Revolutionaries (12 page)

It is not clear how far these views of the ideologists and political leaders were shared by the rank-and-file militants and supporters of the marxist movements. We may suppose that the differences were often much less clearly felt at this level. It is a well-known fact that doctrinal, ideological and programmatic distinctions which are of major importance at one level, are of negligible importance at another – e.g. that as late as 1917 ‘social democratic' workers in many Russian towns were barely if at all aware of the differences between bolsheviks and mensheviks. The historian of labour movements and their doctrines forgets such facts at his peril.

This general background must be supplemented by a discussion of the differences between the situation in various parts of
the world, in so far as these affected the relations between communists and anarchists or anarcho-syndicalists. No comprehensive survey can be made here, but at least three different types of countries must be distinguished:

(
a
) Regions in which anarchism had never been of major significance in the labour movement, e.g. most of north-western Europe (except the Netherlands), and several colonial areas in which labour and socialist movements had hardly developed before 1917.

(
b
) Regions in which anarchist influence had been significant, but diminished dramatically, and perhaps decisively, in the period 1914–36. These must include part of the Latin world, e.g. France, Italy and some Latin American countries, as also China, Japan and – for somewhat different reasons – Russia.

(
c
) Regions in which anarchist influence remained significant, if not dominant, until the latter part of the 1930s. Spain is the most obvious case.

In regions of the first type relations with movements describing themselves as anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist were of no significance to communist movements. The existence of small numbers of anarchists, mainly artists and intellectuals, raised no political problem, and neither did the presence of anarchist political refugees, immigrant communities in which anarchism might be influential, and other phenomena marginal to the native labour movement. This appears to have been the case in, say, Britain and Germany after the 1870s and 1880s, when anarchist trends had played some part, mainly disruptive, in the special circumstances of extremely small socialist movements or socialist movements temporarily pressed into semi-illegality as by Bismarck's anti-socialist law. The struggles between centralized and decentralized types of movement, between bureaucratic and anti-bureaucratic, ‘spontaneous' and ‘disciplined' movements were fought out without any special reference (except by academic writers or a few very erudite marxists)
to the anarchists. This was the case in Britain in the period corresponding to that of revolutionary syndicalism on the continent. The extent to which communist parties showed themselves to be aware of anarchism as a political problem in their countries, remains to be seriously studied by a systematic analysis of their polemical publications (in so far as these did not merely echo the preoccupations of the International), of their translation and/or re-publication of classical marxist writings on anarchism, etc. However, it may be suggested with some confidence that they regarded the problem as negligible, compared to that of reformism, doctrinal schisms within the communist movement, or certain kinds of petty-bourgeois ideological trends such as, in Britain, pacifism. It was certainly entirely possible to be deeply involved in the communist movement in Germany in the early 1930s, in Britain in the later 1930s, without paying more than the most cursory or academic attention to anarchism, or indeed without ever having to discuss the subject.

The regions of the second type are in some respects the most interesting from the point of view of the present discussion. We are here dealing with countries or areas in which anarchism was an important, in some periods or sectors a dominant influence in the trade unions or the political movements of the extreme left.

The crucial historical fact here is the dramatic decline of anarchist (or anarcho-syndicalist) influence in the decade after 1914. In the belligerent countries of Europe this was a neglected aspect of the general collapse of the prewar left. This is usually presented primarily as a crisis of social democracy, and with much justification. At the same time it was also a crisis of the libertarian or anti-bureaucratic revolutionaries in two ways. First, many of them (e.g. among ‘revolutionary syndicalists') joined the bulk of marxist social democrats in the rush to the patriotic banners – at least for a
time. Second, those who did not, proved, on the whole, quite ineffective in their opposition to the war, and even less effective at the end of the war in their attempts to provide an alternative libertarian revolutionary movement to the bolsheviks. To cite only one decisive example. In France (as Professor Kriegel has shown), the ‘Carnet B' drawn up by the Ministry of the Interior to include all those ‘considérés comme dangereux pour l'ordre social', i.e. ‘les révolutionnaires, les syndicalistes et les anarchistes', in fact contained mainly anarchists, or rather ‘la faction des anarchistes qui milite dans le mouvement syndical'. On 1 August 1914 the Minister of the Interior, Malvy, decided to pay no attention to the Carnet B, i.e. to leave at liberty the very men who, in the government's opinion, had convincingly established their intention to oppose war by all means, and who might presumably have become the cadres of a working-class anti-war movement. In fact, few of them had made any concrete preparations for resistance or sabotage, and none any preparation likely to worry the authorities. In a word, Malvy decided that the entire body of men accepted as being the most dangerous revolutionaries, was negligible. He was, of course, quite correct.

The failure of the syndicalist and libertarian revolutionaries, further confirmed in 1918–20, contrasted dramatically with the success of the Russian bolsheviks. In fact, it sealed the fate of anarchism as a major independent force on the left outside a few exceptional countries for the next fifty years. It became hard to recall that in 1905–14 the marxist left had in most countries been on the fringe of the revolutionary movement, the main body of marxists had been identified with a
de facto
non-revolutionary social democracy, while the bulk of the revolutionary left was anarcho-syndicalist, or at least much closer to the ideas and the mood of anarcho-syndicalism than to that of classical marxism. Marxism was henceforth identified with actively revolutionary movements,
and with communist parties and groups, or with social democratic parties which, like the Austrian, prided themselves on being markedly left wing. Anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism entered upon a dramatic and uninterrupted decline. In Italy the triumph of fascism accelerated it, but where, in the France of 1924, let alone of 1929 or 1934 was the anarchist movement which had been the characteristic form of the revolutionary left in 1914?

The question is not merely rhetorical. The answer is and must be: largely in the new communist or communist-led movements. In the absence of adequate research this can not yet be adequately documented, but the broad facts seem clear. Even some of the leading figures or well-known activists of the ‘bolshevized' communist parties came from the former libertarian movements or from the militant trade union movements with their libertarian
ambiance
: thus in France Monmousseau and probably Duclos. This is all the more striking, since it was rather unlikely that leading members of marxist parties would be drawn from former anarcho-syndicalists, and even less likely that leading figures in the libertarian movement would opt for leninism.
¹
It is indeed highly likely that (as the leader of the Dutch
CP
, De Groot observes, perhaps not without some
parti pris
) that ex-libertarian workers adapted themselves better to life in the new
CPS
than ex-libertarian intellectuals or petty bourgeois. After all, at the level of the working-class militant, the doctrinal or programmatic differences which divide ideologists and political leaders so sharply, are often quite unreal, and may have little significance, unless
at this level
– i.e. in the worker's specific locality or trade union – different organizations or leaders have long-established patterns of rivalry.

Nothing is more likely, therefore, than that workers previously adhering to the most militant or revolutionary union in their locality or occupation should, after its disappearance shift without much difficulty into the communist union which now represented militancy or revolutionary attitudes. When old movements disappear, such a transfer is common. The old movement may retain its mass influence here and there, and the leaders and militants who have identified themselves with it, may continue to hold it together on a diminishing scale as best they can, in so far as they do not retire
de jure
or
de facto
into an unreconciled inactivity. Some of the rank and file may also drop out. But a large proportion must be expected to transfer to the most suitable alternative, if one is available. Such transfers have not been investigated seriously, so that we know no more about what happened to ex-anarcho-syndicalists (and those who had followed their lead) than we know about ex-members or followers of the Independent Labour Party in Britain after the 1930s, or ex-communists in Western Germany after 1945.

If a large part of the rank and file of the new communist parties, and more especially, the new revolutionary trade unions, was composed of former libertarians, it would be natural to expect this to have had some effect on them. On the whole there is little sign of this within the communist parties. To take merely one representative example, the discussions on ‘bolshevizing the Communist International' in the Enlarged Executive of that organization, March-April 1925, which dealt specifically with the problem of non-communist influences within the communist movement. There are little more than a half-dozen references to syndicalist and none to anarchist influence in this document.
²
They are confined entirely to the cases of France, Italy and the United States. As for France, the loss ‘of the larger part of the
former leading officials [of social democratic origins in Germany], and of petty-bourgeois syndicalist origins in France' is noted (p. 38). Treint reported that ‘our Party has eliminated all the errors of Trotskyism: all the individualist quasi-anarchist errors, the errors of the belief in legitimacy, of the coexistence of diverse factions in the Party. It has also learned to know the Luxemburgist errors' (p.99). The
ECCI
resolution recommended, as one of ten points concerning the French party ‘in spite of all former French traditions, establishment of a well-organized Communist Mass Party' (p. 160). As for Italy, ‘the numerous and diverse origin of the deviations which have arisen in Italy' are noted, but without reference to any libertarian trends. Bordiga's similarity to ‘Italian syndicalism' is mentioned, though it is not claimed that he ‘identifies himself completely' with this and other analogous views. The Marxist-Syndicalist faction (Avanguardia group) is mentioned as one of the reactions against the opportunism of the Second International, as is its dissolution ‘into trade syndicalism' after leaving the party (pp. 192–3). The recruitment of the
CPUSA
from two sources – the Socialist Party and syndicalist organizations – is mentioned (p. 45). If we compare these scattered references to the preoccupation of the International in the same document with a variety of other ideological deviations and other problems, the relatively minor impact of libertarian-syndicalist traditions within communism, or at least within the major communist parties of the middle 1920s, is evident.

This may to some extent be an illusion, for it is clear that behind several of the tendencies which troubled the International more urgently, such traditions may be discerned. The insistence of the dangers of ‘Luxemburgism' with its stress on spontaneity, its hostility to nationalism and other similar ideas, may well be aimed at the attitudes of militants formed in the libertarian-syndicalist school, as also the hostility – by this time no longer a matter of very serious concern – to electoral
abstentionism. Behind ‘Bordighism', we can certainly discern a preoccupation with such tendencies. In various western parties Trotskyism and other marxist deviations probably attracted communists of syndicalist origins, uncomfortable in the ‘bolshevized' parties – e.g. Rosmer and Monatte. Yet it is significant that the
Cahiers du Bolchevisme
(28 November 1924), in analyzing the ideological trends within the French
CP
, make no allusion to syndicalism. The journal divided the party into ‘20 per cent of Jauresism, 10 per cent of marxism, 20 per cent of leninism, 20 per cent of Trotskyism, and 30 per cent of Confusionism'. Whatever the actual strength of ideas and attitudes derived from the old syndicalist tradition, that tradition itself had ceased to be significant, except as a component of various left-wing, sectarian or schismatic versions of marxism.

However, for obvious reasons, anarchist problems preoccupied the communist movement more in those parts of the world where before the October revolution the political labour movement had been almost entirely anarchist and social democratic movements had been negligible, or where the anarcho-syndicalists maintained their strength and influence during the 1920s; as in large regions of Latin America. It is not surprising that the Red International of Labour Unions in the 1920s was much preoccupied with these problems in Latin America, or that as late as 1935 the Communist International observed that ‘the remnants of anarcho-syndicalism have not yet been completely overcome' in the
CP
of Brazil (whose original membership consisted overwhelmingly of former anarchists). Nevertheless, when we consider the significance of anarcho-syndicalism in this continent, the problems arising from it seem to have caused the Comintern little real preoccupation after the Great Depression of 1929–30. Its chief criticism of the local communist parties in this respect appears to have been that they were unable to benefit sufficiently from the rapid decline of the
anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist organizations and the growing sympathy for communism of their members.
³