The Workers Themselves
Continuing with the installments from the Anarchist Current, the Afterword to Volume Three of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas in which I survey the origins and evolution of anarchist ideas, in the excerpts below I briefly describe the split in the First International between the authoritarians who supported centralized political parties and revolutionary dictatorship, and the anti-authoritarians, the majority of whom were anarchists.
The Split in the First International
Following the suppression of the Commune, the conflict in the International between the anti-authoritarians and the supporters of top down political organization, such as Marx and his followers, came to a head. In response to Marx’s attempt to consolidate power in the International’s General Council, and to make the conquest of political power by the working class a mandatory policy of the International, the Swiss Jura Federation denounced the fictitious unity the Council sought to create through “centralization and dictatorship,” arguing that the “International, as the embryo of the human society of the future, is required in the here and now to faithfully mirror our principles of freedom and federation” (Volume One, Selection 26).
After Bakunin and Guillaume were expelled, largely at Marx’s instigation, from the International on trumped up charges at the 1872 Hague Congress, the anti-authoritarian sections of the International held their own congress at St. Imier in Switzerland. The Congress declared “the destruction of all political power,” rather than its conquest, as “the first duty of the proletariat,” whose “aspirations… can have no purpose other than the establishment of an absolutely free economic organization and federation, founded upon the labour and equality of all” (Volume One, Selection 27).
The St. Imier Congress extolled the benefits of militant trade union organization, for “it integrates the proletariat into a community of interests, trains it in collective living and prepares it for the supreme struggle.” The Congress embraced strike action “as a precious weapon in the struggle,” because it exposes “the antagonism between labour and capital” and prepares “the proletariat for the great and final revolutionary contest” (Volume One, Selection 27). Whether the final revolutionary contest would be an insurrection, a general strike, or a combination of the two remained open to debate. At the time, many anarchists favoured insurrection, particularly those associated with the Italian Federation, which attempted insurrections in Bologna in 1874 and Benevento in 1877.
The proto-syndicalist elements in the anti-authoritarian wing of the International, exemplified by Guillaume, emphasized the need for organized working class resistance to the State and capital. This approach was particularly prominent in Spain and various parts of Latin America, where anarchists were involved in creating some of the first trade unions and workers’ federations.
In Spain this doctrine became known as anarchist “collectivism,” which the Spanish veteran of the First International, José Llunas Pujols (1850-1905), defined as “a society organized on the basis of collective ownership, economic federation and the complete emancipation of the human being” (Volume One, Selection 36). The “unit of organization would… be the trades section in each locality,” with administrative tasks performed by delegates who would be replaced if they failed to adhere to the mandates given to them by their respective sections (Volume One, Selection 36). This form of working class direct democracy, similar to the “Worker Democracy” advocated by Proudhon in On the Political Capacity of the Working Classes (Volume One, Selection 18), was later taken up by the anarcho-syndicalists (Volume One, Chapter 12).
Following the defeat of the Paris Commune, the International was outlawed in much of Europe, making it extremely difficult for anarchists to maintain or create revolutionary working class organizations. Although the anti-authoritarian International outlasted the Marxist wing by several years, it eventually split between the anarchist communists, who favoured insurrectionary methods, the proto-syndicalists who favoured federations of revolutionary unions, and more moderate federalists who eventually embraced state socialism, such as César de Paepe from Belgium.
Robert Graham
Robert Graham
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