Anarchist Responses When Elected Governments are Overturned

Well not only that. I mean I've got friends and family who aren't libertarians, I wouldn't want them to go to war if there was a Tory takeover, because there would be hardly any difference to living conditions, and any changes there were would be best opposed by working class economic power, not military conflict. I think as anarchists we should not support nat lib struggles or intra-bourgeois faction fights, and also argue for other workers to not support them as well, and instead argue for workers self-organisation and direct action about concrete issues which affect us.

This thread is weird. Almost none of the replies actually address the issue they are supposed to be replying to it 'Anarchist Responses When Elected Governments are Overturned'

Besides a coup or an invasion, exactly how do you expect an elected government to be overturned outside of a revolutionary situation? :?

I dunno maybe they are talking about George W Bush's first election victory, maybe Wayne wanted NEFAC to take up arms for the Democrats or something?

Actually nah guns just protests about the election fraud by anti election anarchists, oh the hilarity!

I was referrng to people who when asked about Pinochet went on to claim Wayne must have been talking of Iran or Syria. Plus of course we got told about the difference between Labour and the Tories.

I mean I see a need for using hypotheticals as an example where no real world examples are available but you don't need to do so in this case. Anarchists are very familar with two coups
1. July 18 1936 where the anarchists did indeed 'defend the regime' right down to fighting alongside their previous worst enemies in the form of the assault guards.
2. Sept 11 1973 when Pinochet overthrew Allende

So there are two good examples to consider - we don't need to invent others

Strange definition, choosing not to shoot people involved in the same immmediate goal as you is hardly defending them, I mean when we go on a demo with some gobshites for Ogra Sinn Fein at the back, if we are attacked by the police and we fight back, is it us defending Ogra Sinn Fein if we don't batter them round the head with something there and then?

If the CNT (as it later did) had then handed their guns back to the Republican government, disbanded their militias, not taken over factories and land that would have been collaboration and defence of the regime. Putting down the Francoists in Barcelona with Civil Guards onside isn't the same thing at all. The key thing is the workers act in their own interests not to defend this or that regime, they might see one as more pressing, as in the ones executing their comrades through out Spain but reacting to such events is not the same as defending a bourgeois regime, especially not when you armed yourselves and have taken over the streets.

The CNT's role in defending the regime starts later than that and was a fatal mistake.

lets remember that when the CNT took to the streets on the Morning of July 19 it did not offer itself to the Republican government as it's defenders.

I've already said I find some of Waynes language to suffer from Clunky marxism, mind you the phrase your focusing in on was actually used by him in a comment and not the article so I wouldn't give to much weight to the exact formulation.

That said you posts are a very good example of the problems of a politics that confines itself to rhetorical slogans - they tend to break apart in a crisis and be replaced with all sorts of unacknowledged compromises. There is no dougbt the actions of the CNT preserved the republican regime and this is why the assault guards were willing to fight alongside their former enemies (it went both ways after all). You can dress that up in all sorts of semantics but the outcome is clear and all your semantics achieve is confusing any discussion of the actual political problems.

This becomes very clear when you move on to the situation where the anarchists were very much weaker - the Pinochet coup. Which it seems to me is being carefully avoided by all those with a fondness for militant sounding slogans.

no the argument was made that workers movements fight in their own interests against actual concrete manifestations, so i'd think it would be clearly a matter of resisting marshall law, attacks on workers freedom of speech and assembly. I fail to see how workers would have gained from actively defending the Allende regime as it was Allende and his chums who sought to stand down the working class, who refused to let them arm themselves and unsuprisingly guaranteed not only their own deaths but the brutal suppression of the working class. Or do you think you can only resist attacks on the workers movement from one side by defending the other more insidious side. Now a working class mobilisation might well have stopped the coup and yet not seen Allendes regime destroyed too, but that is clearly nothing like defending a regime anymore than the Poll Tax riots where necessarily an attempt to oust Thatcher in favour of Major or even Labour.

As Devrim said earlier it's not like the working class gets a choice in the matter beyond it's ability to fight it's own corner. Is it that difficult to imagine a military coup that ousts an elected regime, seeks to clamp down on the organised working class, is met with mass resistance to it's decrees and has to ?

Your just doing a mixture of playing semantics and misrepresenting the position you claim to be arguing against here.

But you know this, your just stalling to hang onto your miltant posturising.

In case anyone is confused here is my position.

Clearly Pinochet coming to power was going to be a disaster for the workers movement.

But a libertarian revolution was not on the immediate agenda.

So it was necessary to fight the coup without deluding youself that you were about to create an anarchist society. Such a delusion would have been very dangerous. The majority of those fighting the coup would have been Allende supporters and you would have to be able to relate to them.

But the coup was also a point where the regime needed to give power and weapons to the working class in order to survive. So the fight against Pinochet could also be a fight for workers self management and preparation for insurrection. The defeat of Pincochet could have left a very much more powerful working class. Part of the role of the anarchists was to maximise that outcome.

As above I don't find the way Wayne phrased this to be all that useful but I find the dishonest 'intepretation' of his position much less useful.

Joe that is such a slippery pile of nonsense. Of course there would be Allende supporters amongst the working class, but I don't think that an sizable anarchist or anarcho syndicalist presense would be part of them. You can fight alongside Socialist Party members or even an old Labour party member back on the 80's without "defending the regime or even the labour government". It's also deeply niave to think the "regime your defending" would be over the moon about proletarians running around with guns seizing factories and land. Infact if any threat was helped seen off by the workers movment in arms, the regime you were previously defending might wanna curb you too, they aren't going to wait around long, especially if the workers movement wasn't strong enough to sweep them aside alongside the coup.

In reality though you are talking nonsense as Allende and mates prefered to die than to arm the working class, just like the German Social Democrats who when push came to shove were the first to bring the Free Corps onto the street. Even in the dying days of the Weimar Republic the Social Democrats were more scared of the working class than the Nazi's.

to be honest Joe all I keep seeing from Wayne and yourself are various made up hypothetical situations in which it would be okay to do such and such. I mean you say i'm full of slogans and rhetoric but i'm not the one eventing revolutionary geek role play scenarios in order to justify all softening anarchist principles.

I mean right now, do you see anywhere in the world where an anarchist movment would be wish to defend a regime, or whose support would change anything really?

This doesn't address anything I wrote in fact the second line is a very, very weird misrepresentation indeed. You are sparring with the monsters of your imagination again, get some sleep and try and address what I actually wrote tomorrow!

(This is a reply to the first of revols posts above)

Oh dear not more of this hard and soft thing again. I sometimes wonder what we are actually talking about with this over riding fear of going soft in the face of a crisis.

It's not about 'wishing to defend' (another weird misrepresentation), its about situations where a coup would introduce a regime that would attack the working class. You'll find most (but not all, see Portugal '74) coups qualify under this.

I could certainly see a danger that an anti-Chavez coup could introduce such a regime, he may be only a warmed over populist but such a regime would probably have to defeat the expectections he created. Aristride in Haiti a few years back was probably a similar case. And perhaps more marginally anarchists did actually take part in the struggle against the anti-Yeltsin coup in the USSR a decade back - one of them even posts to Anarkismo some times.

Does he think that it was worth it?
A coup can happen simply because it's a method for one bourgeois faction to sieze power.
If a particularly dangerous regime overthrew an elected government then I think anarchists could be defending their class interests in opposing it.
To use the example of the Frei Korps raised by Revol their little putch was stopped by a general strike iirc. Workers let them do their killing but not take power.

So our aim would be to let the bourgeoisie take the brunt of any actual fighting if possible and try to collapse both sides. Our aim would be to convince working class people on both sides to show solidarity.

i'm surprised nobody has drawn parallels in this discussion to the French movement, at the outbreak of WWI. the invasion by Germany is similar enough to a "coup," and the workers had to decide what stance to take. most Anarchists of the time rejected supporting France in the war, though some (most notably Kropotkin) did.

for those who support fighting to stop the coup (or invasion), what do you think of the situation during WWI? i'm sure some will say that this is very different, and that the German state was barely enough different from France, so the change of hands from the French to the Germans would've mattered little - but one shouldnt underestimate the suffering and oppression of the common people who have been conquered militarily, even if both governments were fairly similar.

in light of this, what ought to have been done by the French during WWI? support of the war as proposed by Kropotkin? total rejection of the war and the usage of strikes, to try to allow Germany to take France without a trial - and then continue to form strikes against the occupying government? armed opposition of French libertarian (or allied) workers, organized independently of the French state and hostile to it (if not openly at war with it)?

not loaded questions or anything - i find this interesting, i'm curious as to the answers people will give.

So what about a regional secession led by local elites who are, in terms of their orientation vs. the working class, more rightwing and more prone to "open"/immediate attacks/repression than the elites elected at the broader federal level? That's a third example that can be placed alongside "coup" and "invasion" while having similar implications for the options faced by the w.c. revs under their heel.

And actually this one happened here in the US a while back, with some interesting consequences.

Here's an idea, how's about you quote me out of context and attribute a load of opinions to me without asking first? Arsehole.

i think it's rather strange that people seem to be suggesting that because working class militancy can create favourable objective conditions for certain factions of the bourgeois that it means we are in de facto support and therefore really why not just make that little skip and say we defend them. For example, a militant working class overthrows a repressive piece of legislation in France ie CPE or something, it makes the conservative government weak and the Socialist Party step in and take advantage, does this mean the workers supported the Socialist Party? Now imagine instead that the Socialist Party are in power and there is some sort of coup that imposes marshall law, if the working class fought back against the curfews etc and this lead to the coup collapsing and the socialist party returning to power, would that be the workers defending the regime or would it not just be the working class resisting attacks on itself, afterall if the elected government imposed marshall law surely anarchists would fight it just as fiercely, no?

It's not "flirting" or "coming short" of supporting anything, it's exactly what it says.

If you're going to lecture people on politeness, then maybe you should bear in mind that it's actually pretty rude to extrapolate something somebody never said and doesn't necessarily follow from their arguement and then rant on refuting what they never said in the first place. Maybe I shouldn't have insulted you, but equally, you could have at least engaged with what I said instead of what you'd like it to be.

Well yes, but the point I was trying to make is that with your coup example, to all intents and purposes, there is a clear class interest in one side (in this case the Socialist Party) winning over the other, which isn't to deny that our interests ultimately lie against both parties, it's just about being intellecutally honest.

As for electoralism, I am anti-electoralist insofar as I don't think electoralism ever works. I can't envisage any specific example in which I would bother to vote. But it's a tactical question, not one of principle.

I'm sorry but it is a point of principle, and let's just remember that a principle doesn't mean it can never ever be broken, rather that you recognise that it is a breach of principle and that it's something that should be sought to avoided and not taken ligthly if it does happen.

Also you don't have any interest in the Socialist Party getting back into power beyond the fact that the useless chumps will only be able to do so in as much as the working class has succeded in resisting an attack on itself. Creating certain objective conditions within state that favours this or that bourgeois faction is not the same as defending those regimes or supporting them in any meaningful sense.

I really think the motives for the vague language and claiming that the working class resisting this or that attack is de facto support for one side of the bourgeois is to muddy the waters and make it easier to slip into defending national liberation movements.

I'm really not interested in having the electoral argument again. It's boring as fuck and it never goes anywhere because everybody on here agrees and just pretends not to.

If you like. It's the idea that workers have absolutely no interest one way or another in such a conflict that irks me most, the rest is semantics, afaic.

Yeah, because I have such a long history of defending national liberation movements, don't I? Well, maybe in my mercifully brief "comedy sixth-form leftist" years but it's best to just not bring that up up

I really don't have any ulterior motives, I just think that looking at things with a little nuance is helpful here.

I don't want to derail this thread but what do you mean by that? That really I don't have a problem with voting on principle and just pretend too?

I wasn't so much thinking of you but rather Wayne and Joe who have got form for defending national liberation struggles. Your just a patsy.

See I think the lack of nuance is more in your argument, whereby just because workers struggle can create or do create conditions that favour this regime or another over another that it means workers defend them.

This is why Devrim said that workers don't get to chose in such a manner that we can have Iraq or Sweden. I mean clearly if it was a simple choice like that then everyone would tick the Sweden box. However in the real world things don't work like that. I mean in Iraq right now, what force/regime could a workers movement line up to support? I mean if workers march against US occupation does that mean they are giving de facto support to Al Qaeda? If workers march against the bombings of the resistance, are they giving de facto support to the occupation? If workers defend themselves against attacks from the Shia militia are they giving defacto support to Sunni militants? If working class women resist restrictions on their rights does that mean they are defending bourgeois women and their political representatives (if there are any left in Iraq) or is it just a temporal overlap in interest?

on a more local issue, when members of Organise! wnet to a rally or march against an IRA or UVF atrocity are they defending the British state? If they had wrote articles and went on demo's criticising internment would this have been defending the republican movement?

I wasn't entirely serious, but I think that the differences on the whole voting thing get exagerated out of all proportion and end up with this circular discussion on some minor semantic point about what we really mean by "on principle". It's really not worth the effort.

Fairy nuff, I do think I'm being wrongly lumped in with Wayne and Joe when I don't actually agree with them on this either.

"Defend" may not have been the best choice of words. But in any case, it's incidental to my initial point, which was that workers sometimes having a short term interest in one bourgeois faction defeating another.

Yes, but the point I'm making is that there is a very real overlap in interest.

I see no parallel between a coup and an invasion plus as I've already indicated I'm not arguing for an automatic opposition to coups in general - there have been progressive ones as with the Carnation revolution, April 74 Portugal when the army overthrew the Salazaar dictatorship. That actually opened up rather than closed down a revolutionary period.

I've given two clear examples of where anarchists did/should have mobilised against coups. I've also pointed to some others where eithers anarchists did so or where it might make sense. There is plenty of material there without drawing up additional hypotheticals or flawed analogies.

I'm not sure myself that the anarchist mobilisation against the anti-Yeltsin coup makes a lot of sense - I was just using it as an example to indicate that these were actually situations that arose from time to time. However I say this with the benefit of hindsight and not actually living in Moscow at that time. Incidentally there is an article on this at http://struggle.ws/eastern/yeltsin_93.html written at the time but also another one looking back after 15 years at http://cia.bzzz.net/lessons_of_the_august_putsch by one of the anarchists which is quite critical of the whole thing and the movement at that time.

I think the bankruptcy of the radical sounding slogans approach to coups is very well illustrated by the terminological knots those who defend the actions of the CNT after July 19 are tying themselves into as they try and claim the CNT actions were not 'defending the regime'. They want to hold both their radical sounding slogans and their 'real politics' reality in their arms at the same time. Despite the fact that the reality included "The Catalan regional committee went so far as to give a list of 87 English firms which were to be respected at all cost"
http://struggle.ws/spain/FODtrans/p4_bor_rep.html

Waynes 'defence of the regime' in his article actually stops short of this - yet we are to believe that this directive was about promoting libertarian communism rather than defending the regime?

Thats the problem with a politics limiited to radical slogans, when push comes to shove they collapse into opportunism and panic. A proper preparation involves a proper political discussion of the issues.

There have already been a lot of good posts explaining why workers have to struggle independently, for example posts by Devrim, Revol, John and others. An instructive example that hasn't been referred to is the Kapp putsch in Germany 1920 - here you had a military offensive by the right which, while seeking the ovethrow of the social democratic government, was fundamentally aimed at crushing the working class, especially in its strongholds in the Ruhr. The class response was immediate and massive - general strike, formation of assemblies, councils, and the armed units numbering tens of thousands. The combination of general strike and armed resistance paralysed the coup attempt. But here again the question of class independence was posed very starkly. The workers had shown that they could, by their own actions, answer the atack from the right. But they were less well armed against the manoeuvres of the left. To deal with the situation, the social democratic government - which a year before had drowned the Berlin uprising in blood - adopted an unbelievably radical language, calling in some places for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialisation of production. At the same time it was marshalling its forces for the disarmament and repression of the insurrectionary workers. The Communist Party - which had recently excluded many of its best elements - vacillated between supporting the workers and acting as a "loyal opposition" to the social democratic government, which it presented as some kind of bulwark against militarism. In doing so, it disarmed the workers politically, strengthening the terrible illusion that the left and democracy are somehow less repressive than the right. In fact, it was, as it had been in 1919, the democratic left which then proceeded to carry out the repression.

We wrote an article on the Kapp putsch in International Review 90, part of a series on the lessons of the German revolution, but it's not online at the moment. Hopefully this will be rectified soonish.