 | Bloodstained — Chapter 3 : The Idea of Equality and the Bolsheviks by Nestor MakhnoBy Barry Pateman |
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| Bloodstained — Chapter 3 : The Idea of Equality and the Bolsheviks by Nestor MakhnoBy Barry Pateman |
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I’m really happy to share a chat with anarchist and historian, Barry Pateman. Barry, born in the early 1950’s, grew up in a working class coal mining town of Doncaster in the UK and became an anarchist in the 1960’s in London. He is a longstanding member of the Kate Sharpley Library which covers histories of little-known anarchists and events in history. Barry has also contributed to and edited numerous books including “Chomsky on Anarchism”, a two book document collection with Candace Falk and many more titles, many on AK Press. We talk about anarchist history, community, repression, defeat, insularity, popular front with authoritarian Marxists, class analysis and how to beat back capitalism. Find Kate Sharpley Library at KateSharpleyLibrary.Net. (From: AshevilleFM.org.)
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Chapter 3
The 14th Congress of the Russian Communist Party has roundly condemned the notion of equality. Prior to the congress, Zinoviev had mentioned the idea in the course of his polemic against Ustrialov and Bukharin. He declared then that the whole of contemporary philosophy was sustained by the idea of equality. Kalinin spoke up forcefully at the congress against that contention, taking the line that any reference to equality could not help but be harmful and was not to be tolerated. His reasoning was as follows:
“Can we talk to peasants about equality? No, that is out of the question, for in that case, they would set about demanding the same rights as workers, which would be in complete contradiction with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Likewise, can we talk of equality to workers? No, that is out of the question too, for if, say, a communist and a nonparty member do the same job, the difference resides in the former being paid twice the wage of the latter. To concede equality would allow nonparty members to demand the same pay as is paid out to a communist. Is that acceptable, comrades? No, it is not. Can we call for equality among communists then? No, that is not on either, for they too occupy different positions, in terms of their rights and their material circumstances alike.”
On the basis of such considerations, Kalinin concluded that Zinoviev’s use of the term “equality” could only have been demagogic and harmful. In his reply, Zinoviev in turn told the congress that, whilst he had spoken of equality, he had meant it in quite a different sense. As for himself, all he had had in mind was “socialist equality,” that is, the equality that would one day come to pass in a more or less distant future. For the time being, until such time as the world revolution had taken place and as there was no way of knowing when it would, there could be no question of any equality. In particular, there could be no equality of rights, for that would risk dragging us in the direction of very dangerous “democratic” deviations.
This understanding on the notion of equality was not spelled out in a resolution from the congress. But, essentially, the two camps that clashed at the congress were agreed in regarding the idea of equality as intolerable.
Formerly, and not all that long ago, the Bolsheviks spoke quite a different language. It was under the banner of equality that they operated during the great Russian revolution, to overthrow the bourgeoisie, in concert with the workers and peasants, at whose expense they rose to political control over the country. It was under those colors that, after eight years of ruling over the lives and liberties of the toilers of the former Russia—henceforth to be known as the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” the Bolshevik czars sought to persuade the toilers of that “Union,” (oppressed by them), as well as the toilers from other countries (which they do not yet control), that if they have persecuted, left to rot in prison or deported and murdered their political enemies, this has been done exclusively in the name of the revolution, its egalitarian foundations (which they allegedly had introduced into the revolution) which their enemies supposedly wished to destroy.
It shall soon be eight years since the blood of anarchists began to flow because of their refusal to servilely bow before the violence or effrontery of those who have seized power, nor before their famously lying ideology and their utter irresponsibility.
In that criminal act, an act that cannot be described as other than a bloodlust of the Bolshevik gods, the finest offspring of the revolution have perished because they were the most loyal exponents of revolutionary ideals and because they could not be bribed into betraying them. In honestly defending the precepts of the revolution, these children of the revolution sought to fend off the madness of the Bolshevik gods and find a way out of their dead end, so as to forge a path to real freedom and genuine equality of the toilers.
The Bolshevik potentates quickly realized that the aspirations of these children of the revolution would spell doom for their madness and above all for the privileges they adroitly inherited from the toppled bourgeoisie, then treacherously beefed up to their advantage. On these grounds they condemned the revolutionaries to death. Men with the souls of slaves supported them in this and the blood flowed. For the past eight years it has gone on flowing, and in the name of what, we might ask? In the name of freedom and equality of the toilers, say the Bolsheviks, continuing to exterminate thousands of nameless revolutionaries, fighters for the social revolution, labeled as “bandits” and “counter-revolutionaries.”
With that shameless falsehood, the Bolsheviks have hidden the true state of affairs in Russia from the eyes of toilers the world over, particularly their utter bankruptcy in the matter of building socialism, when this is all too apparent to all who have the eyes to see.
Anarchists alerted toilers of every country in time to the Bolsheviks’ crimes in the Russian revolution. Bolshevism, embodying the ideal of a centralizing State, has shown itself as the deadly enemy of the free spirit of revolutionary toilers. Resorting to unprecedented measures, it has sabotaged the development of the revolution and besmirched the honor of its finest aspect. Successfully disguised, it concealed its real face from the gaze of the toilers, passing itself off as the champion of their interests. Only now, after an eight years’ reign, increasingly flirting with the international bourgeoisie, does it begin to cast aside its mask of revolution and expose to the world of labor the face of a rapacious exploiter.
The Bolsheviks have jettisoned the idea of equality, not just in practice but also in theory, for the very enunciation of it strikes them as dangerous now. This is quite understandable, for their entire rule depends on a diametrically contrasting notion, on a screaming inequality, the entire horror and evils of which have battened upon the backs of the workers. Let us hope that the toilers of every country may draw the necessary conclusions and, in turn, finish with the Bolsheviks, those exponents of the idea of slavery and oppressors of Labor.
From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org
I’m really happy to share a chat with anarchist and historian, Barry Pateman. Barry, born in the early 1950’s, grew up in a working class coal mining town of Doncaster in the UK and became an anarchist in the 1960’s in London. He is a longstanding member of the Kate Sharpley Library which covers histories of little-known anarchists and events in history. Barry has also contributed to and edited numerous books including “Chomsky on Anarchism”, a two book document collection with Candace Falk and many more titles, many on AK Press. We talk about anarchist history, community, repression, defeat, insularity, popular front with authoritarian Marxists, class analysis and how to beat back capitalism. Find Kate Sharpley Library at KateSharpleyLibrary.Net. (From: AshevilleFM.org.)
Globe-Trotting Anarchist, Journalist, and Exposer of Bolshevik Tyranny
: He was a well-known anarchist leader in the United States and life-long friend of Emma Goldman, a young Russian immigrant whom he met on her first day in New York City. The two became lovers and moved in together, remaining close friends for the rest of Berkman's life. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "The present situation in Russia [in 1921] is most anomalous. Economically it is a combination of State and private capitalism. Politically it remains the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' or, more correctly, the dictatorship of the inner circle of the Communist Party." (From: "The Russian Tragedy," by Alexander Berkman, The R....)
• "Or will the workers at last learn the great lesson Of the Russian Revolution that every government, whatever its fine name and nice promises is by its inherent nature, as a government, destructive of the very purposes of the social revolution? It is the mission of government to govern, to subject, to strenghten and perpetuate itself. It is high time the workers learn that only their own organized, creative efforts, free from Political and State interference, can make their age-long struggle for emancipation a lasting success." (From: "The Russian Tragedy," by Alexander Berkman, The R....)
• "But when the industries will again begin to function more or less systematically, [Soviet] Russia will face a very difficult and complex labor situation. Labor organizations, trade unions, do not exist in Russia, so far as the legitimate activities of such bodies are concerned. The Bolsheviki abolished them long ago. With developing production and capitalism, governmental as well as private, Russia will see the rise of a new proletariat whose interests must naturally come into conflict with those of the employing class. A bitter struggle is imminent. A struggle of a twofold nature: against the private capitalist, and against the State as an employer of labor." (From: "The Russian Tragedy," by Alexander Berkman, The R....)
Cornelius Castoriadis[a] (Greek: Κορνήλιος Καστοριάδης;[b] 11 March 1922 – 26 December 1997) was a Greek-French philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group. His writings on autonomy and social institutions have been influential in both academic and activist circles. (From: Wikipedia.org.)
Iain McKay is an independent anarchist writer and researcher. He was the main author of An Anarchist FAQ as well as numerous other works, including Mutual Aid: An Introduction and Evaluation. In addition, he has edited and introduced Property Is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology; Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology; and Kropotkin’s 1913 book Modern Science and Anarchy. He is also a regular contributor to Anarcho-Syndicalist Review as well as Black Flag and Freedom. (From: PMPress.org.)
Ida Mett (born Ida Gilman, 20 July 1901 in Smarhoń, Imperial Russia – 27 June 1973 in Paris, France) was a Belarusian-born anarchist and author. Mett was an active participant in the Russian anarchist movement in Moscow, and was arrested by Soviet authorities for subversive activities and escaped soon thereafter. From Russia, she fled to Poland, later Berlin, and eventually to Paris where she became active with Dielo Trouda Group and co-edited the Dielo Truda magazine. Mett wrote The Kronstadt Commune, a history of the rebellion at Kronstadt, in 1948. Published by the Spartacus publishing house, it subsequently re-awakened controversy over the events. She also authored The Russian Peasant in the Revolution and Post Revolution and contributed to various international periodicals. She died in Paris on 27 June 1973. (From: Wikipedia.org.)
Luigi Fabbri (23 December 1877 – 24 June 1935) was an Italian anarchist, writer, and educator, who was charged with defeatism during World War I. He was the father of Luce Fabbri. Fabbri was first sentenced for anarchist activities at the age of 16 in Ancona, and spent many years in and out of Italian prisons. Fabbri was a long time and prolific contributor to the anarchist press in Europe and later South America, including co-editing, along with Errico Malatesta, the paper L'Agitazione. He helped edit the paper "Università popolare" in Milan. Fabbri was a delegate to the International Anarchist Congress held in Amsterdam in 1907. He died in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1935. He was the author of: Dictatorship and Revolution (Dettadura e Rivoluzione), a response to Lenin's work The State and the Revolution; Malatesta's Life, translated by Adam Wight (originally published in 1936), this book was published again with expanded content in 1945. He also wrote oth... (From: Wikipedia.org.)
Christopher Agamemnon Pallis (2 December 1923, in Bombay – 10 March 2005, in London) was an Anglo-Greek neurologist and libertarian socialist intellectual. Under the pen-names Martin Grainger and Maurice Brinton, he wrote and translated for the British group Solidarity from 1960 until the early 1980s. As a neurologist, he produced the accepted criteria for brainstem death, and wrote the entry on death for Encyclopædia Britannica. (From: Wikipedia.org.)
Otto Rühle (23 October 1874 – 24 June 1943) was a German Marxist active in opposition to both the First and Second World Wars as well as a student of Alfred Adler. (From: Wikipedia.org.)
German Father of Anarcho-Syndicalism
: Rocker was born in Mainz, Germany, son of a workingman who died when the boy was five years of age. It was an uncle who introduced him to the German SociaI Democratic movement, but he was soon disappointed by the rigidities of German socialism. (From: Irving Horowitz Bio.)
• "...economic exploitation has always gone hand in hand with political and social oppression. The exploitation of man by man and the domination of man over man are inseparable, and each is the condition of the other." (From: "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," by Rudolph Ro....)
• "The urge for social justice can only develop properly and be effective when it grows out of man's sense of freedom and responsibility, and is based upon it." (From: "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," by Rudolph Ro....)
• "Every type of political power presupposes some particular form of human slavery, for the maintenance of which it is called into being." (From: "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," by Rudolph Ro....)
Paul Mattick Sr. (March 13, 1904 – February 7, 1981) was a Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions. Throughout his life, Mattick continually criticized Bolshevism, Vladimir Lenin and Leninist organizational methods, describing their political legacy as "serving as a mere ideology to justify the rise of modified capitalist (state-capitalist) systems, which were [...] controlled by way of an authoritarian state". (From: Wikipedia.org.)
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Chapter 3
