Platformism

From Polcompball Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

"Burn their laws and destroy their prisons, kill the hangmen, the bane of mankind. Smash authority!"

Platformism is an ideology that seeks unity from its participants, having, as a defining characteristic, the idea that each platformist organization should include only people that are fully in agreement with core group ideas, rejecting people who disagree. It stresses the need for tightly organized anarchist organizations that are able to influence working class and peasant movements.

Platformism rejects the model of the Leninist Vanguard and instead uses class consciousness to unite people with anarchist ideas so that they could lead the class struggle, there are four main principles by which an anarchist organization should operate, Tactical unity, Theoretical unity, Collective responsibility and Federalism

Platformism is seen as one of the earliest examples of anarchist praxis and was developed further as theory by the Dielo Truda in Paris, them being composed of Nestor Makhno and other anarchist exiles from Russia and Ukraine based on the results of anarchist movements during the Russian Revolution such as the Free Territory (also known as Makhnovshchyna) and its Black Army.

Platformism has been critiqued to be merely a stepping stone for anarchist movements and should be used to develop other anarchist movements forward, but is also seen as the least ideologically centered anarchist concept and some say that it might be one of the only ways to effectively create an anarchist society.

History

Ukraine

Platformism has its roots in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War where Ukraine ended up divided among many different factions, among this chaos Nestor Makhno would enter into the picture as a charismatic leader that would rally Ukrainian peasants to the anarchist cause. Anarchism in Ukraine would be largely agrarian and was largely a movement of the peasants exerting control from oppressive landlords and Russian elites , this free territory would be a string of villages and communities that would function under a direct democracy and self-governance around the local committee and its confederation with other committes, even having an unionized army command.

Free Territory would fight off Petliura and Skoropadskyy forces, the White Army, and then the Red Army, which, led by Trotsky, betrayed the anarchists and centered its forces to fight them off after defeating the Whites.

By the end of January 1920, the territory of the Makhnovshchina had been overrun by the Red Army. The Cheka set about disarming the local populace, taking villagers hostage while their troops set about searching homes, killing the hostages if they found any unreported weaponry. Petro Grigorenko would later state that "there was no end of bloodshed", drawing attention to reports of one massacre in the Makhnovist town of Novospasivka, where the Cheka had "shot down one in every two able-bodied men". In what Alexandre Skirda described as an act of "outright genocide", an estimated 200000 Ukrainian peasants were killed during the Red Terror.

Makhno himself, however, along with many other anarchists, had managed to escape after their defeat in Ukraine, and developed the ideology of Platformism itself, focusing especially on fixing what went wrong there.

South America

Flag of Especifismo

In South America, Platformism is known as Especifismo ('Specifism'), which can be summarized as:

  • The need for a specifically anarchist organization built around a unity of ideas and praxis.
  • The use of the specifically anarchist organization to theorize and develop strategic political and organizing work.
  • Active involvement in and building of autonomous and popular social movements via social insertion.

How to Draw

Flag of Platformism
  1. Draw a ball
  2. Draw a diagonal black line across the ball
  3. Fill the bottom half in black
  4. Fill the top half in dark red
  5. Draw a star in opposing colors along the middle
  6. Add the eyes and you're done!
Color NameHEXRGB
 Red#FF0000rgb(255, 0, 0)
 Black#141414rgb(20, 20, 20)


Relations

Friends

Frenemies

  • Bombaccism - Bro why do you like me so much?
  • Synthesis Anarchism - You are also an anarchist, but we are organisationally opposites, and Volin gave me my scar.
  • Stratocracy - We both want a platform with people who agree with each other and are able to organize themselves to combat enemies with the use of firepower, but at the end of the day you are just another authoritarian parasite who will use that same firepower to take away our freedom!
  • Post-Leftism - I would usually just think of you as my dad's weird distant son, but calling me a "structural authoritarian"? Really, brother?
  • Hoppeanism - Reactionary and Capitalist, but you value order within Anarchy, like I do. You will be spared if I take your advice and decide to physically remove the Soviets and Capitalists

Enemies

Further Information

Literature

Wikipedia

Videos

Gallery

Navigation

  1. In the territory controlled by the Makhnovshchina, a system of market socialism was implemented, to the particular benefit of the peasantry and workers that produced consumer goods, while social welfare was introduced through the redistribution of income and wealth.