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MOST Anarchists have always rejected "adventurism"/"propaganda by the deed"/"terrorism"/"the armed struggle" as conter-productive. However, regrettably, some Anarchists have advocated "propaganda by the deed", completely disconnected from the class-stuggle since the 19th Century. These groups were responsible for the assasination of a Russian Tsar, a French President, an American president, and countless wealthy magnates from the 1880s onwards. In the process, they initiated a global anti-Anarchist hysteria. Their reasoning ? Well, those people were waging a war on workers so it was time for them to "feel the consequences of their actions". Such Anarchists saw themselves as responding to "the violence of Capitalism" through "the targeted assassination of its leaders". Of course, the result was a terrific backlash against Anarchism and the association of Anarchism with mindless violence that continues to this day. Many within the Anarchist movement tried to dissuade their comrades from such folly, given that the bourgeois press immediately produced the stereotype of the "Anarchist" making bombs in his lair and nihilisticly taking pleasure in mayham and nihilism. The Anarchist movement, in France, Germany or Latin America, was utterly destroyed by the ensuing repression. What had been a mass movement lost a lot of sympathy from the working class all because of these fringe groups (most of them, and this has only become known since the opening of French police archives in 1991, were actually manipulated by the security forces in an effort to discredit the union struggles for the 8-hour working day). The Anarchist movement never recovered its mass appeal once the bourgeois press had durably associated it with murder, bank robbery (la bande a Bonnot) and setting of bombs in public streets. In the 70s, in Italy, France and Germany, some groups resorted to the same tactics. Action Direct shot the CEO of Renault in the 1980s, after he had sacked tens of thousands of workers, claiming that "we are bringing the class struggle against the Capitalist elite to its very own doorstep, and in so doing we are showing the working class that the time has come to wage open warfare on the exploitative class". They were actually dismayed when the leaders of most French unions showed up at the funeral. Of course Anarchists, class-conscious Anarchists, those who work within Unionism to bring the working class to a higher level of consciousness, completely disavow adventurism. On the other hand, Anarchists consider "insurrection" as being quite different in character from left-wing terrorism. In an insurrection, large segments of the working class clash with the security forces. In such a situation, the bourgeois media always try to qualify such acts as "vandalism" , "terrorism" and "common criminality which must be punished to the full extent of the law". This is a fundamental difference in the way violence is construed, which can be found in the works of Kropotkin and Malatesta. In an "insurrection", disgrunteled workers clash with the security forces. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
