o_195qg5dto17o4rbc85q1ge61i84a.pdf

140
anarchism: a beginner’s guide
the would-be guerrillas are often crudely macho. Web-based advice
on the construction of pipe-bombs, rockets and short-range mortar,
comes with the warning that ‘[w]andering away to have a fling with a
local babe … could result in getting oneself and the entire group
killed’. 33 Critics argue that such attitudes betray something of the
inherent authoritarianism of guerrilla warfare and its incompatibility
with anarchist principles.
These suspicions have been fuelled by the tendency of guerrilla
movements to emerge from Marxist-Leninist rather than anarchist
stables. The Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades are well-known
examples. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm of writers like Zerzan,
some anarchists fear that the Zapatistas might prove to be another
and question the leadership role assumed by the media-savvy
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos. In cases where the motivations
of the guerrillas are not in doubt, anarchists warn that guerrilla
action suits would-be commanders as well as it suits anarchists. As
Stuart Christie argues, the Cuban revolution gave the Marxist Fidel
Castro the edge over his anarchist-leaning rival, Camilo Cienfuegos.
In the Makhnovist struggle, the argument about the appropriateness
of guerrilla action to secure revolution was played out in the
context of Makhno’s reforms of the militia and his proposals, made
in exile in the 1920s, that revolutionaries establish a General Union
of anarchists to direct revolutionary and political activity. His
conviction was that anarchists would forever fail in revolution unless
they accepted the necessity of wielding armed revolutionary power.
Indeed, he believed that the anarchists’ inattentiveness to revolutionary
discipline explained their failure to counter Bolshevism.
Having once incited the masses ‘to join in the struggle’ anarchist
forces were incapable ‘of marshalling … resources against the
revolution’s enemies’. Makhno was extremely sensitive to the charge
that this organizational framework represented a betrayal of
anarchist principles. But his response was firm:
Anarchism is and remains a revolutionary social movement and
that is why I am and always will be an advocate of its having a well
articulated organization and support the establishment, come the
revolution, of battalions, regiments, brigades and divisions designed
to amalgamate, at certain times, into one common army, under a
single regional command in the shape of a supervisory organizational
Staffs. The task of the latter will be, according to the
requirements and conditions of the struggle, to draw up a federative