Anarchy Works.pdf - Infoshop.org

neighboring societies
Anarchy Works
and military garrisons, then vanish as quickly as they
had come[ ...] When cornered, the Makhnovtsy would
bury their weapons, make their way Singly back to
their villages, and take up work in the fields, awaiting
the next signal to unearth a new cache of arms and
spring up again in an unexpected quarter. Makhno's
insurgents, in the words of Victor Serge, revealed "a
truly epic capacity for organization and combat:'115
After their supposed allies, the Bolsheviks, endeavored
to impose bureaucratic control over southern Ukraine while
the Makhnovists were fighting at the front, the Makhnovists
successfully waged guerrilla warfare against the massive Red
Army for two years, aided by popular support. The ultimate defeat
of the Ukrainian anarchists demonstrates the need for greater
international solidarity. If other uprisings against the Bolsheviks
had been better coordinated. they might not have been able to
concentrate so much of their might on smashing the anarchists in
ukraine-likewise if libertarian socialists in other countries had
spread news of the Bolshevik repression rather than all rallying
behind Lenin. An anti-authoritarian rebellion in one corner of the
world might even be able to defend itself from the government it is
overthrowing and several neighboring govermnents, but not from
all the governments of the entire world. Global repression must
be met with global resistance. Fortunately, as capital globalizes,
popular networks do as well; our ability to form worldwide
movements and act quickly in solidarity with a struggle on the
other side of the planet is greater than ever before.
In parts of pre-colonial Africa. anarchic societies were able to
exist side-by-side with "predatory states" for centuries because the
terrain and available technology favored "defensive warfare with
lIS Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, Oak i and: AK Press, p. 212-213.
bows and arrows-the 'democratic' weapon of warfare since anyone
can have one:'116 The Seminole tribe of Florida provide an inspiring
example of a stateless, anarchistic society persisting despite the
best efforts of an extremely powerful, technologically advanced
neighboring state with a population thousands of times larger.
The Seminole, whose name originally means "runaways;' formed
out of several indigenous nations, principally the Western creek,
who were fleeing genocide through the southeastern part of what
white people had decided was the United States. The Seminole also
included a Significant number of escaped African slaves and even a
few white Europeans who had run away from the oppressive society
of the United States.
The inclusivity of the Seminole demonstrates how indigenous
Americans viewed tribe and nation as matters of voluntary
association and acceptance within a community, rather than
the restrictive ethnic/hereditary categories they are assumed
to be in Western civilization. The Seminole call themselves the
"unconquered people" because they never signed a peace treaty
with the colonizers. They survived a series of wars waged against
them by the United States and managed to kill fifteen hundred US
soldiers and an unknown number of militiamen. During the Second
Seminole War, from 1835 to 1842, the one thousand Seminole
warriors in the Everglades employed guerrilla tactics to devastating
effect, even though they faced nine thousand profeSSional, wellequipped
soldiers. The war cost the US government twenty million
dollars, a huge sum at the time. By the end of the war, the us
govermnent had managed to force most of the Seminole into exile
in oklahoma, but gave up on conquering the remaining group,
who never surrendered and continued to live free of government
control for decades.
116 Harold Barclay, People without Government: An Anthropology of
Anarchy, London: Kahn and Averill, 1982, p. 57.
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