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Title: Letter: Militant or Revolutionary?
Author: D.McC
Date: 1996
Language: en
Topics: militancy, revolutionary anarchism, critique of leftism, Organise!
Source: Retrieved on May 13, 2013 from https://web.archive.org/web/20130514022317/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue44/letters.html
Notes: Published in Organise! Issue 44 — Autumn/Winter 1996.

D.McC

Letter: Militant or Revolutionary?

Dear Organise!

Congratulations to the ACF on reaching your tenth birthday! Doesn’t time

fly when you’re trying to subvert the system?

I enjoyed issue 42, particularly the Anarchist Communism in Britain

supplement which was very interesting as it showed that there is some

historical and political continuity between the revolutionaries of the

last century and those of the inter-war years right up to the present.

In the history of the ACF, however, I was disappointed not to see any

mention of the short-lived Anarchist Workers Group, if only because

libertarians can learn lessons from even the most disastrous

experiences!

I would like to comment on a couple of articles in issue 42. It’s good

to see the ACF open up the pages of Organise! to other groups and the

Militant Eco-Action article was very welcome. However, whilst I agree

with the author that the fight against environmental destruction is

important to the working class (as we always suffer the worst from it

after all!), I feel that the struggles against Roadbuilding etc.,

however militant, can only be defensive struggles and rear-guard actions

at that. Without a revolutionary perspective that actually sees things

in terms of a fight between two classes and talks about the need for the

working class to smash the power of the ruling class and to create a

free, communist society, the environmental movement is condemned to

constantly having to respond to the assaults of capitalism rather than

go on the offensive and actually take control of the planet out of the

hands of its present owners. This tends to make the debate around

violence vs. non-violence a bit irrelevant as an ultra-violent reformism

is still reformism! Also, concerning the article on the Independent

Working Class Association, just a few thoughts. Although the IWCA is a

product of the crisis of the ‘Left’, the same one which has brought

forth the Scargill Labour Party, the Socialist Alliances and on a

different (and perhaps more positive?) level, the Revolutionary

Socialist Network, it is a little harder to fathom. Without doubt Red

Action are politically the prime movers and the early statements issuing

from the IWCA seem to reflect their ultra- critical attitude towards the

Leninist left and traditional lefty politics (ie.Trade Unionist,

Labourist etc.). But there appears to be a contradiction. Whatever

disagreements libertarian communists have with Red Action, they cannot

be dismissed as a just another ‘vanguardist tendency’, akin to those

others which constitute the IWCA, when they have for years been

critiquing vanguardism, Leninism and Trotskyism, often with great

clarity. So why have they jumped into bed with the biggest gang of

unrepentant Stalinists this side of North Korea, thereby giving these

Leninists credibility? Unless you are willing to believe that Red

Action’s anti-Leninism is totally superficial ( and I don’t think it is)

it must mean that they believe they can carry the directionless

Stalinist flotsam and jetsam behind in their wake. Why not let the

bastards drown?

Anyway, that’s yer lot. Keep up the good work.

Yours for libertarian communism,

D.McC

East London