What We Can Learn From Makhno, or The Myth of Human Nature
David Graeber and David Wengrow argued in their monumental anthropological work The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity that all available archaeological evidence contradicts the popular (and Marxist) assertion of a linear progression of history, where increases in scale or innovations in technology necessitate certain forms of production or organization. The point is not that an anarchist form of organization is inevitable, but that it is possible, as no event in prehistory such as the Agricultural Revolution or the development of cities immediately changed human societies into the hierarchical and constrained form we all know so well today.
The Makhnovshchina was a particularly outstanding example of this argument. Typical Leninist rhetoric regarding the USSR’s actions immediately post-revolution, such as the centralization of control and the demolishing of workers’ democracy, revolve around justification based on the Bolsheviks’ material circumstances at the time. Leninists argue that authoritarianism was necessary due to the limited production and counterrevolutionary threats on all fronts in Russia. However, the Makhnovists, while operating at the same time and with exactly the same material limitations as the Bolsheviks, encouraged workers’ control and liberation wherever they could. They were organized in a fundamentally democratic way, and stood in direct ideological and operational opposition to the Bolshevik party. They punched above their weight with their alternative mode of organization for a relatively long period of time before eventually being crushed by the Red Army due to some military errors and the overwhelming difference in numbers.
The Makhnovist Movement, then, is a demonstration of the great possibilities of human variety presented by Graeber and Wengrow. Many people argue against alternative methods of economic or social organization based on appeals to their specific views on “human nature”. “Human nature” as commonly defined is too limited of a concept, and in my opinion wholly a myth. The most one can rationally claim to know about any “human nature” is probably that humans will get hungry if they do not eat for too long, or that humans will drown if they are put under water for too long. If one goes beyond basic biological claims into large scale psychological and sociological claims, such as “humans are selfish by nature”, one is simply conjuring up blanket statements with nothing to back them up. Humans are complex social creatures, and attempting to observe pure social laws of behavior with controlled variables is inherently paradoxical, as human social interactions happen in circumstances where there are a great number of uncontrollable variables. To claim that all humans are always and will always be selfish is just as baseless as claiming that all humans are always and will always be selfless and altruistic.
Upon reaching this conclusion, one cannot help but look at modern society with a skeptical lens. What, one may ask, causes these misconceptions about humanity and society? Is it the inevitable degeneration of thought that occurs from living under capitalism and the state, or the deliberate influence of the mass perception of history by the powers that be? Or is it something else entirely? These questions are valid, and I am uncertain of the answers to them at this time. But good progress has been made at this point.
