Anarchist buzz words, and Trotskyism

crikey it's comedy

Errrm, Black, the only relevance of Trotskyism today is that its has become part-and-parcel of the bourgeosie. I haven't suggested anything else. This thread evolved from another dealing with Russia, the post-revolutionary state, etc. and raised questions of definitions that concern that discussion.

As far as history goes, don't you think re-appropriating our real history and its lessons is rather important when it comes to informing future struggles? When the Trotskyists appear in revolutionary struggles and start talking about putting their party in power, should we not be able to say "hang on a minute, we made this mistake last time!". At the risk of waxing lyrical, he who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it and I, for one, do not want a repeat of the mess that Russia became!

History for its own sake is pointless, obviously, but that isn't what this discussion is about. And I'm curious why you've singled me out for this criticism!

Sorry D303, I didn't mean to single you out. I see your point about the thread evolving out of another one. Sorry if my post seemed disproportionate.

I think the whole know you're history or be doomed to repeat it thing might need a thread to itself. It is my experience that trots have a very strong historical narrative of their own with a tightly managed historiography to go with it. Challenging them to a game of conkers would be more productive than trying to get them to reconsider history. Any success that I have enjoyed talking to wavering trots has been bound up with discussing contemporary principles and application of revolutionary thought to modern life, in other words talking about the present and the future, not the past.

Again, sorry if I offended, I must make a mental note not to fire off these tirades in the first few minutes after I come in from work.... brain scrambled at that stage of the day I'm afraid.

Yes, it is. They will explain how the aim of the new forms of democracy are needed, that these need to be centralised and that without the revolutionary party they will deform into reformism. They will argue that the difference between Russia 1917 and Germany 1919, Spain 1936, Hungary 1956 and Paris 1968 was the lack of a centralised vanguard party which knew the need for "the workers" (i.e., itself) to seize power. If in doubt, read any Trotskyist account of any of these revolutions.

Of course, your typical rank and file Trotskyist tends to think of revolution in anarchist terms. Most of them have not read Lenin's and Trotsky's arguments for party rule (if not dictatorship). Rather, they get the offical party version where such things are carefully ignored or carefully rationalised. It says a lot that most Leninists are pretty ignorant of their own ideology and its practices, but unsurprising (if they did, would they remain Leninists?).

I've spent a lot of time reading and debating with Leninists and I can assure you that the anarchist critique is not about "buzz words" but rather based on key issues such as self-management, working class verses party power, the role of the revolutionary organisation, the need to understand what states are and how they work, and numerous other basic points.

I would suggest reading section F of An Anarchist FAQ (www.anarchistfaq.org) for a full discussion of this, plus appropriate references and quotes.

I think if we can learn anything from the October Revolution, it's the simple formula for riding a working class struggle into bourgeois power.

A. Observe what the real political organs of the working class (which are not you) are going to manage to do without your help in the very near future. In Lenin's case, that was:
1. Getting out of the war.
2. Expropriating agricultural land to be managed by the peasants instead of the landed nobility.
3. Building up the power of the soviets.

B. Promise that if you're elected to/put in power, you will do these same things. In Lenin's case, that means proclaiming the following party platform:
1. Get out of the war!
2. Give the land to the peasants!
3. Power to the soviets!

C. Watch as the working class finds you to be a easier to support than actual working class political organs, which require too much effort that they're not used to after years of mind-numbing wage slavery. In Lenin's case, that means ending up with a majority in Parliament.

D. Use working class support to establish yourself in power until you no longer need them. In Lenin's case, well, everything that happened later.

History is fun!

excellent tj

one thing to keep in mind about the soviets in the Russian revolution: for the most part they were NOT formed on the initiative of workers. in the big cities such as St. Petersburg and Moscow, they were formed on the initiative of party leaders from the "intelligentsia", that is, professionals, typically associated with the Menshevik, SR, and Popular Socialist (laborite) parties. The St. Petersburg soviet was formed when a group of these members of the Left intelligentsia, including three members of the Duma (parliament), put out a call for workers to elect delegates (on Feb. 27th 1917).

These main soviets were organized in a very top-down way, in terms of deciaion-making power. Power to make decisions was concentreated in the Executive Committee, and later in the Presidium, an even smaller body (seven people, in the case of the Moscow soviet).

Moreover, there was no requirement that the delegates elected by a factory had to work there. As a result, members of the intelligentsia, who were leaders of various parties, campaigned in the factory assemblies to get elected. How else could Lenin or Martov get elected?

It's worth contrasting this with the idea of a "non-party" soviet, advocated by the maximalists, syndicalists, and some (but not all) anarcho-communists. The idea was that the only people who are elected should be someone who works in that base unit. Secondly, the debate in the plenary meetings of the soviet delegates should be a real debate and that should be where the real decision is made. The executive committee should merely exist to ensure the decision is carried out, not set policy itself. This was in fact the way the Kronstadt soviet was organized. (See Israel Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921.)

When the radical left -- including Left SRs, Left Mensheviks, most anarcho-communists and syndicalsts, and maximalists, pushed for transfer of government power to the Congress of Soviets in October 1917, they expected that this would mean that the governing administration would be the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets. But on the day of the convening of the Congress, the Bolsheviks sprung their surprise, they insisted that their own Council of People's Commissars should be given power. The Bolsheviks were able to get their way because the Right SRs and Right Mensheviks walked out in protest, handing the Bolsheviks a majority of those who remained. The Congress of Soviets, it should be mentioned, only represented urban workers and soldiers. There was a separate peasant congress which met a month later. The Left SRs were dominant in that congress, and that is why the Bolsheviks were forced into a coalition government for some months.

But the Cheka, which was set up within a few weeks, was never accountable even to Sovnarkom (Council of People's Commissars). The man who was Commissar of Justice in Sovnarkom was Steinberg, a member of the Left SRs. As Commisssar of Justice, he was nominally in charge of courts and police. But he could never get control of the Cheka. That's because the Cheka only answered to the Bolshevik party central committee, in violation of the soviet principle.

Also, in the spring of 1918, the Bolsheviks lost the vote in local soviet elections in 19 of 22 provincial cities in European Russia. Rather than allow the Mensheviks and SRs, who won the elections, to take over, the Bolsheviks simply stayed in office, abolished the soviet, or otherwise used armed violence to keep themselves in power. Often they abolished the soviet and ruled thru a Military Revolutionary Committee controlled by their party.

In Lenin's concept of the "vanguard party," the possibility of socialism was dependent on control by the vanguard since they contained the seeds of socialism in their brains, in their mastery of Marxist theory. This was, I think, a justification for party dictatorship. This doctrine is not consistent with Marx's dictum borrowed from Flora Tristan) that "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves."

The Bolsheviks got around that by redefining "proletarian power" to mean the power of the party whose ideology was believed apriori to represent workers interests. The justification for the top-down management of production, the construction of a top-down army, was all justified by Trotsky on the grounds that workers' power consists in election of leaders. In his actual arguments he made an analogy with a union, saying that the members control the union by election of the union committee.

One thing about this is that it shows no understanding of self-management or direct democracy. In the case of the unions, why shouldn't the members make decision directly themselves, via assemblies and congresses of rank and file delegates? As Sam Farber (a Cuban-American Marxist sociologist) points out in his book "Before Stalniism", the tradition of Russian Marxism had no concept of participatory democracy.

Another key aspect of Russian Marxism was the commitment to central planning, which was not peculiar to Russian Marxism but a common view in pre-WWI Marxian social-democracy. This was effected in the setting up of the Supreme Council of National Economy a couple weeks after the Bolsheviks gained power.

Central planning is inconsistent with workers' self-management. That's because information and decisions are concentrated at the center, in the central planning staff. Moreover, it is natural for the central planners to want to ensure their plans are carried out, and this tends to lead to the imposition of managers in workplaces. It's easier for a central planning body to deal with a single manager than an entire workforce collectively. hence by the spring of 1918 Trotsky was beating the drum for one-man management.

These tednencies were NOT contradicted by the so-called oppositions in the Bolshevik Party. For example, at the time of the debate over Bukharin's "industrial democracy" proposal and the Workers' Opposition at the party congress in March of 1921, one-man management had become universal. And Schliapnikov, in the debate at the party congress, said that he was not trying to do away with the hierarchy of managers and professionals who had been put in charge of directing production, but was only proposing election of the industrial management boards by the workers, and election by the workers of a producers' congress to control the main lines of the central plan.

Becuase they were not opposing central planning, they were therefore not supporting self-management since central planning is inconsistent with self-management. The idea of self-management is that people should control the decisions that affect them most. There are many issues related to the management of production that affect primarily the workers in a particular facility and self-management says they should control those decisions.

Economic coordination does not require central planning, or a single body to make an entire national economic plan. A plan can be derived from negotiation between production groups and the communities and individuals who will be receiving the products (as in the concept of participatory planning).

So, a basic difference with the Trots is that they have not traditionally advocated, but have been opposed to, self-management. They advocate the taking of state power by a vanguard party. Now, they might phrase that by saying that in a system of worker councils, there would be a variety of parties. (This is what the American Trot group Solidarity says.)

But we can then ask: Would there be a management hierarchy from the executive committee of this "council" that provides a chain of command for orders from top to bottom, controlling a state workforce? Would there be a system of central planning for the economy? Would there be a top-down hierarchy of command in the armed forces, controlled by the party leaders elected to dominance on the exeuctive committee of this "council"?

If the answer is "yes", and if the economy is nationalized, then you have the basis of a coordinator ruling class, I'd say.

t.

Very interesting discussion. I just want to throw in some other angles to the question of the Trotskyists which has not been taken up so far.
Their support for imperialism. Trotskyism was not an expression of capitalist ideology before its support for WW2. It was certainly very confused and increasingly engulfed in opportunism i.e., making concessions to bourgeois ideology for example its enterist policy or its support for 'national liberation', but had not openly supported one major imperialism against another. The support of the majority -there were groups and individuals who took an internationalist position- of Trotskyism for the war marked their final crossing of the Rubicon.
Their support for State Capitalism be through their critical support for Stalinism or their defense of the welfare state and nationalisation.
Their support for the Trade Unions;
Their sterling working in seeking to mobilise the working class to participate in the electoral circus.

Clearly many reading and intervening on this threat think that it is their support for the vanguard party etc that marks them out as being against the class, but this in itself does not represent a defense of the capitalist state whilst the above does.

Trotskyism defense of capitalism is its role, whether they understand what they are doing does not matter. However what does matter is the fact that trotskyism sucks up and destroys many genuine militants who want to get rid of capitalism. Showing the real class nature of trotskyism is thus an important task for revolutionaries.

This is no easy task when you are banned from their meetings, threatened with physical violence or denounced. However, it is important to try and put forwards internationalism and defend the real revolutionary history of the working class.

I think that it is this wider analysis of the role of trotskyism that Devrim is getting at through initiating this thread.

The critique of Leninism is not -- or should not be -- based on any idea of personal failings, that Lenin is a "bad person" or anything like that. The problem lies in their strategic and programmatic orientation. Lenin and the other leading Bolsheviks were certainly self-conscious "socialists" but that is just a buzzword. What does it mean? And what do you (Devrim) mean by working class self-organization? Groups like Solidarity and ISO in the USA talk about "democratic unionism" and support rank and file movements. In the Russian revolution the Bolsheviks were not opposed to working class self-organization, they supported the factory committees, unions and soviets but they saw building the mass movement as just a means, the mass working class organizations were just a trampoline to bounce themselves into control of a state.

The Russian Marxism had no concept of participatory democracy. Bolsheivks thought of "proletarian power" in terms of electing the "workers party" to positions of power in a top-down hierarchy. Leninism lacks a critique of centralized, hierarchical organization. On the contrary, via "democratic centralism" they are committed to it.

They believe that centralization of power is essential for victory in a revolution. We need to be clear that it isn't just a semantic disagreement to say they are for the party taking state power and we are for elimination of the state. There needs to be a replacement for the state through which the working class controls the society, such as congresses of delegates and a militia and so on, some set of institutions through which the society is self-governed.

Now some Trotskyist groups will talk as if they agree with this. For example the American group Solidairty will say they are for a "council state" where a variety of "parties" would be represented. And presumably anarchists would have to agree that there will be different political viewpoints in any mass governance body like a congress of delegates. Why, then, is it a "state"?

This leads to the question of centralization of decision-making. Groups like Solidarity and ISO in the USA say they are for "democratic planning." But this could be envisioned as meaning that there is some elected body like a congress throughout a region or nation or whatever, that is responsible for developing the social plan for production. Inevitably they'd need a staff to help to do this.

This is a form of central planning, even if it is more democratic than what existed in the USSR. It would violate self-management because not all decisions affect everybody equally. There are many decisions in a particular workplace or industry that mainly affect the people who work there. If those decisions are made centrally via a nationa plan, it violates their self-management.

Further, any system of central planning will tend to lead to imposition of local managers because the central planning staff, who won't really be easily controllable by workers directly, will not want to have to deal with large collective organizations of workers but will prefer to have onsite a manager who will enforce their planning orders and exercise surveillance over production. Central planning thus tends to generate an entire corporate-style hiearchy.

And wouldn't centralization of power also become a rationale for a military with hierarchical control?

And thus what you end up with is a state with a top-down, hierarchical division of labor, which implies a continuation of the class system.

The more democratic Trotskyist groups hide these consequences by their talk of a "council state with competing parties" and "democratic planning." I don't mean "hide" necessarily in a bad sense...they may not clearly understand the consequences of their own program.

It's true that Trotskyist groups usually advocate participation in electoral politics. Solidarity in the USA supports the Labor Party and ISO supports running people as Greens. The focus on electoral politics fits in with their strategic partyism, that is, the idea that the working class struggle can be expressed through a political party. But this tends to focus on leaders and programs implemented topdown through the state.

t.

oh my god semantics! What a fucking waste of everyone's time, granted i haven't read page two.

I've rather enjoyed reading this discussion so far. (although some of the conduct is downright pitiful, which is generally the case on this board, I've noticed)

Much has been said on the important organizational disagreements between Anarchists and Trots which can be simplified as bottom-up vs. top-down (although the different interpersonal dynamics and psychological impacts on individuals in either type of system make it more than an issue of organizational forms in and of themselves...these can bee seen as the context from which we launch an analysis of human freedom in actual practice)

I think it is useful to first lay out a few principles which have in large part already been stated:

1) a Trot model of top-down organization necessarily implies a relationship of managers and managed and necessitates the imposition of a managerial and administrative class.

2) this managerial/administrative class is not fundamentally characterized by its numbers, distribution (geographically and otherwise), or the lifestyles its members enjoy. At its core, this class is characterized by its dominant position in a relation of command...its role as a boss class presiding over a 'bossed' class.

3) the relationship of command produced by the class relations in question are fundamentally and inescapably rooted in and maintained by violence and coercion intended to directly constrain individual and collective freedom at its most immediate and meaningful points of potential application (production and distribution). Hence, the centralized state (at least) is in an important sense directly opposed to the principle of self-management...not because of the particulars or this or that mode of organization as abstractions but rather because of the relations of violence and coercion implied in certain organizational models.

(nothing terrifically new or insightful here, I know)

but that leads me to the original statement of the discussion:

When I read these words I was sympathetic to them...my attempts to operate among North American anarchists (which I have learned are much more individualistic than their European counterparts...or at least fail to fully understand the socialist logic implied by their individualist ideals) have left me with a bad taste...in a recent philosophy course with an anarchist professor in a discussion of Bakunin I was stopped cold when I brought up the federalism outlined in "Revolutionary Catechism" and how it represented very clear claims on the individual by community and even seemed to advocate not just stuff like national legislatures but argued that they ought to have some sort of power to tax:

"[the provincial legislature] will enact all laws affecting the whole province, pass on resolutions or measures of the national parliament, without, however, violating the autonomy of the communes and the province. Without interfering in the internal administration of the communes, it will allot to each commune its share of the provincial or national income, which will be used by the commune as its members decide."

Even though Bakunin keeps repeating that higher-order federative bodies don't have the authority to interfere in the business of lower-order federative bodies, lower-order bodies are required to uphold the principles and laws of the higher-order bodies or else will be compelled to end their association and be cut off from the benefits of this association.

So I would argue that in Bakunin's understanding of an Anarchist Federation, there is some degree of a top-down power-dynamic insofar as the higher-order federative bodies may exert authority over lower-order federative bodies which end definitively at the point where the principle of free association is violated:

"1. Every land, every nation, every people, large or small, weak or strong, every region, province, and commune has the absolute right to self-determination, to make alliances, unite or secede as it pleases, regardless of so called historic rights and the political, commercial, or strategic ambitions of States. The unity of the elements of society, in order to be genuine, fruitful, and durable, must be absolutely free: it can emerge only from the internal needs and mutual attractions of the respective units of society...."

and how could the principle of free association be violated without higher-order federative bodies holding a new form state power (an army with which they can keep lower-order bodies in line)? The answer is, it can't.

So I suppose my point is that I see the real difference between Anarchist and State Socialist views on the proper mode of social organization is not so much a simple "top-down vs bottom-up" dichotomy but rather a disagreement about the state. For the Anarchist, the existence of the state presents an ever-present threat to the fundamental values of self-management and free-association...even if it is a "workers' state" that exists, the people gain nothing but the possibility that this conflict might remain latent for a time...before someone decides to step out of line.

[oh, and as far as my philosophy professor goes, he accused me of "reading what I wanted to see into the text", stated that he saw it in exactly the opposite way (as arguing for an nonsocialized/unintegrated understanding of individual freedom, presumably) before saying that I was actually in agreement with Bakunin (ignoring the fact that I wasn't primarily making an assertion of my ideals, just noting something in the text he had passed over) but I had had presented my view as monolithic because it was also Bakunin's...he then requested that I approach anarchist texts as if I were engaging in postmodern literary criticism or something (keep my ideas and desires at the forefront instead of 'hiding' in the text). I was confused...especially since he skipped over all the meaty stuff about federalism, compulsory work and even went so far as to say Bakunin thought that freeloading was ok (misconstruing a line about society's obligations to the upkeep of children as applying to adults...and then getting upset when I pointed out his oversight)]

I remain somewhat perplexed by this thread although I appreciate Dev's attempt to encourage anarchists to move beyond "buzzwords" towards a more clearly though-out position on Trotskyites. Of course, in the end the hostility felt by very many anarchists to any manifestation of Trotskyism trumps the attempt to move beyond secularism to critique; in as much as this is often based on real life experience I do not see this as a problem.

Antieverything, anarchism has come a long way since Bakunin. Libertarian thinkers and activists have always had to struggle against incorporating authoritarian practice into their work and their lives. This is an ongoing dialectic, and all we have going for us is that we recognise its existence.

I shout at my kids; I come on here and get told I don't have the right ideas and perhaps at times I do the same to other people. As I say, what should set anarchists apart is that we recognise the existence of the vital questions about liberty and hierarchy. If you stop at Bakunin you'll find plenty of evidence of contradiction. Look at The Platform as another example, some would argue that it is a strong echo of Leninism. Here we stand in a world riven by hierarchy trying to imagine a better way and prefigure it in our actions, it is not surprising howver, given the ground we are standing on, that contradictory positions arise.

Btw where do you study? Are you English?

I'm a Texan.

I was simply using Bakunin to illustrate a point since he is what I've read most recently (although I've been studying radical and anarchist theory for years and years now)...even within his 'model' the various constitutive bodies can work this stuff out in an infinite variety of ways. Bakunin's goal, in part, seems to be tracing out how the principles of self-ownership and free association could develop a highly organized and relatively harmonious industrial society which is something we should keep doing today, even if we don't like the authoritarian implications of drafting "prescriptions".

Still, I agree with you about Bakunin...but what I love so much about this piece in particular is how it brings out that tension you speak of so clearly. Bakunin is "a fanatical lover of liberty" and liberty of a very specific, humanist and individualist sort...yet he advocates this federal system concluding that it doesn't violate this principle yet is still characterized by the constitutive bodies self-imposing restrictions in order to gain greater individual and collective freedom.

One of my favorite areas of study inside of political theory is what I like to call "soft coercion" that always exists in social organization...there's always a certain amount of freedom (in this sense license) we sacrifice in order to enjoy real, substantive freedoms that develop from human social organization and which in turn give us the resources to further develop our very capacity for human freedom.

Yes indeed, your last point is very interesting. It is clear that you know your Bakunin much better than I do; are you familiar with the work of the English socialist William Morris? I believe that it was precisely because of this "soft coercion" that he would not call himself an anarchist, he saw the sacrifice as essential and inimicable to his conception of anarchism.

I've never read anything by Morris but I googled him just now and he seems to have an interesting perspective--his position as 'mediator' between Marxist and Anarchist sections of the early socialist movement could allow for a very interesting analysis. If you know of anything of his I could read, I'd love to see it!

I've found probably the most compelling attempt to resolve the tension between individual freedom and social organization in the work of Peter Kropotkin...Kropotkin takes the "natural law" or "state of nature" arguments of liberals and uses evolutionary theory, history, and anthropology to turn them on their heads. For Kropotkin an individual divorced from a social context (and the roles and restrictions contained therein) is not free in any sense--rather such an individual is divorced from her nature in a double-edged sense: divorced from her material nature (the means of survival which are necessarily social) as well as her human nature (which is rooted in solidarity due to biological and cultural evolution).

So if we are to ground our analysis in the human experience as it really occurs we are compelled to reject any quixotic ideas like "total liberation" or "spontaneous (dis)organization". The nonsocialized individual is not more free than a socialized individual--indeed a nonsocialized person is not only impossible but profoundly unhappy and alienated. For Hobbes and the liberal tradition that would follow there is a sort of post-social contract 'freedom' that is seen as greater and more desirable than the type of freedom (license) that existed before (Hobbes called submission to authority 'absolute freedom'). Anarchists are naturally opposed to such conceptions but in their rejection of liberal ideas they fail to see the grain of truth contained within such conceptions: unrestricted license is unacceptable and undesirable as a standard of human freedom. Freedom, if it is to mean anything at all, must refer to a system of human relations that allows for a functioning economic system and allows for mechanisms to prevent anti-social individuals from fucking things up...as well as fostering cultural institutions which allow for the free and full development of individuals.

To summarize Bakunin, you can retreat to the wilderness to live with the 'savage beasts'...but it would be much more fulfilling (and easier) to live by your social labor in an anarchist commune. Indeed, it may be this very understanding which compels one to continue working in such a commune even if one would really like to do some sick shit to other people or just be a freeloader.

I know this is kinda off topic...and don't think that I'm writing this to show how much I know. Rather, I'd just like ya'll to understand where I'm coming from with my understanding of Anarchism.

Cliff, like Lenin, wanted state power. Power in a "workers' state", of course, to implement the socialist programme. If he did not, he wasted a lot of time building an organisation whose stated goal was to seize state power (of course they identified workers' power with party power, and vice versa).

That this seizure of power had the aim of creating a better society does not change the fact that Cliff, like Lenin, equated workers' power with party power. The Leninist perspective ends up crushing real workers' power to defend party power. That few Trotskyists recognise this obvious fact of history is why most of them are still leninists.

The combination of hierarchical social institutions associated with state power and vanguard ideology makes for a very good case for why anarchism is right. Our "buzzwords" reflect both our predictive analysis of Marxism as well as the facts of "successful" Marxist revolutions.

It is true that in their analysis of russia, Leninists conflate workers power with party power. Leninists today, like the SWP, claim to not want party power, only workers power.

But of course the fact that they can't see the difference between this and party dictatorship is troublesome to say the least...

Dev, if you do think that they still don't want a party dictatorship, why is it do you think they agree with all of Lenin's statements equating Bolshevik dictatorship with workers power?

As a proper marxist, can one seperate the two?

I don't just mean to be tongue-in-cheek; I think that the three things which you mentioned (which I agree divert the working class from fighting for itself) have a theoretical heritage leading all the way back to the split in the first international, and certainly to the 'marxism' of the second international, which as you know provides the basis for the 'marxism' of the trotskyists.

In fact, i'd even risk the formulation that, in general, the extent to which left-communists and critical trotskyists left behind those three policies that you mention, corresponds to the extent with which they broke from second international 'marxism'.

yeah like Olivier said don't you think there might be some relation between how they invisage a revolution panning out and their approach at present? Seem's almighty stupid to seperate the two.

I am happy to side with Revol on this one. Hardly surprising Dev that you can't get anarchists to buy this point given the central place that the unity of ends and means has to pretty much all of us from whatever strand we come.

Dev, I can tell you that I do not have politics anything like that of Trotskyites, but the longer I spend on Libcom the more I come to believe that very many anarchists are in exactly that position. I even come to see why the - often all too vitriolic IMO - post-left anarchists designate themselves in that way.

on what basis?

On the CNT ministers?

What about the fact that the Friends of Durruti and the most advanced sections of the proletariat in the most advanced and far reaching social revolution in modern history were anarcho syndicalist?

I like most of your politics up until you start making retarded statements like this.

me thinks you don't have much of an understanding of anarcho syndicalism especially in how it approaches things in the present. They push for workers assemblies and seek to create networks or unions (without the left communist semantic baggage) of militant workers.

Even historically you are talking out your arse as the 'unions' that constituted the early CNT were often illegal and clandestine, functioning as "workplace resistance groups", early ones even had the grand title of 'societies for the destruction of capital' or something to that effect.

The Friends of Durruti were anarcho syndicalist, they percieved (correctly) that their programme was consistent with anarcho syndicalism and the CNT's history in general.

It seems to me you approach history in that ridiculous formal mannerism so beloved of Leninists and the left communists who come out of that tradition.

First:

I am not French.

Second: Devrim I agree with you that there is a problem these days of anarchists taking greater or lesser amounts of trotskyist politics, but covered under the mantle of "anti-authoritarian". Many 'anarchists' are more comfortable with the ideas presented in journals like 'Left Turn' (an activistoid split from the ISO) than with the real theoretical heritage of anarchism. Others adopt a leftist view of national liberation and call it innovation.

However, when anarchists take similar political lines to trotskyism and leftism, it is because they are unaware, or are rejecting, the politics that anarchists have upheld in the past (for instance even in Bakunin's various programs it was always mentioned that workers solidarity, and consequently revolution, must extend past all borders).

I agree with Revol. You are using an applicable critique of the marxist party form, but applying it to all 'permanent mass workers organizations'. Then you say that both approaches result in being 'concerned with organizing the working class through these organizations, not with working class self organization'.

However anarchosyndicalism is the exact opposite of marxism in this case, in that the ideas of marxism (such as the formation of workers parties) sprang from the head of a small clique as the ideal form of workers organization; syndicalism and anarchosyndicalism were ideas which came out of the methods of workers self organization, starting from the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union all the way up to the teens, when the ideas were really consolidated by theorists in the IWW, CNT, SAC, FAUD, and some parts of the CGT. Revol is right, the essence of anarchosyndicalist thought has always been based on the self organization of the working class, sometimes in mass, semi-permanent, semi-clandestine organizations, and sometimes on the basis of workers' councils - a great example would be the syndicalists in Russia, such as Maximoff, whose program for the horizontal organization of the soviets into industrial federations was far superior to anything the left communists ever put forward.