#voline

"In April 1917, I happened to be in New York with Trotsky, in a printworks which worked primarily for various left-wing Russian bodies. At the time, he was in charge of a left marxist daily paper, Novy Mir. As for me, the Federation of Russian Workers’ Unions had entrusted me with the editing of the final editions of its weekly, the anarcho-syndicalist Golos Truda, before its removal to Russia. I spent one night each week at the printworks, on the eve of the newspaper’s coming out. And that is how I came to meet Trotsky on my first night on duty. Naturally, we talked of the revolution. We were both making preparations to quit America shortly in order to move “over yonder.” One time I said to Trotsky: “On balance, I am absolutely sure that you left marxists will end up by taking power in Russia. It is inevitable, for the resuscitated soviets will unfailingly come into conflict with the bourgeois government. The latter will not be able to stamp them out because all of the country’s toilers, workers, peasants, etc., and pretty well all of the army as well, will, of course, wind up siding with the soviets against the bourgeoisie and its government. Now, as soon as the people and the army support the soviets, the latter will be the winners in the struggle begun. And as soon as they win, you left marxists will inevitably be swept into power. For the toilers will assuredly carry through the revolution to its bitter end. As syndicalists and anarchists are too weak in Russia to focus the toilers’ attention quickly upon their ideas, the masses will place their trust in you and you will become ‘the masters of the country.’ Whereupon woe betide us anarchists! It is inevitable that you and we should come into conflict. You will begin to persecute us just as soon as your power has been consolidated. And you will end by having us shot down like partridges...” “—Come, come, comrade,” Trotsky replied. “You people are pig-headed and incorrigible fantasists. Look, as things now stand, what is the difference between us? A little question of methodology, quite secondary. You, like us, are revolutionaries. Like you, we are anarchists, in the final analysis. The only thing is that you want to introduce your anarchism straight away, without transition or preparation. Whereas we marxists believe that one cannot ‘leap’ into the libertarian realm in a single bound. We anticipate a transitional stage during which the ground can be cleared and smoothed for the anarchist so­ciety with the aid of an anti-bourgeois political power: the dictatorship of the proletariat exercised by the proletarian party in power. In short, it is only a difference of ‘degree,' nothing more. Essentially, we are very close to one another. Brothers in arms. Think of it: we will have a common foe to fight. Will it even occur to us to fight one another? And anyway, I have no doubt but that you will quickly be persuaded of the necessity for a provisional socialist proletarian dictatorship. So, I really cannot see any reason for warfare between you and us. We will assuredly march hand in hand. And then, even if we do not see eye to eye, you are overstating things a bit to suggest that we socialists will use brute force against anarchists! Life itself and the views of the masses will be enough to resolve the matter and bring us into agreement. No! Can you really, for a single instant, entertain such a nonsense: left-wing socialists in power turning their guns on the anarchists! Come, come, what do you take us for? Anyway, we are socialists, comrade Voline! So, we are not your enemies...” In December 1919, gravely wounded, I was arrested by the Bolshevik military authorities in the Makhnovist region. Deeming me a militant “of some standing,” the authorities notified Trotsky of my arrest by means of a special telegram asking his view of how I should be handled. His answer arrived snappily and tersely and plainly—also by telegram: “Shoot out of hand.—Trotsky.” I was not shot, thanks solely to a set of particularly felicitous and quite fortuitous circumstances."

As a philosophical and moral conception, nihilism had for bases: on the one hand, materialism, and, on the other hand, individualism, both pushed to the extremes. Force and Matter, the famous work of Büchner (German materialist philosopher, 1824–1899) appeared in that era, was translated into Russian, lithographed clandestinely and distributed, despite the risks, with a very great success, in thousands of copies. That book became the veritable gospel of the young Russian intellectuals from then on. The works of Moleschott, Ch. Darwin and several other foreign naturalists and materialists, exercised and equally great influence. Materialism was accepted as an incontestable, absolute truth. As materialists, the “nihilists” waged a relentless war against religion and against everything that was beyond pure, positive reason; against everything found to be outside material and immediately useful reality; against everything that belonged to the spiritual, sentimental, idealist domain. They despised beauty, the aesthetic, sentimental love, the art of dressing, of pleasing, etc ... In this vein, they went so far as to completely disown art as an expression of idealism. ... But the true basis of “nihilism” was a sort of characteristic individualism. Risen, first, as a normal reaction against all that, especially in Russia, crush free and individual thought, its bearer, this individualism ended by renouncing, in the name of an absolute individual liberty, all the constraints, all the shackles, obligations and traditions imposed on individuals by the family, society, customs, mores, beliefs, etc... Complete emancipation of the individual, man or woman, from all that could attack its independence or the liberty of its thought: such was the fundamental idea of “nihilism.” It defended the sacred right of the individual to complete liberty, and the inviolable privacy of existence.

Time for a new oc~

A revolution which is inspired by state socialism and adopts this form, even “provisionally” and “temporarily,” is lost: it takes a wrong road down an ever steeper slope. … All political power inevitably creates a privileged position for those who exercise it.… Having taken over the Revolution, mastered it, and harnessed it, those in power are obliged to create the bureaucratic and repressive apparatus which is indispensable for any authority that wants to maintain itself, to command, to give orders, in a word: to govern. … All authority seeks to some extent to control social life. Its existence predisposes the masses to passivity, its very presence suffocates any spirit of initiative.… “Communist” power is … a real bludgeon. Swollen with “authority” … it fears every independent action. Any autonomous action is immediately seen as suspect, threatening, … for such authority wants sole control of the tiller. Initiative from any other source is seen as an intrusion upon its domain and an infringement of its prerogatives and, therefore, unacceptable.

In April 1917, the Russian anarchist Voline met Leon Trotsky in a New York print works. Not surprisingly, both were producing revolutionary propaganda. Discussing the Russian situation, Voline told Trotsky that he considered it certain that the Bolsheviks would come to power. He went on to say he was equally certain that the Bolsheviks would persecute the anarchists once their power had been consolidated. Trotsky, taken aback by Voline’s conviction, emphasized that the Marxists and the anarchists were both revolutionary socialists fighting the same battle. While it is true that they had their differences, these differences, according to Trotsky, were secondary, merely methodological differences-principally a disagreement regarding a revolutionary “transitional stage.” Trotsky went on to dismiss Voline’s prediction of persecution against the anarchists as nonsense, assuring him that the Bolsheviks were not enemies of the anarchists. Voline relates that in December 1919, less than three years later, he was arrested by Bolshevik military authorities in the Makhnovist region. Since he was a well-known militant, the authorities notified Trotsky of his arrest and asked how he should be handled. Trotsky’s reply was terse: “Shoot out of hand.-Trotsky.” Luckily, Voline lived to tell his tale.

The key idea of anarchism is simple: no party, or political or ideological group, even if it sincerely desires to do so, will ever succeed in emancipating the working masses by placing itself above or outside them in order to “govern” or “guide” them. True emancipation can only be brought about by the direct action…of those concerned, the workers themselves, through their own class organizations (production syndicates, factory committees, cooperatives, etc.) and not under the banner of any political party or ideological body. Their emancipation must be based on concrete action and “self-administration,” aided but not controlled by revolutionaries working from within the masses and not from above them.

Bolshevik ideology played a key role in the degeneration of the revolution—as can be seen in the structures favoured and how socialism was envisioned. These interacted, for a perspective favouring centralised, top-down organisations creates such structures, and these, in turn, shape the views and actions of those placed into power within these hierarchies. The party’s “mentality was more than just a mentality: after the seizure of power, it almost immediately became a part of the real social situation. . . . If it is true that people’s real social existence determines their consciousness, it is from that moment illusory to expect the Bolshevik Party to act in any other fashion than according to its real social situation.” It acted as every ruling class has because it had become a new master class