New translation of 'the platform'

The new translation conveniently ignores the much abused term "vanguard" then?

.... is just what I was thinking.

"Cutting edge," eh? Just out of interest, what's the word in Russian which has been translated here as "cutting edge"?

Is this like when they do updated & trendy versions of the bible?

C'mon Steve -- the platform is far more important than the bible. You know that!

JoeBlack's return from the printer's

Anarchists used to all happily use the term vanguard back in the day. Apparently the Platform's main translator - Voline - was its main detractor though, so some accuse him of distorting meanings to slag it off.

I am amazed that the way in which Voline acted around the Paltform isn 't better known by its latter-day detractors, tbh. It is well covered in Skirda's "Facing the Enemy".

I can also see the point in recasting the Platform in language that makes sense today, especially if you think it still has things to teach us.

What are your main criticisms of the platform, Joe?

Oi. Go and post on my thread on vanguards. I asked this question first! Vanguard was indeed a word happily used by anarchists until recently, Kropotkin actually edited a periodical called Vanguard.

Since most people have a completely different understanding of the term to the original translators, it seems fairly reasonable to me.

Though "cutting edge" is a horrible phrase, it really is.

Yeah it's way worse!

I won't say more till checking out MoM's thread (good to see you back btw).

What would be a better term, though? I can't think of anything that doesn't give the wrong impression of what the Platform was arguing for. "Vanguard" has completely different connotations than when the Platform was first translated into English.

Yeah, basically any section of the working class can be in the vanguard of the class struggle - it was the FBU a couple of years back, the miners in the eighties, and fuck help us the civil service and lecturers most recently. Most people (who would even use the term vanguard) don't use the term that way or think of it like that at all these days though.

I think the problem arose when the term vanguard became more associated with the Bolshevik thing of building the party as the formalised vanguard of the working class, the professional revolutionary cadre that would act as the 'collective memory' of the class, learn the lessons of history and tell the rest of us all what to do to successfully carry out the revolution.

I don't think that historical interpretation is correct. It was explicitly understood to mean not just an intellectual vanguard or the most militant section of the working class as you suppose, but also an organisational vanguard. The FAI would be the best example of this, they were formed to stop the CNT becoming a reformist organisation and consciously gained substantial control over the CNT. It's not just that the use of the word has changed, it appears to me that most anarchist theory now rejects the idea of an organisational vanguard, a group of militants who aim to 'push the revolution forward,' rather than just disusing the language to disassociate themselves from Leninists.

I am not sure that this shift of emphasis away from the need for organisation towards spontaneity has been a productive or desirable one.

And we all know how well that ended

That's often claimed but i've never seen any evidence for it from the CNT or FAI themselves, rather than people's assumptions. Do you have any? Because one would think that such a federation (which would be, for all intents and purposes, platformist) would have been to the CNT's left and not to its right by sending people such as Federica Montseny to Cortes.

I dunno why people don't use avant garde - means exactly the same thing without the trottism.

The first page of this forum doesn't look very apolitical to me.

Joe I think you know full well peoples problem with the Platform.

It's either a meaningless document arguing a redundant point, or it's a pseudo Leninist document that argues for a national executive and a permanent "leadership of ideas". In this it is even behind the ICC who atleast accept that the "leadership of ideas" is something fluxuating.

I also have huge problems with it's mechanical concept of the "vanguard" and the role of so called "revolutionaries".

well it think the general point is that people are dismissive cos it is a rather uninteresting and unprofound document with the very liberal interpretations people bestow on it, or it is an interesting document but one represents little more than a libertarian leninism, where all that changes is the politics being argued.

Revol you're way too fucking smart and well-read too use an idiotic and meaningless phrase like "libertarian leninism". What's next, "fair trade"?

The only "leninist" thing about it is the school of falsification that equates Makhno with Lenin, Arshinov with Trotsky.

I know you were joking Jack, but still...

well sorry but if we take the Platform in it's strictest terms, with the national executive et al then I see no difference between it and the Leninist concept of the Party as advocated by the ICC etc.

If we give it a generous reading we are left with the non point that people need to come to collective agreements.

Sorry that's only a non-point with non-anarchists.

I mean FFS malatesta was the only one with good critiques of the platform, and some of his strongest reservations seem to be based around faulty translations (by Voline no less). I have a lot of respect for Voline and I don't want to insinuate that he would have mistranslated the platform out of spite, but he certainly hated the "non point that people need to come to collective agreements". The platform is not a Bible that Bakunin descended out of the sky to give to the Dielo Trouda group - it is one solid expression of the organized tendency of anarchist-communism that had earlier manifested around Bakunin and would later manifest around the FoD and Georges Fontenis, not in a mystical sort of way but as a general trend of learning from failures. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I think the platform is the best thing to come out of the russian revolution.

the platform had fuck all squared to do with the Friends of Durruti, beyond various platformists (not to mention left communist and trot groups) attempts to root it within that tradition.

Right, now try reading my post rather than just grabbing individual words so you can make a halfway coherent point.