A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion - Sketches for a New Thinking (II): On the "Revolutionary Subject" By COLABORACIONES (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Link to the publication on the Libertarian Portal Oaca. --- An age-old 
(though somewhat reductionist) debate from the origins of anarchism and 
socialism has been the dichotomy between countryside and city. According 
to Bakuninist ideas, it made more sense for the revolution to be 
embraced by the peasantry as the main guarantor of communal virtues - 
but... to the detriment of industrial mechanization? For Marx, the 
proletariat had enough technical advantage and competent disposition to 
carry the revolution on its shoulders, to the detriment of the backward 
peasant whom he initially considered deeply anchored in the obscurantism 
of tradition.

Which of these two subjects is (or was) the source of progress? 
Peasantry or proletariat?

What would Bakunin think of the fact that the CNT (known to be the 
culmination of previous organizations) consolidated in 1910 in Barcelona 
- one of the most industrialized cities in Spain at the time?

What would Marx think of the "indigenous socialisms" manifested in the 
communal practices of certain rural areas?

On the latter we can perhaps answer more accurately, as the draft reply 
to Vera Zasulich's letter[1]shows us:

"[Looking back to the most distant past], we find everywhere in Western 
Europe that the more or less archaic communal property has disappeared 
with social progress. Why should Russia alone escape the same fate?

I answer: Because in Russia, thanks to a unique combination of 
circumstances, the rural commune[mir], which still exists on a national 
scale, can gradually rid itself of its primitive traits and develop 
directly as an element of collective production on a national scale. 
Precisely because it is contemporary with capitalist production, it can 
appropriate all the positive achievements of the latter without passing 
through all its terrible vicissitudes. Russia does not live isolated 
from the modern world; nor is it prey to any foreign conqueror as in the 
East Indies.

If Russian supporters of the capitalist system denied the theoretical 
possibility of such an evolution, I would ask them: Has Russia had to 
pass, like the West, through a long period of mechanical industry 
incubation to use machines, steamships, railways, etc.? (...) If at the 
time of emancipation the rural communities had been in conditions of 
normal prosperity, (...) no one would now think of the 'historical 
fatality' of the annihilation of the commune: all would recognize in it 
the element of the regeneration of Russian society and an element of 
superiority over countries still subjugated by the capitalist regime.

Another favorable circumstance for the preservation (through 
development) of the Russian commune lies in the fact that it is not only 
contemporary with capitalist production, but has survived the time when 
this social system was still intact; now, on the contrary, both in 
Western Europe and the United States, it finds capitalism in crisis, 
fighting against science, against the popular masses and against the 
very productive forces it creates. In a word: it faces a capitalism in 
crisis that will only end with its elimination, with the return of 
modern societies to the 'archaic' type of common property or, as an 
American author[L. Morgan], free of all suspicion of revolutionary 
tendencies and supported in his research by the Washington government, 
says: 'the new system' toward which modern society tends 'will be a 
revival, in a superior form, of an archaic social type'[[2]]. So there 
is no need to fear the word 'archaic.'"

Surely Mao, Guevara's foco theorists, the vast Russian peasantry of 
1917, or the Viet Cong would applaud this response.

Bringing together, in an "unorthodox" way, forms of implicit socialist 
tradition (indigenous socialism) that worked through their own means for 
a present goal is something we already find among the first theorists of 
socialism. Closed readings of our present that seek to replicate 
formulas of the past as they were, without understanding their context 
and era, serve little purpose. We must learn constructively from the 
past, knowing how to use the formulas it offers today, understanding 
their keys and their moments.

Replicating a 1936 today makes as little sense as replicating a 1492. A 
"copy and paste" without understanding the underlying lessons of the 
context in which it developed is baseless.

Today we could say that Bakunin and Marx should have done more to 
understand each other; the working class would be better off now.

Reading authors and their theories dogmatically, following a catechism 
"based on the untouchable ideals of the Idea," makes little sense - 
especially in a world where workers (or the proletariat) as a class are 
in retreat and self-perceive as an aspiring middle class dreaming of a 
villa in Galapagar, earning 600 euros a month and paying at least 550 in 
rent for a hovel.

Being conscious today is more necessary than ever. Praxis must drink 
from the sources that nourish us, whether they are more traditional 
theoretically or not. Reading Marx in a libertarian and organized key 
may be among the least "traditional" approaches. We do not know what 
Daniel Guérin would say, but surely reading him we would find a series 
of interesting answers.

It must be kept in mind that whenever anarchism has been formulated as a 
political project with real social impact, it has always drunk from the 
waters of socialism. Libertarian, yes - but socialist. This is something 
to consider today.

Liberalism for the rich. Utopia only in books. The libertarian has 
always been and will always be socialist.

Martes Estático, a worker from the South

Footnotes
[1]Available at: 
https://www.marxists.org/espanol/m-e/1880s/81-a-zasu.htm#fn1
[2]L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human 
Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism to Civilization («Sociedad 
antigua o Investigaciones de las líneas de progreso humano de la 
barbarie a la civilización»), London, 1877, p. 552.

https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/09/23/esbozos-para-un-nuevo-pensar-ii-sobre-el-sujeto-revolucionario/
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