A review of: Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World (18701940): The Praxis of National Liberation,

Internationalism, and Social Liberation Edited by Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt; with a Foreword by Benedict Anderson Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010; lxxiii+431pages; ISBN 978-90-04-18849-5 __________________________________________________________________ Pradip Baksi

Abstract: The volume under review is a very informative and, an immensely thought-provoking collection of essays on the history of modern Anarchism and Syndicalism in some areas of Africa, Eurasia, and, Latin America, for the period 1870-1940. It contains a Preface, an introductory and a concluding essay, plus ten contributions from twelve contributors. The authors are located in Brazil (2), Hong Kong, Northern Ireland, Russia, Scotland and, South Africa (1 each) and, the USA (5). The editors of the volume are from the USA and South Africa. The collection contains texts on the history of anarchism and syndicalism, for the period under consideration, in Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, Ireland, Korea, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, the Caribbean and Southern United States and, Ukraine. The history of emergence and development of modern anarchism and syndicalism over this vast area in the given period was uneven. The different essays in this volume are of uneven depth, seriousness and, orientation. The responses to each of them in the present review are also uneven. Key Words: Anarchism; Syndicalism; Africa; Eurasia; Latin America; Southern USA; 1870-1940.

Preface and Introduction 1. Benedict Anderson outlined his, and perhaps a common, perception about the theme(s) of this volume in his Preface, when he stated that anarchisms of Bakunin and Kropotkin stole the hearts and headlines, first with the wave of spectacularly successful and failed assassinations of heads of states, top politicians and capitalists (from Buffalo to Harbin); then by the rise of syndicalism with its signature theme of the revolutionary general strike, discussed by Sorel but in fact first theorised by the anarchists of the 1870s (xiv). Anderson is aware of Bakunins remark about Karl Marx being the supreme economic and socialist thinker of their time (same page, last para), yet he subscribes to the dominant Marxist or Anarchist-Syndicalist view that does not consider Marx to be one of the theoreticians of anarchism. For a Marx-scholars view on Marxs relation with anarchist theory, see: Rubel, 1973; and, for a glimpse of Andersons academic interest in anarchism in the colonies, see: Anderson, 2005. The rest of the Preface (xv-xxv) contains Andersons account of the various chapters of the book, ending with a description of the current political and economic time, which appears to be dyspeptic (xxviii) from his chair in the Cornell University, NY, USA. 2. The introductory essay by the editors of the book, Rethinking Anarchism and Syndicalism: The Colonial and Postcolonial Experience, 1870-1940, opens with the clear statement that this volume examines the history, influence, aspirations and actions of anarchism and syndicalism (xxxi) over the space and time indicated in the title of the volume. However, their claim that this volume transcends Eurocentric narratives runs into the troubled waters of a very Eurocentric understanding of political history, when they write that the papers in this volume demonstrate unequivocally that anarchism and syndicalism werefor most of this period, more important than their Marxist rivals (xxxii). This claim about the relative ascendancy of Anarchism and Syndicalism in this historical rivalry is true for the period from 1871 (fall of the Paris Commune) to 1920 (Bolshevik takeover of power in the Russian empire). However, this very assertion misses a larger historical truth: that as ideologies of human social self-liberation these rivals were and are inseparable from one another; after 1920 one (Anarchism-Syndicalism) has come out ideologically victorious through relative

practical defeat and, the other (Marxism), got ideologically defeated through relative practical victory, in attaining hegemony over people through that very state, the sublation of (or transcendence from) which is the declared aim of all movements oriented towards human social self-emancipation. Thanks to the painstaking labour of the authors and editors, we see in pages after pages of this volume, how all over the world, the Marx-innocent Anarchists and Syndicalists have organized, influenced and, joined the equally Marx-innocent Marxist or Communist parties after the Bolshevik takeover of political power in the Russian Empire in 1917. This Marx-innocence, characteristic of all the trends of the various Internationals that emerged in Europe, remains almost intact among the leaders, activists and, academic sympathisers of the labour movements in the world, even in our time. (For an acquaintance with the current possibilities of Marx-awareness, please visit the links to the Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels papers and, the MarxEngels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) project indicated in the References below.) The editors decision to use a narrow definition of anarchism to organize this volume (xxxvi) also has some undesirable consequences. This definition traces the roots of modern anarchism to the debates over the question of the state between Bakunin and Marx in the First International of the late 1860s. This decision ignores the fact that if not since the time of first migration of the Homo erectus out of Africa into Eurasia, then at least starting with the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, Confucius and Socrates and the debates around them, all ideologies and all debates originating in a given geographical territory, in a given historical period, including the above indicated debate within the First International, got transformed into something else, when they spread into the rest of the world. What are the evidences to suggest that the history of anarchism is an exception? If that is not the case, then why insist upon a narrow definition that is bound to smuggle in Eurocentric paradigms into the studies of non-European history? The history of spread of modern European liberalisms, socialisms and, anarchisms over very large territories of our planet, which includes India, China, Central and Western Asia, and Russia, is inextricably connected with and invariably influenced by the existing well-developed Asian ideologies of the various sects of Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. While discussing the class character of anarchism and syndicalism (pp. xlvii-li) the editors have correctly pointed out the narrow, partisan and tendentious nature of

Marxist/communist historiography, which routinely portrayed anarchists as pettybourgeois, artisan, peasant and/or lumpen-proletarian. It may be noted here that the first crop of European intellectuals of the International Workingmens Association (1864-1876) and their successors, came from among the ranks of dissident noblemen (Bakunin, Kropotkin), professionals (Marx) and, businessmen (Engels). While recruiting sympathisers, militants and, activists, all the trends of the First and subsequent Internationals drew from whatever human resources were willing and available for the tasks at hand. This trend continued in the metropolitan, colonial and postcolonial world, with one major difference: the Marxists/communists enjoyed long stints of monopoly in governmental power in many countries since 1917, and that is the main reason why their leadership attracted an ever increasing share of the opportunist and careerist petty-bourgeois, peasantry and, other people with an extremely vicious, militant and envious lumpen mentality (Kon, 1993) and, a steadily diminishing share of the dissident intelligentsia, than did the anarchists. Lumpenisation of the ruling communist parties of the 20th Century and, the partocratic states run by them along the lines of crime syndicates, are major historical phenomena that deserve more serious investigation, in the interests of further advancement of the movements for social self-emancipation of the humankind.

The editors have rightly concluded (lxviii) that no single volume can do justice to the proposed narrative(s) about the social bases, doctrinal tenets, programmatic goals, organizational structures, methods of struggle of anarchism and syndicalism in the colonial and postcolonial world. They have also suggested other questions and lines of inquiry, such as: gender ideologies and practice (for information on a conference held in 2000, in Amsterdam on Free Love and the Labour movement and, another held in 2010, in Leeds on Anarchism and Sexuality in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries see the related links in the References below); race relations; cultural influences; anarchist and syndicalist movements in the areas not adequately covered in this volume and, the post-1940 period. Examples of some efforts in some of these directions include: Mbah and Igariwey, 1997; Graham, 2005, 2009, 2012; Christoyannopoulos 2009, 2010; Ramnath, 2011; Kinna and Evren, 2013.

Part One: Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial World 3. Part one of the volume begins with Anthony Gormans account of the Anarchist Movement in Egypt: 1860-1940; it was a movement diverse in race, religion and nationalitybut united in aspirations of civil progress. Anarchism first appeared among the Italian political refugees and workers of Egypt in the 1860s; some of them were followers of Garibaldi and Mazzini. After the split of the First International in 1872 in the Hague Congress, a section of the anarchist wing of it was organised in Alexandria in 1876, followed by other sections in Cairo, Port Said and Ismailia in 1877 (3-5). A European Socialist Study Circle was established in Alexandria in 1881 (p.8). Some Arabic-speaking Egyptians joined, perhaps, from the first decade of the 20th Century (9). Anarchist propaganda in Egypt chose Catholicism and (curiously enough) Brahmanism (why? Was it ever of any consequence in Egypt?) for criticism but, praised Islam for its tolerance (11). The anarchists of Egypt did not target religion or the state head on; they gave more attention to social transformation through propaganda, education and workers associations (12) and, eschewed political assassination and violence (13). Their publications were in Italian, French and Greek; they had no Arabic newspaper of their own (15) but, since the 1890s the local Arabic press regularly reported about the ideas and activities of the anarchists abroad (16). The trial and execution of the founder of the Modern School Movement Francesco Ferrer i Gurdia in Spain in 1909 created a stir in Alexandria and Cairo. In 1901 Alexandria had its Free Popular University, providing free evening education to the toiling classes, in Italian, French and Arabic, about the humanities, natural sciences, workers associations and, womens status in society. This effort collapsed within a year, its anarchist founders were removed and, it was transformed into a vocational training college (18-19). Though the composition of the Egyptian working class of foreign and domestic origin was heterogenous, it produced an atmosphere of internationalism. In 1909 single gatherings in Cairo were addressed in Arabic, French, Greek, Italian and German. There were five Greeks, five Egyptians, two Syrians, one Italian and an Armenian in a committee of fourteen persons that constituted the leadership of the shoemakers union (22).

After World War I, many of those who had been anarchist militants before the warfinally agreed with their close rivals, the socialists that the Egyptian Socialist Party, the precursor of the Egyptian Communist Party, which did embrace parliamentary politics, has become the main vehicle for the radical challenge to the traditional political order (26-27). During the 1920s-30s the communists, anarchists, socialist and radical nationalists were subjected to repression by the government of Egypt. By the 1940s the labour movement in Egypt drew ideological support from the communist movement and the Muslim Brotherhood but it nevertheless still owed something to its anarcho-syndicalist roots. In Egypt, Nationalism and anarchism became de facto allies, on more than one occasion, in their fight against imperialism (28). It may be of some interest to mention here that, for some time now, the relation of anarchism with the activities of Al-Qaeda is engaging the attention of some historians (Gelvin, 2008). 4. Lucien van der Walts chapter, titled Revolutionary Syndicalism, Communism and the National Question in South African Socialism, 1886-1928, comes next. It is about how the anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists confronted the national question in South Africa during the 1910s, a period of unquestioned syndicalist hegemony on the revolutionary left (33). This chapter deals with a part of the issues covered in his much larger Ph.D. dissertation (Van der Walt, 2007). The author hails from a working class background, earns his bread as a professor and, is active the labour and anarchist movements of his country. It may be of some interest to the readers of this volume in England and India that the anarchist tradition in South Africa may be dated back to the 1880s and the tireless efforts of Henry Glasse, an Englishman born in Surat in 1857 (46), on the eve of the 1857-59 rebellion by the Indian soldiers of the English East India Companys army. Glasse was influenced by the ideas of Kropotkin, translated some of his texts, distributed his journal Khleb i Volya, Malatestas pamphlets and, was alert about the use of racial hatred by the ruling elite (47). While living in South Africa, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi declared for some time that he was a socialist (53). In South Africa the syndicalist movement had significant impact on both the currently ruling African National Congress (1923- ) and, the Communist Party of South Africa [CPSA] (1921- ), renamed the South African Communist Party

[SACP] (1953- ), in their formative periods (36). This chapter offers materials invalidating the claims of the communist party oriented historiography of the early period of modern working class movement in South Africa to the effect that the proto-communists and the SACP were the sole champions of the interests of the working class and toiling people of that country in the period under consideration. It may be mentioned here that even an official party history has conceded that syndicalist concepts remained within the Communist Party for many years after its foundation; echoes of their approach and phraseology appear in many documents and journals (Harmel, 1987: 40; quoted in 88, footnote 328). While dealing with the widespread communist falsifications of the history working class in South Africa and its carry over effects on European academic scholarship (63) and, also while concluding his narrative, Van der Walt justly criticised the misrepresentations practiced by the influential Communist school of labour and left history (89). However, he did not raise the issue of Marxism, Leninismand subsequent derivative ideologies as forms of false consciousness and, hence obstacles on the path of development of historiography as a discipline and, harmful for the cause of self-emancipation of the working class in particular and, that of the toiling and oppressed people of the world in general. 5. Dongyoun Hwang indicated at the very beginning of his text titled Korean Anarchism before 1945: A Regional and Transnational Approach that the primary and secondary sources for the study of Korean anarchism are very fragmentary and limited (95; footnote 2). This chapter contains an examination of the complex relationship between nationalism and anarchism in Korea annexed by Japan in 1910 (96). According to Korean anarchist turned communist Jang Jirak [Kim San] in 1919 Tokyo was a refuge for revolutionaries of many kinds and, Shanghai was a centre of the nationalist movement where the Korean provisional government was functioning (98). Quanzhou was also a transitional concentration point for East Asian anarchists in middle and late 1920s. In these places the Korean anarchists were able to articulate their national goal with the help of anarchism, and, conversely, understand anarchism through their national c ircumstances (99). Kropotkins idea of mutual aid exerted great influence over the anarchists of East Asia (102). Korean anarchists acquired their understanding of political revolution from the Paris Chinese anarchists and, that of modernity from the T okyo

Chinese anarchists (103). They learnt much about the harsh realities of Leninist rule in the Russian empire from the blind Russian anarchist poet Vasilii Eroshenko (1889-1952), who visited China in the early 1920s (113-14). During the late 1920s a mad wave of patriotism engulfed the Korean, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese and Taiwanese anarchists. About 60 anarchists from China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Indiagathered in Nanjing in September 1927 to organise an Eastern Anarchist League. It was decided that the League will have its headquarter in Shanghai and will publish its journal Dongbang [The East]. The first issue of the journal appeared on the 20th of August 1928 (121). In 1931 the Korean anarchists organised a Federation to Save the Nation under conditions of Japanese invasion, in the French concession in Shanghai (122). Their efforts were supported by their Chinese and Japanese comrades. Many Korean anarchists worked with them in the joint anarchist projects like the Shanghai National Labour University (123). The defeat of the Japanese army in 1945 led to US occupation and division of Korea. A pro-US imperialist, anti-communist regime was established by Syngman Rhee in South Korea in 1948. In these new conditions the South Korean anarchists began to emphasize their nationalist and anti-communist credentials to save their skins (125). One does not know what happened to their North Korean counterparts: how many of them perished in police custody and in labour camps and, how many lived to serve the local communist Kim dynasty. 6. Arif Dirliks essay Anarchism and the Question of Place: Thoughts from the Chinese Experience opens with the still dominant Eurocentric opinion that: While historically speaking anarchism is clearly a product of European modernity, anarchists have been quick to discover anarchism in all kinds of places, from small-scale tribal societies in Africa to ancient Chinese philosophies. This has served to reinforce anarchist universalism but also rendered anarchism ideologically ahistorical (131). Such opinions have their roots in the schooling and academic stereotypes imposed by the colonizing European powers upon the people of the rest of the world since the fifteenth century. Let us hope that in the coming six hundred years or less, with the ongoing decline of the global hegemony of western powers, we shall arrive at a more informed view of the trajectory of different ideologies on our planet. It is one

thing to rightly assert that two of the greatest thinkers of anarchism, Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin were themselves productsof Enlightenment thinking as it was filtered through the concerns and experiences of imperial Russia in the middle of the 19th century, (132); it is quite another matter to remain oblivious about the facts that conceptually speaking that very Enlightenment (see: Clarke, 1997) and, geographically speaking that very Russia (see: the map of Russia) do have large Asian components. Further, today the mtDNA view of the peopling of the whole world by Homo sapiens is considered basic information in paleoanthropology and, it has established the African origin of all the people on planet earth. That is why it is very pertinent to trace the roots of all components of human civilisation, anarchism included, to Africa. Deeper awareness about the past does not necessarily entail giving priority to the burdens of the past over the demands of the present, about which Dirlik is worried (ibidem). On the contrary , it may release the present and future generations from the ideological beliefs of the earlier generations and, thus help them chart out new directions unburdened by the ideological baggage of the last century. A part of such baggage is the failure to recognise the fact that Leninism was an extension of the Tsarist imperialist ideology dedicated to the continuation of the Russian empire under a new name and, then to conclude that Leninist Marxism has become victorious in China, Korea and Vietnam (133). What has become victorious in China , the two Koreas and in Vietnam are various forms of peasant nationalism, wherein the ruling communist parties of China, North Korea and Vietnam used a part of Leninist Marxist ideology embellished with some local color , while the ruling parties of Taiwan and South Korea used openly pro-US imperialist, anti-communist ideology, in the context of the Cold War; all of them were and are trying to improvise along various roads of industrial development, unknown to the bourgeois-class-led trajectories of Europe and, its derivative settler capitalisms of the Americas, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. It is very true that the modern anarchist ideas came to East Asia from modern Western Europe, representing a different comprehension of political space than had existed in East Asian societies earlier (135). It is also true that Asia and North Africa played a very large material, technological, scientific and, intellectual role in the making of modernity in Europe (see: Lach, 1965-77; Lach and Van Kley, 1993; Halbfass, 1988; Gerlach, 2005; Saliba, 2007; Rahman et al,2008; Bretelle-

Establet, 2010). In light of the literature indicated above and, Dirliks own subsequent recognition of advocacy of laissez-faire government by Confucianism and Daoism (142), his criticism of those Scholars of anarchism in East Asia who have made efforts to locate anarchism within various legacies of the past from neo-Confucianism to Daoism and Buddhism, to the effect that Such effort is more a product of a culturalism that pervades studies of East Asia (ibidem) , appears very ahistorically Eurocentric to say the least. It will be of some interest for the Chinese, Sinologist and, Maoist readers of this volume to be reminded that in course of the New Culture Movement, by the late 1910s, Among those to come under anarchist influence was Mao Zedong who, like many later Bolsheviks, expressed enthusiasm at this time for European anarchists and their ideas. Anarchists also played a part in founding the first Bolshevik groups in China (139), which would culminate in the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1921. By 1927, Chinese anarchists, in their anti-Bolshevism, devoted their efforts mainly to fighting Bolshevik ideological and labour activity, some of them in collusion with the most reactionary elements in Chinese politics (ibidem). The anarchists in China joined the anti-communist section of the Guomindang, to establish a Labour University in Shanghai, which for a period of five years sought to put in practice the anarchist belief in the necessity of combining mental and manual labour in education. This belief and the Kropotkinite insistence on combining agriculture and industry in social development had become part of radical culture during the New Culture Movement. Both trends would reappear after 1949 and, more forcefully from 1956 to 1976, which began with the great famine of 1958-62 and culminated in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. These events reflect continued existence of some influence of modern anarchism on Mao Zedong (1893-1976) and, on a part of the then leadership of the CPC (141). They also had the ancient anarchist heritage of Laozi (6th Century BCE) and Xu Xing (3rd Century BCE) to draw inspiration from (143). There were Buddhist monks among the Chinese anarchists. The anarchists of Guangdong led by Shifu were considerably interested in Buddhism. These interests in the possible indigenous roots of the principles of anarchism gradually declined under the impact of antitraditionalism of the New Culture Movement (144).

7. Aleksandr Shubin informed us in his essay The Makhnovist Movement and the National Question in the Ukraine, 1917-1921 that Makhnovshina had its roots in a quarter of the small town of Gulyai-Pole in the Aleksandrov district. The history of this area is associated with Cossack outlaws, agricultural struggle and nomadic culture. However, by the beginning of the 20th century only the memory of the Zaporozhe Cossacks remained. New people with a new way of life had settled in the local steppe (147-48). One wonders how a descendant of a Ukrainian Zaporozhe Cossack would react to such charitable prose about his people. We also learn that Nestor Makhno (1888-1934) did not actually speak Ukrainian (150). The anarchist movement in Ukraine, as in Russia as a whole (Is Ukraine a part of Russia, which is the whole? Or, is there an unspoken identification of Russia = the Russian empire?), originated in the Populist (Why within quotation marks?) or narodnik movement of the 1870s and 1880s. However, in the 1880s most of the narodnik groups moved away from anarchism, or were crushed by the tsarist regime. The revival of the anarchist movement in the Russian empire began in 1903.In 1904 the anarcho-communists held their all-Russian conference in Odessa.During the revolution of 1905-1907 there was a powerful surge in sociopolitical activity, including the anarchist movement (150). The revolution of 1905-1907 also affected Gulyai-Pole. On 22 February 1905, the workers of the Kerner factory went on strike. They were demanding improved working conditions, abolition of penalties and, payment for overtime work. Among the strikers was the young Nestor Makhno. In September 1906 the terrorist (my italics) Peasant Group of Anarcho-communists (also known as the Union of Free Grain Growers) began to operate in Gulyai -Pole.Makhno located the terrorists (again my italics) faster than the police, forced them (How?) to accept him into their ranks, and by the 14 [th of] October was already participating in a robbery (151). What kind of historical scholarship calls revolutionaries terrorists? The tsarist state was then the ultimate terrorist in the Russian empire. It appears that our author has graduated from the Okhrana School of historiography. Here are a few other samples: Makhnos group was influenced by the ideas of Piotr Kropotkin, albeit in an extremely abstract and simplified form (153). How polite of you, Your Excellency! Makhno made the mistake of not being born

among the Tsarist intelligentsia who must have had a very concrete and complex understanding of the ideas of Kropotkin! Makhno took steps to transform his (my italics) movement from a destructive peasant uprising (again my italics) to a social revolutionary movement that embodied supreme power in the territory it controlled (once again my italics) (165). How can an uprising be someones? What is a constructive uprising by the gentry? If something is a supreme power in a territory it controls, then in which sense is it anarchist? How is such anarchism different from Bolshevism? There was a Makhnovist (my italics) pogrom in the Jewish colony of Gorkaya on the night of 11th-12th May. As early as January 1919 Makhno himself and his officers took part in savage (my italics) killings although not of the systematic nature to be found in territory controlled by other regimes (172). How can a pogrom have an anarchist ideological label? The antiJewish pogroms of Russia, Ukraine and Poland had only some xenophobic Christian ideology behind them. What are civilised or humane systematic killings? The mutual hatred between peasant and gentry civilizations (my italics), based on a cultural rift that went back to the time of Peter the Great (173). We know that civilizations had and do have their peasants and gentry; but, can common nouns denoting social groups be used as adjectives before the word civilization? Was there no cultural rift between the peasantry and the gentry in Russia before the rule of Pyotr I began in 1682? Why is he great? For using barbaric methods of modernization subsequently copied by Lenin and the Bolsheviks? Everyone must have been equal in Russia before 1682! Were all Russians anarchist then? What about the period called Kievan Rus from the 9th to the middle of 13th century? What about the Tsardom from the time of Ivan IV who assumed the title of Tsar in 1547 to 1682? On the last page of his essay our author has used an expression made famous through one of Lenins well-known statement about the Christiananarchist Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy and, called Nestor Makhno a mirror of the whole Russian revolution (190). No comments. Those who wish to study Nestor Makhnos and Marxist sides of this history may visit the Nestor Makhno Archives (links indicated in the References). 8. Emmet OConnor introduced the Irish syndicalist leader William OBrien to the readers of his essay Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism and Nationalism in Ireland as cold and reservedshrewd, capable and ruthless in his ambition (195). We learn further in the same page that another leader Jim Larkin had charisma and,

yet another leader James Connolly had interest in theory. In the very next page we are told that: What Irish syndicalism amounted to was Larkinism and, from 1917 to 1923, Connollys industrial unionism, and these were applied to structures that were not syndicalist in conception. Irish syndicalism was therefore amorphous and contingent (196). In the section titled Larkinism we learn that: There was certainly a personality cult, which Jim would promote shamelessly (199). Larkin made a virtue of necessity (202). In the section titled Syndicalism Falters we further learn that Larkin had the communists dissolve the Communist Party of Ireland affiliated to the Comintern in 1924 in favour of his own g roup, the Irish Worker League. He remained more a syndicalist than a Leninist, but he never had much interest in theory in any case, and saw communism as the old class struggle in an apparently more effective format. The Comintern had high hopes of Larkin, and prospects looked good (219). Larkin was powerful enough, in Dublin and Moscow, to ensure that if little could be done with him, nothing would be done without him. Extraordinary wrangles between himself and Moscow culminated in a break with the Comintern and Profintern in 1929 (220). In short, in Ireland, early Bolshevism was an outgrowth of an opportunist and careerist faction of syndicalism.

Part Two: Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Postcolonial World 9. Steven J. Hirsch opens his survey of Peruvian Anarcho -Syndicalism: Adapting Transnational Influences and Forging Counterhegemonic Practices, 1905-1930 with statement that: At first glance early 20th century Peru would seem an unlikely setting for anarcho-syndicalism to flourish. A predominantly agrarian society, with a large and economically marginal indigenous populationvast areas of the nation were largely unaffected by capitalist change. With the exception of Lima-Callaosizable urban economies were conspicuously absent. Not surprisingly, given the context, the massive influx of European immigrants that catalyzed the anarcho-syndicalist labour movements in Argentina and Brazil bypassed Peru (227). Yet Peru was not entirely isolated from anarchist currents. Anarchist ideas and publications circulated widely in Peru by the first decade of the 20th century.

Manuel Gonzlez Prada, a Peruvian aristocrat and social gadfly, and a handful of radical immigrant intellectuals based in Lima facilitated the dissemination of anarchist thought. Simultaneously, a nucleus of self-taught craftsmen and machinetenders inspired by the writings of Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta, spearheaded a movement to organise workers in Lima-Callao based on anarchosyndicalist doctrine.the influence of anarcho-syndicalismalso spread to working-class elements along Perus northern coast and central and southern highland regions (ibidem). There are no national level studies of anarcho syndicalism in Peru (227, footnote 1). This chapter examines how anarchosyndicalist ideas were adapted to Peruvian contexts, primarily in Lima-Callao and the southern region of Arequipa, Cuzco, and Puno during the 1910s and 1920s, the heyday of Peruvian anarcho-syndicalism (228). Manuel Gonzlez Prada became an anarchist as a result of his contacts with French and Spanish anarchists during a self-imposed European exile (1891-1898). He persuaded workers to reject mutualism in favour of anarchist practices and, also founded Los Parias (The Pariahs), the first anarchist publication in 1904 (229). Other kindred papers followed. Study circles were organised. On October 17, 1909 the Centre of Socialist Studies First of May organised a public protest in response to the Spanish governments execution of the anarchist and educational innovator, Francesco Ferrer i Gurdia (230). Anarcho-syndicalism grew firm roots in Lima-Callao by 1911 and, gained momentum in 1912-13 (230-31). In December 1918 workers of Limas textile industry struck wo rk demanding 8 hour workday; the government accepted the demand on 15 January 1919 (233). In April a Committee for Cheapening the Prime Necessities was formed. As the President of the land and the business community refused to accept their demands for reduction of the prices of basic food-stuffs, a general strike began on May 27. It continued in the face of governmental brutality for five days. About one hundred persons died, several hundred were wounded and, between three and five hundred people were sent to jail. The strike failed (234). In the subsequent period the Peruvian anarcho-syndicalists prioritized forging a counter-hegemonic workingclass culture capable of contesting and supplanting the dominant culture of Perus ruling elites (235). In 1921 representatives of 23 labour organisations attended the first congress of the local workers federation, a rationalist library was established in Lima for the male and female workers of all races (237). Textile and

construction workers began publishing their own worker-edited papers El Nudito, El Obrero Textil and, El Constructor. Many Cultural and recreational associations sprang up in the Lima-Callao region. Among them a workers musical centre, the Centro Musical Obrero de Lima, founded in 1922 deserves special mention (23840). In 1927 a textile union published Cancionero Revolucionaria, a collection of Universal Proletarian Hymns and Songs of the Day, in honour of the May Day. The first workers tree-planting festival was deliberately organised on 25 December 1921, as a secular festival on a day of Christian holiday. Popular Universities for the education of workers were organised by some reform-minded students of San Marcos University in Lima and Vitarte in 1921 (240-41). A sign marked with three eights painted in red and white was placed in the middle of the proscenium to underscore the support of the Universidad Popular (UP) of Vitarte for eight hours of work, eight hours of study, and eight hours of rest a position in accord with the First International. In May 1923 there were mass demonstrations and pitched battles on the streets against the decision of the government and the Catholic Church to consecrate Peru to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A worker and a student died. The government cancelled the decision; but many of the students and workers linked to the UPs were arrested and deported (242). Governmental repression was unleashed against workers libraries, presses and even their musical centre (242-43). In the given context of Peru, espousing a pragmatic variant of revolutionary syndicalism made sense. The movement also suffered from the ongoing influence of conservative artisan organisations. They derived their understanding mainly form the First International and, from the French and Argentine trades unions of the period. They repudiated party politics and electoralism in favour of direct action tactics, especially the general strike (244). In the Lima-Callao region they displayed a keen interest in the emancipation of women and indigenous workers, including that of the 23, 000 female workers engaged in domestic services in Lima. The Peruvian anarchosyndicalists, guided by a keen interest in internationalism, maintained contact with and, reported news about similar movements in the rest of the Americas and in Europe. They organised protest strikes against the unfair trial and execution of Ferdinand Nicola Sacco and Bartolommeo Vanzetti in the United States in 1927(247).

In the Southern highlands of Peru anarcho-syndicalism drew inspiration from a radical liberal press, Limas labour movement, immigrant anarchists and, crossborder ties with Chilean anarcho-syndicalists (248). The security organs of the government viewed them as Bolsheviks during the 1920s (257-58). An Indigenous Labour Federation was founded in 1923 (264). There were indigenous peasant uprisings against the governments policy of conscription for military service and road construction (265). A nation-wide campaign against the Conscription Act was organised in February 1926 (266). The anarcho-syndicalist labour movement of Peru failed to generate matching counter-hegemony against the state and civil society controlled by Perus agro export creole elite and rapidly declined by 1929 (268). During the mid-1920s there arose complains about bureaucracy in the workers federation, dependence of the leadership on the governments intervention and, their conciliatory attitude to Marxist politics (247). Conflicts over ideology, party politics, and union autonomy erupted within the declining movement in the early 1930s (248). Grounds were prepared for the next phase by global, regional and local developments. During the 1930s and 1940s many former anarcho-syndicalists joined the social democratic Peruvian Aprista Party and the Peruvian Communist Party (both founded in 1930) (268). This is an exemplary and, perhaps, the first comprehensive, text of historical scholarship devoted to the history of working-class movement in Peru, for the period under consideration. Future generations of historians and activists engaged in the cause of human self-emancipation all over the world will learn a lot from it, both about the craft of the historian and, about how this craft can be blended with the spirit of science, human empathy and, solidarity with the working class.

10. Kirk Shaffers essay titled Tropical Libertarians: Anarchist Movements and Networks in the Caribbean, Southern United States, and Mexico, 1890s-1920s is about the networks of sporadic anarchist movements of Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico and Spanish-speaking migrant zones in the southern United States (273). Our author prefers to describe US imperialism in this region as US military and economic influence or, as expanding US foreign policy (ibidem). In the

anarchist networks of the region under consideration the weekly Tierra! (The Earth or Land) published from Havana played an important role. The Caribbean network radiating from Havana overlapped with a Mexican network stretched from Los Angeles to Mexico City (274). The Caribbean network extended from the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico to Caribbean Basin mainland in Panama, stretching across the isthmus to the Pacific Ocean and back north to Florida cities along the Gulf of Mexico and the Straits of Florida. The Mexican network was bound by the natural land bridge dissected by - the US aggression and occupation generated - US-Mexico border, reaching north into the central plains of the united States (Missouri), west to Los Angeles, and south to the urban landscape of Mexico City (275). The Cuban anarchist movement arose in the 1870s when cigar makers Enrique Roig de San Martin and Enrique Messonier established a workers school and newspaper on the outskirts of Havana (276). Though initially hesitant, by 1895 most anarchists in Cuba, Florida and Spain supported the Cuban struggle for independence from Spanish imperialism (277). Many among the Cuban anarchists were Spanish immigrants. As anarchists they supported free movement of workers. However, unrestricted immigration to the island increased the supply of labour, kept wages low and, threatened to hamper anarchist organisation among the existing workers. Anarchists of Cuba were caught in this dilemma (280-81). The Afro-Cuban workers were slaves freed in 1886. They faced racial and cultural discrimination. This situation culminated in the formation of the Partido Independiente de Color, in 1907 (281). The government outlawed it. The outlawed party organised a meeting on 20 May 1912 (the Day of formal Independence of Cuba in 1902 from the US, which still retains an imperial military base there at the Guantanamo Bay). The government attacked the meeting, killed about 6000 AfroCubans and jailed 900 of them. The anarchists of Cuba failed to take the side of the Afro-Cubans (282). The Cuban anarchists also failed to appreciate the improvements in health and sanitation imposed by the first US occupation of the island. They believed that real health reforms had to focus on eliminating poor working conditions and destitute living environments (283). How ungrateful of them! In those days of early twentieth century Cuba, they were even beholden to the values of patriarchal family (284-85), which dominates global familial culture even today! How uncultured of them! With such pro-US imperialist and, time-

sensitive historians as chroniclers, do the Cuban anarchists need their communist historian detractors? After World War I, a new mostly anarcho-syndicalist movement emerged in Cuba. In the 1920s they organised the National Confederation of Cuban Workers together with the Marxists, including some of the future founders of the Communist Party of Cuba, like subsequently murdered Julio Antonio Mella (1903-1929). The anarchist-led Confederation of Workers also organised many financially stable rationalist schools across the island (285). Some anarcho-communist groups opposed cooperation with the Marxists. Repression against the working-class increased during the rule of pro-US president Gerardo Machado (1925-33). In this period anarchist influence declined but, remained alive supporting the revolt of 1933, the Spanish Republican cause and, the Cuban Revolution of the late 1950s (286). The first anarchists came to Florida during the First Cuban War of Independence (1868-1878). Circular migration of workers between Havana and Tampa formed the social basis for the regional anarchist network. Anarchist publications first came from Cuba and then evolved locally. As US imperialist military and economic interests spread throughout the Caribbean, following US intervention in Cubas War of Independence, a corresponding growth in the anarchist network took place in the region, in the face of growing racist violence let loose to divide the working-class. After the assassination of US president William McKinley in 1901, the anarchists came under heavy repression; workers shifted loyalty to the American Federation of Labor (AFL) linked International, in part due to their interest in a solid wage and, in part due to their rejection of puritanical anarchist social agenda of no beer or rum, no cards, no pool, no paid for female companionship (287-292). One year after the US imperialist occupation of Puerto Rico in 1898, some sympathisers of anarchism had formed a Free Federation of Workers there. However, it quickly came to be absorbed within the AFL (293). Between 1908 and 1910 anarchist publications, study centers and activists continued to criticise US imperialist rule and AFL hegemony over the workers in Puerto Rico (294-296). After 1917 the anarcho-communist group organised around the weekly El Communista supported the Russian Revolution but, opposed the goal of political

independence from US rule. Anarchist activities on the island died down by 1921 (298). In 1903 US imperialism purchased the separation of the province of Panama from Columbia and, in 1904 the US controlled government of Panama ceded to the United States a ten-mile wide stretch of land in the heart of the new country (298) for the construction of a 48 mile long canal, connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. US control of the Canal Zone continued up to 1999. The construction project fuelled migration of workers to the area. Some among them were anarchists. Anarchist literature started coming from Cuba. By 1911 anarchist activism among the construction workers became noticeable and, that continued till the end of the construction in 1914. Some journalistic criticism of the Government of Panama continued up to 1925 when the flame of anarchism in Panama was extinguished (303). In Mexico and in the related Texas-Missouri-California circuit of influence, anarcho-communism blended with traditional liberalism until about 1911. Anarcho-syndicalism was active in the industrial and mining areas and, in the oil fields along the Gulf of Mexico, in close cooperation with the Industrial Workers of the World, throughout the 1910s and early 1920s. Ricardo Flores Magn (18741922), one of the major thinkers behind the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, and his brother Enrique Flores Magn (1877-1954), were prominent leaders of the Mexican anarchists (304-305). There were short-lived attempts by their followers to create anarchist workers commune in the state of Baja California in early 1911. This multiethnic anarchist movement was heavily repressed both in Mexico and in the USA. When a movement decays its leading individuals also become petty and mean. Our learned imperial historian chronicled minute details of that decadence (306-309). He has also informed us that by 1914 there were 165 Magonista clubs in the southern Texan counties of Cameron and Hidalgo. Originally they had a plan to liberate Texas from US imperialist occupation. Our historian wrote that the rebels were to enact a race war against Yankee Anglos (310). There was widespread Anglo vigilante and US governmental violence against the Mexicans throughout 1914-1915. Forty percent of the Mexican population of Cameron and Hidalgo fled from these counties. Ricardo Flores Magon and the anarchist organ Regenerecin did not instigate any revolt in this area. Ricardo Flores was arrested

in 1918 for obstructing the war effort and thus violating the US Espionage Act of 1917. He was sentenced for 20 years. Four years later he died in a jail in Kansas. In late 1918 workers of Mexico City came under the then growing influence of Marxists. Some of them carried their earlier anarchist impulses within the Mexican Communist Party right up to the 1930s (314-315). One gets an impression from our authors overall account that compared to the anarchists and other radicals of the area, the US imperialist, Cuban stooge and, Mexican reactionary civil, diplomatic and military intelligence services were more internationalist in their mutual cooperation (319). 11. The next chapter by Geoffroy de Laforcade has the title: Straddling the Nation and the Working World: Anarchism and Syndicalism on the Docks and Rivers of Argentina, 1900-1930. Modern working class movement entered into Argentina with the Italian immigrants and French refugees of the Paris commune. Already in 1871 some European leaders of the International Workingmens Association (IWMA) were aware of the existence of the Anales de la Sociedad Tipogrfica Bonaerense (Engels, 1871: note 3). The Report of the General Council to the Fifth Congress of the IWMA (held at The Hague, September 2-7, 1872), mentioned that the International has established ramifications in Buenos Aires (The Hague Congress, 1872). In the 1880s Ettore Mattei promoted the anarcho-communist ideas of Malatesta and Kropotkin in the pages of El Socialista. Feliciano Rey and his comrades organised collectives inspired by the ideas of Bakunin. Errico Malatesta himself organised a bakers union during his stay in Buenos Aires from 1885 to 1889. Fortunato Serantonis La Questione Social, John Craeghes El Oprimido and, Gregorio Ingln Lafargas La Protesta Humana agitated in favour of trade unions in the wake of waves of strike during the middle of 1890s. During 1896-1897 Virginia Bolten (1870-1960) of Rosario published La Voz de la Muer (The Voice of The Woman), one of the earliest anarchist-feminist newspapers of the world, which had a motto: Ni dios, ni patrn, ni marido (No god, no master, no husband). Italian anarchist lawyer, criminologist, journalist and poet Pietro Gori lived and taught in Buenos Aires, during his years of stay there from 1898 to 1902. There he started the journal Modern Criminology and organised a Libertarian

Federation of Socialist and Anarchist groups. He influenced many Argentine intellectuals, poets and authors (327). After these rich formative years, the anarchists of Argentina were able to generate an alternative discourse of modernity that served as an antidote to popular disempowerment and, an inclusive language of class as a counterpoint to the fragmentation of ethnicity and atavistic nativism (328). The southern end of the city of Buenos Aires was the stage for the quasi-annual strikes of the longshoremen organised by the anarchists during the high export season since the middle of the 1890s. Their network spread to the northern reaches of the Paran River. Here their main rivalry was with the syndicalists. The Port workers of the capital formed a Resistance Society in 1901. It was followed by the formation of a regional Federation of Longshoremen and Related Trades. In response to workers militancy the government passed a Residency Law in 1902 to deport some of the organisers. The labour press and union halls were closed down. The movement went underground. Public expression of labour rights were effectively suppressed (330). The next year a naturalized Argentine citizen, Constante Carballo, was able to organise over five thousand dockworkers. They convened a congress of the Federation of Port Workers, with participation of delegates from Uruguay. In June 1903 an anarchist Resistance Society of Mariners and Firemen was born (ibidem). In this period conflicts were incited among the local and recently arriving workers by conservative circles, over the issue of preference for hiring. In a social environment prone to widespread alcoholism, violence, petty crime and cheap sex (sic), both Catholics and anarchists sought to dignify the longshoremens condition through ethical and moralistic discourses of responsibility (331). The anarchists glorified the masculine qualities and virtuous toil of manual quayside work, discouraged its sympathisers from engaging in prostitution and gambling (ibidem). The organisation of cultural activities by the anarchist resistance societies included advocacy of rationalist education and free love. The Catholic unions rhetoric of responsible breadwinning domesticity was opposed to the anarchist depiction of marriage as a form of subservience for both man and woman (332). However, in workplace conflicts, anarchists and Catholics were not perpetual antagonists. The authority of the anarchist resistance Society rested in large part, at least in some areas, on the familiarity incurred by clientelistic hiring networks, shared living spaces and, the common taverns patronized by them. Large numbers

of casual workers and deckhands relied on the informal ties of resistance societies with the dockside hiring authorities to obtain work (333). During the high export season of 1903 over twelve thousand workers were on strike in the port district. The tramway workers union paralyzed transportation throughout the southern fringes of the city. There was inter-union rivalry, violence and repression (ibidem). After some lull, another strike by the dockworkers erupted in the upriver port of Rosario in the winter of 1905. This time the anarchist and Catholic workers fought jointly against the establishment. The strike continued for weeks in Buenos Aires. The government declared a three-month state of siege. When work was resumed, the strikers effectively forced a boycott of the stooge unions in matters of hiring (333-335). From 1906 the syndicalists came to the foreground of organised labour movement on the Argentine waterfront. They inspired a strike demanding improved hygiene and safety on coastal ships. Institutionalized bargaining channels involving the government emerged and negotiations with formally recognized trade unions became a reality. In 1907 the syndicalists and anarchists organised their first prounification congress. It was not a success (337-339). Their mutual conflicts and internal weakness went through several ups and downs during next decade (340341). During the late 1920s the syndicalists became pro-actively involved in Argentine merchant marine development, while the anarchists repudiated nationalism, resisted state intervention and, came under fire for thereby serving the interests of foreign shipping companies (342). In the port of Buenos Aires, the ideological rivalry between anarchist and syndicalist trade union federations, exacerbated by turf wars between the longshoremens and mariners organisations, spawned periodic outbreaks of violence. When it came to workplace activism, however, the tacit solidarity pacts of the past tended to revive cooperation between different sectors of dockside labour (349).The rest of the article is a melancholy narrative of some sporadic upheavals in the course of an unstoppable downslide of anarcho-syndicalism in Argentine history to the 1940s. 12. Edilene Toledo and Luigi Biondi opened their article titled Constructing Syndicalism and Anarchism Globally: The Transnational Making of the

Syndicalist Movement in So Paulo, 1895-1935 with the straight assertion that: Anarchism, revolutionary syndicalism, and socialism were important elements in the making of the working class in late 19th and early 20th century Brazil, as elsewhere. Anarchism was an important chapter in the history of political thought and action in Brazil and with syndicalism and socialism shaped the workers movement in a number of ways, and also influenced a range of workers social, recreational and cultural activities (363). In the late 19th century, Brazil underwent important transformations, with the abolition of slavery (1888) and the establishment of the republican regime (1889); however, these did not affect the extremely unequal social structure. The victorious republican power was closely linked to the interests of coffee planters living in So Paulo, who drew from liberal thought only what they needed, rejecting any expansion of the republican project that would open up broad political participation (ibidem). The spread of republican ideas was accompanied by accelerating modernization, involving secularization, industrial development, urbanization, and immigration. These historical processes occurred most intensely in some regions, particularly the southeast, between the years 1880 and 1920. They changed traditional ways of life, and led to the development of new social actors, especially in the cities: the industrial bourgeoisie, and the proletarian and middle classes (364). In the context of disillusionment with the farcical liberal democracy of the First Republic (18891930), which was based on a limited franchise qualified by economic and literacy criteria, labour struggles and claims, partly influenced by anarchism, were also an effort to democratize society. These were not only about improving wages and reducing work days, but also an effort to achieve democratic conditions and civil rights, so that the workers movement could be recognized as a legitimate part of society (365). This effort did give birth to some trend-setting standards. In the Statutes of the Resistance League of Male and Female Workers of the Textile Factories of So Paulo, published on 30 November 1902, we read, inter alia, that its Administrative Committee is composed of four men and four women (366). This is an example of a tremendously gender-sensitive labour union not only for its own time, but also an example to follow for the workers unions in many parts of the world even today. During the first decades of the 20th century most labour unions in Brazil followed the revolutionary syndicalist tendency. However, the

unions were supported by different ideological currents, including socialists of various leanings, positivists, and republicans, as well as pragmatic trade unionists who used the mediation of lawyers and authorities (369). The trajectories of working class formation in the two major cities of Brazil, So Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, were different. In the former the immigrants were in the majority and, in the latter the locally born former slaves and their descendants were in the majority, within the working class. The immigrants resisted naturalization and were, in consequence, excluded from the election process. Those born in Brazil were potential voters, had a different tradition of urban struggle and, used important channels of political communication to approach the progressive sections of the middle class. The working class movement of So Paulo was almost exclusively syndicalist and, that of Rio de Janeiro was more reformist, in orientation (369). In Brazil, the labor unions, in general, did not discriminate against the blacks but, some cross-class artistic and recreational associations of the immigrants had statutes prohibiting black membership (373, footnote 25). In Brazil there were conflicts among the anarchists about whether or not to work within the unions and about the purpose of such work. The syndicalists were of the view that the unions were the necessary and according to some of them even the sufficient form of workers organization, not only for the immediate gains, but also for the final revolutionary transformation of society. In Argentina, as in Italy, syndicalism entailed a rejection of the socialists. In Brazil, as in France, it arose as a practice that could unify a range of militants. Subsequently, Fascism presented itself as a continuation of the syndicalist tradition; some syndicalists went over to Fascism, which transformed some of the syndicalist ideas into their opposite (377, footnote 32). Here one notices a striking parallel with what happened to the ideas of the communists of the First International, within the Marxist, Social Democratic Second International and, the Leninist, Bolshevik Third International. The anarchists inspired by Malatesta were of the view that there is no clear and absolute division between individuals or classes. There were infinite gradations of material conditions within the classes. If classes were not homogenous, then it was an illusion to build a movement on economic solidarity rather than moral

solidarity. Anarchism was not about the struggle of one class only it thought in terms of the broad masses of poor and exploited people, and not only the industrial proletariat. Class struggle (in Marxist terms) was seen by the anarchists as one part, but only a part of a larger human struggle between the exploited of all types and the exploiters, of all types. The Church and the State played as central a role here as the bourgeoisie, not just a super-structural one. These anarchists also therefore tended to reject the syndicalist thesis of revolutionary union as the embryo of the new society (378). After the First Republic was established, state power was nominally subject to electoral control. However, vote-rigging was the general practice, taking place in all phases of the electoral process. In addition, elections in the first four decades of the Republic were characterized by low levels of participation. Only the 1930 presidential election saw more than 5 percent of the population go to the polls. Registration and voting were not compulsory, and besides, women and the illiterate were excluded: even in 1930 these groups represented 60 percent of the population (383, footnote 43). This situation provided a fertile ground for the acceptance of anarchist ideas oriented on rejection of the whole political process. The anarchists in Brazil, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, believed strongly in education as an essential means of raising a new person who would build a new world. Essential to this project was the creation of Modern (or Rationalist) Schools, inspired above all in Francesco Ferrer i Gurdias pedagogy. These operated in So Paulo from 1902 till 1919, when they were closed down by police in the repression that followed the great struggles of 1917-1919 (385). These were struggles for the eight-hour working day. Anarchist and syndicalist influences were present within the working class movement of Brazil during the first half of the 1920s. In this decade there were widespread debates over the rise of the Soviet Union. A number of anarchists broke rank and, in 1922, the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) was founded in Niteri, Rio de Janeiro, by former anarchists (391). 13. The last essay by the editors of the volume bears the title Final Reflections: the vicissitudes of Anarchist and Syndicalist Trajectories, 1940 to the Present. Since the 1990s there has been a resurgence of anarchist and syndicalist ideology,

organisation and methods of struggle. The period since the collapse of the USSR has been characterized by experimentation, reinvention and rediscovery on the part of the progressive movements. Anarchism and syndicalism have been part of this process of renewal. New movements have emerged in areas with little in the way of a revolutionary, libertarian socialist tradition; existing movements in areas of historic influence have revived, and a more diffuse anarchistic influence permeates a number of important social movements (395). New anarchist groups have emerged in Indonesia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Syria. Older movements in Spain, Italy, France, England and Russia are going through a process of revitalization. Anti-globalization and Occupy Movements everywhere are permeated with anarchist ideas, if not organizational structures. Same is true of the movements of the Indigenous People in Mexico and Bolivia. The Gandhian Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) of South India is associated with La Via Campesina (The Peasant Way) (395-397). However, in India the ruling parties routinely swear by Gandhiji and, like Gandhiji the KRRS too is reformist; it does not stand for radical structural change (Machattie, 2000). The authors have rightly observed that: The resurgent anarchist and syndicalist movement is diverse, fractured and contested (397). While inheriting the historic orientations of antistatism, anti-capitalism, direct action and direct democracy, contemporary anarchism and syndicalism is also trying embrace the contemporary sensitivities about gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ecology and technology (398). Some of these contemporary sensitivities were very much present in the Brazilian, Peruvian, Argentine, Cuban, Egyptian and South African histories documented in the volume under review (399). The anarchist and syndicalist educational and cultural networks were the nurseries for the cultivation of these sensitivities. To break the elite monopoly on education and culture and to foster self-emancipation and human dignity the anarchists and syndicalists founded many Study circles , popular libraries and universities, independent presses, theatre and art groups, and recreational organisations wherever they were active for some time (401). While chronicling some examples of articulation of anarchism and syndicalism from 1939 to 1989 (401-404), the authors have mentioned some of the relevant events in Spain, Poland, Bolivia, China, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, South Korea and Uruguay but, they forgot to mention the activities of the Portuguese revolutionary Herminio da Palma Incio (1922-2009)

during the regime of Salazar, his various propaganda of the deed, including the daring 1961 air-dropping of 100, 000 anti-Salazar leaflets over Lisbon, Barreiro, Setbal, Beja and Faro and, the residual role played by some anarchists in the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 and, in the subsequent liberation of the remaining Portuguese colonies (see: Freire, 2001). Also of exceptional interest in this connection is the project Movimento Social Critico E Alternativo:
http://mosca-servidor.xdi.uevora.pt/projecto/

While considering the reasons behind the relative decline or retreat of anarchism and syndicalism in many countries during the years 1940-1990, the authors counted state driven repression and, the historic inability of the movements to reinvent themselves when subsequently such repression eased (404-405). The authors have pointed out that the economic determinist interpretation of some historians who are of the view that the decline of radicalism of the western working class resulted from the improvement of their standards of living, has some important limitations (405). After World War I, the image of an enabling developmental state was strengthened. Often such states co-opted the earlier emancipatory discourses and demands of the working people. The ruling and opposition communist parties also absorbed some aspects of the anarchist and syndicalist discourses of worker-peasant alliance and womens self-emancipation (405-407). The communist parties all over the world also enjoyed the financial, logistic, ideological support and, the corresponding bondage to the foreign policy objectives of the ruling communist parties since 1917. However, that did not make them qualitatively different entities (407) in those countries where they were in opposition; they were indeed qualitatively different entities only where they were ruling parties of some government. The present situation has created unprecedented opportunities for investigating the strengths and weaknesses of all the trends of the working class movements of the last century. Such an opportunity should not be lost under the influence of habitual ideological stereotypes inherited from the past. Our authors have justly felt the need to examine some of the internal problems in anarchist and syndicalist movements (408). They are of the view that these movements had/have excessive heterogeneity. In China, we are told, there were 92 different anarchist groups between 1919 and 1925, without any all-China

federation or common programme. The tendency to schism among the Chinese anarchists increased after the rise of Bolshevism. It may be noted that China was and is an empire, not to be confused with western style nation-states. The history of the Communist Party of China is also an encyclopedia of inner-party schisms. Our authors are nostalgic about Nestor Makhnos praise for Bakunins secret organisation with a well-determined programme within the IWMA. They forget that this secret organisation was one of the major factors behind the conflict between Marx and Bakunin in the IWMA. They regret the fact that the anarchist movement in the Russian empire outside Makhnos sphere of influence in the Ukraine did not live up to Bakunins or Makhnos ideals of a homogenous programme and unitary organisation (408-409). To the present reviewer this nostalgia and this regret sound very much monist, Plekhanovite and Leninist. If the anarcho-syndicalists of Ukraine craved for the ideals and practices of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party containing the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions, then they should have joined them. Indeed Bakunin, Plekhanov and Lenin do have some common ancestors: namely, the Nihilists and the Narodniki of Russia. That the anarchists were and often are nave in their faith (409) is a criticism well taken. However, this trait is not unique to them; all the sections and trends of the movements of the working class and other labouring people have this trait. Nor are some of the anarchist leaders of some countries like Mexico, China, Korea or Spain unique in their occasional political opportunism (ibidem) leading to surrender of the goals of revolution. The decisional errors, risks and losses related to alliance building are not inherent to anarchism or syndicalism (ibidem). Our authors are aware of the fact that the leaders of the communist parties have displayed such traits aplenty. The various chapters of the volume under review have successfully established the claim that anarchism and syndicalism must be given its due weight in the larger story of struggles against imperialism, national oppression and racial domination (410) and, that these were and are global movements (ibidem); however, the claim that in their most advanced forms they have faced the question of power seriously remains open to further factual and theoretical investigations, not only for the anarchists and syndicalists, but for all the trends of the movements oriented on human self-emancipation.

References Anarchism and Sexuality in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, 2010:

http://socialhistory.org/en/events/anarchism-and-sexuality-spanish-and-portuguese-speaking-countries

Anderson, Benedict (2005), Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination, London and New York: Verso. Bretelle-Establet, Florence (Ed.) (2010), Looking at it from Asia: The Processes that Shaped the Sources of History of Science, Dordrecht etc.: Springer. Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre (Ed.) (2009), Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. __ (2010), Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel, Exeter: Imprint Academic. Clarke, John James (1997), Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought, London and New York: Routledge. Engels, Friedrich (1871), Letter dated 13 February to the Spanish Federal Council of the International Workingmens Association; available at:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_02_13.htm

Free Love and the Labour Movement, 2000; available at:

http://socialhistory.org/en/events/free-love-and-labour-movement

Freire, Joo (2001), Freedom Fighters: Anarchist Intellectuals, Workers and Soldiers in Portugals History, translator: Maria Sousa; Montreal/New York/London: Black Rose Books. Gelvin, James L. (2008), Al-Qaeda and Anarchism: A Historians Reply to Terrorology, Terrorism and Political Violence, 20 (4): 563-81. Gerlach, Christian (2005), Wu-Wei in Europe: A Study of Eurasian Economic Thought. London School of Economics, Department of Economic History: Working Paper No. 12/05. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22479/

Graham, Robert (Ed.) (2005), Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas: Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to1939); __ (2009) Volume Two: The Emergence of the New Anarchism (1939-1977); __ (2012) Volume Three: The New Anarchism (1974-2012); Montreal/New York/London: Black Rose Books. Halbfass, Wilhelm (1988), India and Europe: An Essay in Philosophical Understanding, New York: State University of New York Press. Harmel, Michael [A.Lerumo] (1987) [1971], Fifty Fighting Years: the Communist Party of South Africa 1921-71, London: Inkululeko Publications. Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels Papers; available at:
http://www.iisg.nl/archives/pdf/ARCH00860.pdf

Kinna, Ruth and Sreyyya Evren (Ed.) (2013), Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies: Issue I: Blasting the Canon, Brooklyn, New York: punctum books. Kon, Igor Semyonovich (1993), Identity Crisis and Postcommunist Psychology, Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 16, No. 4 (winter): 395-405; available at:
http://sexology.narod.ru/english/igor_kon005.html

Lach, Donald F. (1965-77), Asia in the Making of Europe, 2 Volumes (5 Books), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lach, Donald F. and Edwin J, Van Kley (1993), Asia in the Making of Europe, Volume 3 (4 Books), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Machattie, Brian J. (2000), Threats Posed by Globalisation and Responses by Rural Social Movements: Case of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha in South India. Master of Science Thesis. Available at:
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/MQ56349.pdf

Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) Project:

http://www.bbaw.de/bbaw/Forschung/Forschungsprojekte/mega/en/Startseite

Mbah, Sam and I. E. Igariwey (1997), African Anarchism: The History of a Movement, Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press. [The publisher is of the opinion that African Anarchism: Prospects for the Future would have been a more appropriate title for this book.] Nestor Makhno Archive:
http://www.nestormakhno.info/index.htm http://www.nestormakhno.info/russian/index.htm http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/index.htm http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/makhno-nestor/

Rahman, Shahid; Tony Street and Hassan Tahiri (Eds.) (2008), The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition: Science, Logic, Epistemology and their Interactions, Dordrecht etc.: Kluwer-Springer Academic Publishers. Ramnath, Maia (2011), Decolonizing Anarchism: An Antiauthoritarian History of Indias Liberation Struggle, Oakland/Washington/Edinburgh: A K Press/Institute for Anarchist Studies. Rubel, Maximilien (1973), Marx, thoricien de lanarchisme [Marx, theoretician of anarchism], L'Europe en formation, no. 163-164, octobrenovembre. An English translation of the paper is available at:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubel/1973/marx-anarchism.htm

Saliba, George (2007), Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press. The Hague Congress (1872), of the International Workingmens Association, Report of the general Council; available at:
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Van der Walt, Lucien (2007), Anarchism and Syndicalism in South Africa, 19041921: rethinking the history of labour and the left. Ph. D. Dissertation. University of Witwatersrand. Available at:
http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/4506

Kolkata 23 August 2013