The Platform was born from a simple question: why did libertarian revolutionaries fail where the Bolsheviks triumphed? Drawing lessons from the Russian Revolution and the Makhnovist experience, the group Delo Truda rejected convenient explanations and challenged the weaknesses of anarchism itself. Their ambition was to rebuild the libertarian project on revolutionary, organized, and resolutely communist foundations.
The Platform emerged from the debates of the community of Slavic anarchists exiled in Paris. A number of them took part in the events of the 1917 Revolution across Russia, and many even participated in the movement that held the most hope for libertarians: the Ukrainian Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army and the civilian political institutions it brought with it (a broad movement that was called "Makhnovshchina," literally "Makhno's gang," by its opponents). This community was thus imbued with a profoundly revolutionary spirit and was equally deeply disappointed by the turn the great social revolution, which the Bolshevik bureaucracy had managed to seize, was taking. It was a network of anarchists reflecting on their experiences and failures.The State of Anarchism in Russia
While some anarchists, like Voline, attributed their failure to a stroke of bad luck (not enough activists) and Bolshevik repression, this was not the opinion of the "Platformers" (as their opponents would call them). Blaming their failure on the success of their rivals made no sense. Where Lenin's followers had succeeded, Makhno's had failed; the question of why had to be asked. These Russian anarchists diagnosed an "internal impotence"[1]within the movement. This impotence, according to them, lay in the very nature of the movement at that time: a vague and politically indecisive entity. In Russian anarchism, as elsewhere, genuine anarcho-communists, who understood the challenges of organizing the working classes and their political leadership, coexisted with individualists still clinging to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois liberal illusions (humanist and poetic). More than a polemical text, the Platform is the product of a revolutionary experience. It is the fruit of its authors' encounter with the reality of a profound world change in Russia.
Ida Mett (1901-1973), a Russian-born physician, translator, and libertarian activist, is an important figure in anarchism in exile. A member of Delo Truda, she was involved throughout her life in anti-Stalinist, trade union, and anti-fascist struggles in France, Belgium, and Spain.
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The Platform was the will to transform anarchism. The aim was to return to the sources of the most solid tradition (the Bakuninist branch) and to transcend it. This required anarchism to return to materialist foundations and to provide it with the means to achieve its ambitions by giving its activists organization and discipline. In response to the Platform, Voline and Sébastien Faure formulated the Anarchist Synthesis, wishing to avoid splitting a movement they still considered capable of remaining united. And if the Synthetists often accused the Platformists of Bolshevik tendencies, it is perhaps because they were not entirely wrong. The Russian Revolution sparked a wave of enthusiasm among libertarians worldwide. It was the embodiment of a revolutionary impulse among the masses seizing power. And the Bolsheviks' concrete success against other revolutionaries had vindicated a certain aspect of Marxist theory. The Platform therefore proposed to appropriate what had survived the fire of the revolution: the need for a general organization, for coordinated action, for a political perspective, for a revolutionary army, etc. All of this could no longer be questioned by consistent revolutionaries.
The form the Makhnovshchina took during those two years of fighting in Ukraine was, moreover, very telling. It was not particularly exceptional in the torrent of 1917. It was merely one part of that great movement of workers' and soldiers' councils, women's councils, and factory councils that flourished wherever the Tsarist knout had reigned. From 1919 to 1921, revolutionary anarchists built a force of resistance against all the excesses of War Communism: they kept alive the very spirit of the Russian Revolution by building a democracy based on councils, where, among other things, peasants still managed the land collectively and soldiers still elected their leaders. This revolutionary, rather than sectarian, spirit would prove foundational.
The Influence on the CNT
It was this same revolutionary spirit that would soon seize a part of Spain. The Iberian Peninsula was, without a doubt, the only place in Europe where Bakuninist anarchism had remained so strongly entrenched. And although the CNT did not claim allegiance to the Platform, it followed a parallel path. Indeed, it too was profoundly shaken by the 1917 Revolution. Even before Franco's coup, the CNT had joined the Red International of Labor Unions, an offshoot of the Communist International (also known as the Third International). Many CNT members embraced this communism, which held so many promises. Some even went so far as to leave the CNT to join the ranks of the communist left (Andrés Nin, for example, who went on to found the POUM[2]). Others tried to synthesize the best aspects of their own tradition with the best of the Marxist tradition. These men and women found themselves en masse in the FAI (Italian Anarchist Federation) and tried to make a revolution in Spain, where the working class seemed sufficiently organized. And where these actions gained some traction, the Spanish revolutionaries called for the collectivization of land and factories, and tried to implement "libertarian communism."
Piotr Archinov (1887-1938) was a Ukrainian locksmith and anarchist activist, a historian of the Makhnovist movement and the principal architect of the Platform, before returning to the USSR where he was ultimately executed during the Stalinist purges.
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Beyond Marxism and Anarchism
In France, several organizations were heavily influenced by these Russian and Spanish experiences. But each time, the old anarchism refused to die. Faced with the profound debates surrounding the text of the Platform, its principal author, Piotr Archinov, was in despair. Discouraged by the constant controversies and the depressed state of the anarchist movement, he eventually returned to Stalinist USSR to work as a proofreader and was executed in 1938 for "attempting to restore anarchism"[3].
Yet, this was not the death of this revolutionary, libertarian communist spirit. This new "libertarian communism" was no longer quite the same as that claimed by figures like Cafiero or Malatesta; it was no longer synonymous with the old "anarcho-communism." The reactions of rejection it provoked within the old anarchist structures attest to this. This new idea, born in the crucible of a century of wars and revolutions, offered a fresh perspective: that of transcending the great schism, of taking stock of anarchism and Marxist communism, and of retaining only the best of both. Neither Lenin nor Kropotkin, libertarian communism charts the course toward the collectivization of land and factories, toward workers' democracy, against any resurgence of old oppressions-in short, a path to communism. In the postwar period, this was precisely what inspired many young activists, such as Daniel Guérin and Georges Fontenis. By founding the Libertarian Communist Federation and seeking to overcome the stagnation of the Anarchist Federation, they tried to breathe new life into this ever-evolving idea.
Wendelin (UCL Alsace)
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[1]Voline and Faure, The Response to the Platform.
[2]The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification. See Pierre Broué, The Spanish Revolution 1931-1939.
[3]Alexandre Skirda, Individual autonomy and collective strength: the anarchists and the organization from Proudhon to the present day, p. 185-186.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?De-la-Plateforme-a-la-CNT-Aux-origines-du-communisme-libertaire
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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