ANARCHIST JOURNAL ISSUE ZERO

18 Pages·2011·2.52 MB·English

BLACK
LIGHT
ANARCHIST JOURNAL
ISSUE ZERO

CONTENTS
MYTHS ABOUT ANARCHISM #1:
IS ANARCHISM ANTI-SOCIALIST?
by Alice Barricadas 2
VOINA
by Buddy Holly 5
THE NECESSARY CONDITION:
ANARCHISM IN INDONESIA
by Anon 8
WHAT IS ANARCHA-FEMINISM?
by Rebecca 12
BLACK LIGHT is a publication of the Melbourne Anarchist Club.
This is issue zero: a test edition for us to work out the bugs, A HOME FOR THE FAR RIGHT
develop editorial policy and to see if we can keep going. It was
launched on the 140th anniversary of the Paris Commune, by Slackbastard 17
Saturday, 19th of March, 2011.
You can send letters and responses to:
[email protected] MYTHS ABOUT ANARCHISM #2:
ANARCHISM IS INHERENTLY
Check out our aims and principles on our website: DISORGANISED
mac.anarchobase.com by Brendan 24
The Melbourne Anarchist Club is located at:
62 St Georges Rd, Northcote, Australia. THE PARIS COMMUNE

Typeface: Trade Gothic. by Buddy Holly 29
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32
The Commune and its council were organising. Start reading about the
reluctant to give up all the old ideas Commune, start arguing with others
of representative government. Direct about its success and failures – we
democracy was ignored as the interests must be clear on the lessons of the past.
MYTHS ABOUT ANARCHISM #1: of the people were pushed aside in the
interests of the council. The council With that said, the best way we can
became more concerned with defending show solidarity with those who built,
Paris from the coming invasion by fought and died for the Commune is
Thiers’s soldiers rather than building to build an anarchist movement that
IS ANARCHISM
the social revolution. This is the main not only strikes fear into the hearts of
anarchist criticism of the Commune the ruling class, but tears away at the
– it did not go far enough. Instead of world they have forced us to live in. We
abolishing government, the Commune can turn our attention to Tunisia, Egypt
set up a new one. The council ended and Libya, and feel inspired by their
up as the ‘state within the Commune’. revolutionary actions but watching and
Anarchists within the Commune waiting will not get us anywhere. We
ANTI-
argued for organising democratic mass must return to organising in our own
assemblies, without the interference of communities against the oppression
any form of statist control. This was not we suffer everyday. Let these examples
to be. Thiers soldiers entered Paris on teach us and inspire us.
May 21 and, after a week of heavy street Vive la commune!
fi ghting, on May 28 the Commune was
lost. Thirty-thousand communards were
SOCIALIST?
massacred in the weeks afterward. Their
blood still stains the red of the tricolore,
and stands as a reminder of the violence
and repression of the state.
This article is in no way a detailed
account of the events of the Commune
nor is it an apt analysis of why the
Commune failed. Those books already
BY ALICE BARRICADAS exist. Peter Kropotkin’s The Commune
of Paris and Mikhail Bakunin’s The Paris
Commune and the Idea of the State are
two important anarchist commentaries
that deserve a wider audience. Image on page 28: Michel Louise,
Instead, this article has been written to anarchist and participant in the Paris
re-establish the Commune in anarchist commune.
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2 31
M I
ARCH 18 MARKS THE T IS NO SECRET THAT WITHIN when anarchism fi rst emerged in Europe,
THIRTY-THOUSAND
140TH ANNIVERSARY activist circles in Melbourne, or famously articulated the broad position:
COMMUNARDS WERE
of the Paris Commune. other cities in Australia I have
MASSACRED IN THE WEEKS
One of the most visited, that anarchism can be a “Freedom without Socialism is
AFTERWARD. THEIR BLOOD
important events in confused idea. Sometimes this privilege and injustice... Socialism
STILL STAINS THE RED
revolutionary history, reaches extreme dimensions. There without freedom is slavery and
OF THE TRICOLORE, AND
the Commune was an example of the is probably no greater myth about brutality.” Bakunin, Stateless
STANDS AS A REMINDER
working class organising for themselves, anarchism, sometimes circulating Socialism: Anarchism
OF THE VIOLENCE AND
in an attempt to establish a free, within so-called libertarian circles, but
REPRESSION OF THE STATE.
progressive and democratic society. usually an aspersion cast from without, Anarchism without socialism is also an
It was an important event for Paris that anarchism can somehow be historical anomaly. There will always
and France (although it is still largely anti-socialist, or right wing. be people who will make use of popular
ignored in French schoolbooks) and Predictably, this infuriated Thiers, head rhetoric to try to lend credence to their
for the working class the world over. of the new provisional government Without a clear distinction between ideas (just think of ‘national-socialism’).
It was also an important event for the after the Prussian victory. However, liberalism and anarchism, the latter However, to claim that anarchism is
development of anarchist ideas and he ordered all French troops out of loses any meaning whatsoever. For simply the war of the individual against
tactics that should be remembered and Paris in an attempt to stop more of anarchists there is no contradiction everybody else, is to pluck a word out
learnt from. them from deserting and joining the between individual freedom and of its social context, away from the
Commune. Soon the people of the socialism (or equality, society, the millions of participants past and present
As France saw defeat by Prussia in the Commune began to initiate reforms collective). The so-called freedom of in a long historical movement, for whom
Franco-Prussian War, regular French to their way of life. The separation of one individual to persecute another anarchism has been a socialist idea.
troops were sent to Paris to recover church and state was declared and all is not freedom, but arbitrary and
the Parisian National Guard’s cannons church property became public property. illegitimate authority. Anarchism is not I am not claiming that all anarchists
before it was taken by the people. Workers went about setting up many of liberalism, which places the authority have always known with clarity their
They were too late. When ordered by their workplaces as co-operatives run by of one individual or class of people own ideas. The confusion has
their offi cers to fi re on the people, the workers’ councils – by the end of May, above the rest in the name of liberty sometimes been sown by anarchists
soldiers refused and instead turned their they numbered at least 40, including (private property). Anarchism argues for themselves, with attempts to write
weapons on their offi cers. The National the Louvre as a munitions factory. The equality in the name of freedom and the individualists such as the nineteenth
Guard, a citizen’s militia initially formed Women’s Union was formed, demanding individual, and rejects a false dichotomy century philosopher Stirner into the
during the French Revolution, then gender equality, equal pay and the right between the two. anarchist tradition. These attempts
held free elections where a council was to professional education for girls. Soon are essentially revisionist, and have
elected by the citizens of Paris. The Thiers ordered troops back to Paris to Anarchism is confused with the been made by activists such as Emma
council members, who were instantly bring an end to the Commune. The liberal-individualist tradition by Goldman and many insurrectionary
recallable, paid an average wage and council, initially set up to represent state-socialists. The latter essentially anarchists today. These may provide
had equal status with all communards, the communards became caught up has no discourse of individuality within some confusing explanation as to how
declared Paris an independent in fi ghting a new war against their old socialism, and in practice labels as Stirner’s war of the self against all
commune and desired that the rest oppressors. With this, the Commune bourgeois any desire by working-class else can relate to the communitarian
of France should follow to become a committed massive mistakes that for autonomy from the state. Bakunin, impulse of the anarchist movement.
confederation of communes. ultimately led to its downfall. widely recognised as the leading fi gure Or they may simply ignore the
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platformist, insurrectionaries and
ANARCHISM WITHOUT
others?). We could no more expect this
SOCIALISM IS ALSO
than to expect ‘Marxism’ to adequately
AN HISTORICAL ANOMALY.
describe the differences between
Leninists, mensheviks or autonomists.
However, those who move away from
contradiction altogether. However, the the basic idea, that the freedom of one
attempt is doubly ironic because no depends on the freedom of all, and
one would have been more appalled at which translates politically into common
the egalitarian and revolutionary aims ownership of wealth, are moving far
THE PARIS
of either Goldman or insurrectionary away from the anarchist ideal.
anarchists today, than Stirner himself.
‘All anarchists are socialists, but not
all socialists are anarchists’ said
Labadie, an individualist anarchist of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth
COMMUNE
centuries.1 The point should be drilled
in: even the so-called individualist
tradition within anarchism is socialist.
The point is illustrative, even though
‘mutualists’ such as Labadie and Tucker
stood apart from the mass movement of
anarchism at the end of the nineteenth
century. That is to say, even though
these individualists may have been
utopian and had very abstract ideas, BY BUDDY HOLLY
without some notion of equality in
the ownership of wealth (the means
of production or property) ‘anarchism’
becomes a completely useless term.
Being the term for a socialist discourse
of freedom, anarchism is necessarily
broad; it may not adequately describe
how mass anarchist movements have
operated in detail (anarcho-syndicalist,
1 Anarchist FAQ: http://bit.ly/bv7kz3
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VOINA
( )
BY BUDDY HOLLY
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28 5
I
F YOU’VE HEARD OF VOINA AT ALL, Dimitri Medvedev. [see image on the munitions and foodstuffs on a large utopians. It is of no surprise that
you’ve probably heard that Banksy facing page] scale, collectivising all undertakings Barcelona was the last place to fall in
is their biggest fan. He’s even of essential interest to the people the Spanish Civil War.
giving them money. They fuck in p Decemberists commemoration – the in pursuance of that end, these,
museums, tip over police cars group staged a hanging of three self-evidently, are the tasks of the The most important fact to emphasise
and draw dicks on bridges. It all illegal migrant workers, a gay man hour. Thus far, they have been in this discussion, is that in anarchist
sounds a bit crazy, really. But Voina are and LGBT Jewish activist in a carried out by non-governmental, controlled areas during the revolution,
activists with their collective bile aimed Moscow supermarket on Moscow City non-centralistic, non-militaristic the collectives were not only highly
fi rmly at the Russian state and it’s all Day in protest to the Moscow Major’s procedures.” organised, as demonstrated, but they
getting a little bit uncomfortable. openly racist and homophobic achieved this without vanguards or
remarks (views shared by the It must be acknowledged, that Blanquist conspirators. They were,
Voina (Russian for war) was started in majority of Russia’s rulling class). unlike the Red Army of the Russian rather, spontaneously constructed
2007 by two philosophy students, Oleg Revolution, the CNT-FAI forces were and self-administered by the will
Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol. Leonid p Dick Captured by KGB! – in protest volunteer militias, run on democratic and accord of free individuals and
Nikolayev and Alex Plutser-Sarno make to the IEF being held in Saint lines, with offi cers elected and subject associations. The working class of
up the main group, and they are joined Petersburg, the group managed to to recall. These anti-fascist militias Spain did not require being “thrown
by dozens of others to perform their ‘art paint a massive 65m phallus on the were co-ordinated at a higher level here and there, appointed, commanded
actions’. From absurdist beginnings Liteyny drawbridge before it rose. As via the Central Committee of Anti- just like soldiers” as Trotsky would
their actions are started to create the bridge opened up, the ‘Cosmic Fascist Militias, which delegated have us believe, nor did it necessitate
trouble in Russia. Fueled by their Dick’ stood opposite the KGB different commissions and committees “thousands subordinating their will
hatred for the Russian state, Voina’s building. with varying tasks, related to both to the will of one” as Lenin argued
actions have aimed, in particular, at revolutionary and military matters. during the early days of the Russian
the police, the clergy, and current In November of last year, two of Voina’s In fact, these institutions were the Revolution. In much the same sense as
Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev. The members, Leonid and Oleg, were organisational descendants of those Proudhon’s seemingly paradoxical tenet,
state has now resorted to violence, arrested following their art action, similarly created during the Paris that Anarchy is order, Anarchism, by its
censorship and even praise, recently Palace Revolution, which saw the group Commune, which were, ironically, nature, is philosophically geared toward
nominating the group for a national art tipping over 7 police cars in the centre lauded by Marx and Bakunin alike as organisation, not the converse. It is the
prize (something the group has rejected of Saint Petersburg. They were thrown the democratic organisms of a future State, and its counterpart Capital, that
outright). in prison, enduring some pretty terrible socialist society. These organisations breed turmoil, disarray and disorder.
conditions, and are awaiting trial on and their federated institutions
To demonstrate their methods, here charges associated with the action. This organised and administered to such a
are some of their most notable actions is where Banksy’s money comes in. He remarkable degree that their greatest
to date: put up the bail money for Leonid and accomplishment, according to anarchist
Oleg and has donated a whole wad of historian and theorist Rudolf Rocker,
p Fuck for the Heir – Medved’s Little money for their legal costs. was in the fi eld of industry. Prior to
Bear! – the group organised an orgy the confl ict, Catalonia possessed not a
in the State Biological Museum to The latest news to come from the single factory manufacturing munitions;
commiserate the inauguration of group follows a press conference held by 1938, 283 plants were operable.
by Leonid and Oleg after their release. Hardly the work of disorganised
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of anarchist initiative, solidarity and anarchist industrial heartland – three-
most importantly, organisation. We fourths of industry was collectivised
could of course, recite and regurgitate under workers’ self-management. In
all the anarchist accounts of the rural areas like Aragon, also organised
revolution, one after another. However, by the FAI-CNT, the fi gure was at least
as the contemporary theoretician 60%, with over 400 co-operative
Rudolf Rocker noted at the time, even farms established, according to Sam
bourgeois sources were compelled to Dolgoff. In their tangible realisation
praise the organisational capacities of of the dreams of Bakunin, Kropotkin
the anarchist movement in Spain: and others, in certain areas the
“In the midst of the Civil War the anarchists demonstrated (and in the
anarchists have proved themselves process settled the historic debate
to be political organisers of the between anarcho-collectivists and
fi rst rank… the anti-capitalist anarcho-communists) that federated
transformation took place without communes organised upon principles
having to resort to a dictatorship. of mutual exchange could exist
The members of the syndicates without resort to wage-work or money. As they left the press conference, they serve the purpose of highlighting
are their own masters [authors Equally established, is that to the Leonid, Oleg, Natalia and Kasper what is truly wretched in this world –
emphasis] and carry on the extent that the state was destroyed (Oleg and Natalia’s two year old son) capitalism. Voina deserve your support.
production and distribution of the during the Spanish Revolution, there were set upon by seven plainclothes But there is more than that. We should
products of their labour under their did not emerge barbarism as is often police. Attacked from behind, the go further and organise a direct action
own management.” levelled at “utopian dreamers” such three activists suffered head and hand movement against the state.
as ourselves, but a highly complex and injuries. Kasper also suffered bruises on
Equally persuasive is the account of organised society. his head. Clearly, the Russian state has If you want more information on Voina,
Italian anti-fascist Carlo Rosselli: “In been offended! their livejournal account seems to be
three months Catalonia has been Of similar import is that not only the group’s main mouthpiece. They
able to set up a new social order on was a highly co-ordinated social Criticism of the group is aimed at their have an entry with English overviews
the ruins of an ancient system. This revolution taking place in anarchist politics. From the content of their (including photos and videos) of their
is chiefl y due to the anarchists, who dominated areas, without rulers, State actions to their ‘anti-manifesto’ (you actions from 2007 to present, as well
have revealed a remarkable sense of administration and on a completely would be stupid to take it all seriously), as their ‘anti-manifesto’ and links to
proportion, realistic understanding, and libertarian basis, but at the same, some of their politics are indeed English news and interviewers. Go to
organising ability.” If indeed Lenin the CNT-FAI was involved in massive questionable. Are they anarchists? I http://bit.ly/d10NCi
was correct, that “the history of all personnel and logistical operations as don’t know, but they are anti-capitalist
countries, shows that the working class, they conducted their war effort against a activists, who have chosen art as their Also, Free Voina was set up after Leonid
exclusively by its own effort, is able to well-armed and well-fi nanced opponent. form of resistance. They manipulate and Oleg were arrested and also hosts
develop only trade-union consciousness” According to the CNT’s adopted the media, the artworld and fuck with a lot of information on the group in
then that trade-union consciousness in manifesto of July 1936: liberalism not only in Russia, but English (http://en.free-voina.org).
Spain was of a bold, revolutionary and “Co-ordinating the forces of the anti- worldwide. Their art actions are not
historic complexion: in Catalonia – the fascist front, organising supplies of going to bring about a revolution, but
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T
HIS MYTH, LIKE SO MANY OF of reasoning. Again, within this
the pervasive misnomers perspective – much like the argument
directed at the Left- from the Right – the State is paramount
THE
libertarian/anarchist school(s), in ensuring both order and organisation.
fi nds itself accused from both Considering the extensive literature
Left and Right, primarily on within Libertarian-socialist thought
differing grounds, both being equally dealing with conservative depictions
misinformed and ideologically motivated. of anarchism and their notions of
In the case of the Right-wing argument, the imperative nature of the State,
the explanations are manifestly self- this article will deal solely with the
NECESSARY
evident: without the State – upon which, inaccurate allegations of Leninist
not incidentally, capitalist exploitation doctrines, and will discuss primarily
relies for its continued plunder – human examples of a historic nature.
society would veer towards barbarism;
the basic rationale being that without As aforementioned, the authoritarian-
the various State-enforced sanctions Left’s arguments against anarchism,
– prisons, courts and the like, human principally concerning itself with
CONDITION:
beings lack the fundamental decency anarchism’s greatest accomplishment
to treat their kind in a just and humane and historic period – that of
manner. Accordingly, State power is a revolutionary Spain – contends that
must, lest we collectively revert to rape, anarchist failures are due chiefl y to
murder and common banditry. the nature of anarchism itself: diverse
and disparate in creed, and ostensibly
Conversely, and far more interestingly, unwilling to demand uniformity – both
ANARCHISM
is the contention from the ideological and practical – for the sake
Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist/Trotskyist of collective advances. Let us deal then,
authoritarian-Left: that anarchism with the idea that anarchism historically
by its nature lacks organisation, has lacked suffi cient unity and
presumably through a lack of doctrinal coherence, using Spain as an example.
coherence, and an unwillingness to
wield State power in defence of What has been described – not by
IN INDONESIA
proletarian insurrection and revolution. anarchist literature but rather the
This being the oft-cited assertion BBC – as “the greatest experiment in
regarding revolutionary Spain, and workers’ self-management Western
its subsequent defeat at the hand of Europe has ever seen,” (and I think we
Fascist armies; all other historic, social, could argue, without much controversy,
political or economic justifi cations the greatest the world has ever seen)
being superfl uous, given the was a product, as Orwell describes
demonstrative clarity of this line so vividly in his timeless recollection,
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