A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #373 - History - From the Platform to the CNT: The Origins of Libertarian Communism (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The Platform was born from a simple question: why did libertarian 
revolutionaries fail where the Bolsheviks triumphed? Drawing lessons 
from the Russian Revolution and the Makhnovist experience, the group 
Delo Truda rejected convenient explanations and challenged the 
weaknesses of anarchism itself. Their ambition was to rebuild the 
libertarian project on revolutionary, organized, and resolutely 
communist foundations.
The Platform emerged from the debates of the community of Slavic 
anarchists exiled in Paris. A number of them took part in the events of 
the 1917 Revolution across Russia, and many even participated in the 
movement that held the most hope for libertarians: the Ukrainian 
Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army and the civilian political 
institutions it brought with it (a broad movement that was called 
"Makhnovshchina," literally "Makhno's gang," by its opponents). This 
community was thus imbued with a profoundly revolutionary spirit and was 
equally deeply disappointed by the turn the great social revolution, 
which the Bolshevik bureaucracy had managed to seize, was taking. It was 
a network of anarchists reflecting on their experiences and failures.

The State of Anarchism in Russia
While some anarchists, like Voline, attributed their failure to a stroke 
of bad luck (not enough activists) and Bolshevik repression, this was 
not the opinion of the "Platformers" (as their opponents would call 
them). Blaming their failure on the success of their rivals made no 
sense. Where Lenin's followers had succeeded, Makhno's had failed; the 
question of why had to be asked. These Russian anarchists diagnosed an 
"internal impotence"[1]within the movement. This impotence, according to 
them, lay in the very nature of the movement at that time: a vague and 
politically indecisive entity. In Russian anarchism, as elsewhere, 
genuine anarcho-communists, who understood the challenges of organizing 
the working classes and their political leadership, coexisted with 
individualists still clinging to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois liberal 
illusions (humanist and poetic). More than a polemical text, the 
Platform is the product of a revolutionary experience. It is the fruit 
of its authors' encounter with the reality of a profound world change in 
Russia.

Ida Mett (1901-1973), a Russian-born physician, translator, and 
libertarian activist, is an important figure in anarchism in exile. A 
member of Delo Truda, she was involved throughout her life in 
anti-Stalinist, trade union, and anti-fascist struggles in France, 
Belgium, and Spain.

Libcom.org
The Platform was the will to transform anarchism. The aim was to return 
to the sources of the most solid tradition (the Bakuninist branch) and 
to transcend it. This required anarchism to return to materialist 
foundations and to provide it with the means to achieve its ambitions by 
giving its activists organization and discipline. In response to the 
Platform, Voline and Sébastien Faure formulated the Anarchist Synthesis, 
wishing to avoid splitting a movement they still considered capable of 
remaining united. And if the Synthetists often accused the Platformists 
of Bolshevik tendencies, it is perhaps because they were not entirely 
wrong. The Russian Revolution sparked a wave of enthusiasm among 
libertarians worldwide. It was the embodiment of a revolutionary impulse 
among the masses seizing power. And the Bolsheviks' concrete success 
against other revolutionaries had vindicated a certain aspect of Marxist 
theory. The Platform therefore proposed to appropriate what had survived 
the fire of the revolution: the need for a general organization, for 
coordinated action, for a political perspective, for a revolutionary 
army, etc. All of this could no longer be questioned by consistent 
revolutionaries.

The form the Makhnovshchina took during those two years of fighting in 
Ukraine was, moreover, very telling. It was not particularly exceptional 
in the torrent of 1917. It was merely one part of that great movement of 
workers' and soldiers' councils, women's councils, and factory councils 
that flourished wherever the Tsarist knout had reigned. From 1919 to 
1921, revolutionary anarchists built a force of resistance against all 
the excesses of War Communism: they kept alive the very spirit of the 
Russian Revolution by building a democracy based on councils, where, 
among other things, peasants still managed the land collectively and 
soldiers still elected their leaders. This revolutionary, rather than 
sectarian, spirit would prove foundational.

The Influence on the CNT
It was this same revolutionary spirit that would soon seize a part of 
Spain. The Iberian Peninsula was, without a doubt, the only place in 
Europe where Bakuninist anarchism had remained so strongly entrenched. 
And although the CNT did not claim allegiance to the Platform, it 
followed a parallel path. Indeed, it too was profoundly shaken by the 
1917 Revolution. Even before Franco's coup, the CNT had joined the Red 
International of Labor Unions, an offshoot of the Communist 
International (also known as the Third International). Many CNT members 
embraced this communism, which held so many promises. Some even went so 
far as to leave the CNT to join the ranks of the communist left (Andrés 
Nin, for example, who went on to found the POUM[2]). Others tried to 
synthesize the best aspects of their own tradition with the best of the 
Marxist tradition. These men and women found themselves en masse in the 
FAI (Italian Anarchist Federation) and tried to make a revolution in 
Spain, where the working class seemed sufficiently organized. And where 
these actions gained some traction, the Spanish revolutionaries called 
for the collectivization of land and factories, and tried to implement 
"libertarian communism."

Piotr Archinov (1887-1938) was a Ukrainian locksmith and anarchist 
activist, a historian of the Makhnovist movement and the principal 
architect of the Platform, before returning to the USSR where he was 
ultimately executed during the Stalinist purges.

DR
Beyond Marxism and Anarchism
In France, several organizations were heavily influenced by these 
Russian and Spanish experiences. But each time, the old anarchism 
refused to die. Faced with the profound debates surrounding the text of 
the Platform, its principal author, Piotr Archinov, was in despair. 
Discouraged by the constant controversies and the depressed state of the 
anarchist movement, he eventually returned to Stalinist USSR to work as 
a proofreader and was executed in 1938 for "attempting to restore 
anarchism"[3].

Yet, this was not the death of this revolutionary, libertarian communist 
spirit. This new "libertarian communism" was no longer quite the same as 
that claimed by figures like Cafiero or Malatesta; it was no longer 
synonymous with the old "anarcho-communism." The reactions of rejection 
it provoked within the old anarchist structures attest to this. This new 
idea, born in the crucible of a century of wars and revolutions, offered 
a fresh perspective: that of transcending the great schism, of taking 
stock of anarchism and Marxist communism, and of retaining only the best 
of both. Neither Lenin nor Kropotkin, libertarian communism charts the 
course toward the collectivization of land and factories, toward 
workers' democracy, against any resurgence of old oppressions-in short, 
a path to communism. In the postwar period, this was precisely what 
inspired many young activists, such as Daniel Guérin and Georges 
Fontenis. By founding the Libertarian Communist Federation and seeking 
to overcome the stagnation of the Anarchist Federation, they tried to 
breathe new life into this ever-evolving idea.

Wendelin (UCL Alsace)

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[1]Voline and Faure, The Response to the Platform.

[2]The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification. See Pierre Broué, The 
Spanish Revolution 1931-1939.

[3]Alexandre Skirda, Individual autonomy and collective strength: the 
anarchists and the organization from Proudhon to the present day, p. 
185-186.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?De-la-Plateforme-a-la-CNT-Aux-origines-du-communisme-libertaire
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