"In the Spirit of Sholem Schwarzbard" - Addressing Confusion about the War in Ukraine

submitted by anon, original source: avtonom

We recently received this anonymous contribution, and we publish it as a part of ongoing discussion on the Russian invasion against Ukraine. Text does not necessarily reflect collective views of Autonomous Action. 

recently appeared on It’s Going Down decrying support for anarchists in Ukraine who are fighting against the Russian army. Entitled “No War but the Class War,” it begins with a quotation from Rosa Luxemburg and concludes with a dedication: “In the spirit of Sholem Schwarzbard.” These two historical figures—a Jewish Marxist from Poland, active in Germany, and a Jewish anarchist from Ukraine, active in France—are conscripted to legitimize the authors’ polemic.

This juxtaposition between Luxemburg and Schwarzbard is typical of the quality of the scholarship of the whole text. While Luxemburg indeed wrote that “the international proletariat” should “intervene in a revolutionary way” in response to the First World War, Schwarzbard—contrary to the authors’ implications—took a different path. Though an anti-militarist, Schwarzbard enlisted in the French military as soon as World War I broke out and fought against Germany for a full year and a half before going to Ukraine to fight alongside other Jewish people against pogromists and alongside other anarchists against the reactionary White Army.

Let’s spell out Schwarzbard’s military career in detail, so there is no confusion about this. In August 1914, as soon as Germany invaded Belgium and France, Schwarzbard—already long an anarchist—volunteered for the French Foreign Legion. “Like thousands of others,” he later wrote, “I believed that the land was threatened by German militarism.” While explicitly opposing French colonialism and understanding that (as he put it) “the war would not establish justice in the world,” Schwarzbard nonetheless believed that if Germany conquered France, it would be a catastrophe even greater than war. Moreover, Schwarzbard regarded the Russian Tsar—an ally of the French government—as one of the foremost propagators of anti-Semitism; he must have weighed this consideration as he made his choice, the same way that many anarchists in Ukraine today weigh their opposition to NATO, the Azov battalion, and the Ukrainian government while nonetheless mobilizing against Russian bombs and tanks.

In addition to these motivations, according to his , Schwarzbard “revel[ed] in the potential for Jewish power in the hundreds of thousands of soldiers learning to fight in the World War.”

We don’t have to agree with Schwarzbard’s reasoning or with his decision to enlist—or with his apparent enthusiasm for militarism. But if we want to honor his memory and grasp the complexity of the choices he faced—let alone to act “in his spirit,” should we deem that advisable—we owe it to him not to misrepresent his life for our own purposes.

A month after his deployment, Schwarzbard fought in the Battle of Champagne, then, in May and June 1915, in the Second Battle of Artois. A tremendous number of his fellow soldiers were killed and wounded around him. Afterwards, his regiment in the Foreign Legion demanded the right to be discharged or transferred to a regular unit of the French Army. Schwarzbard himself did not leave the military, but accepted transfer to the regular French 363rd Infantry Regiment, with whom he continued fighting for the next seven months.

Finally, on March 1, 1916, Schwarzbard was hit by a German bullet and nearly killed. It took him a year and a half to recover, after which he went to Ukraine to participate in the Ukrainian revolution and the defense of Jewish communities from pogroms, drawing on the skills he had acquired in the French military. Some years later, he assassinated Symon Petliura, former president of Ukraine, whom he held responsible for the pogroms.

If you want to learn more about Schwarzbard’s life, you could start with “” arguably the most comprehensive text available in English.

As anti-militarists, we can’t endorse Schwarzbard’s decision to serve in a state military. But for the authors of “No War but the Class War” to imagine that they are speaking on Schwarzbard’s behalf when they denounce anarchists fighting in Ukraine today is the height of irony.

This error shows how quickly things can go wrong when you don’t bother to do a little research—when you assume, as some anglophone North Americans tend to, that you already know everything there is to know about a subject and those who disagree with you must simply be “US/NATO-aligned” or “fascist-minimizing.”

The questions that the authors of “No War” raise are important for all anti-militarists. Yes, “anarchists do not fight to create or defend the sovereignty of states.” We can also agree with them when they say “to oppose Russian aggression must not equate [sic] support for Ukraine”—provided that by “Ukraine” they mean “the government of Ukraine,” not “human beings who live in Ukraine.” They don’t seem especially concerned about what is happening to Ukrainians, Belarusians, or Russians as a result of the invasion.

Anti-militarism deserves advocates who can show that it is a way of solving people’s real problems, not an excuse to pass moralistic judgments according to a doctrinaire ideology. If we would prefer that anarchists like Schwarzbard not join state militaries when the armies of other states attack them, we need to propose a better alternative. It will not suffice to warn them that somebody in San Francisco is going to call them “US/NATO-aligned” or “fascist-minimizing.”

Why Did Sholem Schwarzbard Join the Army?

Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist. In the same text that the authors of “No War but the Class War” quote, she proclaims blithely that “Imperialist world domination is an historical necessity” and therefore that “imperialism ultimately works for us” [i.e., the proletariat]. Nonetheless, when the government that ruled her invaded another country, it was clear enough to her that she could not endorse this. In that regard, she was wiser than every tankie making excuses for Putin today and every liberal making excuses for NATO.

As an anarchist, Schwarzbard had no recourse to determinist frameworks like Luxemburg’s. Why, then, did he conclude—in August 1914 and then again and again for the next year and a half, at tremendous risk to himself—that his best option was to fight in the French military? If we are going to summon his spirit, we had better hear out his testimony.

We can answer that question with another question. Which city would you rather live in today—Kyiv or Mariupol? Kyiv is the city that has been successfully defended against the Russian invasion; Mariupol is the one that has not been successfully defended. Take a minute to familiarize yourself with everything that has occurred in Mariupol before you answer. Pro-Putin trolls blame the victim, saying it wouldn’t have been necessary to displace hundreds of thousands of people if they had welcomed the Russian tanks with open arms or that it was worth all that suffering to kill a few hundred Azov fascists, but if you ask anarchists from  and , they will tell you very clearly why so many people in Ukraine are risking their lives to fight the Russian army. We might as well have urged the residents of Kobanî to reject militarism back in 2014 when the Islamic State was besieging their city. Sometimes you do not have the choice to opt out of war.

We can criticize Schwarzbard and others like him for risking their lives to defend state democracies rather than fighting to overthrow them. We can argue that they should have formed an anarchist military and immediately attacked all the other (much bigger) armies, or that they should have fled, leaving the entire battlefield (and their hapless neighbors) to other forces. But if we want the Schwarzbards of the world to reject state militarism, too, we had better make proposals that address their actual needs and concerns. Otherwise, they will rightly disregard our criticism as idle talk, no matter how many Rosa Luxemburg quotations we toss at them.

It’s one thing to say that it is not *anarchist* to participate in a state military mobilization. Of course it’s not! Under duress, anarchists do all sorts of things that are not anarchistic, that do nothing to advance any anarchist project—laboring to enrich capitalist bosses, for example, or paying rent to landlords. If we can understand why workers alienate their labor in return for a wage in order to survive, we can understand why they might join a state military in hopes of resisting an invasion, as well. This is not to justify what Schwarzbard did, nor to suggest that militarism solves the problems it purports to address; it is just to ground our discussion in reality.

But it’s another thing altogether to allege that anarchists who participate in the territorial defense of Ukraine against an invading army—and those who provide those anarchists with a platform via which to communicate about what they are doing—are necessarily “minimizing fascism” and “colluding with neoliberal and ultranationalist war mongering.” This charge is decidedly not “in the spirit of Sholem Schwarzbard.” If anything, the anarchists in the Resistance Committee in Ukraine are attempting to improve on Schwarzbard’s example by establishing their own group, drawing on . Their open clashes with fascists—both before the invasion and since it started—are  for those who care to look.

Seen through a Telescope, Hazily

Undeterred, the authors of “No War” sketch out a tenuous string of allegations intended to discredit the Resistance Committee, seeking associate them vaguely with Ukrainian fascists. If the Resistance Committee had meaningful ties to fascists, you would think we would already have heard about it from other anarchists in Ukraine, Belarus, or Russia. At the worst points in their text, the authors of “No War” employ the sort of methodology via which alienated information consumers create conspiracy theories, associatively arranging random material they have encountered online. In one case, they link approvingly to an  by a writer for the Ron Paul Institute in which the author (who lives in Chile and seems to have no particular credentials regarding Ukraine other than appearances on Russian state media platforms Sputnik and RT) promotes bona fide conspiracy theories and puts “global white supremacist terror threat” in scare quotes—arguably “minimizing fascism,” if anyone is. This is an indication of what sort of echo chambers the authors have been spending time in instead of communicating with anarchists in the affected regions.

In their entire discussion of the Russian invasion and the Ukrainian response to it, the authors cite only two contemporary anti-authoritarian sources from the former Eastern Bloc, neither of which corroborate their allegations about the supposed fascist ties of the Resistance Committee.

The sole Ukrainian anti-authoritarian they cite in reference to the Russian invasion, , makes a thoughtful, if bookish, argument in favor of focusing on building solidarity structures and awaiting more promising opportunities for insurrection. He argues that “this war is unwinnable, and every minute of denying it kills more and more people” and points out that “fighting in the regular army is definitely not the way to defeat the state,” while allowing that “sometimes volunteering to fight might be a safer option than continuing to hide out.” , Andrew is practically the only anarchist publishing from Ukraine who believes there is nothing to be gained by fighting against the invasion, though this does not diminish the value of his perspective.

The only other anti-authoritarian author from the former Eastern Bloc that the “No War” authors cite in reference to the invasion is a Russian speaker named Saša Kaluža who appears to be writing at some distance from the events in Ukraine. Saša Kaluža made  at the very beginning of the war that anarchists should focus on organizing solidarity efforts while opposing both the Russian and Ukrainian governments:

“Initiatives such as the Resistance Committee are formed within the military structure of the Ukrainian state. They are not anarchist initiatives, even if most of the participants are anarchists. All territorial defense structures are controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces; their actions and capabilities are limited by the strategy and policies of the state and the Ministry of Defense. We can only have a dialogue or compromise with the state when we have strength and sufficient support from the people, otherwise we will end up repressed in prisons or destroyed by any of the opposing forces, whether it is the Ukrainian armed forces and the nationalist formations on their side or the Russian armed forces and the FSB. Perhaps we will see more positive examples of anarchist organizing in Ukraine, both military and civilian, in the future."

This is a reasonable and principled position, wisely forgoing speculation and hyperbole. It occasioned a similarly even-handed  from the Russian insurrectionist project Anarchist Fighter.

It’s worth quoting the response of Anarchist Fighter at length for several reasons. First, it addresses some of the more substantive critiques in “No War but the Class War.” Second, it was written after Saša Kaluža’s text, which included some predictions that did not come true. Finally, it arguably presents the analysis that is most widely held among anarchists throughout the former Eastern Bloc—and as Anarchist Fighter were writing from a Russian perspective rather than a Ukrainian one, their perspective cannot be written off as Ukrainian nationalism. Here are the concluding paragraphs of Anarchist Fighter’s response:

“We are ready to agree with the comrade [i.e., Saša Kaluža] in many respects. This is what anarchists should prioritize—not just defending one capitalist state from another, but using the situation of instability to transfer power to the people.

“The only problem here is that in the conditions of ongoing hostilities, while the parties to the conflict [i.e., the Russian and Ukrainian governments] are strong, the ‘third’ force will be the target of an attack by both of them as soon as it goes beyond the limits of ‘neighborly mutual assistance’ and tries to present itself as a party to the conflict with its own position and decisions. And also, it will become the object of massive [negative] propaganda, on the grounds that it is interfering with the defense of the country from the invaders. […]

“Here, we move on to the comrade’s criticism of initiatives like the Resistance Committee. Yes, formally, the comrade is right in this criticism. However, we must not forget that history is not made by keeping your hands clean. Simply put, obtaining a weapon and the ability to act without fear of catching a bullet from the Ukrainian Armed Forces represents a significant gain.

“As for the complete dependence of the territorial defense forces on the state and their subordination to the Armed Forces, we think that there is a significant exaggeration here. In conditions of war, such formations will inevitably have a certain autonomy within the framework of the tasks that, yes, the coordinating unit sets before them.

“Due to this autonomy, they can promote the ideas of self-organization, and promote them among the people of Ukraine with deeds as well as words. They can carry out all the tasks that the comrade [Saša Kaluža] writes about in the article (including assisting and organizing people), not on behalf of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but in their own name, as anarchists. At the same time, they can develop as an organization in order to subsequently use the achievements and social influence they have earned to transform the capitalist war into a class war.

“But yes, here it is extremely important not to lose your own identity and dissolve into the general patriotic forces.

“Moving on to the conclusion of the article. Yes, there is a capitalist war. And yes, our goal is the destruction of both the Russian and Ukrainian states, and the transfer of control of society into the hands of the people.

“However, one should not fail to act practically out of a simplistic desire to keep one’s hands and ideals clean. In our opinion, at the current stage, assisting the Ukrainian people, even if that means interacting with the Ukrainian state (for the time being), will allow anarchists to more effectively accumulate the resources and influence necessary to eventually overthrow both the Ukrainian and Russian states.”

Here, Anarchist Fighter briefly explain what anarchists might hope to gain by participating in the territorial defense of Ukraine and why it does not currently seem timely to them to prioritize attacking the Ukrainian army. Nestor Makhno and his comrades made similar calculations at various points in the course of their fight against the armies of several different aspiring governments. , Anarchist Fighter have argued that the defeat of Russia would be the best outcome for anarchists throughout the post-Soviet regions, since Putin has played the role of backing the forces of repression in crushing labor struggles and social movements in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere.

Again, we need not agree with the assessment of Anarchist Fighter, any more than we must agree with Schwarzbard’s decision to join the French military. But neither should we misrepresent it as a merely pro-NATO or pro-nationalist position.

In fact, there is a broad consensus among practically all of the that anarchists in Ukraine, including those in the Resistance Committee, have a right to participate in the territorial defense without being accused of being pro-state, pro-fascist, or pro-NATO. You can find this consensus among practically all of the significant , as well, and it is shared by anarchists in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, , , , , , , and elsewhere.

There are fierce and conflicts between anarchists in all of these countries, and these will likely only intensify as the war drags on. But the critics from Oakland and San Francisco appear to be out on a limb by themselves in claiming that the Resistance Committee are fascist adjacent and that the only possible outcome of their experiment is the further development of fascism and the expansion of NATO’s power.

If the authors of “No War but the Class War” had found any credible statement from anarchists in any of those countries accusing the anarchists of the Resistance Committee, Black Flag, Operation Solidarity, Assembly, or some other Ukrainian anarchist initiative of being pro-fascist, surely they would have directed us to it, rather than linking to The Daily Star (a cheap tabloid from the UK) and someone from the Ron Paul Institute. It’s also worth noting that no Russian, Belarusian, or Ukrainian anarchists have republished or translated their article.

We could conclude that the discrepancy described here indicates that nearly all the anarchists across the entire former Eastern Bloc are fake anarchists, and only a handful of real anarchists in Oakland and San Francisco are keeping the faith. Or we could conclude that we should not depend on a couple anarchists in US metropolises for a proper analysis of events in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, especially not when we can hear from anarchists in the latter regions themselves.

To suggest this is not to argue for “ally politics” or to legitimize a politics of representation. It’s a matter of basic common sense. If you think that Sholem Schwarzbard was a staunch anti-militarist, if you think that you can understand the decisions anarchists are making in the middle of a war on another continent without communicating with them, you are bound to make mistakes.

If you’re concerned that people in the United States are paying more attention to what’s happening in Ukraine than to what’s happening in Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, Tigray, or Myanmar, fair enough. The best solution might be to publish interviews with anti-authoritarians in those countries and organize solidarity actions supporting them, rather than composing yet another text about Ukraine. Don’t berate other English-speaking anarchists for publishing perspectives from anarchists in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and the neighboring regions as if it would improve matters for people to be even more ignorant about the situations there.

And What Should We Do?

Yes, anarchists must fight for the defeat of the Ukrainian government, but not by some more powerful government. If Ukraine is defeated by Russia, the same authoritarian government that has systematically tortured anarchists and crushed social movements and labor organizing in Russia will control more territory and more people’s lives. Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian anarchists who are participating in the territorial defense have been very clear that they are not fighting for the Ukrainian government but rather against the Russian government, in hopes of staking out a foothold from which to transform Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian society in the future. The consistent anarchists among them, at least, do not argue that Ukrainian democracy is worth defending, but rather that it is impossible to organize in the conditions that prevail in Russia and Belarus right now. They don’t seek to stabilize the Ukrainian government, but to destabilize the Russian government, as they believe this will create the greatest possibility of upheaval in the entire region.

As anarchists and anti-militarists, we ought to be critical of every undertaking that involves any kind of compromise with the state. But our critiques will be most useful if they are well-informed. To willfully shut one’s ears to the pleas of actual Russian and Belarusian anarchists who have fled from repression in those countries to Ukraine—and who cannot easily flee to Europe!—in the name of a doctrinaire “anti-militarism” is a poor excuse for solidarity. To shout over their voices, attempting to drown out their pleas with ignorant platitudes from the other side of the ocean, is still more reprehensible.

Yes, we should work towards the defeat of the Russian government, but not by some more powerful government, not by NATO—and not by nationalists of any country. If we make it clear to the millions of ordinary people in Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Georgia, Poland, and for that matter Syria, Myanmar, and everywhere else on the receiving end of the Russian government’s threats that anarchists do not give a damn what happens to them—that they can all die under Russian bombs for all we care, and that if they do anything to defend themselves, we will declare that they are fascist-adjacent—then we will put NATO and the nationalists in a much stronger position. In that case, the vast majority of those who are afraid of ending up like the residents of Mariupol will opt for nationalism or call for more NATO-backed militarization, seeing that we have no real solidarity or strategy to offer them. Proponents of both Putin and NATO would love for anarchists everywhere to adopt such a self-defeating position. So would proponents of the Azov Battalion.

Yes, we should work towards the defeat of NATO, but NATO’s eventual collapse will leave something equally terrible in its wake unless we organize on an international basis starting now. Supposed anti-imperialists whose response to the Russian invasion is to call for isolationism—effectively saying that everyone should just fight against his own (!) state, or against the biggest imperial force, and leave the other states alone—are giving Putin a free hand to torture every anarchist he can get his hands on. They misunderstand the global capitalist ruling class, which is an international entity bound by its own internal solidarities, even in the midst of a war like this. No proletarian has capitalists or politicians of his or her “own.” Empire is not a matter of one nation ruling other nations; it is a structure, like the state itself, that has multiple interconnected centers. Internationalism means fighting against all the politicians and capitalists of the world and standing in solidarity with all others who fight them, even if our comrades in warzones are forced by their dire circumstances to prioritize which ones they confront first. If all of us had extended proper solidarity to Russian anarchists starting in 2012, when the crackdowns there began, perhaps things would never have reached this terrible juncture.

It’s not surprising when the lackeys of certain politicians and capitalists accuse anarchists of serving rival politicians and capitalists. Their agenda is obvious. But anarchists should not sling such accusations at other anarchists lightly. If all it takes to be accused of being pro-NATO and pro-fascist is to defend yourself against a government that is opposed by NATO and fascists, it will take very little to disrupt our networks. Actual pro-Putin tankies would love to have such an easy means to fracture our movements. So would the FBI and FSB.

If it’s awkward to find yourself opposing the same enemy that another of your enemies is fighting, just wait until civil war arrives in the United States. Many anarchists have already experienced being called Nazis when they fight against the police and being accused of being shills for neoliberalism when they fight against the Nazis. We know better than to pay any mind to the liberals and fascists who attempt to reduce all conflict to a false binary between nightmarish alternatives. When people who call themselves anarchists attempt to do the same thing, we should not be cowed by their invective.

So what should we do, if we don’t look to armies to bring an end to wars? What alternative can we propose to the Sholem Schwarzbards of our day, lest they join the military?

If we want to stop the Russian invasion without legitimizing militarism, nationalism, and government, the first step is to support grassroots anti-war organizing in Russia and Belarus, which is disproportionately anarchist, and to support anti-authoritarian prisoners in Russia and Belarus, of whom there are many. The next step is to target capitalists of all nationalities who continue to finance or benefit from Putin’s imperial adventures—we should do this via direct action, sending the message that social movements can address militarism directly without seeking protection from any rival militarist state. If we can do those things effectively, it will position us well to exert pressure against NATO militarism, fascist recruiting, and Ukrainian state repression. If we don’t do those things effectively, pro-NATO and pro-nationalist critics will be able to argue persuasively that we are doing nothing to halt the Russian assault on Ukraine, and they will consequently be able to continue to use the Russian invasion to rally support.

We will be most effective in achieving our immediate aims and in building long-term networks of international solidarity if we are communicating directly with anarchists from a variety of tendencies and vantage points in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Likewise, we ought to do our best to maximize the likelihood that anarchists in Ukraine survive the war, including the ones who are fighting against the Russian invasion. It is a good thing that the anarchists who have chosen to fight in Ukraine have access to medical IFAKs, plate carriers, and the like. We should have raised money years ago to supply the same resources to anarchists fighting in Rojava, quite apart from the question of whether participating in military action qualifies as “anarchist.” There are really not that many of us and we should treat each other’s lives as precious even when we disagree. Having failed to do so in the past is no justification for failing to do it now.

We should oppose all tendencies to dehumanize people on all sides of the war, whether by calling Russian soldiers “orcs,” changing the subject to Azov in discussions about the suffering inflicted on Ukrainian civilians, or centering the lives of Ukrainian refugees over the lives of refugees who do not benefit from white privilege.

Finally, we should be organizing to support refugees and migrants of all nationalities—as and anarchists aligned with the projects attacked in “No War but the Class War” have already been doing, despite the authors’ citationless claim that anti-border organizing has been “sidelined by the fetishisizing of militancy in the form of state-backed militias.” We need to organize with refugees from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, and everywhere else, learning from their experiences and analyses, not immediately branding them as “defen[ders] of the Western liberal-democratic project” when their perspectives differ from ours (as the “No War” authors do in their efforts to discredit Syrian refugees who fled the Putin-backed massacres in Western Syria).

Solidarity with refugees should also extend to the Ukrainian citizens that the Ukrainian government has forbidden from leaving Ukraine on account of their age and ascribed gender.

The only hope for lasting peace in Ukraine lies in not military conflict but in mutiny and rebellion—especially on the side of Russia, which initiated this war. A unilateral mutiny in the Ukrainian military alone would only guarantee that Kyiv and Lviv end up looking like Mariupol (and that there would be endless sequels to the in the territories of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan as well as Russia). We have to foment rebellion on both sides of the battle lines; as Andrew , it will take “a mass movement on both sides of the frontline and in the armies themselves.” Presumably, that is just what Russian and Belarusian and Ukrainian anarchists are working towards in their various efforts to cooperate, none of which received a mention in the “No War” text—either because the authors are oblivious of them or because they consider them to be “NATO-aligned.”

Mobilizing an international resistance that can prevent wars like the one in Ukraine is already challenging. It will only become more difficult if we needlessly write off massive segments of the worldwide anarchist movement as pro-NATO or pro-fascist. We should maintain dialogue with those who are trying out hypotheses other than our own, the better to learn from the results and refine our own critiques.

What proposal do the authors of “No War but the Class War” make regarding how to respond to invasions without participating in state-aligned military formations the way that Schwarzbard did? They speak abstractly about “condemn[ing] invasion and militarization” and “solidarity with anti-war protestors, defectors from the armed forces, and conscription saboteurs.” Condemnations alone are not worth the bytes they are printed on, and as for solidarity with anti-war protestors, the authors’ chief contribution to that seems to be smearing the anarchist projects that have been translating and publishing Russian anarchist perspectives.

The most concrete thing we have to go on from the authors about how they intend to express this “solidarity” is the image they use to illustrate their article: a screenshot of a video taken by an anti-war arsonist who set fire to a military registration and enlistment office in the city of Lukhovitsy. Once again, however, the witness they have summoned testifies against them: the Russian anarchist venues that have circulated news of this action, foremost of which is Anarchist Fighter, are advocates of anarchist participation in the territorial defense of Ukraine. Neither Russian nor Ukrainian anarchists accept a false dichotomy between fighters in Kyiv and arsonists in Lukhovitsy—that dichotomy is an import product from San Francisco.

In this case, as well as in their ill-fated choice to invoke the spirit of Sholem Schwarzbard, the authors appear to have made the classic insurrectionist error of assuming that those they perceive as employing the most militant tactics must therefore share their politics. Somebody burned a recruitment center, so he or she must agree that Ukrainian nationalism is as terrible a scourge as Russian militarism—never mind that the arsonist spray-painted a Ukrainian flag as a part of the action! Sholem Schwarzbard shot a former president—therefore he cannot possibly have violated Rosa Luxemburg’s instructions and enlisted in the French army to fight in the Second World War!

One of the most fundamental divides in the world is between ideologues who assume that everything is simple and those who suffer the complications of the world in their own communities, on their own bodies. It’s effortless to “refus[e] to stand on any side of a war between imperialist states” when you’re ten thousand miles away, but it is more complicated for people in Kharkiv, Minsk, and Moscow right now. Do we have more to learn from dialogue with those for whom such a question is easy because it is abstract, or from those for whom it is painfully complicated?

In Closing

Let’s close with one of the tortured poems that Schwarzbard left us from his time in the military.

And like the bones of Ephraim’s Tribe

That were scattered in the Valley of Jezreel,

The dead men now stirred from the trenches,

Belted, and armed with arrow and bow

Driven, flushed out by wild vengeance

Against God, against heaven, against earth and against men,

Against everything that drove them to their fate

They must now defend their bitter enemies

To fight with their own brothers…

The bottom line is that we have to ensure that the next time a war breaks out, people like those who are fighting in the Resistance Committee have a better option than organizing under a state formation. This is a gigantic responsibility. If we don’t want, like Sholem Schwarzbard, to end up defending our bitter enemies and fighting with our own brothers, if we don’t want to have to choose between two nationalist armies, we need to be working very hard now to establish a concrete alternative. No amount of name-calling or historical revisionism can accomplish this for us. It requires us to be humble, to listen carefully to each other, to be serious about building something together. Despite our differences, we hope to be part of this with the authors of “No War but the Class War,” with the anarchists fighting in Ukraine right now, and with you.

There are 62 Comments

wow, great analysis! walking the tightrope, making many of us look like the bickering peanut gallery we are.

one of the highlights -

"But if we want the Schwarzbards of the world to reject state militarism, too, we had better make proposals that address their actual needs and concerns. Otherwise, they will rightly disregard our criticism as idle talk, no matter how many Rosa Luxemburg quotations we toss at them."

and this is said in the context of what happens when a modern military runs a particularly nasty scorched-earth campaign on a city ... using it's most bloodthirsty counter insurgency specialists... it's a pretty bad look for anarchists to stand next to the smoldering abattoir and be like - but are all your friends cool tho?!

thx, i'm just another windbag. but it's a strange feeling to be walking almost exactly in the footsteps of famous anarchist bickering from a century ago!

Why are we arguing over similar issues to those anarchists (and Marxists) "bickered" over more than a century ago? Because we still have capitalism, the state, war, racial and gender oppression, and ecological imbalance. Except that they are worse; now we have the possibility of nuclear war and global climate collapse. We still haven't solved the problems. So we go over past arguments, so as not to reinvent the wheel, but seek to go beyond past solutions.

Wayne, do you think that you, or humans in general, have the capacity to solve war, oppression, global climate collapse, etc? Do you think that a (another) human derived approach to solving this human created and perpetuated catastrophic problem will be anything more than the foundation for another catastrophe highlighting the hubris of humans, their world saving ideas, their technology? Weren't cities, agriculture, factory farming, nuclear energy, the microchip, plastic, drones, etc, etc, etc all "solutions" created by humans to solve problems caused by humans? Do you think that this tiny number of anarchists bickering over the centuries about all these problems just need to say the right combination of words to the right ears and we can convince the forces of the world to listen to us and solve all these global problems?

I love that Wayne is still an anarchist and still involved in these debates. It's amazing that he is still commenting on anews, also. That shows the depth of his commitment to anarchism, and his patience.

I have more admiration for the lifer that realizes they were duped and changes their tune.

a few of us have been anarchists longer than Wayne (remember, he used to be a trot before the late 1980s), and are still involved in these debates. some of us are even still commenting here on @news. does the fact that Wayne is a leftist first and an anarchist after (if at all, despite his lip service to it) make any difference? the content of someone's comments is surely more important than the label of the commentator (hence my desire to remain anonymous -- i'd rather the discussions/debates [such as they are] be about the topics rather than the personalities). if someone's ideas have remained the same since the late 1980s -- as Wayne's seem to have, despite all the various conversations and discussions that have taken place among anglophone anarchists about all kinds of different topics that hadn't been invented before the 1990s -- isn't that cause for alarm rather than cause for celebration? where are Wayne's engagements with green anarchy (beyond calls for workers' self-management of industry)? where are Wayne's engagements with gender queer/gender nihilism? where are Wayne's engagements with the resurgence of insurrectionary individualism? where are Wayne's engagements with post-left anarchy? where are Wayne's post-game analysis of Love and Rage and NEFAC? all we get here and on the increasingly turgid anarkismo are the usual paeans to 19th century left-anarchism. Wayne's proselytizing mass-oriented entryism is a vestige of his own trot background; it was a failed leninist strategy in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s -- and arguably, it was the strategy of the NYC-based trot RSL when they defected en masse to the idiotic anarchism of what turned into Love and Rage. it's embarrassing.

maybe so, maybe so!

but if nothing else, wayne is here to give you a reason to smash the backboard, dunking on him, yes?

i think his obstinacy might have prompted some above average bickering. fine work everyone! good show!

think i fukin lerned sumthin

Inb4 Wayne replies with a litany of things radicals have accomplished over the years (may day parades, the weekend—hello!) as some sort of proof and measure of progress. Ah sweet sweet progress and ignores these sincere questions entirely. A few more platitudes and the People will end all wars and save the environment.

Dear Pessimistic Anon,

I do not know. "Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will." (Antonio Gramsci). It is not a matter of making predictions but of making a commitment to do the best we can.

> Gramsci

Ah there's no better way to make a point to anarchists than by quoting Gramsci. ..LOL

"making a commitment to do the best we can"

This is akin to the libs that scream "at least I'm doing something!!!" when voting.

Be better, Wayne.

You don't like the Gramsci quotation? OK, the anarchist Paul Goodman liked to quote this from the Talmud: "It is not for you to complete the task, but neither are you free to stop working on it."

I particularly like the statement by Anarchist Fighter, "one should not fail to act practically out of a simplistic desire to keep one’s hands and ideals clean. In our opinion, at the current stage, assisting the Ukrainian people, even if that means interacting with the Ukrainian state (for the time being), will allow anarchists to more effectively accumulate the resources and influence necessary to eventually overthrow both the Ukrainian and Russian states."

I would add that it is entirely justified for anarchist organized military units to take arms from the state or (indirectly) from U.S. imperialism, to use against Russian aggression. Of course, our goals are only temporarily the same as the state and its imperialist allies. Anarchists should warn militants not to trust them and to be prepared for betrayals.

Have to say that this was remarkably well written piece!

I would add that it is entirely justified for anarchist organized military units to take arms from the state...

Worked wonders in Spain in the 1930s, the historical graveyard of anarchism. Duhhhh...

The Spanish anarchists were not defeated because they took arms from the state. Their error was to join the government (in alliance with reformist socialists, Stalinists, and pro-capitalist liberals). They failed to try to overthrow the government when they had the opportunity (on one or two occasions) when it might have been possible.

Of course, Ukrainian anarchists are in no way capable of overthrowing the present state. They have to organize themselves, win over masses of people, and participate in the existing struggle (the war of resistance to Russian invasion) with the goal of eventually becoming able to be a real revolutionary force.

Additionally, it's a small and secondary detail, yet relevant to Schwarzbard questionable choice, thr French Foreign Legion is a fascist organization. They have been created by the Orléans monarchy and have remained loyal to the monarchy of France (which is still existing, somehow even if it has no longer power over France and cannot crown a new king). The FFL is also notirous for being a haven for fascists from many countries, especially Germany, and has been active in several French imperialist black ops.

I think as a non-citizen maybe Schwarzbard couldn't join any other formation? I've read stuff where he complained about the politics of other people in the Foreign Legion with him.

isn't that weird how joining a mercenary company would involve associating with scumbags?! you think the official ones are bad, imagine the private sector...

Fascism wasn't a thing in 1914 when Schwarzbard joined the FFL.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine I have been highly motivated to write to various listservs and sites, arguing for support to the Ukrainian people. Trying to participate in the national and international discussion on the left, I have argued against pro-Russian "campists" and "tankies," as well as anarchists who think it "unprincipled" to support an invaded and oppressed nation.

Inevitably, there have been comments directed at me personally, such as those above in this thread. There are hostile remarks (I am a "fake anarchist") as well as a few positive posts (for sticking it out). Inevitably some critics point out that I was a Trotskyist before I became a revolutionary anarchist. This is true, I was an unorthodox and dissident Trotskyist. And before that, I was an anarchist-pacifist, greatly influenced by Paul Goodman. As this shows, my opinions have changed over time. But I like to think that my values and vision have remained pretty constant.

However this is really a diversion. Neither my personality nor my history is all that important. The issue is political. Do we stand in solidarity with the working people of Ukraine as they are being massacred? Do we agree with the Ukrainian anarchists who are throwing themselves into the armed struggle against the invaders?

For anyone interested in my political evolution, here are two essays:
“Some of My Past Political Mistakes”
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31379?search_text=Wayne+Price

“What is an Anarchist? Am I an Anarchist?”
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/30259?search_text=Wayne+Price

"Do we stand in solidarity with the working people of Ukraine"

What about the unemployed Ukrainian people or the undocumented people that the Ukraine state won't allow to work?

Well why they just don't get a jooob!? Do they think they're better than the good, law-abiding workers?

They were all injured in the great Kyiv manufacturing plant flood while sewing patches for Azov Battalion freedom warriors. Handless unemployed ex-workers and undocumented migrants disallowed to work deserve Wayne's solidarity too don't you think?

But that is the point. We anarchists are in solidarity with all the working people and oppressed of Ukraine, not with the state nor the capitalist class which causes unemployment and discriminates against "undocumented" people. (If the working people are not anarchists or socialists, and therefore accept the state and capitalism, that is their decision, not what we advocate.)

But the existence of these oppressions do not justify the Russian invasion nor should they make us neutral between the Ukrainian people and the Russian army.

Thank you for such a well thought out and articulate analysis. To me, rejecting militarism doesn’t mean not fighting. See for instance the article “Of martial traditions and the art of rebellion” by seaweed, in which the distinction between a militarist approach and a martial arts approach to insurrection is introduced and fleshed out a little.

Personally, if someone is coming after my kin, or to destroy my habitat, or to harm my friends and neighbours, I might fight against them regardless of my typical stance on violence vs non-violence. I might even temporarily join a statist army if I deem it the best option overall in the heat of the moment.

Every time an anarchist or group of anarchists do something it needn’t be interpreted as modelling the strategy or tactics they advocate. Sometimes humans just do things passionately or impetuously, with no regard for how it fits in a historical narrative or how it might or might not reinforce a position, even their own articulated one, within milieu debates.

Ben, your last paragraph is good. The problem I've had consistently with ammosexuals like Wayne and Luke is the presumptuousness of conflating the impetuous or reflexive pro-militarist defensive actions of *some* Ukrainian anarchists who've chosen to ally themselves with the Ukrainian military with anarchist philosophy. At least those Ukrainians and their comrades in other parts of Eastern Europe -- totally unlike the pro-war goofs here -- have the good taste *not* to claim that what they're doing is fully anarchist and so should be automatically supported without comment by all other anarchists.

"Sometimes humans just do things passionately or impetuously, with no regard for how it fits in,,,"
No truer words have been spoken dear man!

I have never said that the actions of the Ukrainian anarchists "should be automatically supported without comment by all other anarchists." Nor would I ever write such a thing about anyone. You made it up. Nor did I claim that what Ukrainian anarchists are doing is "fully anarchist." I don't even know what that means. I do think that what they are doing is the best thing that anarchists can do in their situation to oppose the Russian invaders and to advance the cause of anarchism. To you this may be "partial anarchism," but it's good enough for me, at this point.

You may be the above poster who challenges me because my writings are not "engagements" with a whole list of topics which you regard as essential for an anarchist writer to cover. Before you make such statements you should check out what topics I do "engage" with: https://www.anarkismo.net/openwire?search_text=Wayne+Price&button=Search...

just an aside for you Wayne: you do understand that there have been/are *at least* four different commentators here who have continually opposed your analyses and comments, right? some are more coherent than others, some have overlapping points, but they are clearly distinct, so I'm not sure why you want to lump (no pun intended) some (all?) of them together

I don't see that I have much choice since they all (except Lumpy) insist on being anonymous.

Wayne, that's just laziness. The choice you have is to take each criticism as it comes without trying to score dubious rhetorical points by consolidating your critics into a single easily dismissed entity.

I represent a person who frequently has a name AND criticises you ALL the time for having Marxist syndicalist tendencies.
My client will not name themselves for fear of being deleted yet again, but Lumps is NOT the ONLY named person who has negative things to say abou you.
.

I represent anonymous and after carefully examining all internet logs I can assure you, Wayne, that there is only one other person on the entirety of anews responding to your posts and their name rhymes with Bladamir Bluten.

Be safe out there.

Apart from the possibility of small inter-anarchist initiatives, significant in their own way, I have been wondering about radicals in nato countries and our relation to our local and national social contexts. Support for Ukraine has so much political popularity, there is a temptation to not question it but just give it an anarchist “spin”. Maybe there’s simply no space for such questions about the past eight years of war and whether the US sending infinite weapons to a faraway war zone is good actually or no? Because this is what “supporting Ukraine” means to most people around us. I have always felt that one of the unique virtues of anarchism is raising the most difficult problems and radical critiques, with or without explicit solutions on offer, in times of crisis or quiet. I know personally how costly it can be. Maybe this one isn’t worth it. I will never fail to be disturbed that these past few months have seen many pro-escalation pro-“no fly zone” demonstrations and none that I’m aware of objecting to this course of action. Russians have had the courage to demonstrate against their own government’s militarism. Why don’t we? I recall the Iraq War as another time that most of the US supported any means necessary to defeat a bad national leader in another part of the world. Today fascism is still heating up in the US and EU; what are these “western values” and “democracy” people talk about defending?

Tangent-Anon raises an important issue. Given the popularity of the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion, how do anarchists and other radicals resist the pro-Western patriotism which is becoming so prevalent? Some on the left try to do this by condemning the U.S. state as somehow the real instigator of the war, supporting the Russian side as not really imperialist aggression. I won't go through the argument here. The essential fallacy is to see U.S. imperialism as the only agent here, while ignoring the agency of the Russian state or of the Ukrainian state and of the Ukrainian people (not the same thing). Anarchists rarely accept this view, being fully aware of Russian imperialism as well as U.S. imperialism.

It is important for revolutionary anarchists to point out the record of the U.S. state. While not directly causing the immediate war, the U.S. is the main imperialist power on a world scale, and is involved in wars and oppression around the globe (e.g. in Yemen). Its expansion of NATO toward Russia's borders helped lay the basis for the war, along with Russia's expansion toward the old borders of the Soviet Union. U.S. support for Ukraine does not prove that it is good anymore than (during the Cold War) the Soviet Union's support for various anti-Western national struggles proved that it was good.

But the basic fact remains. Putin's state did attack Ukraine. An imperialist power invaded a poorer, weaker, and essentially colonial country, smashing its cities, killing its people, and driving them from their homes. Not only did the Ukrainian state resist but the Ukrainian people--workers and others--are resisting, with much popular initiative from below. Ukrainian anarchists are participating in the national struggle as best as they can.

For their own reasons, the U.S. state and NATO are supporting the Ukrainians at this time. For their reasons--that they need arms--the Ukrainians are taking weapons from the Western imperialists. Anarchists should not criticize this (unless they want the Ukrainians to lose) but should warn not to trust the Western imperialists. They might expand the war unnecessarily or they might make a deal which could betray the Ukrainians (the experience of the Kurds is relevant here).

P.S. To earlier posters: I assume that everyone who comments on this list, those who criticize my views and those who agree with me, have names. Unlike some lists, anarchistnews makes it easy for posters to be anonymous. Then they should not complain when I cannot tell them apart.

How does Wayne get any anarchist-communist solidarity done if he spends all his time on anews arguing with anarchists that disagree with him? If the good war in Ukraine requires overseas anarchist-communist solidarity then it would surely be the mark of a good comrade to not waste so much time every day, right? Makes you think..

clearly Wayne isn't spending "all his time" here arguing. not sure why you (or any other person who thinks that some of the writers and commentators who post/comment here have nothing else going on in their lives -- projection much?) believe that these discussions are a "waste." they often result in the respective positions becoming clearer to interested people. i, for one, am happy that Wayne spends as much time here as he does -- how else would interested people become aware of the existence of a pro-war, pro-nationalist (small nations, of course, and the parts that have nothing to do with the state that creates and maintains that nation...) tendency among american anarchists? this despicable position deserves the spokesperson it has: Wayne Price, proudly unprincipled cold war Anti-Imperialist champion of Workers, who's still infected by the trotskyism of his pre-Love and Rage/NEFAC days. he is one among many examples of the deleterious affects of having one's formative political years suffused with party-oriented communism, with its love of democratic centralism and entryism. the seepage of Marxism is clear in the language and organizational methodology of neo-Platformists like NEFAC and its derivatives; for most anarchists leery of mass-based politics, the results have been no less horrifying for their predictability. one of the three or four big issues in the nearly-public third split that finally destroyed Love and Rage was nationalism/national liberationism/anti-imperialism, and here's Wayne, epitomizing the wrong side of that split. he seems to think that Ukraine is a baby state deserving of support against the big bully Russia, totally ignoring the fact that Ukraine has been actively courting NATO and the US and receiving war materiel for almost a decade. that's not even in the same league as anarchists fighting against the British in Egypt in the 1890s or against the Spanish in Cuba in the 1880s, yet Wayne's justifications for anarchists supporting wars of national liberation are based on those moments from over a hundred years ago, when European empires were still actively involved in colonialism. Russia might be trying to colonize Ukraine, but Ukraine has been a proper nation-state ever since it became a Soviet republic, with its own military and ruling class. Wayne seems to think that this history is irrelevant, and that supporting "the anarchists" of Ukraine against a military invasion by voluntarily subordinating themselves to that state and that military is 100% in line with anarchist theory, philosophy, and history. and all he can do is repeat himself endlessly when other anarchists point out the immense contradictions of such a position being taken by a self-proclaimed anarchist, since it actually goes against the anarchist principles of anti-militarism (not pacifism) and anti-nationalism.

tl;dr: Wayne is funny

@22;17, is this better for you?
clearly Wayne isn't spending "all his time" here arguing. not sure why you (or any other person who thinks that some of the writers and commentators who post/comment here have nothing else going on in their lives -- projection much?) believe that these discussions are a "waste." they often result in the respective positions becoming clearer to interested people.

i, for one, am happy that Wayne spends as much time here as he does -- how else would interested people become aware of the existence of a pro-war, pro-nationalist (small nations, of course, and the parts that have nothing to do with the state that creates and maintains that nation...) tendency among american anarchists? this despicable position deserves the spokesperson it has: Wayne Price, proudly unprincipled cold war Anti-Imperialist champion of Workers, who's still infected by the trotskyism of his pre-Love and Rage/NEFAC days.

he is one among many examples of the deleterious affects of having one's formative political years suffused with party-oriented communism, with its love of democratic centralism and entryism. the seepage of Marxism is clear in the language and organizational methodology of neo-Platformists like NEFAC and its derivatives; for most anarchists leery of mass-based politics, the results have been no less horrifying for their predictability. one of the three or four big issues in the nearly-public third split that finally destroyed Love and Rage was nationalism/national liberationism/anti-imperialism, and here's Wayne, epitomizing the wrong side of that split.

he seems to think that Ukraine is a baby state deserving of support against the big bully Russia, totally ignoring the fact that Ukraine has been actively courting NATO and the US and receiving war materiel for almost a decade. that's not even in the same league as anarchists fighting against the British in Egypt in the 1890s or against the Spanish in Cuba in the 1880s, yet Wayne's justifications for anarchists supporting wars of national liberation are based on those moments from over a hundred years ago, when European empires were still actively involved in colonialism. Russia might be trying to colonize Ukraine, but Ukraine has been a proper nation-state ever since it became a Soviet republic, with its own military and ruling class. Wayne seems to think that this history is irrelevant, and that supporting "the anarchists" of Ukraine against a military invasion by voluntarily subordinating themselves to that state and that military is 100% in line with anarchist theory, philosophy, and history. and all he can do is repeat himself endlessly when other anarchists point out the immense contradictions of such a position being taken by a self-proclaimed anarchist, since it actually goes against the anarchist principles of anti-militarism (not pacifism) and anti-nationalism.

(1) My anonymous critic (one of several) writes that my attitudes toward national self-determination " are based on those moments from over a hundred years ago, when European empires were still actively involved in colonialism" I have news for them. If not "colonialism", then imperialism is still alive and well, throughout the world--often called "neo-colonialism." The ruling classes of a few great powers dominate the world, oppress and exploit poorer nations, and compete with each other--including local wars. In particular, Putin has repeatedly declared that Ukraine is not really a nation or people and should be incorporated into Russia. What would you call this? The rationale for anarchist anti-imperialism and national self-determination has not been overcome in those 100 years.

(2) You write that I am for Ukrainian anarchists "voluntarily subordinating themselves to that state and that military " They miss the point. This is not primarily a war between states. In Ukraine (as in Vietnam some time ago) a whole people has risen up in resistance to the invaders. There is a great deal of self-organization and initiative from below. It is to this struggling people that I think Ukrainian anarchists should "subordinate" themselve--to be part of. Unfortunately the bulk of Ukrainians are not anarchists or socialists. They accept the state and capitalism (at this time) and let the state coordinate their war efforts. Ukrainian anarchists have to take this into account, to maneuver the best they can in order to advance anarchism. Thus some have organized an anarchist/anti-fascist military unit which has a degree of autonomy within the official Territorial Defense force. Other approaches have been tried. The point is to participate in this justified war while upholding anarchism as best as possible under the circumstances.

there is no rationale for anarchist anti-imperialism. you yourself have given it away: "a few great powers [states with empires] dominate the world, oppress and exploit poorer nations [states without empires]..." the common denominator is states, with boundaries and citizens and the ability to offer and ratify treaties between the great and poor. when anarchists were involved in the anti-colonial struggles in the 19th century that i mentioned, there was not an Egyptian state fighting the British empire; there were Egyptian and non-Egyptian workers and peasants and middle class republicans who were being directly exploited by British colonialists. there was not a Cuban state fighting the Spanish empire; there were native and non-native workers and peasants and middle class republicans who were being directly exploited by Spanish colonialists. when anarchists were involved in those struggles, they allied themselves with insurgents, many of whom were working- and middle-class nationalists who hoped to build, create, and maintain a state of their own, independent from British and Spanish rule. but at the time, they had very little in the way of a bureaucratic infrastructure that could be considered by anyone to be more than a potential state in the making.

the issue of Ukraine is completely different. a sovereign state with the trappings of an empire has invaded another sovereign state without them. Putin's rhetoric marks him as an imperialist, no question about that; his desire is to swallow up any independent manifestation of Ukrainian nationalism and culture. but the Ukrainians (and non-Ukrainians) who are resisting the Russian invasion are doing so in order to defend their state -- that's why they enlist in the military or join the paramilitary territorial defense forces instead of developing a self-organized militia-based insurgency (like the Makhnovists did). you see the former as a legitimate strategy for pursuing a specifically anarchist agenda, namely some imaginary beast you call anarchist anti-imperialism.

you acknowledge that the number of anarchists in Ukraine is quite small, and my contention is that when they choose to become subservient to the militarist necessities of the Ukrainian government, they forfeit their ability "to advance anarchism" within a larger non- or anti-anarchist milieu. if the military authorities did care about these fighters being anarchists, they might be suspicious since anarchists are supposed to fight for the abolition of the very Ukrainian state that's training and arming them. unless those anarchists are, like you, acting as cross-class nationalists, and making it clear to the Ukrainian authorities that (for at least as long as they’re fighting a conventional war) they are not any kind of threat to the smooth operation of a militarized state.

there's a huge problem with militarism for anarchists throughout history, and that is that militarized societies are virtually impossible to make a dent in if you're an anarchist. militarization means hierarchy, it means imposed discipline, it means almost never being able to think for yourself and definitely never acting for yourself. there is no "self" in militarism; there is only the military. this is why many principled anarchists who were part of the militias during the Spanish revolution/civil war left the front when their units were militarized; they could justify being anarchists fighting a military fight as long as they were self-organized in militia columns where there were no officers, but they rejected the arguments many of the leaders of the CNT made about discipline, unified command, and access to better weapons -- the same arguments you're using today to justify the absorption of anarchists into the ranks of a state-organized paramilitary formation.

i can't believe i have to remind you of this: for anarchists there's no such thing as a justified war. you must have missed that lecture during Anarchy 101.

Wrong. The "common denominator" is NOT states but peoples (nations). Certainly this is as the oppressed see it. The Ukrainians as a people are under attack. Putin has been quite clear about that, saying that the Ukrainians were not a nation and did not deserve a state; he aims to incorporate them into the nation of Russia and wipe out all memory of Ukraine, its culture and history.

It is true that the Egyptians and Indians who fought for national self-determination against their British rulers did not, at the time, have states. But they wanted their own states. We anarchists did not agree with this goal, but it was what they aimed for, as the Palestinians, Tibetans, Puerto Ricans, Western Saharans, Chechens, and others want even today (the issue is not dead). Others want to keep their existing states, as in the case today of Ukrainians or the Taiwanese. They saw "their own" states as meaning the independence of their people, just as the Ukrainians do today.

I have demonstrated repeatedly that classical anarchists held this view, from Bakunin and Kropotkin to Malatesta and Guerin. And that today's Ukrainian anarchists hold this view. (Repetitions are available on request.) But you insist that only you know what is real, not "fake" anarchism. Personally I do not care if I am called an anarchist or a revolutionary autonomist, or decentralist socialist, or libertarian communist. It is all the same to me. What I care about is standing with the oppressed when they fight against their repression (such as an invasion), for anything that expands freedom.

The question is, do peoples (composed of workers and oppressed) have the freedom to decide for themselves what political, social, and cultural system they will live under? (whatever we anarchists advocate) That is what is meant by national self-determination.

With dipshit anarchists like Wayne Price is it any wonder that actual anti-authoritarians and radical anti-capitalists among actual anarchists end up working alongside the best anti-state communists? Because anti-state (and anti-party) communists are clear that nationalism (whether cultural or statist) is even more of a socio-political poison in the 21st century than it was already in the 19th.

It's also no wonder that dipshit anarchists like Wayne Price invoke nations as justifiable categories of exclusion (that exclusion being inherent in nationalism just as it is with Wayne's other fetish: democracy), since they all want to promote justifiable wars. Wars would be nearly impossible without nationalism as a potent fuel, and what better foundation for that fuel than a necessarily retrograde version of anti-imperialism (the sort Wayne describes, which countered the direct colonialism that existed in the 19th century but was destroyed by 1920, only to have various new forms emerge, but none of which attracted most anarchists or non-party revolutionaries). That anti-imperialism is transparently nationalist and includes "native" middle class bureaucrats and property owners. That anti-imperialism demands alliances between the working class and the progressive factions of the middle class -- if not the ruling class as well. This is precisely what we can observe happening in Ukraine. There is no way to "advance anarchism" or the other incoherent ideologies that Wayne Price lists. If there were even the slightest chance that the fight against the Russians might yield some breathing space for an influential anti-state, anti-capitalist set of cultural experiments, then it could be worth fighting for. In the total absence of such projects or the possibility that they could exist in the wake of a Ukrainian military victory, then fighting inside the Ukrainian military or paramilitary forces *as anarchists* makes no sense whatsoever.

I am beginning to get the feeling that this commentator does not merely disagree with me strongly--does not just think that I am severely wrong in my politics--but does not like me personally. This poster does not just think that I am a bad anarchist but that I am a bad person. It is hard to say, given their anonominity, but I have probably never met this person. But perhaps I accidentally ran over their dog?

I accept that I may be wrong on any number of issues. In fact, as mentioned before, I have changed my views drastically several times. But I try to be a good person and to stick to the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity.

Does anyone really feel that acting personalities is a productive way to carry on political discussion? Of course, bourgeois polliticians do it all the time, especially these days, but I like to think that radicals are a bit above that. I guess not.

As far as I am concerned, I think I have said all I have to say on this topic, at least on this thread. If anyone else wants to have the last word, go for it.

Of course I did not mean "acting personalities" (which makes no sense) but "denouncing personalities."

As a longtime observer and occasional commenter here, I have to say sorry, not sorry Wayne. There are any number of adjectives modifying "anarchist" that contain negative judgments, some of which are even personally insulting.

I agree that "dipshit" is gratuitous, but I suspect that it's an expression of frustration coupled with shock and perhaps a little bit of contempt at your embrace of nationalism and "justifiable war".

But my question to you has to be this: What adjectives expressing that frustration and shock would you prefer? Or is it just that someone has the audacity to question your anarchist credentials by adding a modifier your version/style of anarchism? The fact is that there are virtually no adjectives that can be attached to "anarchism" that aren't a manifestation of negative judgment (depending on the person's intent; there is such a thing as irony).

Here's an exercise: if/when you look back on the conversations you've provoked with your insistence on a particular version of anarchism (that was somewhat neutral, but required more than one word), just ignore the adjectives and see if the comments sit any better with you as part of a conversation.

Another poster here. Hi Wayne, you make some fair points, and I wish to apologise for all of the cowardly slurs I have directed at your policy on Ukraine anarchist activities.

I am sooo sorry Wayne,,,,because I am a lower common denominaor who has been critical of your support for the Ukrainian "nation NOT State" of people. God bless you, ( though I'm an atheist) and may your anarchist army be victorious. Also, sorry for cajoling you in previous posts,,,,sorry again.

Political bureau spokespeople like Wayne are exempt from :-
1)Armed combat
2)Menial work
3)Cooking
4)Washing clothes
5)Washing dishes
6)Weeding the communal vegie garden
7)Repairing automobiles
8)Cleaning toilets
9)Child caring
So he can spend all his time telling others to help him do hese things for him.

For your information -you, uncivilized individualist anonymous coward- this is called "worker solidarity" in libcom language, thank you!

/s

The whole political class and its dynamic is patriarchal, even the female politicians follow a matriarchal version of hierarchical dominance, so it is deeply built within the system of command.
Menial labor is abhorrent to the political class and regarded as below thir obligations. These are the values of the ruling class or their ideologues. No surprise! These are the mechanisms that foment war between nations and States.

Why is there no response from the people who wrote the "No War but the Class War" text? Do they have nothing to say in response to this?

Are those people who criticize Wayne Price for his supporting the Ukrainian people against the Russian state's invasion doing anything to support the Russian anti-war movement? Or in reality, are they just tankies?

I used to be citical of Wayne, but now I support him, and also democracy, thanks to Wayne I believe in democratic anarchism, Sorry 'bout all previous insults mkay?

Hey, I was one of the " Cowardly Anons" that Wayne referred to earlier. We " Anons" are not one big lump of negative trolls, but are in fact all unique and mostly pacifists, and anti State. But I forgive you Wayne and apologise for my previous verbal attacks upon your anarchism.

Some people who criticize Wayne Price for his supporting the Ukrainian people against the Russian state's invasion are doing things to support the Russian anti-war movement. Others are not. In reality, they are not tankies. Some, however, might be.

In my articles on the Ukrainian war, I have repeatedly referred to the U.S.'s military support to Saudi Arabia (a monarchist dictatorship) in its horrendous war on the Yemeni people. I cite this to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the U.S. state in claiming to support "democracy" and national independence. This is important to point out, even if it does not in any way justify the Russian state's horrendous war on the Ukrainian people.

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