Nationality and the authentic anarchism of Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809 – 1865) was the first one to call himself an anarchist. He was also one of the most influential writers within the 19th century Left of France and Belgium. Together with anarchists like Mikhail Bakunin and Elisée Reclus, he has been very important for the historical anarchist movement in these countries.



Proudhon (lying at his death bed at the picture) openly opposed nationalist movements in Poland, Hungary, and Italy. In 1851 he declared : “If then science, and no longer religion or authority, is taken in every land as the rule of society, the sovereign arbiter of interests, government being void, all the legislation of the universe will be in harmony. There will no longer be nationality, no longer fatherland, in the political sense of the words: they will mean only places of birth.”
And 11 years later he wrote : "I will never put devotion to my country before the rights of Man. If the French Government behaves unjustly to any people, I am deeply grieved and protest in every way that I can.”
In the Principle of Federation (1863) he argued that nationalism inevitably leads to war. To reduce the power of nationalism Proudhon called for a Federal Europe. He advocated a federation of autonomous communes. He believed that Federalism was "the supreme guarantee of all liberty and of all law, and must, without soldiers or priests, replace both feudal and Christian society." Proudhon went on to predict that "the twentieth century will open the era of federations, or humanity will begin again a purgatory of a thousand years."
But his antinationalist notions and strong opposition to the ideas of Napoleon Bonaparte were somewhat diluted by his own Francophilism. Proudhon (1851) : “It was the mania for annexation which, under the Convention and the Directory, aroused the distrust of other nations against the Republic, and which, giving us a taste for Bonaparte, brought us to our finish at Waterloo. Revolutionize, I tell you. Your frontiers will always be long enough and French enough if they are revolutionary.”
In 1995, Murray Bookchin wrote that Proudhon “attempted to formulate a fairly concrete image of a libertarian society. Based on contracts, essentially between small producers, cooperatives, and communes, Proudhon's vision was redolent of the provincial craft world into which he was born. But his attempt to meld a patroniste, often patriarchal notion of liberty with contractual social arrangements was lacking in depth. The craftsman, cooperative, and commune, relating to one another on bourgeois contractual terms of equity or justice rather than on the communist terms of ability and needs, reflected the artisan's bias for personal autonomy, leaving any moral commitment to a collective undefined beyond the good intentions of its members.”
Indeed, Proudhon did not advocate the principle “from each according to ability, to each according to need”. Leftists like Karl Marx, Errico Malatesta and others did do that later. The phrase summarizes the idea that, under a communist system, every person shall produce to the best of his or her ability in accordance with his/her talent, and each person shall receive the fruits of this production in accordance with his/her need, irrespective of what he or she has produced.

The problems with Limonov and National Bolshevism

Eduard Limonov (picture) set up the National Bolshevik Party (Russia). As in many former Eastern Bloc countries, this party is difficult to discuss in simple left-right terms. Eduard Limonov was once an important dissident writer in the Soviet Union. He left Russia but went back later to receive more press. He had a column in the English-language paper in Moscow called The eXile, which was a paper for the English-speaking people who came to Russia to grab what they could after the fall. He then also got involved with some of the ties between the Russian mercenaries who fought on the Serbian side during the Balkan wars.

Limonov looks to the era of Stalin as a period of social stability within the Soviet Union, and this is the part about National Bolshevism.

Peter McNally on the National Bolshevism of Eduard Limonov (an interview with McNally was published a few days ago):

Well, for him all this was a logical extension of where to push Russian nationalism, especially with the older folks, who might not have liked Stalin at the time, and it was not a stable regime, but it was a point of Russian dignity, et cetera. So that’s sort of where Limonov comes from.
And another thing about Limonov is that he attracts a lot of people on the cultural margins. And in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, because of punk rock, Oi and so on, you have the beginnings of what we’d now call Russian skinheads, in the sense of a worldwide skinhead movement, or a grouping of people who are aping right-wing skinheads in Britain. So you have people who are in punk bands, industrial bands or whatever, and he courted that because he was a marginal cultural worker and was sympathetic to those aesthetics and hyped them up. And these days he heavily recruits within the Goth and black metal scene, which is probably the central cultural scene for the more avant-garde, out-there far right – the bands, the graphic art houses and so on are serious cultural players there.

What was Rexism?

The danger in supporting Belgicistic nationalism is bigger than many people in and outside of Belgium think it is.



Ultranationalism of this kind was present in the once electorally very succesful Rexist movement. In the thirties, the party Rex could easily get ten or twenty percent of the votes in Belgium. It was a time when more and more people started to embrace very dubious forms of nationalism, also Social-democratic leaders like the Belgian Hendrik de Man (who began to sympathize with Nazism) and Bolsjevist leaders like Joseph Stalin.



Rexism was a fascist movement in the first half of the twentieth century in Belgium. The Rexist Party (Parti Rexiste), officially called Christus Rex, was founded by Léon Degrelle (picture). The name was derived from the Roman Catholic social teachings concerning Christus Rex, and it was also the title of a conservative Catholic journal led by Degrelle. Rexism was mostly about Belgicistic ultranationalism.

Early Rexism called for the “moral renewal” of Belgian society in large conformity with the teachings of the Church and other ultra-right parties, by forming a corporatist society and abolishing parlementiary democracy. Rexism soon began to ally itself with the interests of Nazi Germany.

Let people create politics themselves

Democratic Alternative For Oslo now has the possibility to run candidates in the upcoming municipal elections. But what is the purpose of the electoral campaign?

Anett Andreassen : "First and foremost: It’s about spreading our ideas, getting people to think about their role in politics and mobilize people to participate more active. It may sound strange for some but our main goal is to let people create politics themselves."

More about the organization Anett is active in , you can find here (in English).

An Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial festival in Belgium

Blood&Honour Flanders, which is notorious for organizing Nazi concerts to entertain boneheads from Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, will be organizing an Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial festival, the 27th of october 2007. Donaldson was the Nazi singer of a band called Screwdriver and died in a car accident. Unfortunately, these kind of concerts will not be stopped in Belgium. But Nazis from all over Europe gather at them. Blood&Honour Flanders likes to make it clear to people that it is friends with the ecofascist Groen Rechts and groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
There will be bands performing from Germany, the UK, Italy, Hungary, and a surprise band.

Social ecology in German

I have noticed that these are sites in German where one can find out more about social ecology:

Kommunalismus
Libertaerer kommunalismus: www.anarchismus.at/texte-anarchismus/libertaerer-kommunalismus









You can also read works of social ecology in German. Here are some books...

Triskel, a bizar shop

Triskel is the paganist shop of the 64-year old Wim Verreycken. He has been one of the most known politicians of the Far Right in Belgium for many years.






Verreycken sells propaganda, Celtic and Germanic inspired jewelry, leather articles, swords, mystical postcards, etcetera. The shop is in the heart of the city of Antwerp.










People of the ultra-right have often tried to justify a nationalism that is mystical.







In the New Age milieu of today, the ultra-right may well find the mystical component it needs to make a truly updated, modernized authoritarian nationalism.












It is said that alternative people sometimes go to the Triskel shop and buy things there without knowing the background of the shop. Antirational cults of the New Age -- primitivistic, esoteric -- abound in the West of today. Such antirationalism and mysticism are appealed to by the 'New' Right. It wants to redefine social norms so that rational doubt is regarded as decadent and therefore eliminated.

Notorious Nazi attacks in Norway

November 2000: a Nazi connected with the notorious Bootboys was arrested in Bergen (Norway), after pouring gasoline at the entrance of a left-wing book cafe. The Bootboys have commited several arson attacks, but also bombings, mistreatment, and illegal possession of firearms, illegal possession of dynamite, and knife stabbing.
The original Bootboys group was founded in the late eighties by Ole Krogstad. He had been convicted before that occured to ten months imprisonment. He was arrested after a bomb attack on a Muslim mosque in 1985. One of the most serious incidents with the Bootboys occurred eight years later, when Krogstad, together with several other Nazis attacked the anarchist youth house Blitz, hurling fire bombs at the building, and firing shots with a sawn-off shotgun when the youngsters inside the house tried to extinguish the fire.



Blitz has been a busy autonomist liberty space/social center in Oslo with a vegetarian cafe, newspaper, radio station, library/bookstore/record store, and meeting/hang out/band space. Just before it was attacked by the Bootboys, antifascists had “spontaneously” broken into the radio offices of fascists and smashed the place. It took the fascist radiostation Nite Rocket 3 hours to get back on the air.



A few days later Blitz was attacked by 25 boneheads, with molotov-cocktails. The Nazis fired four rounds from a shotgun through the windows. Nobody was hurt. The house was defended by people on guard inside the Blitz. It was clear that it was a revenge action after the attack on the fascist radiostation. Radio Nite Rocket (which was on air 8 hours per night) was sending threats on air to Blitz in the hours before the attack. And the bonehead leader Ole Krogstad was a guest in the studio. The fascists also used the radio offices to gather before they attacked Blitz.

A short history of La plume noire

La plume noire is a bookshop, info- and action center of anarchists in Lyon. It was established in 1989. Eight years later, an act of arson was committed there (probably by fascists), which destroyed a part of the bookshop. To try and destroy bookshops of the Left, by putting fire to it, regularly happens in Europe.

Social ecology in French

You can also order some writings of Murray Bookchin in France, at this site.


















You can also find a good introduction to libertarian municipalism in a translated version of a book that Janet Biehl wrote, and there is a book of Chaia Heller that has been translated in French.


Or you can read some texts online...


Textes de Vincent Gerber:

L'écologie sociale, ou l'utopie réalisable d'une société écologique

Apprendre à decider


Entretien avec Murray Bookchin par Janet Biehl (1996)