Author’s Note: This is almost my chapter in the anthology Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrrevolution (Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press, 2017). Some revisions were made during the editing process which are not included here. In addition, references to the 1913 French edition of Kropotkin’s Modern Science and Anarchy have been replaced with those from the 2018 English-language translation. However, the bulk of the text is the same, as is the message and its call to learn from history rather than repeat it. I would, of course, urge you to buy the book.
There were three Revolutions in 1917 – the February revolution which started spontaneously with strikes on International Women’s Day; the October r... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
When G. D. H. Cole died, I remember being amazed as I read the tributes in the newspapers from people like Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson alleging that their socialism was learned from him here, for it had always seemed to me that his socialism was of an entirely different character from that of the politicians of the Labor Party. Among his obituarists, it was left to a dissident Jugoslav communist, Vladimir Dedijer, to point out what this difference was; remarking on his discovery that Cole “rejected the idea of the continued supremacy of the Slate” and believed that “it was destined to disappear.”
For Cole, as for the anarchist philosophers from Godwin onward, I he distinction between society and the state... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Occasionally, the liberal-democratic system nobly affords us the chance to select our representatives from a shallow gene-pool of political management professionals. Save for this transient moment in the ballot booth, we’re separated from the exclusive franchise of governance altogether – voting is our only momentary and tenuous connection to the establishment. Best to leave power and responsibility up to the professionals; the experts, the think-tanks, policy-wonks, lobbyists and journalists. Just like any other specialized industry, with its own internal contradictions and power-relationships, the ‘political class’ is not a homogenized elite, united in a conspiratorial desire to oppress, control or get rich, but al... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
From: Rätekorrespondenz, 1936; English translation: International Council Correspondence, Vol.III, No.1, January 1937; Written: 1936 Transcription\HTML Markup: Greg Adargo Source: Kurasje Council Communist Archives
I.
The term “State Capitalism” is frequently used in two
different ways: first, as an economic form in which the state performs the role
of the capitalist employer, exploiting the workers in the interest of the state.
The federal mail system or a state-owned railway are examples of this kind of
state capitalism. In Russia, this form of state capitalism predominates in
industry: the work is planned, financed and managed by the state; the directors
of industry are appointed by the state and profits are... (From: Marxists.org.)
The problems of the social system in Russia have often been compared with those created by revolutionary France more than a century and a half ago. An understanding of both, it is said, requires perspective. Historians are reminded that the years have dissolved the acrimony heaped on the events of the Great French Revolution — that more 'good' than 'harm' was done. Much the same is implied for Russia. Supporters, even mild critics, of the Stalin regime tell us that so 'new' a phenomenon requires the test of many generations, that the judgment nourished by immediate events, by 'passing' abuses, must be suspended until lasting outlines appear. In place of the years and of abuses engendered by 'expediency', a vast theoretical corpus has ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Lenin in 1921 defined the Soviet Russian State as "a workers' state with a bureaucratic deformation in a country with a peasant majority." This definition must nowadays be modified in the following way: the Soviet State is a bureaucratic State where a bureaucratic middle class and a workers lower middle class are in the process of formation while the agrarian middle class still survives.
Boris Souvarin in his book on 'Stalin' (Paris 1935) gives this portrayal of the social appearance of the USSR.
"The so-called soviet society is based in just the same way on the exploitation of man by man, of the producer by the bureaucrat - technician of political power. Individual appropriation of surplus value is succeeded by a c...
Eleven years have passed since the day when, during a revolt by some migrants detained at the “Serraino Vulpitta” detention camp, mattresses were set alight in protest and the guards, unappreciative of the danger of the situation, failed to open the cages. The blaze caused the deaths of 6 people.
Today the situation has not changed at all. Governments have changed, but the racist policies go on and only get worse, fueling the war between the poor that suits the bosses and our rulers. And so we see the birth of a new, bigger and more isolated structure, a new Center for Identification and Expulsion (CIE) in Milo, on the outskirts of Trapani.
People continue to die and be imprisoned, guilty only of being “clandestine&rdquo... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Dated the day after the death of the Venezuelan president (03/06/2013), a statement was released entitled “La muerte de Hugo Chavez. Su impacto en America Latina y el mundo” — “The Death of Hugo Chavez. Its impact in Latin America and the world”, [1] published and maintained (at the time of writing) in a prominent place on the website of the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation — FAU, the group that claims authorship of the article.
In the text are various statements about the personality of the deceased, his historic role in Venezuela and Latin America, on the government and the political movement that he led, and the contemporary socio-political process in Venezuela; leading to an assessment and conclusions ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
It appears that the French Republic is reaching a tipping point, a fundamental break with the way that rule has functioned here for three decades. Everything indicates that the political legitimization of racism and violent policing must either lead to tyranny or provoke an uprising. These two forces—tyranny and revolt—define the moment we are experiencing in France today. The confrontation is now permanent. In the following report, the second installment in our series leading up to the French elections, we explore these developments and the prospects for revolutionary movements in France.
Today, a year and a half after the declaration of the state of emergency, we count the dead, the wounded, the imprisoned. It has long been t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
It seems the whole world is teetering on the edge of a wonderful oblivion. Stable authoritarian regimes have been toppled by their restive subjects, a tyrant beaten and dragged through the streets by a band of armed insurgents. Egyptians are now back on the streets and in the squares, reinvigorating what seemed like a revolution betrayed by hangers-on from the ancien regime. Across the world, resistance against austerity drives and finance capital is mounting, and in England a police shooting led to three nights of sustained rioting, looting and arson that spread across the country via Blackberry. European capital’s wet-dream of a single-currency trading bloc is on its deathbed as Greeks defend themselves against EU-IMF gangsters with... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
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