Rhodes University, Grahamstown, Oct 2013 launch of "Schwarze Flamme"

"Schwarze Flamme," the German-language translation and revised edition of "Black Flame," was among the books launched at The Rhodes University Annual Book Launch on Thursday 24 October 2013, in Grahamstown, the Eastern Cape, South Africa.


Some photos below of co-author Lucien van der Walt at the launch:

 

German translation of "Black Flame" is now published - AUGUST 2013

http://www.edition-nautilus.de/programm/politik/buch-978-3-89401-783-5.html

Lucien van der Walt / Michael Schmidt

Schwarze FlammeRevolutionäre Klassenpolitik im Anarchismus und Syndikalismus

Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von

Andreas Förster und Holger Marcks

Deutsche Erstausgabe

Großformat, Broschur

560 Seiten

€ (D) 39,90

€ (A) 41,10

*

ISBN 978-3-89401-783-5*

*Erscheint Ende August 2013*

Inhalt

»Eine wohldurchdachte und nuancierte Studie der intellektuellen, politischen und Sozialgeschichte des Anarchismus.« *Steven Hirsch, University of Pittsburgh*

Schwarze Flamme ist eine Geschichte der Gegenmacht: die Südafrikaner Lucien van der Walt und Michael Schmidt legen eine umfassende Systematik und internationale Geschichte des Anarchismus und eine Auseinandersetzung mit dessen Kernfragen wie Organisierung, Strategie und Taktik vor.

Vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zu heutigen antikapitalistischen Bewegungen zeichnen sie anarchistische Traditionen und seine zeitgenössischen Formen nach und untersuchen anarchistische Positionen zu Rasse, Gender, Klasse und Imperialismus. Durch ihren eigenwilligen Blickwinkel stellen sie die bisherige Geschichtsschreibung in einen neuen Rahmen. Mit seinem großen Umfang und der internationalen Dimension der Materialsammlung – auch zu Lateinamerika, Asien und Afrika gibt es umfassende Informationen – darf das Buch bereits jetzt als Standardwerk anarchistischer Geschichtsschreibung gelten: systematisch, kontrovers und ausgesprochen gut lesbar.

Ein Standardwerk zur Theorie und Praxis des weltweiten Anarchosyndikalismus der letzten 150 Jahre!

Inhaltsverzeichnis Schwarze Flamme

Leseprobe

Dieses Buch begann als kurze Einführungsbroschüre in den späten 1990er Jahren, die dann einfach wuchs und wuchs. Wir waren selbst überrascht von der reichen Geschichte der breiten anarchistischen Tradition. Während wir damit gerechnet hatten, einige wenige Lücken zu füllen, öffnete sich vor unseren Augen eine unerwartete Welt: eine Weltgeschichte, die den meisten Anarchisten und Syndikalisten selbst unbekannt ist. Es war eine bewegende und faszinierende Geschichte voller Opfermut, Tragödien, Leiden und manchmal auch Humor und Pathos, durchsetzt mit Heldenhaftigkeit, Kreativität, Schönheit und Errungenschaften. Uns wurde auch klar, dass wir nicht einfach einen Nachruf auf eine Bewegung oder ein Buch von antiquarischem Interesse schreiben, sondern eine lebendige Tradition diskutieren, die für viele Leute von Interesse ist, die die Welt verändern wollen.

Als solches ist das vorliegende Buch auch ein Werk über die Zukunft, das wir einer besseren Welt und einem besseren Morgen widmen wollen.

Zu den Autoren

© privat

Prof. Lucien van der Walt, Ph.D., arbeitet an der Rhodes University, Südafrika, und ist (neben Steve Hirsch) Mitherausgeber von Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1880-1940: The Praxis of Class Struggle, National Liberation and Social Revolution (2010). Er veröffentlichte umfassend zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung und der Linken sowie zu politischer Ökonomie, zu Anarchismus und Syndikalismus. Van der Walt wurde vom Labor History and Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) ausgezeichnet mit den Preisen für die beste internationale und die beste afrikanische Doktorarbeit. Er engagiert sich in der gewerkschaftlichen Bildungsarbeit und in der Arbeiterbewegung.

© privat

Michael Schmidt ist erfahrender Reporter und investigativer Journalist, dessen Reportagen ihn nach Chiapas, Guatemala, die DR Kongo, Mosambik, Ruanda, Darfur, in den Libanon und anderswohin führten. Der frühere gewerkschaftliche Vertrauensmann und Gründer der Professional Journalists’ Association of South Africa nahm 2011 am Clive Menell Media Fellowship der Duke University teil. Schmidt ist Autor der Cartographie de l’anarchisme révolutionnaire (2012) und leitet gegenwärtig das Institute for the Advancement of Journalism im südafrikanischen Johannesburg. Weiterhin schreibt er sowohl für etablierte als auch für alternative Medien.

A "Black Flame" review that has been circulating on anarchist boards and lists...

Stumbled across this, which has been moving through a series of networks and lists:  

Jack Devon:‘Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism’
I came across ‘Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism’ quite by chance and I’m so glad I did; it’s one of the best works of non-fiction I’ve read in years. The authors are a journalist and an academic, a winning combination because they’ve succeeded in combining sound scholarship with accessible prose to launch a bold, unflinching assault on the myth-making, obfuscation, disinformation and downright lies that have served to distort, discredit and obscure the immense contribution anarchism and syndicalism have made to the labour movement globally and to society at large.

Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt adopt a stance of sympathetic engagement; letting nothing pass without critical appraisal, yet their approach is nonetheless sympathetic to the broad anarchist tradition. The result is nothing short of an exhilerating read. I can’t wait to get my hands on volume two.

They begin with the demolition of faulty definitions of anarchism. Paul Elzbacher’s influential ‘Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy’ (1900) picked seven ‘recognised’ anarchist teachers: Godwin, Stirner, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tucker and Tolstoy. His basic assumption was faulty. Godwin derived an antistatist stance from utilitarian principles of the 1790s, but that didn’t make him an anarchist. Stirner was an extreme individualist of the 1840s . Tolstoy was a Christian mystic and contemplative. Godwin and Tolstoy were ascetics, Stirner a libertine. Proudhon was a utopian, a proponent of mutualism. Tucker was a rationalist and an atheist. In other words, Elzbacher ended up with a selection of people with radically different ideas. No wonder he defined anarchism by the lowest common denominator: opposition to the state.

Matters were not improved by the self-serving myth-making of anarchists themselves, some of whom tried to establish the idea that anarchism had always existed in mankind, a phrase that even slipped into the 1910 Encyclopaedia Britannica. The anarchist historian Max Nettlau suggested that the anarchist concept and principles could be found in ancient Greece as well as among scientific writers of the 18th century. In his classic ‘Anarcho-Syndicalism’, Rudolf Rocker said anarchist ideas were to be found in every period of known history. In 1944 George Woodcock found in Taoism the first anarchistic doctrine. If anarchism can encompass economic liberals, Marxists, radical Christians, Taoism, and more,‘ the authors write, ‘it is hardly surprising that the standard works on anarchism describe it as “incoherent”.’

Using a deductive method, the authors start from scratch in seeking to construct an accurate picture of anarchism. ‘The basic premise of all the anarchist arguments was a deep and fundamental commitment to individual freedom,’ they write. ‘For the anarchists, however, freedom could only exist, and be exercised, in society; equally, inegalitarian and hierarchical social structures made freedom impossible. It followed that the anarchist ideal was a society based on social and economic equality as well as self-management, in which individual freedom could truly exist.’

It was simply untrue to claim, as did E.H. Carr in his biography of Bakunin, that the key figure in anarchism was an extreme individualist influenced by Stirner. Bakunin envisaged freedom as a product of society, not a revolt against society by individuals. On the contrary, the struggle against extreme individualism was an essential part of the anarchist project. For the anarchist, duties and freedoms are inextricably linked. So where does this take us? Anarchism and syndicalism are born of the European Enlightenment; specifically, anarchism is rooted in the labour movement of the 1860s.

Anarchism can be said to be rational, anti-authoritarian, egalitarian, and opposed to capitalism and landlordism. For anarchists, the class system has been the fundamental obstacle to true individuality with the state seen as a defender of that class system, a centralised body that concentrates power in the hands of the minority ruling class. ‘The emancipation of the working class and peasantry required a radically different form of social organisation that maximised popular self-activity and self-management – and this was entirely at odds with the state,’ the authors say.

The early anarchists also rejected the classical Marxist strategy of using the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ as a means to destroy class society. That would simply replace one ruling elite with another. ‘I am above all an absolute enemy of revolution by decrees,’ said Bakunin. ‘which derive from the idea of the revolutionary State, i.e., reaction disguised as revolution.’ The new regime would only become a class system as bad as any that preceded it. Revolutionary ‘socialist’ governments, Bakunin and Kropotkin repeatedly said, would in fact be forms of state capitalism. The state ‘will then become the only banker, capitalist, organiser, and director of all national labour, and the distributor of its products,’ Bakunin said. How right he was!

For anarchists, the means shaped the ends. The classical Marxist notion that history was a trajectory, a straight line determined by economic production – regardless of what anyone thought, said or did – was crude determinism by anarchist standards. In the anarchist world view, there was a great deal more to life – and history – than productive forces. If history marched anywhere, it did so in fits and starts, and was affected by phenomena such as culture, religion and leisure Anarchists also saw the struggle of the popular classes – the working class and peasantry – as the engine of change. For classical Marxists, the peasantry was dismissed as a declining class that would be absorbed by the spread of capitalism.

Opposed to Marxist notions of the ‘aristocracy of labour’, Bakunin maintained that only through the broadest possible class unity could the interests of the popular classes as a whole be defended. Anarchists were strongly internationalist, seeing war simply as a means for ruling groups to compete with one another globally for raw materials and new markets. From the start the movement also embraced a strong feminist impulse and championed equal rights for women.

‘It is our view,’ the authors say,’that the term anarchism should be reserved for a particular rationalist and revolutionary form of libertarian socialism that emerged in the second half of the 19the century. Anarchism was against social and economic hierarchy as well as inequality – and specifically, capitalism, landlordism, and the state – and in favour of an international class struggle and revolution from below by a self-organised working class and peasantry in order to create a self-managed, socialist, and stateless social order. In this new order, individual freedom would be harmonised with communal obligations through cooperation, democratic decision making, and social and economic equality, and economic coordination would take place through federal forms…’

Youtube summary of "Black Flame"

Came across this by accident:

REVIEW (+ short response by Lucien): Alex Zukas in 'Labor History'

Alex Zukas, (2013), "Black Flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism," Labor History, volume 54, number 1, pp. 113-115

Just published, Alex Zukas's positive (but at times critical: see below) review praises Black Flame as a "a rich, provocative, and important study of anarchist history, theory, and practice." It is a "wide-ranging intellectual and political history that will surely stimulate debates about anarchist theory and practice." The authors "synthesize a vast amount of primary and secondary source material on anarchism, their points are easy to follow, their arguments are clearly stated, they address key debates within anarchist politics and anarchist scholarship, and they take clear positions on those debates which are likely to generate even more debate." It also fosters new work by raising a "host of issues for future research starting with most of its main arguments"


Zukas also provides a succinct summary of those "main arguments" which is worth reproducing for its clarity: "The main arguments of the book, all of which challenge widely held views about anarchist history, theory, and practice are (1) the anarchist tradition begins in the 1860s as a response to the rise of capitalism and the modern state and emerged with, and was part of, modern socialist and proletarian movements; (2) not all philosophies that are hostile to the state or promote individual freedom are anarchist because anarchism is the libertarian wing of socialism which seeks to collectivize and self-manage production and replace the modern state with international self-management; (3) historians need a global perspective to counter the pervasive idea of ‘Spanish exceptionalism’ because major mass anarchist movements developed outside Spain in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, and Uruguay and often constituted the majority of organized workers in those nations from 1895 to 1925; (4) anarchist ideas have internal coherence; (5) the politics of class struggle, counterpower, and counterculture are integral to anarchism and syndicalism; (6) anarchism has always been predominantly a modern urban working-class movement rather than a rural peasant movement; and (7) anarchist and syndicalist trends are central to comprehending the history of labor and the Left in much of the world."

 While Zukas does not dispute any of these major claims, he does suggest that there is a tension in Black Flame between its "scholarly or academic agenda" and "polemics of a more partisan agenda that involves building a cohesive anarchist movement today." This (he claims) can lead the latter to sometimes "undermine" or "overshadow" the former, leading the book to have "mixed" results.  His main examples of this apparent flaw are that 1) Black Flame does not pay adequate attention to overlaps within the "broad revolutionary Left" and its "permeable boundaries" (his main example here are the De Leonists) 2) it "exhibits a tendency toward a caricatured, tendentious, reified, and reductive view of Marxist politics by means of selective quotation and by reducing Marxism to Leninism (Stalinism, really)" 3) Black Flame  is critical of classical Marxism yet fails to provide much "critical assessment of Bakunin’s and Kropotkin’s key ideas."
 
Short response:
As with all reviews, there is much food for thought in the criticisms provided; critique is not a threat to scholarship, but central to its progress, and so, always welcome.

It is in the same spirit of engagement, then, that I will post this short (I was going to say "brief," but it grew in the telling) response.

I would suggest that Zukas's general claim that "partisan" concerns undermine "academic" claims is a bit overstated. As he points out, the mixed mode of scholarship and advocacy is in the best "tradition of a great deal of labor scholarship" and is "laudable"; it is only a problem if the "partisan" position weakens the "scholarly" quality.

But has Zukas shown this? Yes and no, no, and, last,yes but no...

1) Yes and no: Black Flame focuses on the core of the anarchist and syndicalist tradition, and not on the overlaps and syntheses that emerged at its boundaries. So, yes, the issue of fuzzy boundaries is not central to its project and while it certainly merits more discussion, it is a matter for another project. This focus is not an example of partisanship undermining scholarship, but simply an issue of coverage.

It should also be noted that, within this necessary limitation, Black Flame does in fact discuss a number of examples of such overlaps and syntheses, among them the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa, the 1920s-1930s Sandino movement, and the impact of nationalism upon a wing of the Korean and Chinese anarchists.


The issue of De Leonism is quite separate, however, from this matter. Black Flame specifically, and at some length, rejects the view that De Leonism is an example of a synthesis or overlap. The correctness of that argument can be disputed, but it is a separate matter to the question of the importance of examining "permeable boundaries," since the case for De Leonism being an expression of blending at the boundaries must first be made.

Last on this point: as the points about Sandino etal underline, there have always been "permeable boundaries" on the "broad revolutionary Left," and indeed, between that Left and a range of other forces - not all revolutionary, and not all Left. That some permeability exists is undeniable, but this it is at the boundaries that exist between traditions; the fact of permeability does not efface very real, fundamental differences, and to identify those differences  is not partisan, but a necessary part of scholarly analysis. 


Nor should permeability on the "broad revolutionary Left" be overstated. Such matters such as the 1872 split in the First International, the systematic drive to purge anarchists and syndicalists from the Second and Third Internationals, the repression that was meted out by Marxists against anarchists and syndicalists in Russia, Korea, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, Cuba and elsewhere is certainly not the whole history of the "broad revolutionary Left," but they are an enormous part of that history.

That said, the issue of overlaps and syntheses is an important one, deserving of more attention in its own right. So, with the reservations expressed above, that point is taken.

2) No: Black Flame does not provide a "caricatured, tendentious, reified, and reductive view of Marxist politics" by "selective quotation" and "reducing Marxism to Leninism (Stalinism, really)."

As we have argued in Black Flame and elsewhere, Marxism is not homogenous; it includes, indeed, a libertarian wing closely akin to anarchism.

Zukas notes this nuanced approach, but then wishes to suggest that Black Flame caricatures Marxism with a
"reductive view" based on "selective quotation" and stressing "Leninism (Stalinism, really)."

The problem with Zukas's point is that the dominant tradition in Marxism  has always been statist; the history of countries like the Soviet Union etc., and of the big parties of the Second and Third Internationals (and the smaller but sometimes pretty substantial parties of the Fourth) is not just a minor moment in Marxism, but the bulk of its history. That is the Marxist tradition that most Marxists have always embraced, and that is why that tradition (explicit) forms the focus of Black Flame in discussing Marxism.

Therefore, quoting Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao and Guevara is not really being "reductive" or "selective," but instead, being representative and reasonable; the same applies to linking "Marxism to Leninism (Stalinism, really)." One may not like "Stalinism," after all, but it would be a caricature of Marxism as a mode of thought stressing material realities, if one was to discuss Marxist politics as if the Soviet Union or "Stalinism" never existed.


3) Yes, but no: it is quite true that Black Flame does not provide a detailed criticism of Bakunin's and Kropotkin's "key ideas," but that was not its aim; the aim was, first and foremost, recovery of those core ideas, and of their expression in a revolutionary praxis internationally.

The critical discussion of classical Marxism presented in Black Flame is, by the same token, primarily about recovering the anarchist and syndicalist critique of classical Marxism and its analytical and political alternative to classical Marxism. Likewise, Black Flame provides a critical evaluation of many of the major debates and disputes within the broad anarchist tradition, in order to better understand that tradition's ideas and historical record.

To put this another way: revisiting the anarchist/ Marxist debate, and recapitulating, in all its force, the anarchist and syndicalist critique of many fundamental Marxist positions is a necessary method for examining real, fundamental differences; it is not partisan, so long as the account is fair. And as suggested above, Black Flame provides a fair account of the dominant Marxist positions.

A critical assessment of the "key ideas" of Bakunin and Kropotkin on their own terms, and in place of the caricatures that bedevil the literature, is long overdue, and welcome. However, that task, too, falls beyond the scope of Black Flame.

In closing here, again the point is taken - as indicating an issue deserving of more attention in its own right - but with with reservations.

Lucien

REVIEW ARTICLE: Featherstone in the 'Journal of Global History'

David Featherstone, 2012, "Black flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and and syndicalism (Counterpower  volume 1), by Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt (Edinburgh and Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009, Pp. 500 and Anarchism and syndicalism in the colonial and postcolonial world, 1870–1940: the praxis of national liberation, internationalism, and social revolution, by Steven Hirsch and Lucien  van der Walt (Amsterdam: Brill , 2010, pp. lxxiv+434), Journal of Global History,  volume 7 , number 3, pp. 535-538.

Featherstone's glowing review is available online here, and variously describes Black Flame as a " a major contribution," with various arguments described as "a very significant and valuable achievement,"  "a significant and creative challenge," and as bound to "stimulate a significant revision of existing understandings of leftist political cultures." Set apart by its global scope, unique in the literature, it presents "powerful challenges to existing accounts of leftist internationalisms," asserts "the importance of diverse forms of political agency and activity constituted through trans-local anarchist organizing," and provides "a major contribution to refiguring understandings of political cultures of the Left."

Featherstone also raises a few issues bearing reflection, primarily centred around the issue of overlaps between anarchism and other political traditions (for instance, in the IWW and in Irish syndicalism), and how anarchism spread globally, articulating with diverse traditions as it did so (for instance, in the 1920s-1930s  Sandinista movement in Nicaragua).

These are valuable points, to which we can only respond: thanks!