                            About the 'Platform'

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In reply to A project of anarchist organisation

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Dear Comrade Malatesta,

I have read your response to the project for an 'Organisational Platform of
a General Union of Anarchists', a project published by the group of Russian
anarchists abroad.

My impression is that either you have misunderstood the project for the
'Platform' or your refusal to recognise collective responsibility in
revolutionary action and the directional function that the anarchist forces
must take up, stems from a deep conviction about anarchism that leads you
to disregard that principle of responsibility.

Yet, it is a fundamental principle, which guides each one of us in our way
of understanding the anarchist idea, in our determination that it should
penetrate to the masses, in its spirit of sacrifice. It is thanks to this
that a man can choose the revolutionary way and ignore others. Without it
no revolutionary could have the necessary strength or will or intelligence
to bear the spectacle of social misery, and even less fight against it. It
is through the inspiration of collective responsibility that the
revolutionaries of all epochs and all schools have united their forces; it
is upon this that they based their hope that their partial revolts -
revolts which opened the path for the oppressed - were not in vain, that
the exploited would understand their aspirations, would extract from them
the applications suitable for the time and would use them to find new paths
toward their emancipation.

You yourself, dear Malatesta, recognise the individual responsibility of
the anarchist revolutionary. And what is more, you have lent your support
to it throughout your life as a militant. At least that is how I have
understood your writings on anarchism. But you deny the necessity and
usefulness of collective responsibility as regards the tendencies and
actions of the anarchist movement as a whole. Collective responsibility
alarms you; so you reject it.

For myself, who has acquired the habit of fully facing up to the realities
of our movement, your denial of collective responsibility strikes me not
only as without basis but dangerous for the social revolution, in which you
would do well to take account of experience when it comes to fighting a
decisive battle against all our enemies at once. Now my experience of the
revolutionary battles of the past leads me to believe that no matter what
the order of revolutionary events may be, one needs to give out serious
directives, both ideological and tactical. This means that only a
collective spirit, sound and devoted to anarchism, could express the
requirements of the moment, through a collectively responsible will. None
of us has the right to dodge that element of responsibility. On the
contrary, if it has been until now overlooked among the ranks of the
anarchists, it needs now to become, for us, communist anarchists, an
article of our theoretical and practical programme.

Only the collective spirit of its militants and their collective
responsibility will allow modern anarchism to eliminate from its circles
the idea, historically false, that anarchism cannot be a guide - either
ideologically or in practice - for the mass of workers in a revolutionary
period and therefore could not have overall responsibility.

I will not, in this letter, dwell on the other parts of your article
against the 'Platform' project, such as the part where you see 'a church
and an authority without police'. I will express only my surprise to see
you use such an argument in the course of your criticism. I have given much
thought to it and cannot accept your opinion.

No, you are not right. And because I am not in agreement with your
confutation, using arguments that are too facile, I believe I am entitled
to ask you:

     1. Should anarchism take some responsibility in the struggle of
     the workers against their oppressors, capitalism, and its servant
     the State? If not, can you say why? If yes, must the anarchists
     work towards allowing their movement to exert influence on the
     same basis as the existing social order?

     2. Can anarchism, in the state of disorganisation in which it
     finds itself at the moment, exert any influence, ideological and
     practical, on social affairs and the struggle of the working
     class?

     3. What are the means that anarchism should adopt outside the
     revolution and what are the means of which it can dispose to
     prove and affirm its constructive concepts?

     4. Does anarchism need its own permanent organisations, closely
     tied among themselves by unity of goal and action to attain its
     ends?

     5. What do the anarchists mean by *institutions to be
     established* with a view to guaranteeing the free development of
     society?

     6. Can anarchism, in the communist society it conceives, do
     without social institutions? If yes, by what means? If no, which
     should it recognise and use and with what names bring them into
     being? Should the anarchists take on a leading function,
     therefore one of responsibility, or should they limit themselves
     to being irresponsible auxiliaries?

Your reply, dear Malatesta, would be of great importance to me for two
reasons. It would allow me better to understand your way of seeing things
as regards the questions of organising the anarchist forces and the
movement in general. And - let us be frank - your opinion is immediately
accepted by most anarchists and sympathisers without any discussion, as
that of an experienced militant who has remained all his life firmly
faithful to his libertarian ideal. It therefore depends to a certain extent
on your attitude whether a full study of the urgent questions which this
epoch poses to our movement will be undertaken, and therefore whether its
development will be slowed down or take a new leap forward. By remaining in
the stagnation of the past and present our movement will gain nothing. On
the contrary, it is vital that in view of the events that loom before us it
should have every chance to carry out its functions.

I set great store by your reply.

1928
with revolutionary greetings
Nestor Makhno
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On to Reply to Nestor Makhno

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