anarchism, the doctrine of action, Daniel Guerin, 1981 
"Of all social theories, anarchism is the most misunderstood and most disfigured. Daniel Guerin has tried, texts and supporting facts, to restore its true face. Theories of Proudhon, Bakunin and Stirner until the Russian Revolution and contemporary experiences (English revolution of 1936, Yugoslavia, Algeria), he confronts theory and reality, showing the influence alive of libertarian thought. "
The book is for people / those who already know some big names of anarchism (Stirner, Proudhon, Bakunin, Malatesta ...). The author attempts to show the main ideas of anarchism in the first time, before talking about its practical application, anarchism has always attached to the side more practical than theoretical. Hence the numerous success stories of self libertarians around the world (Spain, Russia, Italy, Algeria, Yugoslavia, Ukraine ...). Anarchism is not a utopia unlike what you would have us believe - he has always terrorized the states saw their end in the depths of his eyes open.
p.12:
Before being sent to the guillotine, the terrorist Emile Henry explained:
"Beware to believe that Anarchy is a dogma, doctrine, unassailable, undeniable, revered by his followers to equal the Koran by Muslims. No: the absolute freedom that we claim is constantly developing our ideas, new horizons to students (at the discretion of the brains of different individuals), and rejects outside narrow bounds of any regulation and any codification. We are not "believers". "
p.20: For
anarchy , Proudhon, heard, just the opposite of disorder. In his view, was the government who is out for mischief. Only a society without government could restore the natural order, restore social harmony. To designate the panacea, arguing that language does he provided no other word, he chose to return to the old word anarchy its strict etymological meaning ("Order without power" NDJ. )
p.21:
Anarchy, in fact, is above all synonymous with socialism . The anarchist is, first, a socialist who seeks to abolish the exploitation of man by man. Anarchism is nothing but a branch of Socialist thought. A branch dominated the sake of freedom, the rush to abolish the state. For Adolphe Fischer, one of the martyrs of Chicago, "every anarchist is a socialist, but every socialist is not necessarily an anarchist."
p.22:
anarchism is primarily a visceral revolt. Augustin Hamon, providing, at the end of last century , survey Opinion mid libertarian, concluded that the anarchist is primarily a rebellious individual. He refused to block the company and its wardens. It frees proclaims Max Stirner, all that is sacred. It carries a huge Deconsecration [...] Proudhon rejecting all the "official gent, philosophers, priests, judges, academics, journalists, parliamentarians, etc.. for whom "the people is always the monster that we fight, we muzzle and that we chain, which is led by address, such as rhino and elephant that conquers by famine that bleeds through colonization and war. " Elisha Recluse explains why society seems to these wealthy so good to keep: "Since there are rich and poor, powerful and subjects, masters and servants, Caesars ordering the combat of gladiators who will die , the smart money simply take the side of the rich and masters, to make the courtiers of the Caesars. "
His permanent state of rebellion led the anarchist to feel sympathy for the irregular, off-the-law, to embrace the cause of convict or other reprobate.
p.23: The horror of the State
To the anarchist, of all the prejudices that blind man since the beginning of time, that of the State is the most fatal. Stirner tonne against one who, "for all eternity," "is owned by the state."
Proudhon fulminated against no less than this "phantasmagoria" of our mind that the first duty of a reason is free to return to museums and libraries . And he dismantled the mechanism: "What has kept this mental predisposition rendered invincible fascination for so long is that the government has always presented to the spirits as the body's natural justice, the protector of the weak . "Ridiculing the" authoritarian "( supporters continued - more or less short-term state, as Marx wanted," the proletarian state, or dictatorship of the proletariat "NDJ .) Inveterate" bow to the authority as churchwardens before the Blessed Sacrament, "jeered" all parties without exception "running" constantly looking toward the authority, as to their single pole, "he calls for the day when" the waiver authority will be replaced as the catechism of faith in political authority " .
Kropotkin mocked bourgeois who "consider the people as a conglomeration of savage eating nose once the government no longer works. "Malatesta, ahead of psychoanalysis, reveals the fear of freedom that lives in the subconscious of the" authoritarian. "
What are the eyes of the anarchists, the misdeeds of the state?
Listen Stirner: "We are both the State and me, enemies. "" Every State is a tyranny, be it the tyranny of one or more. "Every State is bound, as we say today, totalitarian" state still has one purpose: to confine, bind, make the individual, subject to the general thing (...). The state seeks, through its censorship, by its surveillance, police, resisting any activity that is free and repression to her duty, because it is imposed (...) by the instinct of preservation. "The state does not allow me to draw my thoughts all their value and to communicate to men that if they are his own, otherwise it closes my mouth. "
Proudhon echoes Stirner:" The government of man by man is slavery. " "Whoever puts his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant. I declare my enemy. "
p.34:
develops this critique of Bakunin communism "authoritarian"
"I hate communism, because it is the negation of freedom and I can not conceive anything without human liberty. I am not a communist because communism concentrates and makes absorb all the powers of the corporation in the state, because it leads inevitably to the centralization of ownership in the hands of the state, while I want the abolition of the state - the radical extirpation of the principle of authority and guardianship of the state, who under the pretext to moralize and civilize men, has hitherto enslaved, oppressed, exploited, and depraved. I want the organization of society and social or collective ownership and down, through free association and not from top to bottom, by means of any authority whatsoever (...). That is the direction in which I am not at all collectivist and communist. "(Bakunin very lucid and visionary, was simply to warn about what will happen in Russia in 1918: Lenin, an authoritarian, restores the state, leading to the dictatorship of one party (the party Bolshevik) and the horrors of Stalinism this ... monumental and unforgivable error mess came to agree with Bakunin and his theory of the abolition of the state for decades after his death, NDJ. )
p.36:
Bakunin, appreciates better than anyone the theoretical contribution of Marx to the emancipation of the proletariat. But it does not admit is that the intellectual superiority to confer a right of direction of the labor movement, "claiming that a group of individuals, even the most intelligent and well-intentioned, are capable of becoming thought, the soul, directing and unifying will of the revolutionary movement and the economic organization of the proletariat of all countries, it is such a heresy against common sense and against the historical experience that you wonder in amazement how a man as intelligent as Mr. Marx was able to devise. The establishment of a universal dictatorship, a dictatorship which would somehow the work of a chief engineer of the world revolution, regulating and directing the insurrection of the masses of all countries as it runs a machine, establishment of such a dictatorship would be enough in itself to kill the revolution, to paralyze and distort all the commotion. And what to think of an international congress in the interests of the so-called revolution, the proletariat imposes all the civilized world government invested with dictatorial powers?
p.42:
Stirner, ahead of contemporary psychoanalysis, observes and condemns internalization. From childhood moral prejudices have been ingested. Morality has become "an inner power that I can not escape." "His despotism is 10 times worse than previously because it rumbles in my consciousness. "It pushes young people flock to school so they learn the old tunes and when they know by heart the verbiage of the old one says Major." And Stirner is iconoclastic: "God, conscience, duties, laws are blunders which we stuffed the brain and heart. "The real seductive and corrupting the youth, are the priests, parents who" embourbent young hearts and stupefy the young heads. If he is a devil's work, it is alleged that divine voice which was introduced in consciousness.
p.59:
Anarchism is not utopian. The very fact that he wants constructive anarchism rejects, first of all, the charge of utopianism. It uses historical method to try to prove that the future society is not his invention but the product itself underground works of the past.
p.61: Need to organize
Anarchism is not meant not synonymous with disruption. Proudhon was the first to proclaim that anarchy is not disorder, but the order, it is the natural order as opposed to the artificial order imposed from above, it is true unity, compared to the false unity engendered by the stress .
p.178: Spain revolutionary
agricultural communities gave a double management: both economic and local. The two functions were separate, but more often it was the unions that ASSUMED or contrôlèrent.
For economic administration, the general assembly of workers elected farmers in each village, a management committee. Besides the secretary, all members continued to work manually. The work was compulsory for all able-bodied men between 18 and 60. The peasants were divided into groups of 10 or more, with a delegate at their head. Each group was assigned an area of culture or a function, given the age of its members and the nature of work. Each evening the Management Committee received the delegates groups. In terms of local government, frequently summoned the town residents, in general assembly district, for activity reports.
Everything was shared, with the exception of clothing, furniture, personal savings, small livestock, garden plots and poultry for family consumption. Artisans, barbers, shoemakers, etc.., Were grouped in collectives, the sheep of the community divided into flocks of several hundred animals entrusted to shepherds and methodically distributed in the mountains.
Regarding the mode of sharing products, various systems were tested, each under the collectivism of Communism other more or less full, others resulting from a combination of 2. In most cases, compensation was determined based on the needs of the family. Each head of family received, as a daily wage, a good read in pesetas, which could not be redeemed as against consumer goods in communal stores, often installed in the church or its dependencies. The outstanding balance was paid in pesetas consumed credited to a reserve account individual. It was possible to collect on the balance of spending money in limited quantities. Rents, electricity, medical care, pharmaceuticals, assistance to elderly, etc.. Were free, as well as schools, often housed in a former convent, and compulsory for children under 14 years, that manual labor was forbidden.
p.181:
It should be noted that this socialism at the base was not, as some believe, the work of the few anarcho-syndicalists. The self-management were often, according to the testimony of Gaston Leval, "libertarian without knowing." In provinces that have just been listed last, it was the peasants Social Democrats, Catholics or Communists in Asturias, who took the initiative of collectivization.
p.183: The self
was also proven in the industry, especially in Catalonia, the most industrialized region of Spain. Workers whose employers had fled spontaneously began to walk factories. For more than four months, companies in Barcelona, on which floated the red and black banner of the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo), were managed by workers grouped in the revolutionary committees, without help or interference of the state, sometimes without experienced management. But the proletariat was lucky to have her side technicians. Unlike what happened in Russia in 1917-1918, Italy in 1920, during the brief experience of factory occupations, engineers did not refuse their support to the new experience of socialization, they collaborated closely from the earliest days, with workers.
p.183:
Cultural development went hand in hand with the hardware development: adult literacy was undertaken, the regional federations established a program of lectures, film shows, theatrical performances in the villages .
These successes were due not only to the powerful organization of trade unionism, but also to a large extent, intelligence and initiative of the people. Though the majority of illiterate peasants displayed a socialist consciousness, a practical common sense, a spirit of solidarity and sacrifice that brought the admiration of foreign observers.
p.187: As
self agricultural, industrial self-management was largely a success. Witnesses are full of praise, especially as regards the functioning of urban services in self-management. A number of factories, if not all, were managed remarkably. The socialized industry brought a decisive contribution to the war against fascism. The small number of weapons factories created in Spain before 1936 had been out of Catalonia: the employers, in fact, had lacked confidence in the Catalan proletariat. He had, in the Barcelona region, hastily convert factories to make them serve the Republican defense. Workers and technicians competed with enthusiasm and initiative. Quickly came to the front war material produced mainly in Catalonia. An important effort was about the start of production of chemicals essential to the war. In terms of civilian needs, the industry did not go under socialized forward. She embarked on the transformation textile fibers, not previously practiced in Spain, treated hemp, esparto, rice straw, cellulose.
p.210:
Throughout the preceding pages, we tried to show that this image of anarchism is not true. Constructive anarchism, one that has found its most complete expression in the writings of Bakunin, relies on the organization, self-discipline, integration, on a centralized, not coercive, but federalist. It builds on the great modern industry on modern technology, the proletariat modern internationalism on global dimensions. As such, it is our time, it is the twentieth century (XXI now NDJ. ). It's not him, it might be, rather, the State Communism no longer corresponds to contemporary needs. ( history has moreover demonstrated NDJ. )
