Ebook: The Two Octobers

Web paper in english. — 'Anarchive' "Anarchy is Order!": Principles, Propositions & Discussions for Land and Freedom, 1927. — 21 p.

I must Create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's. I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create

– William Blake.During the 19th century, anarchism has developed as a result of a social current which aims for freedom and happiness. A number of factors since World War I have made this movement, and its ideas, disappear little by little under the dust of history.After the classical anarchism – of which the Spanish Revolution was one of the last representatives – a new kind of resistance was founded in the sixties which claimed to be based (at least partly) on this anarchism. However this resistance is often limited to a few (and even then partly misunderstood) slogans such as 'Anarchy is order', 'Property is theft'.Information about anarchism is often hard to come by, monopolised and intellectual; and therefore visibly disappearing. The anarchive or anarchist archive Anarchy is Order (in short A.O) is an attempt to make the 'principles, propositions and discussions' of this tradition available again for anyone it concerns. We believe that these texts are part of our own heritage. They don t belong to publishers, institutes or specialists.These texts thus have to be available for all anarchists an other people interested. That is one of the conditions to give anarchism a new impulse, to let the new anarchism outgrow the slogans. This is what makes this project relevant for us: we must find our roots to be able to renew ourselves. We have to learn from the mistakes of our socialist past. History has shown that a large number of the anarchist ideas remain standing, even during the most recent social-economic developments.Don't mourn, Organise!The victorious revolution of the workers and peasants in 1917 was legally established in the Bolshevik calendar as the October Revolution. There is sane truth in this, but it is not entirely exact. In October 1917 the workers and peasants of Russia surmounted a colossal obstacle to the development of their Revolution. They abolished the nominal power of the capitalist class, but even before that they achieved something of equal revolutionary importance and perhaps even more fundamental. By taking the economic power from the capitalist class, and the land from the large owners in the countryside, they achieved the right to free and uncontrolled work in the towns, if not the total control of the factories. Consequently, it was well before October that the revolutionary workers destroyed the base of capitalism. All that was left was the superstructure. If there had not been this general expropriation of the capitalists by the workers, the destruction of the bourgeois state machine – the political revolution – would not have succeeded in any way. The resistance of the owners would have been much stronger. On the other hand, the objectives of the social revolution in October were not limited to the overthrow of capitalist power. A long period of practical development in social self-management was before the workers, but it was to fail in the following years.

This is how we can finally begin to fight to make anarchism a reality.

— Conor McLoughlin.Contents:The Two Octobers. Piotr Archinov, 1927
The workers October
The Bolshevik October
The Anarchists
Conclusions and PerspectivesReview of: History of the Makhnovist Movement by Piotr Arshinov. Conor McLoughlin, Freedom Press
Enemies on All Sides
The Social Revolution
Ivory Towers
A New Set of Chains