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	Anarchism: From Theory to Practice Daniel Guerin Monthly Review Press, 1970 - 160 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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This book is perfect for those already interessted in the movement, as well as people just looking to learn a bit about it. Also perfect for all those young "Anarchists" who think anarchy is about blowing $#!7 up (far to many of my friends fall into this, hopefully I can pull them out of it....).

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Instructive, stimulating, inspiring

A basic tenant of Libertarian socialism is that workers should directly control and design what their political representatives' implement and should directly control their workplaces, so as to maximize their own freedom. As Marx stressed in his early writings the will to work, to create, to mold nature to our intellects and creative powers, is part of human nature, our "species-being." When prevented from developing their "species-being" by having to sell themselves to wage slavery, struggling to feed themselves and being fettered by other drudgeries, human beings are degraded. They become dysfunctional and their powers of intellect and creativity are assaulted. They become dysfunctional, anti-social. This would become very rare in a libertarian socialist with maximum personal freedom. A community could lock away any person committing criminal acts in order that his constructive "species-being "could be recuperated. Or if the criminal didn't want to do that, a community could expel the criminal from their midst. People should have a choice, said Bakunin of choosing to live in any community they wanted. If any community in a libertarian socialist society dosen't appeal to them, they can go live in the mountains and forests with the beasts as Bakunin put it. People with alternative lifestyles like nudists could set up their own community and link themselves to regular communities as called for in a program of Spanish anarchists in 1936.

Anarchists in the 19th century, Guerin shows, were particularly cognizant of the dangers of authoritarian state socialism. Bakunin gave a particularly prescient prediction about it, though he unfairly described his rival Marx as an adherent of it. Authoritarian socialists like Lenin advocated a one party autocracy that would direct society until that autocracy determined that a society was fit for full libertarian socialism. Libertarian socialists have always recognized the possibility that capitalist institutions may need to be maintained, as society slowly transitions out of capitalist practices. But anarchists believe that direct political democracy should always exist during such periods even if capitalist practices still remain. During the two revolutions in Russia in 1917, the urban proletariat seized control of their workplaces as they had done back in 1905. In many instances workers had seized control of their workplaces after factory owners had fled or refused to comply with early Bolshevik decrees that factory managers share management with workers. Lenin was very uneasy about it but went along with it at first because of its popular support. Long before he achieved political power, Lenin had always written, even in his most libertarian work "State and Revolution" of the need for workers and peasants to be subordinated to an autocracy of "democratic centralism" By mid 1918, using the excuse of the civil war with the White armies and the invasions by the imperialist powers, the freedom of the Soviets were eliminated and they were forced to become docile instruments of Bolshevik policy. Anarchists who non-violently objected to the new policies were subject to savage repression. Because the Bolshevik leaders now delegated themselves all decision making power throughout their vast country, things got screwed up. The workers had to wait a very long time for approval so things didn't get done. The communication and transportation facilities that did exist in Russia at the time were in ruins. The workers were all quite willing to fight for the Bolsheviks in order to defend their self-management institutions. However, when the workers tried to run their factories on their own and coordinate with workers councils in other industries, the Bolsheviks forced them to stop. Guerin quotes Voline an example of this, workers at a St. Petersburg oil refinery who organized themselves to get their factory moving again but were stopped by the authorities. In early 1921, Alexandra Kollantay, urged the Bolshevik party to loosen restrictions on the freedom of workers noting the rising worker discontent, the cause of which was the stifling of that freedom. This contributed to Lenin's decision to officially ban all dissent in the Bolshevik party, which Trotsky later admitted set the party on a firm course towards totalitarianism. There were massive strikes in Petrograd and Moscow and workers and sailors in Kronstadt began to organize in solidarity. The Kronstadt activists demanded the restoration of the freedom of the Soviets and freedom of speech for anarchists and left socialists along with the Bolsheviks. They were against freedom of speech for more conservative socialists. They did not demand the removal of the Bolshevik party. War Commissar Trotsky sent a force that crushed the rebellion in barbaric fashion. Meanwhile in the Ukraine, workers and peasant soviets had been set up successfully under the leadership of an anarchist army led by Nestor Makhno. They drove out the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary, then were much more successful against the White Armies than the Red Army. They were an intolerable threat to Bolshevik power so they were crushed. For instance in November 1920, negotiators from Makhno's army were sent to talk with the Bolsheviks but were arrested and shot by the CHEKA and the Makhnovist army units that had accompanied them were caught in a trap and disarmed.

Anarchism had a firm foothold in Spain, Guerin points out.. So when a left wing government was elected in Spain in February 1936 and Francisco Franco launched his first counterrevolutionary revolt, the workers and peasants stopped it by seizing control of their factories and their land and set up worker's and peasant's councils. The left wing government included some anarchists but was dominated by non-anarchist socialists. This Spanish government was forced by the hostile "neutrality" of the Western powers and the aid given to Franco's forces after his successful rebellion of July 1936 by the Fascist powers to turn to Soviet Russia for support. The power of Stalinists in the government grew and they used it to destroy worker self-management institutions, which were fairly successful for a period according to Guerin.

The last part of the book includes ssome interesting and even prophetic observations about the USSR in the mid-60's and reports on worker self-management within totalitarian political frameworks as in Tito's Yugoslavia. The last chapter, a postscript to the 1970 edition, has Guerin indulging in some very overly hopeful exhortations on the possibilities of the insurrections of 1968 in his country, France.

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An excellent overview for the already initiated.

This book is highly recommended for those who are already convinced of the value of anarchism and want to expand their understanding of anarchist history and theory.

Guerin packs a lot of learning into this slim (160 page) volume. His portrayals of the intellectual fathers of the movement-- Proudhon, Bakunin, Malatesta, et. al., are nuanced and eye-opening. He pulls choice quotes froma broad range of sources and make clear the theoretical principles of social anarchism as they developed out of the 1st International all the way up through the 1960s.

His brief descriptions of the high water marks of anarchist struggle in Spain and Russia are concise, lucid, and affirming.

For all the book's strengths, though, it is not the most exciting reading. Guerin packs a lot of crucial information in, but somehow the spirit of revolt and solidarity, the real poetry of anarchism, doesn't shine through the presentation. In short, this is not the best book to use to turn newbies on to anarchism. For young people new to anarchism, I would recommend Crimethinc's "Days of War, Nights of Love" and "Recipes for Disaster". For the more mature, pragmatically minded initiates, Colin Ward's "Anarchy in Action" is a good place to start. For the questioning Marxist, Bookchin's "Post-Scarcity Anarchism" is essential reading.

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The Best Summary of Anarchist Though I've Encountered

Daniel Guerin's book is the best summary of the writings of early anarchist political theory that I've ever read. The only drawbacks are a failure to provide citations for the sources quoted and of course its age. Having been published in the 1970's it is in serious need of an update to include the writings of Bookchin, Zerzan, Black and Chomsky just to name a few. But with those quibbles aside this could and should be a textbook for either organized classroom study of anarchist history and thought or an excellent resource for the autodidact. I recommend it highly.

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