Some Notes and Information on Anarchist Opposition to War
Translations and Summaries by Charlatan Stew
VIII. Manifesto of the International Anarchist Conference, Paris, 15th, 16th, and 17th May, 1948
International Anarchist Bulletin, No. 1, June, 1948
Two blocks of States stand facing each other, and war threatens, The hopes which the peoples founded on technical progress, material abundance and the unity of the world have been ruined.
To-day nobody sees a way out of the uninterrupted succession of crises and wars. No-one proposes any effective means of escaping the so-called historical fatalities.
Bourgeois democracy is bankrupt. Private capitalism has shown its incapacity to resolve its own contradictions.
State capitalism, under, the total form of Bolshevik dictatorships, of misleading “Labour” nationalisations, or of the reactionary demagogies of fascism, has shown itself to be the pitiless degradation of all human values.
Liberalism and totalitarianism chain us to an economy of war, where the whole of society serves the production of means of destruction.
A reconciliation between the two blocks which overwhelm the world would bring no salvation. The basis of agreement envisaged by Stilton on the 17th May is no other than the preparation in common of new slaughters.
None of the problems set by ruin, famine, social chaos, will be resolved by the eventual combination of the Marshall and Molotov plans. Under the pretext of economic and political reconstruction, these plans are instruments of imperialism.
None of the spiritual forces which pretend to lead humanity according to the dictates of States, Churches and Parties, is to- day any longer capable of a useful role. All have floundered in the most brutal fanaticisms.
All the political, trade-union and religious organisations embodied in authority have become merely the machines of slavery. The peoples of Spain, Portugal, Greece, Latin America, groan under the yoke of Fuhrers which the “movement of liberation” conducted in the sense of the recent world war pretended to right against. In the East, Palestine is on fire. China experiences an endless civil war. The Stalinised peoples are submitted to a police terror as bad as that which Hitlerism established. In the West, forces of the same kind seek to impose themselves on the Americanised peoples.
All that our generation has lived through is no other than an accumulation of evils, resulting from the very functioning of authoritarian society; from the crushing of the forces of liberty. And everything leads our thought back to the same fundamental problem: the construction of a society without States. It is the anarchist revolution of the peoples which, alone, can tear humanity away from the infernal cycle In which it has allowed itself to be enclosed.
Anarchy, the total affirmation of the free activity of the masses in organised indiscipline, is alone capable of breaking the power of the castes wich direct the world to its loss.
Anarchy, spontaneous order in the workshop and in the city, is the sole means of rendering to the producers of all wealth and the creators of all values the immense fruitfulness of an unlimited field of experience, the enjoyment of the fruit of their efforts, and the possibility of orienting them always more consciously towards general solidarity.
Anarchy, principle of Organisation without dogmas or frontiers, is the sole road to peace.
The International Anarchist Conference of Paris salutes all fighters for liberty throughout the world, whose eyes turn to-day towards the reconstruction of the Anarchist International in the whole of Europe ravaged by the second world war: in Germany, Austria and Italy.
From all parts of the world, the studies of psychologists and the experience of educationalists put forward integral liberty as the sole way of individual and social progress.
From all parts of the world, there come to us the echoes of struggles of emancipation carried on by isolated individuals, by rank-and-file groups, or by organisations already solid. It is the renaissance of the only movement which has never changed in its affirmations: the international anarchist movement.
After a hundred years of application, the authoritarian conception of socialism has triumphed in the world to the point of having exhausted its possibilities and revealed of what it was capable. And it is to the libertarian conception that the future henceforward belongs. If humanity would live and grow, it will be by and towards Anarchy.
The Paris Conference, bringing, together delegates from every European horizon, has been above all the expression of that certainty, in a simultaneous affirmation of will and brotherhood above all frontiers.
The renewal of our movement rallies the young forces of the workers. It offers them encouraging perspectives ‘of personal formation and social reconstruction, outside all the constraints which overpower them.
To work comrades! We have an ideal to live, chains to break, and a world to gain.
OUR TASK’
The International Anarchist Conference, held in Paris on the 15th, 16th and 17th of May 1948, gave a new proof of the continuity of the Anarchist Internationale, which was founded in Amsterdam in 1907. The Conference invited all Federations, Groups and isolated comrades and the whole anarchist press to make people realize the practical existence of the Internationale.
After examining the general situation–with an eye to the position of the anarchist organisations and groupings in Europe and in the whole world–the Conference has recognised the urgent necessity for an International commission of co-ordination. This commission is expected to prepare, as soon as possible and on the broadest possible basis, an Anarchist World Congress. The Congress will decide about the form of anarchist international relations in the future. ‘
The Conference has worked out an international program and a provisional system of organised relations, namely the International Anarchist Co-ordination Commission (I.A.C.C.).
Besides the preparation of the International Congress, the tasks of the I.A.C.C. are stated as follows:
1. Issue regularly in various languages a bulletin acting as a liaison.
2. Establish a connection between separate federations, groups and militants, in order to realize solidarity in a practical way.
3. Constitute international records and see to the exchange of publications between different countries.
I.A.C.C. starts on task with a bullefln reduced to a mere detached sheet of paper—without any money or technical help, with a staff composed of comrades willing to help.
I.A.C.C counts on all those who approve of its activity, to bring their contributions to information, propaganda, and financial support, in order to be able to fulfill the task it has been trusted with.
The international stamp “Pro-Congresso” is on sale at the price of 10 fr. Write to the following address:
Robert JOULIN
145, quai de Valmy, Paris (10e)
(C.c.p. 55.61.76)
Correspondence and exchange of printed matters. Information. Solidarity. Write to the same address or to John OLDAY, 15 Orsett Ter. London W 2, England.
Let us hear from you and let us know what you need.
We shall send the International Bulletin (under cover, closed or open) to the comrades who will ask for it. We trust every comrade to act according to his possibilities and first and foremost to assure the re-distribution of every issue of the bulletin in every language.
