Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (103 page)

For many Western observers, including Jean-Paul Sartre, the Cuban Revolution seemed an example of direct democracy, if not anarchy, in the making. But when Castro tightened his hold over the revolutionary process and declared himself in December 1961 to be a Marxist-Leninist until the day he died, the anarchists became increasingly alarmed. Soon after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Castro laid down the narrow limits for permissible dissent: ‘Nothing against the Revolution, everything within the Revolution’.

As the Cuban State, controlled by Castro and a small group of former guerrillas, grew more bureaucratic, centralized and militarized, the ‘Revolution’ became virtually synonymous with the ‘State’. What the State did not like was by definition against the Revolution. The Asociación Libertaria was disbanded and late in 1961 the anarchist papers
El Libertario
and
Solidaridad Gastronómica
ceased publication. Many anarchist militants decided exile was preferable to a Cuban jail. Declaring the Cuban Revolution to be counter-revolutionary, they have continued their agitation from abroad, especially from Miami.
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In the seventies, Castro moved closer to the Soviet Union. He consolidated his form of State socialism by adopting their centralized form of economic planning and by introducing a Constitution in 1976 based on the Eastern-bloc model. The new Cuban Communist Parry, formed in 1965 from a purged coalition of revolutionary groups, did not hold its first congress until 1975. It men adopted a set of statutes in which it described itself as ‘the organized vanguard of the working class’ and declared its ‘fidelity to Marxism-Leninism as its vanguard theory and guide for action’.
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Not surprisingly, the ideologues of the Cuban Communist Party adopt Lenin’s attitude to the ‘infantile disorder’ of left-wing communism; any political troublemakers are dismissed as
anarcholocos
, mad anarchists.

Nevertheless, there continues amongst the Cuban people a strong libertarian underswell which reveals itself in their traditional suspicion of authority, their individualism, and their profound dislike of regimentation. Moreover, the thought and action of Che Guevara keeps alive a libertarian strand within Cuban communism.

Che Guevara has been hailed as the ‘new Bakunin’. He certainly shared the anarchist confidence in the revolutionary potential of the peasantry and sought to create a co-operative society of workers and peasants in which work is transformed into ‘meaningful play’. He was very critical of any bureaucracy which checked individual initiative. He wanted to abolish
money and to see people motivated by moral and not material incentives; to work for the good of the whole, not just for themselves. Above all, he wanted to transform human relations so that all, regardless of sex or race, could realize their full potential. ‘We socialists are freer’, he declared, ‘because we are more complete; we are more complete because we are freer.’
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Although Guevara was unable to overcome his admiration for strong leaders, the early years of the Cuban Revolution, when his influence was at its height, proved the most creative and original phase. Since his death in 1967, his legacy has not been forgotten and libertarian socialists still exist in Cuba who call for direct democracy and self-management.

The early success of the Cuban Revolution in standing up to the United States gave it enormous prestige amongst left-wing movements in Latin America, but its later connection with the Soviet Union and its continued suppression of the freedoms of thought, speech, and movement have tarnished its image amongst the libertarian left in Latin America.

Since Latin America remains a largely under-developed continent, still suffering from poverty, political corruption and authoritarian rule, anarchism is likely to have its voice heard in the foreseeable future. In its syndicalist form it continues to appeal to the most progressive urban workers while anarchist communism echoes the ancient aspiration of the poorest peasants to work the land in common without interference from boss or priest. New libertarian tendencies have emerged in the ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ of the Brazilian educationist Paulo Freire and in Ivan Illich’s search for institutional alternatives to the centralized, technocratic State.
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The Liberation Theology developing in Latin America, which combines Marxism and Christianity, and juxtaposes images of Che and Jesus to potent effect in the shanty-towns, has a strong libertarian impulse which may well leave its historical roots behind.
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It is still not impossible that one day genuine anarchy will rise out of the chaos of military dictatorships in Latin America. In the meantime, it has been a driving force in the anti-capitalist and anti-globalization movements which have swept across the Americas.

M
ODERN
ANARCHISM
CAME
TO
China at the beginning of the twentieth century and became the central radical stream until after the First World War and the rise of Marxism-Leninism. It was introduced by two groups of young intellectuals who had studied abroad in Japan and France. Although they were attracted to anarchism because it appeared the most scientific and progressive of Western political ideologies, mere was of course a long-standing indigenous libertarian tradition in China.

For most of its history, China has been made up of self-governing communities to whom the State appeared distant and impersonal. The oldest debate in Chinese political thought was between the Taoists, who advocated a simple life in harmony with nature, and the Legalists and Confucians, who stressed the need for a strong centralized State and bureaucracy.
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Modern anarchism not only advocated the Taoist rural idyll, but also echoed the peasant longing embedded in Chinese culture for a frugal and egalitarian millennium which has expressed itself in peasant rebellions throughout Chinese history. It further struck a chord with two traditional concepts,
Ta-t’ung
, a legendary golden age of social equality and harmony, and
Ching-t’ien
, a system of communal land tenure which was probably practised locally at different periods during the first millennium.
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At the turn of the century, China was almost completely dependent on Japan for its knowledge of the West. It is not therefore surprising mat the formative stage of Chinese radicalism was closely linked to Japan’s. A Chinese group of students in Tokyo came under the influence of the Japanese anarchist thinker Kōtoku Shūsui. Amongst them was Chang Chi who translated Malatesta’s
Anarchy
into Chinese. The group published in 1907 the anarchist journal
Tien-i-pao.
The classical scholar Liey Shih-p’ei argued that the realization of anarchism in China should not be too difficult because of the influence of Taoist principles of ‘indifference’ and ‘non-interference’.
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A more influential group of Chinese students came under the sway
of anarchism while studying in Paris. They included the aristocratic Li Shih-tseng, Chang Ching-chiang and Wu Chih-hui. They established the journal
Hsin Shih-chi
(The New Century) in June 1907 which championed for three years the cause of revolutionary anarchism. The Paris group, as they came to be known, nonetheless rejected the attempt to link Lao Tzu with modern anarchism or the ancient co-operative well-field system with communism.
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They were chiefly influenced by the evolutionary theory of Darwin, and the anarchism of Bakunin and Kropotkin. They were drawn to the anarchist-communism of the geographers Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus because of their emphasis on science. The greatest single influence was Kropotkin’s
Mutual Aid
, which virtually became the bible of the Chinese anarchist movement. It was translated into Chinese and Japanese many times in the 1920s and 1930s.

The message of
Hsin Shih-chi
was uncompromisingly anarcho-communist. The Chinese anarchists who contributed to it were opposed to religion, tradition, the family, government, militarism and nationalism. They advocated science, freedom, humanism, communism, and universalism. They placed great emphasis on anarchist morality without religious sanctions, and were strongly anti-libertine; many rejected meat, alcohol and tobacco, and visiting prostitutes.

At the same time, they did not balk at violent revolution; like Bakunin, they saw that it was necessary to destroy in order to create. They were the first in Chinese political thought to call for a peasant — worker mass uprising, but since it was not forthcoming in China at the time, they turned to the pistol and the bomb. They advocated assassination of government officials, strikes against capitalism, and love towards society. Some even urged taking over the existing Chinese secret societies.

They defined anarchism like Kropotkin as meaning ‘no authority’.
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Like the European anarchists they saw all States and governments as the enemies of freedom and equality. But while they advocated economic communism, they still saw the individual as the basic unit in society: ‘Together with others, he forms a village, and with other villages, a country is formed. Society in turn is formed through the process of bringing all countries together.’ While the State is the destroyer of society, and governments are organized by the few in their own interest, the ‘proper society is that which permits free exchange between and among individuals, mutual aid, the common happiness and enjoyment of all, and the freedom from force by the control of the few.’
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True communism is not that of the ancient well-field system, but rather is based on common property held by a free federation of small, natural groups.

They totally rejected militarism — brute force exerted to uphold the State — and clashed with the nationalists in wanting to liberate all humanity
and establish universal harmony. They argued that States and armies did not prevent a country from external attack.

The anarchists of the Paris group saw their role as modernizing China and overcoming its deadening tradition as well as its burdensome government. They were impressed by Western civilization, and believed that progress in China had to occur through the spreading of science and direct democracy. Both the Japanese and the French groups of Chinese anarchists were united in their detestation of the Manchu regime. On the eve of the Nationalist Revolution of 1911, the anarchists seemed in a strong position. Large sections of the revolutionary movement were adopting their goals and tactics.

Li and Chang of the Paris group returned to China after the 1911 Revolution and founded in 1912 the ‘Society to Advance Morality’. If any member broke one of its complicated rules, then the others were supposed merely to ‘raise their hats’ in silent disapproval. The major spokesmen of the Paris group when they returned to China affiliated themselves increasingly with the nationalist movement of the Kuomintang, which itself had been founded in 1912. The nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen however was sympathetic to them, especially as he had been influenced during his stay in England in the 1890s by Henry George and his single-tax system. He used the word ‘communism’ in the sense of Kropotkin’s anarcho-communism until his death in 1925.

One of the first to propagate actively the anarcho-communist ideas of
Hsin Shih-chi
in China was the charismatic ex-assassin Liu Szu-fu, better known as Shih fu. In Canton in 1912, he founded the ‘The Society of Cocks Crowing in the Dark’; its conditions of membership included no eating meat, no riding in sedan chairs and rickshaws as well as no joining of political parties. In his anarchist journal,
Hui-ming-lu
(The Voice of the People), Shih fu declared mat ‘Our principles are communism, anti-militarism, syndicalism, anti-religion, anti-family, vegetarianism, an international language, and universal harmony. We also support all the new scientific discoveries which advance man’s livelihood.’
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All the anarchist groups were influenced by the Taoist and Buddhist ideal of the pure man who refuses to take office and who helps others by teaching and example.

The anarchists also initiated the famous work-study movement in China which was to have important repercussions for the future. Wu, Wang, Li and others founded ‘The Society for Frugal Study in France’ in 1912 and in 1915 ‘The Association for Diligent Work and Frugal Study’ to promote simple living and scientific education. Mao Tse-tung was in the Peking class of the latter but did not go to France. He later admitted however that he had been strongly influenced by anarchism as a student.
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Ironically, anarchism in China paved the way for Marxism-Leninism.
The students sent to France by the predominantly anarchist association unintentionally became influenced by Marxist-Leninist dogma. They went on to help establish the Chinese Communist Party which had its first congress in 1921. But it was not long before a leading spokesman for the Communists, Ch’en Tu-hsiu, argued, against the anarchists, the case for an organized central power, an ‘enlightened despotism’ no less. He railed against the ‘lazy, wanton, illegal sort of free thought that forms a part of our people’s character’, which he put down to ‘Chinese-style anarchism’, derived from Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, which was very different from Western anarchism.
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