Bratach Dubh: Collected Articles Volume 1: Insurrectionary Writings

220 Pages·2013·2.17 MB·English

by  Alfredo M. Bonnano

BRATACHD UBH
Collected Articles: Vol I
BratacDhu bh:
Collected
1
lnsurrectionary Writings
BrataDcuhh hC:o llec1t ed
Anarchiasnmd t heN ationLailb eratSitornu ggle
AnarchPiasmtp hlet1 s
1976
TheS trugAgglaei nFsats ciBsemg inwsi tht he
StruggAlgea inBsotl shevism
1981
WorkerA'ust onomy
AnarchPiasmtp hlet2 s
Elephant Editions
ArdenPtr esrse print
Coverde sigbny1 882 distro
2015
Published by Aragom Moser and Leona Benton
Printed at "The Compound"
1818 Carleton St. Berkeley, CA 94703-1908
Contents
Anarchism and the National Liberation Struggle 1
Contributions to the Revolutionary Struggle
Intended to Be Discussed, Corrected, and
Principally Put Into Practice Without Delay 35
The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the
Struggle Against Bolshevism 111
Workers' Autonomy 139
Workers' Councils, Self-Management, and
Developments in Proletarian Autonomy 185
Anarchism and the
National Liberation Struggle
Introduction
Anarchists have tended to shy away from the problem
of the national liberation struggle or rejected it entirely
because of their internationalist principles.
If internationalism is not to be merely meaningless
rhetoric, it must imply solidarity between the
proletariat of different countries or nations. This is a
concrete term. When there is a revolution, it will be as
it has been in the past, in a precise geographical area.
How much it remains there will be directly linked to
the extent of that internationalism, both in terns of
solidarity and of the spreading of the revolution itself.
The patriotism of the people at a basic,
unadulterated level is the struggle for their own
autonomy, a natural urge, a 'product of the life of a
social group united by bonds of genuine solidarity and
not yet enfeebled by reflection or by the effect of
economic and political interests as well as religious
abstractions'. (Bakunin) Just as the State is an anti­
human construction, so is nationalism a concept
designed to transcend and thwart the class struggle
which exists wherever capitalism does (all over the
world). If the efforts of the people who are living in
the social and economic ferment of what is happening
under the name of national liberation are left to their
leaders, they risk finding themselves no better off than
before, living in micro-corporate States under whatever
flag is chosen for them. Anti-imperialism can mask
local corporatism if the struggle is not put in class
terms at a micro- as well as macroscopic level. As the
following article demonstrates, many of the Marxist
groups engaged in national liberation struggles are
none too clear on this point.
Alfredo Bonanno's article was written in response
to a real situation, that of Italy, and in particular, Sicily.
At the present time III that country, where economic
and political disintegration is rife, the weakest link
(Sicily) is being subjected to propaganda and actions
directed towards creating a state of tension in order to
lay the shaky foundations for a separatist solution. This
solution, a separate Sicilian State, is being proposed by
the forces of the right, i.e. the fascists, who have formed
a tenuous working alliance with the Mafia, who
together are the willing servants of US interests
through the intermediary of the CIA. Each party has
its own interests to establish and protect: the Mafia
would gain access to political contacts and facilities for
financial transactions, the Americans would keep their
hold on an economy which is at present seeking
solutions from the Communist Party, and maintain a
strategic base in the Mediterranean, and the fascists,
once in power, would gain credibility, enabling them
to extend this power towards the North.
Needless to say the Sicilian proletariat would pay
the price for this solution to the country's problems, in
the same way as up until now they have paid in sweat
2
and blood for the development of the North, as well as
supplied cheap labour to the German and Swiss
economies. This situation cannot be discarded as
irrelevant to revolutionaries simply because when it
reaches the international eye it will be masked as a
nationalist struggle. The basic truth of Sicilian reality is
a super-exploited proletariat whose only solution can
be sought through armed struggle for workers'
autonomy through a federal or collectivist system of
production of exchange.
To come nearer home, two situations immediately
present themselves: the first, Ireland, which tends to be
left aside as being too complicated, or unconditionally
supported as an anti-imperialist war. This anti­
imperialism needs to be clarified. That the Irish
proletariat will never run their own lives while British
soldiers are occupying their land is a fact. But an
internal dominator, whether Republican or otherwise,
with its own army or State apparatus, would be no less
an obstacle. That the seeds of revolution that have
always been identified with national independence
exist in Ireland is a fact, but this fact is constantly being
distorted by those with an interest in using racial and
religious differences to their own ends. Only through
revolutionary economic and social change, through the
autonomous actions of the Irish exploited as a whole,
supported by the exploited of Britain and the rest of
the world, will ethnic differences be redimensioned
and superstructural fantasies be destroyed. Counter­
infonnation must be brought out in opposition to the
media which have thrived on stirring up hatred around
irrational issues. The economic foundations of these
irrational issues should be laid bare to the world, and
economic solutions worked for through direct action
to put production, distribution and defence in the
hands of the people themselves.
In Scotland big business has found new roots, and
the nationalist argument is proving to be effective in
getting workers to sacrifice themselves for the false
goal of'building the national economy' and 'curbing
inflation', through 'independence from Whitehall'.
Multinational interests can thrive on smaller centralised
interdependent States, rather than through the old
concept of the powerful nation. At a social level, there
are always personal (economic and status) interests to
be gained: for example, revival oflanguage often means
the possibility of a new local elite involved in the
media, education and so on.
At the same time, it is easy to understand why the
exploited in deliberately underdeveloped Scotland
look at the centres of British capitalism and interpret
their misery through a nationalist optic. The
revolutionary work ofu nmasking irrational nationalism
should not disdain the basic struggle for identity and
self-management or divert it into a passive waiting for
an abstract world revolution.
4
Anarchists must therefore work to show up the
void of national self-determination, and disrupt the
corporate plans of parties, trades unions and bosses by
identifying the real struggle for self-appropriation and
contributing to it in a concrete way. Along the road to
generalised insurrection, techniques of sabotage and
defence must be in the hands of those directly involved,
eliminating dependence on outside groups and their
ideologies, in order for them to take over production
and distribution and run their own areas on the basis
of free federalism, collectivism, or both. Starting on
this self-managed basis in a logic where the 'transitional
phase' finds no place, the perspective of a wider
federation of free people becomes a foreseeable reality.
All this requires study and work, both at a practical
and theoretical level. We hope that this pamphlet will
be a small contribution towards this end.
Jean Weir
Glasgow,June 1976