Thanks for that,Im going to publish it on Indymedia soon,real soon. If you are into cryptoanarchy with the emphasis on the anarchy,you may enjoy this... Elliott Abrams, who had pleaded guilty in 1981 to lying to Congress over the conduct of the war, was installed by the president to head his "office for democracy and human rights". See Tom Lehrer again. His criminal offence was described by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer as "a matter of the past". We used to say, NO to Western Imperialism and NO to Soviet Imperialism both. Self determination for ALL PEOPLES! One Empire has fallen. One still has to fall. But we should not mourn the passing of the Soviet prison of nations. The Minister of Education and the Minister of the Interior were assassinated. Students and young workers, determined to destroy the existing order, turned to the writings of Bakunin and Kropotkin for inspiration and with dynamite and pistol hurled themselves against the State. Working people, many of them recently arrived from the countryside to find employment in the vast new factories, elected representatives from their own class whom they could trust and whom they could remove at once if unsatisfactory. Strikes paralysed production, oppressed national groups on the borderlands rebelled, peasants burned and looted, and insurrection broke out The revolt, although short-lived, inspired the young anarchist movement. In spite of increased repression, its 'Battle Detachments' raided gunshops and armouries in search of the Browning pistols they cherished. Officials, police and bosses were murdered and countless 'expropriations' of banks and houses of the wealthy took place. Gun battles with police ended in death, jail or torture. This revolution, as a participant observed, was 'a purely spontaneous phenomenon, not at all the fruit of party agitation.' People were 'fired by a sense of unlimited freedom, a liberation from the restraints of their society.' 'Down with Authority and Capitalism' on black banners. Anarchists seized the mansions of the rich. One became 'The House of Rest', with rooms for reading, discussion and recreation and a children's playground in the garden. world-wide revolution based on free federations of urban and rural communes. In 1908 Nestor Makhno had been given a life sentence for the assassination of a police chief. Freed in 1917, he was elected head of the Soviet of Peasants and Workers in Gulyai-Polye. With an armed band marching behind a huge black banner on which was proclaimed 'Liberty or Death- The Land to the Peasants, the Factories to the Workers', Makhno began re-distributing the estates to the peasants. In 1918, when Austrian and White armies invaded the Ukraine, Makhno's partisans fought back: 'We will conquer not so that we may follow the example of past years and hand over our fate to some new master, but to take it in our own hands and conduct our lives according to our own will and our own conception of truth'. By the following spring the invaders were driven out and Gulyai-Polye was free from external control. Organising regional conferences of peasants, workers and insurgents, Makhno began to establish anarchist communes based on equality and mutual aid. At first the Bolsheviks hailed him as a 'courageous partisan' and 'great revolutionary', but subsequently attacked him as an 'anarcho-bandit'. Two Cheka agents were sent to assassinate Makhno, but the agents were caught and themselves shot. When Makhno invited Red soldiers to the Congress, a furious Trotsky declared him an outlaw, banned the Congress and sent troops to break up the anarchist communes. At this moment the Whites invaded again, driving on Moscow. Bolsheviks and anarchists were sent reeling, yet Makhno's army counter-attacked successfully. Trotsky used the time he had been given to re-organise the Red Army. By Christmas the Whites were expelled. Makhno's anarchists promptly entered Ekaterinoslav, threw open the jails and told the people that they were now free to organise their own lives. Freedom of speech, press and assembly was declared for all except authoritarian parties, which were dissolved. Bolsheviks were advised to 'take up some honest trade'. Again Trotsky outlawed Makhno and serious fighting raged for eight months until Whites invaded yet again. Trotsky appealed for Makhno's help, promising in return the release of all imprisoned anarchists and complete freedom of expression, short of urging the overthrow of the Bolshevik government. The Whites were finally defeated. With victory secure, Trotsky shot all the Makhnovist military commanders, attacked Makhno's HQ and wiped out the staff. The Cheka arrested members of the Nabat in Kharkov; throughout Russia, anarchist clubs, groups and newspaper offices were raided and closed down. Although badly wounded, Makhno, together with the remnants of his insurgent army, evaded the Bolsheviks for a year. Escaping eventually to Paris, he died in 1934 of alcohol and TB. Surviving anarchists launched a campaign of terror against the Bolsheviks. In September 1921, they blew up the Communist Party Moscow, leaving 67 dead or wounded. The anarchists were an immense influence on the popular revolution because their aims coincided with the people's desire to sweep away state and capital. For a brief moment it did seem possible that a social revolution would destroy all authority and create a decentralised society of voluntarily cooperating free individuals. But the anarchists' warning that power corrupts all who wield it - that authority stifles the revolutionary spirit and robs people of freedom - was ignored.
mattd wrote: [...]
If you are into cryptoanarchy with the emphasis on the anarchy,you may enjoy this...
[...]
We used to say, NO to Western Imperialism and NO to Soviet Imperialism both. Self determination for ALL PEOPLES! One Empire has fallen. One still has to fall. But we should not mourn the passing of the Soviet prison of nations.
[...] You miss the point. James & many of the other Libertarians present are aware past attempts at left anarchism. But they think that such attempts will inevitably develop into state socialist tyranny, or else collapse into a bloody war of all against all, or else be defeated by some other group that has already become a centralised tyranny. (In Makhno's case all three happened, at least partly). In other words they think that - to nick a Marxist term they probably wouldn't use themselves - socialism has "contradictions", that you can't have socialism without tyranny. From their point of view there is no logical space for "libertarian socialism" or "socialist anarchism". Someone who claims to be a socialist and yet opposed to state control will, they think, be either a liar who will turn out to be a Statist in the end, or someone who hasn't thought things through, who will turn out to be a capitalist in the end. I happen to think they are wrong. But stirring quotes from well-known texts about the Russian revolution won't persuade them. The few who are at all interested will have read such stuff before and already know the (very persuasive) arguments against it. (After all the Russian revolution really did collapse into ten years of bloody war, followed by 30 years of Stalinism, then another 30 of mind-numbingly boring militarised dictatorship and petty cruelty from which anyone in their right minds would have gladly escaped to America or western Europe. They aren't making this up) Of course most of the US libertarians neither know nor care about that 1920s stuff, and going on about it will just confirm their prejudices about it. Americans tend to be well immunized against socialism - the only way to get it past their mental blocks is to call it something else :-) It was still fun a few years ago when someone posted a chunk of the Communist Manifesto with references to "the Bourgeoisie" changed to "the Net" and quite a few of them took it as some recent anarcho-capitalist rant... Ken
participants (2)
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Ken Brown
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mattd