A Review of a Collection of Articles on Anarcism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial...

7/27/2019 A Review of a Collection of Articles on Anarcism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World [2010], 20

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A review of:

Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World (1870-

1940): The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Liberation

Edited by Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt; with a Foreword by Benedict

Anderson

Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010; lxxiii+431pages; ISBN 978-90-04-18849-5

__________________________________________________________________

Pradip Baksi

Abstract: The volume under review is a very informative and, an immensely

thought-provoking collection of essays on the history of modern Anarchism and

Syndicalism in some areas of Africa, Eurasia, and, Latin America, for the period

1870-1940. It contains a Preface, an introductory and a concluding essay, plus ten

contributions from twelve contributors. The authors are located in Brazil (2), Hong

Kong, Northern Ireland, Russia, Scotland and, South Africa (1 each) and, the USA

(5). The editors of the volume are from the USA and South Africa. The collection

contains texts on the history of anarchism and syndicalism, for the period under

consideration, in Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, Ireland, Korea, Mexico, Peru,

South Africa, the Caribbean and Southern United States and, Ukraine. The history

of emergence and development of modern anarchism and syndicalism over this

vast area in the given period was uneven. The different essays in this volume are of

uneven depth, seriousness and, orientation. The responses to each of them in the

present review are also uneven.

Key Words: Anarchism; Syndicalism; Africa; Eurasia; Latin America; Southern

USA; 1870-1940.


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Preface and Introduction

1. Benedict Anderson outlined his, and perhaps a common, perception about the

theme(s) of this volume in his Preface, when he stated that anarchisms of

Bakunin and Kropotkin stole the hearts and headlines, first with the wave of

spectacularly successful and failed assassinations of heads of states, top politicians

and capitalists (from Buffalo to Harbin); then by the rise of syndicalism with its

signature theme of the revolutionary general strike, discussed by Sorel but in fact

first theorised by the anarchists of the 1870s (xiv). Anderson is aware of

Bakunins remark about Karl Marx being the supreme economic and socialist

thinker of their time (same page, last para), yet he subscribes to the dominant

Marxist or Anarchist-Syndicalist view that does not consider Marx to be one of thetheoreticians of anarchism. For a Marx-scholars view on Marxs relation with

anarchist theory, see: Rubel, 1973; and, for a glimpse of Andersons academic

interest in anarchism in the colonies, see: Anderson, 2005. The rest of the Preface

(xv-xxv) contains Andersons account of the various chapters of the book, ending

with a description of the current political and economic time, which appears to be

dyspeptic (xxviii) from his chair in the Cornell University, NY, USA.

2. The introductory essay by the editors of the book, Rethinking Anarchism and

Syndicalism: The Colonial and Postcolonial Experience, 1870-1940, opens with

the clear statement that this volume examines the history, influence, aspirations

and actions of anarchism and syndicalism (xxxi) over the space and time

indicated in the title of the volume. However, their claim that this volume

transcends Eurocentric narratives runs into the troubled waters of a very

Eurocentric understanding of political history, when they write that the papers in

this volume demonstrate unequivocally that anarchism and syndicalism werefor

most of this period, more important than their Marxist rivals (xxxii). This claim

about the relative ascendancy of Anarchism and Syndicalism in this historicalrivalry is true for the period from 1871 (fall of the Paris Commune) to 1920

(Bolshevik takeover of power in the Russian empire). However, this very assertion

misses a larger historical truth: that as ideologies of human social self-liberation

these rivals were and are inseparable from one another; after 1920 one

(Anarchism-Syndicalism) has come out ideologically victorious through relative


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practical defeat and, the other (Marxism), got ideologically defeated through

relative practical victory, in attaining hegemony over people through that very

state, the sublation of (or transcendence from) which is the declared aim of all

movements oriented towards human social self-emancipation. Thanks to the

painstaking labour of the authors and editors, we see in pages after pages of thisvolume, how all over the world, the Marx-innocent Anarchists and Syndicalists

have organized, influenced and, joined the equally Marx-innocent Marxist or

Communist parties after the Bolshevik takeover of political power in the Russian

Empire in 1917. This Marx-innocence, characteristic of all the trends of the various

Internationals that emerged in Europe, remains almost intact among the leaders,

activists and, academic sympathisers of the labour movements in the world, even

in our time. (For an acquaintance with the current possibilities of Marx-awareness,

please visit the links to the Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels papers and, the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) project indicated in the References below.)

The editors decision to use a narrow definition of anarchism to organize this

volume (xxxvi) also has some undesirable consequences. This definition traces the

roots of modern anarchism to the debates over the question of the state between

Bakunin and Marx in the First International of the late 1860s. This decision ignores

the fact that if not since the time of first migration of the Homo erectus out of

Africa into Eurasia, then at least starting with the teachings of Siddhartha

Gautama, Confucius and Socrates and the debates around them, all ideologies andall debates originating in a given geographical territory, in a given historical

period, including the above indicated debate within the First International, got

transformed into something else, when they spread into the rest of the world. What

are the evidences to suggest that the history of anarchism is an exception? If that is

not the case, then why insist upon a narrow definition that is bound to smuggle in

Eurocentric paradigms into the studies of non-European history? The history of

spread of modern European liberalisms, socialisms and, anarchisms over very large

territories of our planet, which includes India, China, Central and Western Asia,and Russia, is inextricably connected with and invariably influenced by the

existing well-developed Asian ideologies of the various sects of Hinduism,

Jainism, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

While discussing the class character of anarchism and syndicalism (pp. xlvii-li) the

editors have correctly pointed out the narrow, partisan and tendentious nature of


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Part One: Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial World

3. Part one of the volume begins with Anthony Gormans account of the

Anarchist Movement in Egypt: 1860-1940; it was a movement diverse in race,

religion and nationalitybut united in aspirations of civil progress. Anarchism

first appeared among the Italian political refugees and workers of Egypt in the

1860s; some of them were followers of Garibaldi and Mazzini. After the split of

the First International in 1872 in the Hague Congress, a section of the anarchist

wing of it was organised in Alexandria in 1876, followed by other sections in

Cairo, Port Said and Ismailia in 1877 (3-5). A European Socialist Study Circle was

established in Alexandria in 1881 (p.8). Some Arabic-speaking Egyptians joined,

perhaps, from the first decade of the 20th Century (9). Anarchist propaganda inEgypt chose Catholicism and (curiously enough) Brahmanism (why? Was it ever

of any consequence in Egypt?) for criticism but, praised Islam for its tolerance

(11). The anarchists of Egypt did not target religion or the state head on; they gave

more attention to social transformation through propaganda, education and workers

associations (12) and, eschewed political assassination and violence (13). Their

publications were in Italian, French and Greek; they had no Arabic newspaper of

their own (15) but, since the 1890s the local Arabic press regularly reported about

the ideas and activities of the anarchists abroad (16). The trial and execution of thefounder of the Modern School Movement Francesco Ferrer i Gurdia in Spain in

1909 created a stir in Alexandria and Cairo. In 1901 Alexandria had its Free

Popular University, providing free evening education to the toiling classes, in

Italian, French and Arabic, about the humanities, natural sciences, workers

associations and, womens status in society. This effort collapsed within a year, its

anarchist founders were removed and, it was transformed into a vocational training

college (18-19). Though the composition of the Egyptian working class of foreign

and domestic origin was heterogenous, it produced an atmosphere of

internationalism. In 1909 single gatherings in Cairo were addressed in Arabic,

French, Greek, Italian and German. There were five Greeks, five Egyptians, two

Syrians, one Italian and an Armenian in a committee of fourteen persons that

constituted the leadership of the shoemakers union (22).


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After World War I, many of those who had been anarchist militants before the

warfinally agreed with their close rivals, the socialists that the Egyptian

Socialist Party, the precursor of the Egyptian Communist Party, which did

embrace parliamentary politics, has become the main vehicle for the radical

challenge to the traditional political order (26-27). During the 1920s-30s thecommunists, anarchists, socialist and radical nationalists were subjected to

repression by the government of Egypt. By the 1940s the labour movement in

Egypt drew ideological support from the communist movement and the Muslim

Brotherhood but it nevertheless still owed something to its anarcho-syndicalist

roots. In Egypt, Nationalism and anarchism became de facto allies, on more

than one occasion, in their fight against imperialism (28). It may be of some

interest to mention here that, for some time now, the relation of anarchism with the

activities of Al-Qaeda is engaging the attention of some historians (Gelvin, 2008).

4. Lucien van der Walts chapter, titled Revolutionary Syndicalism, Communism

and the National Question in South African Socialism, 1886-1928, comes next. It

is about how the anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists confronted the national

question in South Africa during the 1910s, a period of unquestioned syndicalist

hegemony on the revolutionary left (33). This chapter deals with a part of the

issues covered in his much larger Ph.D. dissertation (Van der Walt, 2007). The

author hails from a working class background, earns his bread as a professor and,

is active the labour and anarchist movements of his country.

It may be of some interest to the readers of this volume in England and India that

the anarchist tradition in South Africa may be dated back to the 1880s and the

tireless efforts of Henry Glasse, an Englishman born in Surat in 1857 (46), on the

eve of the 1857-59 rebellion by the Indian soldiers of the English East India

Companys army. Glasse was influenced by the ideas of Kropotkin, translated

some of his texts, distributed his journalKhleb i Volya, Malatestas pamphlets and,

was alert about the use of racial hatred by the ruling elite (47). While living in

South Africa, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi declared for some time that he was a

socialist (53).

In South Africa the syndicalist movement had significant impact on both the

currently ruling African National Congress (1923- ) and, the Communist Party of

South Africa [CPSA] (1921- ), renamed the South African Communist Party


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[SACP] (1953- ), in their formative periods (36). This chapter offers materials

invalidating the claims of the communist party oriented historiography of the early

period of modern working class movement in South Africa to the effect that the

proto-communists and the SACP were the sole champions of the interests of the

working class and toiling people of that country in the period under consideration.It may be mentioned here that even an official party history has conceded that

syndicalist concepts remained within the Communist Party for many years after

its foundation; echoes of their approach and phraseology appear in many

documents and journals (Harmel, 1987: 40; quoted in 88, footnote 328). While

dealing with the widespread communist falsifications of the history working class

in South Africa and its carry over effects on European academic scholarship (63)

and, also while concluding his narrative, Van der Walt justly criticised the

misrepresentations practiced by the influential Communist school of labour andleft history (89). However, he did not raise the issue of Marxism, Leninismand

subsequent derivative ideologies as forms of false consciousness and, hence

obstacles on the path of development of historiography as a discipline and, harmful

for the cause of self-emancipation of the working class in particular and, that of the

toiling and oppressed people of the world in general.

5. Dongyoun Hwang indicated at the very beginning of his text titled Korean

Anarchism before 1945: A Regional and Transnational Approach that the primary

and secondary sources for the study of Korean anarchism are very fragmentaryand limited (95; footnote 2). This chapter contains an examination of the

complex relationship between nationalism and anarchism in Korea annexed by

Japan in 1910 (96).

According to Korean anarchist turned communist Jang Jirak [Kim San] in 1919

Tokyo was a refuge for revolutionaries of many kinds and, Shanghai was a

centre of the nationalist movement where the Korean provisional government was

functioning (98). Quanzhou was also a transitional concentration point for East

Asian anarchists in middle and late 1920s. In these places the Korean anarchists

were able to articulate their national goal with the help of anarchism, and,

conversely, understand anarchism through their national circumstances (99).

Kropotkins idea of mutual aid exerted great influence over the anarchists of East

Asia (102). Korean anarchists acquired their understanding of political revolution

from the Paris Chinese anarchists and, that of modernity from the Tokyo


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Chinese anarchists (103). They learnt much about the harsh realities of Leninist

rule in the Russian empire from the blind Russian anarchist poet Vasilii Eroshenko

(1889-1952), who visited China in the early 1920s (113-14). During the late 1920s

a mad wave of patriotism engulfed the Korean, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese

and Taiwanese anarchists. About 60 anarchists from China, Taiwan, Japan,Korea, Vietnam and Indiagathered in Nanjing in September 1927 to organise an

Eastern Anarchist League. It was decided that the League will have its

headquarter in Shanghai and will publish its journal Dongbang [The East]. The

first issue of the journal appeared on the 20th of August 1928 (121). In 1931 the

Korean anarchists organised a Federation to Save the Nation under conditions of

Japanese invasion, in the French concession in Shanghai (122). Their efforts were

supported by their Chinese and Japanese comrades. Many Korean anarchists

worked with them in the joint anarchist projects like the Shanghai National LabourUniversity (123).

The defeat of the Japanese army in 1945 led to US occupation and division of

Korea. A pro-US imperialist, anti-communist regime was established by Syngman

Rhee in South Korea in 1948. In these new conditions the South Korean anarchists

began to emphasize their nationalist and anti-communist credentials to save their

skins (125). One does not know what happened to their North Korean counterparts:

how many of them perished in police custody and in labour camps and, how many

lived to serve the local communist Kim dynasty.

6. ArifDirliks essayAnarchism and the Question of Place: Thoughts from the

Chinese Experience opens with the still dominant Eurocentric opinion that:

While historically speaking anarchism is clearly a product of European

modernity, anarchists have been quick to discover anarchism in all kinds of places,

from small-scale tribal societies in Africa to ancient Chinese philosophies. This has

served to reinforce anarchist universalism but also rendered anarchism

ideologically ahistorical (131).

Such opinions have their roots in the schooling and academic stereotypes imposed

by the colonizing European powers upon the people of the rest of the world since

the fifteenth century. Let us hope that in the coming six hundred years or less, with

the ongoing decline of the global hegemony of western powers, we shall arrive at a

more informed view of the trajectory of different ideologies on our planet. It is one


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thing to rightly assert that two of the greatest thinkers of anarchism, Michael

Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin were themselves productsof Enlightenment

thinking as it was filtered through the concerns and experiences of imperial Russia

in the middle of the 19th century, (132); it is quite another matter to remain

oblivious about the facts that conceptually speaking that very Enlightenment (see:Clarke, 1997) and, geographically speaking that very Russia (see: the map of

Russia) do have large Asian components. Further, today the mtDNA view of the

peopling of the whole world by Homo sapiens is considered basic information in

paleoanthropology and, it has established the African origin of all the people on

planet earth. That is why it is very pertinent to trace the roots of all components of

human civilisation, anarchism included, to Africa. Deeper awareness about the past

does not necessarily entail giving priority to the burdens of the past over the

demands of the present, about which Dirlik is worried (ibidem). On the contrary,it may release the present and future generations from the ideological beliefs of the

earlier generations and, thus help them chart out new directions unburdened by the

ideological baggage of the last century. A part of such baggage is the failure to

recognise the fact that Leninism was an extension of the Tsarist imperialist

ideology dedicated to the continuation of the Russian empire under a new name

and, then to conclude that Leninist Marxism has become victorious in China,

Korea and Vietnam (133). What has become victorious in China , the two Koreas

and in Vietnam are various forms of peasant nationalism, wherein the ruling

communist parties of China, North Korea and Vietnam used a part of Leninist

Marxist ideology embellished with some local color , while the ruling parties of

Taiwan and South Korea used openly pro-US imperialist, anti-communist

ideology, in the context of the Cold War; all of them were and are trying to

improvise along various roads of industrial development, unknown to the

bourgeois-class-led trajectories of Europe and, its derivative settler capitalisms of

the Americas, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

It is very true that the modern anarchist ideas came to East Asia from modernWestern Europe, representing a different comprehension of political space than

had existed in East Asian societies earlier (135). It is also true that Asia and North

Africa played a very large material, technological, scientific and, intellectual role

in the making of modernity in Europe (see: Lach, 1965-77; Lach and Van Kley,

1993; Halbfass, 1988; Gerlach, 2005; Saliba, 2007; Rahman et al,2008; Bretelle-


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Establet, 2010). In light of the literature indicated above and, Dirliks own

subsequent recognition of advocacy oflaissez-faire government by Confucianism

and Daoism (142), his criticism of those Scholars of anarchism in East Asia

who have made efforts to locate anarchism within various legacies of the past

from neo-Confucianism to Daoism and Buddhism, to the effect that Such effortis more a product of a culturalism that pervades studies of East Asia (ibidem) ,

appears very ahistorically Eurocentric to say the least.

It will be of some interest for the Chinese, Sinologist and, Maoist readers of this

volume to be reminded that in course of the New Culture Movement, by the late

1910s, Among those to come under anarchist influence was Mao Zedong who,

like many later Bolsheviks, expressed enthusiasm at this time for European

anarchists and their ideas. Anarchists also played a part in founding the first

Bolshevik groups in China (139), which would culminate in the founding of the

Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1921.

By 1927, Chinese anarchists, in their anti-Bolshevism, devoted their efforts

mainly to fighting Bolshevik ideological and labour activity, some of them in

collusion with the most reactionary elements in Chinese politics (ibidem). The

anarchists in China joined the anti-communist section of the Guomindang, to

establish a Labour University in Shanghai, whichfor a period of five years sought

to put in practice the anarchist belief in the necessity of combining mental andmanual labour in education. This belief and the Kropotkinite insistence on

combining agriculture and industry in social development had become part of

radical culture during the New Culture Movement. Both trends would reappear

after 1949 and, more forcefully from 1956 to 1976, which began with the great

famine of 1958-62 and culminated in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. These

events reflect continued existence of some influence of modern anarchism on Mao

Zedong (1893-1976) and, on a part of the then leadership of the CPC (141). They

also had the ancient anarchist heritage of Laozi (6th Century BCE) and Xu Xing

(3rd Century BCE) to draw inspiration from (143). There were Buddhist monks

among the Chinese anarchists. The anarchists of Guangdong led by Shifu were

considerably interested in Buddhism. These interests in the possible indigenous

roots of the principles of anarchism gradually declined under the impact of anti-

traditionalism of the New Culture Movement (144).


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7. Aleksandr Shubin informed us in his essay The Makhnovist Movement and the

National Question in the Ukraine, 1917-1921 thatMakhnovshina had its roots in

a quarter of the small town of Gulyai-Pole in the Aleksandrov district. The history

of this area is associated with Cossack outlaws, agricultural struggle and nomadic

culture. However, by the beginning of the 20th century only the memory of theZaporozhe Cossacks remained. New people with a new way of life had settled in

the local steppe (147-48). One wonders how a descendant of a Ukrainian

Zaporozhe Cossack would react to such charitable prose about his people. We also

learn that Nestor Makhno (1888-1934) did not actually speak Ukrainian (150).

The anarchist movement in Ukraine, as in Russia as a whole (Is Ukraine a part of

Russia, which is the whole? Or, is there an unspoken identification of Russia = the

Russian empire?), originated in the Populist (Why within quotation marks?) or

narodnikmovement of the 1870s and 1880s. However, in the 1880s most of the

narodnik groups moved away from anarchism, or were crushed by the tsarist

regime. The revival of the anarchist movement in the Russian empire began in

1903.In 1904 the anarcho-communists held their all-Russian conference in

Odessa.During the revolution of 1905-1907 there was a powerful surge in socio-

political activity, including the anarchist movement (150).

The revolution of 1905-1907 also affected Gulyai-Pole. On 22 February 1905, the

workers of the Kerner factory went on strike. They were demanding improvedworking conditions, abolition of penalties and, payment for overtime work.

Among the strikers was the young Nestor Makhno. In September 1906 the

terrorist (my italics) Peasant Group of Anarcho-communists (also known as the

Union of Free Grain Growers) began to operate in Gulyai-Pole.Makhno

located the terrorists (again my italics) faster than the police, forced them (How?)

to accept him into their ranks, and by the 14 [th of] October was already

participating in a robbery (151). What kind of historical scholarship calls

revolutionaries terrorists? The tsarist state was then the ultimate terrorist in the

Russian empire. It appears that our author has graduated from the Okhrana School

of historiography.

Here are a few other samples: Makhnos group was influenced by the ideas of

Piotr Kropotkin, albeit in an extremely abstract and simplified form (153). How

polite of you, Your Excellency! Makhno made the mistake of not being born


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among the Tsarist intelligentsia who must have had a very concrete and complex

understanding of the ideas of Kropotkin! Makhno took steps to transform his (my

italics) movement from a destructive peasant uprising(again my italics) to a social

revolutionary movement that embodied supreme power in the territory it

controlled (once again my italics) (165). How can an uprising be someones?What is a constructive uprising by the gentry? If something is a supreme powerin

a territory it controls, then in which sense is it anarchist? How is such anarchism

different from Bolshevism? There was aMakhnovist(my italics) pogromin the

Jewish colony of Gorkaya on the night of 11th-12th May. As early as January

1919 Makhno himself and his officers took part in savage (my italics) killings

although not of the systematic nature to be found in territory controlled by other

regimes (172). How can a pogrom have an anarchist ideological label? The anti-

Jewish pogroms of Russia, Ukraine and Poland had only some xenophobicChristian ideology behind them. What are civilised or humane systematic killings?

The mutual hatred between peasant and gentry civilizations (my italics), based

on a cultural rift that went back to the time of Peter the Great (173). We know that

civilizations had and do have their peasants and gentry; but, can common nouns

denoting social groups be used as adjectives before the word civilization? Was

there no cultural rift between the peasantry and the gentry in Russia before the rule

of Pyotr I began in 1682? Why is he great? For using barbaric methods of

modernization subsequently copied by Lenin and the Bolsheviks? Everyone must

have been equal in Russia before 1682! Were all Russians anarchist then? What

about the period called Kievan Rus from the 9th to the middle of 13th century?

What about the Tsardom from the time of Ivan IV who assumed the title of Tsar in

1547 to 1682? On the last page of his essay our author has used an expression

made famous through one of Lenins well-known statement about the Christian-

anarchist Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy and, called NestorMakhno a mirror of

the whole Russian revolution (190). No comments.

Those who wish to study Nestor Makhnos and Marxist sides of this history mayvisit the Nestor Makhno Archives (links indicated in the References).

8. Emmet OConnorintroduced the Irish syndicalist leader William OBrien to the

readers of his essay Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism and Nationalism in Ireland

as cold and reservedshrewd, capable and ruthless in his ambition (195). We

learn further in the same page that another leader Jim Larkin had charisma and,


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yet another leader James Connolly had interest in theory. In the very next page

we are told that: What Irish syndicalism amounted to was Larkinism and, from

1917 to 1923, Connollys industrial unionism, and these were applied to

structures that were not syndicalist in conception. Irish syndicalism was therefore

amorphous and contingent (196). In the section titled Larkinism we learn that:There was certainly a personality cult, which Jim would promote shamelessly

(199). Larkin made a virtue of necessity (202). In the section titled Syndicalism

Falters we furtherlearn that Larkin had the communists dissolve the Communist

Party of Ireland affiliated to the Comintern in 1924 in favour of his own g roup,

the Irish Worker League. He remained more a syndicalist than a Leninist, but he

never had much interest in theory in any case, and saw communism as the old class

struggle in an apparently more effective format. The Comintern had high hopes of

Larkin, and prospects looked good (219). Larkin was powerful enough, inDublin and Moscow, to ensure that if little could be done with him, nothing would

be done without him. Extraordinary wrangles between himself and Moscow

culminated in a break with the Comintern and Profintern in 1929 (220). In short,

in Ireland, early Bolshevism was an outgrowth of an opportunist and careerist

faction of syndicalism.

Part Two: Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Postcolonial World

9. Steven J. Hirsch opens his survey of Peruvian Anarcho-Syndicalism: Adapting

Transnational Influences and Forging Counterhegemonic Practices, 1905-1930

with statement that: At first glance early 20th century Peru would seem an

unlikely setting for anarcho-syndicalism to flourish. A predominantly agrarian

society, with a large and economically marginal indigenous populationvast areas

of the nation were largely unaffected by capitalist change. With the exception of

Lima-Callaosizable urban economies were conspicuously absent. Not

surprisingly, given the context, the massive influx of European immigrants thatcatalyzed the anarcho-syndicalist labour movements in Argentina and Brazil

bypassed Peru (227).

Yet Peru was not entirely isolated from anarchist currents. Anarchist ideas and

publications circulated widely in Peru by the first decade of the 20th century.


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Manuel Gonzlez Prada, a Peruvian aristocrat and social gadfly, and a handful of

radical immigrant intellectuals based in Lima facilitated the dissemination of

anarchist thought. Simultaneously, a nucleus of self-taught craftsmen and machine-

tenders inspired by the writings of Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta,

spearheaded a movement to organise workers in Lima-Callao based on anarcho-syndicalist doctrine.the influence of anarcho-syndicalismalso spread to

working-class elements along Perus northern coast and central and southern

highland regions (ibidem). There are no national level studies of anarcho-

syndicalism in Peru (227, footnote 1). This chapter examines how anarcho-

syndicalist ideas were adapted to Peruvian contexts, primarily in Lima-Callao and

the southern region of Arequipa, Cuzco, and Puno during the 1910s and 1920s, the

heyday of Peruvian anarcho-syndicalism (228).

Manuel Gonzlez Prada became an anarchist as a result of his contacts with

French and Spanish anarchists during a self-imposed European exile (1891-1898).

He persuaded workers to reject mutualism in favour of anarchist practices and,

also founded Los Parias(The Pariahs), the first anarchist publication in 1904

(229). Other kindred papers followed. Study circles were organised. On October

17, 1909 the Centre of Socialist Studies First of May organised a public protest in

response to the Spanish governments execution of the anarchist and educational

innovator, Francesco Ferrer i Gurdia (230). Anarcho-syndicalism grew firm

roots in Lima-Callao by 1911 and, gained momentum in 1912-13 (230-31). InDecember 1918 workers of Limas textile industry struck work demanding 8 hour

workday; the government accepted the demand on 15 January 1919 (233). In April

a Committee for Cheapening the Prime Necessities was formed. As the President

of the land and the business community refused to accept their demands for

reduction of the prices of basic food-stuffs, a general strike began on May 27. It

continued in the face of governmental brutality for five days. About one hundred

persons died, several hundred were wounded and, between three and five hundred

people were sent to jail. The strike failed (234). In the subsequent period thePeruvian anarcho-syndicalists prioritized forging a counter-hegemonic working-

class culture capable of contesting and supplanting the dominant culture of Perus

ruling elites (235). In 1921 representatives of 23 labour organisations attended the

first congress of the local workers federation, a rationalist library was established

in Lima for the male and female workers of all races (237). Textile and


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construction workers began publishing their own worker-edited papers El Nudito,

El Obrero Textiland,El Constructor. Many Cultural and recreational associations

sprang up in the Lima-Callao region. Among them a workers musical centre, the

Centro Musical Obrero de Lima, founded in 1922 deserves special mention (238-

40). In 1927 a textile union published Cancionero Revolucionaria, a collection ofUniversal Proletarian Hymns and Songs of the Day, in honour of the May Day.

The first workers tree-planting festival was deliberately organised on 25

December 1921, as a secular festival on a day of Christian holiday. Popular

Universities for the education of workers were organised by some reform-minded

students of San Marcos University in Lima and Vitarte in 1921 (240-41). A sign

marked with three eights painted in red and white was placed in the middle of the

proscenium to underscore the support of the Universidad Popular(UP) of Vitarte

for eight hours of work, eight hours of study, and eight hours of rest a positionin accord with the First International. In May 1923 there were mass

demonstrations and pitched battles on the streets against the decision of the

government and the Catholic Church to consecrate Peru to the Sacred Heart of

Jesus. A worker and a student died. The government cancelled the decision; but

many of the students and workers linked to the UPs were arrested and deported

(242). Governmental repression was unleashed against workers libraries, presses

and even their musical centre (242-43). In the given context of Peru, espousing a

pragmatic variant of revolutionary syndicalism made sense. The movement also

suffered from the ongoing influence of conservative artisan organisations. They

derived their understanding mainly form the First International and, from the

French and Argentine trades unions of the period. They repudiated party politics

and electoralism in favour of direct action tactics, especially the general strike

(244). In the Lima-Callao region they displayed a keen interest in the

emancipation of women and indigenous workers, including that of the 23, 000

female workers engaged in domestic services in Lima. The Peruvian anarcho-

syndicalists, guided by a keen interest in internationalism, maintained contact with

and, reported news about similar movements in the rest of the Americas and in

Europe. They organised protest strikes against the unfair trial and execution of

Ferdinand Nicola Sacco and Bartolommeo Vanzetti in the United States in

1927(247).


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In the Southern highlands of Peru anarcho-syndicalism drew inspiration from a

radical liberal press, Limas labour movement, immigrant anarchists and, cross-

border ties with Chilean anarcho-syndicalists (248). The security organs of the

government viewed them as Bolsheviks during the 1920s (257-58). An

Indigenous Labour Federation was founded in 1923 (264). There were indigenouspeasant uprisings against the governments policy of conscription for military

service and road construction (265). A nation-wide campaign against the

Conscription Act was organised in February 1926 (266).

The anarcho-syndicalist labour movement of Peru failed to generate matching

counter-hegemony against the state and civil society controlled by Perus agro-

export creole elite and rapidly declined by 1929 (268). During the mid-1920s there

arose complains about bureaucracy in the workers federation, dependence of the

leadership on the governments intervention and, their conciliatory attitude to

Marxist politics (247). Conflicts over ideology, party politics, and union autonomy

erupted within the declining movement in the early 1930s (248). Grounds were

prepared for the next phase by global, regional and local developments. During the

1930s and 1940s many former anarcho-syndicalists joined the social democratic

Peruvian Aprista Party and the Peruvian Communist Party (both founded in 1930)

(268).

This is an exemplary and, perhaps, the first comprehensive, text of historicalscholarship devoted to the history of working-class movement in Peru, for the

period under consideration. Future generations of historians and activists engaged

in the cause of human self-emancipation all over the world will learn a lot from it,

both about the craft of the historian and, about how this craft can be blended with

the spirit of science, human empathy and, solidarity with the working class.

10. Kirk Shaffers essay titled Tropical Libertarians: Anarchist Movements and

Networks in the Caribbean, Southern United States, and Mexico, 1890s-1920s is

about the networks of sporadic anarchist movements of Cuba, Mexico, Panama,

Puerto Rico and Spanish-speaking migrant zones in the southern United States

(273). Our author prefers to describe US imperialism in this region as US military

and economic influence or, as expanding US foreign policy (ibidem). In the


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anarchist networks of the region under consideration the weekly Tierra! (The

Earth orLand) published from Havana played an important role. The Caribbean

network radiating from Havana overlapped with a Mexican network stretched from

Los Angeles to Mexico City (274). The Caribbean network extended from the

islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico to Caribbean Basin mainland in Panama,stretching across the isthmus to the Pacific Ocean and back north to Florida cities

along the Gulf of Mexico and the Straits of Florida. The Mexican network was

bound by the natural land bridge dissected by - the US aggression and occupation

generated - US-Mexico border, reaching north into the central plains of the

united States (Missouri), west to Los Angeles, and south to the urban landscape of

Mexico City (275).

The Cuban anarchist movement arose in the 1870s when cigar makers Enrique

Roig de San Martin and Enrique Messonier established a workers school and

newspaper on the outskirts of Havana (276). Though initially hesitant , by 1895

most anarchists in Cuba, Florida and Spain supported the Cuban struggle for

independence from Spanish imperialism (277). Many among the Cuban

anarchists were Spanish immigrants. As anarchists they supported free movement

of workers. However, unrestricted immigration to the island increased the supply

of labour, kept wages low and, threatened to hamper anarchist organisation among

the existing workers. Anarchists of Cuba were caught in this dilemma (280-81).

The Afro-Cuban workers were slaves freed in 1886. They faced racial and culturaldiscrimination. This situation culminated in the formation of the Partido

Independiente de Color, in 1907 (281). The government outlawed it. The outlawed

party organised a meeting on 20 May 1912 (the Day of formal Independence of

Cuba in 1902 from the US, which still retains an imperial military base there at the

Guantanamo Bay). The government attacked the meeting, killed about 6000 Afro-

Cubans and jailed 900 of them. The anarchists of Cuba failed to take the side of the

Afro-Cubans (282). The Cuban anarchists also failed to appreciate the

improvements in health and sanitation imposed by the first US occupation ofthe island. They believed that real health reforms had to focus on eliminating

poor working conditions and destitute living environments (283). How ungrateful

of them! In those days of early twentieth century Cuba, they were even beholden to

the values of patriarchal family (284-85), which dominates global familial culture

even today! How uncultured of them! With such pro-US imperialist and, time-


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sensitive historians as chroniclers, do the Cuban anarchists need their communist

historian detractors?

After World War I, a new mostly anarcho-syndicalist movement emerged in Cuba.

In the 1920s they organised the National Confederation of Cuban Workers togetherwith the Marxists, including some of the future founders of the Communist Party

of Cuba, like subsequently murdered Julio Antonio Mella (1903-1929). The

anarchist-led Confederation of Workers also organised many financially stable

rationalist schools across the island (285). Some anarcho-communist groups

opposed cooperation with the Marxists. Repression against the working-class

increased during the rule of pro-US president Gerardo Machado (1925-33). In this

period anarchist influence declined but, remained alive supporting the revolt of

1933, the Spanish Republican cause and, the Cuban Revolution of the late 1950s

(286).

The first anarchists came to Florida during the First Cuban War of Independence

(1868-1878). Circular migration of workers between Havana and Tampa formed

the social basis for the regional anarchist network. Anarchist publications first

came from Cuba and then evolved locally. As US imperialist military and

economic interests spread throughout the Caribbean, following US intervention in

Cubas War of Independence, a corresponding growth in the anarchist network

took place in the region, in the face of growing racist violence let loose to dividethe working-class. After the assassination of US president William McKinley in

1901, the anarchists came under heavy repression; workers shifted loyalty to the

American Federation of Labor (AFL) linked International, in part due to their

interest in a solid wage and, in part due to their rejection of puritanical anarchist

social agenda of no beer or rum, no cards, no pool, no paid for female

companionship (287-292).

One year after the US imperialist occupation of Puerto Rico in 1898, some

sympathisers of anarchism had formed a Free Federation of Workers there.However, it quickly came to be absorbed within the AFL (293). Between 1908 and

1910 anarchist publications, study centers and activists continued to criticise US

imperialist rule and AFL hegemony over the workers in Puerto Rico (294-296).

After 1917 the anarcho-communist group organised around the weekly El

Communista supported the Russian Revolution but, opposed the goal of political


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independence from US rule. Anarchist activities on the island died down by 1921

(298).

In 1903 US imperialism purchased the separation of the province of Panama from

Columbia and, in 1904 the US controlled government of Panama ceded to theUnited States a ten-mile wide stretch of land in the heart of the new country (298)

for the construction of a 48 mile long canal, connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the

Pacific Ocean. US control of the Canal Zone continued up to 1999. The

construction project fuelled migration of workers to the area. Some among them

were anarchists. Anarchist literature started coming from Cuba. By 1911 anarchist

activism among the construction workers became noticeable and, that continued till

the end of the construction in 1914. Some journalistic criticism of the Government

of Panama continued up to 1925 when the flame of anarchism in Panama was

extinguished (303).

In Mexico and in the related Texas-Missouri-California circuit of influence,

anarcho-communism blended with traditional liberalism until about 1911.

Anarcho-syndicalism was active in the industrial and mining areas and, in the oil

fields along the Gulf of Mexico, in close cooperation with the Industrial Workers

of the World, throughout the 1910s and early 1920s. Ricardo Flores Magn (1874-

1922), one of the major thinkers behind the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, and

his brother Enrique Flores Magn (1877-1954), were prominent leaders of theMexican anarchists (304-305). There were short-lived attempts by their followers

to create anarchist workers commune in the state of Baja California in early 1911.

This multiethnic anarchist movement was heavily repressed both in Mexico and in

the USA. When a movement decays its leading individuals also become petty and

mean. Our learned imperial historian chronicled minute details of that decadence

(306-309). He has also informed us that by 1914 there were 165 Magonista clubs

in the southern Texan counties of Cameron and Hidalgo. Originally they had a plan

to liberate Texas from US imperialist occupation. Our historian wrote that the

rebels were to enact a race war against Yankee Anglos (310). There was

widespread Anglo vigilante and US governmental violence against the Mexicans

throughout 1914-1915. Forty percent of the Mexican population of Cameron and

Hidalgo fled from these counties. Ricardo Flores Magon and the anarchist organ

Regenerecin did not instigate any revolt in this area. Ricardo Flores was arrested


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in 1918 for obstructing the war effort and thus violating the US Espionage Act of

1917. He was sentenced for 20 years. Four years later he died in a jail in Kansas.

In late 1918 workers of Mexico City came under the then growing influence of

Marxists. Some of them carried their earlier anarchist impulses within the MexicanCommunist Party right up to the 1930s (314-315). One gets an impression from

our authors overall account that compared to the anarchists and other radicals of

the area, the US imperialist, Cuban stooge and, Mexican reactionary civil,

diplomatic and military intelligence services were more internationalist in their

mutual cooperation (319).

11. The next chapter by Geoffroy de Laforcade has the title: Straddling the Nation

and the Working World: Anarchism and Syndicalism on the Docks and Rivers of

Argentina, 1900-1930.

Modern working class movement entered into Argentina with the Italian

immigrants and French refugees of the Paris commune. Already in 1871 some

European leaders of the International Workingmens Association (IWMA) were

aware of the existence of the Anales de la Sociedad Tipogrfica Bonaerense

(Engels, 1871: note 3). The Report of the General Council to the Fifth Congress of

the IWMA (held at The Hague, September 2-7, 1872), mentioned that the

International has established ramifications in Buenos Aires (The Hague

Congress, 1872). In the 1880s Ettore Mattei promoted the anarcho-communist

ideas of Malatesta and Kropotkin in the pages ofEl Socialista. Feliciano Rey and

his comrades organised collectives inspired by the ideas of Bakunin. Errico

Malatesta himself organised a bakers union during his stay in Buenos Aires from

1885 to 1889. Fortunato SerantonisLa Questione Social, John Craeghes El

Oprimido and, Gregorio Ingln LafargasLa Protesta Humana agitated in favour

of trade unions in the wake of waves of strike during the middle of 1890s. During

1896-1897 Virginia Bolten (1870-1960) of Rosario published La Voz de la Muer

(The Voice of The Woman), one of the earliest anarchist-feminist newspapers of theworld, which had a motto: Ni dios, ni patrn, ni marido (No god, no master, no

husband). Italian anarchist lawyer, criminologist, journalist and poet Pietro Gori

lived and taught in Buenos Aires, during his years of stay there from 1898 to 1902.

There he started the journal Modern Criminology and organised a Libertarian


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Federation of Socialist and Anarchist groups. He influenced many Argentine

intellectuals, poets and authors (327).

After these rich formative years, the anarchists of Argentina were able to generate

an alternative discourse of modernity that served as an antidote to populardisempowerment and, an inclusive language of class as a counterpoint to the

fragmentation of ethnicity and atavistic nativism (328). The southern end of the

city of Buenos Aires was the stage for the quasi-annual strikes of the longshoremen

organised by the anarchists during the high export season since the middle of the

1890s. Their network spread to the northern reaches of the Paran River. Here their

main rivalry was with the syndicalists. The Port workers of the capital formed a

Resistance Society in 1901. It was followed by the formation of a regional

Federation of Longshoremen and Related Trades. In response to workers

militancy the government passed a Residency Law in 1902 to deport some of the

organisers. The labour press and union halls were closed down. The movement

went underground. Public expression of labour rights were effectively suppressed

(330). The next year a naturalized Argentine citizen, Constante Carballo, was able

to organise over five thousand dockworkers. They convened a congress of the

Federation of Port Workers, with participation of delegates from Uruguay. In June

1903 an anarchist Resistance Society of Mariners and Firemen was born (ibidem).

In this period conflicts were incited among the local and recently arriving workers

by conservative circles, over the issue ofpreference for hiring. In a socialenvironment prone to widespread alcoholism, violence, petty crime and cheap sex

(sic), both Catholics and anarchists sought to dignify the longshoremens

condition through ethical and moralistic discourses of responsibility (331). The

anarchists glorified the masculine qualities and virtuous toil of manual quayside

work, discouraged its sympathisers from engaging in prostitution and gambling

(ibidem). The organisation of cultural activities by the anarchist resistance societies

included advocacy of rationalist education and free love. The Catholic unions

rhetoric of responsible breadwinning domesticity was opposed to the anarchistdepiction of marriage as a form of subservience for both man and woman (332).

However, in workplace conflicts, anarchists and Catholics were not perpetual

antagonists. The authority of the anarchist resistance Society rested in large part, at

least in some areas, on the familiarity incurred by clientelistic hiring networks,

shared living spaces and, the common taverns patronized by them. Large numbers


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of casual workers and deckhands relied on the informal ties of resistance societies

with the dockside hiring authorities to obtain work (333).

During the high export season of 1903 over twelve thousand workers were on

strike in the port district. The tramway workers union paralyzed transportationthroughout the southern fringes of the city. There was inter-union rivalry, violence

and repression (ibidem). After some lull, another strike by the dockworkers erupted

in the upriver port of Rosario in the winter of 1905. This time the anarchist and

Catholic workers fought jointly against the establishment. The strike continued for

weeks in Buenos Aires. The government declared a three-month state of siege.

When work was resumed, the strikers effectively forced a boycott of the stooge

unions in matters of hiring (333-335).

From 1906 the syndicalists came to the foreground of organised labour movementon the Argentine waterfront. They inspired a strike demanding improved hygiene

and safety on coastal ships. Institutionalized bargaining channels involving the

government emerged and negotiations with formally recognized trade unions

became a reality. In 1907 the syndicalists and anarchists organised their first pro-

unification congress. It was not a success (337-339). Their mutual conflicts and

internal weakness went through several ups and downs during next decade (340-

341). During the late 1920s the syndicalists became pro-actively involved in

Argentine merchant marine development, while the anarchists repudiatednationalism, resisted state intervention and, came under fire for thereby serving the

interests of foreign shipping companies (342).

In the port of Buenos Aires, the ideological rivalry between anarchist and

syndicalist trade union federations, exacerbated by turf wars between the

longshoremens and mariners organisations, spawned periodic outbreaks of

violence. When it came to workplace activism, however, the tacit solidarity pacts

of the past tended to revive cooperation between different sectors of dockside

labour (349).The rest of the article is a melancholy narrative of some sporadicupheavals in the course of an unstoppable downslide of anarcho-syndicalism in

Argentine history to the 1940s.

12. Edilene Toledo and Luigi Biondi opened their article titled Constructing

Syndicalism and Anarchism Globally: The Transnational Making of the


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Syndicalist Movement in So Paulo, 1895-1935 with the straight assertion that:

Anarchism, revolutionary syndicalism, and socialism were important elements in

the making of the working class in late 19th and early 20th century Brazil, as

elsewhere. Anarchism was an important chapter in the history of political thought

and action in Brazil and with syndicalism and socialism shaped the workersmovement in a number of ways, and also influenced a range of workers social,

recreational and cultural activities (363).

In the late 19th century, Brazil underwent important transformations, with the

abolition of slavery (1888) and the establishment of the republican regime (1889);

however, these did not affect the extremely unequal social structure. The

victorious republican power was closely linked to the interests of coffee planters

living in So Paulo, who drew from liberal thought only what they needed,

rejecting any expansion of the republican project that would open up broad

political participation (ibidem).

The spread of republican ideas was accompanied by accelerating modernization,

involving secularization, industrial development, urbanization, and immigration.

These historical processes occurred most intensely in some regions, particularly the

southeast, between the years 1880 and 1920. They changed traditional ways of life,

and led to the development of new social actors, especially in the cities: the

industrial bourgeoisie, and the proletarian and middle classes (364). In the contextof disillusionment with the farcical liberal democracy of the First Republic (1889-

1930), which was based on a limited franchise qualified by economic and literacy

criteria, labour struggles and claims, partly influenced by anarchism, were also an

effort to democratize society. These were not only about improving wages and

reducing work days, but also an effort to achieve democratic conditions and civil

rights, so that the workers movement could be recognized as a legitimate part of

society (365). This effort did give birth to some trend-setting standards. In the

Statutes of the Resistance League of Male and Female Workers of the Textile

Factories of So Paulo, published on 30 November 1902, we read, inter alia, that

its Administrative Committee is composed of four men and four women (366).

This is an example of a tremendously gender-sensitive labour union not only for its

own time, but also an example to follow for the workers unions in many parts of

the world even today. During the first decades of the 20th century most labour

unions in Brazil followed the revolutionary syndicalist tendency. However, the


24/32

unions were supported by different ideological currents, including socialists of

various leanings, positivists, and republicans, as well as pragmatic trade unionists

who used the mediation of lawyers and authorities (369).

The trajectories of working class formation in the two major cities of Brazil, SoPaulo and Rio de Janeiro, were different. In the former the immigrants were in the

majority and, in the latter the locally born former slaves and their descendants were

in the majority, within the working class. The immigrants resisted naturalization

and were, in consequence, excluded from the election process. Those born in

Brazil were potential voters, had a different tradition of urban struggle and, used

important channels of political communication to approach the progressive

sections of the middle class. The working class movement of So Paulo was almost

exclusively syndicalist and, that of Rio de Janeiro was more reformist, in

orientation (369).

In Brazil, the labor unions, in general, did not discriminate against the blacks but,

some cross-class artistic and recreational associations of the immigrants had

statutes prohibiting black membership (373, footnote 25).

In Brazil there were conflicts among the anarchists about whether or not to work

within the unions and about the purpose of such work. The syndicalists were of the

view that the unions were the necessary and according to some of them even the

sufficient form of workers organization, not only for the immediate gains, but also

for the final revolutionary transformation of society. In Argentina, as in Italy,

syndicalism entailed a rejection of the socialists. In Brazil, as in France, it arose as

a practice that could unify a range of militants. Subsequently, Fascism presented

itself as a continuation of the syndicalist tradition; some syndicalists went over to

Fascism, which transformed some of the syndicalist ideas into their opposite (377,

footnote 32). Here one notices a striking parallel with what happened to the ideas

of the communists of the First International, within the Marxist, Social Democratic

Second International and, the Leninist, Bolshevik Third International.

The anarchists inspired by Malatesta were of the view that there is no clear and

absolute division between individuals or classes. There were infinite gradations of

material conditions within the classes. If classes were not homogenous, then it

was an illusion to build a movement on economic solidarity rather than moral


25/32

solidarity. Anarchism was not about the struggle of one class only it thought in

terms of the broad masses of poor and exploited people, and not only the industrial

proletariat. Class struggle (in Marxist terms) was seen by the anarchists as one part,

but only a partof a larger human struggle between the exploited of all types and

the exploiters, of all types. The Church and the State played as central a role hereas the bourgeoisie, not just a super-structural one. These anarchists also therefore

tended to reject the syndicalist thesis of revolutionary union as the embryo of the

new society (378).

After the First Republic was established, state power was nominally subject to

electoral control. However, vote-rigging was the general practice, taking place in

all phases of the electoral process. In addition, elections in the first four decades of

the Republic were characterized by low levels of participation. Only the 1930

presidential election saw more than 5 percent of the population go to the polls.

Registration and voting were not compulsory, and besides, women and the illiterate

were excluded: even in 1930 these groups represented 60 percent of the

population (383, footnote 43). This situation provided a fertile ground for the

acceptance of anarchist ideas oriented on rejection of the whole political process.

The anarchists in Brazil, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, believed

strongly in education as an essential means of raising a new person who would

build a new world. Essential to this project was the creation of Modern (orRationalist) Schools, inspired above all in Francesco Ferrer i Gurdias pedagogy.

These operated in So Paulo from 1902 till 1919, when they were closed down by

police in the repression that followed the great struggles of 1917-1919 (385).

These were struggles for the eight-hour working day.

Anarchist and syndicalist influences were present within the working class

movement of Brazil during the first half of the 1920s. In this decade there were

widespread debates over the rise of the Soviet Union. A number of anarchists

broke rank and, in 1922, the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) was founded inNiteri, Rio de Janeiro, by former anarchists (391).

13. The last essay by the editors of the volume bears the title Final Reflections:

the vicissitudes of Anarchist and Syndicalist Trajectories, 1940 to the Present.

Since the 1990s there has been a resurgence of anarchist and syndicalist ideology,


26/32

organisation and methods of struggle. The period since the collapse of the USSR

has been characterized by experimentation, reinvention and rediscovery on the

part of the progressive movements. Anarchism and syndicalism have been part of

this process of renewal. New movements have emerged in areas with little in the

way of a revolutionary, libertarian socialist tradition; existing movements in areasof historic influence have revived, and a more diffuse anarchistic influence

permeates a number of important social movements (395).

New anarchist groups have emerged in Indonesia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Syria.

Older movements in Spain, Italy, France, England and Russia are going through a

process of revitalization. Anti-globalization and Occupy Movements everywhere

are permeated with anarchist ideas, if not organizational structures. Same is true of

the movements of the Indigenous People in Mexico and Bolivia. The Gandhian

Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) of South India is associated with La Via

Campesina (The Peasant Way) (395-397). However, in India the ruling parties

routinely swear by Gandhiji and, like Gandhiji the KRRS too is reformist; it does

not stand for radical structural change (Machattie, 2000). The authors have rightly

observed that: The resurgent anarchist and syndicalist movement is diverse,

fractured and contested (397). While inheriting the historic orientations of anti-

statism, anti-capitalism, direct action and direct democracy, contemporary

anarchism and syndicalism is also trying embrace the contemporary sensitivities

about gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ecology and technology (398). Some of thesecontemporary sensitivities were very much present in the Brazilian, Peruvian,

Argentine, Cuban, Egyptian and South African histories documented in the volume

under review (399). The anarchist and syndicalist educational and cultural

networks were the nurseries for the cultivation of these sensitivities. To break the

elite monopoly on education and culture and to foster self-emancipation and

human dignity the anarchists and syndicalists founded many Study circles ,

popular libraries and universities, independent presses, theatre and art groups, and

recreational organisations whereverthey were active for some time (401).

While chronicling some examples of articulation of anarchism and syndicalism

from 1939 to 1989 (401-404), the authors have mentioned some of the relevant

events in Spain, Poland, Bolivia, China, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Argentina, Brazil,

Chile, Cuba, Mexico, South Korea and Uruguay but, they forgot to mention the

activities of the Portuguese revolutionary Herminio da Palma Incio (1922-2009)


27/32

during the regime of Salazar, his various propaganda of the deed, including the

daring 1961 air-dropping of 100, 000 anti-Salazar leaflets over Lisbon, Barreiro,

Setbal, Beja and Faro and, the residual role played by some anarchists in the

Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 and, in the subsequent liberation of the

remaining Portuguese colonies (see: Freire, 2001). Also of exceptional interest inthis connection is the project Movimento Social Critico E Alternativo:

http://mosca-servidor.xdi.uevora.pt/projecto/

While considering the reasons behind the relative decline or retreat of anarchism

and syndicalism in many countries during the years 1940-1990, the authors

counted state driven repression and, the historic inability of the movements to

reinvent themselves when subsequently such repression eased (404-405). The

authors have pointed out that the economic determinist interpretation of somehistorians who are of the view that the decline of radicalism of the western

working class resulted from the improvement of their standards of living, has some

important limitations (405). After World War I, the image of an enabling

developmental state was strengthened. Often such states co-opted the earlier

emancipatory discourses and demands of the working people. The ruling and

opposition communist parties also absorbed some aspects of the anarchist and

syndicalist discourses of worker-peasant alliance and womens self-emancipation

(405-407). The communist parties all over the world also enjoyed the financial,

logistic, ideological support and, the corresponding bondage to the foreign policy

objectives of the ruling communist parties since 1917. However, that did not make

them qualitatively different entities (407) in those countries where they were in

opposition; they were indeed qualitatively different entities only where they were

ruling parties of some government. The present situation has created

unprecedented opportunities for investigating the strengths and weaknesses of all

the trends of the working class movements of the last century. Such an opportunity

should not be lost under the influence of habitual ideological stereotypes inherited

from the past.

Our authors havejustly felt the need to examine some of the internal problems in

anarchist and syndicalist movements (408). They are of the view that these

movements had/have excessive heterogeneity. In China, we are told, there were

92 different anarchist groups between 1919 and 1925, without any all-China
http://mosca-servidor.xdi.uevora.pt/projecto/http://mosca-servidor.xdi.uevora.pt/projecto/http://mosca-servidor.xdi.uevora.pt/projecto/


28/32

federation or common programme. The tendency to schism among the Chinese

anarchists increased after the rise of Bolshevism. It may be noted that China was

and is an empire, not to be confused with western style nation-states. The history

of the Communist Party of China is also an encyclopedia of inner-party schisms.

Our authors are nostalgic about Nestor Makhnos praise for Bakunins secretorganisation with a well-determined programme within the IWMA. They forget

that this secret organisation was one of the major factors behind the conflict

between Marx and Bakunin in the IWMA. They regret the fact that the anarchist

movement in the Russian empire outside Makhnos sphere of influence in the

Ukraine did not live up to Bakunins or Makhnos ideals of a homogenous

programme and unitary organisation (408-409). To the present reviewer this

nostalgia and this regret sound very much monist, Plekhanovite and Leninist. If the

anarcho-syndicalists of Ukraine craved for the ideals and practices of the RussianSocial Democratic Labour Party containing the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions,

then they should have joined them. Indeed Bakunin, Plekhanov and Lenin do have

some common ancestors: namely, the Nihilists and the Narodniki of Russia. That

the anarchists were and often are nave in their faith (409) is a criticism well

taken. However, this trait is not unique to them; all the sections and trends of the

movements of the working class and other labouring people have this trait. Nor are

some of the anarchist leaders of some countries like Mexico, China, Korea or

Spain unique in their occasional political opportunism (ibidem) leading to

surrender of the goals of revolution. The decisional errors, risks and losses related

to alliance building are not inherent to anarchism or syndicalism (ibidem). Our

authors are aware of the fact that the leaders of the communist parties have

displayed such traits aplenty.

The various chapters of the volume under review have successfully established the

claim that anarchism and syndicalism must be given its due weight in the larger

story of struggles against imperialism, national oppression and racial domination

(410) and, that these were and are global movements (ibidem); however, the claimthat in their most advanced forms they have faced the question of power

seriously remains open to further factual and theoretical investigations, not only

for the anarchists and syndicalists, but for all the trends of the movements oriented

on human self-emancipation.


29/32

References

Anarchism and Sexuality in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, 2010:

http://socialhistory.org/en/events/anarchism-and-sexuality-spanish-and-portuguese-speaking-countries

Anderson, Benedict (2005), Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial

Imagination, London and New York: Verso.

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Graham, Robert (Ed.) (2005),Anarchism:

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Van der Walt, Lucien (2007), Anarchism and Syndicalism in South Africa, 1904-

1921: rethinking the history of labour and the left. Ph. D. Dissertation. University

of Witwatersrand. Available at:

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/4506

Kolkata

23 August 2013
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A Review of a Collection of Articles on Anarcism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial...

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