Announcing the new Anarchist Platform Archive

Announce the new Anarchist Platform Archive. The Anarchist Platform Archive is an archive of texts relating to the publishing of the Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft) by the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad (“Delo Truda” Group) in 1926.

Friends and comrades,

We would like to take this opportunity to announce the new Anarchist Platform Archive. The Anarchist Platform Archive is an archive of texts relating to the publishing of the Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft) by the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad (“Delo Truda” Group) in 1926.

Also, and maybe more importantly, we hope to archive texts that have added to, and expanded on, this tradition in the hope that this can play however small a part, in the development and continuing growth of the organised class-struggle anarchist-communist movement.

This site was inspired by the Anarchism and the Platformist Tradition page of our comrades from the Northeastern Federation of Anarchist Communists.

We will be updating the Archive with related texts as and when they come to light. You can help out by suggesting texts for inclusion by sending us a link via the contact form on the site.

http://anarchistplatform.wordpress.com/

Introduction

The Platformist tradition takes its name, in historical terms, from the Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft) (1926) (also known as The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists). It is also seen as based on the writings of the ‘Friends of Durruti’ grouping of CNT members during the Spanish Revolution, compiled in Towards A Fresh Revolution.

The Organisational Platform itself insisted that its approach drew directly on the views of Bakunin and Kropotkin, and was a restatement of classical anarchist thought. Bakunin and Kropotkin had been partisans of organisational dualism: the view that a specific, anarchist, political organisation was required to supplement popular movements like unions. Some would strongly argue that some of Bakunin’s writings on revolutionary organisation should also be included in any account of Platformism, notably his The Program of the International Brotherhood (1869) and The Rules and Program of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy (1868)

In the post war period many include documents like the Georges Fontenis pamphlet Manifesto of Libertarian Communism. This is somewhat controversial: different Platformists would have different amount of agreement and disagreement with each of these documents, particularly reservations about including the Manifesto at all. The Federation of Anarchist Communists of Bulgaria’s 1945 manifesto, on the other hand, is not well-known, but has a strong claim to be included in the Platformist tradition. The Especifismo conception of anarchist organisation, coined by the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation or FAU, and important in Latin America, has many similarities with Platformism. Like Bakunin, and the Platform itself, it advocates theoretical and tactical unity, collective responsibility, and federalism.