist-Leninist concept
of the party. It is these two ideas that we will be examining below.
THE CONCEPT OF "PARTY"
As a Revolutionary Organization, our aim is to make the proletariat aware of its
social strength and of the fact that this very strength can bring down
capitalist society. Our work, therefore, involves the organization of popular
forces from below, in other words independently of the ruling class. We believe
that it is inappropriate to present ourselves to the workers as a "workers'
party", given that nowadays party is understood in its bourgeois sense
associated with elections, parliament, political power and a whole series of
concepts which go against the idea of popular emancipation. We are convinced
that those parties and individuals who describe themselves as representing the
exploited classes and the oppressed, and who create hopes of emancipation in
them through elections and parliaments, are instead only reinforcing the
bourgeois political institutions and thereby (logically and effectively) also
despotism, exploitation and tyranny...
THE LENINIST PARTY AND THE ANARCHIST POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
We run the risk not only of being confused with the bourgeois parties, but also
with the Leninist ones. And something interesting emerges here: Leninism
promotes the creation of a party that represents the interests of the working
class. Some might draw the conclusion that anarchist ideas and the Leninist
model have much in common, but that is something which we flatly reject, for two
reasons. To begin with, as can be seen from the earlier part of this document,
the concept of an Organization of the most advanced elements ("vanguard") was
not something which was first expressed by Lenin. Decades before, Bakunin had
understood that mass defence and resistance fronts alone (such as trade unions
and international workers' associations) were not sufficient to undertake a
revolutionary struggle as they were lacking, amongst other things, that nucleus
of the most conscious revolutionaries who could fight to ensure that the popular
movements did not fall victim to reformist or openly bourgeois tendencies.
The other main difference with the Leninist concept is even more important, as
it concerns the aims of each tendency. The Leninist tendency wants the vanguard
party to take control of the State once the revolution has been won, as its
members are supposed to be the most conscious, the most intelligent, the best
able to represent perfectly the interests of the proletariat. The function of
the anarchist Political Organization, instead, is not to conquer State power.
Unlike the Leninists, we want the destruction of the State, as we know that
political and military power in the hands of a minority in the name of the
revolution is exactly what can damage the revolution most.
The taking of political power, or rather the fact that a minority turns itself
into a nucleus of professional politicians with the right to take decisions and
impose these on the masses, signifies creating the seeds for bureaucratization
and counter-revolution. It lays the basis for a return to a society divided into
a privileged minority and a huge oppressed and dominated majority.
The goal of the anarchist Organization is not political power but the building
of proletarian popular power from the bottom up, in other words all the power
based on the working people collectively through their assemblies and horizontal
decision-making bodies.
ANARCHISM AND REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION
But Revolutionary Anarchism did not see its programme for homogeneous
Organization expressed only during the time of Bakunin. Apart from the Alliance
of Socialist Democracy, other similar groups have at various times tried to
emulate the role of the Alliance, groups such as the Delo Truda group, formed
principally of Russian and Ukrainian anarchists who fought together with the
Russian proletariat in the Russian Revolution, which was subsequently
transformed by the Bolsheviks into a State-Party dictatoriship.
At the end of the 1920s, The Delo Truda group published a document which was
very important for the international Libertarian Movement, opening a breach
between organized anarchism and the individualist interpretation of anarchism
which repudiated the formation of an Organization of the vanguard. The anti-organizationalists
consisted of those who did not want to make a committment or be responsible as
militants, those who repudiated that revolutionary discipline which, as Nestor
Makhno pointed out, is essential for our tasks to be carried out successfully.
These few lines will help us to clear up the question in hand: "without
discipline inside the organization it is impossible to undertake any serious
revolutionary action at all. Without discipline, the revolutionary vanguard
cannot exist, as in would then find itself in total practical disunity and would
be unable to identify the tasks of the moment or carry out its role as initiator
which the masses expect of it." (Nestor Makhno, "On Revolutionary Discipline")
The Organizational Platform is a document published by the Delo Truda Group with
the aim of bringing about a General Union of Anarchists, an Organization of the
revolutionary anarchist vanguard. It is a document which sets out the arguments
regarding the need for an organizational structure of this type. Another example
of anarchism constituted in a Revolutionary Organization is that of the Friends
of Durruti in Spain during the 1930s, at the time of the Spanish Civil War. The
Friends of Durruti were an anarcho-syndicalist group within the CNT who
understood the need to form a conscious revolutionary leadership after the CNT
began to commit historical errors such as joining the Republic's bourgeois
government. The Friends of Durruti, whose name commemorated the revolutionary
anarchist Buenaventura Durruti who died in combat on 20th November 1936,
realized that in the circumstances of the time is was urgently necessary to
create a nucleus which would be able to indicate the correct positions for the
Spanish proletariat so that it could go back to the strictly collectivist and
anti-State positions which had been defended from day one of the Spanish
Revolution by Durruti and Ascaso.
CONCLUSIONS
We can summarize by saying that we anarchists of the Bakuninist line are
advocates of a specific revolutionary Organization which participates in the
popular movements, seeking to insert our Libertarian Socialist programme in
these movements and ensure that they proceed along anti-capitalist lines in
order to abolish private ownership of the means of production and create
horizontal and assemblyist popular power on the ruins of all that is called
political power and the State. An Organization of this type is what the
militants of the
Alliance of the
Libertarian Communists
want to build and we are working daily towards the social revolution and the
emancipation of the world.
Alianza
Comunista Libertaria
translated by: FdCA