Saturday 20 October 2012

Leah Lynn Plante on her arrest and male chauvinism

“I went against the advice of several people and did what one should never do, I read the comments. I read the comments on support pages, articles, and photos. While a lot of the messages were wonderful, so many of them were about how attractive or unnattractive the commenter thought I was. They thought that because my face is all over the internet, they had the right to dehumanize me and reduce m
e to an object, just like the fucking state did. I am not number #42611-086 and I am not a number on your 0-10 scale of hot or not. They thought I would enjoy the attention if I knew about it. I am glad that many came to my defense and confronted the blatant misogyny, however it was mostly met with ‘stop being so serious.’ Someone even went to the extent to Photoshop my tattoos from photos in order to make me appeal more to the mainstream. I will say now, and let me be clear: I do not care what anyone on this planet thinks about how I look. I do not appreciate
 comments about my appearance. I do not want your compliments. I do not owe anyone a curtsy, a sweet smile and a ‘thank you so much.’ I do not have to be gracious about it, I do not owe respect to those who do not show respect to me. I also saw how people made a lot of casual references to me getting sexually assaulted. This is extremely disrespectful, especially because that is something I have dealt with too many times in my life as is. I am more than a face, a body, a (former)prisoner, a number. To anyone who reduces me to those things: you are my enemy, not my ally, you are not my friend, not my comrade, not my supporter and I do not appreciate you. I have despised sexism/misogyny my entire life and I have confronted it at every opportunity, as I am doing right now. If you support someone for something they do, just say that. What you think about their appearance is irrelevant. Keep your opinion to yourself because if you are furthering one kind of oppression while trying to fight another, you aren’t actually accomplishing anything.”

— Leah’s official quote on seeing the internet’s response for the first time after being released.

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Labor Unrest In Foxconn Factories Continue


In the evening of September 23, a riot broke out in Foxconn's factory complex in Taiyuan, Shanxi. 2.000 Foxconn workers took part in the riot, many thousands looked on, and 40 people got injured. The rioters smashed shop-windows, set fires on the street, over-turned police cars and demolished company fences. 5.000 police were sent in but did not bring the situation under control until the early morning hours. There were no reported arrests. Foxconn stopped production for the following day in the whole plant.
Foxconn manufactures electronic devices and components for many of the world's largest electronics brands including HP, Sony and Apple. It employs roughly 1,3 million people worldwide and 1,1 million in China. The Taiyuan factory complex produces magnesium alloy components for consumer electronics, LED lighting products, mobile phone products and more. The complex is a walled-off city with factories, dormitories, shops, etc. Foxconn Taiyuan has about 79.000 workers whose average age is 20 years. 65 percent are male, and 77 percent come from local Shanxi province. 1
Foxconn factories install "suicide nets" to prevent suicidal wage slaves from
jumping off the buildings and committing suicide.
While Foxconn initially claimed that the riot started when a dispute among workers from different provinces got out of control, workers' reports paint a different picture. It all started after company security guards intervened in a personal fight in one of the dormitories. When the security guards started beating people, the workers went to get support. Thousands had just finished their shift, and many got involved and took the chance to express their anger. There had been many cases of harassment and violent attacks by company security guards against workers before, so tensions were high. The methods of the guards are part of Foxconn's strict and paramilitary management of both workplaces and dormitories. This includes fences, gates, security checks and correlating rules and regulations.
However, there is more behind the riot: Foxconn needed more workers for the production of parts for the new iPhone 5. So workers were transferred from factories in Shenzhen and Zhengzhou to Taiyuan. Still, most workers do not want to go to a provincial city like Taiyuan, but rather stay in coastal boom-towns. Furthermore, most workers do unskilled, repetitive, monotonous tasks, ten to twelve hours a day. The relocation and job-transferns from coastal to inland regions with lower wages mean that many experience a wage loss, and often the paid wage is lower than promised. So most workers do not like the factory work. The riot was caused by their dissatisfaction and repressive working and living conditions and only sparked by the security guards' attack.
On Friday, October 5, workers in the Foxconn facility in Zhengzhou, Henan, went on strike over working conditions related to the production of iPone 5-parts. In the previous days, a wave of customer complaints in the USA and elsewhere about scratches on the back cover of the new phone lead to raised quality standards in the Foxconn plants, apparently, without giving workers adequate training. The strike broke out on the On-site Quality Control (OQC) line. It all started when workers and quality control inspectors in one area (K) started to fight which lead to some injuries and property damage in an inspection room. Later, quality control inspectors got beat up again in the area K, and inspectors in area L received physical threats. Foxconn's management ignored the complaints of quality inspectors about these incidents, who, for that reason, went on strike so that work came to a halt. The work-stoppage involved 3.000 to 4.000 people. iPhone 5-lines were stopped for the entire day. 2 Later, Foxconn denied the reports and stated that there was no strike.
Foxconn and Apple have already been under rising pressure since a series of suicides in 2010, when almost twenty workers jumped from different Foxconn buildings over the course of the year. Foxconn reacted by installing security nets and window bars at their buildings and by announcing wage increases. However, according to workers accounts the wage increases were accompanied by faster work speed and increased unpaid overtime hours. 3 The ongoing problems have lead to more workers' struggles. In China, the official trade unions (ACFTU) are affiliated to the local state, while independent unions are banned. The Foxconn-section of the ACFTU sides with the employer and tries to prevent militant labor actions. Workers have to organize autonomously at the workplaces and in the dormitories.
Before the Taiyuan-riot and the Zhengzhou-strike, several other workers' struggles at Foxconn factories were reported this year: In January, 150 threatened a mass suicide over wages in Wuhan, and 1.000 went on strike over wages in Yantai; in February hundreds went on strike over wages on public holidays in Ningbo; in March 1.000 went on strike in Taiyuan over wages; in April, again in Taiyuan, 2.000 went in strike over wages, in Wuhan 200 threatened a mass suicide over wages and working conditions, and dozens of workers staged a roof-occupation against re-location and job-transfers in Shenzhen; and in June Chengdu saw a riot of 1.000 workers after a dispute with company security guards. These are just the cases of labor struggles at Foxconn in 2012 reported by media or labor activists. 4
The new generation of migrant workers that works for Foxconn and in other export plants dislikes the unskilled and monotonous factory work, the low wages, the harsh management. It expects improvements and progress in their personal lives, only to see that they are exploited as workers and discriminated against as migrants. Workers have access to modern communication; weibo (Chinese twitter) in particular plays an important role in disseminating information among them. Workers do know that Apple sells millions of products they produce and makes high profits, while their wages remain low and working conditions harsh; and they know that workers in Foxconn factories go on strike or riot. Therefore, Foxconn workers have – alongside other migrant workers in China – constantly pressed for higher wages in the past few years. At the same time most of these factories have high turnover rates. The question is whether after experiencing exploitation and abuse Foxconn workers "just leave" or "stay and fight." It seems that they increasingly try the second option.
On http://en.labournet.tv/ you can see a short film called "The Truth about the Apple iPad" that describes the conditions at one of the new Foxconn-factories in China's hinterland, in the case in Chengdu, Sichuan. "We wake up before the roosters, go to sleep after the dogs, and eat worse than the pigs", says a worker in the film: http://en.labournet.tv/video/6393/truth-about-apple-ipad

Original text/sources here: http://libcom.org/news/revolts-islaves-%E2%80%93-more-labor-unrest-chinas-foxconn-factories-fall-2012-17102012

State Repression In The North Pacific


A third self-described anarchist from the Pacific Northwest has been jailed by federal officials for refusing to speak before a secretive grand jury that the accused have called a politically-motivated modern-day witch-hunt.

Leah-Lynn Plante, a mid-20s activist from Seattle, Washington, was ushered out of court by authorities on Wednesday after refusing for a third time to answer questions forced on her by a grand jury — a panel of prosecutors convened to determine if an indictment can be issued for a federal crime.

Plante was one of a handful of people targeted in a series of raids administered by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force on July 25 of this year which the feds say were in conjunction with an investigation into acts of vandalism that occurred during May Day protests in Seattle nearly two months prior. As part of their probe, search warrants were issued at multiple residences of activists in the area, including Plante’s, demanding that dwellers provide agents with “anti-government or anarchist literature” in their homes and any flags, flag-making material, cell phones, hard drives, address books, and black clothing.

“As if they had taken pointers from Orwell’s 1984, they took books, artwork and other various literature as ‘evidence’ as well as many other personal belongings even though they seemed to know that nobody there was even in Seattle on May Day,” Plante recalls in a post published this week to her Tumblr page.

Only one week after the raid, Neil Fox of the National Lawyers Guild told Seattle Times that raids like this are create a “chilling effect” by going after lawful, constitutionally-allowed private possessions.

“It concerns us any time there are law-enforcement raids that target political literature, First Amendment-protected materials,” Fox said.

This week Plante still maintains her innocence, now she has reason to believe that the raid that has left her suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome may have been more than an investigation into an activity, but an ideology. Plante says a Freedom of Information Act request she filed in the months after her apartment door was broken down by armed officials reveals that the grand jury investigating her was first convened in March, two months before the vandalism she is being accused of even occurred.

“They are trying to investigate anarchists and persecute them for their beliefs. This is a fishing expedition. This is a witch hunt,” she says this week.

On the day of her third meeting with the grand jury on Wednesday, Plante wrote on her blog that she’d almost certainly be jailed on charges of contempt for refusing once again to testify about herself but said she was willing to face the consequences for exercising her right to remain silent.

“I do not look forward to what inevitably awaits me today, but I accept it,” she writes. “My convictions are unwavering and will not be shaken by their harassment. Today is October 10th, 2012 and I am ready to go to prison.”

Hours later, her Tumblr was updated with a note authored by one of her supporters confirming that Plante “was thrown into prison for civil contempt” after her court date. Plante is now the third anarchist to be imprisoned in the last month for refusing to answer questions about their belief and behavior before a grand jury.

Last month, Plante spoke openly about the grand jury before refusing their questioning for only her second time. “I believe that these hearings are politically motivated,” she wrote in a September 16 statement. “The government wants to use them to collect information that it can use in a campaign of repression. I refuse to have any part of it, I will never answer their questions, I will never speak.”

“While I hate the very idea of prison, I am ready to face it in order to stay true to my personal beliefs. I know that they want to kidnap me and isolate me from my friends and my loved ones in an effort to coerce me to speak. It will not work. I know that if I am taken away, I will not be alone.”

Katherine “KteeO” Olejnik, a fellow anarchist from the Seattle area, was taken into federal custody on September 28 for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury, a decision she said was based on humanity and her First Amendment protections.

“I cannot and will not say something that could greatly harm a person’s life, and providing information that could lead to long term incarceration would be doing that,” Olejnik wrote before being booked. “Icannot and will not be a party to a McCarthyist policy that is asking individuals to condemn each other based on political beliefs.”

On the No Political Repression blog, a support of Olejnik writes that she was prohibited from taking notes during her time on the stand, during which she says she resisted questioning.

Days before her imprisonment began, Matt Duran was also jailed for contempt. According to his attorneys, Duran was not only imprisoned by placed in solitary confinement, denied intimate contact with his lawyer, denied visitor requests forms, personal dietary requirements and sunlight an fresh air.

Original text here: http://rt.com/usa/news/refusing-grand-jury-plante-196/

Tuesday 16 October 2012

Insight From Murray Bookchin On Autonomy And Freedom.

Without falling into the trap of social constructionism that sees every category as a product of a given social order, we are obliged to ask for a definition of the 'free individual.' How does individuality come into being, and under what circumstances is it free?
When lifestyle anarchists call for autonomy rather than freedom, they thereby forfeit the rich social connotations of freedom. Indeed, today's steady anarchist drumbeat for autonomy rather than social freedom cannot be dismissed as accidental, particularly in Anglo-American varieties of libertarian thought, where the notion of autonomy more closely corresponds to personal liberty. Its roots lie in the Roman imperial tradition of libertas, wherein the untrammeled ego is 'free' to own his personal property -- and to gratify his personal lusts. Today, the individual endowed with 'sovereign rights' is seen by many lifestyle anarchists as antithetical not only to the State but to society as such.
Strictly defined, the Greek word autonomia means 'independence,' connoting a self-managing ego, independent of any clientage or reliance on others for its maintenance. To my knowledge, it was not widely used by the Greek philosophers; indeed, it is not even mentioned in F. E. Peters's historical lexicon of Greek Philosophical Terms. Autonomy, like liberty, refers to the man (or woman) who Plato would have ironically called the 'master of himself,' a condition 'when the better principle of the human soul controls the worse.' Even for Plato, the attempt to achieve autonomy through mastery of oneself constituted a paradox, 'for the master is also the servant and the servant the master, and in all these modes of speaking the same person is predicated' (Republic, book 4, 431). Characteristically, Paul Goodman, an essentially individualistic anarchist, maintained that 'for me, the chief principle of anarchism is not freedom but autonomy, the ability to initiate a task and do it one's own way' -- a view worthy of an aesthete but not of a social revolutionary.[6]
While autonomy is associated with the presumably self-sovereign individual, freedom dialectically interweaves the individual with the collective. The word freedom has its analogue in the Greek eleutheria and derives from the German Freiheit, a term that still retains a gemeinsch'ftliche or communal ancestry in Teutonic tribal life and law. When applied to the individual, freedom thus preserves a social or collective interpretation of that individual's origins and development as a self. In 'freedom,' individual selfhood does not stand opposed to or apart from the collective but is significantly formed -- and in a rational society, would be realized -- by his or her own social existence. Freedom thus does not subsume the individual's liberty but denotes its actualization.
The confusion between autonomy and freedom is all too evident in L. Susan Brown's The Politics of Individualism (POI), a recent attempt to articulate and elaborate a basically individualist anarchism, yet retain some filiations with anarcho-communism. [7] If lifestyle anarchism needs an academic pedigree, it will find it in her attempt to meld Bakunin and Kropotkin with John Stuart Mill. Alas, herein lies a problem that is more than academic. Brown's work exhibits the extent to which concepts of personal autonomy stand at odds with concepts of social freedom. In essence, like Goodman she interprets anarchism as a philosophy not of social freedom but of personal autonomy. She then offers a notion of 'existential individualism' that she contrasts sharply both with 'instrumental individualism' (or C. B. Macpherson's 'possessive [bourgeois] individualism') and with 'collectivism' -- leavened with extensive quotations from Emma Goldman, who was by no means the ablest thinker in the libertarian pantheon.
Brown's 'existential individualism' shares liberalism's 'commitment to individual autonomy and self-determination,' she writes (POI, p. 2). 'While much of anarchist theory has been viewed as communist by anarchists and non-anarchists alike,' she observes, 'what distinguishes anarchism from other communist philosophies is anarchism's uncompromising and relentless celebration of individual self-determination and autonomy. To be an anarchist -- whether communist, individualist, mutualist, syndicalist, or feminist -- is to affirm a commitment to the primacy of individual freedom' (POI, p. 2) -- and here she uses the word freedom in the sense of autonomy. Although anarchism's 'critique of private property and advocacy of free communal economic relations' (POI, p. 2) move Brown's anarchism beyond liberalism, it nonetheless upholds individual rights over -- and against -- those of the collective.
'What distinguishes [existential individualism] from the collectivist point of view,' Brown goes on, 'is that individualists' -- anarchists no less than liberals -- 'believe in the existence of an internally motivated and authentic free will, while most collectivists understand the human individual as shaped externally by others -- the individual for them is 'constructed' by the collective' (POI, p. 12, emphasis added). Essentially, Brown dismisses collectivism -- not just state socialism, but collectivism as such -- with the liberal canard that a collectivist society entails the subordination of the individual to the group. Her extraordinary suggestion that 'most collectivists' have regarded individual people as 'simply human flotsam and jetsam swept along in the current of history' (POI, p.12) is a case in point. Stalin certainly held this view, and so did many Bolsheviks, with their hypostasization of social forces over individual desires and intentions. But collectivists as such? Are we to ignore the generous traditions of collectivism that sought a rational, democratic, and harmonious society -- the visions of William Morris, say, or Gustav Landauer? What about Robert Owen, the Fourierists, democratic and libertarian socialists, Social Democrats of an earlier era, even Karl Marx and Peter Kropotkin? I am not sure that 'most collectivists,' even those who are anarchists, would accept the crude determinism that Brown attributes to Marx's social interpretations. By creating straw 'collectivists' who are hard-line mechanists, Brown rhetorically counterposes a mysteriously and autogenetically constituted individual, on the one hand, with an omnipresent, presumably oppressive, even totalitarian collective, on the other. Brown, in effect, overstates the contrast between 'existential individualism' and the beliefs of 'most collectivists' -- to the point where her arguments seem misguided at best or disingenuous at worst.
It is elementary that, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ringing opening to the Social Contract notwithstanding, people are definitely not 'born free,' let alone autonomous. Indeed, quite to the contrary, they are born very unfree, highly dependent, and conspicuously heteronomous. What freedom, independence, and autonomy people have in a given historical period is the product of long social traditions and, yes, a collective development -- which is not to deny that individuals play an important role in that development, indeed are ultimately obliged to do so if they wish to be free.
Brown's argument leads to a surprisingly simplistic conclusion. 'It is not the group that gives shape to the individual,' we are told, 'but rather individuals who give form and content to the group. A group is a collection of individuals, no more and no less; it has no life or consciousness of its own' (POI, p. 12, emphasis added). Not only does this incredible formulation closely resemble Margaret Thatcher's notorious statement that there is no such thing as a society but only individuals; it attests to a positivistic, indeed naive social myopia in which the universal is wholly separated from the concrete. Aristotle, one would have thought, resolved this problem when he chided Plato for creating a realm of ineffable 'forms' that existed apart from their tangible and imperfect 'copies.'
It remains true that individuals never form mere 'collections' -- except perhaps in cyberspace; quite to the contrary, even when they seem atomized and hermetic, they are immensely defined by the relationships they establish or are obliged to establish with each other, by virtue of their very real existence as social beings. The idea that a collective -- and by extrapolation, society -- is merely a 'collection of individuals, no more and no less' represents an 'insight' into the nature of human consociation that is hardly liberal but, today particularly, potentially reactionary.
By insistently identifying collectivism with an implacable social determinism, Brown herself creates an abstract 'individual,' one that is not even existential in the strictly conventional sense of the word. Minimally, human existence presupposes the social and material conditions necessary for the maintenance of life, sanity, intelligence, and discourse; and the affective qualities Brown regards as essential for her voluntaristic form of communism: care, concern, and sharing. Lacking the rich articulation of social relationships in which people are embedded from birth through maturity to old age, a 'collection of individuals' such as Brown posits would be, to put it bluntly, not a society at all. It would be literally a 'collection' in Thatcher's sense of free-booting, self-seeking, egoistic monads. Presumably complete unto themselves, they are, by dialectical inversion, immensely de-individuated for want of any aim beyond the satisfaction of their own needs and pleasures -- which are often socially engineered today in any case.
Acknowledging that individuals are self-motivated and possess free will does not require us to reject collectivism, given that they are also capable of developing an awareness of the social conditions under which these eminently human potentialities are exercised. The attainment of freedom rests partly on biological facts, as anyone who has raised a child knows; partly, on social facts, as anyone who lives in a community knows; and contrary to social constructionists, partly on the interaction of environment and inborn personal proclivities, as any thinking person knows. Individuality did not spring into being ab novo. Like the idea of freedom, it has a long social and psychological history.
Left to his or her own self, the individual loses the indispensable social moorings that make for what an anarchist might be expected to prize in individuality: reflective powers, which derive in great part from discourse; the emotional equipment that nourishes rage against unfreedom; the sociality that motivates the desire for radical change; and the sense of responsibility that engenders social action.
Indeed, Brown's thesis has disturbing implications for social action. If individual 'autonomy' overrides any commitment to a 'collectivity,' there is no basis whatever for social institutionalization, decision-making, or even administrative coordination. Each individual, self-contained in his or her 'autonomy,' is free to do whatever he or she wants -- presumably, following the old liberal formula, if it does not impede the 'autonomy' of others. Even democratic decision-making is jettisoned as authoritarian. 'Democratic rule is still rule,' Brown warns. 'While it allows for more individual participation in government than monarchy or totalitarian dictatorship, it still inherently involves the repression of the wills of some people. This is obviously at odds with the existential individual, who must maintain the integrity of will in order to be existentially free' (POI, p. 53). Indeed, so transcendentally sacrosanct is the autonomous individual will, in Brown's eyes, that she approvingly quotes Peter Marshall's claim that, according to anarchist principles, 'the majority has no more right to dictate to the minority, even a minority of one, than the minority to the majority' (POI, p. 140, emphasis added).
Denigrating rational, discursive, and direct-democratic procedures for collective decision-making as 'dictating' and 'ruling' awards a minority of one sovereign ego the right to abort the decision of a majority. But the fact remains that a free society will either be democratic, or it will not be achieved at all. In the very existential situation, if you please, of an anarchist society -- a direct libertarian democracy -- decisions would most certainly be made following open discussion. Thereafter the outvoted minority -- even a minority of one -- would have every opportunity to present countervailing arguments to try to change that decision. Decision-making by consensus, on the other hand, precludes ongoing dissensus -- the all-important process of continual dialogue, disagreement, challenge, and counter'challenge, without which social as well as individual creativity would be impossible.
If anything, functioning on the basis of consensus assures that important decision-making will be either manipulated by a minority or collapse completely. And the decisions that are made will embody the lowest common denominator of views and constitute the least creative level of agreement. I speak, here, from painful, years-long experience with the use of consensus in the Clamshell Alliance of the 1970s. Just at the moment when this quasi-anarchic antinuclear-power movement was at the peak of its struggle, with thousands of activists, it was destroyed through the manipulation of the consensus process by a minority. The 'tyranny of structurelessness' that consensus decision-making produced permitted a well-organized few to control the unwieldy, deinstitutionalized, and largely disorganized many within the movement.
Nor, amidst the hue and cry for consensus, was it possible for dissensus to exist and creatively stimulate discussion, fostering a creative development of ideas that could yield new and ever-expanding perspectives. In any community, dissensus -- and dissident individuals -- prevent the community from stagnating. Pejorative words like dictate and rule properly refer to the silencing of dissenters, not to the exercise of democracy; ironically, it is the consensual 'general will' that could well, in Rousseau's memorable phrase from the Social Contract, 'force men to be free.'
Far from being existential in any earthy sense of the word, Brown's 'existential individualism' deals with the individual ahistorically. She rarefies the individual as a transcendental category, much as, in the 1970s, Robert K. Wolff paraded Kantian concepts of the individual in his dubious Defense of Anarchism. The social factors that interact with the individual to make him or her a truly willful and creative being are subsumed under transcendental moral abstractions that, given a purely intellectual life of their own, 'exist' outside of history and praxis.
Alternating between moral transcendentalism and simplistic positivism in her approach to the individual's relationship with the collective, Brown's exposition fits together as clumsily as creationism with evolution. The rich dialectic and the ample history that shows how the individual was largely formed by and interacted with a social development is nearly absent from her work. Atomistic and narrowly analytic in many of her views, yet abstractly moral and even transcendental in her interpretations, Brown provides an excellent setting for a notion of autonomy that is antipodal to social freedom. With the 'existential individual' on one side, and a society that consists of a 'collection of individuals' and nothing more on the other, the chasm between autonomy and freedom becomes unbridgeable.

Original text here:  http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/soclife.html

Monday 15 October 2012

"Anarcho"-Capitalist Ethics And Their Logical Conclusions In Regards To The Rights Of Infants.

Famous "Anarcho"-Capitalist Murray Rothbard made certain argumentations towards the rights of parents in regards to their children as well as private property. The logical conclusion of Rothbard's argumentation is quite horrific, that parents should have the right to kill their children.

In Rothbard's "Ethics of Liberty" he argues:

"First, we may say that the parents-or rather the mother, who is the only certain and visible parent-as the creators of the baby become its owners. A newborn baby cannot be an existent self-owner in any sense. Therefore, either the mother or some other party or parties may be the babies owner,"1

"The mother, then, is the natural and rightful owner of the baby, and any attempt to seize the baby by force is an invasion of her property right."1

Rothbard makes the argument that the child is the private property of the mother due to its inability to exercise self-ownership, and anyone attempting to seize the private property of the mother (the child) from her would violate the non-aggression principle and the liberty of the mother.

Rothbard argued that the parent had the right not to feed their child and let it die, he argued that this would not violate Libertarian ethics necessarily:

"But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die. The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive. (Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g. by not feeding it)? The answer is of course yes, following a fortiori from the larger right to allow any baby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such ‘neglect’ down to a minimum.)” 1

If one follows Libertarian ethics, they may see nothing wrong with this argumentation. They may say that since the parent did not use force or agression against the child, and simply did NOT feed it, it would not necessarily be unethical, however let us take the Rothbardian code of ethics and natural rights to its natural conclusion.

Anyone with a basic understanding of Anarcho-Capitalist philosophy will understand that Rothbard upheld the right to dispose of your private property in any way the user whom had acquired it (according to the right wing Libertarian standards of legitimacy) without the use of force sees fit.

We have established that Rothbard believed the following:

1) Babies are incapable of exercising self-ownership, and thus were under the jurisdiction of their parents.

2) The baby is the private property of the mother.

3) One can dispose of their private property in any way they see fit.

Since the child cannot exercise self-ownership, and since it is the private property of the mother, its consent is not required in any interaction, and can be used by the mother in way she sees fit regardless of the purpose. One could sell their child into slavery, prostitution or simply dispose of them with a butcher knife without violating Rothbard's conception of the non-aggression principle.

A Libertarian confronted with this problem may simply say that Rothbard was wrong on this specific point, and that the child can exercise self-ownership, the logical flaw in this is obvious. Rothbard was correct when he said that an infant does not have the mental capacity necessary to do so.  Or perhaps he could argue that the neighbors could prevent the mother from treating her children unethically, however we once again run into a problem. An infant cannot consent to the unethical actions of their mother in disposing of them, NOR can they consent to the neighbor removing them from the custody of their mother. Also, what institution would define unethical treatment of a child, certainly not a state, certainly not a collectivist Democracy, nor subjective ethical evaluations of the mother or the neighbor. The "Libertarian" Non-Agression principle itself runs into problems in the general aspect of person hood. If we define person hood (the right to self-ownership) If one defines a human being as the obvious homo-sapiens, and therefor the consent of all human beings is necessary, and force cannot be initiated against anyone, consider a  person whom has been a victim of a horrible accident and is now incapable of signing any documents or saying anything giving consent to doctors "pulling the plug", do we simply doom these people to a life of incredible pain due to their inability to give consent? If we define human being by rational and self aware (and therefor can exercise self ownership we run into the same problem as Rothbard, babies would not be protected against violence and would become the property of their parents.


Not only is Rothbardian ethics flawed, but would lead to a society that allows the most heinous of atrocities to be committed against the most vulnerable people.


1) Rothbard, M. N. 1998. The Ethics of Liberty, New York University Press, New York, N.Y. and London.

Sunday 14 October 2012

Anti-Semitism and Anarchism

 Historically, the Anarchist movement has been plagued by anti-semitism, many of the early Anarchist philosophers were extremely anti-semitic. The founder of the theory of Anarchy himself Pierre Proudhon displayed extremely anti-semitic views, as well as the later Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.

On December 26th, 1847, Pierre Proudhon wrote:

 "Jews. Write an article against this race that poisons everything by sticking its nose into everything without ever mixing with any other people. Demand its expulsion from France with the exception of those individuals married to French women. Abolish synagogues and not admit them to any employment. Finally, pursue the abolition of this religion. It’s not without cause that the Christians called them deicide. The Jew is the enemy of humankind. They must be sent back to Asia or be exterminated. By steel or by fire or by expulsion the Jew must disappear."1

Although Proudhon was the founder of Anarchist theory, the anti-Anarchistic nature of his comments regarding the Jews should be obvious to any studier of Anarchist theory. Proudhon advocates forcing the Jews out of France, and limiting the freedom and liberty of both French and Jewish people to marry.

Later, Anarchist theoretician Mikhail Bakunin made anti-semitic comments:

 "This whole Jewish world, comprising a single exploiting sect, a kind of blood sucking people, a kind of organic destructive collective parasite, going beyond not only the frontiers of states, but of political opinion, this world is now, at least for the most part, at the disposal of Marx on the one hand, and of Rothschild on the other... This may seem strange. What can there be in common between socialism and a leading bank? The point is that authoritarian socialism, Marxist communism, demands a strong centralisation of the state. And where there is centralisation of the state, there must necessarily be a central bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, speculating with the Labour of the people, will be found"2

he goes on...

"Marx is a Jew and is surrounded by a crowd of little, more or less intelligent, scheming, agile, speculating Jews, just as Jews are everywhere -- commercial and banking agents, writers, politicians, correspondents for newspapers of all shades; in short, literary brokers, just as they are financial brokers, with one foot in the bank and the other in the socialist movement, and their arses sitting upon the German press. They have grabbed hold of all newspapers, and you can imagine what a nauseating literature is the outcome of it .... Now this entire Jewish world, which constitutes an exploiting sect, a people of leeches, a voracious parasite, closely and intimately connected with another, regardless not only of frontiers but of political differences as well -- this Jewish world is today largely at the disposal of Marx or Rothschild. I am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschilds appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschilds. This may seem strange. What could there be in common between communism and high finance? Ho ho! The communism of Marx seeks a strong state centralization, and where this exists, there the parasitic Jewish nation -- which speculates upon the labor of people -- will always find the means for its existence .... In reality, this would be for the proletariat a barrack-regime, under which the workingmen and the workingwomen, converted into a uniform mass, would rise, fall asleep, work, and live at the beat of the drum. The privilege of ruling would be in the hands of the skilled and the learned, with a wide scope left for profitable crooked deals carried on by the Jews, who would be attracted by the enormous extension of the international speculations of the national banks."2
Extreme anti-Semitic sentiments existed all throughout Europe
during Proudhon's era 

  Many in Europe at the time (and still today) unfairly equate Jewish people with finance capital and banking, things that Anarchists still to this day oppose as being hubs of exploitation of the working masses. Bakunin fell victim to a tragic misunderstanding of the economic history of Feudal Europe, and how it was that Jew's became money lenders. When Jew's migrated to Europe, the Catholic church decreed that they could not take on jobs that could be done by Catholics. Since the church forbid money lending for Catholic Christians, the Jews took up the occupation from the lack of other options. My family descends from Swiss watchmakers, whom like the Jews passed their trade down from generation to generation. It was not until the rise of Capitalism in the 19th century that the Jews involved in money lending became powerful. Even with this, Jews are not the only bankers! many gentiles took up banking and were just as exploitative as any Jewish banker.

 It is important to give context to Proudhon and Bakunin, whom like any other individual are products of their social enviroment. The former grew up in the extremely anti-semitic climate of 19th century France, this along with his particular hatred for finance capital and money lenders who bankrupted French workers through charging usary rates on loans, equating this with Jewish people led him to being extremely anti-semitic. The latter (Bakunin) grew up in Czarist Russia! Anti-semitism was societal norm. The thoughts of human being are by no means independently developed, they are products of their social enviroment. The same goes for Bakunin's other less than enlightened views regarding Germans.

 Marxist's often use anti-semitism as an ad hominem attack on Proudhon, Bakunin and the early Anarchists. What is ironic is that Marx himself had plenty of similar unenlightened views.

July 30th, 1862 in a letter to Engels, Marx said about La-Salle:

"The Jewish nigger Lassalle who, I’m glad to say, is leaving at the end of this week, has happily lost another 5,000 talers in an ill-judged speculation."

He goes on in the letter,

"It is now quite plain to me — as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify — that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger). Now, this blend of Jewishness and Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow’s importunity is also nigger-like."

Clearly, Marx himself was no stranger to racist views. In order for the Marxist to make such attacks on Proudhon or Bakunin, they must first reconcile Marx's own racist statements.

"Was Makhno and the black army anti-semitic, if so does this provide a justification for the Bolshevik's crushing the Ukrainian black army?"

No, Makhno and the black army were not anti-semitic. This was simply untrue slander popularized by the Bolsheviks. The Anarchist FAQ covers this accusation quite well.

No, they were not. Anyone who claims that the Mahnovist movement was anti-Semitic or conducted pogroms against Jews simply shows ignorance or a desire to deceive. As we will show, the Makhnovists were both theoretically and practically opposed to anti-Semitism and progroms.

Unsurprisingly, many Leninists slander the Makhnovists on this score. Trotsky, for example, asserted in 1937 that Makhno's followers expressed "a militant anti-Semitism." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 80] Needless to say, the Trotskyist editors of the book in question did not indicate that Trotsky was wrong in the accusation. In this way a slander goes unchecked and becomes "accepted" as being true. As the charge of "militant anti-Semitism" is a serious one, so it is essential that we (unlike Trotsky) provide evidence to refute it.

To do so we will present a chronological overview of the evidence against it. This will, to some degree, result in some duplication as well as lengthy quotations, however it is unavoidable. We are sorry to labour this point, but this allegation is sadly commonplace and it is essential to refute it fully.

Unsurprisingly, Arshinov's 1923 account of the movement takes on the allegations that the Makhnovists were anti-Semitic. He presents extensive evidence to show that the Makhnovists opposed anti-Semitism and pogroms. It is worth quoting him at length:

"In the Russian press as well as abroad, the Makhnovshchina was often pictured as a very restricted guerrilla movement, foreign to ideas of brotherhood and international solidarity, and even tainted with anti-Semitism. Nothing could be more criminal than such slanders. In order to shed light on this question, we will cite here certain documented facts which relate to this subject.

"An important role was played in the Makhnovist army by revolutionaries of Jewish origin, many of whom had been sentenced to forced labour for participation in the 1905 revolution, or else had been obliged to emigrate to Western Europe or America. Among others, we can mention:

"Kogan -- vice-president of the central organ of the movement, the Regional Revolutionary Military Council of Hulyai Pole. Kogan was a worker who, for reasons of principle, had left his factory well before the revolution of 1917, and had gone to do agricultural work in a poor Jewish agricultural colony. Wounded at the battle of Peregonovka, near Uman, against the Denikinists, he was seized by them at the hospital at Uman where he was being treated, and, according to witnesses, the Denikinists killed him with sabres.

"L. Zin'kovsky (Zadov) -- head of the army's counter espionage section, and later commander of a special cavalry regiment. A worker who before the 1917 revolution was condemned to ten years of forced labour for political activities. One of the most active militants of the revolutionary insurrection.

"Elena Keller -- secretary of the army's cultural and educational section. A worker who took part in the syndicalist movement in America. One of the organisers of the 'Nabat' Confederation.

"Iosif Emigrant (Gotman) -- Member of the army's cultural and educational section. A worker who took an active part in the Ukrainian anarchist movement. One of the organisers of the 'Nabat' Confederation, and later a member of its secretariat.

"Ya. Alyi (Sukhovol'sky) -- worker, and member of the army's cultural and educational section. In the Tsarist period he was condemned to forced labor for political activity. One of the organisers of the 'Nabat' Confederation and a member of its secretariat.

"We could add many more names to the long list of Jewish revolutionaries who took part in different areas of the Makhnovist movement, but we will not do this, because it would endanger their security.

"At the heart of the revolutionary insurrection, the Jewish working population was among brothers. The Jewish agricultural colonies scattered throughout the districts of Mariupol, Berdyansk, Aleksandrovsk and elsewhere, actively participated in the regional assemblies of peasants, workers and insurgents; they sent delegates there, and also to the regional Revolutionary Military Council.

"Following certain anti-Semitic incidents which occurred in the region in February, 1919, Makhno proposed to all the Jewish colonies that they organise their self-defence and he furnished the necessary guns and ammunition to all these colonies. At the same time Makhno organised a series of meetings in the region where he appealed to the masses to struggle against anti-Semitism.

"The Jewish working population, in turn, expressed profound solidarity and revolutionary brotherhood toward the revolutionary insurrection. In answer to the call made by the Revolutionary Military Council to furnish voluntary combatants to the Makhnovist insurgent army, the Jewish colonies sent from their midst a large number of volunteers.

"In the army of the Makhnovist insurgents there was an exclusively Jewish artillery battery which was covered by an infantry detachment, also made up of Jews. This battery, commanded by the Jewish insurgent Shneider, heroically defended Hulyai Pole from Denikin's troops in June, 1919, and the entire battery perished there, down to the last man and the last shell.

"In the extremely rapid succession of events after the uprising of 1918-19, there were obviously individuals who were hostile to Jews, but these individuals were not the products of the insurrection; they were products of Russian life. These individuals did not have any importance in the movement as a whole. If people of this type took part in acts directed against Jews, they were quickly and severely punished by the revolutionary insurgents.

"We described earlier the speed and determination with which the Makhnovists executed Hryhoriyiv and his staff, and we mentioned that one of the main reasons for this execution was their participation in pogroms of Jews.

"We can mention other events of this nature with which we are familiar.

"On May 12, 1919, several Jewish families - 20 people in all - were killed in the Jewish agricultural colony of Gor'kaya, near Aleksandrovsk. The Makhnovist staff immediately set up a special commission to investigate this event. This commission discovered that the murders had been committed by seven peasants of the neighbouring village of Uspenovka. These peasants were not part of the insurrectionary army. However, the Makhnovists felt it was impossible to leave this crime unpunished, and they shot the murderers. It was later established that this event and other attempts of this nature had been carried out at the instigation of Denikin's agents, who had managed to infiltrate the region and had sought by these means to prepare an atmosphere favourable for the entry of Denikin's troops into the Ukraine.

"On May 4th or 5th, 1919, Makhno and a few commanders hurriedly left the front and went to Hulyai Pole, where they were awaited by the Extraordinary Plenipotentiary of the Republic, L. Kamenev, who had arrived from Khar'kov with other representatives of the Soviet government. At the Verkhnii Tokmak station, Makhno saw a poster with the words: 'Death to Jews, Save the Revolution, Long Live Batko Makhno.'

"'Who put up that poster?' Makhno asked.

"He learned that the poster had been put up by an insurgent whom Makhno knew personally, a soldier who had taken part in the battle against Denikin's troops, a person who was in general decent. He presented himself immediately and was shot on the spot.

"Makhno continued the journey to Hulyai Pole. During the rest of the day and during his negotiations with the Plenipotentiary of the Republic, he could not free himself from the influence of this event. He realised that the insurgent had been cruelly dealt with, but he also knew that in conditions of war and in view of Denikin's advance, such posters could represent an enormous danger for the Jewish population and for the entire revolution if one did not oppose them quickly and resolutely.

"When the insurrectionary army retreated toward Uman in the summer of 1919, there were several cases when insurgents plundered Jewish homes. When the insurrectionary army examined these cases, it was learned that one group of four or five men was involved in all these incidents -- men who had earlier belonged to Hryhoriyiv's detachments and who had been incorporated into the Makhnovist army after Hryhoriyiv was shot. This group was disarmed and discharged immediately. Following this, all the combatants who had served under Hryhoriyiv were discharged from the Makhnovist army as an unreliable element whose re-education was not possible in view of the unfavorable conditions and the lack of time. Thus we see how the Makhnovists viewed anti-Semitism. Outbursts of anti-Semitism in various parts of the Ukraine had no relation to the Makhnovshchina.

"Wherever the Jewish population was in contact with the Makhnovists, it found in them its best protectors against anti-Semitic incidents. The Jewish population of Hulyai Pole, Aleksandrovsk, Berdyansk, Mariupol, as well as all the Jewish agricultural colonies scattered throughout the Donets region, can themselves corroborate the fact that they always found the Makhnovists to be true revolutionary friends, and that due to the severe and decisive measures of the Makhno visits, the anti-Semitic leanings of the counter-revolutionary forces in this region were promptly squashed.

"Anti-Semitism exists in Russia as well as in many other countries. In Russia, and to some extent in the Ukraine, it is not a result of the revolutionary epoch or of the insurrectionary movement, but is on the contrary a vestige of the past. The Makhnovists always fought it resolutely in words as well as deeds. During the entire period of the movement, they issued numerous publications calling on the masses to struggle against this evil. It can firmly be stated that in the struggle against anti-Semitism in the Ukraine and beyond its borders, their accomplishment was enormous." [Arshinov, Op. Cit., pp. 211-215]

Arshinov then goes on to quote an appeal published by Makhnovists together with anarchists referring to an anti-Semitic incident which took place in the spring of 1919. It is called

WORKERS, PEASANTS AND INSURGENTS FOR THE OPPRESSED, AGAINST THE OPPRESSORS- ALWAYS!:

"During the painful days of reaction, when the situation of the Ukrainian peasants was especially difficult and seemed hopeless, you were the first to rise as fearless and unconquerable fighters for the great cause of the liberation of the working masses. . . This was the most beautiful and joyful moment in the history of our revolution. You marched against the enemy with weapons in your hands as conscious revolutionaries, guided by the great idea of freedom and equality. . . But harmful and criminal elements succeeded in insinuating themselves into your ranks. And the revolutionary songs, songs of brotherhood and of the approaching liberation of the workers, began to be disrupted by the harrowing cries of poor Jews who were being tormented to death. . . On the clear and splendid foundation of the revolution appeared indelible dark blots caused by the parched blood of poor Jewish martyrs who now, as before, continue to be innocent victims of the criminal reaction, of the class struggle . . . Shameful acts are being carried out. Anti-Semitic pogroms are taking place.

"Peasants, workers and insurgents! You know that the workers of all nationalities -- Russians, Jews, Poles, Germans, Armenians, etc. -- are equally imprisoned in the abyss of poverty. You know that thousands of Jewish girls, daughters of the people, are sold and dishonoured by capital, the same as women of other nationalities. You know how many honest and valiant revolutionary Jewish fighters have given their lives for freedom in Russia during our whole liberation movement. . . The revolution and the honour of workers obliges all of us to declare as loudly as possible that we make war on the same enemies: on capital and authority, which oppress all workers equally, whether they be Russian, Polish, Jewish, etc. We must proclaim everywhere that our enemies are exploiters and oppressors of various nationalities: the Russian manufacturer, the German iron magnate, the Jewish banker, the Polish aristocrat .. . . The bourgeoisie of all countries and all nationalities is united in a bitter struggle against the revolution, against the labouring masses of the whole world and of all nationalities.

"Peasants, workers and insurgents! At this moment when the international enemy -- the bourgeoisie of all countries -- hurries to the Russian revolution to create nationalist hatred among the mass of workers in order to distort the revolution and to shake the very foundation of our class struggle - the solidarity and unity of all workers -- you must move against conscious and unconscious counter-revolutionaries who endanger the emancipation of the working people from capital and authority. Your revolutionary duty is to stifle all nationalist persecution by dealing ruthlessly with all instigators of anti-Semitic pogroms.

"The path toward the emancipation of the workers can be reached by the union of all the workers of the world." [quoted by Arshinov, Op. Cit., 215-7]

Arshinov also quotes an order issued by Makhno to "all revolutionary insurgents without exception" which states, in part, that the "goal of our revolutionary army, and of every insurgent participating in it, is an honourable struggle for the full liberation of the Ukrainian workers from all oppression." This was "why every insurgent should constantly keep in mind that there is no place among us for those who, under the cover of the revolutionary insurrection, seek to satisfy their desires for personal profit, violence and plunder at the expense of the peaceful Jewish population." [quoted by Arshinov, Op. Cit., pp. 217-8]

Unsurprisingly, as an anarchist, Makhno presents a class analysis of the problem of racism, arguing as follows:

"Every revolutionary insurgent should remember that his personal enemies as well as the enemies of all the people are the rich bourgeoisie, regardless of whether they be Russian, or Jewish, or Ukrainian. The enemies of the working people are also those who protect the unjust bourgeois regime, i.e., the Soviet Commissars, the members of repressive expeditionary corps, the Extraordinary Commissions which go through the cities and villages torturing the working people who refuse to submit to their arbitrary dictatorship. Every insurgent should arrest and send to the army staff all representatives of such expeditionary corps, Extraordinary Commissions and other institutions which oppress and subjugate the people; if they resist, they should be shot on the spot. As for any violence done to peaceful workers of whatever nationality - such acts are unworthy of any revolutionary insurgent, and the perpetrator of such acts will be punished by death." [quoted by Arshinov, Op. Cit., p. 218]

It should also be noted that the chairmen of three Makhnovist regional congresses were Jewish. The first and second congresses had a Jewish chairman [Palij, Op. Cit., p. 293], while Voline was the chair for the fourth one held at Aleksandrovsk. Similarly, one of the heads of the army's counter-espionage section was Jewish. [Arshinov, Op. Cit., p. 212] Little wonder both Arshinov and Voline stress that an important role was played by Jews within the movement.

The Jewish American anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman were also in Russia and the Ukraine during the revolution. Between 1920 and 1921, they were in contact with anarchists involved with the Makhnovists and were concerned to verify what they had heard about the movement from Bolshevik and other sources. Berkman recounts meeting the Jewish anarchist Yossif the Emigrant (shot by the Bolsheviks in late 1920). Yossif stated that "Nestor is merciless toward those guilty of Jew-baiting. Most of you have read his numerous proclamations against pogroms, and you know how severely he punishes such things." He stressed that any stories of atrocities and pogroms committed by the Makhnovists were "lies wilfully spread by the Bolsheviks" who "hate Nestor worse than they do Wrangel." For Yossif, "Makhno represents the real spirit of October." [quoted by Berkman, Op. Cit., pp. 187-9] He also notes that Halyna Makhno, Nestor's wife, would "slightly raise her voice in indignation when reports of Jew-baiting by povstantsi [partisans] were mentioned. These stories were deliberately spread by the Bolsheviki, she averred. No-one could be more severe in punishing such excesses than Nestor. Some of his best comrades are Jews; there are a number of them in the Revolutionary Soviet and in other branches of the army. Few men are so loved and respected by the povstantsi as Yossif the Emigrant, who is a Jew, and Makhno's best friend." [Berkman, Op. Cit., pp. 238-9] Both Goldman and Berkman became friends with Makhno during his exile in Paris.

After his exile, Makhno himself spent time refuting allegations of anti-Semitism. Two articles on this subject are contained in The Struggle Against the State and other Essays, a collection of Makhno's exile writings. In the article "The Makhnovshchina and Anti-Semitism" he recounts various examples of the "uncompromising line on the anti-Semitism of pogromists" which the Makhnovists took "throughout its entire existence." This was "because it was a genuinely revolutionary toilers' movement in the Ukraine." He stressed that "[a]t no time did the movement make it its business to carry out pogroms against Jews nor did it ever encourage any." [The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays, p. 38 and p. 34] He wrote another article (called "To the Jews of All Countries"):

"In my first 'Appeal to Jews, published in the French libertarian newspaper, Le Libertaire, I asked Jews in general, which is to say the bourgeois and the socialist ones as well as the 'anarchist' ones like Yanovsky, who have all spoken of me as a pogromist against Jews and labelled as anti-Semitic the liberation movement of the Ukrainian peasants and workers of which I was the leader, to detail to me the specific facts instead of blathering vacuously away: just where and just when did I or the aforementioned movement perpetrate such acts? . . . Thus far, no such evidence advanced by Jews has come to my attention. The only thing that has appeared thus far in the press generally, certain Jewish anarchist organs included, regarding myself and the insurgent movement I led, has been the product of the most shameless lies and of the vulgarity of certain political mavericks and their hirelings." [Op. Cit., p. 28]

It should be noted that Yanovsky, editor of the Yiddish language anarchist paper Freie Arbeiter Stimme later admitted that Makhno was right. Yanovsky originally believed the charges of anti-Semitism made against Makhno, going so far as ignoring Makhno's appeal to him out of hand. However, by the time of Makhno's death in 1934, Yanovsky had learned the truth:

"So strongly biased was I against him [Makhno] at that time I did not think it necessary to find out whether my serious accusation was founded on any real facts during the period of his great fight for real freedom in Russia. Now I know that my accusations of anti-Semitism against Makhno were built entirely on the lies of the Bolsheviks and to the rest of their crimes must be added this great crime of killing his greatness and the purity of this fighter for freedom."

Due to this, he could not forgive himself for "so misjudg[ing] a man merely on the basis of calumny by his bitter enemies who more than once shamefully betrayed him, and against whom he fought so heroically." He also notes that it had "become known to me that a great many Jewish comrades were heart and soul with Makhno and the whole Makhno movement. Amongst them was one whom I knew well personally, Joseph Zutman of Detroit, and I know that he would not have had anything to do with persons, or a movement, which possessed the slightest leaning towards anti-Semitism." ["appendix," My Visit to the Kremlin, pp. 36-7]

However, by far the best source to refute claims of anti-Semitism the work of the Jewish anarchist Volin. He summarises the extensive evidence against such claims:

"We could cover dozens of pages with extensive and irrefutable proofs of the falseness of these assertions. We could mention articles and proclamations by Makhno and the Council of Revolutionary Insurgents denouncing anti-Semitism. We could tell of spontaneous acts by Makhno himself and other insurgents against the slightest manifestation of the anti-Semitic spirit on the part of a few isolated and misguided unfortunates in the army and the population. . . One of the reasons for the execution of Grigoriev by the Makhnovists was his anti-Semitism and the immense pogrom he organised at Elizabethgrad . . .

"We could cite a whole series of similar facts, but we do not find it necessary . . . and will content ourselves with mentioning briefly the following essential facts:

"1. A fairly important part in the Makhnovist movement was played by revolutionists of Jewish origin.

"2. Several members of the Education and Propaganda Commission were Jewish.

"3. Besides many Jewish combatants in various units of the army, there was a battery composed entirely of Jewish artillery men and a Jewish infantry unit.

"4. Jewish colonies in the Ukraine furnished many volunteers to the Insurrectionary Army.

"5. In general the Jewish population, which was very numerous in the Ukraine, took an active part in all the activities of the movement. The Jewish agricultural colonies which were scattered throughout the districts of Mariupol, Berdiansk, Alexandrovsk, etc., participated in the regional assemblies of workers, peasants and partisans; they sent their delegates to the regional Revolutionary Military Council.

"6. Rich and reactionary Jews certainly had to suffer from the Makhnovist army, not as Jews, but just in the same way as non-Jewish counter-revolutionaries." [The Unknown Revolution, pp. 967-8]

However, it could be claimed that these accounts are from anarchists and so are biased. Ignoring the question of why so many Jewish anarchists should defend Makhno if he was, in fact, a pogromist or anti-Semite, we can turn to non-anarchist sources for confirmation of the fact that Makhno and the Makhnovist movement were not anti-Semites.

First, we turn to Voline, who quotes the eminent Jewish writer and historian M. Tcherikover about the question of the Makhnovists and anti-Semitism. Tcherikover had, for a number of years, had specialised in research on the persecutions of the Jews in Russia. The Jewish historian states "with certainty that, on the whole, the behaviour of Makhno's army cannot be compared with that of the other armies which were operating in Russian during the events 1917-21. Two facts I can certify absolutely explicitly.

"1. It is undeniable that, of all these armies, including the Red Army, the Makhnovists behaved best with regard the civil population in general and the Jewish population in particular. I have numerous testimonies to this. The proportion of justified complaints against the Makhnovist army, in comparison with the others, is negligible.

"2. Do not speak of pogroms alleged to have been organised by Makhno himself. That is a slander or an error. Nothing of the sort occurred. As for the Makhnovist Army, I have had hints and precise denunciations on this subject. But, up to the present, every time I have tried to check the facts, I have been obliged to declare that on the day in question no Makhnovist unit could have been at the place indicated, the whole army being far away from there. Upon examining the evidence closely, I established this fact, every time, with absolute certainty, at the place and on the date of the pogrom, no Makhnovist unit was operating or even located in the vicinity. Not once have I been able to prove the existence of a Makhnovist unit at the place a pogrom against the Jews took place. Consequently, the pogroms in question could not have been the work of the Makhnovists." [quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., p. 699]

This conclusion is confirmed by later historians. Paul Avrich notes that "[c]harges of Jew-baiting and of anti-Jewish pogroms have come from every quarter, left, right, and centre. Without exception, however, they are based on hearsay, rumour, or intentional slander, and remain undocumented and unproved." He adds that the "Soviet propaganda machine was at particular pains to malign Makhno as a bandit and pogromist." Wishing to verify the conclusions of Tcherikover proved by Voline, Avrich examined several hundred photographs in the Tcherikover Collection, housed in the YIVO Library in New York and depicting anti-Jewish atrocities in the Ukraine during the Civil War. He found that "only one [was] labelled as being the work of the Makhnovists, though even here neither Makhno himself nor any of his recognisable subordinates are to be seen, nor is there any indication that Makhno had authorised the raid or, indeed, that the band involved was in fact affiliated with his Insurgent Army." Avrich then states that "there is evidence that Makhno did all in his power to counteract anti-Semitic tendencies among his followers" and that "a considerable number of Jews took part in the Makhnovist movement." He also points out that the Jewish anarchists Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Sholem Schwartzbard, Volin, Senya Fleshin, and Mollie Steimer did not criticise Makhno as an anti-Semite, they also "defended him against the campaign of slander that persisted from all sides." [Anarchist Portraits, pp. 122-3] It should be noted that Schwartzbard assassinated the Nationalist leader Petliura in 1926 because he considered him responsible for pogroms conducted by Nationalist troops during the civil war. He shot Petliura the day after he, Makhno and Berkman had seen him at a Russian restaurant in Paris. [Malet, Op. Cit., p. 189]

Michael Malet, in his account of the Makhnovists, states that "there is overwhelming evidence that Makhno himself was not anti-Semitic." [Op. Cit., p. 168] He indicates that in the period January to September 1919, the Central Committee of Zionist Organisations in Russia listed the Nationalists as creating 15,000 victims of pogroms, then the Denikinists with 9,500 followed by Hryhoriyiv, Sokolovsky, Struk, Yatsenko and Soviet troops (500 victims). Makhno is not mentioned. Of the pogroms listed, almost all took place on the western Ukraine, where the local otamany (warlords) and the Nationalists were strong. Very few took place where Makhno's influence predominated, the nearest being in Katerinoslav town and Kherson province; none in the provinces of Katerinoslav or Tavria. It should also be noted that the period of January to June of that year was one of stability within the Makhnovist region, so allowing them the space to apply their ideas. Malet summarises:

"Even granted the lower level of Jewish involvement in left-bank trade, the almost total lack of anti-Semitic manifestations would show that Makhno's appeals, at a time when anti-Semitism was fast becoming fashionable, did not go unheeded by the population. There were a number of Jewish colonies in the south-east Ukraine." [Op. Cit., p. 169]

Unsurprisingly, Malet notes that apart from certain personal considerations (such as his friendship with a number of Jews, including Voline and Yossif the Emigrant), "the basis of Makhno's hostility to anti-Semitism was his anarchism. Anarchism has always been an international creed, explicitly condemning all forms of racial hatred as incompatible with the freedom of individuals and the society of equals." And like other serious historians, he points to "the continual participation in the movement of both intellectual Jews from outside, and Jews from the local colonies" as "further proof . . . of the low level of anti-Semitism within the Makhnovshchina." [Op. Cit., p. 171 and pp. 171-2]

Anarchist Serge Cipko summarises the literature by stating that the "scholarly literature that discusses Makhno's relationships with the Jewish population is of the same opinion [that the Makhnovists were not anti-Semitic] and concur that unlike the Whites, Bolsheviks and other competing groups in Ukraine during the Revolution, the Makhnovists did not engage in pogroms." ["Nestor Makhno: A Mini-Historiography of the Anarchist Revolution in Ukraine, 1917-1921," pp. 57-75, The Raven, no. 13, p. 62]

Historian Christopher Reed concurs, noting that "Makhno actively opposed anti-Semitism . . . Not surprisingly, many Jews held prominent positions in the Insurgent movement and Jewish farmers and villagers staunchly supported Makhno in the face of the unrestrained anti-Semitism of Ukrainian nationalists like Grigoriev and of the Great Russian chauvinists like the Whites." [Op. Cit., pp. 263-4] Arthur E. Adams states that "Makhno protected Jews and in fact had many serving on his own staff." [Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, p. 402]

 We apologise again for labouring this point, but the lie that Makhno and the Makhnovists were anti-Semitic is relatively commonplace and needs to be refuted. As noted, Trotskyists repeat Trotsky's false assertions without correction. Other repeat the lie from other sources. It was essential, therefore, to spend time making the facts available and to nail the lie of Makhnovist anti-Semitism once and for all!"4

In conclusion, Proudhon, Bakunin as well as Marx were products of their social enviroment and their ideas reflected this. Their anti-Semitic views should be given context and not used as  Ad hominem attacks against their ideas as revolutionaries.

1) http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudhon/1847/jews.htm

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin

3) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.htm

4) http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/makfaq/h_6_9.htm

Wage Labor Is Not Voluntary

According to anarcho-capitalists employment is voluntary. They argue that it is a mutually beneficial free agreement between owner and worker.

Yet we are told that it is not an act of aggression for a capitalist to hire workers and force them to work under awful conditions by giving them a choice between having a job and being unemployed. The result of being unemployed would be poverty and starvation as the worker would lack the income to pay for his survival by buying food. In both examples the worker is given the choice between death and work. In the 1st instance the threat of death is direct and immediate while in the 2nd the threat of death is the indirect and prolonged threat of starvation. Despite these differences the threats are nonetheless similar as the end result is the same. To quote Karl Marx "He can work only with their permission, hence live only with their permission."

They argue that employment would only be involuntary if it was the result of direct force. For instance an employer who gave his workers the choice between working in awful conditions or being shot to death by his private security guards would be rightly condemned.

An advocate of capitalism can respond by crying out “it’s voluntary, the worker can leave whenever he wants”. This argument makes a categorical error when it conflates rights with means. It is true that the worker has the right to leave the job but importantly the worker lacks the means. This is because in order to survive the worker must have an income, from this it follows that the worker labours under these awful conditions only due to the realisation that the alternative is starvation for himself and his family or working for another boss.

Indeed when a so called anarcho-capitalist responds by arguing that you are free to work for another boss if you dislike your current one they are not arguing for liberty as they falsely proclaim. This is because liberty is not the capacity to choose between masters but is instead the absence of masters, it is autonomy over one’s self. The ability to choose a new master is not freedom but is instead a form of democratic tyranny as rather than being forced to accept the will of one ruler you are given the choice between several different rulers.

In response it may be argued that market competition will result in employers treating their workers better in order to attract more and better workers. This however completely misses the point. The issue is not whether your master is nice or nasty, the issue is that you have a master in the first place. We would not attempt to justify chattel slavery by arguing that market pressures to improve productivity would result in the slave master giving his slaves a better diet and living quarters. Likewise can we not justify wage slavery by arguing for the benevolent capitalist.

To quote ‘Tolstoy, "the liberal capitalist is like a kind donkey owner. He will do everything for the donkey -- care for it, feed it, wash it. Everything except get off its back!"

Thus the workers freedom is freedom only to rent himself out to an employer or freedom to starve to death.

To quote Alexander Berkman
"The law says your employer does not steal anything from you, because it is done with your consent. You have agreed to work for your boss for certain pay, he to have all that you produce . . .

"But did you really consent?

"When the highway man holds his gun to your head, you turn your valuables over to him. You 'consent' all right, but you do so because you cannot help yourself, because you are compelled by his gun.

"Are you not compelled to work for an employer? Your need compels you just as the highwayman's gun. You must live . . . You can't work for yourself . . . The factories, machinery, and tools belong to the employing class, so you must hire yourself out to that class in order to work and live. Whatever you work at, whoever your employer may be, it always comes to the same: you must work for him. You can't help yourself. You are compelled."[What is Anarchism?, p. 11]”

A so called anarcho-capitalist can respond by arguing that if the threat of starvation makes working for a boss involuntary then it follows that choosing to eat is an involuntary action as you eat only to avoid starvation and malnutrition. As eating food does not inhibit our freedom despite being involuntary it follows that working for a capitalist does not inhibits our freedom either.

This argument is, however, absurd as it does not compare like with like. This is because discussions of freedom are only concerned with what humans are capable of doing. For instance an individual lacking the ability to grow wings and fly does not inhibit his freedom as he is not biologically capable of performing this action. His freedom would only be inhibited if he was capable of growing wings and flying but not allowed to do so. Therefore, while eating food is involuntary (as we do not have a choice in the matter) it does not inhibit our freedom as we are not capable of not eating food and continuing to survive. The same cannot be said of working for a boss. This is because wage slavery is not rooted in the biology of human beings but is instead the result of the private ownership of the means of production. The social relationship between employers and employees, unlike our biologically need for nutrients, is something which can be changed and abolished. Indeed many societies have operated without such a relationship. For instance during the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 wage slavery was abolished and Anarcho-Syndicalism was put into practice. Therefore, the apparent choice workers make when they work for a boss is both involuntary and an inhibitor of freedom.

http://anarchpac.blogspot.co.uk/ - Original text here.