On revolutionary discipline (by Nestor Makhno)

This short text was published by Nestor Makhno in the newspaper Dielo Trouda (No. 7-8, December 1925-January 1926), a newspaper founded by Russian, Ukrainian and Polish anarchist activists who took refuge in France to flee the repression of Bolshevik power in Russia in the 1920s. A peasant from Gouliaipole, Makhno was one of the strategists of the 1917-1921 insurrection who set out to repel German occupiers, Ukrainian nationalists and Bolsheviks in order to liberate the poor peasantry. To go further, a podcast of France Inter as well as a item ofthe Diplomatic world tell the story of “Makhnovshchina”.

Comrades asked me the following question: how do I conceive of revolutionary discipline? I will answer it.

I understand revolutionary discipline as a self-discipline of the individual, established in a collective acting, in an equal manner for all, and strictly elaborated.

It must be the responsible line of conduct for the members of this collective, leading to a strict agreement between its practice and its theory.

Without discipline in the organization, it is impossible to undertake any serious revolutionary action. Without discipline, the revolutionary vanguard cannot exist, because then it would be in complete practical disunity and would be unable to formulate the tasks of the moment, of fulfilling the role of initiator that the masses expect of it.

I am basing this question on the observation and experience of a consistent revolutionary practice. For my part, I am based on the experience of the Russian Revolution, which carried with it a typically libertarian content in many ways.

If the anarchists had been closely linked organizationally and had observed a definite discipline in their actions, they would never have suffered such a defeat. But, because anarchists “of all stripes and of all tendencies” did not represent, even in their specific groups, a homogeneous collective with a well-defined discipline of action, for this reason these anarchists could not bear the political and strategic examination imposed on them by revolutionary circumstances. The disorganization led them to political impotence, dividing them into two categories: the first was those who started the systematic occupation of bourgeois houses, in which they lived and lived for their well-being. They were the same people I would call the “tourists”, the various anarchists who go from city to city, hoping to find a place to stay for a while en route, laze around and stay there as long as possible to live in comfort and good pleasure.

The other category consisted of those who broke all honest ties with anarchism (although some of them, in the USSR, now pass themselves off as the only representatives of revolutionary anarchism) and threw themselves at the responsibilities offered by the Bolsheviks, even when the authorities shot dead the anarchists who remained faithful to their revolutionary posts by denouncing the betrayal of the Bolsheviks.

Given these facts, it is easy to understand why I cannot remain indifferent to the state of recklessness and neglect that currently exists in our communities. On the one hand, this prevents the creation of a coherent libertarian collective, which would allow anarchists to occupy their rightful place in the revolution, and on the other hand, it makes it possible to be content with nice phrases and big thoughts, while evading the moment to take action.

That is why I am talking about a libertarian organization based on the principle of fraternal discipline. Such an organization would lead to the indispensable agreement of all the living forces of revolutionary anarchism and would help it to occupy its place in the struggle of Labor against Capital.

By this means, libertarian ideas can only win the masses, not impoverish themselves. Only empty and irresponsible talkers can flee in the face of such organizational structures.

Organizational responsibility and discipline should not frighten: they are the traveling companions of the practice of social anarchism.

Nestor Makhno

Translation: Alexandre Skirda