Errico Malatesta
About the 'Platform'
In reply to a project of anarchist organisation
Dear Comrade Malatesta,
I have read your response to the project for an 'Organisational Platform of a
General Union of Anarchists', a project published by the group of Russian
anarchists abroad.
My impression is that either you have misunderstood the project for the
'Platform' or your refusal to recognise collective responsibility in
revolutionary action and the directional function that the anarchist forces must
take up, stems from a deep conviction about anarchism that leads you to
disregard that principle of responsibility.
Yet, it is a fundamental principle, which guides each one of us in our way of
understanding the anarchist idea, in our determination that it should penetrate
to the masses, in its spirit of sacrifice. It is thanks to this that a man can
choose the revolutionary way and ignore others. Without it no revolutionary
could have the necessary strength or will or intelligence to bear the spectacle
of social misery, and even less fight against it. It is through the inspiration
of collective responsibility that the revolutionaries of all epochs and all
schools have united their forces; it is upon this that they based their hope
that their partial revolts - revolts which opened the path for the oppressed -
were not in vain, that the exploited would understand their aspirations, would
extract from them the applications suitable for the time and would use them to
find new paths toward their emancipation.
You yourself, dear Malatesta, recognise the individual responsibility of the
anarchist revolutionary. And what is more, you have lent your support to it
throughout your life as a militant. At least that is how I have understood your
writings on anarchism. But you deny the necessity and usefulness of collective
responsibility as regards the tendencies and actions of the anarchist movement
as a whole. Collective responsibility alarms you; so you reject it.
For myself, who has acquired the habit of fully facing up to the realities of
our movement, your denial of collective responsibility strikes me not only as
without basis but dangerous for the social revolution, in which you would do
well to take account of experience when it comes to fighting a decisive battle
against all our enemies at once. Now my experience of the revolutionary battles
of the past leads me to believe that no matter what the order of revolutionary
events may be, one needs to give out serious directives, both ideological and
tactical. This means that only a collective spirit, sound and devoted to
anarchism, could express the requirements of the moment, through a collectively
responsible will. None of us has the right to dodge that element of
responsibility. On the contrary, if it has been until now overlooked among the
ranks of the anarchists, it needs now to become, for us, communist anarchists,
an article of our theoretical and practical programme.
Only the collective spirit of its militants and their collective responsibility
will allow modern anarchism to eliminate from its circles the idea, historically
false, that anarchism cannot be a guide - either ideologically or in practice -
for the mass of workers in a revolutionary period and therefore could not have
overall responsibility.
I will not, in this letter, dwell on the other parts of your article against the
'Platform' project, such as the part where you see 'a church and an authority
without police'. I will express only my surprise to see you use such an argument
in the course of your criticism. I have given much thought to it and cannot
accept your opinion.
No, you are not right. And because I am not in agreement with your confutation,
using arguments that are too facile, I believe I am entitled to ask you:
1. Should anarchism take some responsibility in the struggle of the workers
against their oppressors, capitalism, and its servant the State? If not, can
you say why? If yes, must the anarchists work towards allowing their
movement to exert influence on the same basis as the existing social order?
2. Can anarchism, in the state of disorganisation in which it finds itself
at the moment, exert any influence, ideological and practical, on social
affairs and the struggle of the working class?
3. What are the means that anarchism should adopt outside the revolution and
what are the means of which it can dispose to prove and affirm its
constructive concepts?
4. Does anarchism need its own permanent organisations, closely tied among
themselves by unity of goal and action to attain its ends?
5. What do the anarchists mean by *institutions to be established* with a
view to guaranteeing the free development of society?
6. Can anarchism, in the communist society it conceives, do without social
institutions? If yes, by what means? If no, which should it recognise and
use and with what names bring them into being? Should the anarchists take on
a leading function, therefore one of responsibility, or should they limit
themselves to being irresponsible auxiliaries?
Your reply, dear Malatesta, would be of great importance to me for two reasons.
It would allow me better to understand your way of seeing things as regards the
questions of organising the anarchist forces and the movement in general. And -
let us be frank - your opinion is immediately accepted by most anarchists and
sympathisers without any discussion, as that of an experienced militant who has
remained all his life firmly faithful to his libertarian ideal. It therefore
depends to a certain extent on your attitude whether a full study of the urgent
questions which this epoch poses to our movement will be undertaken, and
therefore whether its development will be slowed down or take a new leap
forward. By remaining in the stagnation of the past and present our movement
will gain nothing. On the contrary, it is vital that in view of the events that
loom before us it should have every chance to carry out its functions.
I set great store by your reply.
1928
with revolutionary greetings
Nestor Makhno
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