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Organising against Capitalism
Over the last few years I have taken part in many
forums which have discussed the collapse of the left, the changes in
capitalism and the need for a new opposition. Not all of these have
been exclusively anarchist, I attended the 'Intercontinental
Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism' organised by the
Zapatistas in Chiapas in the summer of 1996 for instance, but most
have been held by anarchists in Britain or Ireland. A common feature
of these events is a recognition that everything has changed in the
last decade, that many of yesterday's answers are discredited today
and that there is a need for the construction of a new movement. Such
discussions cannot remain on the theoretical level, we must start to
put these ideas into practice in building a new anti-capitalist
movement.
Seven years ago the Berlin wall came down, bringing to a
definitive end the period of history begun by the Russian revolution
in 1917. Since the 1950's this was known as the Cold War. To
supporters of the Western status quo the end of this period was a
signal that history had ended. Not in the sense that nothing
interesting would ever happen again but rather that the most perfect
model of society had been found and tested in the form of the
'western democracies'. Now it was only a question of allowing time
for the rest of the world to catch up. The future was rosy since the
'peace dividend' along with the new markets and productive capacity
of eastern Europe would usher in a new era of prosperity.
Five years ago the peace dividend collapsed with the 'war' against
Iraq. A war that was no more than a high tech light show for western
viewers, but which led to the loss of up to 200,0001 relatives and
friends for those in Iraq. Parallel to this, civil war was brewing in
Yugoslavia, and the economies of eastern Europe were collapsing,
resulting in widespread poverty, civil war and - particularly for the
old - a dramatically reduced life expectancy. The 'New World Order'
that was coming into being, we were assured, would indeed introduce
global prosperity but first some belt tightening and the removal of
'new Hitlers' was required. This of course required the maintenance
of a strong military!
Three years ago this 'New World Order' received its first real
resistance when rebellion [2] broke out
in one of its show pieces of improvement and modernisation. Mexico
was a 'model' of how developing countries which started to move from
a state led to a free market economy could also reach the 'end of
history' and join the first world. The Zapatista rising blew away
this smoke screen to reveal an end of history that excluded most of
Mexico's population. The period since has been scattered with
examples of capitalism not only failing to provide for people's needs
but, more importantly, people recognising this and organising on a
mass scale against it. This resistance has spread to the very western
countries which were supposed to have moved beyond the need for the
population to take to the streets to oppose the state. History, we
have learnt, is not over yet.
Dead and buried
State socialism has died as an attractive alternative to anyone,
that much is a welcome truth. The need for an alternative to
capitalism continues to be strong. Supporters of state socialism have
become dwindling cadres of various Leninist groups, 'New' social
democrats indistinguishable from conservatives and the occasional
dinosaur whose brain has yet to recognise that there is a difference
between sloganeering about 'socialism from below' and actually
organising in such a manner. The end of these organisations - which
mostly served as barriers to workers organising themselves - is
welcome, but there is a price to pay. The weakness of libertarian
ideas in Britain and Ireland means the possibility of an alternative
to capitalism died with these fake 'alternatives' in the minds of
many activists. This is not terminal but the message that
alternatives to capitalism, other than the state run (non-)
alternatives that were on offer, exist will have to be widely spread.
Another legacy of the domination of the authoritarian left is that
we are left with a tradition of working class struggle being almost
immediately tied to a particular political organisation. Workplace
struggles, for instance, take place through the organisational
structures of the trade unions but the left, rather than encourage
self-activity in economic struggle and the extension of this
self-activity to the political arena, have instead sought to tie the
unions to the Labour party. This is of course just a reflection of
the left's strategy on the economic level which, instead of
encouraging workers to take direct control of their struggles, have
instead directed the attention of militants towards electing left
wing bureaucrats to run the union on 'their' behalf.
This pattern extends outside the workplace as well, in Britain in
recent years we have seen an often obscene struggle between different
left groups as to who can control working class militancy against
fascism and racism. Campaign after campaign arises that pretends to
be independent but on examination is obviously controlled by one
organisation alone. Even where joint work occurs, large amounts of
energy may be squandered in attempts to control the decision making
structures of campaigns. Many activists have become demoralised and
then exhausted by these bureaucratic squabbles.
The party and the class
This pattern of organisation occurred because the key thing for
the authoritarian left was the relative strength of their
organisation and not the level of self-activity of the class or even
the strength of the class. Historical and current defeats of the
working class were analysed as being due to the absence of a strong
enough vanguard that was equipped with the right slogans, rather than
due to a weakness of self-organisation and a reliance on minority
leadership by the class. An excellent recent example of this logic
was provided by Tony Cliff, the leader of one of the surviving
Leninist groups, the British Socialist Workers Party. In 1993 mass
demonstrations took place all over Britain aimed at preventing the
Tories closing the remaining coal mines. These demonstrations however
remained firmly under the control of union bureaucrats and Labour MPs
with workers playing the role of a stage army to be marched up and
down hills under their control.
To the SWP though, the weakness of this movement was that they did
not have enough members to control it. As its leader, Tony Cliff,
said at the time
"If we had 15,000 members in the SWP and 30,000 supporters the
21 October miners' demonstration could have been different. Instead
of marching round Hyde Park socialists could have taken 40 or 50,000
people to parliament. If that had happened the Tory MPs wouldn't have
dared to vote with Michael Heseltine. The government would have
collapsed."[3]
This sort of logic, which can only see the strength of the
struggles of the working class in terms of the strength of the party,
is precisely the same logic that kept Leninists defending policies
they knew to be rubbish year after year. It was what kept Communist
Parties all over the world together as the Russian tanks rolled over
the working class of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
To go further back again it was what caused the Workers'
Opposition4 , in the process of being
purged from the Bolshevik Party in 1921, to be to the forefront of
attacking the revolutionaries who had risen in Kronstadt. This
despite the fact that these sailors they were massacring had a
programme far more in common with their platform than that of Lenin
and Trotsky, who directed the massacres!
This is putting the party first, so well described by Trotsky in
1921 when he rounded on the Workers' Opposition declaring "They
have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of
democratic principles. They have placed the workers' right to elect
representatives above the Party. As if the Party were not entitled to
assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed
with the passing moods of the workers' democracy !". [5]
This is the logic behind the decades of sabotage of working class
struggles by Leninists, justified by the recruiting of a few extra
people into the party. This is also why gaining positions of power is
so central to Leninist doctrine, so that through these positions they
can control struggles - even if they lose popularity within them.
With the attraction of 'actually existing socialism' or
'degenerated workers' states' consigned to the dustbin of history,
many Leninists have reconsidered their position and abandoned
Leninism. Indeed it seems just about everywhere discussion groups
have formed made up of ex-members of Leninist and Social-democratic
organisations trying to sketch out a new left. So far these
initiatives have tended to run around in circles or to partially
re-invent the wheel. Few appear to have considered anarchism
seriously as having already answered, at least in part, many of the
'new' questions they are now puzzling over. Sometimes because they
have judged anarchism on the poor state of the local movement, but
commonly due to a combination of a fear of breaking with the last
idol, Marx, alongside a failure to understand that the organisational
purpose of anarchist groups is completely different in aim and
content to that with which they are familiar. If you are familiar
with an organisational practice that constantly seeks to take things
over then the anarchist method of organisation can seem worse than
useless.
Anarchist organisations exist not to obtain leading positions in
the organisations of the working class, but rather to achieve
influence for anarchist ideas. From this point of view there is
absolutely no point in loyalty towards an organisation whose ideas
you do not agree with. The anarchist organisation should seek neither
to absorb the whole class under its leadership nor to simply become
the class by recruiting every worker regardless of their
understanding of anarchism. Rather our organisation(s) need to be
nuclei for anarchist ideas and organisation that will be active in
all the struggles of our class and so carry these ideas into and
between these struggles. Our aim must not be the creation of one big
anarchist organisation through which all the struggles of our class
will be conducted, but rather aiding the growth of a tradition of
working class organisation that is based on direct democracy and
independent of all political organisations.
The role of the anarchist organisation is not to compete in the
destructive rat race for control of working class organisations, but
rather to seek to undermine the rat race itself by creating an
alternative tradition of self-organisation of struggles. Such a
tradition cannot be built either through attempting to guide
struggles within anarchist organisations (the classic tradition of
anarcho-syndicalism) or by withdrawing from broad struggles to create
narrow anarchist dominated groups operating on the edges of them.
Anarchists must be wherever workers are entering into struggle,
attempting to influence the direction and organisational strategy of
that struggle towards self-organisation. In practice this means
anarchist organisations must encourage their members to join and
become active in organisations of working class struggle like Trade
Unions and community campaigns despite the fact that we may share
nothing in common with the leadership of these organisations.
The struggle goes on
In recent years a host of grassroots movements have demonstrated
not only that the class struggle is very much alive but, on single
issues at least, capitalism can be defeated. Even in Ireland the
struggle against Water Charges shows the continued power of ordinary
people. The December 1995 French strikes against neoliberalism
demonstrated the potential for these struggles to begin to develop an
alternative vision of society. 1996 saw mass strikes and
demonstrations in Canada, Germany, and parts of Australia where
demonstrators also stormed the parliament building. If such movements
are limited to being protest movements against aspects of capitalism,
they also offer a very positive strategy as they were based on direct
action that frequently took them outside the narrow confines of
protest allowed under capitalism.
Yet it was only France which showed the potential in such
struggles for the growth of anarchism. In the aftermath of the
December strikes all French anarchist groups reported a marked
increase in interest in anarchism and the anarcho-syndicalist CNT-F
[6] grew from just over 1,000 members to
6,000 by late summer of 1996. France is also where the struggle is
moving from a defensive to an offensive one, the lorry drivers'
strike which brought the country to a halt in November of 1996
demanded a lowering of the retirement age and working week. Contacts
with French anarchists since December 1995 have indicated that a new
mood is entering the workers' movement there, large numbers of people
are talking about different ways of organising society.
In Britain and Ireland [7] however,
while anarchists have continued to play a major role in local
struggles throughout the 1990's, they have completely failed to break
out of the very small circles of activists they relate to. What is
more disturbing in many cases is the lack of interest in or
discussion of doing so. Rather than looking for ways of winning
numbers of people to anarchism, many groups have become content with
providing a service to local struggles on the one hand or on the
other providing commentaries for the left in general on how such
struggles are (or are not) good, bad or indifferent.
In terms of national organisations, of those that existed in 1990
in Britain and Ireland (WSM [8],
Organise!, ACF [9], Sol-Fed/DAM [10], Class War [11]) none have grown significantly although
we can note the addition of the SFA [12]
and the self destruction of the AWG [13]. Excuses of course can be provided, some
good, some indifferent but in an overall sense the complete failure
of any of these organisations to win a significant number of new
people to anarchism, despite both the potential in terms of struggle
and the redundancy of the alternatives has to say something. The fact
that the same experience has been reflected in the USA, Australia and
New Zealand underlines that something, somewhere is badly wrong. The
question is what?
Where are we going?
This failure in a period which saw anarchism proved 'right' in
many respects should cause anarchists to pause and think. Does it
reflect a fundamental failure in Anarchism, perhaps an inability to
deal with the conditions of the modern world? Or is it something to
do with the way we have been organising over the last few years? If
we are serious about revolutionary change and do not want to be just
a permanent protest movement, we need to confront this question head
on. The easy answer of course is to blame it all on the international
circumstances we find ourselves in, the general swing to the right
found throughout society.
According to this perspective the failure of the organised
anarchist movement to grow [14] in the
post-Cold War period is due to the lack of opportunity.
Circumstances, which include the collapse of Soviet style 'socialism'
and the boost this gave to capitalism, mean that very few people
believe there can be an alternative to capitalism. From this point of
view there is little anarchists can do except wait for workers to
enter into mass struggle and re-discover the need for an alternative
to capitalism.
Yet in terms of anarchism a strategy of waiting for 'the workers'
to enter into prolonged periods of struggle before expecting large
numbers to become anarchists is deeply flawed. The level of struggle
itself brings things to a head long before this process can be
completed as capitalism, rather than waiting for the revolutionary
movement to gather its strength, will precipitate the revolution by
attacking first. This was what happened in 1936 in Spain when the
majority of the capitalists opted for backing a military coup rather
than allowing the anarchists to continue to gain in numbers and
influence. During the Spanish revolution many anarchists laid their
failure to complete the revolution on the not unreasonable [15] grounds that the anarchists, being a
minority [16], could not make the
revolution for fear of creating an 'anarchist' dictatorship. If the
majority of an organisation of anarcho-syndicalists with over one
million members could feel this unprepared after a couple of decades
in existence as a mass organisation, the suggestion that we can
afford to wait for the next revolutionary wave before growing is
perhaps not the wisest of strategies.
Many of those at the forefront of the struggle in Spain were aware
of this problem, even in the anarchist stronghold of Barcelona on the
outbreak of the revolution. They were aware of how the moment of
revolution is always forced prematurely on revolutionaries rather
than being something they can hold back until the time is ripe
"There was total disorder. We formed a commission and
thereafter all arms were handed only to revolutionary organisations
... 10,000 rifles, I calculate as well as some machine guns, were
taken. That was the moment when the people of Barcelona were armed;
that was the moment, in consequence, when power fell into the masses'
hands. We of the CNT hadn't set out to make the revolution but to
defend ourselves, to defend the working class. To make the social
revolution, which needed to have the whole of the Spanish proletariat
behind it, would take another ten years....but it wasn't we who chose
the moment; it was forced on us by the military who were making the
revolution, who wanted to finish off the CNT once and for all.."
[17]
This is one of the key questions anarchist have to tackle in the
aftermath of the Spanish revolution, for it should be clear that far
from being a combination of exceptional circumstances the environment
in which the revolution took place is typical of the environment all
revolutions have taken place in. Unlike the Leninists we cannot
advance a strategy where a small minority of activists, prepared with
the right ideas before a revolutionary upsurge, can then manoeuvre
themselves into the leadership of such an upsurge. A successful
anarchist revolution requires not only huge numbers of conscious
anarchists but also a massive confidence throughout the working class
in its ability to immediately move to take over the running of the
workplaces from the local to the global level. Such a confidence can
only come from experience of self-managing struggle in the years
before the revolution. Here and now anarchists cannot be content to
exist in isolated propaganda or activist groups but must seek out
ways to draw in wider and wider layers of society.
Playing a waiting game
We could hope for revolutionary periods that last decades but
historically such periods are far shorter and revolutions begin when
the revolutionaries are in a small minority. It seems more sensible
to lose our complacency about being small 'guardians of the faith'
now, while awaiting mass upsurge, and look for ways to win over at
least a sizeable and militant minority in the period before the next
revolutionary upsurge. For when it comes we need to have the numbers
and confidence to make sure it does not stop short of overthrowing
capitalism but also goes on to defeat the authoritarian left that
will argue for a new state.
This means organising alongside our class in the here and now,
despite whatever differences we may have with the way unions or
community campaigns are structured. Our role in the unions or
community organisations must be to bring anarchist ideas into them
and gain an audience for these ideas by being the best activists.
Anarchist methods have to be shown to work in people's day to day
lives. We cannot gain this audience by carping from the outside about
flaws in their structure and refusing to involve ourselves until
these flaws are spontaneously rectified. The authoritarian tradition
of organisation will not be changed by small numbers of activists
criticising from outside. Instead it will be eroded over time if
anarchists enter struggles and argue for different methods of
organisation as the opportunities arise.
It is useful to consider why it seems necessary to make these
arguments, ones that should be self-evident. To start answering this
question it is useful to examine the forces that created the
anarchist movement in the English speaking world.
Anarchism re-emerged in the English speaking countries in the
post-WWII period in two forms, one was a kind of liberal radical
democracy that paid lip service to the historical movement and the
movement elsewhere but never really had all that much to do with
anarchism. Essentially it combined a utopian wish for a nicer world
with a rejection of any and all of the methods needed to achieve such
a world. It comprised a minority of those who called themselves
anarchists but received the bulk of the attention of the media
because it included a number of prominent intellectuals.
Secondly there were groups formed by activists who were inspired
by anarchism as a fighting ideology that seemed to avoid the pitfalls
of Leninism. The label 'class struggle anarchist' is sometimes used
to distinguish this second set from the liberals above. But because
these groups were a tiny minority in a much larger social democratic
or Leninist left they came to adapt themselves almost completely
around the issues and practices of that left. They tended to define
themselves not in a positive fashion but in a negative one, against
some aspect of the existing left, so they would
1. seek to build 'real revolutionary unions' rather
than social democratic ones
2. write a funny and aggressive paper rather than a boring and
complaining one
3. expose the authoritarian practices of the left
4. not bore people with talking about politics but 'do stuff'
instead.
Cold War Culture
This is part of the cultural legacy of the Cold War for
anarchists, an attitude where the idea of mass national and
international organisations may get lip service but very little
energy or enthusiasm goes into constructing them. Another legacy is
that many anarchists have come through the destructive mill of
Leninist politics and are nervous about seriously addressing
organisational issues in case this is seen as 'latent' Leninism.
This culture also arose in part as a reaction, often by
ex-members, to the manipulative practices and authoritarian internal
organisation of the left in general. This also resulted in a tendency
to shy away from anything too closely connected with recruitment,
spreading ideas (paper sales/public meetings) or trying to advocate a
strategy for a particular struggle (as opposed to criticising someone
else's).
This culture was never useful but it is entirely useless for
anarchists today in a situation where there are a vanishingly small
number of authoritarian left outfits to expose or be mistaken for.
There is a very serious need to junk a lot of the prejudices and
traditions developed in the long years under Leninism and initiate a
positive, outgoing, organising and growing movement to take its
place. We can no longer be satisfied with being a 'pure' opposition,
we must begin to move into a position where anarchist ideas lead
struggles rather than simply explaining why they are failing or will
in the future be sold out.
In Britain it may be said that 'sure the national organisations
have not grown but locally there are far more anarchists around and
involved in stuff'. This might be true but while these groups may be
useful in aiding struggles they are very limited in building a wider
anti-capitalist movement. Where this is discussed local groups tend
to repeat on a local scale the problems of 'national' organisations
(discussed below). This does however raise a second question, why do
so many otherwise active anarchists reject not only the existing
national organisations, but it would appear organisation at the
national level altogether?
A large part of this must be the experience of national
organisations, which in most cases has been negative. There is a
sharp tendency in many countries for national organisations to become
little more than propaganda groups which criticise but are seldom
seen as doing anything, while local groups become the centre for
activity but seldom manage to develop strategies for promoting
anarchism. So while national organisations are associated with
sectarian feuding, at least local organisations are seen as doing
something, even if that 'something' isn't particularly coherent. This
division is disastrous as it separates theory and action into two
separate spheres and commonly two separate and mutually suspicious
sets of people. It is impossible to build a movement on this basis
and until organisations arise that are capable of bringing together
theory and action such groups that exist will be condemned to
continuing irrelevance.
Make love not war
This conflict is also avoidable. While there is a clear and
pressing need for coherent national (and international)
organisations, this in no way precludes anarchists coming together on
a geographical basis to work on common projects. In fact local
co-operation between organisations with political differences would
seem to be essential in preventing or overcoming sectarianism. There
are many projects that need considerable resources but don't require
more then a minimum of political agreement, for instance the opening
and running of centres and bookshops, that will obviously benefit
from such co-operation and indeed, in areas where anarchism is weak,
cannot take place without it. Likewise joint activity around
campaigns will commonly be possible and make the anarchist input very
much stronger. The holding of regional gatherings of anarchists can
only help the flow of information.
Almost everyone's experience of first encountering the left is to
find the divisions and rows that go on frustrating and puzzling. 'Why
can't everyone just come together and be more effective?' is a common
plea of newcomers. With time you understand that many of the
differences are actually important, and indeed from the perspective
of vanguard organisations it is a central part of their politics to
see similar organisations as the biggest problem because they are
'false prophets'. Anarchists have been influenced by this practise
too but it is entirely nonsensical for us. Where we disagree we are
competing on the terrain of ideas alone, we are not competing for
leadership positions in working class organisations. So adopting the
sectarianism of the vanguardists towards each other is suicidal and
has to be overcome. As long as anarchist groups are on the fringes of
society this sort of behaviour is likely to continue. It's both a
product of and a cause of being on the fringe. But revolutionary
change requires that we move into the centre of society.
The anarchist organisation(s) has to become a centre for struggle
in today's society. In this way, although it may not be possible to
win a majority of workers, it should be the case that a very large
minority have either worked alongside or in anarchist organisations
and so a large minority have experience of libertarian practice and
know it can work. The organisation needs to not just preach the need
for social revolution but organise the fight against the day to day
grind of capitalism now.
This implies an organisation quite different from any that
currently exist. The advantage of the syndicalist method is that,
where it can be applied, it results in an organisation that is based
very much on day to day struggles in the workplace or, at a more
advanced stage, in the community. If the limitations [18] of anarcho-syndicalism have caused us to
reject it as an adequate organisational tool, this should not prevent
us from recognising its strength in creating genuine, mass,
grassroots organisations.
Stop and think
Let us stop for a moment and consider what level of organisation
we're talking of. We mean not only activists on every street and in
every workplace but social centres in every neighbourhood, weekly or
even daily papers with circulations in the tens or hundreds of
thousands, radio stations.... and all this of sufficient strength to
resist the state oppression that will come before the revolution. It
must have activists who are known and trusted in all the struggles
occurring throughout the class.
What is the role of our organisations instead of being social
clubs or talking shops? That role must be to become a 'leadership of
ideas' within the struggles and organisation of the working class.
That is for the organisation to gain the credibility and acceptance,
so that when it speaks people listen and seriously consider what it
has to say. At the moment, particular individuals within a group
often succeed in doing this on an individual level by becoming known
as a 'good head', with whom it is worth talking to about a new
situation in a struggle. This may give a certain local influence to
that individual, but it does not give a wider influence to the
organisation, or lead people to realise that it is anarchism as a set
of ideas that is worth looking at as the motivation of this 'good
head'.
If the organisation hopes to influence the struggles and ideas in
the class, it must speak with an agreed voice. This idea was put
forward in the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists
as the need for "Tactical and Theoretical Unity".
Because it is difficult to talk of a leadership of ideas because
of the negative connection most anarchists draw between the word
leadership and authoritarian politics, I want to explain the term and
then move onto discussing a practical example of what this means in
practice.
Bourgeois politics is based around the concept of the 'leadership
of position'. This means that you get to a particular position and,
because you are in this position, you then get to implement your
ideas. The position may be that of a politician or a union bureaucrat
but the basic idea remains the same, the position gives you power
over people. In fact, once in power you don't even have to pay any
attention to those you claim to represent. It is not unusual for this
sort of leader to claim some sort of special understanding which the
people he represents lack because they lack the time or information
to form this judgement. Obviously anarchists completely reject this
form of leadership.
However Leninists deliberately confuse this form of leadership
with a second form, that of the 'leadership of ideas', into the
general term 'leadership'.[19] Many
anarchists make the mistake of accepting this deliberate confusion
and so end up rejecting or feeling uncomfortable with the idea of
becoming a 'leadership of ideas' [20].
This is the source of confusion, not just in politics, but also on
more general questions like that of the role of specialists in the
workplace (e.g. surgeons, architects etc.).
What the leadership of ideas means is not that the organisation
holds any special position but rather that it has built up a record
of being 'right' or 'sensible' so people are inclined to take its
advice seriously and act on it. Its power lies solely in its ability
to convince people. But obviously to develop such a reputation, it
must be able to speak with a common voice in its publications and at
strategy meetings. Otherwise, although individuals may develop this
reputation the organisation cannot!
Follow the leader?
So why do we need to develop organisations that are seen as a
'leadership of ideas'? There are two answers to this. The first is
that it is a bad thing for this development to take place at the
individual level as it tends to lead to informal cults of the
individual.
The second though is more profound. The world is a big place, if
we ever hope to see an anarchist revolution we will require to be
able to address the majority of the population with libertarian
ideas. It's unlikely the capitalist media will ever allow any
individual the sort of media access this would require (and, even if
they did, this - for the reasons outlined above - would not be a good
thing). So this is going to have to be achieved on an organisational
basis.
There are two reasons for joining an organisation. The first is to
meet like minded people and in the end tends to result in a small
organisation that consists of a circle of friends (and feuding
partners). The second is because you believe that the organisation is
trying to achieve what you are trying to achieve, that the parts of
it you can't see (because of geographical separation or just
complexity) will act in a similar way to how you will act, that in
the event of a crisis you will then be part of a large number of
people acting in a common way on the basis of prior agreement. All
these require tactical and theoretical unity.
The main misunderstanding which arises from discussion of the need
for theoretical and tactical unity is that an organisation which has
such agreement will consider itself to hold the 'true' ideas of
anarchism and all others as heretics. It's not hard to see where this
idea emerges from, again from the culture of the left and the 57
feuding brands of Leninism. But for anarchists such an attitude has
to be impermissible. It is also obviously incompatible with the role
of the organisation I argued for earlier - that of being a nucleus of
ideas and activists within the struggles of the working class rather
than something which seeks to become the formal leadership of the
class.
A final area of controversy around this idea is the surrender of
individual sovereignty it entails. The original 'Platformists' talked
about this as a "Collective responsibility" the organisation
shared for the action of its activists. Alongside this is the
responsibility of activists to implement the decisions of the
organisation even where they clashed with their own views on this
matter. Some anarchists see this as being akin to the organisational
discipline required by many Leninists where party members are
required to give the party a "monopoly of their political
activity" and follow "democratic centralism".
Of course there are similarities but there are also similarities
with respecting a picket line even if you voted against the strike.
In fact every day in our lives we voluntarily adhere to a "collective
responsibility", when we share cooking or holiday arrangements with
others, or even settle on going to a pub we are not all that keen on
because that's where our friends want to drink! Doing things that are
not your first preference are pretty much part of all social
interactions, the only way to avoid this in any society would be to
live the life of a hermit.
Follow the Party?
What makes these decisions different and acceptable to us is in
fact what separates "collective responsibility" from "party
discipline". The first and most important of these is that we have an
equal say in how these decisions are reached. In the anarchist
organisation all have an equal say and vote in defining the
organisation's position through conference discussions or mandated
delegates. In the Leninist organisation the closest you get to this
is getting some sort of vote on which party leader tells you what to
do [21]. Secondly, in the anarchist
organisation the nature of this discipline is voluntary in the sense
that members should be free to leave organisations they disagree with
and join ones they agree with without being regarded as "class
traitors" (readers will be aware of how Leninist groups relate to
each other) [22]. A third difference is
that members would be free to carry on whatever activity they were
interested in providing it did not contradict the agreed policy of
their organisation, rather than having their political activity
monopolised by the party leadership.
Many of the readers of this article may find themselves agreeing
with the sort of organisational structure and principles it outlines.
But this is not written merely as a set of ideas to be thought about
and then laid aside. If you agree with the core ideas presented here
then you have a responsibility to start to put these into action by
searching out others who also agree and taking the first steps in
building such organisation(s). It is my experience that many of the
anarchists I have met are completely selfless when it comes to
putting themselves in exposed physical positions in the struggles of
our class, it is time to put the same sort of energy into building
anarchist organisations that can re-define the traditions of working
class struggle and prepare for a successful revolution.
Andrew Flood
Footnotes
1. This casualty figure is the maximum estimate for actual war
deaths I have seen. It is a sign of the continued acceptance of the
rationale behind the war in the West that no-one actually seems to
either know or care how many died on the Iraqi side, or that perhaps
500,000 Iraqi children have died since the end of the war due to the
combined effects of destruction at the time of the war and sanctions
since.
2. The EZLN rising of 1 Jan. 1994 in Chiapas; see Red & Black
Revolution No. 1 for an analysis of the Zapatistas
[http://www.oocities.org/CapitolHill/3102/abezln.html].
3. Quoted in The SWP and the Crisis of British Capitalism, 1992
4. A faction within the Bolshevik party that was based on the
unions and demanded a return to some workplace democracy. The main
result was that factions were then banned in the Party!
5. R.V. Daniels The Conscience of the Revolution Pp. 145-6
6. This is split into two sections, the section with its HQ in
Paris was expelled from the IWA-AIT at its December 1996 Congress.
7. This article is referring to the anarchist movement in Britain
and Ireland except where I state otherwise. This is the area where I
am very familiar with the internal life of organised anarchism but
from what I am told similar problems apply in the U.S., Australia and
New Zealand. These countries all share a common tradition of union
and political organising, dominated by struggles for the leadership
of the movement and where self-organisation of struggle has seldom
progressed beyond a slogan.
8. Workers Solidarity Movement (publishers of Red & Black
Revolution)
9. Anarchist Communist Federation
10. British section of the IWA, now called Solidarity Federation,
formerly the Direct Action Movement
11. Although including Class War in a listing of national
anarchist organisations is problematical as they keep changing their
minds about whether they are or are not anarchists.
12. Scottish Federation of Anarchists
13. The Anarchist Workers Group which self-destructed in 1992 when
it abandoned anarchism, changed its name to Socialism from Below and
then vanished. [http://www.oocities.org/CapitolHill/2419/awg.html]
for more information
14. There has been an increase in interest in anarchism as a set
of ideas but in English language countries this has not translated
into a significant growth in organisation.
15. Not unreasonable in the context of syndicalism where either
the union is capable of taking over the economy on its own or it is
not. In terms of non-syndicalist anarchist politics, however, the
idea of completing the revolution on a non-syndicalist basis through
the creation of other organs of workers' self-management was open. By
1937 a sizeable minority of the CNT were willing to explore this
possibility in the form of a revolutionary junta elected (and
recallable) by the CNT and CGT workers.
16. The CNT had about one million members at the start of the
revolution, this may have risen as high as two million by 1937.
17. CNT textile worker Andreu Capdevila, quoted in Blood of Spain
P.72
18. See the article Syndicalism: Its strengths and weaknesses in
Red & Black Revolution No. 1
19. Which is why we must be careful not to imagine that the
Leninist concept of democratic centralism, which means no more than
democratically selecting who gets to decide party policy, has
anything in common with the anarchist concept of theoretical and
tactical unity.
20. Bakunin discussed the difference in the two forms as being two
different forms of meaning of the word authority; i.e. to be an
authority on something as opposed to being in authority over
something.
21. In practice, though, this selection is fixed through
mechanisms like the use of slates. Leninist groups are infamous for
having the same leader 'elected' again and again until he dies and
the organisation then splits!
22. In fact, as usual, we can observe that the Leninists have
adopted the methods of capitalist organisation on this issue, with a
division between those who make decisions and those who carry them
out whereas collective responsibility models the future anarchist
society, where those making the decisions will be all of those
effected by those decisions (workers' self-management in the economic
context).
