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Red & Black Revolution
A magazine of libertarian communism
Issue 1 October 1994
Produced by Workers Solidarity Movement
TIME TO BE CONSTRUCTIVE
In "from Ashes to Phoenix?" it was argued
that the left as it had come to be known
has collapsed. The new left that is
arising from the ashes carries much of the
baggage and many of the mistakes of its
predecessors. It is without clear
direction, knowing it wants to build
something new, but not sure what this will
be or how to do it. It bases itself on a
hodgepodge of different traditions or on
none. These criticisms are easy to make,
what is more difficult is to pinpoint a way
forwards.
This article indicates the direction that
needs to be taken. There is a current
within the left that stands out in its
opposition to the division of revolutionary
organisations into leaders and led. This
current is anarchism. However new
organisation(s) should not be built on the
basis of a turn to the past. Rather it
must be recognised that previous anarchist
movements have also failed, and not just
for objective reasons. None of them are
adequate as models, so it is not a question
of constructing international versions of
the CNT, the Friends of Durruti or any
other group. Indeed any project that picks
an organisation from history and says this
is what we should be modelled on would seem
to be more interested in historical re-
enactment than revolution.
Anarchism put forward an accurate critique
of the problems of Marxism as a whole.
Anarchism also demonstrated methods of
organisation based on mass democracy. This
is its importance, as not only does it go
some way to explaining why the left has
failed but it also points the way to how it
can succeed.
Anarchism crystallised around opposition to
the idea that socialism could be introduced
by a small elite on behalf of the minority.
There are, were and probably will continue
to be Marxists that claim Marx also opposed
this idea but to do this is to deny the
historical argument that took place at the
end of the 1860's between the Marxists and
the anarchists. It is also to ignore what
Marxism has meant in the period since then.
To an extent the anarchist critique of
Marxism can be portrayed as
unsophisticated, not explaining where the
authoritarian side of Marxism comes from in
sufficient depth. Certainly in the English
speaking countries, anarchism appears
theoretically weak when compared to the
vast body of work calling itself Marxist.
But complexity or detail does not make an
analysis correct, sometimes the simplest of
ideas carry profound truths(1). And when
the record of the anarchist organisations
are compared with those of the Marxists one
finds on those key issues of 20th century
socialism, the state and role of the
revolutionary organisation, the anarchists
were consistently on the right side. The
worst of the anarchist deviations, the
power sharing with the bourgeois
republicans in Spain palls into
insignificance when compared with the
damage done by social democracy or Stalin.
The strength of anarchism has been its
belief in the ability of the working class
to take its destiny into its own hands free
of intermediaries. This and its
uncompromising rejection of the state and
politics of manipulation has left a legacy
that can be sharply contrasted with that of
other left currents. This makes it very
different from both Leninism and social
democracy, whose basic ideas are quite
closely connected. Many of the old debates
and the style they were carried out in are
now irrelevant, it will take time before
new, more positive debates become the norm.
For the left today, in a period where many
believe social-democracy and the USSR have
demonstrated that socialism cannot work,
the demonstrations of self-management by
anarchist inspired workers are of key
importance. The Spanish revolution saw the
democratic running of a large part of the
economy and a sizeable military force by
the working class(2). This provides us
with an actual example of the non-utopian
nature of self-management. In practice
such forms also arose spontaneously in
revolutions where anarchist ideas played no
major part, including that of Hungary in
1956(3). In the future it is to these
examples we should look to for inspiration.
English speaking 'Anarchism'
What the anarchist movement needs today is
not a historical re-enactment of past
glories. What's more, in the English
speaking countries at least, the anarchist
movement, to be polite, leaves a lot to be
desired. There is no real mass tradition
of anarchism outside the pre-WWI USA. Even
this was more of an example of anarchist
ideas playing a major role within a wider
movement than of an anarchist mass
movement. There have been no real
anarchist syndicalist(4) unions or mass
organisations. Individual anarchists like
Emma Goldman may have been important
figures but they represented isolated
examples rather than movements.
In the inter-war years anarchism was nearly
destroyed internationally by dictatorship,
fascism and Leninism. Those countries
where the tradition was weak, in particular
the English speaking ones, saw a complete
death of any understanding of anarchism and
its re-interpretation by academics, among
these George Woodcock. This re-
interpretation attempted to rob anarchism
of its base in class struggle and instead
reduce it to a radical liberalism. This
had (and continues to have) disastrous
consequences for the growth of anarchism
from the 60's on in these countries.
One of the most harmful ideas introduced by
these academics was the idea of anarchism
as a code of personal conduct rather than
one of collective struggle. This occurred
partially by their inclusion of all
pacifists from Tolstoy to Gandhi as
anarchists and partially from a completely
false understanding of the anarchist
movement in Spain. The Spanish example was
particularly absurd, anarchists were
presented as moralists who would not drink
coffee rather than as members of an
organisation based on class struggle, over
one million strong.. It's true that
anarchists do have a different sense of
what is 'right or wrong' than that
instilled in us by capitalist culture but
this flows from their politics rather than
the reverse.
Anarchism is different from Leninism and
social democracy in that it understands
that the means used to achieve a socialist
revolution will determine the success or
failure of that revolution. This was not
true for the revolutions that brought
capitalism to power, there it was possible
for the new elite to emerge regardless of
how it had got its backing. Socialism
requires mass participation. As such it
will not be granted by an elite but will
have to prevent the emergence of elites.
This can only be done if the mass of
society is already acting on the basis that
no new centres of rule can be allowed to
emerge, that they themselves must plan,
create and administer the new society.
The identification of anarchism with
counter cultural movements (like punk rock
and increasingly the 'crusty/new age
traveller' scene) arises from this
'liberal' interpretation. In turn this
image of anarchism as a personal code of
conduct encourages the counter culture to
attach the label anarchist to itself. This
'anarchism' is an often bizarre set of
rules ranging from not eating at McDonalds
to not getting a job. If anything it
represents a hopeless rebellion against,
and alienation from, life under modern
capitalism. It is a self-imposed ghetto,
its adherents see no hope of changing
society. In fact the counter culture is
often hostile to any attempt to address
anyone outside the ghetto(5), seeing this
as selling out. However the counter
culture is not entirely apolitical. A
significant minority in Britain for
instance will turn out for demonstrations
and where physical confrontation with the
state occur they often become the cannon
fodder.
There are also significant areas within
this counter culture where work is done
which can give a positive example. Perhaps
the best example of this is the squatting
movement of the last couple of decades
which saw huge numbers of people using
direct action to solve homelessness by
taking over empty buildings. Of course the
bulk of these people were outside the
counter culture, immigrant workers, the
young homeless and those including young
married people whose jobs could not cover
the high rent in London and for whom
council accommodation was unavailable or
inadequate.
However the fact that so many of today's
anarchists came to anarchism through this
counter culture has repercussions for
building new movements. To an extent they
find it difficult to break with the anti-
organisational parts of the counter
culture. This response dovetails with that
of activists who have had bad experience of
revolutionary organisations. The counter
culture also tends to see the way forward
in winning over the ghetto rather than
addressing mainstream society and getting
involved in its institutions. Having
identified the existing left as being only
interested in theory and building the party
organisation, they end up rejecting the
need for both theory and organisation. In
short, they attempt to create their own new
ghetto to which they can win people.
Anarchism today
Whatever about the poor state of the
anarchist movement in English speaking
countries, a different, much stronger
tradition is found almost everywhere else.
Language limitations restrict our ability
to comment in depth on many of these but
there are anarchist organisations in most
if not all European, Central American and
Southern American countries. There are
also organisations in some Asian and
African countries. In some of these
countries they are the biggest or only
force on the revolutionary left.
This is an area that is not just holding
its own but is indeed growing. This year
the IWA welcomed its first African section,
in the form of the Awareness League of
Nigeria and has entered into discussion
with two unions in Asia. Since the mid-
70's anarcho-syndicalist unions have been
re-built in Spain and the Swedish SAC has
moved from reformism back to anarchist-
syndicalism. Anarchists were the first
sections of the left to resume activity in
Eastern Europe, the first opposition march
in Moscow since the late 20's was staged by
anarchists on 28th May 1988 under the
banner "Freedom without Socialism is
Privilege and Injustice. Socialism without
Freedom is Slavery and Brutality", a quote
from Bakunin. In the last year several
anarchist groups have emerged in the
republics of former Yugoslavia and some
have started a process of co-operation
against the war there. Central and
Southern America have also seen groups re-
emerge into public activity, in some
countries, like Venezuela, the anarchists
are the only national force on the left.
In a period where all other sections of the
left have been in decline, anarchism has
re-established itself and started to grow.
This is all the more remarkable when you
consider this growth has come about almost
completely internally, no major resources
were pumped in from the outside. Compare
this with the Trotskyist groups who poured
huge resources into Eastern Europe for
relatively little return. This included
sending members over to maintain a
permanent presence in Moscow and the other
capitals. Anyone reading the Trotskyist
press would be aware of their constant
appeals for funds to help in this work.
This attempt to import Trotskyism in any of
its varieties failed to make any
significant impact. Anarchist groups, on
the contrary, emerged from the countries of
the East to make contact with us in the
west. They were based on 'left dissidents'
rediscovering a banned history, their
membership coming from sections of society
as far apart as intellectuals(6) to punk
fans and independent union activists.
So although the situation can seem very
much isolated in any of the English
speaking countries there is a very much
larger and more together movement
elsewhere. It is by no means perfect, it
is dominated by syndicalism but it is a
start. The question for us and the readers
of this article is how to go about building
mass anarchist movements in our countries.
The beginnings of such a movement exist in
almost all countries, anarchism has
consistently attracted new blood and new
influence.
Both the historical legacy of anarchism and
the (related) fact that it is currently the
only substantial anti-Leninist but
revolutionary movement in existence lead to
the conclusion that the best starting point
for building a new left is anarchism. But
what sort of anarchist movement is needed?
The objective has to be kept in mind, to
aid in the creation of a revolution that
will found a future society without classes
or the rule of a minority. It also has to
be recognised that anarchism in the past
has failed to fulfil this objective, most
notably in Spain where it could have
carried the revolution through, at least
locally.
We must learn from the mistakes of the
past. It is not enough to build large
loose organisations formed on the basis of
opposition to capitalism and an adherence
to anarchism as an ideal. Experience has
shown that these become paralysed when
faced with an unforseen set of
circumstances as with the Spanish CNT, or
effectively taken over by much smaller but
more coherent forces as was the fate of
many of the other syndicalist movements.
At a key moment they are likely to falter
and it at this point that authoritarians
can step in and assume leadership over the
revolution.
More importantly, the building of local
groups with only with the intention of
getting stuck in but no vision of becoming
a mass movement, has little to offer when
it comes to creating a libertarian
revolution. Such groups and the networks
that are constructed from time to time may
start off vibrant but quickly lose a sense
of purpose and cease to exist over time.
In Britain in particular a large number of
these have arisen over the last decade, and
in Ireland we have had a few. They leave
no real legacy, however; who can even
remember the Dublin Anarchist Collective,
Dundalk Libertarian Communist Group,
Scottish Libertarian Federation or the
Midlands Anarchist Network.
Some anarchists in Russia and Spain after
the revolutions there attempted to identify
why their movements were defeated by the
authoritarian forces. Their conclusions
were remarkably similar and apply to
anarchism today in many countries.
Some of the Russian exiles formed a group
in Paris that published a pamphlet(7)
based on their experiences that argued:
"This contradiction between the positive
and incontestable substance of libertarian
ideas, and the miserable state in which the
anarchist movement vegetates, has its
explanation in a number of causes, of which
the most important, the principal, is the
absence of organisational principles and
practices in the anarchist movement.
In all countries. the anarchist movement is
represented by several local organisations
advocating contradictory theories and
practices having no perspectives for the
future, nor of a continuity in militant
work, and habitually disappearing. hardly
leaving the slightest trace behind them."
A decade later in 1938 a second group, "the
Friends of Durruti" composed of several
thousand members of the Spanish CNT
published a pamphlet(8) explaining why the
CNT had failed to complete the Spanish
revolution. It was part of an attempt even
at that late stage to turn the situation
around:
"We [the CNT] did not have a concrete
program. We had no idea where we were
going. We had lyricism aplenty; but when
all is said and done, we did not know what
to do with our masses of workers or how to
give substance to the popular effusion
which erupted inside our organisation. By
not knowing what to do we handed the
revolution on a platter to the bourgeoisie
and the Marxists who support the farce of
yesteryear"
Although the Friends of Durruti were
talking of the problems faced during an
actual revolution their criticism is also
relevant to today's situation. Lack of
organisation prevents many anarchist groups
from being effective and in the event of a
revolution in the future will prevent them
from leading it to success.
What is needed is an organisation with
coherent ideas and a practice of democratic
debate and decision making. One capable of
dealing with crisis and making rapid
decisions without relying on a
'leadership'. This is an easy statement to
make, in practice it is not easy to create.
All too often such attempts either succumb
to authoritarianism or collapse into
sectarianism and isolation. They become
isolated in their own ghetto, interested in
argument but no longer capable of or even
interested in intervening in struggle.
Building an effective anarchist
organisation is not something that can
happen overnight. Even the initial
formation of core politics takes a number
of years. Then the process of winning
people over to these politics and giving
them the skills and knowledge required to
play a full role in a revolutionary
organisation takes a considerable amount of
time. To maintain coherency and democracy
the organisation can only grow slowly when
small, even in ideal circumstances doubling
perhaps every 6 months to a year. And in
the course of that growth it is all too
easy to lose sight of the goal and lapse
into isolation, sectarianism and
irrelevancy.
Even given the right theory, an
organisation is dependant on the experience
and commitment of its membership in order
to put its ideas into practice and arrive
at new sensible strategies. The commitment
needed can only be maintained if the
internal culture of an organisation is one
in which debate is favoured and
sectarianism is discouraged.
Obviously the political positions are also
important but that discussion is beyond the
scope of any one article. However it is
possible to identify key areas of
organisational practice that an anarchist
organisation needs to be committed to in
order to avoid the mistakes of the past,
and grow in a consistent, coherent way.
These are:
Theoretical and tactical unity
An organisation is strong only because it
represents the collective efforts of many
individuals. To maximise on this these
efforts need to be completely collective,
all members working towards a common goal
with common tactics. This is not just in
relation to revolution but in every area
the organisation involves itself in. This
has been called tactical unity.
Authoritarian organisations have tactical
unity because commands are passed down from
the leadership, unity only breaks down when
disagreements arise within the leadership.
These organisations may have a formal
adherence to theoretical unity but usually
this comprises of no more than the ability
of the membership to repeat the utterings
of the leadership(9). This is not an
option for anarchists, in order to achieve
tactical unity there must be real
theoretical unity. This requires
unrelenting discussion, education and
debate around all theoretical issues within
the organisation with the goal of forging a
set of clearly understood positions and the
ability of all the membership to argue for
and present new ones. Rather than
parroting a party line there is needed an
organisational understanding of how to see
and interact with the rest of the world.
This practice not only gives the
organisation real strength in its
activities, but also gives it the ability
to react in a crisis. The understanding
developed and the experience of decision
making are precisely the tools needed when
it comes to aiding the creation of
revolution and the establishment of a
socialist society based on real democracy.
The continuous interaction of the members
with society brings the skills and practice
of the organisation into the wider
movement. We wish our ideas to lead, not
because we have control of particular
positions, but because of the superiority
of our organisation's ideas.
Involvement in everyday life.
Too often revolutionaries see themselves as
separate from and above everyday life. The
working class is often talked of as a
separate, foreign entity rather than the
place where we live and interact on a daily
basis. Activity is seen as the cart to be
placed behind the horse of revolutionary
theory. Some Marxists refer to this as a
cornerstone of their organisation. They
have expressed it as "No revolutionary
practice without revolutionary theory".
Activity is thus seen at best, as the
method by which new recruits are won(10),
at worst, something that is not as yet
necessary.
If building a mass revolutionary
organisation was simply a matter of having
a good theory, perhaps there would be
something in this approach, at least for
authoritarian socialists. A few learned
types go up the mountain for some years to
consult the written word of the gods of
socialism. They interpret this as a creed
for new times, carve it in stone and return
to the assembled masses on the plains
below, ready to lead them to the promised
land. This is still a popular approach to
revolutionary organisation at the moment.
But a quick look at the history of the left
demonstrates that the mass organisations
have not been those with the best theory
but those most able to interact with the
mass of the population. The strength of
Maoism or the Sandanistas to name two once
popular movements, was hardly in their
theoretical clarity. Rather it was in
their ability to interact with a sizeable
section of the population, despite the
weakness of their political understanding.
Anarchists need to root their politics
firmly in actual struggle, at whatever
level it is occurring. Through this
involvement, as serious activists, respect
can be gained and so an audience won among
the real 'vanguard', those actually
involved in fighting at some level against
the system. Theory, as far as possible,
must be taken from experiences of struggle
and tested by that experience. It must be
presented so that it gains a wider and
wider influence within the major movement.
Commitment
Too often anarchist groups are composed of
a small core of people who do the vast bulk
of the work and financing of the
organisation and a much larger periphery
who avoid this commitment. This is
unacceptable and a recipe for disaster.
Revolutionary organisations require a large
commitment in both money and time if they
are to grow. All individuals involved must
be willing to make this commitment, there
is little room for hobbyists.
The left is coming through a bleak time,
one of defeat and retreat stretching back
over a decade. It is all too easy to
become demoralised. But it is part of a
price that has to be paid for a century of
following a variety of dead ends. The left
may be largely comatose for the moment but
the force that created it is as active as
ever. Capitalism is incapable of
fulfilling the needs of the people of the
world, and so long as it exists it will
throw up oppositional forces. In Ireland,
issues such as the X-case and the service
charges demonstrate how people will be
forced to fight back, although these are
not offensives and should not be portrayed
as such. In Mexico the EZLN rising on New
Years day exposes the same force.
The question for us is how to avoid the
mistakes of those activists who went before
us. Anarchism is weak at the moment, but
the possibility remains open to build the
organisations and confidence in the class
that are required to win change.
Revolutionary opportunities will arise, the
task is to build the skills and confidence
needed to seize them, and that work starts
today.
1 Indeed if volume and complexity of
theory alone were the yardstick used
Christianity or Islam! should be
considered.
2 by anarchists, these accounted for the
failure of anarchism to create an
alternative, however much it could point at
the possibility of that alternative.
3 It is important to recognise that none
of these things were complete however, due
to a situation of dual power with the
state. However the period from after the
revolution in 1936 to May 1937 saw most
major decisions being made in a democratic
fashion with the state only interfering at
the national level.
4 These examples should have ended the
debate over whether the working class could
collectively run the economy. To the
idealists where the idea is more important
than the reality however we still receive
the mantra of 'trade union consciousness'
and 'need for the state'.
5 The IWW in the USA was indeed a real
union but it was explicitly not anarchist.
Its politics although having much in common
with anarchism (and despite the fact many
anarchists were members) was more probably
described as revolutionary syndicalist.
6 A fair part of this view originates with
a single study by a right wing bourgeoisie
scholar in Spain based on one village at
the time of a minor uprising in 1932. His
work has since been shown as completely
inaccurate. See "The anarchists of Casas
Viejas" by Jerome R. Mintz (1982) for a
fuller discussion of this event and its
subsequent falsification.
7 An example of this was the recent
beating up of one of the more political and
successful punk singers, Jello Biafra the
lead singer of the Dead Kennedy's for
'selling out'. His leg was broken so badly
that it was so swollen it could not be put
in a cast.
8 There is an excellent interview with
activists of KAS (Russian anarchists, using
the name of the anarcho-syndicalist
organisation suppressed by the Bolsheviks
in 1918) in issue #5 of "Independent
Politics", Winter 1994 that describes the
origins of these groups in more detail.
The following quote describes the formation
of one of the groups that came together
from 12 cities in the late 80's to re-form
KAS.
"In Moscow this was a student group called
Obshchina, community or commune, which
dates back to 1983. There was a group of
people, friends, and in 1985-86 they had
been the organising committee of the All
Union Revolutionary Marxist Party. Later
there was some evolution of ideas and by
the time the Obshchina group was created in
1987 the main participants already knew
that they stood for anarcho-syndicalism.
This was mainly under the influence of
Bakunin's critique of state socialism and
Marxism. These people were mainly
historians and had the possibility to read
materials in the archives, which was closed
to the general public."
9 Although defeat at the hands of Franco's
better equipped army, or by even stronger
international intervention would have
remained a possibility. There was little
international support that could be called
on. Obviously without spreading
internationally the revolution could not
have survived long.
10 Organisational Platform of the
Libertarian Communists.
11 Towards a Fresh Revolution.