               A.5 What are some examples of "Anarchy in Action"?

   Anarchism, more than anything else, is about the efforts of millions of
   revolutionaries changing the world in the last two centuries. Here we
   will discuss some of the high points of this movement, all of them of a
   profoundly anti-capitalist nature.

   Anarchism is about radically changing the world, not just making the
   present system less inhuman by encouraging the anarchistic tendencies
   within it to grow and develop. While no purely anarchist revolution has
   taken place yet, there have been numerous ones with a highly anarchist
   character and level of participation. And while these have all been
   destroyed, in each case it has been at the hands of outside force
   brought against them (backed either by Communists or Capitalists), not
   because of any internal problems in anarchism itself. These
   revolutions, despite their failure to survive in the face of
   overwhelming force, have been both an inspiration for anarchists and
   proof that anarchism is a viable social theory and can be practised on
   a large scale.

   What these revolutions share is the fact they are, to use Proudhon's
   term, a "revolution from below" -- they were examples of "collective
   activity, of popular spontaneity." It is only a transformation of
   society from the bottom up by the action of the oppressed themselves
   that can create a free society. As Proudhon asked, "[w]hat serious and
   lasting Revolution was not made from below, by the people?" For this
   reason an anarchist is a "revolutionary from below." Thus the social
   revolutions and mass movements we discuss in this section are examples
   of popular self-activity and self-liberation (as Proudhon put it in
   1848, "the proletariat must emancipate itself"). [quoted by George
   Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography, p. 143 and p. 125] All
   anarchists echo Proudhon's idea of revolutionary change from below, the
   creation of a new society by the actions of the oppressed themselves.
   Bakunin, for example, argued that anarchists are "foes . . . of all
   State organisations as such, and believe that the people can only be
   happy and free, when, organised from below by means of its own
   autonomous and completely free associations, without the supervision of
   any guardians, it will create its own life." [Marxism, Freedom and the
   State, p. 63] In [1]section J.7 we discuss what anarchists think a
   social revolution is and what it involves.

   Many of these revolutions and revolutionary movements are relatively
   unknown to non-anarchists. Most people will have heard of the Russian
   revolution but few will know of the popular movements which were its
   life-blood before the Bolsheviks seized power or the role that the
   anarchists played in it. Few will have heard of the Paris Commune, the
   Italian factory occupations or the Spanish collectives. This is
   unsurprising for, as Hebert Read notes, history "is of two kinds -- a
   record of events that take place publicly, that make the headlines in
   the newspapers and get embodied in official records -- we might call
   this overground history" but "taking place at the same time, preparing
   for these public events, anticipating them, is another kind of history,
   that is not embodied in official records, an invisible underground
   history." [quoted by William R. McKercher, Freedom and Authority, p.
   155] Almost by definition, popular movements and revolts are part of
   "underground history", the social history which gets ignored in favour
   of elite history, the accounts of the kings, queens, politicians and
   wealthy whose fame is the product of the crushing of the many.

   This means our examples of "anarchy in action" are part of what the
   Russian anarchist Voline called "The Unknown Revolution." Voline used
   that expression as the title of his classic account of the Russian
   revolution he was an active participant of. He used it to refer to the
   rarely acknowledged independent, creative actions of the people
   themselves. As Voline put it, "it is not known how to study a
   revolution" and most historians "mistrust and ignore those developments
   which occur silently in the depths of the revolution . . . at best,
   they accord them a few words in passing . . . [Yet] it is precisely
   these hidden facts which are important, and which throw a true light on
   the events under consideration and on the period." [The Unknown
   Revolution, p. 19] Anarchism, based as it is on revolution from below,
   has contributed considerably to both the "underground history" and the
   "unknown revolution" of the past few centuries and this section of the
   FAQ will shed some light on its achievements.

   It is important to point out that these examples are of wide-scale
   social experiments and do not imply that we ignore the undercurrent of
   anarchist practice which exists in everyday life, even under
   capitalism. Both Peter Kropotkin (in Mutual Aid) and Colin Ward (in
   Anarchy in Action) have documented the many ways in which ordinary
   people, usually unaware of anarchism, have worked together as equals to
   meet their common interests. As Colin Ward argues, "an anarchist
   society, a society which organises itself without authority, is always
   in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of
   the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and
   its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious
   differences and their superstitious separatism." [Anarchy in Action, p.
   14]

   Anarchism is not only about a future society, it is also about the
   social struggle happening today. It is not a condition but a process,
   which we create by our self-activity and self-liberation.

   By the 1960's, however, many commentators were writing off the
   anarchist movement as a thing of the past. Not only had fascism
   finished off European anarchist movements in the years before and
   during the war, but in the post-war period these movements were
   prevented from recovering by the capitalist West on one hand and the
   Leninist East on the other. Over the same period of time, anarchism had
   been repressed in the US, Latin America, China, Korea (where a social
   revolution with anarchist content was put down before the Korean War),
   and Japan. Even in the one or two countries that escaped the worst of
   the repression, the combination of the Cold War and international
   isolation saw libertarian unions like the Swedish SAC become reformist.

   But the 60's were a decade of new struggle, and all over the world the
   'New Left' looked to anarchism as well as elsewhere for its ideas. Many
   of the prominent figures of the massive explosion of May 1968 in France
   considered themselves anarchists. Although these movements themselves
   degenerated, those coming out of them kept the idea alive and began to
   construct new movements. The death of Franco in 1975 saw a massive
   rebirth of anarchism in Spain, with up to 500,000 people attending the
   CNT's first post-Franco rally. The return to a limited democracy in
   some South American countries in the late 70's and 80's saw a growth in
   anarchism there. Finally, in the late 80's it was anarchists who struck
   the first blows against the Leninist USSR, with the first protest march
   since 1928 being held in Moscow by anarchists in 1987.

   Today the anarchist movement, although still weak, organises tens of
   thousands of revolutionaries in many countries. Spain, Sweden and Italy
   all have libertarian union movements organising some 250,000 between
   them. Most other European countries have several thousand active
   anarchists. Anarchist groups have appeared for the first time in other
   countries, including Nigeria and Turkey. In South America the movement
   has recovered massively. A contact sheet circulated by the Venezuelan
   anarchist group Corrio A lists over 100 organisations in just about
   every country.

   Perhaps the recovery is slowest in North America, but there, too, all
   the libertarian organisations seem to be undergoing significant growth.
   As this growth accelerates, many more examples of anarchy in action
   will be created and more and more people will take part in anarchist
   organisations and activities, making this part of the FAQ less and less
   important.

   However, it is essential to highlight mass examples of anarchism
   working on a large scale in order to avoid the specious accusation of
   "utopianism." As history is written by the winners, these examples of
   anarchy in action are often hidden from view in obscure books. Rarely
   are they mentioned in the schools and universities (or if mentioned,
   they are distorted). Needless to say, the few examples we give are just
   that, a few.

   Anarchism has a long history in many countries, and we cannot attempt
   to document every example, just those we consider to be important. We
   are also sorry if the examples seem Eurocentric. We have, due to space
   and time considerations, had to ignore the syndicalist revolt (1910 to
   1914) and the shop steward movement (1917-21) in Britain, Germany
   (1919-21), Portugal (1974), the Mexican revolution, anarchists in the
   Cuban revolution, the struggle in Korea against Japanese (then US and
   Russian) imperialism during and after the Second World War, Hungary
   (1956), the "the refusal of work" revolt in the late 1960's
   (particularly in "the hot Autumn" in Italy, 1969), the UK miner's
   strike (1984-85), the struggle against the Poll Tax in Britain
   (1988-92), the strikes in France in 1986 and 1995, the Italian COBAS
   movement in the 80's and 90's, the popular assemblies and self-managed
   occupied workplaces during the Argentine revolt at the start of the
   21st century and numerous other major struggles that have involved
   anarchist ideas of self-management (ideas that usually develop from the
   movement themselves, without anarchists necessarily playing a major, or
   "leading", role).

   For anarchists, revolutions and mass struggles are "festivals of the
   oppressed," when ordinary people start to act for themselves and change
   both themselves and the world.

A.5.1 The Paris Commune

   The Paris Commune of 1871 played an important role in the development
   of both anarchist ideas and the movement. As Bakunin commented at the
   time,

     "revolutionary socialism [i.e. anarchism] has just attempted its
     first striking and practical demonstration in the Paris Commune . .
     . [It] show[ed] to all enslaved peoples (and are there any masses
     that are not slaves?) the only road to emancipation and health;
     Paris inflict[ed] a mortal blow upon the political traditions of
     bourgeois radicalism and [gave] a real basis to revolutionary
     socialism." [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 263-4]

   The Paris Commune was created after France was defeated by Prussia in
   the Franco-Prussian war. The French government tried to send in troops
   to regain the Parisian National Guard's cannon to prevent it from
   falling into the hands of the population. "Learning that the Versailles
   soldiers were trying to seize the cannon," recounted participant Louise
   Michel, "men and women of Montmartre swarmed up the Butte in surprise
   manoeuvre. Those people who were climbing up the Butte believed they
   would die, but they were prepared to pay the price." The soldiers
   refused to fire on the jeering crowd and turned their weapons on their
   officers. This was March 18th; the Commune had begun and "the people
   wakened . . . The eighteenth of March could have belonged to the allies
   of kings, or to foreigners, or to the people. It was the people's."
   [Red Virgin: Memoirs of Louise Michel, p. 64]

   In the free elections called by the Parisian National Guard, the
   citizens of Paris elected a council made up of a majority of Jacobins
   and Republicans and a minority of socialists (mostly Blanquists --
   authoritarian socialists -- and followers of the anarchist Proudhon).
   This council proclaimed Paris autonomous and desired to recreate France
   as a confederation of communes (i.e. communities). Within the Commune,
   the elected council people were recallable and paid an average wage. In
   addition, they had to report back to the people who had elected them
   and were subject to recall by electors if they did not carry out their
   mandates.

   Why this development caught the imagination of anarchists is clear --
   it has strong similarities with anarchist ideas. In fact, the example
   of the Paris Commune was in many ways similar to how Bakunin had
   predicted that a revolution would have to occur -- a major city
   declaring itself autonomous, organising itself, leading by example, and
   urging the rest of the planet to follow it. (See "Letter to Albert
   Richards" in Bakunin on Anarchism). The Paris Commune began the process
   of creating a new society, one organised from the bottom up. It was "a
   blow for the decentralisation of political power." [Voltairine de
   Cleyre, "The Paris Commune," Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman's
   Mother Earth, p. 67]

   Many anarchists played a role within the Commune -- for example Louise
   Michel, the Reclus brothers, and Eugene Varlin (the latter murdered in
   the repression afterwards). As for the reforms initiated by the
   Commune, such as the re-opening of workplaces as co-operatives,
   anarchists can see their ideas of associated labour beginning to be
   realised. By May, 43 workplaces were co-operatively run and the Louvre
   Museum was a munitions factory run by a workers' council. Echoing
   Proudhon, a meeting of the Mechanics Union and the Association of Metal
   Workers argued that "our economic emancipation . . . can only be
   obtained through the formation of workers' associations, which alone
   can transform our position from that of wage earners to that of
   associates." They instructed their delegates to the Commune's
   Commission on Labour Organisation to support the following objectives:

     "The abolition of the exploitation of man by man, the last vestige
     of slavery;

     "The organisation of labour in mutual associations and inalienable
     capital."

   In this way, they hoped to ensure that "equality must not be an empty
   word" in the Commune. [The Paris Commune of 1871: The View from the
   Left, Eugene Schulkind (ed.), p. 164] The Engineers Union voted at a
   meeting on 23rd of April that since the aim of the Commune should be
   "economic emancipation" it should "organise labour through associations
   in which there would be joint responsibility" in order "to suppress the
   exploitation of man by man." [quoted by Stewart Edwards, The Paris
   Commune 1871, pp. 263-4]

   As well as self-managed workers' associations, the Communards practised
   direct democracy in a network popular clubs, popular organisations
   similar to the directly democratic neighbourhood assemblies
   ("sections") of the French Revolution. "People, govern yourselves
   through your public meetings, through your press" proclaimed the
   newspaper of one Club. The commune was seen as an expression of the
   assembled people, for (to quote another Club) "Communal power resides
   in each arrondissement [neighbourhood] wherever men are assembled who
   have a horror of the yoke and of servitude." Little wonder that Gustave
   Courbet, artist friend and follower of Proudhon, proclaimed Paris as "a
   true paradise . . . all social groups have established themselves as
   federations and are masters of their own fate." [quoted by Martin
   Phillip Johnson, The Paradise of Association, p. 5 and p. 6]

   In addition the Commune's "Declaration to the French People" which
   echoed many key anarchist ideas. It saw the "political unity" of
   society as being based on "the voluntary association of all local
   initiatives, the free and spontaneous concourse of all individual
   energies for the common aim, the well-being, the liberty and the
   security of all." [quoted by Edwards, Op. Cit., p. 218] The new society
   envisioned by the communards was one based on the "absolute autonomy of
   the Commune . . . assuring to each its integral rights and to each
   Frenchman the full exercise of his aptitudes, as a man, a citizen and a
   labourer. The autonomy of the Commune will have for its limits only the
   equal autonomy of all other communes adhering to the contract; their
   association must ensure the liberty of France." ["Declaration to the
   French People", quoted by George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A
   Biography, pp. 276-7] With its vision of a confederation of communes,
   Bakunin was correct to assert that the Paris Commune was "a bold,
   clearly formulated negation of the State." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p.
   264]

   Moreover, the Commune's ideas on federation obviously reflected the
   influence of Proudhon on French radical ideas. Indeed, the Commune's
   vision of a communal France based on a federation of delegates bound by
   imperative mandates issued by their electors and subject to recall at
   any moment echoes Proudhon's ideas (Proudhon had argued in favour of
   the "implementation of the binding mandate" in 1848 [No Gods, No
   Masters, p. 63] and for federation of communes in his work The
   Principle of Federation).

   Thus both economically and politically the Paris Commune was heavily
   influenced by anarchist ideas. Economically, the theory of associated
   production expounded by Proudhon and Bakunin became consciously
   revolutionary practice. Politically, in the Commune's call for
   federalism and autonomy, anarchists see their "future social
   organisation. . . [being] carried out from the bottom up, by the free
   association or federation of workers, starting with associations, then
   going into the communes, the regions, the nations, and, finally,
   culminating in a great international and universal federation."
   [Bakunin, Op. Cit., p. 270]

   However, for anarchists the Commune did not go far enough. It did not
   abolish the state within the Commune, as it had abolished it beyond it.
   The Communards organised themselves "in a Jacobin manner" (to use
   Bakunin's cutting term). As Peter Kropotkin pointed out, while
   "proclaiming the free Commune, the people of Paris proclaimed an
   essential anarchist principle . . . they stopped mid-course" and gave
   "themselves a Communal Council copied from the old municipal councils."
   Thus the Paris Commune did not "break with the tradition of the State,
   of representative government, and it did not attempt to achieve within
   the Commune that organisation from the simple to the complex it
   inaugurated by proclaiming the independence and free federation of the
   Communes." This lead to disaster as the Commune council became
   "immobilised . . . by red tape" and lost "the sensitivity that comes
   from continued contact with the masses . . . Paralysed by their
   distancing from the revolutionary centre -- the people -- they
   themselves paralysed the popular initiative." [Words of a Rebel, p. 97,
   p. 93 and p. 97]

   In addition, its attempts at economic reform did not go far enough,
   making no attempt to turn all workplaces into co-operatives (i.e. to
   expropriate capital) and forming associations of these co-operatives to
   co-ordinate and support each other's economic activities. Paris,
   stressed Voltairine de Cleyre, "failed to strike at economic tyranny,
   and so came of what it could have achieved" which was a "free community
   whose economic affairs shall be arranged by the groups of actual
   producers and distributors, eliminating the useless and harmful element
   now in possession of the world's capital." [Op. Cit., p. 67] As the
   city was under constant siege by the French army, it is understandable
   that the Communards had other things on their minds. However, for
   Kropotkin such a position was a disaster:

     "They treated the economic question as a secondary one, which would
     be attended to later on, after the triumph of the Commune . . . But
     the crushing defeat which soon followed, and the blood-thirsty
     revenge taken by the middle class, proved once more that the triumph
     of a popular Commune was materially impossible without a parallel
     triumph of the people in the economic field." [Op. Cit., p. 74]

   Anarchists drew the obvious conclusions, arguing that "if no central
   government was needed to rule the independent Communes, if the national
   Government is thrown overboard and national unity is obtained by free
   federation, then a central municipal Government becomes equally useless
   and noxious. The same federative principle would do within the
   Commune." [Kropotkin, Evolution and Environment, p. 75] Instead of
   abolishing the state within the commune by organising federations of
   directly democratic mass assemblies, like the Parisian "sections" of
   the revolution of 1789-93 (see Kropotkin's Great French Revolution for
   more on these), the Paris Commune kept representative government and
   suffered for it. "Instead of acting for themselves . . . the people,
   confiding in their governors, entrusted them the charge of taking the
   initiative. This was the first consequence of the inevitable result of
   elections." The council soon became "the greatest obstacle to the
   revolution" thus proving the "political axiom that a government cannot
   be revolutionary." [Anarchism, p. 240, p. 241 and p. 249]

   The council become more and more isolated from the people who elected
   it, and thus more and more irrelevant. And as its irrelevance grew, so
   did its authoritarian tendencies, with the Jacobin majority creating a
   "Committee of Public Safety" to "defend" (by terror) the "revolution."
   The Committee was opposed by the libertarian socialist minority and
   was, fortunately, ignored in practice by the people of Paris as they
   defended their freedom against the French army, which was attacking
   them in the name of capitalist civilisation and "liberty." On May 21st,
   government troops entered the city, followed by seven days of bitter
   street fighting. Squads of soldiers and armed members of the
   bourgeoisie roamed the streets, killing and maiming at will. Over
   25,000 people were killed in the street fighting, many murdered after
   they had surrendered, and their bodies dumped in mass graves. As a
   final insult, Sacr Coeur was built by the bourgeoisie on the birth
   place of the Commune, the Butte of Montmartre, to atone for the radical
   and atheist revolt which had so terrified them.

   For anarchists, the lessons of the Paris Commune were threefold.
   Firstly, a decentralised confederation of communities is the necessary
   political form of a free society ("This was the form that the social
   revolution must take -- the independent commune." [Kropotkin, Op. Cit.,
   p. 163]). Secondly, "there is no more reason for a government inside a
   Commune than for government above the Commune." This means that an
   anarchist community will be based on a confederation of neighbourhood
   and workplace assemblies freely co-operating together. Thirdly, it is
   critically important to unify political and economic revolutions into a
   social revolution. "They tried to consolidate the Commune first and put
   off the social revolution until later, whereas the only way to proceed
   was to consolidate the Commune by means of the social revolution!"
   [Peter Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel , p. 97]

   For more anarchist perspectives on the Paris Commune see Kropotkin's
   essay "The Paris Commune" in Words of a Rebel (and The Anarchist
   Reader) and Bakunin's "The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State" in
   Bakunin on Anarchism.

A.5.2 The Haymarket Martyrs

   May 1st is a day of special significance for the labour movement. While
   it has been hijacked in the past by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the
   Soviet Union and elsewhere, the labour movement festival of May Day is
   a day of world-wide solidarity. A time to remember past struggles and
   demonstrate our hope for a better future. A day to remember that an
   injury to one is an injury to all.

   The history of Mayday is closely linked with the anarchist movement and
   the struggles of working people for a better world. Indeed, it
   originated with the execution of four anarchists in Chicago in 1886 for
   organising workers in the fight for the eight-hour day. Thus May Day is
   a product of "anarchy in action" -- of the struggle of working people
   using direct action in labour unions to change the world.

   It began in the 1880s in the USA. In 1884, the Federation of Organised
   Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (created in
   1881, it changed its name in 1886 to the American Federation of Labor)
   passed a resolution which asserted that "eight hours shall constitute a
   legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886, and that we recommend to
   labour organisations throughout this district that they so direct their
   laws as to conform to this resolution." A call for strikes on May 1st,
   1886 was made in support of this demand.

   In Chicago the anarchists were the main force in the union movement,
   and partially as a result of their presence, the unions translated this
   call into strikes on May 1st. The anarchists thought that the eight
   hour day could only be won through direct action and solidarity. They
   considered that struggles for reforms, like the eight hour day, were
   not enough in themselves. They viewed them as only one battle in an
   ongoing class war that would only end by social revolution and the
   creation of a free society. It was with these ideas that they organised
   and fought.

   In Chicago alone, 400 000 workers went out and the threat of strike
   action ensured that more than 45 000 were granted a shorter working day
   without striking. On May 3, 1886, police fired into a crowd of pickets
   at the McCormick Harvester Machine Company, killing at least one
   striker, seriously wounding five or six others, and injuring an
   undetermined number. Anarchists called for a mass meeting the next day
   in Haymarket Square to protest the brutality. According to the Mayor,
   "nothing had occurred yet, or looked likely to occur to require
   interference." However, as the meeting was breaking up a column of 180
   police arrived and ordered the meeting to end. At this moment a bomb
   was thrown into the police ranks, who opened fire on the crowd. How
   many civilians were wounded or killed by the police was never exactly
   ascertained, but 7 policemen eventually died (ironically, only one was
   the victim of the bomb, the rest were a result of the bullets fired by
   the police [Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, p. 208]).

   A "reign of terror" swept over Chicago, and the "organised banditti and
   conscienceless brigands of capital suspended the only papers which
   would give the side of those whom they crammed into prison cells. They
   have invaded the homes of everyone who has ever known to have raised a
   voice or sympathised with those who have aught to say against the
   present system of robbery and oppression . . . they have invaded their
   homes and subjected them and their families to indignities that must be
   seen to be believed." [Lucy Parsons, Liberty, Equality & Solidarity, p.
   53] Meeting halls, union offices, printing shops and private homes were
   raided (usually without warrants). Such raids into working-class areas
   allowed the police to round up all known anarchists and other
   socialists. Many suspects were beaten up and some bribed. "Make the
   raids first and look up the law afterwards" was the public statement of
   J. Grinnell, the States Attorney, when a question was raised about
   search warrants. ["Editor's Introduction", The Autobiographies of the
   Haymarket Martyrs, p. 7]

   Eight anarchists were put on trial for accessory to murder. No pretence
   was made that any of the accused had carried out or even planned the
   bomb. The judge ruled that it was not necessary for the state to
   identify the actual perpetrator or prove that he had acted under the
   influence of the accused. The state did not try to establish that the
   defendants had in any way approved or abetted the act. In fact, only
   three were present at the meeting when the bomb exploded and one of
   those, Albert Parsons, was accompanied by his wife and fellow anarchist
   Lucy and their two small children to the event.

   The reason why these eight were picked was because of their anarchism
   and union organising, as made clear by that State's Attorney when he
   told the jury that "Law is on trial. Anarchy is on trial. These men
   have been selected, picked out by the Grand Jury, and indicted because
   they were leaders. They are no more guilty than the thousands who
   follow them. Gentlemen of the jury; convict these men, make examples of
   them, hang them and you save our institutions, our society." The jury
   was selected by a special bailiff, nominated by the State's Attorney
   and was explicitly chosen to compose of businessmen and a relative of
   one of the cops killed. The defence was not allowed to present evidence
   that the special bailiff had publicly claimed "I am managing this case
   and I know what I am about. These fellows are going to be hanged as
   certain as death." [Op. Cit., p. 8] Not surprisingly, the accused were
   convicted. Seven were sentenced to death, one to 15 years'
   imprisonment.

   An international campaign resulted in two of the death sentences being
   commuted to life, but the world wide protest did not stop the US state.
   Of the remaining five, one (Louis Lingg) cheated the executioner and
   killed himself on the eve of the execution. The remaining four (Albert
   Parsons, August Spies, George Engel and Adolph Fischer) were hanged on
   November 11th 1887. They are known in Labour history as the Haymarket
   Martyrs. Between 150,000 and 500,000 lined the route taken by the
   funeral cortege and between 10,000 to 25,000 were estimated to have
   watched the burial.

   In 1889, the American delegation attending the International Socialist
   congress in Paris proposed that May 1st be adopted as a workers'
   holiday. This was to commemorate working class struggle and the
   "Martyrdom of the Chicago Eight". Since then Mayday has became a day
   for international solidarity. In 1893, the new Governor of Illinois
   made official what the working class in Chicago and across the world
   knew all along and pardoned the Martyrs because of their obvious
   innocence and because "the trial was not fair." To this day, no one
   knows who threw the bomb -- the only definite fact is that it was not
   any of those who were tried for the act: "Our comrades were not
   murdered by the state because they had any connection with the
   bomb-throwing, but because they had been active in organising the
   wage-slaves of America." [Lucy Parsons, Op. Cit., p. 142]

   The authorities had believed at the time of the trial that such
   persecution would break the back of the labour movement. As Lucy
   Parsons, a participant of the events, noted 20 years later, the
   Haymarket trial "was a class trial -- relentless, vindictive, savage
   and bloody. By that prosecution the capitalists sought to break the
   great strike for the eight-hour day which as being successfully
   inaugurated in Chicago, this city being the stormcentre of that great
   movement; and they also intended, by the savage manner in which they
   conducted the trial of these men, to frighten the working class back to
   their long hours of toil and low wages from which they were attempting
   to emerge. The capitalistic class imagined they could carry out their
   hellish plot by putting to an ignominious death the most progressive
   leaders among the working class of that day. In executing their bloody
   deed of judicial murder they succeeded, but in arresting the mighty
   onward movement of the class struggle they utterly failed." [Lucy
   Parsons, Op. Cit., p. 128] In the words of August Spies when he
   addressed the court after he had been sentenced to die:

     "If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labour
     movement . . . the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the
     millions who toil in misery and want, expect salvation -- if this is
     your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread on a spark, but
     there and there, behind you -- and in front of you, and everywhere,
     flames blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out."
     [quoted by Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 287]

   At the time and in the years to come, this defiance of the state and
   capitalism was to win thousands to anarchism, particularly in the US
   itself. Since the Haymarket event, anarchists have celebrated May Day
   (on the 1st of May -- the reformist unions and labour parties moved its
   marches to the first Sunday of the month). We do so to show our
   solidarity with other working class people across the world, to
   celebrate past and present struggles, to show our power and remind the
   ruling class of their vulnerability. As Nestor Makhno put it:

     "That day those American workers attempted, by organising
     themselves, to give expression to their protest against the
     iniquitous order of the State and Capital of the propertied . . .

     "The workers of Chicago . . . had gathered to resolve, in common,
     the problems of their lives and their struggles. . .

     "Today too . . . the toilers . . . regard the first of May as the
     occasion of a get-together when they will concern themselves with
     their own affairs and consider the matter of their emancipation."
     [The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays, pp. 59-60]

   Anarchists stay true to the origins of May Day and celebrate its birth
   in the direct action of the oppressed. It is a classic example of
   anarchist principles of direct action and solidarity, "an historic
   event of great importance, inasmuch as it was, in the first place, the
   first time that workers themselves had attempted to get a shorter work
   day by united, simultaneous action . . . this strike was the first in
   the nature of Direct Action on a large scale, the first in America."
   [Lucy Parsons, Op. Cit., pp. 139-40] Oppression and exploitation breed
   resistance and, for anarchists, May Day is an international symbol of
   that resistance and power -- a power expressed in the last words of
   August Spies, chiselled in stone on the monument to the Haymarket
   martyrs in Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago:

     "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the
     voices you are throttling today."

   To understand why the state and business class were so determined to
   hang the Chicago Anarchists, it is necessary to realise they were
   considered the leaders of a massive radical union movement. In 1884,
   the Chicago Anarchists produced the world's first daily anarchist
   newspaper, the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeiting. This was written, read,
   owned and published by the German immigrant working class movement. The
   combined circulation of this daily plus a weekly (Vorbote) and a Sunday
   edition (Fackel) more than doubled, from 13,000 per issues in 1880 to
   26,980 in 1886. Anarchist weekly papers existed for other ethnic groups
   as well (one English, one Bohemian and one Scandinavian).

   Anarchists were very active in the Central Labour Union (which included
   the eleven largest unions in the city) and aimed to make it, in the
   words of Albert Parsons (one of the Martyrs), "the embryonic group of
   the future 'free society.'" The anarchists were also part of the
   International Working People's Association (also called the "Black
   International") which had representatives from 26 cities at its
   founding convention. The I.W.P.A. soon "made headway among trade
   unions, especially in the mid-west" and its ideas of "direct action of
   the rank and file" and of trade unions "serv[ing] as the instrument of
   the working class for the complete destruction of capitalism and the
   nucleus for the formation of a new society" became known as the
   "Chicago Idea" (an idea which later inspired the Industrial Workers of
   the World which was founded in Chicago in 1905). ["Editor's
   Introduction," The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs, p. 4]

   This idea was expressed in the manifesto issued at the I.W.P.A.'s
   Pittsburgh Congress of 1883:

     "First -- Destruction of the existing class rule, by all means, i.e.
     by energetic, relentless, revolutionary and international action.

     "Second -- Establishment of a free society based upon co-operative
     organisation of production.

     "Third -- Free exchange of equivalent products by and between the
     productive organisations without commerce and profit-mongery.

     "Fourth -- Organisation of education on a secular, scientific and
     equal basis for both sexes.

     "Fifth -- Equal rights for all without distinction to sex or race.

     "Sixth -- Regulation of all public affairs by free contracts between
     autonomous (independent) communes and associations, resting on a
     federalistic basis."
     [Op. Cit., p. 42]

   In addition to their union organising, the Chicago anarchist movement
   also organised social societies, picnics, lectures, dances, libraries
   and a host of other activities. These all helped to forge a distinctly
   working-class revolutionary culture in the heart of the "American
   Dream." The threat to the ruling class and their system was too great
   to allow it to continue (particularly with memories of the vast
   uprising of labour in 1877 still fresh. As in 1886, that revolt was
   also meet by state violence -- see Strike! by J. Brecher for details of
   this strike movement as well as the Haymarket events). Hence the
   repression, kangaroo court, and the state murder of those the state and
   capitalist class considered "leaders" of the movement.

   For more on the Haymarket Martyrs, their lives and their ideas, The
   Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs is essential reading. Albert
   Parsons, the only American born Martyr, produced a book which explained
   what they stood for called Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific
   Basis. Historian Paul Avrich's The Haymarket Tragedy is a useful in
   depth account of the events.

A.5.3 Building the Syndicalist Unions

   Just before the turn of the century in Europe, the anarchist movement
   began to create one of the most successful attempts to apply anarchist
   organisational ideas in everyday life. This was the building of mass
   revolutionary unions (also known as syndicalism or
   anarcho-syndicalism). The syndicalist movement, in the words of a
   leading French syndicalist militant, was "a practical schooling in
   anarchism" for it was "a laboratory of economic struggles" and
   organised "along anarchic lines." By organising workers into
   "libertarian organisations," the syndicalist unions were creating the
   "free associations of free producers" within capitalism to combat it
   and, ultimately, replace it. [Fernand Pelloutier, No Gods, No Masters,
   vol. 2, p. 57, p. 55 and p. 56]

   While the details of syndicalist organisation varied from country to
   country, the main lines were the same. Workers should form themselves
   into unions (or syndicates, the French for union). While organisation
   by industry was generally the preferred form, craft and trade
   organisations were also used. These unions were directly controlled by
   their members and would federate together on an industrial and
   geographical basis. Thus a given union would be federated with all the
   local unions in a given town, region and country as well as with all
   the unions within its industry into a national union (of, say, miners
   or metal workers). Each union was autonomous and all officials were
   part-time (and paid their normal wages if they missed work on union
   business). The tactics of syndicalism were direct action and solidarity
   and its aim was to replace capitalism by the unions providing the basic
   framework of the new, free, society.

   Thus, for anarcho-syndicalism, "the trade union is by no means a mere
   transitory phenomenon bound up with the duration of capitalist society,
   it is the germ of the Socialist economy of the future, the elementary
   school of Socialism in general." The "economic fighting organisation of
   the workers" gives their members "every opportunity for direct action
   in their struggles for daily bread, it also provides them with the
   necessary preliminaries for carrying through the reorganisation of
   social life on a [libertarian] Socialist plan by them own strength."
   [Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 59 and p. 62]
   Anarcho-syndicalism, to use the expression of the I.W.W., aims to build
   the new world in the shell of the old.

   In the period from the 1890's to the outbreak of World War I,
   anarchists built revolutionary unions in most European countries
   (particularly in Spain, Italy and France). In addition, anarchists in
   South and North America were also successful in organising syndicalist
   unions (particularly Cuba, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil). Almost all
   industrialised countries had some syndicalist movement, although Europe
   and South America had the biggest and strongest ones. These unions were
   organised in a confederal manner, from the bottom up, along anarchist
   lines. They fought with capitalists on a day-to-day basis around the
   issue of better wages and working conditions and the state for social
   reforms, but they also sought to overthrow capitalism through the
   revolutionary general strike.

   Thus hundreds of thousands of workers around the world were applying
   anarchist ideas in everyday life, proving that anarchy was no utopian
   dream but a practical method of organising on a wide scale. That
   anarchist organisational techniques encouraged member participation,
   empowerment and militancy, and that they also successfully fought for
   reforms and promoted class consciousness, can be seen in the growth of
   anarcho-syndicalist unions and their impact on the labour movement. The
   Industrial Workers of the World, for example, still inspires union
   activists and has, throughout its long history, provided many union
   songs and slogans.

   However, as a mass movement, syndicalism effectively ended by the
   1930s. This was due to two factors. Firstly, most of the syndicalist
   unions were severely repressed just after World War I. In the immediate
   post-war years they reached their height. This wave of militancy was
   known as the "red years" in Italy, where it attained its high point
   with factory occupations (see [2]section A.5.5). But these years also
   saw the destruction of these unions in country after county. In the
   USA, for example, the I.W.W. was crushed by a wave of repression backed
   whole-heartedly by the media, the state, and the capitalist class.
   Europe saw capitalism go on the offensive with a new weapon -- fascism.
   Fascism arose (first in Italy and, most infamously, in Germany) as an
   attempt by capitalism to physically smash the organisations the working
   class had built. This was due to radicalism that had spread across
   Europe in the wake of the war ending, inspired by the example of
   Russia. Numerous near revolutions had terrified the bourgeoisie, who
   turned to fascism to save their system.

   In country after country, anarchists were forced to flee into exile,
   vanish from sight, or became victims of assassins or concentration
   camps after their (often heroic) attempts at fighting fascism failed.
   In Portugal, for example, the 100,000 strong anarcho-syndicalist CGT
   union launched numerous revolts in the late 1920s and early 1930s
   against fascism. In January 1934, the CGT called for a revolutionary
   general strike which developed into a five day insurrection. A state of
   siege was declared by the state, which used extensive force to crush
   the rebellion. The CGT, whose militants had played a prominent and
   courageous role in the insurrection, was completely smashed and
   Portugal remained a fascist state for the next 40 years. [Phil Mailer,
   Portugal: The Impossible Revolution, pp. 72-3] In Spain, the CNT (the
   most famous anarcho-syndicalist union) fought a similar battle. By
   1936, it claimed one and a half million members. As in Italy and
   Portugal, the capitalist class embraced fascism to save their power
   from the dispossessed, who were becoming confident of their power and
   their right to manage their own lives (see [3]section A.5.6).

   As well as fascism, syndicalism also faced the negative influence of
   Leninism. The apparent success of the Russian revolution led many
   activists to turn to authoritarian politics, particularly in English
   speaking countries and, to a lesser extent, France. Such notable
   syndicalist activists as Tom Mann in England, William Gallacher in
   Scotland and William Foster in the USA became Communists (the last two,
   it should be noted, became Stalinist). Moreover, Communist parties
   deliberately undermined the libertarian unions, encouraging fights and
   splits (as, for example, in the I.W.W.). After the end of the Second
   World War, the Stalinists finished off what fascism had started in
   Eastern Europe and destroyed the anarchist and syndicalist movements in
   such places as Bulgaria and Poland. In Cuba, Castro also followed
   Lenin's example and did what the Batista and Machado dictatorship's
   could not, namely smash the influential anarchist and syndicalist
   movements (see Frank Fernandez's Cuban Anarchism for a history of this
   movement from its origins in the 1860s to the 21st century).

   So by the start of the second world war, the large and powerful
   anarchist movements of Italy, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria and Portugal had
   been crushed by fascism (but not, we must stress, without a fight).
   When necessary, the capitalists supported authoritarian states in order
   to crush the labour movement and make their countries safe for
   capitalism. Only Sweden escaped this trend, where the syndicalist union
   the SAC is still organising workers. It is, in fact, like many other
   syndicalist unions active today, growing as workers turn away from
   bureaucratic unions whose leaders seem more interested in protecting
   their privileges and cutting deals with management than defending their
   members. In France, Spain and Italy and elsewhere, syndicalist unions
   are again on the rise, showing that anarchist ideas are applicable in
   everyday life.

   Finally, it must be stressed that syndicalism has its roots in the
   ideas of the earliest anarchists and, consequently, was not invented in
   the 1890s. It is true that development of syndicalism came about, in
   part, as a reaction to the disastrous "propaganda by deed" period, in
   which individual anarchists assassinated government leaders in attempts
   to provoke a popular uprising and in revenge for the mass murders of
   the Communards and other rebels (see [4]section A.2.18 for details).
   But in response to this failed and counterproductive campaign,
   anarchists went back to their roots and to the ideas of Bakunin. Thus,
   as recognised by the likes of Kropotkin and Malatesta, syndicalism was
   simply a return to the ideas current in the libertarian wing of the
   First International.

   Thus we find Bakunin arguing that "it is necessary to organise the
   power of the proletariat. But this organisation must be the work of the
   proletariat itself . . . Organise, constantly organise the
   international militant solidarity of the workers, in every trade and
   country, and remember that however weak you are as isolated individuals
   or districts, you will constitute a tremendous, invincible power by
   means of universal co-operation." As one American activist commented,
   this is "the same militant spirit that breathes now in the best
   expressions of the Syndicalist and I.W.W. movements" both of which
   express "a strong world wide revival of the ideas for which Bakunin
   laboured throughout his life." [Max Baginski, Anarchy! An Anthology of
   Emma Goldman's Mother Earth, p. 71] As with the syndicalists, Bakunin
   stressed the "organisation of trade sections, their federation . . .
   bear in themselves the living germs of the new social order, which is
   to replace the bourgeois world. They are creating not only the ideas
   but also the facts of the future itself." [quoted by Rudolf Rocker, Op.
   Cit., p. 50]

   Such ideas were repeated by other libertarians. Eugene Varlin, whose
   role in the Paris Commune ensured his death, advocated a socialism of
   associations, arguing in 1870 that syndicates were the "natural
   elements" for the rebuilding of society: "it is they that can easily be
   transformed into producer associations; it is they that can put into
   practice the retooling of society and the organisation of production."
   [quoted by Martin Phillip Johnson, The Paradise of Association, p. 139]
   As we discussed in [5]section A.5.2, the Chicago Anarchists held
   similar views, seeing the labour movement as both the means of
   achieving anarchy and the framework of the free society. As Lucy
   Parsons (the wife of Albert) put it "we hold that the granges,
   trade-unions, Knights of Labour assemblies, etc., are the embryonic
   groups of the ideal anarchistic society . . ." [contained in Albert R.
   Parsons, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, p. 110] These
   ideas fed into the revolutionary unionism of the I.W.W. As one
   historian notes, the "proceedings of the I.W.W.'s inaugural convention
   indicate that the participants were not only aware of the 'Chicago
   Idea' but were conscious of a continuity between their efforts and the
   struggles of the Chicago anarchists to initiate industrial unionism."
   The Chicago idea represented "the earliest American expression of
   syndicalism." [Salvatore Salerno, Red November, Black November, p. 71]

   Thus, syndicalism and anarchism are not differing theories but, rather,
   different interpretations of the same ideas (see for a fuller
   discussion [6]section H.2.8). While not all syndicalists are anarchists
   (some Marxists have proclaimed support for syndicalism) and not all
   anarchists are syndicalists (see [7]section J.3.9 for a discussion
   why), all social anarchists see the need for taking part in the labour
   and other popular movements and encouraging libertarian forms of
   organisation and struggle within them. By doing this, inside and
   outside of syndicalist unions, anarchists are showing the validity of
   our ideas. For, as Kropotkin stressed, the "next revolution must from
   its inception bring about the seizure of the entire social wealth by
   the workers in order to transform it into common property. This
   revolution can succeed only through the workers, only if the urban and
   rural workers everywhere carry out this objective themselves. To that
   end, they must initiate their own action in the period before the
   revolution; this can happen only if there is a strong workers'
   organisation." [Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, p. 20]
   Such popular self-managed organisations cannot be anything but "anarchy
   in action."

A.5.4 Anarchists in the Russian Revolution

   The Russian revolution of 1917 saw a huge growth in anarchism in that
   country and many experiments in anarchist ideas. However, in popular
   culture the Russian Revolution is seen not as a mass movement by
   ordinary people struggling towards freedom but as the means by which
   Lenin imposed his dictatorship on Russia. The truth is radically
   different. The Russian Revolution was a mass movement from below in
   which many different currents of ideas existed and in which millions of
   working people (workers in the cities and towns as well as peasants)
   tried to transform their world into a better place. Sadly, those hopes
   and dreams were crushed under the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party
   -- first under Lenin, later under Stalin.

   The Russian Revolution, like most history, is a good example of the
   maxim "history is written by those who win." Most capitalist histories
   of the period between 1917 and 1921 ignore what the anarchist Voline
   called "the unknown revolution" -- the revolution called forth from
   below by the actions of ordinary people. Leninist accounts, at best,
   praise this autonomous activity of workers so long as it coincides with
   their own party line but radically condemn it (and attribute it with
   the basest motives) as soon as it strays from that line. Thus Leninist
   accounts will praise the workers when they move ahead of the Bolsheviks
   (as in the spring and summer of 1917) but will condemn them when they
   oppose Bolshevik policy once the Bolsheviks are in power. At worse,
   Leninist accounts portray the movement and struggles of the masses as
   little more than a backdrop to the activities of the vanguard party.

   For anarchists, however, the Russian Revolution is seen as a classic
   example of a social revolution in which the self-activity of working
   people played a key role. In their soviets, factory committees and
   other class organisations, the Russian masses were trying to transform
   society from a class-ridden, hierarchical statist regime into one based
   on liberty, equality and solidarity. As such, the initial months of the
   Revolution seemed to confirm Bakunin's prediction that the "future
   social organisation must be made solely from the bottom upwards, by the
   free associations or federations of workers, firstly in their unions,
   then in the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great
   federation, international and universal." [Michael Bakunin: Selected
   Writings, p. 206] The soviets and factory committees expressed
   concretely Bakunin's ideas and Anarchists played an important role in
   the struggle.

   The initial overthrow of the Tsar came from the direct action of the
   masses. In February 1917, the women of Petrograd erupted in bread
   riots. On February 18th, the workers of the Putilov Works in Petrograd
   went on strike. By February 22nd, the strike had spread to other
   factories. Two days later, 200 000 workers were on strike and by
   February 25th the strike was virtually general. The same day also saw
   the first bloody clashes between protestors and the army. The turning
   point came on the 27th, when some troops went over to the revolutionary
   masses, sweeping along other units. This left the government without
   its means of coercion, the Tsar abdicated and a provisional government
   was formed.

   So spontaneous was this movement that all the political parties were
   left behind. This included the Bolsheviks, with the "Petrograd
   organisation of the Bolsheviks oppos[ing] the calling of strikes
   precisely on the eve of the revolution destined to overthrow the Tsar.
   Fortunately, the workers ignored the Bolshevik 'directives' and went on
   strike anyway . . . Had the workers followed its guidance, it is
   doubtful that the revolution would have occurred when it did." [Murray
   Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 123]

   The revolution carried on in this vein of direct action from below
   until the new, "socialist" state was powerful enough to stop it.

   For the Left, the end of Tsarism was the culmination of years of effort
   by socialists and anarchists everywhere. It represented the progressive
   wing of human thought overcoming traditional oppression, and as such
   was duly praised by leftists around the world. However, in Russia
   things were progressing. In the workplaces and streets and on the land,
   more and more people became convinced that abolishing feudalism
   politically was not enough. The overthrow of the Tsar made little real
   difference if feudal exploitation still existed in the economy, so
   workers started to seize their workplaces and peasants, the land. All
   across Russia, ordinary people started to build their own
   organisations, unions, co-operatives, factory committees and councils
   (or "soviets" in Russian). These organisations were initially organised
   in anarchist fashion, with recallable delegates and being federated
   with each other.

   Needless to say, all the political parties and organisations played a
   role in this process. The two wings of the Marxist social-democrats
   were active (the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks), as were the Social
   Revolutionaries (a populist peasant based party) and the anarchists.
   The anarchists participated in this movement, encouraging all
   tendencies to self-management and urging the overthrow of the
   provisional government. They argued that it was necessary to transform
   the revolution from a purely political one into an economic/social one.
   Until the return of Lenin from exile, they were the only political
   tendency who thought along those lines.

   Lenin convinced his party to adopt the slogan "All Power to the
   Soviets" and push the revolution forward. This meant a sharp break with
   previous Marxist positions, leading one ex-Bolshevik turned Menshevik
   to comment that Lenin had "made himself a candidate for one European
   throne that has been vacant for thirty years -- the throne of Bakunin!"
   [quoted by Alexander Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution, p. 40] The
   Bolsheviks now turned to winning mass support, championing direct
   action and supporting the radical actions of the masses, policies in
   the past associated with anarchism ("the Bolsheviks launched . . .
   slogans which until then had been particularly and insistently been
   voiced by the Anarchists." [Voline, The Unknown Revolution, p. 210]).
   Soon they were winning more and more votes in the soviet and factory
   committee elections. As Alexander Berkman argues, the "Anarchist
   mottoes proclaimed by the Bolsheviks did not fail to bring results. The
   masses relied to their flag." [What is Anarchism?, p. 120]

   The anarchists were also influential at this time. Anarchists were
   particularly active in the movement for workers self-management of
   production which existed around the factory committees (see M. Brinton,
   The Bolsheviks and Workers Control for details). They were arguing for
   workers and peasants to expropriate the owning class, abolish all forms
   of government and re-organise society from the bottom up using their
   own class organisations -- the soviets, the factory committees,
   co-operatives and so on. They could also influence the direction of
   struggle. As Alexander Rabinowitch (in his study of the July uprising
   of 1917) notes:

     "At the rank-and-file level, particularly within the [Petrograd]
     garrison and at the Kronstadt naval base, there was in fact very
     little to distinguish Bolshevik from Anarchist. . . The
     Anarchist-Communists and the Bolsheviks competed for the support of
     the same uneducated, depressed, and dissatisfied elements of the
     population, and the fact is that in the summer of 1917, the
     Anarchist-Communists, with the support they enjoyed in a few
     important factories and regiments, possessed an undeniable capacity
     to influence the course of events. Indeed, the Anarchist appeal was
     great enough in some factories and military units to influence the
     actions of the Bolsheviks themselves." [Op. Cit., p. 64]

   Indeed, one leading Bolshevik stated in June, 1917 (in response to a
   rise in anarchist influence), "[b]y fencing ourselves off from the
   Anarchists, we may fence ourselves off from the masses." [quoted by
   Alexander Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 102]

   The anarchists operated with the Bolsheviks during the October
   Revolution which overthrew the provisional government. But things
   changed once the authoritarian socialists of the Bolshevik party had
   seized power. While both anarchists and Bolsheviks used many of the
   same slogans, there were important differences between the two. As
   Voline argued, "[f]rom the lips and pens of the Anarchists, those
   slogans were sincere and concrete, for they corresponded to their
   principles and called for action entirely in conformity with such
   principles. But with the Bolsheviks, the same slogans meant practical
   solutions totally different from those of the libertarians and did not
   tally with the ideas which the slogans appeared to express." [The
   Unknown Revolution, p. 210]

   Take, for example, the slogan "All power to the Soviets." For
   anarchists it meant exactly that -- organs for the working class to run
   society directly, based on mandated, recallable delegates. For the
   Bolsheviks, that slogan was simply the means for a Bolshevik government
   to be formed over and above the soviets. The difference is important,
   "for the Anarchists declared, if 'power' really should belong to the
   soviets, it could not belong to the Bolshevik party, and if it should
   belong to that Party, as the Bolsheviks envisaged, it could not belong
   to the soviets." [Voline, Op. Cit., p. 213] Reducing the soviets to
   simply executing the decrees of the central (Bolshevik) government and
   having their All-Russian Congress be able to recall the government
   (i.e. those with real power) does not equal "all power," quite the
   reverse.

   Similarly with the term "workers' control of production." Before the
   October Revolution Lenin saw "workers' control" purely in terms of the
   "universal, all-embracing workers' control over the capitalists." [Will
   the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?, p. 52] He did not see it in terms of
   workers' management of production itself (i.e. the abolition of wage
   labour) via federations of factory committees. Anarchists and the
   workers' factory committees did. As S.A. Smith correctly notes, Lenin
   used "the term ['workers' control'] in a very different sense from that
   of the factory committees." In fact Lenin's "proposals . . . [were]
   thoroughly statist and centralist in character, whereas the practice of
   the factory committees was essentially local and autonomous." [Red
   Petrograd, p. 154] For anarchists, "if the workers' organisations were
   capable of exercising effective control [over their bosses], then they
   also were capable of guaranteeing all production. In such an event,
   private industry could be eliminated quickly but progressively, and
   replaced by collective industry. Consequently, the Anarchists rejected
   the vague nebulous slogan of 'control of production.' They advocated
   expropriation -- progressive, but immediate -- of private industry by
   the organisations of collective production." [Voline, Op. Cit., p. 221]

   Once in power, the Bolsheviks systematically undermined the popular
   meaning of workers' control and replaced it with their own, statist
   conception. "On three occasions," one historian notes, "in the first
   months of Soviet power, the [factory] committee leaders sought to bring
   their model into being. At each point the party leadership overruled
   them. The result was to vest both managerial and control powers in
   organs of the state which were subordinate to the central authorities,
   and formed by them." [Thomas F. Remington, Building Socialism in
   Bolshevik Russia, p. 38] This process ultimately resulted in Lenin
   arguing for, and introducing, "one-man management" armed with
   "dictatorial" power (with the manager appointed from above by the
   state) in April 1918. This process is documented in Maurice Brinton's
   The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, which also indicates the clear
   links between Bolshevik practice and Bolshevik ideology as well as how
   both differed from popular activity and ideas.

   Hence the comments by Russian Anarchist Peter Arshinov:

     "Another no less important peculiarity is that [the] October
     [revolution of 1917] has two meanings -- that which the working'
     masses who participated in the social revolution gave it, and with
     them the Anarchist-Communists, and that which was given it by the
     political party [the Marxist-Communists] that captured power from
     this aspiration to social revolution, and which betrayed and stifled
     all further development. An enormous gulf exists between these two
     interpretations of October. The October of the workers and peasants
     is the suppression of the power of the parasite classes in the name
     of equality and self-management. The Bolshevik October is the
     conquest of power by the party of the revolutionary intelligentsia,
     the installation of its 'State Socialism' and of its 'socialist'
     methods of governing the masses." [The Two Octobers]

   Initially, anarchists had supported the Bolsheviks, since the Bolshevik
   leaders had hidden their state-building ideology behind support for the
   soviets (as socialist historian Samuel Farber notes, the anarchists
   "had actually been an unnamed coalition partner of the Bolsheviks in
   the October Revolution." [Before Stalinism, p. 126]). However, this
   support quickly "withered away" as the Bolsheviks showed that they
   were, in fact, not seeking true socialism but were instead securing
   power for themselves and pushing not for collective ownership of land
   and productive resources but for government ownership. The Bolsheviks,
   as noted, systematically undermined the workers'
   control/self-management movement in favour of capitalist-like forms of
   workplace management based around "one-man management" armed with
   "dictatorial powers."

   As regards the soviets, the Bolsheviks systematically undermining what
   limited independence and democracy they had. In response to the "great
   Bolshevik losses in the soviet elections" during the spring and summer
   of 1918 "Bolshevik armed force usually overthrew the results of these
   provincial elections." Also, the "government continually postponed the
   new general elections to the Petrograd Soviet, the term of which had
   ended in March 1918. Apparently, the government feared that the
   opposition parties would show gains." [Samuel Farber, Op. Cit., p. 24
   and p. 22] In the Petrograd elections, the Bolsheviks "lost the
   absolute majority in the soviet they had previously enjoyed" but
   remained the largest party. However, the results of the Petrograd
   soviet elections were irrelevant as a "Bolshevik victory was assured by
   the numerically quite significant representation now given to trade
   unions, district soviets, factory-shop committees, district workers
   conferences, and Red Army and naval units, in which the Bolsheviks had
   overwhelming strength." [Alexander Rabinowitch, "The Evolution of Local
   Soviets in Petrograd", pp. 20-37, Slavic Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, p.
   36f] In other words, the Bolsheviks had undermined the democratic
   nature of the soviet by swamping it by their own delegates. Faced with
   rejection in the soviets, the Bolsheviks showed that for them "soviet
   power" equalled party power. To stay in power, the Bolsheviks had to
   destroy the soviets, which they did. The soviet system remained
   "soviet" in name only. Indeed, from 1919 onwards Lenin, Trotsky and
   other leading Bolsheviks were admitting that they had created a party
   dictatorship and, moreover, that such a dictatorship was essential for
   any revolution (Trotsky supported party dictatorship even after the
   rise of Stalinism).

   The Red Army, moreover, no longer was a democratic organisation. In
   March of 1918 Trotsky had abolished the election of officers and
   soldier committees:

     "the principle of election is politically purposeless and
     technically inexpedient, and it has been, in practice, abolished by
     decree." [Work, Discipline, Order]

   As Maurice Brinton correctly summarises:

     "Trotsky, appointed Commissar of Military Affairs after
     Brest-Litovsk, had rapidly been reorganising the Red Army. The death
     penalty for disobedience under fire had been restored. So, more
     gradually, had saluting, special forms of address, separate living
     quarters and other privileges for officers. Democratic forms of
     organisation, including the election of officers, had been quickly
     dispensed with." ["The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control", For
     Workers' Power, pp. 336-7]

   Unsurprisingly, Samuel Farber notes that "there is no evidence
   indicating that Lenin or any of the mainstream Bolshevik leaders
   lamented the loss of workers' control or of democracy in the soviets,
   or at least referred to these losses as a retreat, as Lenin declared
   with the replacement of War Communism by NEP in 1921." [Before
   Stalinism, p. 44]

   Thus after the October Revolution, anarchists started to denounce the
   Bolshevik regime and call for a "Third Revolution" which would finally
   free the masses from all bosses (capitalist or socialist). They exposed
   the fundamental difference between the rhetoric of Bolshevism (as
   expressed, for example, in Lenin's State and Revolution) with its
   reality. Bolshevism in power had proved Bakunin's prediction that the
   "dictatorship of the proletariat" would become the "dictatorship over
   the proletariat" by the leaders of the Communist Party.

   The influence of the anarchists started to grow. As Jacques Sadoul (a
   French officer) noted in early 1918:

     "The anarchist party is the most active, the most militant of the
     opposition groups and probably the most popular . . . The Bolsheviks
     are anxious." [quoted by Daniel Guerin, Anarchism, pp. 95-6]

   By April 1918, the Bolsheviks began the physical suppression of their
   anarchist rivals. On April 12th, 1918, the Cheka (the secret police
   formed by Lenin in December, 1917) attacked anarchist centres in
   Moscow. Those in other cities were attacked soon after. As well as
   repressing their most vocal opponents on the left, the Bolsheviks were
   restricting the freedom of the masses they claimed to be protecting.
   Democratic soviets, free speech, opposition political parties and
   groups, self-management in the workplace and on the land -- all were
   destroyed in the name of "socialism." All this happened, we must
   stress, before the start of the Civil War in late May, 1918, which most
   supporters of Leninism blame for the Bolsheviks' authoritarianism.
   During the civil war, this process accelerated, with the Bolsheviks'
   systematically repressing opposition from all quarters -- including the
   strikes and protests of the very class who they claimed was exercising
   its "dictatorship" while they were in power!

   It is important to stress that this process had started well before the
   start of the civil war, confirming anarchist theory that a "workers'
   state" is a contraction in terms. For anarchists, the Bolshevik
   substitution of party power for workers power (and the conflict between
   the two) did not come as a surprise. The state is the delegation of
   power -- as such, it means that the idea of a "workers' state"
   expressing "workers' power" is a logical impossibility. If workers are
   running society then power rests in their hands. If a state exists then
   power rests in the hands of the handful of people at the top, not in
   the hands of all. The state was designed for minority rule. No state
   can be an organ of working class (i.e. majority) self-management due to
   its basic nature, structure and design. For this reason anarchists have
   argued for a bottom-up federation of workers' councils as the agent of
   revolution and the means of managing society after capitalism and the
   state have been abolished.

   As we discuss in [8]section H, the degeneration of the Bolsheviks from
   a popular working class party into dictators over the working class did
   not occur by accident. A combination of political ideas and the
   realities of state power (and the social relationships it generates)
   could not help but result in such a degeneration. The political ideas
   of Bolshevism, with its vanguardism, fear of spontaneity and
   identification of party power with working class power inevitably meant
   that the party would clash with those whom it claimed to represent.
   After all, if the party is the vanguard then, automatically, everyone
   else is a "backward" element. This meant that if the working class
   resisted Bolshevik policies or rejected them in soviet elections, then
   the working class was "wavering" and being influenced by
   "petty-bourgeois" and "backward" elements. Vanguardism breeds elitism
   and, when combined with state power, dictatorship.

   State power, as anarchists have always stressed, means the delegation
   of power into the hands of a few. This automatically produces a class
   division in society -- those with power and those without. As such,
   once in power the Bolsheviks were isolated from the working class. The
   Russian Revolution confirmed Malatesta's argument that a "government,
   that is a group of people entrusted with making laws and empowered to
   use the collective power to oblige each individual to obey them, is
   already a privileged class and cut off from the people. As any
   constituted body would do, it will instinctively seek to extend its
   powers, to be beyond public control, to impose its own policies and to
   give priority to its special interests. Having been put in a privileged
   position, the government is already at odds with the people whose
   strength it disposes of." [Anarchy, p. 34] A highly centralised state
   such as the Bolsheviks built would reduce accountability to a minimum
   while at the same time accelerating the isolation of the rulers from
   the ruled. The masses were no longer a source of inspiration and power,
   but rather an alien group whose lack of "discipline" (i.e. ability to
   follow orders) placed the revolution in danger. As one Russian
   Anarchist argued,

     "The proletariat is being gradually enserfed by the state. The
     people are being transformed into servants over whom there has
     arisen a new class of administrators -- a new class born mainly form
     the womb of the so-called intelligentsia . . . We do not mean to say
     . . . that the Bolshevik party set out to create a new class system.
     But we do say that even the best intentions and aspirations must
     inevitably be smashed against the evils inherent in any system of
     centralised power. The separation of management from labour, the
     division between administrators and workers flows logically from
     centralisation. It cannot be otherwise." [The Anarchists in the
     Russian Revolution, pp. 123-4]

   For this reason anarchists, while agreeing that there is an uneven
   development of political ideas within the working class, reject the
   idea that "revolutionaries" should take power on behalf of working
   people. Only when working people actually run society themselves will a
   revolution be successful. For anarchists, this meant that "[e]ffective
   emancipation can be achieved only by the direct, widespread, and
   independent action . . . of the workers themselves, grouped . . . in
   their own class organisations . . . on the basis of concrete action and
   self-government, helped but not governed, by revolutionaries working in
   the very midst of, and not above the mass and the professional,
   technical, defence and other branches." [Voline, Op. Cit., p. 197] By
   substituting party power for workers power, the Russian Revolution had
   made its first fatal step. Little wonder that the following prediction
   (from November 1917) made by anarchists in Russia came true:

     "Once their power is consolidated and 'legalised', the Bolsheviks
     who are . . . men of centralist and authoritarian action will begin
     to rearrange the life of the country and of the people by
     governmental and dictatorial methods, imposed by the centre. The[y]
     . . . will dictate the will of the party to all Russia, and command
     the whole nation. Your Soviets and your other local organisations
     will become little by little, simply executive organs of the will of
     the central government. In the place of healthy, constructive work
     by the labouring masses, in place of free unification from the
     bottom, we will see the installation of an authoritarian and statist
     apparatus which would act from above and set about wiping out
     everything that stood in its way with an iron hand." [quoted by
     Voline, Op. Cit., p. 235]

   The so-called "workers' state" could not be participatory or empowering
   for working class people (as the Marxists claimed) simply because state
   structures are not designed for that. Created as instruments of
   minority rule, they cannot be transformed into (nor "new" ones created
   which are) a means of liberation for the working classes. As Kropotkin
   put it, Anarchists "maintain that the State organisation, having been
   the force to which minorities resorted for establishing and organising
   their power over the masses, cannot be the force which will serve to
   destroy these privileges." [Anarchism, p. 170] In the words of an
   anarchist pamphlet written in 1918:

     "Bolshevism, day by day and step by step, proves that state power
     possesses inalienable characteristics; it can change its label, its
     'theory', and its servitors, but in essence it merely remains power
     and despotism in new forms." [quoted by Paul Avrich, "The Anarchists
     in the Russian Revolution," pp. 341-350, Russian Review, vol. 26,
     issue no. 4, p. 347]

   For insiders, the Revolution had died a few months after the Bolsheviks
   took over. To the outside world, the Bolsheviks and the USSR came to
   represent "socialism" even as they systematically destroyed the basis
   of real socialism. By transforming the soviets into state bodies,
   substituting party power for soviet power, undermining the factory
   committees, eliminating democracy in the armed forces and workplaces,
   repressing the political opposition and workers' protests, the
   Bolsheviks effectively marginalised the working class from its own
   revolution. Bolshevik ideology and practice were themselves important
   and sometimes decisive factors in the degeneration of the revolution
   and the ultimate rise of Stalinism.

   As anarchists had predicted for decades previously, in the space of a
   few months, and before the start of the Civil War, the Bolshevik's
   "workers' state" had become, like any state, an alien power over the
   working class and an instrument of minority rule (in this case, the
   rule of the party). The Civil War accelerated this process and soon
   party dictatorship was introduced (indeed, leading Bolsheviks began
   arguing that it was essential in any revolution). The Bolsheviks put
   down the libertarian socialist elements within their country, with the
   crushing of the uprising at Kronstadt and the Makhnovist movement in
   the Ukraine being the final nails in the coffin of socialism and the
   subjugation of the soviets.

   The Kronstadt uprising of February, 1921, was, for anarchists, of
   immense importance (see the appendix [9]"What was the Kronstadt
   Rebellion?" for a full discussion of this uprising). The uprising
   started when the sailors of Kronstadt supported the striking workers of
   Petrograd in February, 1921. They raised a 15 point resolution, the
   first point of which was a call for soviet democracy. The Bolsheviks
   slandered the Kronstadt rebels as counter-revolutionaries and crushed
   the revolt. For anarchists, this was significant as the repression
   could not be justified in terms of the Civil War (which had ended
   months before) and because it was a major uprising of ordinary people
   for real socialism. As Voline puts it:

     "Kronstadt was the first entirely independent attempt of the people
     to liberate themselves of all yokes and carry out the Social
     Revolution: this attempt was made directly . . . by the working
     masses themselves, without political shepherds, without leaders or
     tutors. It was the first step towards the third and social
     revolution." [Voline, Op. Cit., pp. 537-8]

   In the Ukraine, anarchist ideas were most successfully applied. In
   areas under the protection of the Makhnovist movement, working class
   people organised their own lives directly, based on their own ideas and
   needs -- true social self-determination. Under the leadership of Nestor
   Makhno, a self-educated peasant, the movement not only fought against
   both Red and White dictatorships but also resisted the Ukrainian
   nationalists. In opposition to the call for "national
   self-determination," i.e. a new Ukrainian state, Makhno called instead
   for working class self-determination in the Ukraine and across the
   world. Makhno inspired his fellow peasants and workers to fight for
   real freedom:

     "Conquer or die -- such is the dilemma that faces the Ukrainian
     peasants and workers at this historic moment . . . But we will not
     conquer in order to repeat the errors of the past years, the error
     of putting our fate into the hands of new masters; we will conquer
     in order to take our destinies into our own hands, to conduct our
     lives according to our own will and our own conception of the
     truth." [quoted by Peter Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist
     Movement, p. 58]

   To ensure this end, the Makhnovists refused to set up governments in
   the towns and cities they liberated, instead urging the creation of
   free soviets so that the working people could govern themselves. Taking
   the example of Aleksandrovsk, once they had liberated the city the
   Makhnovists "immediately invited the working population to participate
   in a general conference . . . it was proposed that the workers organise
   the life of the city and the functioning of the factories with their
   own forces and their own organisations . . . The first conference was
   followed by a second. The problems of organising life according to
   principles of self-management by workers were examined and discussed
   with animation by the masses of workers, who all welcomed this ideas
   with the greatest enthusiasm . . . Railroad workers took the first step
   . . . They formed a committee charged with organising the railway
   network of the region . . . From this point, the proletariat of
   Aleksandrovsk began to turn systematically to the problem of creating
   organs of self-management." [Op. Cit., p. 149]

   The Makhnovists argued that the "freedom of the workers and peasants is
   their own, and not subject to any restriction. It is up to the workers
   and peasants themselves to act, to organise themselves, to agree among
   themselves in all aspects of their lives, as they see fit and desire .
   . . The Makhnovists can do no more than give aid and counsel . . . In
   no circumstances can they, nor do they wish to, govern." [Peter
   Arshinov, quoted by Guerin, Op. Cit., p. 99] In Alexandrovsk, the
   Bolsheviks proposed to the Makhnovists spheres of action - their Revkom
   (Revolutionary Committee) would handle political affairs and the
   Makhnovists military ones. Makhno advised them "to go and take up some
   honest trade instead of seeking to impose their will on the workers."
   [Peter Arshinov in The Anarchist Reader, p. 141]

   They also organised free agricultural communes which "[a]dmittedly . .
   . were not numerous, and included only a minority of the population . .
   . But what was most precious was that these communes were formed by the
   poor peasants themselves. The Makhnovists never exerted any pressure on
   the peasants, confining themselves to propagating the idea of free
   communes." [Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist Movement, p. 87] Makhno
   played an important role in abolishing the holdings of the landed
   gentry. The local soviet and their district and regional congresses
   equalised the use of the land between all sections of the peasant
   community. [Op. Cit., pp. 53-4]

   Moreover, the Makhnovists took the time and energy to involve the whole
   population in discussing the development of the revolution, the
   activities of the army and social policy. They organised numerous
   conferences of workers', soldiers' and peasants' delegates to discuss
   political and social issues as well as free soviets, unions and
   communes. They organised a regional congress of peasants and workers
   when they had liberated Aleksandrovsk. When the Makhnovists tried to
   convene the third regional congress of peasants, workers and insurgents
   in April 1919 and an extraordinary congress of several regions in June
   1919 the Bolsheviks viewed them as counter-revolutionary, tried to ban
   them and declared their organisers and delegates outside the law.

   The Makhnovists replied by holding the conferences anyway and asking
   "[c]an there exist laws made by a few people who call themselves
   revolutionaries, which permit them to outlaw a whole people who are
   more revolutionary than they are themselves?" and "[w]hose interests
   should the revolution defend: those of the Party or those of the people
   who set the revolution in motion with their blood?" Makhno himself
   stated that he "consider[ed] it an inviolable right of the workers and
   peasants, a right won by the revolution, to call conferences on their
   own account, to discuss their affairs." [Op. Cit., p. 103 and p. 129]

   In addition, the Makhnovists "fully applied the revolutionary
   principles of freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, and of
   political association. In all cities and towns occupied by the
   Makhnovists, they began by lifting all the prohibitions and repealing
   all the restrictions imposed on the press and on political
   organisations by one or another power." Indeed, the "only restriction
   that the Makhnovists considered necessary to impose on the Bolsheviks,
   the left Socialist-Revolutionaries and other statists was a prohibition
   on the formation of those 'revolutionary committees' which sought to
   impose a dictatorship over the people." [Op. Cit., p. 153 and p. 154]

   The Makhnovists rejected the Bolshevik corruption of the soviets and
   instead proposed "the free and completely independent soviet system of
   working people without authorities and their arbitrary laws." Their
   proclamations stated that the "working people themselves must freely
   choose their own soviets, which carry out the will and desires of the
   working people themselves, that is to say. ADMINISTRATIVE, not ruling
   soviets." Economically, capitalism would be abolished along with the
   state - the land and workshops "must belong to the working people
   themselves, to those who work in them, that is to say, they must be
   socialised." [Op. Cit., p. 271 and p. 273]

   The army itself, in stark contrast to the Red Army, was fundamentally
   democratic (although, of course, the horrific nature of the civil war
   did result in a few deviations from the ideal -- however, compared to
   the regime imposed on the Red Army by Trotsky, the Makhnovists were
   much more democratic movement).

   The anarchist experiment of self-management in the Ukraine came to a
   bloody end when the Bolsheviks turned on the Makhnovists (their former
   allies against the "Whites," or pro-Tsarists) when they were no longer
   needed. This important movement is fully discussed in the appendix
   [10]"Why does the Makhnovist movement show there is an alternative to
   Bolshevism?" of our FAQ. However, we must stress here the one obvious
   lesson of the Makhnovist movement, namely that the dictatorial policies
   pursued by the Bolsheviks were not imposed on them by objective
   circumstances. Rather, the political ideas of Bolshevism had a clear
   influence in the decisions they made. After all, the Makhnovists were
   active in the same Civil War and yet did not pursue the same policies
   of party power as the Bolsheviks did. Rather, they successfully
   encouraged working class freedom, democracy and power in extremely
   difficult circumstances (and in the face of strong Bolshevik opposition
   to those policies). The received wisdom on the left is that there was
   no alternative open to the Bolsheviks. The experience of the
   Makhnovists disproves this. What the masses of people, as well as those
   in power, do and think politically is as much part of the process
   determining the outcome of history as are the objective obstacles that
   limit the choices available. Clearly, ideas do matter and, as such, the
   Makhnovists show that there was (and is) a practical alternative to
   Bolshevism -- anarchism.

   The last anarchist march in Moscow until 1987 took place at the funeral
   of Kropotkin in 1921, when over 10,000 marched behind his coffin. They
   carried black banners declaring "Where there is authority, there is no
   freedom" and "The Liberation of the working class is the task of the
   workers themselves." As the procession passed the Butyrki prison, the
   inmates sang anarchist songs and shook the bars of their cells.

   Anarchist opposition within Russia to the Bolshevik regime started in
   1918. They were the first left-wing group to be repressed by the new
   "revolutionary" regime. Outside of Russia, anarchists continued to
   support the Bolsheviks until news came from anarchist sources about the
   repressive nature of the Bolshevik regime (until then, many had
   discounted negative reports as being from pro-capitalist sources). Once
   these reliable reports came in, anarchists across the globe rejected
   Bolshevism and its system of party power and repression. The experience
   of Bolshevism confirmed Bakunin's prediction that Marxism meant "the
   highly despotic government of the masses by a new and very small
   aristocracy of real or pretended scholars. The people are not learned,
   so they will be liberated from the cares of government and included in
   entirety in the governed herd." [Statism and Anarchy, pp. 178-9]

   From about 1921 on, anarchists outside of Russia started describing the
   USSR as "state-capitalist" to indicate that although individual bosses
   might have been eliminated, the Soviet state bureaucracy played the
   same role as individual bosses do in the West (anarchists within Russia
   had been calling it that since 1918). For anarchists, "the Russian
   revolution . . . is trying to reach . . . economic equality . . . this
   effort has been made in Russia under a strongly centralised party
   dictatorship . . . this effort to build a communist republic on the
   basis of a strongly centralised state communism under the iron law of a
   party dictatorship is bound to end in failure. We are learning to know
   in Russia how not to introduce communism." [Anarchism, p. 254]

   This meant exposing that Berkman called "The Bolshevik Myth," the idea
   that the Russian Revolution was a success and should be copied by
   revolutionaries in other countries: "It is imperative to unmask the
   great delusion, which otherwise might lead the Western workers to the
   same abyss as their brothers [and sisters] in Russia. It is incumbent
   upon those who have seen through the myth to expose its true nature."
   ["The Anti-Climax'", The Bolshevik Myth, p. 342] Moreover, anarchists
   felt that it was their revolutionary duty not only present and learn
   from the facts of the revolution but also show solidarity with those
   subject to Bolshevik dictatorship. As Emma Goldman argued, she had not
   "come to Russia expecting to find Anarchism realised." Such idealism
   was alien to her (although that has not stopped Leninists saying the
   opposite). Rather, she expected to see "the beginnings of the social
   changes for which the Revolution had been fought." She was aware that
   revolutions were difficult, involving "destruction" and "violence."
   That Russia was not perfect was not the source of her vocal opposition
   to Bolshevism. Rather, it was the fact that "the Russian people have
   been locked out" of their own revolution by the Bolshevik state which
   used "the sword and the gun to keep the people out." As a revolutionary
   she refused "to side with the master class, which in Russia is called
   the Communist Party." [My Disillusionment in Russia, p. xlvii and p.
   xliv]

   For more information on the Russian Revolution and the role played by
   anarchists, see the appendix on [11]"The Russian Revolution" of the
   FAQ. As well as covering the Kronstadt uprising and the Makhnovists, it
   discusses why the revolution failed, the role of Bolshevik ideology
   played in that failure and whether there were any alternatives to
   Bolshevism.

   The following books are also recommended: The Unknown Revolution by
   Voline; The Guillotine at Work by G.P. Maximov; The Bolshevik Myth and
   The Russian Tragedy, both by Alexander Berkman; The Bolsheviks and
   Workers Control by M. Brinton; The Kronstadt Uprising by Ida Mett; The
   History of the Makhnovist Movement by Peter Arshinov; My
   Disillusionment in Russia and Living My Life by Emma Goldman; Nestor
   Makhno Anarchy's Cossack: The struggle for free soviets in the Ukraine
   1917-1921 by Alexandre Skirda.

   Many of these books were written by anarchists active during the
   revolution, many imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and deported to the West
   due to international pressure exerted by anarcho-syndicalist delegates
   to Moscow who the Bolsheviks were trying to win over to Leninism. The
   majority of such delegates stayed true to their libertarian politics
   and convinced their unions to reject Bolshevism and break with Moscow.
   By the early 1920's all the anarcho-syndicalist union confederations
   had joined with the anarchists in rejecting the "socialism" in Russia
   as state capitalism and party dictatorship.

A.5.5 Anarchists in the Italian Factory Occupations

   After the end of the First World War there was a massive radicalisation
   across Europe and the world. Union membership exploded, with strikes,
   demonstrations and agitation reaching massive levels. This was partly
   due to the war, partly to the apparent success of the Russian
   Revolution. This enthusiasm for the Russian Revolution even reached
   Individualist Anarchists like Joseph Labadie, who like many other
   anti-capitalists, saw "the red in the east [giving] hope of a brighter
   day" and the Bolsheviks as making "laudable efforts to at least try
   some way out of the hell of industrial slavery." [quoted by Carlotta R.
   Anderson, All-American Anarchist p. 225 and p. 241]

   Across Europe, anarchist ideas became more popular and
   anarcho-syndicalist unions grew in size. For example, in Britain, the
   ferment produced the shop stewards' movement and the strikes on
   Clydeside; Germany saw the rise of IWW inspired industrial unionism and
   a libertarian form of Marxism called "Council Communism"; Spain saw a
   massive growth in the anarcho-syndicalist CNT. In addition, it also,
   unfortunately, saw the rise and growth of both social democratic and
   communist parties. Italy was no exception.

   In Turin, a new rank-and-file movement was developing. This movement
   was based around the "internal commissions" (elected ad hoc grievance
   committees). These new organisations were based directly on the group
   of people who worked together in a particular work shop, with a
   mandated and recallable shop steward elected for each group of 15 to 20
   or so workers. The assembly of all the shop stewards in a given plant
   then elected the "internal commission" for that facility, which was
   directly and constantly responsible to the body of shop stewards, which
   was called the "factory council."

   Between November 1918 and March 1919, the internal commissions had
   become a national issue within the trade union movement. On February
   20, 1919, the Italian Federation of Metal Workers (FIOM) won a contract
   providing for the election of "internal commissions" in the factories.
   The workers subsequently tried to transform these organs of workers'
   representation into factory councils with a managerial function. By May
   Day 1919, the internal commissions "were becoming the dominant force
   within the metalworking industry and the unions were in danger of
   becoming marginal administrative units. Behind these alarming
   developments, in the eyes of reformists, lay the libertarians." [Carl
   Levy, Gramsci and the Anarchists, p. 135] By November 1919 the internal
   commissions of Turin were transformed into factory councils.

   The movement in Turin is usually associated with the weekly L'Ordine
   Nuovo (The New Order), which first appeared on May 1, 1919. As Daniel
   Guerin summarises, it was "edited by a left socialist, Antonio Gramsci,
   assisted by a professor of philosophy at Turin University with
   anarchist ideas, writing under the pseudonym of Carlo Petri, and also
   of a whole nucleus of Turin libertarians. In the factories, the Ordine
   Nuovo group was supported by a number of people, especially the
   anarcho-syndicalist militants of the metal trades, Pietro Ferrero and
   Maurizio Garino. The manifesto of Ordine Nuovo was signed by socialists
   and libertarians together, agreeing to regard the factory councils as
   'organs suited to future communist management of both the individual
   factory and the whole society.'" [Anarchism, p. 109]

   The developments in Turin should not be taken in isolation. All across
   Italy, workers and peasants were taking action. In late February 1920,
   a rash of factory occupations broke out in Liguria, Piedmont and
   Naples. In Liguria, the workers occupied the metal and shipbuilding
   plants in Sestri Ponente, Cornigliano and Campi after a breakdown of
   pay talks. For up to four days, under syndicalist leadership, they ran
   the plants through factory councils.

   During this period the Italian Syndicalist Union (USI) grew in size to
   around 800 000 members and the influence of the Italian Anarchist Union
   (UAI) with its 20 000 members and daily paper (Umanita Nova) grew
   correspondingly. As the Welsh Marxist historian Gwyn A. Williams points
   out "Anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists were the most
   consistently and totally revolutionary group on the left . . . the most
   obvious feature of the history of syndicalism and anarchism in 1919-20:
   rapid and virtually continuous growth . . . The syndicalists above all
   captured militant working-class opinion which the socialist movement
   was utterly failing to capture." [Proletarian Order, pp. 194-195] In
   Turin, libertarians "worked within FIOM" and had been "heavily involved
   in the Ordine Nuovo campaign from the beginning." [Op. Cit., p. 195]
   Unsurprisingly, Ordone Nuovo was denounced as "syndicalist" by other
   socialists.

   It was the anarchists and syndicalists who first raised the idea of
   occupying workplaces. Malatesta was discussing this idea in Umanita
   Nova in March, 1920. In his words, "General strikes of protest no
   longer upset anyone . . . One must seek something else. We put forward
   an idea: take-over of factories. . . the method certainly has a future,
   because it corresponds to the ultimate ends of the workers' movement
   and constitutes an exercise preparing one for the ultimate act of
   expropriation." [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 134] In the
   same month, during "a strong syndicalist campaign to establish councils
   in Mila, Armando Borghi [anarchist secretary of the USI] called for
   mass factory occupations. In Turin, the re-election of workshop
   commissars was just ending in a two-week orgy of passionate discussion
   and workers caught the fever. [Factory Council] Commissars began to
   call for occupations." Indeed, "the council movement outside Turin was
   essentially anarcho-syndicalist." Unsurprisingly, the secretary of the
   syndicalist metal-workers "urged support for the Turin councils because
   they represented anti-bureaucratic direct action, aimed at control of
   the factory and could be the first cells of syndicalist industrial
   unions . . . The syndicalist congress voted to support the councils. .
   . . Malatesta . . . supported them as a form of direct action
   guaranteed to generate rebelliousness . . . Umanita Nova and Guerra di
   Classe [paper of the USI] became almost as committed to the councils as
   L'Ordine Nuovo and the Turin edition of Avanti." [Williams, Op. Cit.,
   p. 200, p. 193 and p. 196]

   The upsurge in militancy soon provoked an employer counter-offensive.
   The bosses organisation denounced the factory councils and called for a
   mobilisation against them. Workers were rebelling and refusing to
   follow the bosses orders -- "indiscipline" was rising in the factories.
   They won state support for the enforcement of the existing industrial
   regulations. The national contract won by the FIOM in 1919 had provided
   that the internal commissions were banned from the shop floor and
   restricted to non-working hours. This meant that the activities of the
   shop stewards' movement in Turin -- such as stopping work to hold shop
   steward elections -- were in violation of the contract. The movement
   was essentially being maintained through mass insubordination. The
   bosses used this infringement of the agreed contract as the means
   combating the factory councils in Turin.

   The showdown with the employers arrived in April, when a general
   assembly of shop stewards at Fiat called for sit-in strikes to protest
   the dismissal of several shop stewards. In response the employers
   declared a general lockout. The government supported the lockout with a
   mass show of force and troops occupied the factories and mounted
   machine guns posts at them. When the shop stewards movement decided to
   surrender on the immediate issues in dispute after two weeks on strike,
   the employers responded with demands that the shop stewards councils be
   limited to non-working hours, in accordance with the FIOM national
   contract, and that managerial control be re-imposed.

   These demands were aimed at the heart of the factory council system and
   Turin labour movement responded with a massive general strike in
   defence of it. In Turin, the strike was total and it soon spread
   throughout the region of Piedmont and involved 500 000 workers at its
   height. The Turin strikers called for the strike to be extended
   nationally and, being mostly led by socialists, they turned to the CGL
   trade union and Socialist Party leaders, who rejected their call.

   The only support for the Turin general strike came from unions that
   were mainly under anarcho-syndicalist influence, such as the
   independent railway and the maritime workers unions ("The syndicalists
   were the only ones to move."). The railway workers in Pisa and Florence
   refused to transport troops who were being sent to Turin. There were
   strikes all around Genoa, among dock workers and in workplaces where
   the USI was a major influence. So in spite of being "betrayed and
   abandoned by the whole socialist movement," the April movement "still
   found popular support" with "actions . . . either directly led or
   indirectly inspired by anarcho-syndicalists." In Turin itself, the
   anarchists and syndicalists were "threatening to cut the council
   movement out from under" Gramsci and the Ordine Nuovo group. [Williams,
   Op. Cit., p. 207, p. 193 and p. 194]

   Eventually the CGL leadership settled the strike on terms that accepted
   the employers' main demand for limiting the shop stewards' councils to
   non-working hours. Though the councils were now much reduced in
   activity and shop floor presence, they would yet see a resurgence of
   their position during the September factory occupations.

   The anarchists "accused the socialists of betrayal. They criticised
   what they believed was a false sense of discipline that had bound
   socialists to their own cowardly leadership. They contrasted the
   discipline that placed every movement under the 'calculations, fears,
   mistakes and possible betrayals of the leaders' to the other discipline
   of the workers of Sestri Ponente who struck in solidarity with Turin,
   the discipline of the railway workers who refused to transport security
   forces to Turin and the anarchists and members of the Unione Sindacale
   who forgot considerations of party and sect to put themselves at the
   disposition of the Torinesi." [Carl Levy, Op. Cit., p. 161] Sadly, this
   top-down "discipline" of the socialists and their unions would be
   repeated during the factory occupations, with terrible results.

   In September, 1920, there were large-scale stay-in strikes in Italy in
   response to an owner wage cut and lockout. "Central to the climate of
   the crisis was the rise of the syndicalists." In mid-August, the USI
   metal-workers "called for both unions to occupy the factories" and
   called for "a preventive occupation" against lock-outs. The USI saw
   this as the "expropriation of the factories by the metal-workers"
   (which must "be defended by all necessary measures") and saw the need
   "to call the workers of other industries into battle." [Williams, Op.
   Cit., p. 236, pp. 238-9] Indeed, "[i]f the FIOM had not embraced the
   syndicalist idea of an occupation of factories to counter an employer's
   lockout, the USI may well have won significant support from the
   politically active working class of Turin." [Carl Levy, Op. Cit., p.
   129] These strikes began in the engineering factories and soon spread
   to railways, road transport, and other industries, with peasants
   seizing land. The strikers, however, did more than just occupy their
   workplaces, they placed them under workers' self-management. Soon over
   500 000 "strikers" were at work, producing for themselves. Errico
   Malatesta, who took part in these events, writes:

     "The metal workers started the movement over wage rates. It was a
     strike of a new kind. Instead of abandoning the factories, the idea
     was to remain inside without working . . . Throughout Italy there
     was a revolutionary fervour among the workers and soon the demands
     changed their characters. Workers thought that the moment was ripe
     to take possession once [and] for all the means of production. They
     armed for defence . . . and began to organise production on their
     own . . . It was the right of property abolished in fact . . .; it
     was a new regime, a new form of social life that was being ushered
     in. And the government stood by because it felt impotent to offer
     opposition." [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 134]

   Daniel Guerin provides a good summary of the extent of the movement:

     "The management of the factories . . . [was] conducted by technical
     and administrative workers' committees. Self-management went quite a
     long way: in the early period assistance was obtained from the
     banks, but when it was withdrawn the self-management system issued
     its own money to pay the workers' wages. Very strict self-discipline
     was required, the use of alcoholic beverages forbidden, and armed
     patrols were organised for self-defence. Very close solidarity was
     established between the factories under self-management. Ores and
     coal were put into a common pool, and shared out equitably."
     [Anarchism, p. 109]

   Italy was "paralysed, with half a million workers occupying their
   factories and raising red and black flags over them." The movement
   spread throughout Italy, not only in the industrial heartland around
   Milan, Turin and Genoa, but also in Rome, Florence, Naples and Palermo.
   The "militants of the USI were certainly in the forefront of the
   movement," while Umanita Nova argued that "the movement is very serious
   and we must do everything we can to channel it towards a massive
   extension." The persistent call of the USI was for "an extension of the
   movement to the whole of industry to institute their 'expropriating
   general strike.'" [Williams, Op. Cit., p. 236 and pp. 243-4] Railway
   workers, influenced by the libertarians, refused to transport troops,
   workers went on strike against the orders of the reformist unions and
   peasants occupied the land. The anarchists whole-heartedly supported
   the movement, unsurprisingly as the "occupation of the factories and
   the land suited perfectly our programme of action." [Malatesta, Op.
   Cit., p. 135] Luigi Fabbri described the occupations as having
   "revealed a power in the proletariat of which it had been unaware
   hitherto." [quoted by Paolo Sprinao, The Occupation of the Factories,
   p. 134]

   However, after four weeks of occupation, the workers decided to leave
   the factories. This was because of the actions of the socialist party
   and the reformist trade unions. They opposed the movement and
   negotiated with the state for a return to "normality" in exchange for a
   promise to extend workers' control legally, in association with the
   bosses. The question of revolution was decided by a vote of the CGL
   national council in Milan on April 10-11th, without consulting the
   syndicalist unions, after the Socialist Party leadership refused to
   decide one way or the other.

   Needless to say, this promise of "workers' control" was not kept. The
   lack of independent inter-factory organisation made workers dependent
   on trade union bureaucrats for information on what was going on in
   other cities, and they used that power to isolate factories, cities,
   and factories from each other. This lead to a return to work, "in spite
   of the opposition of individual anarchists dispersed among the
   factories." [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 136] The local syndicalist union
   confederations could not provide the necessary framework for a fully
   co-ordinated occupation movement as the reformist unions refused to
   work with them; and although the anarchists were a large minority, they
   were still a minority:

     "At the 'interproletarian' convention held on 12 September (in which
     the Unione Anarchia, the railwaymen's and maritime workers union
     participated) the syndicalist union decided that 'we cannot do it
     ourselves' without the socialist party and the CGL, protested
     against the 'counter-revolutionary vote' of Milan, declared it
     minoritarian, arbitrary and null, and ended by launching new, vague,
     but ardent calls to action." [Paolo Spriano, Op. Cit., p. 94]

   Malatesta addressed the workers of one of the factories at Milan. He
   argued that "[t]hose who celebrate the agreement signed at Rome
   [between the Confederazione and the capitalists] as a great victory of
   yours are deceiving you. The victory in reality belongs to Giolitti, to
   the government and the bourgeoisie who are saved from the precipice
   over which they were hanging." During the occupation the "bourgeoisie
   trembled, the government was powerless to face the situation."
   Therefore:

     "To speak of victory when the Roman agreement throws you back under
     bourgeois exploitation which you could have got rid of is a lie. If
     you give up the factories, do this with the conviction [of] hav[ing]
     lost a great battle and with the firm intention to resume the
     struggle on the first occasion and to carry it on in a thorough way.
     . . Nothing is lost if you have no illusion [about] the deceiving
     character of the victory. The famous decree on the control of
     factories is a mockery . . . because it tends to harmonise your
     interests and those of the bourgeois which is like harmonising the
     interests of the wolf and the sheep. Don't believe those of your
     leaders who make fools of you by adjourning the revolution from day
     to day. You yourselves must make the revolution when an occasion
     will offer itself, without waiting for orders which never come, or
     which come only to enjoin you to abandon action. Have confidence in
     yourselves, have faith in your future and you will win." [quoted by
     Max Nettlau, Errico Malatesta: The Biography of an Anarchist]

   Malatesta was proven correct. With the end of the occupations, the only
   victors were the bourgeoisie and the government. Soon the workers would
   face Fascism, but first, in October 1920, "after the factories were
   evacuated," the government (obviously knowing who the real threat was)
   "arrested the entire leadership of the USI and UAI. The socialists did
   not respond" and "more-or-less ignored the persecution of the
   libertarians until the spring of 1921 when the aged Malatesta and other
   imprisoned anarchists mounted a hunger strike from their cells in
   Milan." [Carl Levy, Op. Cit., pp. 221-2] They were acquitted after a
   four day trial.

   The events of 1920 show four things. Firstly, that workers can manage
   their own workplaces successfully by themselves, without bosses.
   Secondly, on the need for anarchists to be involved in the labour
   movement. Without the support of the USI, the Turin movement would have
   been even more isolated than it was. Thirdly, anarchists need to be
   organised to influence the class struggle. The growth of the UAI and
   USI in terms of both influence and size indicates the importance of
   this. Without the anarchists and syndicalists raising the idea of
   factory occupations and supporting the movement, it is doubtful that it
   would have been as successful and widespread as it was. Lastly, that
   socialist organisations, structured in a hierarchical fashion, do not
   produce a revolutionary membership. By continually looking to leaders,
   the movement was crippled and could not develop to its full potential.

   This period of Italian history explains the growth of Fascism in Italy.
   As Tobias Abse points out, "the rise of fascism in Italy cannot be
   detached from the events of the biennio rosso, the two red years of
   1919 and 1920, that preceded it. Fascism was a preventive
   counter-revolution . . . launched as a result of the failed revolution"
   ["The Rise of Fascism in an Industrial City", pp. 52-81, Rethinking
   Italian Fascism, David Forgacs (ed.), p. 54] The term "preventive
   counter-revolution" was originally coined by the leading anarchist
   Luigi Fabbri, who correctly described fascism as "the organisation and
   agent of the violent armed defence of the ruling class against the
   proletariat, which, to their mind, has become unduly demanding, united
   and intrusive." ["Fascism: The Preventive Counter-Revolution", pp.
   408-416, Anarchism, Robert Graham (ed.), p. 410 and p. 409]

   The rise of fascism confirmed Malatesta's warning at the time of the
   factory occupations: "If we do not carry on to the end, we will pay
   with tears of blood for the fear we now instil in the bourgeoisie."
   [quoted by Tobias Abse, Op. Cit., p. 66] The capitalists and rich
   landowners backed the fascists in order to teach the working class
   their place, aided by the state. They ensured "that it was given every
   assistance in terms of funding and arms, turning a blind eye to its
   breaches of the law and, where necessary, covering its back through
   intervention by armed forces which, on the pretext of restoring order,
   would rush to the aid of the fascists wherever the latter were
   beginning to take a beating instead of doling one out." [Fabbri, Op.
   Cit., p. 411] To quote Tobias Abse:

     "The aims of the Fascists and their backers amongst the
     industrialists and agrarians in 1921-22 were simple: to break the
     power of the organised workers and peasants as completely as
     possible, to wipe out, with the bullet and the club, not only the
     gains of the biennio rosso, but everything that the lower classes
     had gained . . . between the turn of the century and the outbreak of
     the First World War." [Op. Cit., p. 54]

   The fascist squads attacked and destroyed anarchist and socialist
   meeting places, social centres, radical presses and Camera del Lavoro
   (local trade union councils). However, even in the dark days of fascist
   terror, the anarchists resisted the forces of totalitarianism. "It is
   no coincidence that the strongest working-class resistance to Fascism
   was in . . . towns or cities in which there was quite a strong
   anarchist, syndicalist or anarcho-syndicalist tradition." [Tobias Abse,
   Op. Cit., p. 56]

   The anarchists participated in, and often organised sections of, the
   Arditi del Popolo, a working-class organisation devoted to the
   self-defence of workers' interests. The Arditi del Popolo organised and
   encouraged working-class resistance to fascist squads, often defeating
   larger fascist forces (for example, "the total humiliation of thousands
   of Italo Balbo's squadristi by a couple of hundred Arditi del Popolo
   backed by the inhabitants of the working class districts" in the
   anarchist stronghold of Parma in August 1922 [Tobias Abse, Op. Cit., p.
   56]).

   The Arditi del Popolo was the closest Italy got to the idea of a
   united, revolutionary working-class front against fascism, as had been
   suggested by Malatesta and the UAI. This movement "developed along
   anti-bourgeois and anti-fascist lines, and was marked by the
   independence of its local sections." [Red Years, Black Years: Anarchist
   Resistance to Fascism in Italy, p. 2] Rather than being just an
   "anti-fascist" organisation, the Arditi "were not a movement in defence
   of 'democracy' in the abstract, but an essentially working-class
   organisation devoted to the defence of the interests of industrial
   workers, the dockers and large numbers of artisans and craftsmen."
   [Tobias Abse, Op. Cit., p. 75] Unsurprisingly, the Arditi del Popolo
   "appear to have been strongest and most successful in areas where
   traditional working-class political culture was less exclusively
   socialist and had strong anarchist or syndicalist traditions, for
   example, Bari, Livorno, Parma and Rome." [Antonio Sonnessa, "Working
   Class Defence Organisation, Anti-Fascist Resistance and the Arditi del
   Popolo in Turin, 1919-22," pp. 183-218, European History Quarterly,
   vol. 33, no. 2, p. 184]

   However, both the socialist and communist parties withdrew from the
   organisation. The socialists signed a "Pact of Pacification" with the
   Fascists in August 1921. The communists "preferred to withdraw their
   members from the Arditi del Popolo rather than let them work with the
   anarchists." [Red Years, Black Years, p. 17] Indeed, "[o]n the same day
   as the Pact was signed, Ordine Nuovo published a PCd'I [Communist Party
   of Italy] communication warning communists against involvement" in the
   Arditi del Popolo. Four days later, the Communist leadership
   "officially abandoned the movement. Severe disciplinary measures were
   threatened against those communists who continued to participate in, or
   liase with," the organisation. Thus by "the end of the first week of
   August 1921 the PSI, CGL and the PCd'I had officially denounced" the
   organisation. "Only the anarchist leaders, if not always sympathetic to
   the programme of the [Arditi del Popolo], did not abandon the
   movement." Indeed, Umanita Nova "strongly supported" it "on the grounds
   it represented a popular expression of anti-fascist resistance and in
   defence of freedom to organise." [Antonio Sonnessa, Op. Cit., p. 195
   and p. 194]

   However, in spite of the decisions by their leaders, many rank and file
   socialists and communists took part in the movement. The latter took
   part in open "defiance of the PCd'I leadership's growing abandonment"
   of it. In Turin, for example, communists who took part in the Arditi
   del Polopo did so "less as communists and more as part of a wider,
   working-class self-identification . . . This dynamic was re-enforced by
   an important socialist and anarchist presence" there. The failure of
   the Communist leadership to support the movement shows the bankruptcy
   of Bolshevik organisational forms which were unresponsive to the needs
   of the popular movement. Indeed, these events show the "libertarian
   custom of autonomy from, and resistance to, authority was also operated
   against the leaders of the workers' movement, particularly when they
   were held to have misunderstood the situation at grass roots level."
   [Sonnessa, Op. Cit., p. 200, p. 198 and p. 193]

   Thus the Communist Party failed to support the popular resistance to
   fascism. The Communist leader Antonio Gramsci explained why, arguing
   that "the party leadership's attitude on the question of the Arditi del
   Popolo . . . corresponded to a need to prevent the party members from
   being controlled by a leadership that was not the party's leadership."
   Gramsci added that this policy "served to disqualify a mass movement
   which had started from below and which could instead have been
   exploited by us politically." [Selections from Political Writings
   (1921-1926), p. 333] While being less sectarian towards the Arditi del
   Popolo than other Communist leaders, "[i]n common with all communist
   leaders, Gramsci awaited the formation of the PCd'I-led military
   squads." [Sonnessa, Op. Cit., p. 196] In other words, the struggle
   against fascism was seen by the Communist leadership as a means of
   gaining more members and, when the opposite was a possibility, they
   preferred defeat and fascism rather than risk their followers becoming
   influenced by anarchism.

   As Abse notes, "it was the withdrawal of support by the Socialist and
   Communist parties at the national level that crippled" the Arditi. [Op.
   Cit., p. 74] Thus "social reformist defeatism and communist
   sectarianism made impossible an armed opposition that was widespread
   and therefore effective; and the isolated instances of popular
   resistance were unable to unite in a successful strategy." And fascism
   could have been defeated: "Insurrections at Sarzanna, in July 1921, and
   at Parma, in August 1922, are examples of the correctness of the
   policies which the anarchists urged in action and propaganda." [Red
   Years, Black Years, p. 3 and p. 2] Historian Tobias Abse confirms this
   analysis, arguing that "[w]hat happened in Parma in August 1922 . . .
   could have happened elsewhere, if only the leadership of the Socialist
   and Communist parties thrown their weight behind the call of the
   anarchist Malatesta for a united revolutionary front against Fascism."
   [Op. Cit., p. 56]

   In the end, fascist violence was successful and capitalist power
   maintained:

     "The anarchists' will and courage were not enough to counter the
     fascist gangs, powerfully aided with material and arms, backed by
     the repressive organs of the state. Anarchists and
     anarcho-syndicalists were decisive in some areas and in some
     industries, but only a similar choice of direct action on the parts
     of the Socialist Party and the General Confederation of Labour [the
     reformist trade union] could have halted fascism." [Red Years, Black
     Years, pp. 1-2]

   After helping to defeat the revolution, the Marxists helped ensure the
   victory of fascism.

   Even after the fascist state was created, anarchists resisted both
   inside and outside Italy. In America, for example, Italian anarchists
   played a major role in fighting fascist influence in their communities,
   none more so that Carlo Tresca, most famous for his role in the 1912
   IWW Lawrence strike, who "in the 1920s had no peer among anti-Fascist
   leaders, a distinction recognised by Mussolini's political police in
   Rome." [Nunzio Pernicone, Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel, p. 4] Many
   Italians, both anarchist and non-anarchist, travelled to Spain to
   resist Franco in 1936 (see Umberto Marzochhi's Remembering Spain:
   Italian Anarchist Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War for details).
   During the Second World War, anarchists played a major part in the
   Italian Partisan movement. It was the fact that the anti-fascist
   movement was dominated by anti-capitalist elements that led the USA and
   the UK to place known fascists in governmental positions in the places
   they "liberated" (often where the town had already been taken by the
   Partisans, resulting in the Allied troops "liberating" the town from
   its own inhabitants!).

   Given this history of resisting fascism in Italy, it is surprising that
   some claim Italian fascism was a product or form of syndicalism. This
   is even claimed by some anarchists. According to Bob Black the "Italian
   syndicalists mostly went over to Fascism" and references David D.
   Roberts 1979 study The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism to
   support his claim. [Anarchy after Leftism, p. 64] Peter Sabatini in a
   review in Social Anarchism makes a similar statement, saying that
   syndicalism's "ultimate failure" was "its transformation into a vehicle
   of fascism." [Social Anarchism, no. 23, p. 99] What is the truth behind
   these claims?

   Looking at Black's reference we discover that, in fact, most of the
   Italian syndicalists did not go over to fascism, if by syndicalists we
   mean members of the USI (the Italian Syndicalist Union). Roberts states
   that:

     "The vast majority of the organised workers failed to respond to the
     syndicalists' appeals and continued to oppose [Italian] intervention
     [in the First World War], shunning what seemed to be a futile
     capitalist war. The syndicalists failed to convince even a majority
     within the USI . . . the majority opted for the neutralism of
     Armando Borghi, leader of the anarchists within the USI. Schism
     followed as De Ambris led the interventionist minority out of the
     confederation." [The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism, p.
     113]

   However, if we take "syndicalist" to mean some of the intellectuals and
   "leaders" of the pre-war movement, it was a case that the "leading
   syndicalists came out for intervention quickly and almost unanimously"
   [Roberts, Op. Cit., p. 106] after the First World War started. Many of
   these pro-war "leading syndicalists" did become fascists. However, to
   concentrate on a handful of "leaders" (which the majority did not even
   follow!) and state that this shows that the "Italian syndicalists
   mostly went over to Fascism" staggers belief. What is even worse, as
   seen above, the Italian anarchists and syndicalists were the most
   dedicated and successful fighters against fascism. In effect, Black and
   Sabatini have slandered a whole movement.

   What is also interesting is that these "leading syndicalists" were not
   anarchists and so not anarcho-syndicalists. As Roberts notes "[i]n
   Italy, the syndicalist doctrine was more clearly the product of a group
   of intellectuals, operating within the Socialist party and seeking an
   alternative to reformism." They "explicitly denounced anarchism" and
   "insisted on a variety of Marxist orthodoxy." The "syndicalists
   genuinely desired -- and tried -- to work within the Marxist
   tradition." [Op. Cit., p. 66, p. 72, p. 57 and p. 79] According to Carl
   Levy, in his account of Italian anarchism, "[u]nlike other syndicalist
   movements, the Italian variation coalesced inside a Second
   International party. Supporter were partially drawn from socialist
   intransigents . . . the southern syndicalist intellectuals pronounced
   republicanism . . . Another component . . . was the remnant of the
   Partito Operaio." ["Italian Anarchism: 1870-1926" in For Anarchism:
   History, Theory, and Practice, David Goodway (Ed.), p. 51]

   In other words, the Italian syndicalists who turned to fascism were,
   firstly, a small minority of intellectuals who could not convince the
   majority within the syndicalist union to follow them, and, secondly,
   Marxists and republicans rather than anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists
   or even revolutionary syndicalists.

   According to Carl Levy, Roberts' book "concentrates on the syndicalist
   intelligentsia" and that "some syndicalist intellectuals . . . helped
   generate, or sympathetically endorsed, the new Nationalist movement . .
   . which bore similarities to the populist and republican rhetoric of
   the southern syndicalist intellectuals." He argues that there "has been
   far too much emphasis on syndicalist intellectuals and national
   organisers" and that syndicalism "relied little on its national
   leadership for its long-term vitality." [Op. Cit., p. 77, p. 53 and p.
   51] If we do look at the membership of the USI, rather than finding a
   group which "mostly went over to fascism," we discover a group of
   people who fought fascism tooth and nail and were subject to extensive
   fascist violence.

   To summarise, Italian Fascism had nothing to do with syndicalism and,
   as seen above, the USI fought the Fascists and was destroyed by them
   along with the UAI, Socialist Party and other radicals. That a handful
   of pre-war Marxist-syndicalists later became Fascists and called for a
   "National-Syndicalism" does not mean that syndicalism and fascism are
   related (any more than some anarchists later becoming Marxists makes
   anarchism "a vehicle" for Marxism!).

   It is hardly surprising that anarchists were the most consistent and
   successful opponents of Fascism. The two movements could not be further
   apart, one standing for total statism in the service of capitalism
   while the other for a free, non-capitalist society. Neither is it
   surprising that when their privileges and power were in danger, the
   capitalists and the landowners turned to fascism to save them. This
   process is a common feature in history (to list just four examples,
   Italy, Germany, Spain and Chile).

A.5.6 Anarchism and the Spanish Revolution

   As Noam Chomsky notes, "a good example of a really large-scale
   anarchist revolution -- in fact the best example to my knowledge -- is
   the Spanish revolution in 1936, in which over most of Republican Spain
   there was a quite inspiring anarchist revolution that involved both
   industry and agriculture over substantial areas . . . And that again
   was, by both human measures and indeed anyone's economic measures,
   quite successful. That is, production continued effectively; workers in
   farms and factories proved quite capable of managing their affairs
   without coercion from above, contrary to what lots of socialists,
   communists, liberals and other wanted to believe." The revolution of
   1936 was "based on three generations of experiment and thought and work
   which extended anarchist ideas to very large parts of the population."
   [Radical Priorities, p. 212]

   Due to this anarchist organising and agitation, Spain in the 1930's had
   the largest anarchist movement in the world. At the start of the
   Spanish "Civil" war, over one and one half million workers and peasants
   were members of the CNT (the National Confederation of Labour), an
   anarcho-syndicalist union federation, and 30,000 were members of the
   FAI (the Anarchist Federation of Iberia). The total population of Spain
   at this time was 24 million.

   The social revolution which met the Fascist coup on July 18th, 1936, is
   the greatest experiment in libertarian socialism to date. Here the last
   mass syndicalist union, the CNT, not only held off the fascist rising
   but encouraged the widespread take-over of land and factories. Over
   seven million people, including about two million CNT members, put
   self-management into practise in the most difficult of circumstances
   and actually improved both working conditions and output.

   In the heady days after the 19th of July, the initiative and power
   truly rested in the hands of the rank-and-file members of the CNT and
   FAI. It was ordinary people, undoubtedly under the influence of Faistas
   (members of the FAI) and CNT militants, who, after defeating the
   fascist uprising, got production, distribution and consumption started
   again (under more egalitarian arrangements, of course), as well as
   organising and volunteering (in their tens of thousands) to join the
   militias, which were to be sent to free those parts of Spain that were
   under Franco. In every possible way the working class of Spain were
   creating by their own actions a new world based on their own ideas of
   social justice and freedom -- ideas inspired, of course, by anarchism
   and anarchosyndicalism.

   George Orwell's eye-witness account of revolutionary Barcelona in late
   December, 1936, gives a vivid picture of the social transformation that
   had begun:

     "The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the
     revolution was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there
     since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January
     that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight
     from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and
     overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town
     where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every
     building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped
     with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists;
     every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the
     initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been
     gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being
     systematically demolished by gangs of workman. Every shop and cafe
     had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised; even the
     bootblacks had been collectivised and their boxes painted red and
     black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated
     you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had
     temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Seor' or 'Don' or even
     'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said
     'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. . . Above all, there was a belief
     in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly
     emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were
     trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist
     machine." [Homage to Catalonia, pp. 2-3]

   The full extent of this historic revolution cannot be covered here. It
   will be discussed in more detail in [12]Section I.8 of the FAQ. All
   that can be done is to highlight a few points of special interest in
   the hope that these will give some indication of the importance of
   these events and encourage people to find out more about it.

   All industry in Catalonia was placed either under workers'
   self-management or workers' control (that is, either totally taking
   over all aspects of management, in the first case, or, in the second,
   controlling the old management). In some cases, whole town and regional
   economies were transformed into federations of collectives. The example
   of the Railway Federation (which was set up to manage the railway lines
   in Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia) can be given as a typical example.
   The base of the federation was the local assemblies:

     "All the workers of each locality would meet twice a week to examine
     all that pertained to the work to be done... The local general
     assembly named a committee to manage the general activity in each
     station and its annexes. At [these] meetings, the decisions
     (direccion) of this committee, whose members continued to work [at
     their previous jobs], would be subjected to the approval or
     disapproval of the workers, after giving reports and answering
     questions."

   The delegates on the committee could be removed by an assembly at any
   time and the highest co-ordinating body of the Railway Federation was
   the "Revolutionary Committee," whose members were elected by union
   assemblies in the various divisions. The control over the rail lines,
   according to Gaston Leval, "did not operate from above downwards, as in
   a statist and centralised system. The Revolutionary Committee had no
   such powers. . . The members of the. . . committee being content to
   supervise the general activity and to co-ordinate that of the different
   routes that made up the network." [Gaston Leval, Collectives in the
   Spanish Revolution, p. 255]

   On the land, tens of thousands of peasants and rural day workers
   created voluntary, self-managed collectives. The quality of life
   improved as co-operation allowed the introduction of health care,
   education, machinery and investment in the social infrastructure. As
   well as increasing production, the collectives increased freedom. As
   one member puts it, "it was marvellous . . . to live in a collective, a
   free society where one could say what one thought, where if the village
   committee seemed unsatisfactory one could say. The committee took no
   big decisions without calling the whole village together in a general
   assembly. All this was wonderful." [Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p.
   360]

   We discuss the revolution in more detail in [13]section I.8. For
   example, sections [14]I.8.3 and [15]I.8.4 discuss in more depth how the
   industrial collectives. The rural collectives are discussed in sections
   [16]I.8.5 and [17]I.8.6. We must stress that these sections are
   summaries of a vast social movement, and more information can be
   gathered from such works as Gaston Leval's Collectives in the Spanish
   Revolution, Sam Dolfgoff's The Anarchist Collectives, Jose Peirats' The
   CNT in the Spanish Revolution and a host of other anarchist accounts of
   the revolution.

   On the social front, anarchist organisations created rational schools,
   a libertarian health service, social centres, and so on. The Mujeres
   Libres (free women) combated the traditional role of women in Spanish
   society, empowering thousands both inside and outside the anarchist
   movement (see The Free Women of Spain by Martha A. Ackelsberg for more
   information on this very important organisation). This activity on the
   social front only built on the work started long before the outbreak of
   the war; for example, the unions often funded rational schools, workers
   centres, and so on.

   The voluntary militias that went to free the rest of Spain from Franco
   were organised on anarchist principles and included both men and women.
   There was no rank, no saluting and no officer class. Everybody was
   equal. George Orwell, a member of the POUM militia (the POUM was a
   dissident Marxist party, influenced by Leninism but not, as the
   Communists asserted, Trotskyist) makes this clear:

     "The essential point of the [militia] system was the social equality
     between officers and men. Everyone from general to private drew the
     same pay, ate the same food, wore the same clothes, and mingled on
     terms of complete equality. If you wanted to slap the general
     commanding the division on the back and ask him for a cigarette, you
     could do so, and no one thought it curious. In theory at any rate
     each militia was a democracy and not a hierarchy. It was understood
     that orders had to be obeyed, but it was also understood that when
     you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as
     superior to inferior. There were officers and N.C.O.s, but there was
     no military rank in the ordinary sense; no titles, no badges, no
     heel-clicking and saluting. They had attempted to produce within the
     militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society.
     Of course there was not perfect equality, but there was a nearer
     approach to it than I had ever seen or that I would have though
     conceivable in time of war. . . " [Op. Cit., p. 26]

   In Spain, however, as elsewhere, the anarchist movement was smashed
   between Stalinism (the Communist Party) on the one hand and Capitalism
   (Franco) on the other. Unfortunately, the anarchists placed
   anti-fascist unity before the revolution, thus helping their enemies to
   defeat both them and the revolution. Whether they were forced by
   circumstances into this position or could have avoided it is still
   being debated (see [18]section I.8.10 for a discussion of why the
   CNT-FAI collaborated and [19]section I.8.11 on why this decision was
   not a product of anarchist theory).

   Orwell's account of his experiences in the militia's indicates why the
   Spanish Revolution is so important to anarchists:

     "I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any
     size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief
     in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in
     Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not
     entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and
     mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality,
     and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in
     which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste
     of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere
     was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilised life
     -- snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc. -- had
     simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class- division of society had
     disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the
     money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the
     peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.
     . . One had been in a community where hope was more normal than
     apathy or cynicism, where the word 'comrade' stood for comradeship
     and not, as in most countries, for humbug. One had breathed the air
     of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that
     Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the
     world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are
     busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned
     state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately
     there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this.
     The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them
     willing to risk their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is
     the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means
     a classless society, or it means nothing at all . . . In that
     community where no one was on the make, where there was a shortage
     of everything but no boot-licking, one got, perhaps, a crude
     forecast of what the opening stages of Socialism might be like. And,
     after all, instead of disillusioning me it deeply attracted me. . ."
     [Op. Cit., pp. 83-84]

   For more information on the Spanish Revolution, the following books are
   recommended: Lessons of the Spanish Revolution by Vernon Richards;
   Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution and The CNT in the Spanish
   Revolution by Jose Peirats; Free Women of Spain by Martha A.
   Ackelsberg; The Anarchist Collectives edited by Sam Dolgoff;
   "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship" by Noam Chomsky (in The Chomsky
   Reader); The Anarchists of Casas Viejas by Jerome R. Mintz; and Homage
   to Catalonia by George Orwell.

A.5.7 The May-June Revolt in France, 1968

   The May-June events in France placed anarchism back on the radical
   landscape after a period in which many people had written the movement
   off as dead. This revolt of ten million people grew from humble
   beginnings. Expelled by the university authorities of Nanterre in Paris
   for anti-Vietnam War activity, a group of anarchists (including Daniel
   Cohn-Bendit) promptly called a protest demonstration. The arrival of 80
   police enraged many students, who quit their studies to join the battle
   and drive the police from the university.

   Inspired by this support, the anarchists seized the administration
   building and held a mass debate. The occupation spread, Nanterre was
   surrounded by police, and the authorities closed the university down.
   The next day, the Nanterre students gathered at the Sorbonne University
   in the centre of Paris. Continual police pressure and the arrest of
   over 500 people caused anger to erupt into five hours of street
   fighting. The police even attacked passers-by with clubs and tear gas.

   A total ban on demonstrations and the closure of the Sorbonne brought
   thousands of students out onto the streets. Increasing police violence
   provoked the building of the first barricades. Jean Jacques Lebel, a
   reporter, wrote that by 1 a.m., "[l]iterally thousands helped build
   barricades. . . women, workers, bystanders, people in pyjamas, human
   chains to carry rocks, wood, iron." An entire night of fighting left
   350 police injured. On May 7th, a 50,000-strong protest march against
   the police was transformed into a day-long battle through the narrow
   streets of the Latin Quarter. Police tear gas was answered by molotov
   cocktails and the chant "Long Live the Paris Commune!"

   By May 10th, continuing massive demonstrations forced the Education
   Minister to start negotiations. But in the streets, 60 barricades had
   appeared and young workers were joining the students. The trade unions
   condemned the police violence. Huge demonstrations throughout France
   culminated on May 13th with one million people on the streets of Paris.

   Faced with this massive protest, the police left the Latin Quarter.
   Students seized the Sorbonne and created a mass assembly to spread the
   struggle. Occupations soon spread to every French University. From the
   Sorbonne came a flood of propaganda, leaflets, proclamations,
   telegrams, and posters. Slogans such as "Everything is Possible," "Be
   Realistic, Demand the Impossible," "Life without Dead Times," and "It
   is Forbidden to Forbid" plastered the walls. "All Power to the
   Imagination" was on everyone's lips. As Murray Bookchin pointed out,
   "the motive forces of revolution today. . . are not simply scarcity and
   material need, but also quality of everyday life . . . the attempt to
   gain control of one's own destiny." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 166]

   Many of the most famous slogans of those days originated from the
   Situationists. The Situationist International had been formed in 1957
   by a small group of dissident radicals and artists. They had developed
   a highly sophisticated (if jargon riddled) and coherent analysis of
   modern capitalist society and how to supersede it with a new, freer
   one. Modern life, they argued, was mere survival rather than living,
   dominated by the economy of consumption in which everyone, everything,
   every emotion and relationship becomes a commodity. People were no
   longer simply alienated producers, they were also alienated consumers.
   They defined this kind of society as the "Spectacle." Life itself had
   been stolen and so revolution meant recreating life. The area of
   revolutionary change was no longer just the workplace, but in everyday
   existence:

     "People who talk about revolution and class struggle without
     referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is
     subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of
     constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth." [quoted by
     Clifford Harper, Anarchy: A Graphic Guide, p. 153]

   Like many other groups whose politics influenced the Paris events, the
   situationists argued that "the workers' councils are the only answer.
   Every other form of revolutionary struggle has ended up with the very
   opposite of what it was originally looking for." [quoted by Clifford
   Harper, Op. Cit., p. 149] These councils would be self-managed and not
   be the means by which a "revolutionary" party would take power. Like
   the anarchists of Noire et Rouge and the libertarian socialists of
   Socialisme ou Barbarie, their support for a self-managed revolution
   from below had a massive influence in the May events and the ideas that
   inspired it.

   On May 14th, the Sud-Aviation workers locked the management in its
   offices and occupied their factory. They were followed by the
   Cleon-Renault, Lockhead-Beauvais and Mucel-Orleans factories the next
   day. That night the National Theatre in Paris was seized to become a
   permanent assembly for mass debate. Next, France's largest factory,
   Renault-Billancourt, was occupied. Often the decision to go on
   indefinite strike was taken by the workers without consulting union
   officials. By May 17th, a hundred Paris Factories were in the hands of
   their workers. The weekend of the 19th of May saw 122 factories
   occupied. By May 20th, the strike and occupations were general and
   involved six million people. Print workers said they did not wish to
   leave a monopoly of media coverage to TV and radio, and agreed to print
   newspapers as long as the press "carries out with objectivity the role
   of providing information which is its duty." In some cases
   print-workers insisted on changes in headlines or articles before they
   would print the paper. This happened mostly with the right-wing papers
   such as 'Le Figaro' or 'La Nation'.

   With the Renault occupation, the Sorbonne occupiers immediately
   prepared to join the Renault strikers, and led by anarchist black and
   red banners, 4,000 students headed for the occupied factory. The state,
   bosses, unions and Communist Party were now faced with their greatest
   nightmare -- a worker-student alliance. Ten thousand police reservists
   were called up and frantic union officials locked the factory gates.
   The Communist Party urged their members to crush the revolt. They
   united with the government and bosses to craft a series of reforms, but
   once they turned to the factories they were jeered out of them by the
   workers.

   The struggle itself and the activity to spread it was organised by
   self-governing mass assemblies and co-ordinated by action committees.
   The strikes were often run by assemblies as well. As Murray Bookchin
   argues, the "hope [of the revolt] lay in the extension of
   self-management in all its forms -- the general assemblies and their
   administrative forms, the action committees, the factory strike
   committees -- to all areas of the economy, indeed to all areas of life
   itself." Within the assemblies, "a fever of life gripped millions, a
   rewaking of senses that people never thought they possessed." [Op.
   Cit., p. 168 and p. 167] It was not a workers' strike or a student
   strike. It was a peoples' strike that cut across almost all class
   lines.

   On May 24th, anarchists organised a demonstration. Thirty thousand
   marched towards the Palace de la Bastille. The police had the
   Ministries protected, using the usual devices of tear gas and batons,
   but the Bourse (Stock Exchange) was left unprotected and a number of
   demonstrators set fire to it.

   It was at this stage that some left-wing groups lost their nerve. The
   Trotskyist JCR turned people back into the Latin Quarter. Other groups
   such as UNEF and Parti Socialiste Unife (United Socialist Party)
   blocked the taking of the Ministries of Finance and Justice.
   Cohn-Bendit said of this incident "As for us, we failed to realise how
   easy it would have been to sweep all these nobodies away. . . .It is
   now clear that if, on 25 May, Paris had woken to find the most
   important Ministries occupied, Gaullism would have caved in at once. .
   . . " Cohn-Bendit was forced into exile later that very night.

   As the street demonstrations grew and occupations continued, the state
   prepared to use overwhelming means to stop the revolt. Secretly, top
   generals readied 20,000 loyal troops for use on Paris. Police occupied
   communications centres like TV stations and Post Offices. By Monday,
   May 27th, the Government had guaranteed an increase of 35% in the
   industrial minimum wage and an all round-wage increase of 10%. The
   leaders of the CGT organised a march of 500,000 workers through the
   streets of Paris two days later. Paris was covered in posters calling
   for a "Government of the People." Unfortunately the majority still
   thought in terms of changing their rulers rather than taking control
   for themselves.

   By June 5th most of the strikes were over and an air of what passes for
   normality within capitalism had rolled back over France. Any strikes
   which continued after this date were crushed in a military-style
   operation using armoured vehicles and guns. On June 7th, they made an
   assault on the Flins steelworks which started a four-day running battle
   which left one worker dead. Three days later, Renault strikers were
   gunned down by police, killing two. In isolation, those pockets of
   militancy stood no chance. On June 12th, demonstrations were banned,
   radical groups outlawed, and their members arrested. Under attack from
   all sides, with escalating state violence and trade union sell-outs,
   the General Strike and occupations crumbled.

   So why did this revolt fail? Certainly not because "vanguard" Bolshevik
   parties were missing. It was infested with them. Fortunately, the
   traditional authoritarian left sects were isolated and outraged. Those
   involved in the revolt did not require a vanguard to tell them what to
   do, and the "workers' vanguards" frantically ran after the movement
   trying to catch up with it and control it.

   No, it was the lack of independent, self-managed confederal
   organisations to co-ordinate struggle which resulted in occupations
   being isolated from each other. So divided, they fell. In addition,
   Murray Bookchin argues that "an awareness among the workers that the
   factories had to be worked, not merely occupied or struck," was
   missing. [Op. Cit., p. 182]

   This awareness would have been encouraged by the existence of a strong
   anarchist movement before the revolt. The anti-authoritarian left,
   though very active, was too weak among striking workers, and so the
   idea of self-managed organisations and workers self-management was not
   widespread. However, the May-June revolt shows that events can change
   very rapidly. "Under the influence of the students," noted libertarian
   socialist Maurice Brinton, "thousands began to query the whole
   principle of hierarchy . . . Within a matter of days the tremendous
   creative potentialities of the people suddenly erupted. The boldest and
   realistic ideas -- and they are usually the same -- were advocated,
   argued, applied. Language, rendered stale by decades of bureaucratic
   mumbo-jumbo, eviscerated by those who manipulate it for advertising
   purposes, reappeared as something new and fresh. People re-appropriated
   it in all its fullness. Magnificently apposite and poetic slogans
   emerged from the anonymous crowd." ["Paris: May 1968", For Workers'
   Power, p. 253] The working class, fused by the energy and bravado of
   the students, raised demands that could not be catered for within the
   confines of the existing system. The General Strike displays with
   beautiful clarity the potential power that lies in the hands of the
   working class. The mass assemblies and occupations give an excellent,
   if short-lived, example of anarchy in action and how anarchist ideas
   can quickly spread and be applied in practice.

   For more details of these events, see participants Daniel and Gabriel
   Cohn-Bendit's Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative or Maurice
   Brinton's eye-witness account "Paris: may 1968" (in his For Workers'
   Power). Beneath the Paving Stones by edited Dark Star is a good
   anthology of situationist works relating to Paris 68 (it also contains
   Brinton's essay).

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ7.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA5.html#seca55
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA5.html#seca56
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA2.html#seca218
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA5.html#seca52
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech28
   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ3.html#secj39
   8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secHcon.html
   9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append42.html
  10. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append46.html
  11. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append4.html
  12. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html
  13. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html
  14. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci83
  15. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci84
  16. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci85
  17. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci86
  18. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci810
  19. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci811
