The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays

Bibliographic Information
The struggle against the state and other essays by Nestor Makhno; edited by Alexandre Sirda translated by Paul Sharkey © Copyright: 1996 Alexandre Skirda Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Makhno, Nestor Ivanovich. 1889-1934. [Lutte contre l'Etat et autres écrits. English] The struggle against the state and other essays / by Nestor Makhno ; edited by Alexandre Sirda. p. cm. Includes biblographical references. ISBN 1-873176-78-3 (pbk.) 1. Ukraine--History--Revolution. 1917-1921. 2. Ukraine--History--1921-1944. 3. Anarchism. I. Skirda, Alexandre. II. Title. DK265.8.U4M27413 1995 947' 710841--dc20 95-40647 CIP British Library Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this title is available from the British Library. First published in 1996 by AK Press P.O. Box 12766 Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9YE AK... (From : Spunk.org.)

Chapter 19 : Bibliographical Afterword, by Alexandre Skirda
ALEXANDRE SKIRDA Among the articles by Nestor Makhno left out of this anthology, we might mention the one on the peasantry and the Bolsheviks,1 where he sets out the (in fact, quite well-known) socio-economic differentials between the wealthy peasants, or kulaks, the middle peasantry or serednyakis, the poor peasants or bednyakis, and the farm laborers or batrakis. Categories that the Bolsheviko-Stalinist policy of developing rural capitalism in the 1920s tended to reduce to its extremities alone: to the kulaks and the batrakis, to the detriment of the overwhelming majority of the peasantry. We know, here, that from 1929 to 1934, this policy was escalated in such a way as to lead to the utter dispossession of the peasants of their land, and this at the price of the holocaust of its times, which has been underplayed thus far, for this "de-kulakisation" cost the lives of 15 million victims, according to reliable estimates. Let... (From : Spunk.org.)

Chapter 18 : On the History of the Spanish Revolution of 1931 and the Part Played by the Left and Right-Wing Socialists and the Anarchist
Whenever a revolution breaks out - and regardless of its character - (the most important point is that broad masses of workers and peasants should have a hand in it) and its guides, whether a compact group or a scattering of individuals, enjoying a special authority in the eyes of the workers, place themselves above these masses and do not march in step with them and do not earn their trust, waiting for something out of the ordinary to happen or even, worse still, seek to subordinate them by trying to point them along the "only" path to follow, well, the revolution fails to develop thoroughly enough and fails to resolve or even correctly formulate the attendant problems in need of resolution. Then it cannot devise new and additional methods of social action to thwart its enemies and meet the pressing needs: whereupon it is induced to adopt vague directions and gets lost amid their fatal zigzags. At that point, it either perishes under the blows of those against whom it is targeted... (From : Spunk.org.)

Chapter 17 : Open Letter to the Spanish Anarchists
Dear Comrades Carbó and Pestaña, Convey to our friends and comrades and, through them, to all Spanish workers my encouragement to them not to let their resolution falter in the revolutionary process which has been launched, as well as to make haste in uniting around a practical program drafted along libertarian lines. At all costs there must be no let up in the pace of the masses' revolutionary action. On the contrary, we must rush to help them compel (by force if there is no other way, no other means) the acting republican government which is hindering and distracting the revolution with its absurd decrees to desist from such harmful endeavors. The Spanish toilers - workers, peasants and working intelligentsia - must unite and display the utmost revolutionary energy so as to conjure into existence a situation whereby the bourgeoisie may be precluded from opposing the seizure of land, factories and full freedoms: a situation that would thus become mor... (From : Spunk.org.)

Chapter 16 : The ABC of the Revolutionary Anarchist
Anarchism means man living free and working constructively. It means the destruction of everything that is directed against man's natural, healthy aspirations. Anarchism is not exclusively a theoretical teaching emanating from programs artificially conceived with an eye to the regulation of life: it is a teaching derived from life across all its wholesome manifestations, skipping over all artificial criteria. The social and political visage of anarchism is a free, anti-authoritarian society, one that enshrines freedom, equality and solidarity between all its members. In anarchism, Right means the responsibility of the individual, the sort of responsibility that brings with it an authentic guarantee of freedom and social justice for each and for all, in all places and at all times. It is out of this that communism springs. Anarchism is naturally innate in man: communism is the logical extrapolation from it. These assertions require theoretica... (From : Spunk.org.)

The Makhovshchina and Anti-Semitism
For the past seven years, almost, the enemies of the Makhnovist revolutionary movement have wallowed in so many lies about it that one might marvel that these people do not take a red face, once in a while at least. It is rather characteristic that these shameless lies directed against myself and the Makhnovist insurgents, indeed against our movement as a whole, can unite folk from very different socio-political camps: among them one can find journalists of every persuasion, writers, scholars and laymen who place obstacles in their path, mavericks and speculators, who occasionally have no hesitation in putting themselves forward as pathfinders for avant-garde revolutionary ideas. One can also come across supposed anarchists, like Yanovsky, ... (From : Spunk.org.)

On Defense of the Revolution
Within the context of the debate that has taken place among our comrades from many lands regarding the Draft Platform of the General Union of Anarchists, published by the group of Russian anarchists abroad, I have been asked from several quarters to write a piece specifically devoted to the issue of the defense of the revolution. I shall strive to deal with it most diligently, but, before I do, I think I have a duty to inform comrades that this is not the central issue of the Draft Platform: the crux of it is the necessity of achieving the most consistent unity in our libertarian communist ranks. That portion asks only for amendment and completion before implementation. Otherwise, if we do not strive to marshal our forces, our movement will... (From : Spunk.org.)

To the Jews of All Countries
Jewish citizens! In my first "Appeal to Jews", published in the French libertarian newspaper, Le Libertaire, I asked Jews in general, which is to say the bourgeois and the socialist ones as well as the 'anarchist' ones like Yanovsky, who have all spoken of me as a pogromist against Jews and labeled as anti-Semitic the liberation movement of the Ukrainian peasants and workers of which I was the leader, to detail to me the specific facts instead of blathering vacuously away: just where and just when did I or the aforementioned movement perpetrate such acts? I had expected that Jews in general would answer my "Appeal" after the manner of people eager to disclose to the civilized world the truth about these blackguards responsible for the massa... (From : Spunk.org.)

The Struggle Against the State
The fact that the modern State is the organizational form of an authority founded upon arbitrariness and violence in the social life of toilers is independent of whether it may be "bourgeois" or "proletarian." It relies upon oppressive centralism, arising out of the direct violence of a minority deployed against the majority. In order to enforce and impose the legality of its system, the State resorts not only to the gun and money, but also to potent weapons of psychological pressure. With the aide of such weapons, a tiny group of politicians enforces psychological repression of an entire society, and, in particular, of the toiling masses, conditioning them in such a way as to divert their attention from the slavery instituted by the State.... (From : Spunk.org.)

A Few Words on the National Question in the Ukraine
In the wake of the abolition of czarist despotism at the time of the 1917 revolution, prospects of new, free relations between peoples hitherto in subjection beneath the violent yoke of the Russian State, appeared on the horizons of the world of Labor. The notion of complete self-determination, up to and including a complete break with the Russian State, thus emerged naturally among these peoples. Groups of every persuasion sprang up among the Ukrainian population by the dozen: each of them had its own outlook and interpreted the idea of self-determination according to its own factional interests. All in all, the toiling masses of the Ukraine did not identify with these groups and did not join them. Over seven years have elapsed since, and ... (From : Spunk.org.)