Why I'm not a Makhnoite (was Re: AUT: (en) A call for anarchists

[Peter van Heusden <pvh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 20 Jul 2000, Harald Beyer-Arnesen wrote:

> Sort of an answer to Fabian/"Leutha Blissett":
>
> Because CNT ended up in collaboration in 1936, any anarcho-
> syndicalist project would be doomed to repeat this for all
> future, is that your theory? In case, you should extend
> your critique to workers councils (far more vulnerable
> for this kind of critique) and by implication council
> communists.

I didn't read Leutha Blissett's comments in this light. Rather, I read
what they said as an attempt to address the 'Leninist bad'
'Anarcho-Syndicalist good' dichotomy by presenting an example which
suggests a more complex reading.

On Spain - the CNT in Spain certainly seems to have done a hell of a lot
better than the Bolsheviks in Russia - i.e. collectivising factories,
attempting to maintain the management of factories at the collective
level, rather than the level of state co-ordination, was a good thing.

At the same time, as "Workers against work" shows, there was resistance to
the 'collective' management in the factories. Later movements - e.g. that
which grew out of workers' confrontation with Keynesianism - went further
than the Spanish revolutionaries of the 1930s did, in that the question of
doing away with the factory (seeing the factory not as a neutral
'technical' organisation, but rather central to an alienated
society) rather than taking over the factory got raised.

I think a modern revolutionary anti-capitalist movement needs to take this
into account. Its not just that theory has 'advanced' (as if theory gets
up and advances on its own two feet- NOT!), but rather that capitalism -
and the organisation of production - has changed. Organised fragmentation
of work is an everyday reality for many workers today - I'm acutely aware
of how little of a 'product' I directly produce. Firing my boss will only
be the first step of what I need to do to liberate myself.

The point? Programs arise as the working class articulates its needs to
itself - i.e. as the working class arises as a real entity rather than an
analytical catagory. Syndicalism, French or Spanish style was one such
articulation. Social Democracy, German style, was another. Syndicalism,
Wobbly style, was yet another. Each one gave us a program, which expressed
one process of the working class composing itself.

When - as a result of various processes, both within and outside the
working class - the working class 'reconstructs its composition at a great
level of power', a program will arise out of that process of class
composition which will be like, and also unlike, the programs of the past.

It is this process of class composition to which I focus my energies -
not towards any particular program.

Peter
--
Peter van Heusden <pvh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics
"Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man
shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain
and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844



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