What is all the fuss about Platformism?

Nah, dare I say it but I think the majority of proper anarchist organisations are either 'platformist' or influenced by and/or quite similar to the current. Nobody really likes the phrase and perhaps the earlier incarnations of what it could entail, esp. regarding to what extent an individual could disagree with the rest of the group, practical details in place of generalisations and so on. However IMO what it represents was fundamentally correct. We don't even need to mention the Draft Platform itself. but rather where it came from in revolutionary circumstances, its implications and rejection of the non-organisational, collaborationist and individualist tendencies.

Not all organisations are 'platformist' though, because not all organisations try to be highly organised and at the same time libertarian. Specifically there should be a good degree of close-knit theoretical and practical unity -of course along the lines of anarchist communsit ideas and direction.

General organisation is seen as an important but not synonymous part of the group's function. So it's completely necessary to be a part of and linked to all that's radical and aspiring to be in struggles, but there should be a solely anarchist communist meeting of individuals for the propagation of their own theory and propaganda. The CNT or even the FAI wasn't 'platformist' in the sense we mean because the CNT was firstly a union, involved in the process of negotiation and workplace improvement as well as appealling to any militant workers who didn't even have to be 'anarchists'. The FAI became an arm of the CNT and in anycase didn't display the high-level of strictly communist ideas and unity.

This isn't to say that 'platformists' didn't also support anarcho-syndicalism, but as being distinct from their theoretical (sometimes practical) work and indeed anarchism.

that's somewhat disingenous. The CNT was a wee bit more than that, and your use of negotiation implies it was involved in the mediation of struggle.

And do I need to mention the CNT's vast network of organs outside the workplace, and it's history of insurrection and illegality.

Your post reeks of the kind of revisionist platformist bullshit that see's in the CNT nothing but a malleable mass given direction only by the importing of anarchist ideas.

You don't say, however I was replying to why it wouldn't be a specific anarchist communist group. Also I think it's clear it was involved in the mediation of struggle, at so many points in its history but particularly immediately before the start of pistolerismo and of course during the Revolution. Why is any of this difficult to believe? When you've got the typical union features of a moderate section, economic permanency and improvement etc. it will at some point confront more independent struggles, and there will always be a risk of greater bureaucratisation and fetishising the organisation in itself. At the same time, unlike complete anti-unionists, I believe the CNT had a massively positive effect throughout its development - without which there would've been no revolutionary movement.

It was given direction by a variety of ideas, syndicalism above all. I s'pose I'm revisionist if by that we take all pre-existing understanding of the apparent defeat of anarchism in Spain to be a bit shite, in all honesty. I won't talk about the contradiction of a amphorphous mass being molded by anarchist ideas.

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No, because I probably know more about it than you do revol and its irrelevant to the subject.

Nah, the 'platform' is the draft for organisational unity among class struggle anarchists* not a front. The class front is sometimes used, like the un-pc vanguard, to mean a specific organisation which as I've said is based around theory and propaganda - so naturally has to be solely anarchist communist. That's distinct from mass organisation which involves as many people as possible in defence and furtherance of immediate economic gains, but actually more than that. It should be open to anyone desiring radical change in their work-place etc. but characterised by 'self-management and radical autonomy' as far as possible. (The IWW of the future?)

The subject is interesting and the reason for this split, and more, is founded on core, but sometimes quite complex, reasons. The stuff on the Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (of Italy) website deals with a lot of these questions and really gives food for thought. - Take 'raising consciousness'; it's taken for granted here that mass organisations exist themselves for "the development of libertarian revolutionary consciousness". Specific, 'political' groups aim to encourage a class consciousness (a degree of clarity and so on), but anarchist communist ideas and practice will only take root when "mass organizations apply that revolutionary logic which is not a necessary prerogative of theirs, but which is at the same time naturally inborn in them."

*...aside from the basics and an historical source I'd say forget it. I personally reject the term platformist and I really hate how the debate always gets stuck in post-Makhnovist musings in Paris. The ideas that came out of that were important, actually pivotal, in anarchist history but what we're really talking about is (anarchist) communist organisation in relation to everyday life. That can't be, and in fact isn't, ossified in the what some dead Ukranians/Russians said.

Again the CNT couldn't have been 'platformist' and quite a few things led to their collaboration, although I think purely syndicalist organisation contributed to it. Perhaps things would've been radically different with an independent FAI-type group, but IMO more than going beyond union activity it would've been necessary that the proletariat relied more and more on their own autonomy, their own already developing libertarian networking, and not limited themselves to the confines of a particular group but to all of society.

The thing with platformism is that it removes the anarchists away from the working class and implies that the working masses need ideological leadership just like the commies and all political parties.

It does not see the working class as having an ability to mould its own struggles.

Reply to the Platform - by "several Russian anarchists" (Sobol, Schwartz, Steimer, Volin, Lia, Roman, Ervantian, Fleshin) http://libcom.org/library/reply-to-platform-synthesist-volin

Yeah the radical difference would be a smaller organisation. The CNT did what it had to do in spain to ensure the defence of the its members and the working class.

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"your use of negotiation implies it was involved in the mediation of struggle."

Was it not then?

No it wasn't.

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Are you 100% sure? Frankly, yes it was. Unless you imagine some 1000s of people just straining at the leash to physically attack the bosses in every dispute - no matter how minor. That's idiot SWP_style syndicalist shit designed for college kids. The CNT did mediate, and *should have* mediated during the periods of the 20s and 30s when it could - for tactical reasons. It built up it's long term support *through* mediation. Have a look at the IWW for what happens to those who don't - nice red card but oh, you're deported/dead/in nick.

Unless you don't know what the terms means and think it just means 'sell out'? Sorry, doesn't work that way with mass organisations.

I think the problem is that the word mediation has so many implicit connatations.

For example it implies a middle party between the workers and the bosses eg union bureacrats.

It is obvious of course that the CNT fought for reforms and got them, just as a wildcat strike fights for a set of demands and calls itself off after it gets them, it's perfectly sensible, infaqct it is as you pointed out only twats in the SWP who think that every strike is the midwife of social revolution.

This is why I said it implies, and i think the use of negoiation was a deliberate attempt to conjure up images of CNT bureacrats selling out.

But I would not call the ending of a particular strike or struggle for a demand a form of mediation as the struggle was under the control of the workers themselves.

Exactly. Any "mediation" meaning "negotiation" would have been done by the workers themselves, through their assemblies, no? Even if these assemblies were majority-CNT membership ones. I think this is different from what is implied by "mediation", which is that full-time union officials come in and negotiate on behalf of the workers. As far as I know the CNT never did this - and couldn't because they didn't have any FTOs. Is this correct? butchers?

I would disagree with WTY saying "they did what they could to defend the working class" though, as it seems to excuse their error in joining the cross-class anti-fascist alliance. I think it's "excusable" in that it was the class's error, and the CNT expressing quite well the democratic will of the class went along with it - but the CNT and the class were wrong and it shouldn't be supported with hindsight.

As far as i know it was kept as close to the actual workplace/territory as possible, i'm not sure that this didn't mean on occasion regional or industry bods (elected recallable etc)having an input.But i can't 100% say one way or the other atm. There certainly wasn't a section employed by the union to negotiate on behalf of others, they were well aware of the dangers of that (which doesn't mean that this didn't happen via informal means either)and took pretty much every precaution possible.

Hi WTY, the idea is in fact the complete oppositeof what you've just said but I think I can see why you'd think that. Especially when you read the older, more crude texts in this debate you'll find some really unfortunate uses of language (though as always we have to bear translation in mind) and some perhaps overly simple ideas of 'raising consciousness'. This kind of thing goes all the way back to Bakunin, which isn't a coincidence, and gets worse (before better) in the so-called 'Manifesto of Libertarian Communism' etc. But fundamentally, things like 'vanguard', 'party', 'ideological guidance' etc. can be, and have been, held up as examples of an apparent over-bearing authoritarian side; it's funny to see that people really don't understand what was implied, - indeed that most anarchists, Kropotkin and Malatesta included, used some of these terms is not usually mentioned.

To carry on with the arse-numbingly boring historical take (something I said we should really have left behind and not continue to conflate with present thought and strategy), however, look at what Voline's criticisms of (his idea of) 'platformism' were: he presents valid points on the Draft Platform itself but his classic philosophy of synthesis is fucking dire. We're expected to be a mish-mash of individualists, lifestylists, class-strugglists, insurrectionists. Any real, concentrated attempt at theoretical understanding (esp. from anarchist communist take) is frowned upon, conscious revolutionary strategy will spring naturally and en mass.

The best challenge of the core ideas came from Malatesta , from someone for whom I've got a lot of respect. Yet even here, his view on what 'collective responsibility' is, and his take on the different anti-capitalist currents [which be found on the Anarkismo site] are IMO really quite flawed. It would be tyrannical in his view to force people to accept communism, of course and impossible, so we should allow for the continuation of the use of money etc. if that's what some people want. Oh dear! Errico missed the point of the social relations of capital and the only way we can break from them.

In reality, we're for the increasing participation and standing of anarchist ideas, practice, examples, debate in every area of working class life. For them to be taken up by more and more of the working class to the point that it becomes a developing, negating part of it. We want to have our own primarily a.c. organisations to maintain a critical space for the on-going understanding of communism rather than mixing it with any particular union, or set practice - which is crucial to maintaining our ideas. This is not about 'leadership', that would presume that we had a ready-made plan and that revolution wasn't an organic, changing current made by us within but against capital.

That should not mean we put down our own thinking and historical experiences. If we've got something to tell people about their lives, why and some way to how they should change them (and we do!) it'd be about "example and persuasion", encouraging and constand picking away at old delusions - not a minority leading the majority. If anarchism became more taken on board, it would mean the revolutionising of self-avowed 'anarchists' and anarchism as much as anything else.

But we naturally think spontaneist beliefs (held by most anarcho-communists, including Kropotkin) do not reflect what we know about the development of a revolutionary presence. The flip side of this, talked about by the better a.c groups, would be ideologism which expects a revolutionary stance to be taken automatically, to be 'led' and copied, "before the need for [it] is autonomously established, gradually and through practice." That also is rejected, but unsurprisingly it's what many people think we mean.

:rbstar:

Yes it was, and yes it certainly does. I didn't realise until I read Dolgoff - text here:
http://libcom.org.uk/library/controversy-anarchists-spanish-revolution-sam-dolgoff

That's not quite what I meant. Mediation happened on one hand in regards the syndicalist framing of the organisation, the fact that it had to be radical, change things, but at the same time exist. So you've got this tension between insurrectionary, revolutionary sides and progressively unionist sides. In this case it doesn't necessarily mean that there were high-up individuals separate from everybody else having nice chats with the bosses. It meant that any challenging of the system also involved concessions to it, there were parameters. So there's the idea of a 'mediation' (ideological moderation to a balancing of radicalism etc.) occuring which is implicit in the structures themselves.

At various times there were clear reformists in the CNT who, even though they were delegates and part of an organisation with a good deal of radicalism, came to have a greater voice than most. You had the CNT official paper acting for many of years as a moderate mouth-piece and what they stood for was theoretically very much concerned with mediation - some moderates even wanted to co-operate more closely with the UGT, or Republicans etc.

Continuing with that, charismatic delegates obviously did then have more influence as time went on and some of them of course had a more overt mediating function, in regards their political environment, in regards their take on situations and propaganda. This all had a big effect on workers' decisions and so on. The CNT was greatly pushed by independent, often insurrectionary, activity and autonomous strikes, when it didn't decide it itself, and it yet also had throughout its history a tendency, at least in part, to reign them in. This happened particularly when the CNT came to be more than just a big union - when it actually came to be an extremely influential organisation, capable of doing more than ever.

The greatest point is that you can have workers run things relatively independently, 'workers' control' and you can have them manage things, deciding things directly for themselves. What's often confused for workers' power is in fact workers taking over but not touching the underlying basis of what they're doing. So that 'the struggle was under the control of the workers themselves' was true in many cases, but should really be assessed more deeply than that. At the most crucial periods, the struggle was most clearly not.

Other than argue for abandoning the collaboration, for people to fight the republican government and to further the revolution, I'm not sure. Though stealing the central bank's gold and getting involved in the May Days fighting would've helped.