Preface: The crux of the matter ---- The debate sparked by the publication of the "Organizing Platform" has so far focused primarily on its various theses or on the proposed organizational draft. In appreciating the Platform, neither most of the negative reviews nor many of the positive ones have ever shed light on its premises: they have never attempted to uncover the factors that led to its emergence or the starting point adopted by its authors. Yet these very factors are of the greatest importance to those seeking to understand the spirit and significance of the Platform. The text recently published by Volin and other anarchists, entitled "Reply to the Platform," purporting to constitute a broad-based critique of the Platform, has failed-despite its best efforts and its claim to read "between the lines"-to elevate the debate beyond the level of a banal dispute between arguments isolated from their context, ineffective in addressing the true heart of the matter. Given that this "Reply" reveals a complete misunderstanding of the Platform's theses, distorting their meaning and contradicting them with sophistries, the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, having acknowledged this alleged rejection, has once again identified a series of points for criticism. At the same time, the Group has highlighted the political and theoretical inadequacies contained in the "Reply." The following comments constitute an examination of the content of the "Reply." They therefore do not constitute a complement or an appendix to the Platform. They are intended simply to clarify some of our theses. Nevertheless, we would like to take this opportunity to highlight some aspects worthy of consideration by comrades who may be interested in the Platform for the Organization of Anarchism. We believe that in this way we can better grasp both the spirit and meaning of the Platform. We often attribute the defeat of the anarchist movement in Russia between 1917 and 1919 to the statist repression of the Bolshevik Party, but this is a grave error. Bolshevik repression hindered the spread of the anarchist movement during the revolution, but it was only an impediment. Instead, the internal ineffectiveness of the anarchist movement itself was one of the main causes of the defeat, an ineffectiveness resulting from the vagueness and indecision that characterized its political positions on the organizational and tactical levels. Russian anarchism was unable to develop any firm, decisive, and practicable proposal capable of addressing the main problems of the social revolution.No proposal aimed at providing answers to the masses who were waging the revolution. The anarchists were in favor of taking over the factories, but they didn't have the slightest, albeit definite, idea about the new production and its structures. The anarchists extolled the communist principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need ", but they never hesitated to apply it in practice. In doing so, they allowed unreliable elements to transform this great principle into a caricature of anarchism. (It is worth remembering how many swindlers used this principle as a tool to grab the resources of the community for their own personal gain during the revolution.) The anarchists discussed a lot about self-managed revolutionary activity by the workers, but they were unable to orient the masses, even approximately, towards the forms that self-management could take: they proved incapable of establishing reciprocal relations between the masses and the ideological core of anarchism. The anarchists incited the masses to throw off the yoke of authority, but they were never able to show them how to consolidate and defend the revolutionary gains. There was an absence of clear and incisive ideas as well as specific policies for action on a whole series of other issues. problems. This is what distanced them from the activity of the masses and condemned them to historical and social impotence. This is where we must look to understand the causes of the anarchists' defeat in the Russian Revolution. We, Russian anarchists, who lived through the harsh trials of the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, have not the slightest doubt about this. The obvious evidence of anarchism's internal ineffectiveness forced us to seek ways to win. We have behind us twenty years of experience, of revolutionary activity, twenty years of efforts within anarchist ranks, efforts that have seen nothing but the defeat of anarchism as an organizing movement: well, all this has convinced us of the need for a new and meaningful anarchist party, an organization founded on a homogeneous theory, policy, and tactics. These are the premises of the "Organizing Platform." If anarchists in other countries, who, despite not having personally experienced the Russian Revolution, have even a limited knowledge of it, If they were to carefully examine the climate within the anarchist movement in their country, they would inevitably realize that even within their own ranks, the same internal ineffectiveness that caused the defeat of the Russian Revolution and that represents a mortal threat to the movement everywhere, especially in times of revolution, is equally prevalent. And then they will understand the significance of the step forward that the "Organizing Platform" represents for anarchism, both in terms of ideas and in terms of organization and revolutionary construction.
* For the full text, please refer to the text " The Organizational Platform of Anarchist Communists - origin, debate and meaning" being published one hundred years after its elaboration by the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad (DIELO TRUDA), Paris 1926.
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