‘In Defense of Associative Specificity’

Part IV: In Defense of Anarchist “Sectarianism”

Posted on 2022/06/01 - 2022/06/01 by darknights

Note of ANARQUÍA: This is the fourth part of a series of articles by comrade Gustavo Rodriguez, in response to the critiques of Marxism and some anarchist individualities, who seek revolutionary unity and label those of us who do NOT forget the objective and the path we must create for anarchy as a sect.

1. IN DEFENCE OF ASSOCIATIVE SPECIFICITY – ABOUT (INTRINSICALLY) ANARCHIC “SECTARIANISM
2. CONSULTING THE DICTIONARY: CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS OF “SECTARIANISM”.
3. THE MARXIAN CHURCH AGAINST ANARCHIST “SECTARIANISM”.

The Marxian religion was imposed in Russia by blood and fire with the Bolshevik coup d’état. Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (alias Lenin) would be in charge of canonizing the dogma -glorifying its metaphysical character with ontological and metahistorical pretensions- and implementing it as a disciplinary instrument and tool of domination. As could not be otherwise, the institutional faith produced its high priests who, in the end, would turn out to be “more papist than the Pope”; reaching its dogmatic paroxysm with the rise of Soviet orthodoxy after 1930 and the development of the schools affiliated with Stalinism (read: most of the Marxian currents that were implanted in the so-called Third World). Certainly, in this context, the “struggle against sectarianism”¹ was exacerbated in the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Circus-trials, mass imprisonments, state surveillance and extrajudicial executions – by means of Cheka -,² were the response to “sectarianism” in the land of the “soviets” during 70 years of red fascism. Thousands of anarchists, critical Marxians, Mensheviks, social-revolutionaries and other “sychophants” went to the concentration camps created by Trotsky, accused of “sectarianism”. In those same extermination camps, the survivors of the Kronstadt massacre served their sentences, under the same accusation. In East Germany, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, China, North Korea, Mongolia, Cuba, Cambodia and Ethiopia, “sectarians” were persecuted and killed by their respective states/churches. Continue reading “Part IV: In Defense of Anarchist “Sectarianism”” →

Consulting the dictionary: concepts and definitions of “sectarianism” Part ii by Gustavo Rodríguez

Posted on 2021/12/17 by darknights

First part can be read here: In Defense of Associative Specificity by Gustavo Rodríguez EN/ES

From anarquia.info, translated by Act for Freedom Now!

According to the Diccionario de uso del español¹ María Moliner,² it is defined as:

Sect: Doctrine taught by a teacher and followed by his adepts. Particularly, the doctrine and the group of its adepts. desp. Doctrine considered erroneous, or that departs from the traditional or official, and, especially, that which is considered pernicious for its followers: “Destructive sect”. A group of the followers of a sect.
Sectarian: -a (adv. sectarian) 1 adj. and n. (of) Follower of a certain sect. 2 Applied to one who fanatically follows a doctrine, and its attitude, opinions, etc. → *Intransigent, * partisan.
Sectarianism: m. Quality or attitude of sectarian.

If we consult the Indo-European Etymological Dictionary of the Spanish Language, it reveals that the noun “sect” (sectam) is the feminine of an obsolete participle of the Latin sequor (“to follow”) that comes from the Indo-European root *sekʷ-.³ The Oxford Latin Dictionary also agrees with this meaning.⁴ And, in the same vein, the Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary is also in agreement with this meaning; therefore, it is inferred that “the sect has as its first point of reference, not a particular doctrine, but […] membership to a group with a identity which is well-defined and distinct from the broader social environment […] The opposition is then manifested at the level of doctrine, morals, ritual and discipline and structuring of the group”⁵.

However, around this elucidation there are strong discrepancies, since the Indo-European root sek actually has three meanings that give rise to three Latin verbs: 1. secare (to blind/cut), 2. sequor (to follow), 3. siccare (to dry). The latter comes from the Latin word siccus (“dry”) which has a very different Indo-European root (*seik). However, secare or sectum (“to cut”), from which the Latin word sectio (sector/section/segment) derives, does seem to be related to the Latin and Spanish voice “secta”, as well as the verbs sequor, sequi, sequire (“to follow”, “to continue”, “sequence”). In this sense, the Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue Latine. Histoire des mots by Alfred Ernout and Antoine Meillet, offers us a certain “solution” by combining the verbs sequor (to follow) and siccus (“dry”), concluding that secta could rather derive from the verbal frequentative sector.⁶ In this regard, it is curious – without falling into wordplay – that the feminine noun “sedition”, which comes from the Latin seditio, seditionis (“estrangement”, “disunion”, “going far away”, “departure from an established power or a common march”), from which also comes “revolt”), although derived from a completely different Indo-European root (*ei, meaning “to go”), is closely related conceptually to the notion of “sect” understood as the “doctrine that departs from orthodoxy” or “sections itself from the established”.

In the religious context, these nominatives (“sect”, “sectarian” and “sectarianism”) are widely documented in the Jewish religion. Specifically, upon their return from exile (in the 6th century B.C.E.), the idea of a single God became popular among the Israelites and, hand in hand with this monotheistic conception, any group that departed from the religious hegemony began to be adjectivized as a “sect” or “faction”, considering it a “disloyal practice”. In this sense, the Bible mentions the Sadducees, Pharisees, Nazarenes and Christians as factions of Judaism. When they departed from the orthodox ideas and practices of Judaism, they were called “sectarians”. Continue reading “Consulting the dictionary: concepts and definitions of “sectarianism” Part ii by Gustavo Rodríguez” →

In Defense of Associative Specificity by Gustavo Rodríguez EN/ES

Posted on 2021/11/29 - 2021/11/29 by darknights

ES: APOLOGÍA A LA ESPECIFICIDAD ASOCIATIVA

“The International was founded in order to replace the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class for struggle. The original Statutes and the Inaugural Address show this at the first glance. On the other hand the Internationalists could not have maintained themselves if the course of history had not already smashed up the sectarian system. The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers’ movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity al sects are essentially reactionary. […] And the history of the International was a continual struggle on the part of the General Council against the sects […] At the end of 1868 the Russian, Bakunin, entered the International with the aim of forming inside it a second International called the “Alliance of Social-Democracy,” with himself as leader. He – a man devoid of theoretical knowledge – put forward the pretension that this separate body was to represent the scientific propaganda of the International, which was to be made the special function of this second International within the International. His programme was a superficially scraped together hash of Right and Left […] atheism as a dogma to be dictated to the members, etc., and as the main dogma (Proudhonist), abstention from the political movement. This infant’s spelling-book found favour (and still has a certain hold) in Italy and Spain, where the real conditions of the workers’ movement are as yet little developed, and among a few vain, ambitious and empty doctrinaires in French Switzerland and Belgium. Resolutions I (2) and (3) and IX now give the New York committee legal weapons with which to put an end to all sectarian formations and amateur groups and if necessary to expel them.”

K. Marx, Letter to Friedrich Bolte, November 23, 1871. [1]

Since the defeat of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, reiteration is a frequent ocurrence in the Babellian context in which the life of the so-called “anarchist movement” painfully takes place.[2] As if it were “Groundhog Day” [3], we are condemned to repeat the same experience indefinitely. Time and again, the ideological displacements and the conceptualizations of others gain presence in our camp. Thus – again – the notions of “sect”, “sectarianism” and “sectarian” emerge in the debate. We don’t have the slightest chance of escaping from this vicious cycle. Like Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in the famous comedy, every day the same song is hammered into us (at six in the morning!), forced to repeat ourselves in an infinite cycle from which not even suicide saves us.

Perhaps, for those who come from the so-called “left” – who have happily already evolved into “libertarian” positions – and today share the same barricade side by side, these imprecations have always been there, close at hand. Ready to be wielded at the slightest provocation. So they assume that such curse words are part of our lexicon or that they are part of a kind of universal vocabulary that we have to use out of obligation.

For those of us who have been in the fight for some years, the feeling of déjà vécu caused by the remastering of this farcical operetta is inevitable. Indeed, it’s not the first time that we have to face these epithets and, definitely, it will not be the last. They are repeated as a mantra invoking the “crushing march of history” (Saint Charlie of Trier, dixit). The sad observation is that this liturgy even occurs in the ins and outs of the praxis —live and active today— of the Informal Anarchic Tendency (TIA). A tendency that has no place for uniforming practices, nor for repetition; that is to say, the attempts at fronts, nor the attempts at “tactical unity” and “collective responsibility.” Continue reading “In Defense of Associative Specificity by Gustavo Rodríguez EN/ES” →