We reproduce the article from Tridni Valka from their blog CLASS WAR see
link at the end ---- We publish here a text from the German-speakinggroup AST (Anti-political Social-revolutionary Tendency) that we
translated into English and French. Our overall assessment is that we
appreciate the militant efforts of these comrades, especially when it
comes to revolutionary defeatist action, i.e. the struggle against
capitalist war and peace. ---- There are, however, unresolved points of
disagreement in their contributions, particularly on the all-too-famous
"question of the party" and its corollary "the transition period", the
question of the State in general and the capitalist State in particular,
and not to mention the tricky issue of the very essence of democracy.
For communists, the latter can only be grasped as the negation in action
of class antagonism (and its revolutionary overcoming) as well as their
merging into a national (re)conciliatory entity called "the people" -
whether "sovereign" and voting, or under the yoke of a "dictator" or a
one-party system, is of little importance. It's clear that the dividing
line is not between "democracy" and "dictatorship", but between
revolution and counter-revolution, between the abolition of capitalist
social relations and their consolidation, even if it means painting them
red, or even red and black. Fascist or anti-fascist, democracy is always
the dictatorship of capital.
In the present text, the AST comrades elaborate in abundance their
critique of "the party", which they too quickly equate with the Leninist
party, the Bolshevik party... When criticizing what they call "Party
Marxism" (Parteimarxismus), what we see as to be particularly targeted
are in fact "the builders of parties and internationals", the "bearers
of consciousness for the class", this "socialist consciousness[that]is
something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without
and not something that arose within it spontaneously" (Kautsky quoted by
Lenin in "What is to be done?").
But more generally, and beyond the terms and expressions used, we can
see here a first disagreement with the comrades of AST about the
organization of the struggle of the proletariat, which emerges
spontaneously from the fertile soil of capitalist social relations,
which necessarily asserts itself as a force, as a full energy, and which
must bring down any materialization of the social dictatorship of the
value, commodity, money, i.e. of Capital and its State. This social
force, this destructive energy of "the existing" which destroys our
humanity, it's the proletariat which gets organized as a class (against
all classes and for their definitive abolition!), which gets organized
as a party (against all parties and for their as well definitive
abolition!), which gets organized as a party that is not a party "in the
traditional sense of the term" (as the comrades of the KAPD already
affirmed over a century ago), but that is in practice an anti-class, an
anti-party!!!!
The proletarian revolution has nothing in common with the political
"revolutions" of the bourgeoisie. So, the organization of the
proletariat as a party has nothing in common with bourgeois political
parties and especially not with the Leninist conception of the party.
What we refer to is the distinction between the party of Order against
the proletarian class as the party of Anarchy, of socialism, of
communism. (Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852)
The proletariat organized as a party does not aspire to democratically
conquer power but, on the contrary, arises from the imperious necessity
to liquidate this power, this democracy and everything which separates
the proletariat from its humanity, from its Gemeinwesen.
There was a time, in the 19th century and even at the beginning of the
20th, when the formula of the proletariat organizing itself as a class,
and therefore as a party, was very well assimilated into the
international discussion. It wasn't a problem for any sincere militant
of our class, even among those who claimed the Black Flag of Anarchy.
Among the most militant of them, Malatesta, for example, openly referred
to the "anarchist party": "By anarchist party we mean the ensemble of
those who are out to help make anarchy a reality and who therefore need
to set themselves a target to achieve and a path to follow". Or in
another way thirty years later he was persisting and signing: "We
anarchists can all say that we are of the same party, if by the word
'party' we mean all who are on the same side, that is, who share the
same general aspirations and who, in one way or another, struggle for
the same ends against common adversaries and enemies."
Class and party are not two different historic entities which should be
separately defined only to form a relationship later. On the contrary,
they are the distinct expressions of one and the same historic being:
Communism. The party is the communist movement constituted as an
international force, the organization of the revolutionary class which
will bring about communism, arising spontaneously and developing on the
basis of a community of interests and perspectives, a real community of
proletarian struggle.
This tendency towards the worldwide organization of the proletariat,
towards its programmatical affirmation and its organic centralization
confronts all the forces and ideologies of the counter-revolution.
Or in other words, we are partisans of the revolutionary
self-organization of the proletariat, that is, of the "historical party"
of the world communist revolution, which springs up spontaneously from
the soil of bourgeois society and has nothing to do with self-proclaimed
vanguardism. The self-organization of the proletariat, class
independence, and direct action are inseparable and mean struggling
without intermediaries or representatives; that is, struggling outside
and against unions, parties, elections, parliaments, bourgeois legality,
etc.
Considering that, when the proletariat rises up and shakes the
capitalist order, the right and left wings of Capital unite into one
single party against it, that is, "the party of democracy"; in return,
the "historical party" of the revolutionary proletariat is a party
against democracy, that is, against the social dictatorship of Capital
and its State over the proletariat.
The "historical party" is not a formal party in the "traditional" sense,
or a State like the Leninist parties wrongly called "communist". But it
is a party of action which, although it needs to structure itself in
order to organize revolutionary tasks, goes far beyond formal aspects.
It is the proletariat itself that organically organizes and acts as a
revolutionary class. It is the real movement that terminates and
overcomes the present state of things. It is the party of communism and
anarchy against the party of democracy. It is the revolutionary
self-organization of the proletariat in action.
A second disagreement also appears clearly in the point 2 "For the
revolutionary destruction of all States". The proletariat in struggle
confronts all the organized forms of the capitalist State, which imposes
and realizes the social dictatorship of the value valorizing itself
through wage labor, exchange, world market, money... But against this
reality, our class must organize, structure and impose its world
dictatorship of human needs against Capital and revolutionary terror
against bourgeois forces, and this process will not be achieved by
simply erasing words and expressions that might seem awkward. This is
somewhat clumsily expressed in the AST text: "In the world revolution
there will therefore be classless and stateless communities as well as
capitalist States". But they fail to see how they confront each other in
a life-and-death struggle...
The proletarian dictatorship means abolishment of existing social
relations: abolition of wage labor, abolition of useless professions and
productions, elimination of exchange relations from all aspects of our
lives, abolition of economy and production for profit and subordination
of all productive forces to human needs and needs of the world
revolution, disappearance of the difference between work and leisure,
city and countryside and all other separations, violent destruction of
the State and its replacing with organs of proletarian revolutionary
self-organization, all of that which the triumph of the revolution turns
into a global human community. Through this historical revolutionary
process, the proletariat (as last existing class) abolishes itself and
thus the whole class society and fully develops worldwide human community.
The dictatorship of the proletariat thus means the violent abolition of
wage labor, abolition of the capitalist mode of production and all the
social relations it reproduces. It is necessarily violent, repressive
and despotic as well as subversive process that uproots the very social
fabric of capitalist reality. It directly and immediately imposes the
satisfaction of our human needs, which we are dispossessed from under
capitalism by our very role as a class, whose labor power is exploited
and whose products of labor are alienated from us.
There will be a violent insurrection against the State, in which the
proletariat will seize the means of production and the infrastructures
of communication and distribution, and violently attack and overthrow
the centers of State power. Then the proletariat will expropriate
factories and land to produce for the direct satisfaction of its needs,
rather than for the profit of capitalists. Proletarians in uniform will
turn their weapons against their own generals, stop fighting the
capitalists' wars, loot weapons depots and share them with the rest of
the proletariat, and together, they will release prisoners and storm the
centers of power. The capitalist State will be attacked from all sides
and actively repressed and subverted by our class violence. Not only the
government and the forces of repression, but also the State as a
totality, as a system of capitalist social relations - i.e. trade
unions, citizenship, faith, family, education, etc. - will be absorbed
into the maelstrom of the revolutionary abolition of the existing. This
process, which we call the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the
transition period between capitalism and fully-achieved communism, is by
no means embodied in "apparatuses of violence separate from the
society", as the AST text assumes, but rather as a dialectical unity
between the struggling proletarian class and its most far-sighted
leading elements, whose motricity, if not a guarantee of the
revolution's success, at least pushes it to its ultimate consequences.
Let's be clear, this can only be achieved by extending the revolution
worldwide, and all human activity must be subordinated to this goal.
There's no such thing as "socialism in one country" (or group of
countries), as the Bolsheviks/Leninists of all kinds claim (including
even the libertarians who drool with admiration over the "Rojava
Revolution", the Zapatista "Free Communes" or "Free Palestine", ad
nauseam) - on the contrary, it's an absolutely counter-revolutionary
position! The concept of "socialism in one country" was nothing but a
tool to enable and justify the strengthening of capital's dictatorship
over the proletariat in Russia at the hands of the Bolshevik party and
its policies.
In order to realize the organized activity of the society up to the
achievement of communism, the proletarian revolution must violently
destroy all the institutions and apparatuses of the counter-revolution
which seek to maintain the dictatorship of value against human needs. We
must insist on this point - it means the active suppression of wage
labor, of exchange (trade), of any form of regional or local autonomy
that could become the basis of future nationalist reaction, of freedom
of expression and association for counter-revolutionary forces...
But to come back to the AST's text, may the few and other points of
disagreement we emphasized not spoil the pleasure of sharing
internationally and submitting for collective criticism this
contribution by comrades who, with strengths and weaknesses (as any
revolutionary internationalist militant structure developing under the
black sun of capital), are trying to outline and affirm the program of
communism and the direct action of the proletariat in struggle. And in
this sense, the development/consolidation of our world proletarian
community of struggle, to which the present text contributes, beyond the
division into ideological families, seems to us more than necessary, and
indeed inescapable!
Have a good reading!
CW.
Link to the AST article:
https://www.autistici.org/tridnivalka/ast-for-the-creation-of-a-global-network-of-revolutionary-anarchists-and-anti-leninist-communists/
https://anarcomuk.uk/2025/06/03/for-the-creation-of-a-global-network-of-revolutionary-anarchists-and-anti-leninist-communists/
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