The history of the International shows us the influence of idea on deed. ----
Errico Malatesta[1]---- The man fights more inspired by what he thinks than bywhat he feels. ---- Emilio Lopez Arango[2] ---- The tension between syndicalismand anarchism has its history and in it it has its actuality. Somehow it is oneof the multiple instances of the eternal struggle between idea and matter, thechicken and the egg of philosophical matters. ---- I have to make a " disclaimer", a waiver of responsibility. Attentive to the horror that philosophy sometimesproduces in trade union affairs, please allow me two brief paragraphs to justifymyself.Normally the birth of philosophy is marked in the texts of Plato and in theactivity of Socrates portrayed by him. What lies behind that foundational gestureis the search for a substratum in which a political project can be sustained thatdoes not depend on interested opinion, but rather is explained as a consequenceof a universal principle. The Platonic cause is the cause of knowing againstopinion to find the conditions of a good society.The word politics here does not necessarily mean government, power, speculation,representation, or all those bad weeds, but the thought of the common good. Thepolitical is, in its oldest and most literal sense, the thought of the life ofmany, or at least of several, which becomes what is later usually translated asthe " city-state ", but which we could also translate as a community. It is inthis sense that we can claim a philosophy that is basically a rational way toapproach a thought that allows us to approach an idea of the good on which tocompose the image of a good society. The Greeks called the image idea .Words are not innocent. They drag senses even if we don't want it. That is whysometimes stopping at them to clarify meanings is a necessary effort.The understanding of politics as a thought oriented to finding the conditions ofa good society hardly exists anymore. In the anarchist tradition, the wordpolitics has a completely justified pejorative meaning and is linked to what wasdone in its name. It will be necessary to see, in any case, if what gives meaningto a word is what can be understood in it or what has been done with it. But thetruth is that the bad reputation of politics is completely justified.However, the social issue involves universal issues that transcend immediateexperience. When the popular misery caused by the greed of the owners ofeverything is reproached, it is done by demanding justice. The reproach is notbased on the suffering of the poor but on the responsibility of the rich. That iswhy it is a reproach and not a lament.That the rich are responsible for the suffering of the poor justifies the angerof the poor against the rich. But that is not enough to transform society becausethe poor could become rich and the rich become poor, and with that only the fateof each person would have changed, but the reproach could justly begin again. Theonly way for the situation to end is by changing the root of the matter, the rootcause of that inequality. It is then that the reproach becomes a claim for justice.Ending the inequality between rich and poor is a different challenge thanobtaining for the poor some relief from their suffering. It is a struggle to makea just society and not just a struggle to obtain some kind of benefit frominjustice, or some reduction of the curse.The social issue revolves around the challenge of creating a good society, thatis, a fair one. And a fair society is an egalitarian society, one in which no onehas privileges over the rest. That is why the most genuine struggle of thedispossessed begins in rebellion against a disease but advances towards theradical transformation of current conditions with a view to a society withoutprivileges.The labor movement is born from the rebellion of workers against poor living andworking conditions. But within this conflict a thought takes shape that goesbeyond the particularity of the immediate claims and acquires a transcendentmeaning. In the context of the struggle for the interests of the working class,it is noted that the most important of these interests is to abolish theconditions of inequality. Otherwise, what has been gained in a thousand days ofstruggle is lost in a plant closure or in a magic pass by the economists.If, on the other hand, the workers' struggle remained in the circumstantialdemand for working hours and wages, it would work in favor of a system that usesthe collective effort of the working class to finance the privilege of theproperty-owning class. I would put a certain limit on dispossession, but thatlimit is none other than the one in which the plundering machinery still works.So there is a first argument for the workers' struggle that is economic, in thesense that it seeks to modify the cost-benefit balance of production andconsumption relations, and a second argument that is political, in the sense thatit seeks modify the way in which society is organized and, within it, economicproduction.This duality was present in the labor movement from its beginnings. Usually thosewho speak of politics speak, strictly speaking, of representation; They speak ofputting the workers' organization at the service of a transcendent cause led byleadership cliques that act in their name. But we will see that there were alwaysthose who spoke of politics in a broader sense when necessary, despite defendingpositions radically opposed to the "politicians" of workerism.The workers' organization, when led by any political organization, ends up beinga tool used by know-it-alls and profiteers. And even when this leadership iscarried out by honest militants, committed to the workers' cause, the order ofpriorities is inverted and the local decisions of the workers are postponed,usually oriented towards immediate struggles of an economic nature, by virtue ofa political centrality taken in other part. If what is sought is something of theorder of the emancipation of work, failure is guaranteed. That emancipationbegins with the abolition of the subordination that puts us workers below thedecisions of others. Our emancipation, it is said, will be the work of ourselves.Political groups and parties have always wanted to control the activism of thelabor movement according to their own aspirations. Some will say that for thebetter, others that for the worse. They all accuse each other of taking personalor political advantage and of always having ulterior motives. And it is thatthere always were and continue to be ulterior motives in those who intend to leadthe workers in one direction or another.Beyond the comfort of being governed, nobody really likes being told where to goand what to do, and, mainly, nobody likes discovering themselves as a pawn insomeone else's chess game and seeing that their motives and its causes have beenassigned to strategies that are outside the decision itself. But, even beyondlikes and dislikes, equality disappears the moment some are led, directed,governed by others. And this is what makes political leadership unfair.Unfortunately, this issue is transversal to the different political tendenciesthat were injected into the labor movement through the orientation of the unionorganizations. Anarchism also stumbles over that accursed stone when itunnecessarily separates the identity of anarchism from the union organization.This has its reason for being and also has its history, and it is in view of thishistory that we should be able to rethink the matter without fear of revivingghosts or resuming apparently settled discussions. "Why hide certain truths, nowthat they are in the realm of history and can be a lesson for the present and thefuture?"[3], said Malatesta.Errico Malatesta was one of the most transcendent personalities of anarchism on aglobal level. He was part of the Italian section of the First International[4],the parent organization of the labor movement and proletarian internationalism.In an article from 1914 he made a self-criticism regarding the way in which therelationship between anarchists and workers in that organization had taken place,and reached a conclusion. In relation to the ideological definitions of theinternational he said:«The spontaneous impulse of the working masses had little or nothing to do withit, and it was, on the contrary, a small group of thinkers and fighters whoproposed, discussed, accepted certain solutions to the social problem, and thenpropagated them and made them accepted by the mass of internationalists. Andwhat, more than anything, caused the death of the International was that theinitiating and leading minority neglected the masses too much and did not knowhow to separate the functions of the party from those of the workers' movement ."[5]The diagnosis is as shocking as its conclusion. The separation of that " smallgroup of thinkers" from the " working mass" , separation that had caused the "death of the international" , perhaps had not been, in Malatesta's reflection,enough. This experience served Malatesta to conclude later that the trade unionstrategy of anarchism was to intervene politically in class organizations, thatis, that they did not have any political definition in themselves. In a 1925article, the Spanish translation of which was published in the anarchistnewspaper La Protesta, he said the following:«Syndicalism (I am referring to «practical unionism» and not to «theoreticalunionism», of which each one has a different conception) is reformist by its verynature.[...]Any fusion or confusion between the anarchist and revolutionarymovement and the syndicalist movement results in rendering the union impotent forits specific purpose, or in attenuating, falsifying and annihilating the spiritof anarchism."[6]This perspective of the relationship between trade unionism and anarchism wasopposed by Emilio López Arango, a baker and director of the newspaper La Protestaat the time. Two weeks later, Arango writes:«May Malatesta, and with him all the defenders of political anarchism -of thespecific organizations, outside the labor movement and in opposition to theelectoral parties- that the acceptance of the anarchist label in the unionssupposes the flagging in an exclusivist tendency and that for being such itrejects those who previously do not abide by its program. But that imposition,which on the other hand is manifested in all spheres of human activity, despiteour libertarian preaching, does not exercise violent functions in the labormovement. We do not force the workers of a trade or an industry, due to the factthat they have identical interests as wage earners, to join our organizations. Weprefer to dispense with the class bond in order to unite the workers according totheir ideas.[7]If Malatesta's line splits the union from its political leadership, reserved foran enlightened and leading minority, Arango's opposition integrates the unioninto anarchist political groups.These two positions express very clearly the main difficulty that arises when itcomes to conceiving a labor movement that has the power to resist the advances ofcapitalist plunder and, at the same time, move towards a radical, revolutionary,that is, emancipatory transformation. .What is clear is that there are current problems that we did not invent and that,on many occasions, there are notes of the current situation that speak of thesuccess or failure of previous attempts to address the same issues. Butsimplifying the complexity of the story would be a serious mistake. That is whywhat matters in these references is not to establish who was right but to bringfrom common experience two perspectives that tried to address issues thatcontinue to be important.Currently the labor movement is practically decimated. Union activity iscompletely subordinated to the political interests of the leading sectors. Thetutelary function of the State seems to be out of the question and there ispractically no historical continuity with those who have given the labor movementits true social thickness. In this context, it is urgent to consolidate the ideason which a reconstruction of workers' organizations should be projected with aview to overcoming such a situation.What we find in the controversy between Arango and Malatesta is a vision of ananarchism that emerges from a social sector that is differentiated from the labormovement and that seeks strategies to insert itself into it. Malatesta proposes,broadly speaking, the tactic that Bakunin himself deployed in the FirstInternational, which consists of creating specifically anarchist organizationsthat intervene within class organizations, ideologically neutral, in the same waythat they would be activated in any other countryside. Arango opposes thecreation of ideologically defined workers' organizations, "labeled" asanarchists, and that give the ideological fight within the movement by creatingtheir own unions. Ultimately, this means creating specifically anarchist workers'organizations.The dilemma is more complex than it might seem. If an organization of an economictype that brings together workers renounces any political character, it loses theability to eliminate the root causes of the conditions for which it fights. Butif it defines its political specificity above the economic condition, itsubordinates the interests of the workers to the political interests of theavant-garde leaders. And that, from the perspective of the labor movement, isputting the cart before the horse.Raised in this way, the organizations of the labor movement seem to be tornbetween being subordinated to a political organization that controls them, oropenly becoming one of them.In the history of FORA these tensions were extremely important. From thebeginning, the disputes between socialists and anarchists challenged activism andexpressed themselves in different and antagonistic strategies to direct theworkers' struggle. This culminated in the V * congress when a revolutionarypurpose was determined and the propaganda of anarchic communism was recommendedwithin it. In fact, these elements are the expression of an identification of theorganization with anarchism, but with the particularity of not defining itself asa specific organization.Arango's debate with Malatesta takes place 20 years after that congress, within athriving organization that discussed the unification of the labor movement undera single class organization. Two years later, in 1927, in an internationalcontest celebrating the 30th anniversary of the founding of the anarchistnewspaper La Protesta, Arango published an article, Doctrine and tactics[8], fromwhich I allow myself to extract the following paragraphs, which are quitesignificant:"There is nothing more opposed to the reality of the revolutionary workers'movement than the unitary theory. If the concept of worker unity expresses anamalgamation of men linked by needs and by a precarious defensive instinct, thepossibility of this fact would be in the dependence of each individual on acommon interest prevailing over particular passions and egoisms.[...]For State Socialism, this concept imports a confirmation of historicalmaterialism. If the individual is the result of the social environment in whichhe lives, and his ideas and his will do not act as determinants of humanprogress, it is clear that it is admitted that economic contingencies are thosethat act on the faculties of the movement of man, those that they would always beunconscious, produced by unknown causes...We are not convinced by this materialistic metaphysics. What value does thispurely instinctive, biological impulse have for the progress of the world, whichwould be the only determinant of the workers' organization? The man fights forbread. For the satisfaction of his needs; but in that fight there is almostalways an altruistic impulse: the desire to ensure bread for all men. I haveexplained the motive for the rebellion that goes beyond urgent needs and classdivisions.Consequently, we find that the policy of workers' unity -essence of classism-conceals purposes of predominance and subordination of the labor movement to theauthority of the political bosses who act in the sphere of the union.[...]What do the defenders of class unity want, then? Only one thing: direct thelabor movement from within or from without."And a little higher up, it said:«We do not conceive that anarchism that wants to be historical and scientific andthat only differs from Marxist theories by its opposition to the State in what itrepresents as a political entity. The theory of apolitical trade unionism doesnot express clearly enough the objectives of a social revolution. This means thatit is possible to fight the historical State, oppose the reformist propaganda ofthe Social Democrats, deny the effectiveness of the laws and even bringdevastating criticism to Parliament, without this subversive action necessarilyimplying an in-depth attack on the capitalist system. If politically we deny theefficacy of Marxist tactics, but in the economic field we agree with thosetactics, that is, -we accept from Marxism the so-called historical science: theinevitability of the development of capitalism in a unilateral sense-how can webuild a revolutionary movement capable of freeing itself from the vicious circlein which all the workers' parties currently revolve? And if the proletariat isonly the result of a social process that takes place without itsintervention[...],How can the anarchists break the umbilical cord that ties theworking class to the womb of the bourgeoisie?»[9]In these fragments Arango exposes the importance of a philosophical divergencefrom which political and economic consequences are deduced that organize thebackground of the discussion. Arango is neither naive nor innocent: he confrontsthe authoritarian currents within the labor movement, and he does so by pointingout its philosophical background because he warns that it is the core of meaningfrom which it is possible to identify that authoritarianism in its differentexpressions, and not only in its openly Marxist version.In this way we could suppose that Malatesta would agree. None defended thehistorical materialism with which economic conditions were supposed to besufficient by themselves to give rise to social revolution. In 1914 Malatesta said:"We want, through conscious action, to give the labor movement the direction thatseems best to us, against those who believe in the miracles of automatism and inthe innate virtues of the working masses."[10]The rebellion is not explained by the suffering, but a rebellious subjectivity isnecessary that is not immediately deduced from the oppressed condition. There issomething in the order of the will that does not explain itself as materiallydetermined, but it is it, ultimately, that determines revolutionary action. InMalatesta's own words[11]:«The purpose of scientific research is to study nature,[...]that is, theconditions in which the fact necessarily occurs.[...]Chance, discretion, caprice,are concepts foreign to science, which investigates what is fatal, what cannot beotherwise, what is necessary.Does this need[...]cover everything that happens in the Universe, includingpsychic and social events?The mechanists say yes[...]Our life and that of human societies would be totallypredestined and predictable[...]and our will would be a simple illusion like thatof the stone that Spinoza speaks of, which when falling would be aware of itsfall and believe that she falls because she wants to fall.Once this is admitted[...]it becomes absurd to want to regulate one's ownlife,[...]to reform the social organization in one way or another.[...]For men to have faith, or at least hope of being able to do a useful task, it isnecessary to admit a creative force, a first cause, or first causes, independentof the physical world of mechanical laws, and this force is what we call Will."Synthesizing:«What I maintain is that the existence of a will capable of producing neweffects, independent of the mechanical laws of nature, is a necessarypresupposition for whoever sustains the possibility of reforming society»It is clear that both thinkers coincide in strongly questioning the deterministthesis that makes the ideological tendencies of the workers in the configurationof a class consciousness deduce from the material evolution of the productivesystem.. The working class does not have homogeneous, historically determinedinterests, but is divided by ideological tendencies in the same way as any othersocial group. It is not that they do not have common interests, but rather thatthese are not enough to deduce a conception of justice in the social order. Thewill, on the other hand, forged in ideas and in a moral condition, isindeterminate and this explains the need for an ideological dispute within thelabor movement. This is the true engine of human action. What Malatesta andArango discuss is what is the tactic with which they hope to multiply therevolutionary idea in the "working mass".Anarchism is considered, both by Arango and by Malatesta as well as by allanarchist propagandists, in general terms, as a kind of moral elevation whoseintegrity and purity must be defended from worldly deviations. But if theaspiration of anarchism were properly the moral elevation of humanity, the pathcould never be revolutionary, but exclusively propagandistic in the way of thepreachers, or imperative in the way of the inquisitor.The history of humanity is full of tensions between pure ideas and deviations,and the purity of ideas, even when they have been defended with some kind oforthodox exaggeration, has always served as a tension so that the pragmatisms ofconservation do not end up turning all the struggles in complacent resignations.Changing the world is not a matter of lukewarmness, and ideological radicalismoften requires a certain conceptual rigidity. But, at the same time, the idea ofan ideological transcendence that justifies the separation of leaders and thoseled by virtue of a kind of rational, moral or religious enlightenment, alwaysends in the repetition of inequality whose injustice has historically beendenounced and combated by anarchism.The dilemma of finding the correct way to link the political principles ofanarchism with the workers' organization is a false dilemma because emancipation,which is consubstantial with anarchism, can never be the product ofindoctrination or teaching. Anarchism, like any other ideology, is a culturalobject ready for whoever wants to take it. We workers do not need to beinstructed by an " initiating and leading minority ", but to appropriate what hasbeen accumulated and produce.What we call emancipation is the process by which whoever was subordinated to theoppressive conditions of political or economic control decides to take theinitiative and break down those bonds of subordination. There are no recipes orstereotypes. There is no standard for rebellion. That is possibly the mainobstacle. Trained in the doctrine of employment, mechanized by industry or tamedby the labor market, we workers tend to distrust our own inventiveness. We arerather accustomed to following the traces of the path, and we have more pridethan initiative. Breaking this inertia is perhaps the greatest challenge of theworkers' struggle.The ideas for emancipation can only be the ideas of the emancipated. Each workingsociety, each group and each union must become an ideological factory thatconscientiously aims at the emancipation of the working class on the straightpath that goes from the vindication of its current material interests to theabolition of the causes that would make them eternal. . The ideas of anarchismare what our comrades have bequeathed to us as a locker from which to take theprecise tools for the necessary actions. What is missing must be invented.These ideas are not reduced to the finalist imaginary of the social revolution.The contribution of anarchism to the labor movement is much more rooted in thesharing of archaic principles such as direct action, the assembly, the rotationof positions, the abolition of privileges and personalities, the decentralizationof decision-making and solidarity between colleagues. All these elements, eachone by itself, are the product of common experience since ancient times andthroughout the ages. But the articulation of all of them in a consistent body ofideas, solidly built from formal principles that articulate them, is what makesanarchism an ideology capable of providing theoretical and conceptual tools toworker activism.The other path, that of the more or less centralized contribution of ideas foractivism, is a path that has not had the expected results. Whether from affinitygroups that keep the fire and replicate it in the workers' organizations, or fromworkers' organizations made up of anarchist workers, the separation between thematerial composition of the organizations of the working class and theirideological conformation is guaranteed. , and that is what we should avoid.Although Arango's model is more our own, and not only by tradition, it is truethat, seen from the 21st century, in retrospect but also in prospective, it showsthe limit that a doctrinal vision of anarchism quickly reaches. The labormovement must not be attached to the anarchist doctrine, but rather anarchismserve as an ideological tributary for the labor movement.Currently we are not debating against the unitary tendency of the labor movementor against the centralist scheme of industrialism, but against the conciliationof classes assumed as a natural fact and against the political manipulation ofthe workers' organizations. The main enemy of the labor movement is its ownresignation before the capitalist world and the lack of initiative for thecreation of a common project, which is expressed in its tendency to subordinateitself to the cliques that "know what to do". And this double resignation isembodied in vertical organizations that are directed by accomplices of thepolitical and economic control of the workers. The currently existing corporateunionism is a government body, one more institution of the State.Syndicalism, however, is the natural organization of the labor movement in acapitalist system, to the extent that it expresses the confluence of workers insolidarity and in the common project to face the injustices of the economicsystem. Anarchism is an indispensable tributary for syndicalism both for itscontributions to the practices and institutional forms of unions and workers'societies, as well as for the identification of a social purpose that implies theprofound modification of the causes of injustice. If the workers' organizationintends to truly resolve the injustices of capitalism, it cannot do without arevolutionary goal and organic mechanisms consistent with it.That is why the ideological character of the labor movement cannot be conceivedin the image and likeness of a laboratory anarchism, investigated by vanguardscapable of indoctrinating the workers, but must be conceived as the result ofideological processes that actively take place in the organizations themselves.Perhaps there is no need to "trust the force of things", but it is necessary toaccept a certain distance that the materiality of concrete transformations mayhave with respect to an ideal that, by dint of purification and perfectionism,ends up being imaginary, utopian. And the problem of the utopian, in this sense,is that it becomes identitarian because it is relative to the person who makes upthe image, it loses universality, and in the moral desire to be perfectlyfaithful to the doctrine, it becomes authoritarian.«The theme of the relationship between the labor movement and the progressiveparties is old and endless» Says Malatesta. Arango, for his part, states: "Thesubject lends itself to many other considerations... But we will leave them for abetter occasion, since this article is already too long."[1]Errico Malatesta, Where is the labor movement headed - Published in LE RÉUEILCOMMUNISTE-ANARCHISTE - N° 379 Genève, March 7, 1914. Direct translation from theFrench from the fascimil obtained from https://archivesautonomies.org/IMG/pdf/anarchismes/avant-1914/lereveil/1914/lra_1914_03_07.pdf[2]Emilio López Arango, Doctrine and Tactics , Ediciones FORA brochure. Takenfrom the weekly La Protesta of July 13, 1925.[3]Malatesta, Where the labor movement is headed .[4]The first International was the parent organization of the modern labormovement. It lasted a decade, founded in 1864 and formally dissolved in 1876.Although it was a European organization, due to its internationalist nature andthe magnitude of its influence, its importance ended up being global and it isstill in force.[5]Malatesta, Where the labor movement is headed . The highlight is mine.[6]Errico Malatesta, Syndicalism and Anarchism , La protest, weekly issue of June29, 1925[7]Emilio López Arango, Sindicalismo y Anarquismo, La protest, weekly issue ofJuly 13, 1925[8]Emilio López Arango, Doctrina y Táctica , International Contest of LaProtesta, Buenos Aires 1927. The article was republished in a brochure ofEdiciones FORA with the same title, around the year 2009.[9]Emphasis mine.[10]Malatesta, Where is the labor movement headed?[11]Errico Malatesta, Science and Anarchy - Pensiero e Volontà, February 19,1926, quoted in Vernon Richards, Malatesta: revolutionary thought and action. -1st ed. Buenos Aires: Tupac Editions, 2007, p. 47https://organizacion-obrera.fora.com.ar/2022/11/07/anarquismo-en-el-movimiento-obrero/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten