Jacobo Prince was an Argentine anarchist active in the Argentine Anarcho-Communist Federation, which later became the Argentine Libertarian Federation. During the Spanish Revolution and Civil War, he went to Spain, where he became an editor of the CNT paper, Solidaridad Obrera, and joined the Peninsular Committee of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI). After the war he returned to Argentina, where he opposed the Peronist dictatorship. He was one of the first Latin American anarchists to defend the Cuban anarchists against the growing repression therefollowing Castr&s seizure of power. Thefollowing passages, translated by Paul Sharkey, are taken from his essay, “The Libertarian Movements Presence and Purposes," reprinted in EI Anarquismo en America Latina (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayachucho, 1990), ed. AJ. Cappelletti and CM. Rama.
RESEARCHERS FROM A VARIETY OF PERSUASIONS and schools ofthought are in general agreement that the fight for freedom, based on principles which came to be defined doctrinally as “philosophical anarchism,” is a fight whose roots stretch back as far as the installation of political authority itself, which is to say, is as ancient as the establishment in human societies of authority in a state format... The religious or theological roots of authority and statism, so masterfully demonstrated by Mikhail Bakunin in his God and the State, have ensured that the rebels, the libertarians who repudiated arbitrary power, have been labelled as heretics.
The rebels, the heretics, the deniers of established authority or sacred dogma have not always been fighting for the effective eradication of the authority principle and dogmatism from human society. Historical experience and what we have been able to gather for ourselves from a period fraught with events, violent revolutions and political changes, like the period since the First World War, require that we bring an analytical approach and critical spirit to the scrutiny of the attitudes of certain rebel or insurgent movements, which, while rightly challenging the established order, do not in fact aim to supersede it and lay the groundwork for a different, more harmonious, just and libertarian arrangement, but seek merely to substitute one group of leaders with another which, generally speaking, is struggling to the surface with a greater hunger for power and more efficient repressive techniques.
This critical approach to socio-political insurgency in no way amounts to a condemnation of the spirit of rebellion nor of revolutionary action as such. These days, in our high technological societies where real power, the basis for anti-social privilege, resides in and is manifested through an elaborate massification of peoples, just like centuries or millennia ago when the tyranny of the mighty was more straightforward and direct—even though, then as now, that tyranny was dependent, not upon force of arms but also upon the mental imperium of certain dogmas and superstitions—the first step, the basic pre-requisite for any movement in the direction of positive change in society consists of the negation or querying of the established order. Where there is no disquiet, no discontent, no inquisitiveness about moving beyond what already exists, there can be neither change nor progress. This conclusion holds equally true for the material order, insofar as it relates to constmctive endeavour, artistic creativity, science, technology and schemes for the overhaul of society.
But, as we pointed out earlier, that prerequisite of denial and revulsion is not enough to conjure up a new social order unaided, nor indeed to effectively better the living conditions of a wide swathe of the population which finds itself dispossessed, overlooked and oppressed. The genuinely progressive or revolutionary character of a given doctrine or movement can be gauged by the extent to which it contains, in equal measure, the spirit of revolt and creative capability. In the final analysis, it is the latter that counts.
We are not thinking here of the creators of static, closed systems which spread and seep into consciousness thanks to shrewd playing to the gallery and which ultimately are imposed by force. From our libertarian vantage point, revolutionary creativity is that which liberates and opens up channels for positive social forces, which teases out free institutions and organizations that operate in the service of the individual and of all of the individuals belonging to them, rather than the other way round, when individual citizens, workers or members are subordinated to the organization, party, nation or church, or whatever name the authoritarian mode of institutionalized abstraction may go under.
To cite a few straightforward, readily understandable examples, let us say that, in our opinion, the creation and launching of labour unions governed by the rules of self-determination, federalism and action, of cultural centres free of dogma, wherein individuals, as producers, consumers or researchers, can express themselves without the deformity imposed by authoritarian governance, are revolutionary. On the same basis, we cannot deem revolutionary, nor even “progressive,” mammoth trade union or political organizations, or whatever, whose membership, no matter what size it may be, is made up only of compliant pawns passively abiding by orders handed down by a tiny band of bureaucrats—often a single person—heading up the organization in question. The fact that such orders occasionally translate into acts of violence, strikes, riots, planned uprisings, does not alter the essentially backward looking (which is to say, reactionary) character of such bodies and movements, in that their ultimate objective cannot but be to establish a new dictatorship, the chief casualties of which will include most of those who, in all good faith, helped establish it, precisely because they were dazzled by the chimera of sham revolutionary slogans.
Drawing its inspiration from the political philosophy of anarchism, the libertarian movement has at all times laid particular stress on concrete goals consonant with that ideology, as well as on fighting methods that logically have to be in harmony with those goals. Of course, the imperative to act did not always allow the achievement of strict conformity with that ideological essence. Thus, the use of revolutionary violence, be it individual or collective, imposed by the requirements of the struggle against the exploitation and tyranny of privileged groups, appears to fly in the face of the principles offreedom, mutual aid and nonviolence emanating from the anarchist approach to human relationships. But, and let me say this again, these are only symptoms ofthe imperative to act... For libertarians consistent with their own doctrine, violence can never be an end in itself, nor, for the reasons outlined, an unmistakable identitying mark of the libertarian socialist movement.
The same holds for other forms of behaviour which are formally alien to anarchist orthodoxy. Such as, say, acknowledgment of certain social reforms or improvements enshrined by legislation in most modem states. From the anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist viewpoint, such reforms are mere concessions extracted from the established authorities and ruling class over many decades of labour struggle,
Ter of fact many of those in government and all rabble-rousing politicians try to capitalize upon such reforms in order to further their craving for power, the historical fact is that the latter represent gains initially made by the workers through recourse to direct action. Consequently, the defence of these gains is, to libertarians, both a necessity and a duty, every bit as legitimate as any other more spectacularly revolutionary objective. Which, needless to say, does not mean espousing a legalistic stance nor drifting into the much-feared integration into the establishment. The essential difference separating a reformer acting on merely opportunistic grounds from an anarchist revolutionary clamouring for or working towards short-term gains is that, as far as the former is concerned, those gains, however insignificant, represent his only aim, independent of the whole gamut ofinjustices that endure, whereas the latter sees them as merely transitional stages, valuable only insofar as they are won through the deliberate action of the masses of the people and then only to the extent that they do not block the way, through some dewy-eyed conformity, to further and more telling victories for human sociability.
Something similar happens when we come to differentiate between supporters of violence or contestation as the ultimate aims of the struggle and the violence and criticism that constructive-minded revolutionaries find themselves compelled to resort to in order to facilitate the devising offresh and more flawless forms of human coexistence. We should add here also, that the shock-horror displayed by some greenhorn ultra-revolutionaries with regard to anything connected with speculation or broad-brush anticipation of new forms of social living as they purport to shy away from bureaucratic planning, is nothing more than an indication of a certain revolutionary messiahism that was very fashionable towards the end of the last century but obviously obsolete since the revolutions we have been through in this one, as we stand on the threshold of the twenty first.
The important thing to stress is that the validity and vitality oflibertarian ideas reside essentially in the accuracy of their critical stance vis-a-vis oppressive authorities, as well as in that constructive mentality rooted in the urge to move beyond the existing that has historically prompted the theorists and militants identified with such ideas...
The critical and militant endeavours of the libertarian wing of the great international labour and socialist movement that expanded thereafter—after the fifth decade of the 19th century—was forced to fight, as the saying goes, on two fronts. On the one hand, it had to direct its struggle on the terrain of theory and practice against the ruthlessly exploitative methods employed by a grasping, expanding capitalism that refused to countenance any lawful or trade union limitations upon its management of its economic ventures. As we know, that particular economic absolutism was largely curbed and brought to heel thanks to a long and costly struggle promoted by the workers’ movement, sometimes inspired by ideologies canvassing thoroughgoing social change and at other points driven simply by a just aspiration to secure short term gains and act as a brake upon the capitalist pursuit of profit.
As far as the libertarians active within the workers’ movement were concerned, it should have been directed towards more consequential aims than simply securing short term gains: towards the abolition of the institutions and norms facilitating man’s exploitation of his fellow man and the resultant establishment of fresh forms of relations involving the production and distribution of society’s wealth. There is no doubt butthatsuch revolutionary idealism, applied to the field ofworkers’ struggles, represented one of the most effective idees-forces in the service of raising the dignity of the exploited classes and, but for it, many of the gains enjoyed by the workers in many countries today would probably never have been achieved. But it is no less true that in pressing home these demands, as in challenging the doctrinal foundations of capitalism, libertarians had to some extent to compromise with other segments of the labour movement and socialists and indeed with enormous masses of workers bereft of all ideology and merely eager to better their material circumstances. That fact, the search for betterment pure and simple, a resounding denial of the alleged “historical vocation” that Marxists attribute to the proletariat—and, more especially, to the industrial proletariat—has been plentifully exploited by modern rabble-rousers of every hue, even to the extent of turning labour unionism—thanks to a paternalistic statism—into the out and out opposite of the selfless revolutionary movement that its pioneers and martyrs strove to build up as a tool for genuine, positive change in society.
The consistent spokespersons for libertarian communism, who never waded into the democratic game that can only generate dictators and masses of willing slaves, have ploughed a lonely furrow and stood out from other reformers or social revolutionaries on account of this underlying rejection of authoritarianism and statism in all their many guises.
It is here, in relation to the specific point of the social struggle against statism and against the State per se as an agency supposedly representative of society, when in fact it has only ever represented and represents the interests of certain ruling groups, that we find a second front opening up, with libertarians plus a few occasionally anti-statist groups in one corner and, in the other, the vast majority of authoritarians, statists and State-worshippers—among whom virtually every one of the followers of Marxism must be counted...
Today, as we face the seventh decade ofthe 20th century, soto speak, when according to certain interpretations we are already living in the 21st, there are plentiful examples and experiences justifying libertarians’ determined opposition to statism. But it is worth bearing in mind that that line was maintained for upwards of a hundred years at a time when parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage seemed to represent the rosiest hope of liberation as far as many men of good will were concerned and, later still, when the highfalutin notion of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was regarded by many workers and revolutionaries as synonymous with revolutionary struggle, in the wake of which victory and the ensuing elimination of class privileges the State, dictatorship and the organized violence of the authorities would have no further purpose and were fated to disappear and fade away, leaving behind a free socialist society.
No need for us now to catalogue the horrors, criminality and trespasses against the dignity of the person that humanity has had to confront in recent decades, thanks to the handiwork of such sophistry and the failed revolutions conducted in accordance with them. The broad masses, including the most enlightened and idealistic persons among them, paid a very high price for their attachment to that magical formula that promised to spare them the great exertions and mutual aid required to organize, from the bottom up, a genuinely free, fraternal, socialist society.
The aberrations of statism and of authoritarianism generally have apparently peaked and there are telling indications that they are receding, as indicated by the stirrings of rebellion cropping up everywhere in even the unlikeliest quarters. From the activity of student foes of convention, rebel clerics and a few politicians in revolt against the very dogmas in which they were schooled, to significant groups of workers rediscovering the case for direct action in the old world, even under the rule of totalitarian regimes, there has been a flurry of unmistakable signals as to the necessity and presence of a libertarian movement which, albeit diffuse and barely organized, represents a hope and a fillip for those desirous offreeing humankind from the nightmare of a dehumanized totalitarianism looming over this little planet of ours. Reconstruir, No. 60, May-June 1969
World History
