Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

300 / ANARCHISM
interfere with the work of the fa ctory committees, labour exchanges, or workers'
consumer cooperatives.
V. The factory committee is a fighting organizational form of the entire workers'
movement, more perfect than the soviet of workers' , soldiers' and peasants' deputies
in that it is a basic self-governing producers' organization under the continuous
and alert control of the workers. On its shoulders the revolution has placed the task
of reconstructing economic life along communist lines. In those areas of production
where it is not possible to establish factory committees, the trade unions will carry
out their fu nctions.
VI. The factory committee is our young, fresh, future organization in full flower
and strength. The trade union is our bygone, decrepit, outmoded, defunct organization.
The factory committee is one ofthe most perfect forms oflabour organization
within the framework of the present crumbling state capitalist order, and the primary
social organism in the future anarchist-communist society. All other fo rms oflabour
organization must yield before it and become its component parts. With the aid
of the factory committees and their industry-wide federations, the working class will
destroy both the existing economic slavery and its new form of state capitalism
which is fa lsely labelled "socialism."
85. Manifestos of the Makhnovist Movement (1920)
After the October Revolution, Russia was soon plunged into civil war. The Bolsheviks negotiated
a truce with the Germans, allowing fo r the German occupation of Ukraine. An insurrec­
{ionmy peasant army under the leadership of Nestor Makhno (1889- 1 934}fought to expel the
Germans and to overthrow the local overlords {"hetmen"}. After the Germans withdrew at the
end of the First World War, various White (Czarist) and Red (Bolshevik) armies invaded
Ukraine to re-establish their dominance. Makhno, a committed anarchist, fought against
them both at various times, while at others allying with the Red Army against the counter-revolutionary
White forces. The fo llowing Makhnovist manifestos are reprinted from Peter
Arshinov's History of the Makhnovist Movement (1918-1921), London: Freedom
Press, 1987; originally published 1923.
Declaration of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine (Makhnovist)
FELLOW WORKERS! THE REVOLUTIONARY Insurgent Army of the Ukraine
(Makhnovist) was called into existence as a protest against the oppression of the
workers and peasants by the bourgeois-landlord authority on the one hand and the
Bolshevik-Communist dictatorship on the other.